Tenpenny tower

Ugh.  I don't want to write about this.

I don't want to write about this, because video games aren't supposed to give you choices like this one.  They're supposed to give you easy choices.  Think back to the choices that you were given going all the way through video games in the '80s.  You are Mario.  You jump on goombas.  And that wasn't even really a moral question, since if you didn't jump on a goomba or a koopa they'd just happily walk right off a cliff anyway, without even slowing down.  Well, the green shells, anyway.  Pac-man ate ghosts, that was his job.  And all this stuff was really simple, and framed in the good guy / bad guy framework (or the Lucas Simms / Mister Burke framework if you'd rather).


But then comes Tenpenny Tower.

Tenpenny Tower is where the moral nature of the game kicks into overdrive, and if you've ever played it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.  On first glance, it's not a complicated question.  Allistair Tenpenny is a bad man.  We know that from first talking to him.  After all, he was the one who wanted Megaton destroyed, and all its inhabitants killed, because it was an 'eyesore.'  He sits on his balcony at the top of Tenpenny Tower, and looks through his sniper rifle and blasts away at ghouls and wildlife, and human visitors, in what he calls a 'wasteland safari.'  This is the textbook definition of someone that you should want to execute in the game. For further proof of that, type 'Allistair Tenpenny' into the search bar in youtube. Try to find a single video that isn't a compliation of him getting murdered.  He doesn't attack you, but he's obviously up to no good.  He's a bigot, and the type of person who would end lives because the people who stand in his way are inconvenient.

Although there's a quest given to you from a ghoul in Underworld to kill Tenpenny, you don't have to, at least not right away.  But in the areas around Tenpenny Tower, there are bigger things happening.  For you see, sentient ghouls are living in the subways around Tenpenny Tower.  And they're not real happy about being second class citizens.  As they shouldn't be.  Their spokesman, Roy Phillips, wants them to be let into Tenpenny Tower as paying residents.   The ghouls are people too.  People who look a little bit different, people whose skin has been wrecked by radiation (Ghouls call humans smoothskins), but people nonetheless.  And these people want the same access to the luxury of Tenpenny Tower that any other paying guest would want.

And so the stage is set.  The die is cast. Chief Gustav, Tenpenny's head of security, offers you money and guns to kill all the ghouls in the subway beneath the ground.  When you get there, the ghouls tell you their demands.  And this seems like an easy choice.  Obviously the ghouls should be allowed to enter, right?  They're people too.  And the whole thing smacks of not-so-veiled racism.  But the ghouls under the city don't exactly have a great plan either, in that they want to let a bunch of feral ghouls into the Tower to kill all the human residents, and then move into the tower after all the humans are dead.  So, in the one case, you murder all the ghouls, and then get money and guns for your trouble from the bigot humans.  In the other case, you help the ghouls to kill all the humans, and then they move into the Tower and take over, trying to forget all the murders that they committed to get there.


If only there was another way.  Which there is.


You see, Fallout is not a shooter, or at least it doesn't have to be.  You are not required to go into every situation guns blazing.  When there are puzzles to be solved, the solution isn't always 'use bullet on

man.'  There are alternatives to fighting.  When I was making my character for the game, I put a lot of points into charisma, speech, all those things that I feel as though I would have to rely on in the wastelands.  And when presented with this choice, I was relieved to find that instead of murder on one side and murder on the other side, there was an option to deal with diplomacy.  You can, if you work hard enough and are convincing enough, get the humans to be less bigoted, and to let the ghouls move in alongside them.  This is obviously the best of all possible solutions, in which the right thing happens.  The ghouls get to enter the Tower alongside the humns, and everyone learns an important lesson about life.


And again, that's the way thing are supposed to go.  Jesus tells us 'blessed are the peacemakers,' and that's a wonderful thing to aspire to.  The desire when approaching a situation like Tenpenny Tower is to want to make peace, to enter into this world as the savior of the wastes, as the one who is able to
smooth out differences and disagreements, as the one who is able to make everything better and to make sure that people can both live, and prosper.  We are told that throughout the scriptures, that one's goal ought to be to encourage, to help and to change the hearts of stone of those who are resistant to the word of God.  He desires that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.  Jesus tells us that there is always the chance to turn things around, to do the right thing, that nobody ought to be considered to be too far gone as long as they yet draw breath.


So you go, you talk to all the residents of Tenpenny Tower, you discuss their dreadfully bigotry, and you convince them one by one to let the ghouls move in.  And after talking to all of them, they allow, through a great deal of conversation, the ghouls to be equal residents of the Tower.  The solution is there, and everyone is happy.  You shake hands with Roy Phillips, and walk away, safe in the knowledge that you did the right thing.

But if you go back to the tower, if you leave and then go back, you will find something strange.  The humans who lived there are nowhere to be found.  For some reason, it's all ghouls all over the place, all the time.  It's surreal, that place that was inhabited by humans is all deserted.  And this was the space in which you were sure that you smoothed things over and made it all better by talking nicely to everyone.  It is only after talking to Roy Phillips that he tells you that he and the human residents had a 'disagreement,' and that's that.  If you keep exploring the tower, you'll find where all the people went.  Their bodies are all crammed into basement storage.


After all your effort of trying to make sure that the humans and the ghouls could get along, they still don't.  Someone's still going to die.  There will be blood in this mission.  And the saddest thing of all is that after you spend forever and ever trying to convince the humans that the ghouls are people too, that they're not bad, that they're not any different than they are, that they're safe and fair and just people, and even then, the ghouls end up slaughtering them en masse, and hiding their bodies in the basement.


Bottom line:  There is no good way to complete this quest.  It's not even like 'Wargames' where the only way to win is not to play.  If you refuse to play, if you refuse to participate, then the bigots will continue to live fat and happy in their luxury, and will be confident in their offensive oppressive nature. But if the ghouls win, the people end up dead.  Whether you kill them or someone else does, they end up dead.  And knowing that, there's not a good way to complete the task so that everyone prospers. Someone will lose, someone will die.


As a Christian, this is the hardest decision that there was to make, because I felt personally responsible for the outcome.  I wanted to do the right thing, I wanted to do what was good and proper, I wanted the bigots to change their minds, and for them to live side by side with the ghouls, and it didn't happen.  And so the question is, how much responsibility do you bear for the decisions of other people?


This is something that Christians need to consider.  Your issues are your issues only.  Your decisions are your decisions only.  That whole proverb that tells you that you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink, that's true.    You can make all the correct decisions you want, you can bring people together, but it's not up to you to live their lives for them.   You can do all you want to give them the best information possible, to make it so that they would make good quality decisions, you can discuss things with them, you can help them to see how things ought to be, but you can't take full responsibility for what they do.  That's not your call to make.


This is one of the most difficult of all Christian teachings to deal with and to bear, that you are just responsible for your own morality.  You can call out and punish evil, you can look evil right in the face and call it out for what it is, you can present people with all the morality you have, but their decisions
are ultimately up to them.  Each one should bear his own load.  This is what separates, or should separate, a Christian nation from a 'Christian' nation.  The first is the one in which the majority of people internalize, live out Christian principles.  The second is one in which the government will or will not allow individuals to do things based on a perception of Christian principles.  You see, the Bible says that you shall not kill, and it's right to do so.  No murder.  But you can't kill people based on future murder that they might commit. You can't pre-emptively pull a minority report and assume that you know who will or will not turn on their fellow man.


Ultimately, what Tenepenny Tower tells you is that you are responsible for your own actions.  If you got a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realized what had happened, it's because the game is too smart to give you a simple black and white choice, of letting you choose the good option and eschew the bad option.  Both options are bad, because both sets of people are bad.  They've all got problems.  Nobody leaves Tenpenny tower with all their morals and scruples intact.  Or if they do, then they lose all their blood.  Back in Megaton, there were good guys and bad guys.  Simms and Burke.  In Tenpenny Tower, you only have bad guys, and whichever pony you back, someone's going to do bad things.  All you can do, as the player, is to do the right thing as much as you can, and to let the consequences for that rest on those who committed the crimes.


If I had to reload the save, and start over, I would not even touch Tenpenny Tower at all.  If they want to sort this all out, they can do it on their own.  But I think I still would deal with Mr. Tenpenny myself.  He is my responsibility.



Tune in next week as we wrap up Fallout 3, talking about how to end an open world game that never ends.