Dylan Weber
Kim Priest
English 101
Rhetorical Analysis During the beginning of this article, Tom Bissel has a back and forth comparison of his opinion about the video game Fallout 3, and telling his imaginary children, Kermit and Hussein, what he was doing the day that Barack Obama was elected to be our first African-American President of the United States. He tries to make an argument that even though there was a widely-known national, and even global, event that took place, he felt like playing the open world game of Fallout 3 was just more important. He goes on to say, “And so, my beloved Kermit, my dear little Hussein, at the moment America changed forever, your father was wandering an ICBM-denuded wasteland, nervously monitoring his radiation level, armed only with a baseball bat, a 10mm pistol, and six rounds of ammunition, in search of a vicious gang of mohawked marauders who were 100 percent bad news and totally had to be dealt with. Trust Daddy on this one”. This analogy of two events shows that beating a video game like Fallout 3 was just as important as watching the election of the 44th President of the United States. And while the excruciating detail of the game makes it seem like there was a lot of responsibility on his hands and he makes it sound like an assertion, it wouldn’t matter in the end, because we all know it was just a virtual world, and he missed out on reality. His anecdote was very detailed, however, and I’m sure if there was anyone who was skeptical about buying Fallout 3, they aren’t skeptical now. He goes on to talk about how Fallout 3 is an open world/sandbox game that provides limitless possibilities. He transitions into the game Oblivion, which was also released by the same creators of the Fallout 3 Bethesda. He sneaks in a little story (anecdote) about a group of “jean-jacketed dullards” throwing a copy of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual II into Lake Michigan, and he’s afraid of being bullied by the same group of guys, which is very unrealistic and irrational considering he hasn’t seen those kids since 1985. He makes the claim that he has logged 200 hours into the game Oblivion, and he backs that up by saying how the game tracks the hours for you, and it shows up every time you play. These authority points back up his logos of the time logged into the game. Bissell talks about the first gameplay video (trailer) released for Fallout 3. He’s quoted as saying, “When Bethesda posted a video showcasing Fallout 3’s in-game combat-a brilliant synthesis of trigger-happy first-person-style shooting and the more deliberative, turn-based tactics of the traditional role-playing video game, wherein you attack, suffer your enemy’s counterattack, counterattack yourself, and so on, until one of you is dead-many could not believe the audacity of its cartoon-Peckinpah violence.” This is an amazing anecdote for an apparently amazing story in the Fallout 3 universe. There is phenomenal features in the game, like slo-motion action shots, and he says plain and simple “Fallout 3 was going to be fucking awesome”. That’s the most blatant way to describe a video game for the many who have not seen the gameplay or tried the game for themselves. The author moves on to the visual display of the game, telling about how the first seven hours were used to analyze the graphics. A high budget game had some pretty amazing features, like the forests, the industrial zones that looked futuristic, and the gun fights that would abruptly start, and so on. This is someone who has logged 200 hours into just this one game, among other games as well, and with such incredible detail to the game play and visual design, he clearly knows what he is talking about, which shows ethos. You start to get enthralled into what the game would be like, especially for someone like me who has never played the game before. I get excited to hear these details, and especially with the concept of a post-apocalyptic world, I feel pathos in the essay. The setting of the game is in 2277, two centuries or so after a huge nuclear confrontation between the United States and China. Clearly the audience knows this is a fantasy setting with no real facts driven behind it. But despite this, Tom Bissell says this game just looks beautiful. While most modern games can also be described as beautiful, this game just feels right, even when you bash the brains of a radioactive ghoul. This setting gives the reader a chance to use their imagination and their slight anticipation to want to bash in skulls of virtual demons themselves. This selection in pathos driven. Then comes Fallout 3’s tutorial, which according to Bissell, is his most frustrating part of the game. Then again, who actually likes the tutorial? I mean granted the tutorial shows you how to actually play the game but for some games those are just rhetorical hints. They already know how to play the game, and it frustrates them. Thankfully some games allow you to just skip the tutorial which is a huge sigh of relief from gamers everywhere, but, just in case the gamer is a little too cocky for his own good, keep the tutorial in the games inventory. Wow. Just thinking about the tutorial in some games drove a reaction out of me. Bissell definitely knew how to take an infuriating part of video games called the tutorial and showcase it to readers so they can know the struggles that he was feeling while playing Fallout 3, turning this section into a pathos-driven piece. Skipping ahead to page 359, and Tom Bissell is quoted saying “the games that interest me the most are the games that choose to tell stories”. He gives the example PLUMBER’S GIRLFRIEND CATURED BY APE!, which is an allusion to the game Super Mario, staring perhaps the most famous plumber of all time Mario, who has to save Princess Peach from the evil Donkey Kong. Super Mario is arguably the most popular video game of all time, and is still alive and well today, with new Mario games that seem to be released every year. But the author continues his points, saying how video games are often compared to movies. Yet Bissell says upon closer comparison the two couldn’t be farther apart. Yes they are scored, have paid actors and actresses, and they both have cinematic scenes, but movies have a more compressed style of storytelling, where you are focused on the main point no matter what. In video games, there are more options available, meaning you can focus on the main storyline, or ultimately you could change the camera to something else, meaning you could miss the main point. But to that, gamers love having the choice to choose. This analogy is perfect for the modern era, seeing as these two electronic pastimes are the cornerstone of this generation.

In conclusion, this essay was a well written document. It showed an in-depth description of Fallout 3, the marvelous game by Bethesda. Its use of rhetorical strategies inside the game’s analysis was well done, along with its comparison to current and past events like the election of Barack Obama, or the great classic game of Super Mario. But no racial barriers, rolling barrels, or post-apocalyptic ghouls kept Tom Bissell from going in-depth on the significance of a good video game like Fallout 3. Now as the reader, I’m tempted to buy this game (rent if at all possible; money is an issue as a college student) so I can be a part of the statistic that has played this mind-blowing, unique, open world game by the name of Fallout 3.