When my roommate purchased “Fallout 4,” I’ll admit I was less than enthused. Having never been much of a gamer, I was not overwhelmed with the same excitement that she and millions of people felt as they purchased their copies. Yet one day soon after she got her copy, she convinced me to open my own save file and try it out. I was hooked. 

I appreciate not only the fantastic graphics, storylines and characters, but also the wonderful female representation that the game offers. Aside from being able to set your own character as a strong-willed female who bravely battles her way across a decimated Massachusetts, the game also features other strong, unique feminist characters. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Piper, whom you meet outside of Diamond City, is a good example of the positive female representation this game has. She runs her own newspaper, Publick Occurrences, and does her own investigative journalism about the Institute and synths. Piper provides a positive example of a woman in a leadership role, an area in which other video games sometimes lack portrayal.

Other female representation is equally as good as Piper’s. For example, the player meets Curie and Cait along his or her journey. Both are remarkably different women, but both serve as good female representation.

Cait serves as a reminder not to consider women as weak or fragile. When the player first meets Cait, she is fighting for a living in the Combat Zone, where she has worked for many years. She is arguably the toughest character in the game, which is a role few female video game characters get to serve. It is important to see women as being strong and capable of fighting because it serves, even in a video game, to challenge preconceived ideas about women’s capabilities. 

Meanwhile, Curie originally begins her life as a robot, but has the ability to turn herself “human” after becoming the player’s companion. She has dedicated her entire life to the promotion of science and eventually becomes a medic upon receiving a more human-like body. Her representation is important because it shows a woman in the medical profession. Curie is a positive representation of a successful, intelligent woman. 

As a person playing a videogame, I admire “Fallout 4” for many face-value reasons. It is a wonderful, thorough, fun game to play. But on a deeper level, I have to applaud Bethesda Softworks, the game’s publisher, for the positive representations of its female characters.