Fallout 3

Set in the year 2277, 200 years after nuclear armeggedon

I've been playing this game for a few weeks now, and I must say that it's probably the best game I've ever played. For it's depth, scope, references, and execution it gets 10 out of 10 from me.

Now considering what's been happening in the middle east recently, and as recorded history has demonstrated, warfare appears sadly to be a recurrent aspect of the human condition, and when coupled with advanced nuclear weapons technology, and those with a will to unleash them .. well, extinction becomes a real possibility. One thing I came across in this game I find bitingly poignant, (and apparently a nod to Ray Bradbury's sci-fi novel 'There will come soft rains') -

In a house in the ruins of washington DC, there is a still functioning 'servant robot'. This robot may be activated from a computer terminal nearby, and when the option to 'Read junior a bed-time story' is selected, the robot activates, goes upstairs to a child's bedroom, where a small skeleton lies on the bed, and recites this poem -


There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.