My Favorite Things: Fallout 2 - Inside the Hubologists Shuttle

Just because it makes no sense - it doesn't mean you should not write about it. Sometimes surfing the web leads to some really unexpected corners of Internet. You may find yourself inside some fan-curated Wikia dedicated to something close to your heart 15 years ago. Not because you want to know more but because you feel empty inside and have nothing else to do. That is how i have found this image. It is from the files of the post-nuclear role-playing game Fallout 2 (G.O.A.T. btw). It might seem a little bit elusive and somewhat cryptic but in fact it is nothing but a non-fuctional piece of a game.

Believe it or not - this image masterfully depicts the interiors of a space shuttle. In fact - it is one of a kind depiction of the interiors of a space shuttle. It is nothing like any other depictions of the interiors of the space shuttles. It is simply a black screen covered in red patches that read "unused art". It is one of the most brilliant design choices ever. I wonder why no one ever tried to pull this off for real? It even fits Fallout's own Special Encounters rulebook (in short: odd and batshit, gallows humor). 

Why am i writing about such insignificant thing? Because i find it interesting. Outside of its original context black field with red patches looks like a fine example of tongue-in-cheek conceptual art. Technically it is a piece of concrete poetry mixed with conceptual writing. It reminds me of Allen Ruppersberg and Billy Apple. It is a wasteland of its own. It is empty and filled with placeholders. It is something ponder about. 

You can enter the interiors of the shuttle through the map. If you press "5" key you will get to the location. However you can't get out of it and so you need to reload from earlier place. Why it happened to be so? Because the player was never meant to enter the space shuttle thus there was no need to design its interiors. Its exterior looks like this:

Nothing interesting - just another futurist-styled spaceship designed after NASA Space Shuttle. The  ship is titled USS Quetzel (soaring pretzel!). Inside a game - it was built some time prior to the Great War and somehow managed to remain mostly intact. It was owned by the Hubologists. Who are they? It is a religious cult based on Scientology. They are situated in San Francisco. Their religion is titled "Hubology". It is centered around the idea that humans suffer from spirits of the dead who create parasitic substances or entities known as "neurodynes" which supress talents and abilities of human beings. Hubology offeres a "cleansing" which may cause "severe" "empowerment" and permament brain damage. If you want to know how does this "cleansing" looks like - think about Room 104 episode 3 - it is more or less exact depiction of the process. 

So - some time before the game started Hubologists have found this space shuttle and tried to repair it. But because of inner city politics they were unable to do that. Then came The Player and helped to fix things. Hubologists wanted to use space shuttle in order to escape from Earth to another planet they called Quetzel (dramatic squirrel!). Due to lack of significance of the plot it was never really resolved. 

There are two quests connected to it - "get the fuel" and "repair the shuttle". The player can provide cultists with fuel and repair the ship - but then they all die due to suffocation caused by lack of air supply (sad). If player fails to provide Hubologists with fuel they use some alternative fuel and blow up during liftoff (hahaha!). If player provides them with fuel but fails to repair the ship - they all die after a liftoff due to depressurization (double sad).