The following is a section I deleted from my article on The Outer Worlds and imperialism. As it’s not supported by the in-game text, I didn’t think it belonged in the essay, but I do think it came out nice, so here it is.
Like Fallout, Outer Worlds views its future as both an extension of its in-world alternative history and of the real history of the United States. Obsidian Entertainment believes political influence ripples out on the order of centuries. Despite being set in 2355, the game’s inciting incident occurred in 1901. From 1887 to 1901, William McKinley was the President of the U.S.A. McKinley was pugnaciously pro-monopoly and pro-empire, absorbing countries such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines into the American colonies and giving his blessing to business trusts that swallowed entire industries. Living at the same time as McKinley was Leon Czolgosz, who had suffered under mass layoffs and wage reductions as a manual labourer. When Czolgosz and his colleagues tried to protest these conditions, police often arrived, truncheon in fist, to beat and silence them. Czolgosz’s experiences manifested an affinity for anarchism, and McKinley’s consolidation of power was antithetical to that philosophy. On September 6th, 1901, Czolgosz met McKinley inside the “Temple of Music” at the Pan-American Exposition. With his left hand, he greeted the President, and with his right, shot him twice in the stomach.
Eight days later, McKinley’s Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, was racing across the Adirondack Mountains by carriage. At dawn, he arrived at a train station where he received the news that his superior had died, promoting him to the 26th President of the United States. It would take forty-five days for Czolgosz to be executed by electric chair at the age of 28, but it only took 13 hours after the death of McKinley for Roosevelt to be sworn into office. Despite serving under an entrenched collaborator with America’s business tycoons, Roosevelt was looking for his country to reverse course. He wasn’t anti-capitalist; he even waged a campaign against anarchism, but he did have a different vision for capitalism in America. He broke up colossal corporate trusts and gave the welfare state a shot in the arm.
In Outer Worlds’ timeline, McKinley is never assassinated, so Roosevelt doesn’t become President and divide up the business alliances. Therefore, it’s those trusts that colonise space, and in the year 2355, one rules Halcyon.
