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Oxhorn is a YouTuber that does videos primarily on the Fallout series, including in-depth looks and summaries of their stories, characters, lore, analysis of said stories, characters and lore, as well as walkthroughs of the quests, videos showing off settlements that he has created in Fallout 4, and a video series on fan-made mods for the games, called Oxhorn's Mod Musters.note  He has also dabbled into looking at other games, including an in-depth look into the story of L.A. Noire. Oxhorn has a live stream called "Scotch and Smoke Rings".

Before he became known for his Fallout videos, Oxhorn was best known for his Oxhorn Short Shorts, a Machinima series based on World of Warcraft.

His channel can be found here.


Oxhorn provides examples of:

  • Beautiful Singing Voice: When he covered the story of the Lonesome Road add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, Ox went all-out and helped compose a Thematic Theme Tune, appropriately titled "Lonesome Road". While the opening of the series was only the instrumentals, during Episode 7: An Ending to Things (link leads to the song's start), when showing the Courier fighting with Ulysses against the Marked Men, the full song plays and oh boy, does Oxhorn deliver one outstanding performance! The song can be downloaded on AppleMusic as well.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: For Fallout: New Vegas, Oxhorn was initially delighted to learn about the option to help Yes Man push out the NCR, Caesar, and Mr. House, and make Vegas a truly independent power in the Mojave, and committed his very first playthrough to get that ending. However, as determined in his video on the topic, Ox ultimately came to the conclusion that, as the story indicates, making an independent Vegas with Yes Man in charge will be equally as bad as if House or the NCR took over after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. He cites the fact that, as General Oliver astutely points out towards the story's end, the Courier, whose job experience consists entirely of moving from place to place rather than settling in one spot, and Yes Man, an A.I. jury-rigged to be completely compliant to anyone who gives him an order, know next to nothing about empire-building, e.g. putting up fortifications, protecting the roads, portioning crops for the people they're governing. Additionally, there is no option or ability to suggest forming a council or representative system for the various communities and/or settlements around the Mojave; all important decisions are coming direct from the Courier, whom Yes Man implicitly says he plans to modify his programming to make him completely loyal to them. It even turns out to be the absolute worst circumstances for the Followers of the Apocalypse, a genuinely nice faction trying to do honest, altruistic work in the wasteland. Overall, Ox finds the Independent ending to be a much less hopeful conclusion than he started out thinking.
  • Be Yourself: Discussed. Oxhorn admits that he's not a fan of this idea because there are people who might be trying to improve themselves and the whole "be yourself" and "follow your heart" mentality might encourage some bad habits.
  • Cross Player: Three out of the four of his Fallout 4 avatars that he showed off were female and his avatars for his Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas videos are as well.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: In-universe in regards to Parker Quinn, the conman that tries to sell the Sole Survivor a phony "charge card" in Fallout 4; Oxhorn just finds his personality so entertaining, he can't bring himself to dislike the guy.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Oxhorn believes that siding with the Minutemen in Fallout 4 is ultimately the best bet for rebuilding the Commonwealth and humanity, in spite of admitting that they are the weakest faction, at least by the start of the game and that it takes a lot of hard work on the player's side to get them to that point.

    He argues that because the Minutemen have suffered through a tremendous Trauma Conga Line, starting from the loss of the Castle to General Becker's death up to the Quincy Massacre, they have gained more experience in how to lose than anyone in the Commonwealth and with it, an organization-wide Determinator mindset fueling their mission to protect the Commonwealth; they've already hit the proverbial rock-bottom, so there's nowhere else to go but up. This is in tandem with the fact that the Minutemen are constantly fighting a quasi-Forever War with the various wasteland creatures and cretins like Raiders, Feral ghouls, Super mutants, Deathclaws, etc., to defend their settlements, preventing them from becoming lazy or growing complacent in the brief times of peace.

    And while they still suffer from some prominent negative traits (reliance on a charismatic leader to get things done, for example), because the Minutemen have made it their mission to make sure the entire Commonwealth benefits, rather than choosing which settlements need help over others or installing themselves as the ruling regime, Ox sees a Minutemen-aligned ending as presenting a future where the core values of the would-be Commonwealth Provisional Government (settlements cooperating with each other, providing the supplies and resources, while the Minutemen are simply the military protectors) are revived and where the Commonwealth becomes the heart of an East Coast sister nation to the West Coast NCR, that is, a prominent and powerful entity in the wasteland that can back up its claims of making prosperous all of those under its flag.
    • In contrast, he considers siding with the other three factions as either promoting "evil" in the Commonwealth (the Institute's callous disregard for the Wasteland and its inhabitants; the Brotherhood's exclusive motivation for hoarding pre-War technology) or taking an approach that is good but ultimately flawed (the Railroad's synth-centric agenda that does more harm than good by continuing to feed the paranoia surrounding synth infiltration).
  • Eviler than Thou: For a time he considered HalluciGen. Inc. worse than even Vault-Tec when he visited there in Fallout 4, citing their knowingly kidnapping people that came to their 'job interviews' by drugging them, then performing experiments for creating anti-personnel hardware for use by police and military on them. However, after later exploring Vault 75 and discovering the horrific experiments on children performed there, Oxhorn reversed his position and once again crowned Vault-Tec as the evilest corporation in the Falloutverse.
  • Flat Character: Discussed in Oxhorn's character profile on Preston Garvey, alongside Preston's memetic status as The Scrappy which is linked to the infamous Scrappy Mechanic of him constantly giving repetitive Minutemen quests as fast if not faster than they are completed. In his video, Ox defends Garvey as one of the most genuinely noble and respectable characters in the game... while conceding that he is still a flat character and that Ox would personally rather share a drink with Hancock or romance Cait than hang out with Preston in general. He does however believe Preston is still the better person out of the three.
    • In his Let's Play of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Ox chooses to sacrifice Kaidan during the mission on Virmire in the first game in spite of his own admission that Kaidan, as a superior officer and stable L2-implant-model biotic, a rarity in and of itself, would be the logical choice of a military commander to save. This is because Ox believes that Kaidan is "flat" and/or unremarkable personality-wise and has little to no prospect for development, whereas Ashley has flaws that make her ripe for character growth over the trilogy's course, which is why he saves her instead.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Throughout his gameplay commentaries, he goes out of his way to avoid reading any swear words, often either not reading them at all, making a substitute phrase, or even alluding to the line, sometimes even blurring the line in text.
  • The Gunslinger: Fittingly, his Fallout: New Vegas avatar is one.
  • Hardboiled Detective: He likes to put on an impression of one when appropriate. Like in his video on the murder mystery at Vault 118 and in the narration of his L.A. Noire videos.
  • Honor Before Reason: He considers this to be the ultimate failing of Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. Their adamant refusal to adapt to the NCR's long-range-engagement tactics, even defying training dedicated snipers of their own as part of their overall exclusion of any sort of advanced technology that could possibly even the battlefield; strictly holding to a Zerg Rush mindset of simply throwing more bodies against the enemy until either absolute victory or total defeat, such that their significant loss during the First Battle of Hoover Dam left the Legion with no other choice but to retreat entirely to the East until they could marshal more forces from the wild tribes left; frequently commiting atrocities and terrorist acts like the sacking of Nipton to spread fear and unrest in enemy territory which severely limits the kind of people willing to work with them (what self-respecting, put-together operation wants to associate with a man that declares You Have Failed Me with cruxifiction?); and finally, Caesar himself's stubborn determination to claim Hoover Dam (his "Rubicon"), New Vegas (his "Rome"), and ultimately the NCR itself even as he stretches his already-dwindling Legion thin by bringing in reinforcements from their Southwest holdings, lead Ox to believe that the faction's future was already looking bleak once Caesar learned from Ulysses about the Dam.
    • It's particularly telling of Oxhorn's opinion of a Legion victory at Hoover Dam that, of all four of his videos reviewing the implications of the endings to New Vegas, while the titles of the House/NCR/Independent ending videos all say "Why X is bad for the Mojave", Ox deliberately titles it "Why the Legion is Doomed to Fail".
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: According to him, his Institute-aligned character is supposed to have this, due to her son being a pivotal figure among them as well as the leader of the organization, while she's a simple agent doing their bidding even after taking the Directorship.
  • Ink-Suit Actor: His Brotherhood of Steel/Big-Guns character in Fallout 4, "Ox", is meant to resemble him, at least as close as he could get.
    • Even better, due to the popularity of Ox in critically analyzing the Fallout series, the owners of FudgeMuppet, themselves avid RPG analysts and fans of both Fallout and Elder Scrolls, made a tribute to Ox in the form of a roleplaying build in Fallout 4, even modeling the character in their video as closely to Ox's likeness as 4's character creator would allow.
  • Large Ham: His narrations are often full of this. Especially when he feels it appropriate to put on the Noir voice.
  • Lesser of Two Evils: Or four as it turns out. In his summary videos on the endings for all the four factions (House, the Legion, the NCR, and Independent/Yes Man) in the story of Fallout: New Vegas, Oxhorn concluded that all of the options ultimately prove to be a disastrous choice for taking control of the Mojave Wasteland, and it becomes more of a question of this trope, deciding which one will be the least disastrous. In the end, Ox sides with the NCR because though the faction has several problems like the ludicrous amounts of red tape grinding their bureaucracy to a near halt and the sheer logistical nightmare of trying both to hold New California and occupy the Mojave, he still thinks the NCR has the best chance and the greatest likelihood to actually make it work, to make the Mojave a livable, safe region, not just New Vegas but even also the small communities like Novac, Freeside, etc.
    • Oxhorn also finds this trope present in the Pitt and Far Harbor DLCs.
      • Just as the fandom felt with the original release of The Pitt, Oxhorn found it hard to reconcile a truly "good" ending to his playthrough when both sides have their positive and negative traits: Wernher, while genuinely wanting to free the slaves from the iron fist of Ashur, wants to steal the cure and use it as a bargaining chip, even after finding out where the cure is sourced from, and even have the slaves remain working in the steel mill, only nominally being "in charge". On the other hand, Ashur, warlord of the Pitt, considers the raiders and the slave workforce as necessary to ensure the Pitt's safety and continued industrial strength, while the cure is his key to keeping that order, despite knowing full well that it's sourced from the blood of his infant daughter, born with an immunity to radiation, allowing slaves to birth healthy children that will then replace them when needed. Ox ultimately sided with Wernher.
      • The “least evil” ending he could manage to find in Far Harbor is also the one which he views as “Institute-level manipulation”: killing and replacing the militant leader of the Children of Atom sect on the Island with one of DiMA's synths implanted with false memories to forge a peace between the Children and the denizens of Far Harbor. Just like the Institute does and has done for decades in the Commonwealth. The 'evil' part here can be somewhat mitigated by having a strong rapport with the Children prior to this event which allows convincing the leader to leave peacefully, albeit it requires doing many side quests as well as passing a hard Charisma check to do so.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: His Brotherhood-aligned character in Fallout 4 is deliberately made to be this way. “Ox” just follows Brotherhood diktats without really thinking through the ethics.
  • Not So Above It All: Oxhorn will often go in-depth on what options the player is given, he feels are best from a moral perspective. But, he still doesn't hide the fact that he enjoys a little Video Game Cruelty Potential every now and again.
  • Pet-Peeve Trope: He doesn't particularly like it when the Fallout series dabbles in the supernatural, preferring them to stick to their main genre as a post-apocalyptic atompunk series (though admits he tolerates it if said supernatural elements have a plausible scientific explanation).
  • Shout-Out:
    • His video on "Camp Guardian" in Fallout: New Vegas is named "Saving Private Halford", a clear reference to the film Saving Private Ryan.
    • In his video on Eden Meadows Cinemas, while reading the synopsis of the various upcoming movies the people of pre-nuclear fallout America were consuming on a terminal, Oxhorn can’t help but be reminded of Futurama upon seeing a sci-fi movie that involves Neptunians, even quoting our favorite Neptunian Chef, Elzar:
      Oxhorn: Every now and again, you need to knock it up a notch with a blast from you spice weasel. Bam, I'm Elzar!
    • His video on Juno's Gambit in Starfield includes "We Don't Talk About Juno" in the thumbnail, clearly referencing the popular song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto.
  • Take That!: In his video for the "Horse Power Armor" mod from Creation Club, he wonders if the suit's creator, a raider with an obsession for Giddyup Buttercup toy robot horses, was meant as one towards bronies.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in Oxhorn's video on the Deathclaw Sanctuary, where he tries to show off both the unique Gatling laser Vengeanceand the unique Ripper "Jack", only to get interrupted by a Deathclaw sneaking behind him both times.
  • Trophy Room: In his Kingsport Lighthouse settlement, Oxhorn has the armor/clothes of various fallen enemies hanging up on display.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: This is often discussed in Oxhorn’s videos, when he comes across Well-Intentioned Extremist in the games, the many miraculous scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to save countless people but were developed through human experimentation, or the unscrupulous options the Player Character is given that could do a lot of good in the long term. Oxhorn himself ultimately concludes that there is absolutely no end goal, no matter how beneficial it might seem that is worth disregarding the lives and personal liberties of innocent people.
    • The House ending in New Vegas is a prime example of this. In his video about it, while Ox admits that House definitely deserves to be in control of Vegas given everything he did to protect the city during the Great War and later to rebuild its prosperity in the wasteland, House explicitly says in-game that his plans beyond the Second Battle of Hoover Dam are to set himself up as an autocrat, the one and only authority when it comes to running Vegas without any control or oversight from others like the Three Families or the NCR, a decision that Oxhorn is largely against on a personal note. Ox also acknowledges the issue that House's contemporary aspirations of glory extend as far as the walls of New Vegas and no further; House wouldn't altruistically help Freeside, Novac, or any of the small towns and communities surrounding New Vegas despite being wholly capable of it. Without any material and/or monetary gain, the most good he'd do for them is leaving them alone as they are, lacking the economic boon of the Strip's casinos and especially the defensive capability of his upgraded Securitrons.

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