Starting Fallout is like coming back to an old friend. I haven’t played the original in years because of the current tsunami of video games in the world. Yet, the sights and sounds immediately set off synapses in the brain as I watch the introduction video. Even with the video at a resolution that would be scoffed at by a modern game, it does a great job of setting up the story and atmosphere of the Fallout world. It is a bleak world that is reminiscent of 1950’s America. Ron Perlman’s slightly raspy voice does a great job of explaining why this art deco inspired paradise tumbled head first into nuclear Armageddon. I think it’s one of the best introductions to a setting in the history of gaming with people who have never played the Fallout franchise quoting the first words Perlman speaks.
War. War never changes.
He might be right about war, but the Fallout franchise has changed a bit since debuting in 1997. Just going back to this first game in the franchise shows as much. Even if the intro screen didn’t give me a clue, I understood the dramatic changes seen int he series as I dropped into character creation.
A Spark of Life
When going in to the character creator, there are a few different choices to make. The game offers three premade characters and an option to make my own. I ignore the premade characters and start creating my character for this play through. There are a lot of options here that reflect the complex subsystems used throughout the game. The SPECIAL system is the base stats for the character and stand for strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck. There is a small amount of points to spread between the base number that need to be allocated. I also need to choose the three main skills my character will concentrate on upgrading in the game. There are also a list of perks that can help hinder my character through the rest of the adventure. I choose these and end up with a character I’m satisfied with.
I named him Marcus. He is a twenty-five year old man who knows how to use big and small guns and has a penchant for lock picking. His perception is great but his strength is low. He won’t be able to hit enemies with a bat very hard but he’ll be able to snipe them with a rocket launcher. My chosen perks are called Gifted and Skilled. Gifted raises my base stats and lower my skills. Skilled raises my initial skills back up but only grants me a perk every four levels instead of three. I’m happy with this and feel I have a well-rounded character.
Finishing my character creation drops into another low resolution video of someone that looks like he escaped Bethesda’s Oblivion. It is the overseer of the vault and he fills me in with the details of what I’m expected to do. I need to find a water chip to keep the vault from going dry within a one-hundred and fifty days. He seems apologetic in sending me on this task. He should be. I know what happens at the end of the game from my previous play through. The dastard.
The vault door opens and soon I’m standing in a cave getting attacked by a rat. The remains of another vault dweller is beside me and all I can think of is looting the body after I make this rat become a corpse. The experience is both nostalgic and new. I feel warm and fuzzy despite all the violence since I’m now back home in the barren waste of post apocalyptic America.
Falling Out of Time
What if the technology of the 1950’s never evolved t our current state of this digital age? What if a nuclear exchange had ended that world prematurely? These are the conceits behind the Fallout universe. This take on the apocalypse is what helps sell the game. The buzzing of vacuüm tubes and the click of small monochrome monitors can be seen in the most technologically advanced areas of the game. Yet, every character starts out in a musty cave being attacked by rats. It is up to the player to find out what is left outside the cave and if that can help his quest. The main draw of the original Fallout is the world that is just beyond the entrance of the cave. The world that exists in the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.
When I leave the cave, I’m taken to a map grid with my current location and one other site marked on the map. All else is shrouded in a fog of war. The map is interesting. I know I don’t have to go to this other location, Vault 15, but it is hard to deny wanting to see another vault in the blackness of the grid. I pass a town going to the new Vault and after being rebuffed in my exploration, I head back to the town known as Shady Sands. This gives me a moment to take in the sights of the game itself.
The graphics of the game is filled with both the bad and the good. The characters tend to be faceless clones that are wondering the desert and cities of the wasteland. The movements can seem a bit jerky at times, especially since everything is attached to a hexagonal grid. When comparing the human models to other games from the same era, like Diablo by Blizzard, they don’t come out on top. The human models do a decent job of acting as characters and player avatar within the game world. At least the armor and weapons change on the characters as the items are switched out. The nonhuman NPCs and enemies are well done and full of detail. These range form the mundane to the gross and menacing. Deathclaws in the game are still creatures with whom I don’t want to tangle.
The cities, vaults, and military bases of the world of the world look great in a just-surviving-an-atomic-exchange sort of way. Some towns are cobbled together from pieces of left over refuge while other area are memorials to technological splendor. All the graphics seem are tiled based and the artists involved did a great job with the environments. Fallout isn’t a modern looking game by any means but isn’t as bad as some would have the reader believe. The main purpose of graphics is to immerse the player in the gaming world and these graphics do this job well.
Sounding Off
One of the main reasons that Fallout is so immersive is the sound design and music. From the pop of the guns to the meaty thunk of a mêlée weapon hitting the enemies, the sound in this game is second to none. I find that many modern games don’t do sound design justice. Going back to a mid 90’s RPG like Fallout helps me to understand why.
The visuals in older games didn’t have the same fidelity as they do in newer products. Designers often used sound and music to create an atmosphere that immersed the player even when the graphics were limited by other factors during the era. Fallout uses the sound cues in a way that makes dark areas seem extra creepy and strange areas that much more comedic.
The music also helps create the atmosphere of Fallout. Composed by Mark Morgan, the soundtrack evokes a time when all hope is lost and the world is nothing but a burnt out shell. It is hard not to imagine hearing his tunes while sitting in a lonely whistle-stop waiting for a train that will never come.
The music and sound in the game doesn’t just help set the tone within the world itself. This starts from the very moment the game boots up and the lonely wind howls as the Inkblots start singing. Maybe the game would still be the same without the sound and music design but I doubt it. Of course, the sound is tied to the world itself as my character starts exploring the rest of the Wasteland.
Moving On Up
One item that had slipped my mind is that Fallout has a distinct lack of a beginning tutorial. There is no hand-holding at the beginning of the game and there are no arrows or blinking lights leading the way. The player is expected to read the manual to find out how the game plays. Even a Fallout veteran, like myself, was a little thrown when I first starting the game back up. I guess I really have become a bit too familiar with current game design.
Fallout is split into two parts: Exploration and Combat. Both modes take place on the same screen and use similar mechanics. When exploring, the cursor can be passed over various object to see how a player can use the object. A mouth appears if the player can speak with another character, a hand appears if the object or character can be searched or used and a pair of binoculars is used to look at items. This brings up a description of the object or character through text in the lower left hand of the screen. The right mouse button is used to cycle through these icons and the hexagonal movement icon.
The difference between the exploration mode and the combat mode is that the former is in real time and the later is turn based. The player is given a limited amount of points to use in combat. Each action in the takes a certain amount of points. For example, if a weapon isn’t drawn when combat starts then points will be used to arm the character. Moving into position takes actions points as does reloading, precise aiming and interacting with objects. The action point system makes the turn based combat feel vibrant and tense since every action has a cost. Of course, these action points can be expanded as the character levels up.
Playing a Role
The designers of Fallout pulled various concepts from tabletop and digital role playing games of the era. The various systems are in place to help the player experience the world as he would if he were living it. The SPECIAL system acts as a base for all interactions in the game. However, there are a variety of skills that can be leveled up to help offset any weaknesses in the base skills. A perk is chosen every three or four levels that also work to help create a fully fleshed out character.
Fallout is a huge sandbox that doesn’t limit the player. There is no constraining the character down a linear path just to satisfy story beats. At least, that is true for the most part. There is a time limit imposed on the player when looking for the Vault’s water chip. The game will end after 150 days if the chip isn’t found. There are ways to extend the time limit and cheats to get around the quest, but the time limit is there as a design in the game. The game doesn’t end with the water chip being returned to the Vault. The game opens up with no time limit after this point. It is an irritation but doesn’t take much away from the game itself.
Talking It Out
One of the reasons the Fallout series has lasted so long is the open ended nature of the dialog trees. How a character is initially designed affects all areas of the game. Almost any situation can be approached from a variety of angles. Did the player roll up a character that is great with a stick but isn’t a quick thinker? The dialog choices with each NPC will reflect this. Instead of being able to talk his way out of a situation, the player might have to use his big stick to kill or be killed. A player that is intelligent but has a low strength will have to rely on talking his way through certain situations or get a really big gun. There is even situations where high luck can bring the player through battles where he might have parishes otherwise. The SPECIAL system is very diverse and still holds up even in the against modern game design.
Becoming a Saint or Sinner
Karma and reputation play a big part on how the world views the player’s character. Doing bad things, like killing children or civilians, will make the population hate the character. Doing good things, like helping save some cattle for a village or ridding a cave of rad scorpions, will raise the reputation of the character. Every town can view the player differently. In one area, the player can be a complete villain while in another he can be a paragon. These towns don’t have a great way of communicating in this vast wasteland so often the reputation doesn’t precede the character. However, the game does keep tally of how a player acts and gives a general overview of his overall reputation in the world.
Final Solution
When I first heard about Fallout, it was the first time I read the term “Spiritual Sequel.” At the time, the designers couldn’t use the Wasteland setting that they had created in the late 1980’s and created this game instead. I often thing this bit of trivia leads people to downplay the true importance of the original Fallout. Like many games in the mid to late 90’s, this was a product released before it could be truly appreciated. Many of the systems and ideas found within the game are now found peppered through every genre that gaming has to offer.
That doesn’t mean Fallout doesn’t have flaws. Describing the User Interface for the game as clunky is an understatement. The graphics range from good to pretty bad. Some of the dialog and text flavor in the game is written in a way that makes me scratch my head. Yet, I think those flaws are mostly about nitpicking the game. The world itself draws me in like few others. I can still sit here and play it a full run through of this game that came out eighteen years ago and feel accomplished.
Fallout is a great start to a long lasting franchise and deserves more recognition then it gets. Do yourself a favor and try out the game, especially if you’ve only played the last two entries. Don’t let the dated graphics and turn-based gameplay push you away. There is a quality game that is just as immersive as either of the Fallout products Bethesda has published.