The Fallout Series: A Comparison, part one
The Fallout Series: A comparison
"War never changes..."
It was inevitable that I'd be more interested than ever in playing the rest of the Fallout series after enjoying the third one so much. I just didn't know HOW interested; getting the first one and buying the second a few days later, I motored my way through the franchise that gave birth to oft-acclaimed Game of the Year.
I'd heard all the naysayers; No Mutants Allowed dot com, the crazy ancient fans who said that no 3D first person BETHESDA game would ever hold a candle to their beloved series.
After playing through both games, I found that their gripes were actually... well, not crazy. They were actually pretty sensible, in fact.
We'll start with Fallout 1, and I may update throughout the day.
Part One: FALLOUT
Summary and Gameplay
Fallout was released in 1997 by Black Isle Studios, published by Interplay as the first in it's series, although in technical terms it can be considered a spiritual successor to a much older game called Wasteland, another post-apocalyptic RPG.
The game opens with a cutscene showcasing the desolate wasteland the world has become. Once you start your game and choose your character (pre-made or custom, I went with custom) you get another cutscene: You live in Vault 13, a highly advanced bomb shelter that contains about a thousand people. As far as you can tell you and your ancestors have lived in this vault for around eighty years since the war began, making the year 2161.
There have been no problems... until the day the game actually begins, when the vault's water synthesizing device breaks down. No replacement is forthcoming, and so the vault's Overseer (the leading official (or dictator, depending on the vault) of the vault's people) sends you out into the wasteland to find another water chip. Your people have only about a few months of water left, and time is already running out.
You begin in the cave leading up to Vault 13, and the game officially starts.
The game features an isometric system of gameplay, where you view the player character (and the action) from a top-down perspective. The player occupies a certain cell in the world and moves along the space within that cell, interacting with characters and objects within the world.
Gameplay is very simplistic; you could play it solely with a mouse if you wanted to. Every function has a button you can click on, whether it's using your skills, changing firing mode, or simply moving along.
Action is relegated to various set-piece gun battles where you take your turn firing and then weathering your enemy's attack, in true RPG fashion. It can wear a little on your patience, however, as some enemy's are so slow and cantankerous that you just want to get the fighting over with and move on. Thankfully however, most battles aren't like this.
Unlike Fallout 3, where you can explore the entire world space on foot, Fallout divides the action into random encounters and settlements that exist in the wider wasteland. You're taken to a world screen once you exit a point of interest, where your character makes tracks across the wasteland and time flies by. Travel is done on foot, which can make the going slow and very, very treacherous if you're not well prepared.
Survival is actually a very well-done aspect of Fallout, in most fields. If you don't prepare yourself for traveling the wasteland, the wasteland will claim you. Sometimes your character will be unable to find water in the desert and you will take damage, simulating the harsh environment. Other times you will be set upon by raiders, who WILL kill you if you're not well prepared; either to run away or to fight back.
It's not always so lonely, however; about three humans and a dog can join you in your travels, and the brawn they provide can easily turn the tide of any battle. However, they're not very smart and are prone to shooting you in the back arbitrarily if you get in the way of their attacks, and while you level up and gain new armor, they cannot do the same. These issues are addressed in Fallout 2, and companions become even more effective in Fallout 3.
In the settlements you will find a bunch of neat things to do, be it repairing the villagers farm equipment, saving the life of a kind-hearted prostitute from an angry customer, to rescuing an entire city from annihilation. In the quest for better equipment and money, you can easily lose sight of what you were sent out to find in the first place.
So that's gameplay. Let's look at how the game's presented.
Presentation
The Fallout series is known for it's black humor, be it the McCarthy-esque communist hysteria in Fallout 3 to the self-referential comedy in Fallout 2. Fallout has it's share of the funny, but it's not as prevalent as it is in the other two games. In Fallout 2 I helped King Arthur's knights storm the Vorpal Rat (not a rabbit this time) cave in search of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (earlier I passed the Bridge of Death,) while in Fallout 3 an entire settlement is sent into a killing frenzy if you convince them that you're a communist invader.
Fallout, on the other hand, tends to take its subject matter very seriously. The only outright reference I could find in the game was a random encounter, where a time traveling phone booth disappeared in front of me. The characters tend to be very serious with you, although they do have their natural quirks. The game tends to employ dark humor more than anything else; you'll chuckle at a Ghoul character's self-deprecation, where he keeps cracking the same joke of him "dying" in an ancient military base, or at a Super Mutant's slow, ponderous way of talking.
Style
The Fallout series takes place in an alternate universe where the old fifties version of the World of Tomorrow actually takes place. You'll see big cars, period advertisements, and occasionally find reference to(if not hear outright) fifties music.
Fallout 3 utilizes this setting to impeccable effect, while the the other two, especially Fallout, are a bit more subtle in their presentation of the retro feel.
What I personally found more interesting in Fallout was how civilization had started rebounding. Your first encounter with other human beings is in a friendly settlement called Shady Sands, which is filled with farmers who toil constantly to keep themselves fed, whether by slaughtering their two-headed cows or trying to make food grow.
Occasionally, you'll find a sickly looking tree filled with leaves. The apocalypse has come, yes, but the world is finding its own way again.
Of course, for every tree and Shady Sands you find, you'll find a thousand more desolate ruins filled with mutated beasts and Mad Max-esque raiders.
To be honest, I found the life reborn aspect of Fallout so natural that I was forced to take another look at the constant, constant ruins and lack of vegetation in Fallout 3 and shake my head in disappointment. But I'll get to that some other time.
Story
The story of Fallout, at first glance, lacks the epic battles of Fallout 3 and the vast conspiracies of Fallout 2. But does it suffer for this? No, not even in the slightest. The story does not constrict you to following its course, as Fallout 3 sometimes does, and it takes itself seriously, which Fallout 2 almost never did.
The conflict which arises in Fallout, while peripherally being central to Vault 13's survival, eventually becomes more broad and more dangerous. You find hints while looking for the water chip that speak of the true threat, one that threatens humanity itself. An army is mobilizing in the north, and they are taking out everything in their path.
The joy of this final sequence is that it can eventually be solved in a number of ways; you can use guile, your brawn, stealth, or just plain sweet-talk your way to victory. Depending on your skills you can do any one of these options, and more. The plot definitely isn't as far-reaching as Fallout 2, or even Fallout 3, but in it's own way it forms a very compelling journey.
So what do I think of Fallout?
The gameplay is sublime, albeit marred with stupid problems, the presentation is absolutely great, no line of dialogue feels forced or badly acted when it's voiced (unlike Fallout 3) and the story is interesting enough to make you feel invested in solving it. The game takes itself seriously without becoming dour, and is humorous enough to not seem silly. In short, Fallout is the first and probably the best of the series.
Next up I'll take a look at Fallout 2.
"War never changes..."
It was inevitable that I'd be more interested than ever in playing the rest of the Fallout series after enjoying the third one so much. I just didn't know HOW interested; getting the first one and buying the second a few days later, I motored my way through the franchise that gave birth to oft-acclaimed Game of the Year.
I'd heard all the naysayers; No Mutants Allowed dot com, the crazy ancient fans who said that no 3D first person BETHESDA game would ever hold a candle to their beloved series.
After playing through both games, I found that their gripes were actually... well, not crazy. They were actually pretty sensible, in fact.
We'll start with Fallout 1, and I may update throughout the day.
Part One: FALLOUT
Summary and Gameplay
Fallout was released in 1997 by Black Isle Studios, published by Interplay as the first in it's series, although in technical terms it can be considered a spiritual successor to a much older game called Wasteland, another post-apocalyptic RPG.
The game opens with a cutscene showcasing the desolate wasteland the world has become. Once you start your game and choose your character (pre-made or custom, I went with custom) you get another cutscene: You live in Vault 13, a highly advanced bomb shelter that contains about a thousand people. As far as you can tell you and your ancestors have lived in this vault for around eighty years since the war began, making the year 2161.
There have been no problems... until the day the game actually begins, when the vault's water synthesizing device breaks down. No replacement is forthcoming, and so the vault's Overseer (the leading official (or dictator, depending on the vault) of the vault's people) sends you out into the wasteland to find another water chip. Your people have only about a few months of water left, and time is already running out.
You begin in the cave leading up to Vault 13, and the game officially starts.
The game features an isometric system of gameplay, where you view the player character (and the action) from a top-down perspective. The player occupies a certain cell in the world and moves along the space within that cell, interacting with characters and objects within the world.
Gameplay is very simplistic; you could play it solely with a mouse if you wanted to. Every function has a button you can click on, whether it's using your skills, changing firing mode, or simply moving along.
Action is relegated to various set-piece gun battles where you take your turn firing and then weathering your enemy's attack, in true RPG fashion. It can wear a little on your patience, however, as some enemy's are so slow and cantankerous that you just want to get the fighting over with and move on. Thankfully however, most battles aren't like this.
Unlike Fallout 3, where you can explore the entire world space on foot, Fallout divides the action into random encounters and settlements that exist in the wider wasteland. You're taken to a world screen once you exit a point of interest, where your character makes tracks across the wasteland and time flies by. Travel is done on foot, which can make the going slow and very, very treacherous if you're not well prepared.
Survival is actually a very well-done aspect of Fallout, in most fields. If you don't prepare yourself for traveling the wasteland, the wasteland will claim you. Sometimes your character will be unable to find water in the desert and you will take damage, simulating the harsh environment. Other times you will be set upon by raiders, who WILL kill you if you're not well prepared; either to run away or to fight back.
It's not always so lonely, however; about three humans and a dog can join you in your travels, and the brawn they provide can easily turn the tide of any battle. However, they're not very smart and are prone to shooting you in the back arbitrarily if you get in the way of their attacks, and while you level up and gain new armor, they cannot do the same. These issues are addressed in Fallout 2, and companions become even more effective in Fallout 3.
In the settlements you will find a bunch of neat things to do, be it repairing the villagers farm equipment, saving the life of a kind-hearted prostitute from an angry customer, to rescuing an entire city from annihilation. In the quest for better equipment and money, you can easily lose sight of what you were sent out to find in the first place.
So that's gameplay. Let's look at how the game's presented.
Presentation
The Fallout series is known for it's black humor, be it the McCarthy-esque communist hysteria in Fallout 3 to the self-referential comedy in Fallout 2. Fallout has it's share of the funny, but it's not as prevalent as it is in the other two games. In Fallout 2 I helped King Arthur's knights storm the Vorpal Rat (not a rabbit this time) cave in search of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (earlier I passed the Bridge of Death,) while in Fallout 3 an entire settlement is sent into a killing frenzy if you convince them that you're a communist invader.
Fallout, on the other hand, tends to take its subject matter very seriously. The only outright reference I could find in the game was a random encounter, where a time traveling phone booth disappeared in front of me. The characters tend to be very serious with you, although they do have their natural quirks. The game tends to employ dark humor more than anything else; you'll chuckle at a Ghoul character's self-deprecation, where he keeps cracking the same joke of him "dying" in an ancient military base, or at a Super Mutant's slow, ponderous way of talking.
Style
The Fallout series takes place in an alternate universe where the old fifties version of the World of Tomorrow actually takes place. You'll see big cars, period advertisements, and occasionally find reference to(if not hear outright) fifties music.
Fallout 3 utilizes this setting to impeccable effect, while the the other two, especially Fallout, are a bit more subtle in their presentation of the retro feel.
What I personally found more interesting in Fallout was how civilization had started rebounding. Your first encounter with other human beings is in a friendly settlement called Shady Sands, which is filled with farmers who toil constantly to keep themselves fed, whether by slaughtering their two-headed cows or trying to make food grow.
Occasionally, you'll find a sickly looking tree filled with leaves. The apocalypse has come, yes, but the world is finding its own way again.
Of course, for every tree and Shady Sands you find, you'll find a thousand more desolate ruins filled with mutated beasts and Mad Max-esque raiders.
To be honest, I found the life reborn aspect of Fallout so natural that I was forced to take another look at the constant, constant ruins and lack of vegetation in Fallout 3 and shake my head in disappointment. But I'll get to that some other time.
Story
The story of Fallout, at first glance, lacks the epic battles of Fallout 3 and the vast conspiracies of Fallout 2. But does it suffer for this? No, not even in the slightest. The story does not constrict you to following its course, as Fallout 3 sometimes does, and it takes itself seriously, which Fallout 2 almost never did.
The conflict which arises in Fallout, while peripherally being central to Vault 13's survival, eventually becomes more broad and more dangerous. You find hints while looking for the water chip that speak of the true threat, one that threatens humanity itself. An army is mobilizing in the north, and they are taking out everything in their path.
The joy of this final sequence is that it can eventually be solved in a number of ways; you can use guile, your brawn, stealth, or just plain sweet-talk your way to victory. Depending on your skills you can do any one of these options, and more. The plot definitely isn't as far-reaching as Fallout 2, or even Fallout 3, but in it's own way it forms a very compelling journey.
So what do I think of Fallout?
The gameplay is sublime, albeit marred with stupid problems, the presentation is absolutely great, no line of dialogue feels forced or badly acted when it's voiced (unlike Fallout 3) and the story is interesting enough to make you feel invested in solving it. The game takes itself seriously without becoming dour, and is humorous enough to not seem silly. In short, Fallout is the first and probably the best of the series.
Next up I'll take a look at Fallout 2.