Fallout

aka: FO1, Fallout: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure, Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game, Fallout: Ein postnukleares Rollenspiel, Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure
Moby ID: 223
Macintosh Specs
Buy on Windows
$2.49 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

A devastating nuclear war had wiped out almost the entire population of the Earth. The civilization, as we know it, has been destroyed. The Earth has become a huge wasteland populated by mutated creatures. Only small number of humans survived and they formed communities living on the surface, where they mostly scavenge what remains from the pre-war civilization. Some lucky people managed to reach safety of the Vaults, huge underground dwellings, during the war. Recently, the water purification controller chip in Vault 13 broke. Without clean water, the people of the Vault cannot survive. One person is sent to find a replacement chip and ventures outside to face a dangerous world, hoping to return within a hundred and fifty days.

Fallout is a role-playing game that utilizes a character development system called S.P.E.C.I.A.L., an acronym formed from the first letters of the game's basic character attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. In addition to having these attributes, the protagonist can also learn and improve skills, as well as acquire traits and perks.

Skill points are awarded when the player character levels up; traits are assigned during character creation, while perks are obtained every three character levels. There are eighteen different skills in the game, divided into combat, active, and passive categories. Combat skills include weapon proficiencies (e.g. small and big guns, melee, etc.); active skills are used for support or interacting with the environment (doctor, lockpick, science, steal, and others); passive skills are mainly dedicated to social interaction (barter, speech, gambling, and so on). Traits bestow various benefits upon the character while also imposing penalties; in contrast, perks are purely beneficial. By developing and customizing attributes, skills, traits and perks, the player is granted a considerable freedom in shaping the protagonist in his combat-related and social behavior.

The game has an open world which can be freely explored from the onset. Only a few quests are required to complete in order to advance the main plot; a vast amount of side quests is available. Thanks to the game's emphasis on social interaction, many problems can be solved in a non-violent way; in fact, it is possible to complete the game without engaging in battles at all, running away from enemy encounters and concluding the final confrontation in a relatively peaceful fashion. Conversely, the player can opt for a destructive path, killing everyone in sight. A Karma system is used to track the player's moral decisions during the game.

Combat in Fallout is turn-based. Participants have a limited amount of action points (AP) per turn; each action (including movement) depletes a certain number of AP, eventually ending a character's turn. The player can target specific body parts of enemies during battles. Characters may join the protagonist, traveling together and participating in combat as a party. Though the player may assign general commands to the companions, their actions are controlled by the AI, and they cannot be customized.

Spellings

  • 異塵餘生 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 辐射 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

154 People (140 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 43 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 574 ratings with 22 reviews)

Ahem... the best game ever.

The Good
The joy of a role playing game is that you (the player) gets to take on the persona of your character. Very few computer rpg's understand this, but Fallout gets this completely right. Your character in Fallout is more that a stack of numbers, he or she is an everyday person with some skills and some deficiencies. The environment is a post-apocalyptic but maintains a sense of wonder. The characters are developed, you'll meet good people in evil towns, sympathetic monsters, and monstrous humans. You will see man's inhumanity to man and hope in a hopeless situation. Best of all, your character develops as he or she struggles to survive, from everyday person to hero, anti-hero, or villian.

The Bad
The time constraints placed on the quest adds a sense of urgency but doesn't allow for that much exploration early on. A patch does correct this. More character models would have been appropriate for the player character or maybe a body type that changes according to character stats. Turn based combat might not work for some.

The Bottom Line
Hmmm... me against three mutants. Do I shoot two of them or go for a head shot against the big one? Good thing I brought the minigun.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2005

Apocalyptic

The Good
It's the end of the world as we know it and I for one have always wondered about life after World War 3. So, finally, Interplay has given us a chance to explore that world and, of course, become the last, best hope for humanity. And having played Fallout, I can hardly think it could have been done better.

At the moment the opening movie begins to play, Fallout is all about atmosphere. The 1950's/future tech/post-apocalypse styling of the game is well thought out and well implemented with the great graphics and sound. Elements such as wasted cars, burned-out buildings, and the cute 1950's-kitsch "Pip-Boy" character who appears throughout your option screens all bring Fallout a solid sense of its own flavor. And, of course, there are the bits of dark humour thrown in for good measure. Upon entering the game world one feels that this is something which hasn't been experienced before in a computer RPG. In my experience with RPG's, only Planescape: Torment has so engulfed me in its world.

Another of the key points in favor of the game is combat. The wastelands are tough and you must defend yourself or eat radiated dust. If there was one word I would use to describe Fallout's combat it would be "Visceral". The guns sound great, particularly the crack-clink of the assault rifle, and the animations are very well done, making the action almost cinematic. Not to mention the fact that the weapons themselves pack serious punch. From advanced destruction like combat shotguns and plasma weapons to old school stuff like brass knuckles and desert eagle pistols, Fallout has a heavy duty arsenal.

Beyond just the look and feel of the combat, there is the challenging tactical gameplay available. Management of action points between shots and movement is an art essential to victory, as are the choice of weapons, armor, and even what enhancing drugs you take. And while in classic RPG's, you have virtually unlimited usage of your Sword Of Much Head-Busting, most of the useful weapons in Fallout are limited by ammunition. Keep good track of your ammo because, while that minigun may mow down most enemies, it won't last long if you use it for hunting down cave rats. The combat is a game within itself (and, in fact, an expanded version of it will be a game in itself fairly soon in the upcoming "Fallout Tactics").

Most RPG's place a prime importance upon character development and Fallout does as well. Developing my skills in different fields kept me constantly looking for ways to gain experience to bring up my abilities. And of further interest are your reputation, which changes how people will react to you, and "perks", extra-special abilities which are bestowed every 3 or 4 Skill Levels.

There's also the constant management of your inventory to do, of course. I mean, you can only carry 250lbs or so. So you can't carry everything you find. Just mostly everything.

The "music" in Fallout is really more like ambient sound effects combined with various drumbeats or sitar-pluckings that wander into the background. It mimicks the barrenness of the wastes themselves, stirring in the sparks of surviving humanity, which is really the essence of the Fallout story. The only real traditional music is in the opening sequence, in which a crackly old 40's ballad sets an eerie contrast to the devastation.

All in all, with the above mentioned facets as well as the good storyline and good puzzles, Fallout rules.

The Bad
Aaaaaaagh! Bugs! Giant, radiated ones. Geez. You think they could have QA'd this a bit more, but I guess not. Bugs run rampant throughout the program and range from silly to frustrating. I have had problems with unplayable saved games (don't wait very long between saves, friends), untimely game crashes, and a couple other bugs that oughtn't to have been in a complete game. One I haven't encountered, but have heard much about, is the multiplying Ian effect. This is when your party-member Ian is suddenly multiplied several times or more and the duplicates won't go until you kill them.

Then there is AI. The AI is fine for most of the time. But then it can get just plain stupid. I don't mind if the enemy gets stupid on occasion. But I simply won't have my own party-member shooting me in the back of the head with an uzi. It just shouldn't happen. Further, the NPC's of your party seem to have no sense of self-preservation. I don't know how many times I've had to reload the game because Dogmeat bravely jumped at a minigun-wielding super-mutant and got turned to kibbles n' bits. Grrrrrrr. But maybe the worst NPC fault is when they follow you into a tight place and then you can't turn around because they block your way. That really ought to have been fixed. It should be noted that most of these AI bugs were fixed for the equally excellent Fallout 2.

The Bottom Line
All bugs aside, Fallout is one of the best RPG experiences you will ever have.

Windows · by Steelysama (82) · 2000

You are very S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

The Good
The second half of 1990's saw many great role-playing games, but three of them have the special status of franchise-starters and reformers in the genre: Diablo, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout. The first succeeded because of simplification; the second thanks to intense study of traditional material. Fallout, on the other hand, relies pretty much on one template only: Interplay's own groundbreaking Wasteland, of which it is a clear spiritual follower. It is therefore even more remarkable that this game managed to gain considerable popularity even in mainstream cycles despite being both non-traditional and hardcore at the same time. It adapted the revolutionary spirit of Wasteland to contemporary sensibilities, and the results are singularly impressive, to say the least.

Like its predecessor, Fallout opts for a flexible approach to role-playing. Character creation system leads you through a thicket of main attributes, skills, and perks, but these are not bound by classes, races, or any other comparable category. Darklands was certainly even more realistic in its depth and complexity while trying to avoid as many genre conventions as possible. But it is the genius of Fallout that makes it simple to play, yet hard to master; it never sacrifices pure fun and instant playability for its sophisticated system.

The most notable breakthrough of this system - and a further important step towards a more inclusive understanding of role-playing - is its greater openness to actions that do not necessarily pertain to combat. For years, role-playing games have been mostly about getting better at killing enemies. Social interaction was added to some games, but nowhere does it become such an integral part of the gameplay as in Fallout. According to this game, "role-playing" means that you make choices and form your behavior according to your own views, or at least according to what you have in mind at that particular moment. Fallout lets you decide everywhere, in any situation. You can kill every person you see in the game. Much more importantly: you can complete the entire game without killing a single creature. I don't think there was ever another RPG that let you do that.

Character development thus gains a whole new meaning: indeed, you are developing a real character rather than just somebody who can kill monsters faster. It's not only about getting the best weapon: it's also about surviving in a situation where you don't have that weapon - or, rather, where you decide you want to complete the game without ever using that weapon. It's about making your character what you want them to be. Feel like bullying people and solve problems with brute force? Fine, then create a physically strong idiot and hope no enemy is too tough for him. More inclined towards diplomacy? Make your character a cunning fellow who can talk his way out of every situation, but don't cry if he gets bitten by sewer rats. Be a doctor or a hacker, or don't be anything in particular - just be yourself, go with the flow.

In case you are inclined towards more traditional RPG activities, fear not: Fallout delivers plenty of that as well. There are quests and sub quests to tackle, dangerous dungeons to traverse, and all sorts of creatures to vanquish. There are diverse weapon specializations, items to collect, and many opportunities to fight and pillage to your heart's content. The game's turn-based combat system works exceptionally well in spite of a few shortcomings, and is very in-depth, including features such as differentiated body part damage; calculations of distance, attributes of combatants and weapon ratings allowing to express every action in percentages of success; action points that determine the amount of actions per turn, leading to vast tactical possibilities, and so on.

Of course, the system alone wouldn't be enough to provide hours upon hours of gourmet RPG fun - you also need a world to which this system could be properly applied. I think this is where Fallout truly triumphs over Darklands: it has realism in common, abstract categories (be violent, be kind, be sneaky, etc.), but it marries this realism to a perfectly satisfying game world, with unique locations, characters and situations rather than just copies of the same town and clones of the same pilgrims and wandering monks. In other words, it achieves perfect balance between player-created and scripted content, between free-form playing and attachment to existing material.

In fact, the world of Fallout is a real beauty, and I'm positive that was a big factor in its rise to popularity: you can be easily immersed into the game without even beginning to understand the extent of its system's complexity. Just start playing and feel the game's intense atmosphere. And Fallout does not use cheap means in order to impress: it achieves the effect by paying a lot of attention to visual detail, creating an instantly recognizable, memorable stylistic environment.

Wasteland stood out with its unusual (for video games of the time) preference for a post-apocalyptic setting when most RPGs were medieval fantasies. But technology wasn't powerful enough then to really bring out that difference in a tangible, sensual way. Fallout, on the other hand, is a piece of moody art almost as much as it is a great role-playing game. Behind mutants, obscene cultists, and Nuka-Cola hide serious speculations about the future, manifested in the game's artistic amalgamation of World War II themes, nostalgic American culture of the 1950's, and cold, bleak high-tech elements. Fallout sets its unique tone right away with one of the best introduction sequences I've seen in a video game.

The Bad
No game is perfect. The original release of Fallout was quite buggy, with some broken quests and erratic NPC behavior problems. Later patches corrected many of the issues, but a completely smooth experience is not guaranteed. In particular, your companions display weird logical thinking more often than not, and their AI is questionable at best. They would regularly damage you in combat and do idiotic things such as using rocket launchers in cramped quarters etc. They are also not particularly talkative or significant for plot-related situations.

I don't quite see why they had to take away the player's control over those companions. It would be understandable in a game with fast-paced, real-time combat like Ultima VII, but turn-based battles call for micro-management, and Fallout only allows it for the protagonist. This leads to further lack of attachment to the rest of your party, compelling you to dismiss your crew and fight solo - which, under the conditions of slow, tactical combat, is not always particularly thrilling.

The Bottom Line
Fallout is a game that will survive, not matter how many others are forgotten. It will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of mediocrity and oblivion, to tell us and show us how to make a great RPG. This game should be put on a pedestal and taught to developers in special schools.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181788) · 2014

[ View all 22 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
I guess I'm a bit annoyed by open-endedness. chirinea (47504) Jun 23, 2015
Again a Fallout (Jewel Case) cover bubbleman1987 Sep 5, 2012
Countries where have been sold the Fallout games bubbleman1987 Sep 1, 2012
Unknown Cover bubbleman1987 Sep 1, 2012
GOG.com giveaway Cavalary (11445) Apr 5, 2012

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Fallout appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

AI

The artificial "intelligence" makes the characters do some pretty amazing (amazingly stupid, anyway) things. Twice I have had _all_ friendly NPCs in combat repeatedly picking up a lit flare I'd dropped and throwing it at the enemy. An AI routine that makes people with firearms try to whack their opponents with flares deserves mention, in my opinion.

Alternative credits

Hold down shift key and click on the Credits button to see some alternative credits.

Bugs

Fallout shipped with a number of blatantly obvious bugs that almost inevitably seriously screwed up the game. One of the most amusing bugs caused Ian (one of the NPCs that can join your party) to suffer from "Agent Smith Syndrome", multiplying rapidly until there were 100s of him running around the game world killing everybody.

Besides screwing up the game world, this would also cause your game to slow to a crawl because whenever combat started, you'd have to wait for every single Ian to take their turn before control is returned to you.

Concept Art

As of 2002 people who worked on the Fallout games are employed by Black Isle or Troika Games, and have released a number of pre-production drawings and sketches. Thanks to "fallout.scifi.pl" website, you can see them in one place. Sketches - posters - un-used GURPS Vaultboy art

Fallout Bible

The best source of Fallout design and production memoirs, world history, and rare interviews would be "Fallout Bible", found on both official Black Isle website, and on "Duck and Cover" fan-site.

Goodies

Original release includes a "Goodies" folder that includes a Windows screensaver as well as the prototype version of the game developed in 1994, which consists of a knight walking around an isometric landscape and which would eventually evolve into the Fallout engine (requires dos4gw to run).

GOG release

In December 2013, Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics were given away for free on the download distribution platform GOG. This was the last month Interplay had the distribution rights for the games before they went to Bethesda. The games were pulled from GOG on January 01, 2014. They were readded to the catalogue with Bethesda as publisher on August 26, 2015.

Inconsistencies

The Fallout manual says the thickness of Vault's blast door is '4 yards of steel'. 1 yard is almost 1 meter, which means the door's thickness is more than twice your height. That's 12 feet! In comparison, NORAD's 25 ton door is mere 3.5 feet thick.

Low intelligence

If you create your own character, you need to have an intelligence of at least 4. Any lower than that, and you will find it very hard to complete the game because you can't converse with anyone -- your only dialogue options are various grunts or other gutteral noises. I'd recommend trying it once, as it's rather amusing.

An interesting aside is that the dialogue with the cook in Shady Sands doesn't seem to be affected... a character with the lowest possible intelligence can still proclaim, "That smells great! I bet it tastes terrific!" Must be some good food, indeed.

Maybe

The song that plays during the introduction and closing credits is Maybe by the Ink Spots, a black vocal quartet from the 1930s-1940s. As of 2001 most of their work has been re-released and can be bought for $10 - $12 per CD.

Recipes

Fallout's manual comes with a "survival recipes" appendix, which has actual recipes!

References

  • The game includes all sorts of odd references - you may stumble onto a UFO which has a sign reading, 'Property of Area 51. Please return if found' and an alien corpse with a ray gun and a picture of Elvis.
  • There is a way cool reference to the 1960's era blue UK Police Box that gives you a motion scanner. Doctor Who fans will pick up on that one. The TV which appears in the Introduction Movie is a Radiation King. In The Simpsons*, Homer once said that he spent hours as a child watching tv in the old Radiation King.
  • Set your Windows to use large icons and have a look at the Fallout icon or shortcut. This is probably a face of one of game's creators.
  • If you search the log files in the computer in the upper level of the Military Base, you will see that two of the names in the actually are developers of the game: Boyarsky and Anderson. Try to download those log files and you will get an "unexpected end of line" error message.
  • At one point you'll have the opportunity to chat with a member of the Brotherhood of Steel who says the line "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. I'm all out of gum". This is a play on the memorable "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." from the movie They Live which is also referenced in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • There are references to Mad Max in the game. Dogmeat is the first reference, as Max has a dog in Mad Max 2. In addition, when the description of the previous owner of Dogmeat is given, it describes a person with a shotgun and wearing a leather jacket. This is basically what Max wears in Mad Max 2. The shotgun is his weapon in the movie as well. The other reference is in the ending cinematic. The player has a single barrel shotgun on his hip, same as Max, the player wears what appears a shoulder section of the football pads on his left shoulder, so does Max. There is a bit a limp in player's walk, Max limps because of his injured knee. Finally player is heading in to the wasteland just like Max did at the end of his movies.

References to Wasteland

There are several references to the original Wasteland in the game: * Far Go Traders: Brian Fargo was one of the lead developers of the original Wasteland game. * Tycho: Talk to him a bit, and you find out that he's been through "Ranger Training". In Wasteland, the Desert Rangers were the "heroes" of the game. * The Red Ryder BB gun: Red Ryder showed up in the small town of Highpool in Wasteland (eerily similar to Shady Sands in Fallout). In Fallout, the Red Ryder LE BB Gun is one of the more powerful non-energy weapons you can find, if you're lucky. * Dugan, the Blades' Nuka-Cola addict, is probably named after Bill Dugan, who was part of the Wasteland team

RPG System

During early stages of development, Fallout was designed using G.U.R.P.S. roleplaying system. However, when Steve Jackson Games (owners of G.U.R.P.S. license) pressured the development team to cut down on violence, a decision was made to switch to S.P.E.C.I.A.L., home-brewn rules-light GURPS clone, and abandon G.U.R.P.S. altogether.

Secrets

During your travels from city to city, you may come across a GIANT footprint in the ground with a bloody mess in the middle of it. Search the mess and you will find a Stealth Boy.

I guess the Stealth Boy works really well, since the thing that stepped on the guy carrying the (active) Stealth Boy never saw him. :-)

Text to speech

The Macintosh version of the game supported a system extension called "Text-to-Speech" which enabled text on screen to be read out by a computer generated voice. The game's PipBoy could be used with the extension which "spoke" all replies this PDA like device gave the user. For example, when the player used the alarm clock to rest the PipBoy would speak a long-stretched wake-up call: "waaake uuup!".

The option for "PipBoy speech" could be toggled in the options menu.

Time limit

The original release of the game had a 500 days time limit in which to complete the game (400 if you hired the water merchants). This was because the mutant army was constantly looking for your vault, which they eventually find and invade once the limit expires. The limit was removed on the subsequent patches, but you can still see the cutscene that played when the limit expired if you select to willingly join the army and reveal the vault's location to the master.

Although you no longer get an automatic "game over" after 500 days after installing the patches, taking too long to finish the game still has consequences. The mutant army is still on the march, and even if they no longer can seize your vault, they will still gradually conquer the various towns as time progresses. This has no in-game effect (the mutants don't actually show up in the towns), but during the game's ending you'll get a bad "we got smooshed" ending for places like the Necropolis, Hub, or Followers if you took too long to stop the mutants.

Violence

In the game's options, you can adjust the game's violence level: * US Release - 4 violence levels available - no cuts * UK Release - 3 violence levels available - the most brutal setting is blocked * German Release - 2 violence levels available - the two most brutal settings are missing...

In both the UK and German release all children are missing.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 1998 (Issue #164) – Role-Playing Game of the Year
    • June 2000 (Issue #191) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #51 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #18 in the "Readers' All-Time Top 50 Games" Poll
    • October 2001 - #4 in the "Top 50 Games of All Time" list (together with Fallout 2)
    • April 2005 - #10 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1998 – Best RPG in 1997

Information also provided by Adam Baratz, Ajan, Alan Chan, Alexander Schaefer, ApTyp, Entorphane, Fire Convoy, glidefan, Heikki Sairanen, Kabushi, Late, MirrorshadesUK, n-n, PCGamer77, Trixter, Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe, ZombieDepot, Zovni and Evolyzer

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Droog.

OnLive added by firefang9212. Linux added by Evolyzer. Macintosh added by LepricahnsGold. DOS added by Spartan_234. Windows Apps added by Koterminus.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, Kabushi, Vaelor, Pseudo_Intellectual, jlebel, Solid Flamingo, Luchsen, Paulus18950, Tatar_Khan, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack, ZeTomes, Evolyzer.

Game added August 17, 1999. Last modified March 17, 2024.