Fallout (video game)
Fallout is a 1997 role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay Productions, set in a mid-22nd century post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic world, decades after a global nuclear war led by the United States and China. Fallout protagonist, the Vault Dweller, inhabits an underground nuclear shelter. The player must scour the surrounding wasteland for a computer chip that can fix the Vault's failed water supply system. They interact with other survivors, some of whom give them quests, and engage in turn-based combat.
Tim Cain began working on Fallout in 1994. It began and was conceptualized as based on the role-playing game GURPS, but after Steve Jackson Games objected to Fallout violence, Cain and designer Christopher Taylor created a new character customization scheme, SPECIAL. Interplay initially gave the game little attention, but eventually spent $3 million and employed up to thirty people to develop it. Interplay considered Fallout the spiritual successor to its 1988 role-playing game Wasteland and drew artistic inspiration from 1950s literature and media emblematic of the Atomic Age as well as the films Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog. The quests were intentionally made morally ambiguous. After three and a half years of development, Fallout was released in North America in October 1997.
Fallout received acclaim for its open-ended gameplay, character system, plot, and setting. It won "Role-Playing Game of the Year" from GameSpot and Computer Games Magazine and was nominated by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the Spotlight Awards. Fallout was a commercial success, selling more than half a million copies worldwide. Often listed among the greatest video games of all time, Fallout has been credited for renewing consumer interest in the role-playing video game genre. It spawned the widely successful Fallout series, the rights to which were purchased in 2007 by Bethesda Softworks.
Gameplay
Character creation
Fallout is a role-playing video game. The player begins by selecting one of three characters, or one with player-customized attributes. The protagonist, known as the Vault Dweller, has seven primary statistics that the player can set: strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. Each statistic may range from one to ten, provided their sum does not exceed 40. Two other statistics set during character creation are skills and traits. All 18 skills are learned abilities, their effectiveness determined by a percentage value. Their initial effectivenesses are determined by the primary statistics, but three can be tagged and given a 20% boost. Traits are character qualities with both a positive and negative effect; the player can pick up to two from a list of sixteen. During gameplay, the player can gather experience points through various actions. For gathering experience points, the player will level up and may increase their skills by a set number of points. Every three levels, the player can grant themself a special ability, known as perks. There are 48 perks and each has prerequisites that must be met. For example, "Animal Friend", which prevents animals from attacking the player character, requires the player to be level nine, have an intelligence of five or higher, and have an outdoorsman skill of 25%.Exploration and combat
In Fallout, the player explores the game world from a trimetric perspective and interacts with non-player characters. Characters vary in their amount of dialogue; some say short messages, while others speak at length. Significant characters are illustrated with 3D models, known as "talking heads", during conversations. The player can barter with other characters or buy goods using bottle caps as currency. The game has companions that the player can recruit for exploration and combat, although they cannot be directly controlled.There are three main quests where completion is required, two of them given after completion of the first one. The first main quest has a time limit of 150 in-game days ; the game ends if the player fails to complete it within the allotted time. Some characters give the player side quests; if the player solves them, they receive experience points and occasionally a reward in the form of money and/or goods. The player can utilize the PIP-Boy 2000, a portable wearable computer that tracks these quests. Many quests feature multiple solutions; they can often be completed through diplomacy, combat, or stealth, and some allow solutions that are unconventional or contrary to the original task. Based on how they completed quests, the player can earn or lose reputation points, which determine how others treat them. The player's actions dictate what future story or gameplay opportunities are available and the ending.
Combat is turn based and uses an action-point system, the number of action points that are available depending on certain perks and the player's allocation in the agility statistic. During each turn, multiple actions may be performed by the player until they run out of action points. Different actions such as attacking, moving, reloading, interacting with objects mid-combat, and accessing the inventory consume different amounts of points. The player can rapidly switch between two equipped weapons, and may acquire a diverse range of weapons, many of which can target specific areas of enemies. All weapons have one or two types of attacks, for example: Melee weapons typically have two attacks: swing or thrust, automatic firearms come with a burst mode. If the player has equipped no weapon, they can punch or kick.
Plot
Setting
On October 23, 2077, a worldwide nuclear war between the United States and China following a global conflict caused by resource shortages devastated the world and destroyed modern civilization. The events of Fallout take place nearly a century later in 2161, and follow the Vault Dweller, a human born and raised within Vault 13, one of a number of high-tech underground fallout shelters built to protect survivors. Those on the surface live off the salvage of the old world.Vault 13 is located beneath the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller can explore major settlements including Junktown, which is mired in conflict between local sheriff Killian Darkwater and criminal Gizmo ; the Hub, a bustling merchant city with job opportunities; and Necropolis, a city founded in the remains of Bakersfield by Ghouls, humans mutated by radiation, who are revealed to be the former inhabitants of Vault 12. The Vault Dweller's journey also brings them into contact with various factions, including the Brotherhood of Steel, a quasi-religious military order devoted to finding and restoring pre-war technology; the Children of the Cathedral, an optimistic religious cult; and an army of virtually immortal humanoids immune to radiation called Super Mutants, led by an amalgamated creature known as "the Master".
Characters
The player controls the Vault Dweller, who is sent into the Wasteland to save their vault. The Vault Dweller can be customized or based on one of three pre-generated characters: Albert Cole, a negotiator and charismatic leader with a legal background; Natalia Dubrovhsky, a talented acrobat and the intelligent and resourceful granddaughter of a Russian diplomat in the pre-War Soviet consulate in Los Angeles; and Max Stone, the largest person in the Vault who is known for his strength, stamina, and lack of intelligence. The three characters present a diplomatic, deceptive, or combative approach to the game, respectively. Although the character can be male or female, the Vault Dweller is canonically male.The four companions the player can recruit are: Ian, a mercenary guard from Shady Sands; Tycho, a desert ranger; Dogmeat, a tireless loyal dog; and Katja, a member of an organization called the Followers of the Apocalypse. Other major characters include Vault Boy, the mascot of Vault-Tec, the creators of the Vaults; Killian Darkwater, the mayor, sheriff, and shopkeeper of Junktown; and the Master, leader of the Super Mutants and the main antagonist.
Plot
In Vault 13, the Water Chip, a computer component responsible for the Vault's water recycling and pumping machinery, stops working. With only 150 days before water reserves will run dry, the Vault Overseer tasks the Vault Dweller with finding a replacement. Armed with the PIPBoy 2000 and meager equipment, the Vault Dweller leaves Vault 13 for the nearest source of possible help, Vault 15, but finds it abandoned and in ruins. The Vault Dweller then explores the wasteland and locates a replacement chip in the destroyed Vault 12, underneath Necropolis.The Vault Dweller returns to Vault 13 with the chip and the water system is repaired. However, the Overseer becomes concerned about the mutants reported by the Vault Dweller. Believing the mutations are too widespread and extreme to be a natural occurrence, the Overseer assigns the Vault Dweller a new task: finding and stopping the source of the mutations. Information discovered throughout the wasteland reveals that humans are being captured and turned into Super Mutants by exposure to the Forced Evolutionary Virus. The Super Mutants are led by the Master, who intends to transform every human into a Super Mutant and establish "unity" on Earth. The Children of the cathedral are a front created by the Master, who is using them to trick humans into peaceful submission.
To stop the mutations, the Vault Dweller must destroy the vats containing the F.E.V. and kill the Master; the order of the tasks is chosen by the player. The Vault Dweller travels to the Mariposa Military Base to destroy it and the vats within, preventing the creation of more Super Mutants. To kill the Master, the Vault Dweller travels to the Children's Cathedral and locates a prototype Vault beneath it, from which the Master commands his army. The Vault Dweller infiltrates the Vault and can choose to convince the Master that his plan will fail because the Super Mutants are infertile, kill him immediately, or set off an explosion that destroys the cathedral. The Vault Dweller returns to Vault 13 but is denied entry by the Overseer, who fears that they have been changed by their experiences and the tales of their exploits and accomplishments will encourage the inhabitants to abandon the Vault. As such, the Overseer reluctantly exiles the Vault Dweller into the wasteland. Fallout concludes with the legacy of the Vault Dweller's decisions on the societies and people they had encountered.
Additionally, there is an alternate ending if the player chooses to join the Master. This ending has the player character dunked into the F.E.V. and made into a super mutant, who then returns to Vault 13 with the Master's army and massacres its inhabitants as witnessed on security footage.