Fallout is now 25 years old, and I want to take this chance to talk about the original Fallout and why it is my favorite in the series. First, I didn’t play Fallout in the 90s, my brother had the game (and I always thought the CD case cover looked like the coolest game ever) but I had no space in my heart for any video games that weren’t first-person shooters or real-time strategy games. The brief time spent watching my brother play Fallout made it look like such a boring game. It wasn’t until many years later that Fallout 1 was one of the free games on Gametap and I, bored of the games I had, decided to play it (at that point in life having accepted that games other than Doom could be fun). So, when I Gush over Fallout, know that it is not as someone who played it when it launched but as someone who played it probably a decade after its release and still fell in love. It is also worth noting that I am critical of the Fallouts that followed but it comes from a place of love. They are still great games in a great series, and I am only ever sad they aren't better.
I jumped into Fallout blind, only really knowing it was post-apocalyptic and that the power armor looked rad. I was focused on the TV in the opening and ignored the slow zoom out of the camera and enjoying the world building of the ads until the TV dies, at which point I looked around at the devastation and had chills run down my arms. The perfect feeling of despair to then get hit with that perfect line, “War, war never changes.” The end result of this was that I hadn’t so much as clicked New Game and was already hooked on this game and its world. I build a character (a terrible character as I’d never played an RPG that required things like stats!) and jump into the game. This moment at the start with the Overseer is incredible at setting the tone and your mission, and it is one area I think every other Fallout game has failed to reach up to. It’s obvious that your vault is in a dire state and you are the last hope of everyone you have ever known. Importantly, it never feels like you are The Chosen One or some great hero of your vault, you just feel like the last one the Overseer has to send on this quest. The last thing he tells you is to, above all, stay safe. Almost like he is saying, “We can’t afford to lose you too.” And when you step out of the vault, you know exactly why.
You are not the first person that vault 13 has sent on this task. It is difficult to tell, but the body you come out to is wearing a vault 13 suit! Oh hey, it’s Ed! You, apparently, knew Ed! He (presumably) was the person the Overseer sent before sending you. And he has Armor Piercing 10mm ammo on him too, they only sent you with Jacketed Hollow Points (ignore game effects here, the point is he has ammo you do not have. He is better prepared than you, and look at how much that helped him). The reason they have sent you with so little equipment is because they just don’t have anything better to send you with, they sent the two people (we’ll learn way later in the game about the first one they sent out) before you with the best equipment that they could spare.
“Here’s a common handgun, some ammo, a knife, and some healing stuff; you have 150 days. Good luck!” What you get sent with does change a bit by your tagged skills, but it isn’t like they send you with a laser pistol or a rifle or body armor if you tagged the right things. It has been made clear, assuming you notice why you know the skeleton’s name, that you are not the first choice, but the safety of the vault and everyone you have ever known, is still resting on you. No pressure! In Fallout 2 you are literally called The Chosen One, you are the first and best your village has to send out to save it. In Fallout 3, you are just some kid trying to find your Dad. In New Vegas, you are just some courier who is trying to find the guy that shot you and left you for dead. And in Fallout 4, you are only trying to find your kidnapped son. Only in the original Fallout are you fighting for more than you or a family member AND not the first choice to save the day. I would say 3, NV, and 4 are much more personal stories where “saving the world/wasteland” comes in Act 2, after you have found the person you were hunting for and are then thrust into deciding the fate of the area. I can appreciate all of these stories but they lack the high stakes the original Fallout had right from the start; you are not eased into despair you are thrust into it. Fallout 2 does have high stakes from the start (your village is dying) but you are the best person they have for the job, so it feels more hopeful (you're the best, you got this!). The cave in Fallout sets the tone for the rest of the game, where humanity feels like it is barely hanging on, whereas Fallout 2 makes it clear with the first town you visit that humanity is doing pretty okay! Things are not great exactly, but we have bars and traders, a brothel, and plenty of people living pretty peaceful lives. Fallout 1’s first town does not have much other than farmers, farmers who are plagued by raiders and wildlife. This all adds to the stakes, as you slowly see that your vault being forced out would lead to a terrible life for everyone. The towns you visit are not great places, the wildlife is terrifying, there are raiders and all manner of people that would murder everyone from your vault if it paid them well enough. This wasteland is not safe and your vault may be the only safe place left on Earth! Your village in Fallout 2 seems peaceful and worth saving, but they can just move if they really have to. We can assume there are other villages such that there just isn’t anywhere else good to move to, but we never see them. Other than a dislike of “tribals” there also doesn’t appear to be a reason your village couldn’t move to farming near town or working with other farmers. The stakes just feel so much lower, even if the second half has you, again, saving the world from some terrible threat.
I find myself coming back to Fallout 1 over and over again because it feels so close to perfection. The mechanical improvements to Fallout 2 are all very obvious (why was the transfer limit 999 in a game where things, like money, go higher than that? That “take all” button is so nice!) but the story and world are not as bleak and that results in a very different game. To say nothing of the abundance of pop-culture references in Fallout 2 that always remind me I’m playing a video game. And then Fallout 2 also has so many quests and so much content all resulting in a game that is much more fun to play but a story that is less focused. Fallout 3 does a better job of creating a bleak world than Fallout 2 did; the Capital Wasteland (and that misspelling has ruined my ability to spell capitol when I need to) is honestly worse off than even Fallout 1’s world, and while a lot of that is from engine and hardware limitations (you just do not have the memory for lots of NPCs in the era of PS3/XB360 so the wasteland feels devoid of anyone farming or otherwise living) but it does make for what feels like a bleak despair of a world. (It also means wanting to bring fresh water to the wasteland makes sense and fits with what it would need to survive.) And New Vegas and 4 both present us with worlds that are pretty civilized with towns and factions and, still clearly limited by available RAM, people just living and surviving. At this point, Fallout is much more post-post-apocalyptic than anything else, as the worlds are presenting us with people fighting for control instead of fighting to survive the week. The New California Republic wants Hoover Dam because it supplies their cities with abundant electricity and for the Legion it is just the road across the river on the endless march of war. The East Coast is busy fighting over techbros replacing people with synthetic copies and military authoritarians (as an aside, this does make me wonder what a Fallout with the NCR and East Coast Brotherhood smashing against each other would look like, as NCR annexes territory as it grows and the Brotherhood brings order through overwhelming force. They could never co-exist. But I digress.) This all makes for a very different game world and story than what the original presented us with. I do really love the stories that can be told in this world now, and I like seeing the battle for how the world will be lead, but there is a simplicity in a battle for agricultural land or fighting against beasts in the wasteland that is largely lost now. I am not complaining that Fallout has grown (I actually love that it has instead of repeating itself again and again) but simply admiring the bleak hell it all came from. My favorite post-apocalyptic setting is where humanity can still survive but it could also still fail. The original Fallout is exactly in that spot, but the games since all have more hope for humanity's survival and, at least at the start of the games, feel like they'd largely do just fine if you failed. There is a great freedom in storytelling here and to watch the world grow from your choices (Coming across the NCR in Fallout 2 was the coolest, I did that! Democracy for the wasteland all because I saved one person!) I do however quite love where Fallout is at now, and continue to be excited for the future of the series, because if there is one thing that the newer post-post-apocalyptic setting of Fallout shows us it’s that war, war never changes.
