Fallout (video game)

See Fallout series for the series as a whole.

Fallout
Fallout box art
Developer(s)	Interplay
Publisher(s)	Interplay
Designer(s)	Tim Cain
Engine	Fallout engine
Platform(s)	DOS, Windows, Macintosh
Release	September 30, 1997
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player

Fallout is a computer role-playing game produced by Tim Cain and published by Interplay in 1997. Although set in the late 22nd century, its story and artwork are heavily influenced by the post-World War II nuclear paranoia of the 1950s. The game is sometimes considered to be an unofficial sequel to Wasteland, but it could not use that title as Electronic Arts held the rights to it, and, except for minor references, the games are set in separate universes. It was also intended to use Steve Jackson Games's GURPS system, but for unknown reasons, that deal fell through.

Storyline

The background to which the game is set is a world in which the Cold War never really ended, "it just stopped being cold". The game's history begins in 2052 with an energy crisis beginning the Resource Wars. The United Nations is disbanded, a plague renders the United States paranoid, Canada is annexed, and the Resource War becomes the Great War, as a vast nuclear exchange is carried out in 2077. Within two hours, most of the world's population is destroyed, and the Earth's surface is reduced to wasteland.

The player or protagonist of Fallout is an inhabitant of one of the government-contracted fallout shelters known as Vaults. In subsequent Fallout games, he is referred to as the Vault Dweller. The game takes place in 2161 in Southern California and begins in Vault 13, the protagonist's home. Vault 13's Water Chip, a computer chip responsible for the water recycling and pumping machinery, has broken, and the Vault Overseer tasks the protagonist with finding a replacement. He is given a portable device called the "PIPBoy 2000" which keeps track of mapmaking, quest objectives, and various bookkeeping aspects, and sent out into the remains of California.

The player initially has 150 days before the Vault's water supply runs out. This can be extended by 70 days if he commissions merchants in the Hub to send water caravans to Vault 13. Upon returning the chip, the Vault Dweller is then tasked with destroying a mutant army that threatens humanity. A mutant known as "The Master" (previously known as Richard Grey) has begun using a pre-war, genetically engineered virus called Forced Evolutionary Virus to convert humanity into a race of "Super Mutants", and bring them together in the Unity, his plan for a perfect world. The player is to kill him and destroy the Military Base housing the supply of FEV, thus halting the invasion before it can start.

If the player does not complete both objective within 500 game days, the mutant army will discover Vault 13 and invade it, bringing an end to the game. This time limit is shortened to 400 days if the player divulged Vault 13's location to the water merchants. A cinematic cut-scene of mutants overrunning the vault is shown if the player fails to stop the mutant army within this time frame, indicating the player has lost the game. If the player agrees to join the mutant army, the same cinematic is shown.

In version 1.1 of the game, if players did not reveal the location of Vault 13 to the Water Merchants, mutants will not attack Vault 13. This allows most players to explore the game world at their leisure.

The player can defeat the Master and destroy the Super Mutant's Military Base in either order. When both threats are eliminated, a cut-scene ensues in which the player automatically returns to Vault 13. There he is told that he has changed too much and his return would negatively influence the citizens of the Vault. Thus he is rewarded with exile into the desert.

Regarding the war that caused the apocalypse, it is said in Fallout 2 that nobody knew who launched the first nuclear missile. Two separate artificial intelligence computers in Fallout 2, Skynet in Sierra Army Depot and the computer in the Brotherhood of Steel's San Francisco, both state that the war may have started because AI computers have grown bored. Template:Endspoiler

Game locations

File:Fallout 01.jpg

Walking in the Hub

While most of the towns in Fallout are not present in the real world (Junktown, Shady Sands, The Hub, etc), Los Angeles is in its correct place. However, the town of Necropolis is described as being the city of Bakersfield, although some fans have compared it to maps and found that it more accurately resembles Barstow.

There are many references to post-apocalyptic science fiction, such as Mad Max or the infamous post-apocalyptic musical and detective movie Radioactive Dreams. One of the first available armors is a one-sleeved leather jacket that resembles the jacket worn by Mel Gibson in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. A player wearing this jacket can get a dog, named Dogmeat for Mad Max’s dog, to join the party in Junktown (in Fallout 2 if the player character damages Dogmeat an NPC with the curious name of Mel will show up to defend the dog).

Like Fallout 2, many of the references to other material can be found in random encounters, which include a vanishing TARDIS à la Doctor Who complete with sound effect, and a massive footprint that resembles Godzilla's, referring to the short animation "Bambi Meets Godzilla". Another reference comes in the form of a quotation; in the Old Town district of The Hub, an insane man named Uncle Slappy wanders in perpetual circles calling out non-sequiturs, one of which is "Let's play Global Thermo-Nuclear War!", a reference to a similar line in the 1983 film WarGames. The game also refers to other pieces of fiction, including Robin Hood.

Reception

Fallout made #4 on the list of top games of all time produced by PC Gamer in 2001. It made #55 on the list of the top 100 games ever by IGN (IGN's List), and is usually placed in similar lists. It also won the award of RPG of the Year from GameSpot.

Influences

Fallout draws much from 50s pulp magazines, science fiction and superhero comic books. For example, computers use vacuum tubes instead of transistors; energy weapons exist and resemble those used by Flash Gordon. The Vault Dweller's main style of dress is a blue jumpsuit with a yellow line going down the center of the chest and along the belt area, though the main character's appearance changes while wearing armor. The number on the back might differ from the Vault the dweller represents, but it's usually "13", or in other cases, missing.

Fallout's menu interfaces are designed to resemble advertisements and toys of the same period; For example, the characters sheet cards and perks available, look like those of the board game Monopoly. The lack of this retro stylization was one of the things the Fallout spin-offs were criticized for, as retro-futurism is a hallmark of the Fallout series.

The Fallout games are famous for their Easter eggs. While the first game mostly had references to the 1950s and 1960s pop-culture (Doctor Who, Godzilla), in Fallout 2 there are many references to Star Trek, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python; Some fans of the first game argued that there are too many Easter eggs in the sequel and that they distract from the immersiveness of the game world.

In Fallout, your character meets an NPC named Tycho, who mentions that he is a Desert Ranger and, under the right conditions, will talk of his grandfather, who told him about Fat Freddy, a character from Las Vegas in Wasteland, implying that his grandfather was one of the PCs in Wasteland, who were named the Desert Rangers. Although the time frame of Wasteland is completely different from Fallout, and Fallout game designers deny that Fallout 1 or 2 takes place in the same universe as Wasteland, this is one of many references to the events and the style of Wasteland in the Fallout series, which is why Fallout is sometimes regarded as the spiritual successor to Wasteland.

Intro Sequences

The game begins with two introductory cut-scenes, which can be skipped by the player.

The first is a slow pull-back from a functioning television set, while the song "Maybe" by the Ink Spots plays. The news story shown on the screen depicts US repression in Canada by showing an armored trooper shooting a kneeling man in the head and then waving to the camera. Behind a close-up of an armored trooper, a modified US flag is shown to wave. These scenes are offset by nearly-silent commercials for the "Mr. Handy" domestic chores robot and the 1950s-style "Corvega" sports car, which appear in the game. As the camera continues to pull back, the surrounding scene is a damaged room in a demolished city, and the television cuts out.

The second is in a slide-show format, with narration by Ron Perlman that begins with the line "War. War never changes." It has some description of the storyline. The important thing about it is that Fallout is not based on the Cold War and the Soviets are not the villains.

Trivia

• The song that plays during the intro sequence is titled "Maybe" and is sung by The Ink Spots. The original theme was going to be "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire", also by The Ink Spots, but apparently Black Isle was unable to get the license, so it was scrapped.
  • The song "Maybe" that appears in the opening cinematic of Fallout is originally by Allan Flynn & Frank Madden and is copyright 1935 by Robins Music Corporation.
• Killing Deputy Kenny in The Hub causes the message "Oh my god, they killed Kenny! You bastards!" to appear, an obvious reference to South Park
• Holding Shift and clicking the Credits button in the beginning game menu brings up a series of humorous/lewd comments by members of the Interplay team that developed the Fallout games.
• "RadAway", in Fallout, was a medicine that lowered the game characters level of irradiation. Supposedly it worked by bonding itself with radiation particles making it possible for them to "pass" through your system, as some form of radiation chelation therapy.
• "Mentats", a drug in the series that temporarily raises your intelligence, is named after Mentat in the Dune universe.
• "Brahmin", the two-headed cows, share their name with the Hindu priestly caste. The possibility of this name usage being purely coincidental is diminished when considering that cows are sacred in Hinduism. The name is also similar to the Brahman breed of cattle which are found in India.
• An early version of the game had a Goodies folder on the CD; this included a Windows screensaver and 1994 prototype version of the game.
• Three key members behind Fallout (Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson) left Interplay in 1998 and founded Troika Games. Troika was closed down in February 2005 due to financial problems.
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura by Troika Games has a reference to the two-headed cows that appeared originally in Fallout. They are said to come from a "far away desert".
• Among the random encounters, it is possible to find a crashed UFO, containing alien corpses. A Ray-Gun weapon and a portrait of Elvis can be found near the ship, and the phrase "You always knew they existed!" appears on screen.
• While wandering around in the desert, player can come across another random encounter with whale remains which seemed to have fallen out of the sky, this is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• "War. War never changes" is the famous phrase uttered in the intro of Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics by Ron Perlman. The phrase is one of the foremost iconic catch-phrases of the game.
• "Nuka Cola" is a blue cola in a Coca-Cola shaped bottle, in the game, obviously a reference to Coca-Cola. In fact, at one point when 4 bottles of Nuka Cola are received as a reward for completion of a quest, they are simply called "cokes".
• The Red Ryder BB Gun makes an appearance in both series of Fallout. This is a reference to the classic computer game, Wasteland, on which the Fallout series itself is loosely based. In turn, Wasteland was referencing the Christmas movie A Christmas Story (1983) In which the movie's main character wants nothing more for Christmas than a Red Ryder BB gun.
• At one point in Fallout's development, in Junktown, if the player aided local sheriff Killian Darkwater in killing the criminal Gizmo, Killian would take his pursuit of the law much too far to the point of tyranny, and force Junktown to stagnate. However, if the player killed Killian for Gizmo, then Gizmo would help Junktown prosper for his own benefit. The game's publisher didn't like this bit of moral ambiguity and had the outcomes changed to what they are now.

• Fallout games feature well-known actors as NPC voice-talent. Notable appearances include:
  • Richard Dean Anderson (Killian, Fallout)
  • David Warner (Morpheus, Fallout)
  • Tony Shalhoub ((credited as Tony Shalub) Aradesh, Fallout)
  • Brad Garrett (Harry, Fallout)
  • Keith David (Decker, Fallout)
  • Michael Dorn (Marcus the Mutant, Special Agent Frank Horrigan, Fallout 2)
  • Richard Moll (Cabot, Fallout)
  • Ron Perlman (Narrator, Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics)

External links

Official

• Fallout Product Help - Interplay Self Help
  • Fallout Hints and Cheats - Interplay Self Help
• Mirrors of the original Fallout website: Internet Archive No Mutants Allowed

Fan Sites

• Duck and Cover, Fallout Fan Site
• No Mutants Allowed, The oldest Fallout Fan Site

Others

• The Vault, A Fallout wiki. It is the largest source of information about the Fallout series on the internet.
• Fallout at MobyGames
• Fallout at IMDb
• FIFE, an open source Fallout engine