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

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 575 ratings with 22 reviews)

A definite classic.

The Good
I am generally not very fond of CRPGs, or RPGs in general for that matter. I have always held the firm, conservative belief that RPGs should be limited to fantasy (AD&D) and CRPG to hack'n'slash (Eye of the Beholder 2). I know it's lame, but that's the way I always thought. That is, before I played Fallout.

To tell the truth, I never knew of this game (well, maybe by name) before a friend of mine urged me to play it late in the year 2000, about three years after it came out. I was definitely not disappointed. Fallout is an extremely unique game that has much going for it, with good reason:

  • Fallout's game engine is, basically, very advanced. Utilizing a decent SVGA resolution along with some clever palette optimization techniques the game is able to draw an extremely detailed playfield. While not absolutely visually astounding, the engine does the job very well and puts out a fairly smooth framerate without sacrificing quality. Good thing.
  • The atmosphere in this game is superb. It is difficult to say which supports which, the story or the atmosphere, but the two work in tandem to create one of the most realistic and frightening experiences I've ever had the pleasure to play. I recall one of the reviewers complaining about the lack of colour in the game (something along the lines of "nature will survive") - that's fair enough, but I believe that the uncolourful graphics in Fallout corrolate much better with its plot, and one also has to consider that the world you move about in Fallout is referred to as The Wilderness. The graphic artists did an excellent job of conveying an appropriate image of the outside world, as I would have imagined it had Fallout been a book. The dreary, for lack of a better word, visual design in Fallout contributes to the atmosphere tremendously. The lack of many visual stimuli actually contributes to the game.
  • Aside from the outside world, the visual design in Fallout is incredible. The effort that went into the various structural types (desert village, vault, city, sewer etc.) is evident every step of the way. Everything looks exactly as it should - shattered cities bombed back into the stoneage; the high-tech, metallic look of the vaults; the claustrophobic, eerie Necropolis; the old, decaying Cathedral. This point cannot be overemphasized, as the contribution of proper visual design to the overall atmosphere in a game is simply something that cannot be described in words.
  • The storyline in this game is worthy of a decent novel. While it won't earn its author a literary prize, it is definitely worth noting that depsite the seemingly banal nature of the story (post-nuclear world, mutants roaming about), the execution of the story in the game is - despite being partially linear - extremely rewarding.
  • The three primary characters are well-rounded, plus the ability to generate your own character provide for a varied gameplay - where in one you run around beating people into a bloody pulp, in the other you must rely on charisma and quick fingers to get what you need. The amound of personality traits and special abilities is seemingly limitless, and the radically diverse nature of the various perks is truely genius (my personal being Bloody Mess - it's funny as hell). The effect each and every one of your character qualities will have be detrimental to the process of the game.
  • Fallout is one of those games, one of a select few, whose introduction sequence leaves me with a feeling of DAMN!!!. It has one of the most memorable intros I've seen in my whole life - funny at first, profound and amazingly touching later. I will easily place Fallout's introduction sequence right up there with the likes of Dune 2, Reunion, The 7th Guest and Star Control 2. Trust me; coming from me, that means a lot.
  • Where it actually features it, Fallout enjoys excellent background music. Unfortunately these tracks are fairly scarce, usually limited to an eerie tune playing in the background; however, as already said - whenever there is music in Fallout, it is definitely worth hearing.
  • The ending sequence (though not the ending itself) in Fallout is absolutely magnificent, giving you an account of what you have done and what the ramifications are. The ability to play the game as either a good or evil person also makes it a lot more interesting.
  • Fallout is littered with injokes (did you know the Brahmin sometimes utter "Moo, I say"?) that add a lot of flavour to the game; for example, if your character is lucky, you just might run into a crashed alien ships during your travels, where you will find (a) an alien weapon (literally, a Death Ray), and (b) make note of this: a picture of Elvis!

And in summation, I will only say this: Fallout is one hell of a game.

The Bad
Despite its greatness, Fallout is not without its flaws.

To begin with, it is basically a very difficult game, at least in the beginning. You'll have to be extremely careful not to run into too many fights at first, simply because you might not make it out alive. This changes over time, but the Super Mutants towards the end of the game will still give you a major run for your money.

More importantly, the interface in Fallout is not very intuitive; it makes a lot of sense basically, but the learning curve is extremely steep. I had my brother (who finished the game before I even got around to playing it) to give me a kickstart (in the ass), but it still took a good few hours to get used to it. Occasionally, due to loads or whatnot, I still make stupid mistakes using it, that quite frankly should not occur. I wouldn't call the interface cumbersome, but there's definitely room for improvement.

The NPCs are spectacularly... useless. Ian will do all the work for you at first, or should I say, you're as good as dead without him. Towards the middle of the game, however, he becomes a bloody neusance (constantly shooting you in the back etc.) and not much help, and in about two thirds of the game the only justification to keeping him around is as a human baggage (or cannon fodder). The NPC AI in Fallout is extremely handicapped, and it is quite unfortunate.

Another major drawback is that some of the parts in Fallout are very trial-and-error based, for example: The Glow. It took me three tries to get the damn thing right, and I still didn't go as deep as possible into the complex. The military base also took some work, as you will have to find a way to move about the troops without making too much rockus (five Super Mutant Guards with SMGs are not to be trifled with, even when fully armored and with the best weapons). Getting the damn Powered Armor working also took quite a while. This is unfortunate, because it puts an unnecessary and unwarranted blemish on what could've otherwise been nearly flawless gameplay.

Last but not lesat, your nemesis, The Master, is not a very good character IMO. To begin with, it looks like it was taken directly out of Phantasmagoria 2 - it even sounds the same. Second, it's damn near invincible (I couldn't kill it no matter how hard I try; I hear other people managed though). I also gave it about 30 tries and still couldn't convince the bloody thing that I was right. I had to blow up the entire cathedral, which was an incredibly bothersome ordeal. This basically makes the actual ending of the game very unsatisfying, at least for me. I feel the same way towards how the designers chose to end the game (won't spoil it for those who haven't played it yet though).

The Bottom Line
A spectacular game that gave me a new taste for CRPG. Depsite some flaws, it is an overall extraordinary experience that I recommend to any computer game lover.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2001

Roam the wastes, save the world... what's left of it, at least

The Good
Fallout is routinely considered one of the finest RPGs ever produced, and has garnered a rabid cult following since its release in late 1997. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are a great many good qualities to detail.

The world of Fallout is a beautifully-done satire of 1950s-era fears of nuclear holocaust. It is a bleak, harsh vision of what the people of that time thought that the future would be like, and what would happen when the bombs fell and ruined civilization. As such, the style of the game is heavily influenced by 1950s art and architecture. Computers are massive terminals running on tape and vacuum tubes. Cars have the distinct look of 1950s models. Magazine ads, public service announcements, and so on all have the distinct '50s-Americana flavor. Yet, there is a healthy dose of dark humor and irony running through the setting, not the least of which being that the player, obviously playing the game well after the 1950s, can smile at an extrapolation of the legitimate fears of a generation.

Perhaps the key characteristic of Fallout, though, is that, unlike a large number of RPGs, it remembers that the “R” and “P” stand for role-playing. To that end, Fallout provides ample opportunity for the player to not only create a role for himself/herself in the game world, but to make meaningful choices in the context of that world. The SPECIAL system -- a fortunate byproduct of the loss of the GURPS license due to Steven Jackson Games' issues with the game's violent content – stands as one of the most versatile and useful character creation systems ever devised. Players assign points to each of the seven core abilities (such as Strength, Intelligence, etc.), which affect how the character interacts with the world in accordance with standard RPG conventions. The scores also affect different skills (such as Lockpick, Doctor, and so on), three of which the player can choose to “tag,” or specialize in. The player also has the ability to choose two “traits,” special characteristics that bestow some advantage upon the character with a trade-off. For example, “Fast Shot” allows the character to attack more quickly, but at the expense of being unable to make targeted shots. The character creation system, then, allows the player to truly create a character suited to their style of play, whether that be “quick, glib sniper” or “big brawler with the IQ of a four-year-old.”

Of course, several RPGs allow for intricate character creation, then fail to actually make any of that hard work on the part of the player significant in any way. Fortunately, Fallout does not suffer from such a problem, as not only the style of character but also the player's actions in the world affect the way that NPCs react to him. Did you off the leader of one wasteland town? Then the criminal element in the next town over will have heard of you and wish to employ your services. Is your character so stupid that he can barely form coherent sentences? The sheriff that was so eager to ask for your help in bringing that criminal element to justice will no longer even speak with you. Do you get some sort of perverse enjoyment out of bashing orphaned children in the groin with a sledgehammer? The town will turn on you and try to drive your twisted self out of town. There are myriad instances of being able to play the game and complete it in many different ways. Pretty much any type of character can complete the game in its own way, providing a different play experience each time.

The combat system is, in this reviewer's opinion, one of the finest ever crafted in any RPG, period. The decision to go with a purely turn-based system in the days when games such as Diablo were all the rage was, quite frankly, a great decision. Combat feels more strategic and unfolds at a slower pace (but this is not a bad thing; quite the contrary, in fact). Combat takes place on a hex-grid on the game map. Every combatant has a number of Action Points with which to perform actions during his or her turn. Every action has an AP cost, and once the character's AP are depleted, their turn is over. Moving, for example, costs one AP per hex moved, while firing a Desert Eagle pistol costs five AP for a single shot. Perks (special abilities gained through raising experience levels) can modify these AP costs. Furthermore, characters can make “targeted shots” for one AP more, choosing to try to attack an opponent's head, legs, and even groin (who didn't at least smile in juvenile glee the first time they realized that you could target an opponent's groin?). These attacks have a lower likelihood of connecting, but with a payoff: higher potential for critical damage or injury, such as blindness or crippled limbs. The system feels very tactical, and builds off of the abilities of the character and the player's decisions instead of proficiency in twitch gaming.

The Bad
Despite its numerous good qualities, however, Fallout does have its blemishes. By far the most irritating thing about Fallout is the way NPC party members are handled. The system for managing NPC companions -- or rather the lack thereof -- is extremely poor. The player can only instruct companions in very basic ways, such as “draw your best weapon in the next fight” or “stay close to me.” Though party members can technically carry equipment, they must be bartered with in order for the player to actually get the item back. (Well, you could always steal the item back from them, but if you get caught they will turn on you and try to kill you.) The NPCs themselves are pretty much useless, especially in the latter half of the game when the player has good enough equipment to take out an army. They do not grow in power, and they will often do stupid things such as shoot the PC more often than the enemy or block movement by obliviously standing in a doorway for five minutes. They effectively become little more than cannon fodder for randomly-encountered squads of super mutants. (Most of these problems with companions were remedied in Fallout 2, however.)

The only other negative of which to speak is the “unfinished” nature of the game. There are numerous quests that are either broken or unimplemented, though characters in-game will still mention them or even give them to you. This is, again, especially problematic in the later stages of the game. Additionally, some of the elements of the game that were included are glitchy or do not work as they are supposed to.

These problems, however, are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, and do not seriously detract from the overall experience.

A note: Fallout can be very finicky on newer machines running Windows XP or Vista. Any problems encountered are usually pretty easy to remedy, but are still annoying nonetheless.

The Bottom Line
Atmosphere, gameplay, and above all else, freedom to play however you want. There are a scant few games that can readily claim that they have all of these things in abundance, but Fallout is part of that echelon of games. Despite its relatively minor flaws, Fallout delivers a unique role-playing experience that truly justifies its status as a classic and cult favorite.

Windows · by prymusferal (23) · 2007

I said it back in 1997 and I'll say it again: Fallout isn't just the best RPG ever, it is the best game ever.

The Good
Let's look back to the year 1997. I was in college, and a year earlier me and my bud Paul started up an underground magazine called "Nerdgasm." I wrote reviews and managed a column called "The Whiny Movie-goer." The magazine spread around the campus and got a cult following. One morning I woke up with Paul standing over me, holding the box for Fallout. He told me I had to review it. When he told me it was an RPG, I said 'No.' I wasn't too big on RPGs. He literally began poking me with a stick, and two days later I finally gave in to his stick poking and installed the game. Long story short: I fell in love with the game, and it won Game of the Year in our mag. The next year Fallout 2 would win, although as a gag I said that it tied with Fallout 1. It would become a running joke all the way until the magazines death that at each Game of the Year ceremony, I attempt to shoehorn in Fallout as game of the year again or say its the "real" game of the year but I was stick poked into picking a game actually from that year.

12 years later, and the game is still the greatest RPG ever, and already a nominee for Game of the Year 2009, right up with "Prototype."

Lets say that during the height of the cold war crisis, the nuclear bombs actually fell. Lets say that the Chinese attacked America. Lets say that the future is a post apocalyptic hellhole where raiders and slavers menace poor civilians and mutants wait outside peoples homes expecting a nice meal of human flesh. That's the idea behind Fallout. The story itself has you taking upon the role of a Vault dweller from Vault 13. The Vaults are numerous underground Fallout shelters that were made to protect humanity from the bombs. Vault 13 hasn't opened since the war, and generations have bred there, all living and dying in the vault. Yet recently Vault 13 has a little problem... The machine that gives you water is busted, and there's no way to replace it without getting another one from another vault. Vault 13 is opened for the first time in thousands of years, and you walk out into the frightening world of The Wasteland. As you quest for a spare waterchip, you will encounter many strange denizens, mutants, and learn that the world outside the Vault ain't exactly heaven. The games second act takes a dark yet brilliant turn, but my reviews are certified spoiler free. The story is great, and the world is immersive and unique, exploring it is a treat and hunting down the many unique denizens proves rewarding, especially when you run into HAROLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :B I really like Harold. He's the funniest game character ever. Although his level of hilarity isn't as epic as it is in Fallout 2, he's still the funniest mutant ever to not menace society. He's also one of the few mutants you WONT want to shoot. On the topic of humour, Fallout has a great sense of humour. The sense of humour in Fallout is brilliantly dark, sadistic, and perverted, yet even those who usually cringe at jokes about death, disease, mutation, sex, and sex with diseased undead mutants are likely to laugh at something in Fallout. The games 50's "Duck and Cover" style aesthetics and charm really help lighten the horror of the post apocalypse. The massive contrasts are surprisingly balanced. The opening cutscenes alone set both tones and get you in the mood for something scary and something funny.

The combat system is great, and has been unmatched in the realm of CRPG games. The game is turn based, but rather than just repeating the process of "Select move, select monster, watch what move does, reselect move again, select monster again, watch what move does" every friggen' time you fight something. Instead, Fallout requires you to pay more attention and rely on your wits. When you enter combat, whether you're fighting one monster alone or a group of baddies with some squad mates, you will enter a grid based combat scenario and are given "Action Points." How many action points you have is based on the games S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute system. Each item and move costs action points. If you have a few extra action points to spare, you can target a specific body part of your foe, which can really help the outcome of battle. Action points will run down during your turn, and will restore when it is your turn again. Bad guys and team mates use the same system, so the game never feels unbalanced, although naturally beefier enemies will have their own unique attributes and of course all the foes/team mates in the game will have different skill sets based on their race/faction.

On the topic of factions, Fallout has the freedom of choosing who you ally with or don't. Who will you ally with? The vicious raiders that murder and steal? How about the ever mysterious Brotherhood of Steel, a group of modern knights bent on keeping the peace and preserving our technology and history. Many other factions await, and regardless of their moral beliefs, you can make the choice to join their ranks. The game has a karma system, which takes into account your good and evil actions. You are given a great amount of freedom, and whether you will save the world, burn it greater, or leave no impact at all through neutrality, its all up to you.

Fallout has a relative difficulty curve, but once you get the swing of things, the games intuitive interface will become second nature. Some parts can be frustrating, but you will be compelled to overcome your weaknesses and build your strengths. The SPECIAL attribute system and a system of "Perks" and a large skill tree all offer an expansive character building system.

The graphics may not "Wow" in 2009, but when I'm looking at older games, I always look at the graphics from the eyes of someone living in the year it was released, and rate it based on that. I remember the games looks in 1997, and they looked great. The sprites are large and pixelation free, and the various gruesome death animations, characters and "talking heads" looked great. The sound is great too, sound effects all match up, and the eerie atmospheric score puts you in the mood. The game has great production values. The only complaint I had then that I still have now, is that I wish there were more full vocals and talking head graphics.

The game is so engrossing and fun, its hard to put down at all, if ever. Everything is great.

The Bad
Uhm... Uhh.... Poor compatability on modern computers?

Well, that's not an actual problem with the game, just for modern computers...

Uhm.. Radioactive scorpions are scary? No, that's not a complaint either since they're supposed to be scary....

Ooh! Ooh! I know! Harold is the funniest character ever! Wait.. no, that's another praise...

Uhh...... You know what? This game is perfect. The only true negative is that it ends. :'(

The Bottom Line
I still love this game, I love Fallout 2, and although it can't compare with the first two games euphoric feeling, Fallout 3 is a great successor to the series. Fallout Tactics is a great spin off as well. I may review Fo3 on here, but my review of Fallout 2 wouldn't be any different than this review. It would get 5 perfect stars. This is the greatest RPG of all time, if not the greatest game of all time. If you like RPGs, buy this. If you like strategy games, buy this. If you don't like RPGs, buy this. If you don't like strategy games, buy this. It has something for everyone, and if you haven't played it you are missing out. The complete collection - save for Fallout 3 (Although it can be bought from here as well) - is available DRM free on Steam for only 20 bucks for the whole set. It's also available on GameTap and Good Old Games. If you have it, or even if you don't and are missing your discs, buy this incredible game.

Windows · by Kaddy B. (777) · 2009

[ View all 22 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
I guess I'm a bit annoyed by open-endedness. chirinea (47500) 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.