Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (Windows)

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Description

After the great war, the wasteland is inhabited by a wide variety of mutated species... And one force of order and justice: the Brotherhood of Steel. As a new initiate to the Brotherhood, you will undertake different missions to take on Raiders and such as you attempt to protect the fragile respawning of civilization... and discover the new threat to the west...

Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is essentially the combat portion of the original Fallout series, with a new campaign, graphical polish, a set of random encounters, and a world map. The emphasis is on squad tactics and tactical combat, though your characters will grow like in any RPG.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Trailer

Alternate Titles

• "辐射战略版：钢铁兄弟会" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
• "異塵餘生戰略版：鋼鐵兄弟會" -- Chinese spelling (traditional)
• "Fallout Tactics: Die stählerne Bruderschaft" -- German title
• "Fallout Tactics: BoS" -- Common informal abbreviation

Part of the Following Groups

• Fallout games
• Gameplay feature: Multiple endings
• Gameplay feature: Radiation / Radioactive Poisoning
• Video games turned into board / card games
• Wasteland universe

User Reviews

Playable on its own merits...	Vaelor (381)
Great until the final missions.	Terrence Bosky (5463)
All combat and tactics, no strategy, some extremely bad interface design... at times tedious	Kasey Chang (4617)	unrated
It's buggy and it falls a little short, but it works for me.	Zovni (10646)
A good, but far from perfect, continuation of the Fallout universe.	Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe (1691)
A decent tactical game in the Fallout world, but limited in role-playing potential and not to be confused with the original RPGs	weregamer (169)
A fairly good continuation of the Fallout Series.	Michael Miller (2)	unrated
Much Steel, little Brotherhood, even less Tactics.	Jacques Guy (55)	unrated
A fun combination of RPG and strategy that is marred by a general lack of polish	Droog (522)
Its good, but not fallout	Chad Henshaw (32)	unrated

Critic Reviews

GameSpy	Mar 23, 2001	89 out of 100	89
Game Watcher	Aug 12, 2003	8.3 out of 10	83
GameSpot	Mar 20, 2001	8.3 out of 10	83
Gamesmania.de	Apr 27, 2001	82 out of 100	82
games xtreme	Apr 17, 2001	8.2 out of 10	82
Jeuxvideo.com	Apr 18, 2001	16 out of 20	80
GameZone	Apr 19, 2001	7.5 out of 10	75
Game Revolution	Apr, 2001	B-	67
GameStar (Germany)	May, 2001	66 out of 100	66
Gry OnLine	May 17, 2001	6.5 out of 10	65

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
never played fallout, start with fallout tactics?	7	Solid Flamingo (1495) Dec 22, 2007

Trivia

Art

Fallout Tactics did NOT use any of the arts used in previous Fallout games. Interplay was unable to retrieve the archive of previous art on the backup tape. This caused quite a bit of problems for the developer as extra artists had to be hired to redo all the art from scratch.

Corrupt files

Following the tradition of "fatal bugs" that have plagued the Fallout series and which prompt you to get a patch right from the start, Fallout Tactics was initially released with some corrupt files in a batch of "bad" CDs that make it literally impossible to play. The only fix for this is to download a 85MB file from the Interplay's FT:BOS site and replace it following a series of precise instructions. That is in addition to the regular bug patches.

Development

MicroForte was contracted by 14 Degrees East to do Fallout Tactics. They caught Interplay's attention when they demoed a game featuring their isometric game engine. Interplay didn't like the game, but liked the engine well enough they suggested MicroForte to do Fallout Tactics instead.

Endings

There are four different endings, depending on your final choices. Destroy, send someone else, or submit? The last depends on how much karma you got.

Extras

Fallout Tactics had a special bonus mission CD that was available only by pre-ordering the game from Interplay or certain outlets (Amazon, etc).

German version

In the German version all blood and death animations were removed.

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.

Photoshop

If you try playing Fallout Tactics with Photoshop running, you'll be told Fallout Tactics cannot run "due to Photoshop's evil presence."

References

The "stinky meat platter" you find in various places throughout the game is probably a nod to Mahlon Smith's "StinkyMeat Project". As of 2001 it was available at http://www.thespark.com/science/stinkymeat/

References

• The game has many pop-culture references that mentions everything from Diablo (the game) and Everquest (the game) to the movies The Terminator, Die Hard, The Sixth Sense, The Space Race, Pitch Black (the character Riddick makes an appearance) and plenty of things in between.
• Morte from Planescape: Torment, does a little cameo in a special encounter. As you can see in the screenshots section.

Information also contributed by Kasey Chang, kbmb, Kyle Levesque, Zovni and Evolyzer

Related Web Sites

• Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (official website)
• Duck and Cover (An extensive Fallout fan site with information on all the Fallout games and the Fallout Bible.)
• Fallout Wastelands - The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide (An excellent unofficial fan site for the Fallout series.)
• No Mutants Allowed (Real Fallout fans never die - they just get a little radioactive after a while! NMA is the most comprehensive unofficial Fallout series site on the internet.)
• The Vault (Wiki based encyclopedia about all things Fallout.)