Media Consumes Me’s History and Review of the Fallout series, from it’s origins in the late 80’s to the popular Bethesda bonanza of today. This is Part 1 of 2 in a trip through the post apocalyptic wastelands. I had to suffer through a night of no sleep to complete this post, then go to work for 12 hours, eating only chocolate chip cookies, so I hope you enjoy!
Below is the complete transcript plus a few extra tidbits.
The Cold War showdown of the 1950s gave science fiction a question it has always tried to answer: How would humanity survive the man made apocalypse brought on by it’s arsenal of nuclear weapons? Since my early childhood I have had the peculiar urge to be hopeful of an impending nuclear apocalypse. Being exposed to many of the science fiction films from the 70’s and 80’s, I have longed to live the dream, or rather nightmare, of the radiated deserts and abandoned cities. Alone in the world, wondering the wastes, foraging for radiated food, hoping to find some refuge to make my own, it was a concept ripe with adventure and terror. The post-nuclear world seemed to contain certain characteristics like vast deserts, dilapidated towns, roaming gangs of thugs, radiated ghouls, dog companions, underground bomb shelters, and sawed off shotguns. It was only time before we were able to live out the fantasy in a simulation.
Games had really good box art back then...
It all started in 1988 with Wasteland, published by Electronic Arts. It featured EGA graphics and was released on the Commodore 64, Apple II, and DOS. The game was set in the post-apocalyptic southwestern U.S. and the player controlled a party of Rangers exploring the wastes. It was a pretty advanced RPG for its time, giving the player a nonlinear experience not found in many RPGs during the late 80s. The game was very dynamic, allowing the player to overcome an obstacle in a variety of ways, based on the parties’ stats. It was also one of the first RPG games to introduce a persistent world.
The game came on two 5 1/4 floppies, and the manual advised the player to back up these discs, since the game would save information directly back onto them. In 1988, hard drives were pretty rare for gaming, and for such a complex game, it needed to save information somewhere so you could continue your quests later. This meant that if something wrong were to occur during the save process, then the entire disc would be corrupted. A manual was also included. Throughout the game, the user was instructed to read corresponding paragraphs in the manual, while saving space on the disks, and acting as an old school DRM of sorts. Some of the paragraphs included a false storyline about going to Mars as a way of confusing those who chose to read the manual without playing the game. Similarly, there were also paragraphs written to mislead curious readers who skipped ahead.
The game is still fun to this day, and I would suggest that anyone who is a fan of old school RPGs to try it out. Initially, it is forgiving since many characters go unconscious when out of health, but later in the game, enemies become exceedingly more difficult. When all members of a party die, an end screen appears, followed by a DOS prompt. On reload, however, you begin where you ended, a fantastic feature that is lacking in some games even today. There isn’t much sound effects nor music, so it is best played with your own choice of post-apocalyptic score.
Wasteland garnered spots on many top ten lists. Publishers, Electronic Arts and newly formed Interplay, which was founded by ex EA employees, were both interested in making successors to Wasteland. Electronic Arts started fresh, with a new development team and engine, for a follow-up entitled Fountain of Dreams, and Interplay began development with the Wasteland engine on a game called Meantime. Fountain of Dreams did poorly and Meantime was cancelled because the 8-bit EGA graphics market was being crushed by games like Ultima VII featuring 256 color VGA graphics. It wasn’t until nine years later, that Interplay finally saw their “spiritual” successor to Wasteland.
Fallout was very unique for its time.
The game was called Fallout and was developed by newcomer Black Isle Studios (although they were not formally named till Fallout 2). It featured many of the same concepts as Wasteland, but because Electronic Arts still owned the rights to Wasteland, so much of the story and name had to be changed. The game was still set in the post-apocalyptic wastelands, but it took place in a retro future with a 1950’s motif. The player controlled a character sent out from his underground Vault 13 into the Southern Californian wastes to find a water computer chip for the vault’s water recycling system. The game was originally going to incorporate Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS system, pretty much the standard for pen and paper RPGs, and they even incorporated this in the game early on. They went as far to make promotional materials featuring the GURPS system, but because the game was so violent the deal fell through (after lawyers also found flaws in the initial contract) and they instead created the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Every character in the game was governed by the this system, which stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. This system along with Karma points, special traits, and perks, decided how the player interacted with the NPCs.
What made Fallout unique for it’s time was the ability for the player to respond to dilemmas in the game. If you did something good, like taking out a local gangster you would earn good Karma points, or if you did something bad like become a slaver you earned bad Karma points. This pretty much made the game extremely replayable as there was a variety of different outcomes and multiple endings to the game.
Your character’s intelligence also decided how well you interacted with NPCs, something you wouldn’t normally find in other RPGs. For instance, your dialogue would be a series of grunts and unintelligible gibberish if your intelligence was less than 4 points. NPCs would sometimes take pity on you, and others would totally ignore you, making side quests almost impossible unless you had Mentats, a drug that improved your intelligence and perception. Drugs played a large part in Fallout’s universe. Instead of potions or spells like in many other RPGs of the time, Fallout incorporated drugs as a way to temporarily increase your characters main stats, but take them with caution as your character would feel side effects and could potentially become an addict.
Your map, quest log, and other options were handled through your handy Vault-Tec Pip-Boy. It made the game’s interface feel much more in tune with the game world, and provided all the information you would need. Traveling in the map screen, you would stumble upon all sorts interesting encounters, like fights already occurring, caravans, dead bodies, and many of the game’s in-jokes and science fiction references. It made the game world more dynamic when traveling from town to town.
The game carried a hefty amount of ranged and melee weapons that tempted players to find their favorite throughout the game. My favorite has always been the plasma rifle. Burning or melting my enemy away leaving only a pile of flesh goo was so satisfying. The death animations were plentiful, lasers would cut people in half, shotguns or rifles would take out chunks of abdomens, and machine guns would rip away large pieces flesh before what was left would fall to the ground. This made the combat system very entertaining, though seeing your own character pulverized by an enemies’ combat shotgun was quite depressing.
All this violence almost made me forget about the combat system. During regular play, your character moved in real-time, and once you were ready to start fighting, or encountered enemies, the game would switch to a turn based system. During a fight, the amount of action points your character had, determined how far you could move, how many shots you could fire, and any other actions your character made. If you used a targeted attack on an opponent, you could choose to shoot at a specific part of their body, giving you more of a chance for a critical, a chance at disabling that part of their body. The game had a sadistic chess feel to it, especially when fighting more then 5 or so characters at a time. It also meant death could come quickly if a enemy was able to get a critical shot. That’s why it was sometimes helpful to have teammates.
Unlike Wasteland where you controlled a squad of rangers, Fallout gave you the option to travel alone or recruit teammates along the way during your quests. I usually had my player traveling solo through much of the game, since I always felt like I had to take care of anyone I brought with me. Teammates would frequently end up getting killed, and I would feel bad if I didn’t reload and try to save them. This was because you didn’t control their actions, only their equipment and development. Your teammates’ A.I. wasn’t the greatest and they would get in the way more often then not.
Fallout’s graphics were more then adequate, giving a great feel for the post apocalyptic retro theme it touted. Beyond the stats, items, weapons, and cosmetics, was a darkly humored story. Dialogue was at it’s best in the first two Fallout games, with great delivery by the actors doing the voice over work. Included in the cast was Ron Perlman, who narrates and provides the most notable quote from the series “War, war never changes.” The cast throughout the series also included Richard Dean Anderson, Tony Shalhoub, Richard Moll, David Warner, Jim Cummings, Charles Adler, Michael Dorn, Jeffery Jones, Malcolm McDowell, Liam Neeson, and many other talented voice actors.
Fallout introduced the Enclave as a new enemy.
After Fallout was released to much praise, picking up “The Best RPG of the Year” from Gamespot, Black Isle Studios was already underway in a sequel that followed very closely to it’s predecessor. Fallout 2 took place mostly in Northern California and Nevada and graphically was very similar to Fallout. You played the descendant of the vault dweller, your character from the first game, sent out as the chosen one of your tribe to retrieve a device called the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, also known as the G.E.C.K.. The sequel was released only a year later in 1998, letting Black Isle Studios focus on content and update many of the game engine’s bugs.
It gave fans of the first game a chance to relive the post-nuclear world with a bigger more diverse environment. It added larger towns, a reputation system, new weapons, enemies, and armor, and a car. Reputation added to the Karma system, and this showed how your character was perceived by the residents of individual towns. This was important as Fallout 2 incorporated quests that would extend beyond many of them.
Fallout and Fallout 2 also dealt with some risqué elements like prostitution and child killing. At that time there weren’t many mainstream games where you could become a porn star, or a “fluffer” for one, and contract a venereal disease. In the game was also the ability to target and eliminate children that you encountered, earning your character the child killer trait. The little buggers would usually die as the result of crossfire, making you carefully target your opponents in areas where residents inhabited. If you did receive the child killer trait for killing two or more kids, a group of bounty hunters would come after you. Subsequently, European release of both games were without the graphics and animations of children, leaving disembodied voices where the children once were.
Tactics was more of the same but with a real time twist!
Fallout 2 gained moderate success and Black Isle Studios looked to update the engine for Fallout 3. During development for Van Buren (Fallout 3’s codename) two spin offs of the Fallout series were released. Micro Forte developed Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, a game that put you in control of a Brotherhood of Steel initiate sent out on missions into the wastes. It added a few new ideas, one of which was real-time combat, something I wasn’t a big fan of using since I still had the option for turn based combat, but because there were so many enemies in each level, it would take forever to complete in turn based mode. It was easier switching to real time and rushing in with all your squad’s guns blazing. It is interesting that Tactics if preordered also came with a tabletop war game entitled Fallout: Warfare by Christopher Taylor that featured cutouts of art by the Tactics development artists.
The low point of the series.
The next game was Interplay’s own Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, the first console based exclusive Fallout game for Xbox and Playstation 2. It was more action oriented giving the player a top down view of their character, catering to the simple nature of quickly made console games. I didn’t get to play this, and I probably never will. We will just leave it at that.
Next time, when I return, we will look at Black Isle Studios’ Fallout 3 (Van Buren) tech demo, Bethesda’s Fallout 3, its DLCs, and the future of the Fallout series on Media Consumes Me’s History and Review.
You can download Wasteland at: Abandonline.com
Tue, Oct 6, 2009
Video Games