Today, exactly 22 years ago, the first game of the Fallout series appeared on the market, but in a significantly different release from what Fallout represents today.
Post-apocalypse is a common theme in popular culture and there are several franchises that we automatically associate with it. When we think of the post-apocalypse in the movie world, let's think of the Mad Max series. And when we think of the post-apocalypse in the video game world, let's think of Fallout, which was launched 22 years ago today.
Fallout emerged as the spiritual heir to the 1988 Wasteland, a play from which he took on a specific type of black humor but also a pessimistic vision of the future. The product of the then Interplay Productions warned the players in the introduction that the war never changes, and even though the Earth was devastated after the US-China nuclear conflict in 2077, the civilization mentality remained the same and survivors quickly entered new conflicts.
Fallout was an RPG game with an isometric camera in which the fight took place on moves. At first, the Interplay title should be based on a role-playing rule system called GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System). The working names of the game were also GURPS: Wasteland and Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure.
However, the collaboration between the development team and the creators of GURPS was eventually discontinued due to disagreement and a new system called SPECIAL was designed for Fallout. That acronym for System Attribute System (Stranght, Perception, Endurance, Carisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) has remained the foundation of Fallout to this day.
With the help of skills and perks, SPECIAL offered flexible and rich fiction that had a huge impact on the gameplay itself. You could, for example, make a character who would barely put words into sentences, but who would be so lucky that situations would always be of benefit to him. On the contrary, you could make a genius who couldn't hit an enemy with a weapon even when he was half a meter away from him, but would be able to hack all the robots.
Fallout received excellent ratings upon its release and sold over 600,000 copies. It was a modest result, but the start of something big. A year later, a direct sequel, larger and more elaborate than the original, had already taken place. Fallout 2 also came out today, putting us in the role of the "Chosen One", a descendant of Vault Dweller from the first game. Our task was to find a device called GECK, but as usual, during the game we got involved in conflicts that we could not get out of.
Fallout 2 did not change much about the gameplay of the previous game, but enriched it with new motifs and themes. The game was darker with topics such as slavery, prostitution and organized crime; which was reflected in the characters themselves. So you could recruit a drug addict, ex-slave, robot and radioactive "zombie" into your team. Control of the teammates was improved and you could give them instructions on how to act near you and what equipment to use.
Fallout 2 sat even better than the original, and is still remembered by many fans today as the best part of the old Fallout, if not the best part of the entire series. Personally, I would say that this was achieved primarily because of the tone of the game that was perfectly balanced between tragic and comical.
For example, you would come to San Francisco dominated by descendants of a Chinese aggressor, and their emperor was a computer. The rest of the population who represents "American" culture is hiding on a tanker and in an underground shelter where members of the cult of Hubologists (obvious mockery of Scientology), whose faces are welcomed by two pornographic stars, reside.
It is because of such unusual scenarios that Fallout has become extremely beloved in its small fan base on PC. Later, this Bethesd series turned into something completely different and found even greater success in the wider market, but many original fans will agree that the new games are more focused on shooting at mutants and bandits and less on depicting the ironies of the aftermath of nuclear war. the culture of the American nation.
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