In Part 1, I talked about the origins of the Fallout series beginning with the inventive Wasteland by Electronic Arts.  I explored the heart of the series in Interplay’s Fallout 1 and 2, and talked a little about Fallout Tactics with it’s inclusion of real-time combat. I finished up without comment on the immature joke riddled console game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Now I continue the journey of the franchise in Media Consumes Me’s History and Review of the Fallout Series Part 2.

Check out Part 1 if you haven’t already. Below is the transcript plus extra bits for reading.

Immediately after the release of Fallout 2, Black Isle Studios began working on another sequel to the series. Interplay at the time had just gone public on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange and their shares began to take a nosedive after several years of reporting loses. Even though Interplay published some great games, they were purportedly spending boatloads of cash on projects like Star Trek: The Secret of Vulcan Fury,a project I was eagerly awaiting, having seen a preview in PCGamer magazine. Fallout 3 along with many other upcoming projects were cancelled.

Interplay was funding its projects through credit agreements, game sales, and loans from the head of the company himself, Brian Fargo. They never kept much cash at the ready, and once troubles grew out of their hands in 1999, Titus Interactive, a French based production company, acquired a majority interest in Interplay. In 2001, Brian Fargo, the original founder, left the company and Titus Interactive’s own Herve Caen took over as CEO. A deal with Vivendi Universal was signed to publish Interplays games, giving a much needed lifeline to the troubled company.

Black Isle Studios returned to making Fallout 3, codenaming their production Van Buren. Details began to emerge and fans salivated at the thought of another game in the franchise.  The game would feature 3D graphics, using the Jefferson engine developed for Baldur’s Gate 3, and continued the Fallout storyline in the American southwest in locations such as Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The player would have started off as a prisoner thrust into war between factions of the New California Republic (featured in Fallout 2) and the Brotherhood of Steel. It also featured a mad scientist named Victor Presper bent on using a Ballistic Missile Satellite to destroy what was left of the post-nuclear world. Supposedly at the end of the game, the player would have to choose where the satellite would target, something very familiar to players of Bethesda’s Fallout 3 DLC, Broken Steel, but we’ll get to that later.

Even though a good percentage of Van Buren was complete, on December 8th, 2003 Interplay cancelled it and closed Black Isle Studios. The troubles had escalated even with Vivendi Universal picking up publishing duties. The next year, Interplay was slapped with an eviction notice from its landlord, and shut down because of non-payment to some of their employees. Somehow though, Interplay survived moving to a smaller office space, possibly one with a lower overhead.

Years later in 2007 a leaked version of the Van Buren tech demo was released on the internet through No Mutants Allowed, a hardcore Fallout fan site. The demo contained a small incomplete tutorial level from the game, giving fans of the series a “what could have been” look at the cancelled game. Although the game was to feature real-time combat  and turn-based combat like that of Fallout Tactics, a requirement Interplay insisted on, the demo sadly only has real-time mode. Interplay also insisted on a cooperative multi-player mode.Once loaded up, a character is created in the updated creation system, and the player’s character starts off in an unnamed town during the Great War somewhere in the Midwest Commonwealth. Your character is escorted by a Corporal of the 4th Infantry Division through the war torn streets of the town, fighting against communist insurgents, as you make your way to a Vault located at the end of the level.

Playing the tech demo, fans easily saw the potential Black Isle Studios’ Fallout 3 had. The graphics, even though most were placeholders, were spot on echoing the atmosphere of the rest of the series. The tech demo is very buggy with almost all options missing (including the female character’s top), but it is great to see for anyone who is a fan of the Fallout series. It is hard to say how well the game would have succeeded with the new engine in its final release, but maybe if there was some alternate universe in which Black Isle’s Fallout 3 was finished, I am sure the Fallout fans residing there would have been more then happy with the final outcome then what occurred here, back in our dimension.

Going back to 2004, after cancelling Fallout 3, Interplay sold the rights to Bethesda Softworks, the makers of another successful RPG series, The Elder Scrolls. Bethesda at that time was in production of the fourth game in their TES series named Oblivion. Bethesda announced they would be starting production of Fallout 3 immediately but it was speculated that production didn’t fully start until Oblivion was finished. Leading up to Fallout 3’s release date, fans of the series were split on whether Bethesda would give the series a faithful update.

Eventually in 2008, Bethesda’s Fallout 3 was released for the PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. The game featured the same engine (Gamebryo) as Oblivion, and it was easy for fans to see that it had less in common than what they were used to in a Fallout title. It was transformed into a real-time RPG First Person Shooter, and no longer exhibited many of the traits fans were used to in the previous installments. To fans, it looked like a big budget Oblivion total conversion, but you could tell Bethesda tried very hard to make the story and atmosphere resemble as closely as possible to the original games.

You start at the very beginning of your character’s life, literally being born on screen, from your own point of view, you emerge from your mother’s womb. You are introduced to your dad, voiced by Liam Neeson, who through a series of questions lays down the basic name and appearance of your character. What follows is a small tutorial chapter inside the vault you inhabit from a small child to an adult, choosing your character’s skills and traits along the way. The first few times you play this section it is refreshing, but after awhile of replay the linearity of the vault sequence starts to show. Most of your choices are sometimes redundant too, as after your escape you are displayed a screen giving you a chance to undue what you previously selected.

Once you have broken free into the Capital wastelands, the choice is yours to venture wherever you choose. Although you are pointed in the direction of the main quest, to find your father, the game let’s you traverse to any number of locations. The game’s map is gigantic, and with exception to downtown Washington D.C. , is pretty much free of the usual obstacles to keep a player from freely traversing the area.  The graphics are immense, rendering the post apocalyptic landscape with numerous amounts of rubble and debris, and although I would have liked to see the long expansive deserts of the American southwest, you have to admit Bethesda did a perfect job in bringing the environment to life. The only real problem regarding graphics is the color palette, which never really leaves the boundaries of its dusty grays, yellows, and greens.

The story and main quest take a little time to actually get moving, and for a bit is very entertaining, but after a few seminal moments, feels a little dull, especially for the Fallout series. Most of the time you will be preoccupied with the side quests, which too after awhile get a bit tedious and feel like basic fetch this item, kill that guy, kind of missions. There are only certain times when you can actually try different routes using your charisma and speech unlike it’s predecessors, and even then they feel a little limited. There are excellent payoffs during certain quests early in the game, most notably if you choose to play an evil character. The dialogue is good, but not necessarily on par all the time, with some characters sounding phoned in, but nevertheless better then Oblivion. The character’s in many circumstances aren’t very memorable, since they all share a weird likeness in the uncanny valley.

Using the same engine as TES: Oblivion brought Fallout 3 most of the same good and bad points that Oblivion had. The interface was greatly updated from previous Fallout games, to give us everything in a seamless PipBoy transition, but suffers from console disease brought on from Oblivion’s simplistic inventory and map. TES 3: Morrowind had a very intricate interface for PC, and felt like an advanced RPG, but when Bethesda updated it to Oblivion and the console, a lot went the way of the dodo.  As far as the action goes, Bethesda tried to appeal to Fallout fans by incorporating the V.A.T.S. targeting system. Entering into this mode targets a nearby enemy, and using your action points let’s you choose which body part will be the focus of your attack. Adding in this option helps the game play, as much of the action in Fallout is clumsy, but once you have used V.A.T.S. around a few hundred times throughout the game, and your character has become god-like, watching the gory slow motion deaths get’s a little tedious.

What Bethesda did right is give the player a giant map to explore like in their previous TES series, and create a story of his/her own. Being able to just explore a game without any purpose other then that of discovery is something that I longed to do in my childhood before many sandbox style games were introduced. Sometimes I wish they would even forgo a main quest line for a more open ended experience. During your adventures, the PipBoy interface also gives you limited radio stations to tune into, giving you a break from well produced wind sounds and event timed soundtrack. You could also stumble upon radio transmissions useful in finding locations or quests.

Throughout the game the player will pick up numerous items, some will be useless at first, but almost all of them have a use at some point. There are tons of weapons to find, or create, expanding possibilities in combat, but again once the player has gone through most of them, they will probably end up picking their favorite and using it again and again (ahem…plasma rifle). There are so many objects in the game that during the first half you’ll be picking up all of them and schlepping them back to your house or apartment just to watch your collection grow. I would usually pick up unique objects, then store them in appropriate containers, and end up forgetting about them.

Bethesda could have spent more time developing some of the towns, as they felt much smaller then those in previous Fallout games, but they had much more on their radiated plate. In it’s first release Fallout 3 contained numerous bugs. Just like the first Fallout, some quests were incomplete, and the non-linear approach sometimes backfired. The game physics would also get a bit wonky during certain times, throwing corpses across the screen like mashed up ragdolls, or letting the player slip through the ground and become stuck between geometry. After some patches though, most of the problems were fixed, but Fallout 3 still suffered from an ending that left a sour taste in a lot of fans’ mouths.

In the next year Bethesda would roll out five add-ons as downloadable content, pricing each at ten dollars.  The first up was Operation Anchorage, and at first look, seemed like an exciting concept, but once I was able to play through it, I found it was the worst of the bunch. It is more focused on action then RPG elements, something Fallout 3 was just hanging on by a thread through much of the vanilla game. The story and setting are great, taking place inside a simulation of the war in Anchorage, Alaska. The levels are somewhat linear, and much of the stealth game play is wasted. The only prize at the end of the frozen tundra are some weapons, armor, and items that make the rest of the game even easier then it already is.

The second DLC to be released was The Pitt. It featured one of the best storylines and environment of the downloadable content, forcing the player into tough decisions, even though the outcomes and rewards were similar in the end. It had the Mad Max 3: Thunderdome feel being able to explore a rundown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that was controlled by raiders. My only problem was I wish it could have been a little longer, but the ride was well worth it, rewarding the player with an ammo supply and interesting weaponry. The Pitt was sadly released with a boatload of bugs for the Xbox 360 version, and was pulled from Xbox Live until Bethesda was able to iron them out.

The third DLC was Broken Steel, which opened up the end game for the player to continue the main quest, helping the Brotherhood of Steel against remnants of the Enclave that were scattered throughout the Capitol Wasteland. This DLC was a must as it changed the level cap from 20 to 30, adding as usual more weapons, armor, items, and perks. It provided some interesting plot developments and some memorable moments, like Mirelurk campfires down by the river.

The fourth and largest of the DLCs released, was Point Lookout, giving the player a whole state park in Maryland to explore. There are plenty of locations and side quests, and also hillbillies and tribals to fight. The mood and atmosphere is up there with The Pitt, with a twisted storyline that even features a drug induced dreamy sequence.

The final DLC to be released was Mothership Zeta. Finally players got a chance to board an alien spacecraft, get their hands on advanced weaponry (like there wasn’t enough already), and live the dream of fighting from deck to deck against alien hordes, something  I’m sure Travis Walton wish he could have done. Although it is again an action oriented DLC, the new textures and environment, along with the story, make it stand out a lot more then Operation Anchorage.

Of course, hardcore fans upset with any of the features in Fallout 3, can download Bethesda’s free editor, named appropriately after a Fallout 2 plot device. The G.E.C.K. was released shortly after Fallout 3 hit store shelves, and has already spawned many modifications focused on balancing game play, or adding in elements some felt were missing. Bethesda knew they wanted to keep fans busy between game releases, and they have done the same with past games in their Elder Scrolls series. If you have some time on your hands, you can pick up the G.E.C.K. Fallout 3 editor here from the official website, which also contains tutorials on using the program.

Now that all of the DLCs have been released and featured in the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition, it’s time to look towards the future of the Fallout franchise, past all the legal troubles of intellectual property between Interplay and Bethesda. There has been a number of games proposed, like Bethesda’s Fallout 4, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas, and Interplay’s Project V13. They all have me excited, and worried at the same time for the franchise. Where will they take us? I hope to one day make a Part 3 featuring them, but until then, I would like to thank the Fallout community over at No Mutants Allowed for their support and critical response to my articles.

Download the Van Buren Tech Demo

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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: Abandonia.com