Just because I don't care to read the usual FP/RTvsTB/?etc bullshit that these topics usually bring up, I ignored it.
I have a much more important point to make - the integral design of Fallout.
Fallout was much of the Cold War, much of the fears and etc. add in a bit of EC Comics' style of sociological commentary and dark ironies, and associated items that follow the dark ironies and general theme - there you have the mere setting in a nutshell. The setting was an alternate timeline, but in a "what-if" scenario of the Earth being nuked. Well, to be honest, it would only take a few high-altitude blasts to almost completely fry much of the US' current electronics. So what could have been spared, and be of use to a post-nuclear disaster survivor? Tubes.
The
design, as explained to me by both messieurs Timothy Cain and Leonard Boyardsky, encompasses each element more deeply than "well, let's just use x". Therefore, also symbolic to the retro nature of the character system/combat being from the roots of role-playing games (P&P), the silicon semi-conductor aka transistor, was never discovered or developed. As if ignoring the development of the transistor, the design of Fallout was ignoring the current trend of RPGs to become more "action-based" (often in truth just being hack and slash in a stat system), and returning to a more solid, endurable design, yet progressing upon it. Fallout was notable
because it was a trend-breaker, and has deep design put behind it (though, party NPC and the combat could have been better). This design also included the viewpoint, making the characters upon the combat field look more like tabletop RPG figurines.
The original right-click menu had the stereotypical references to the Illuminati and deeper, veiled meanings. The in-references in this game are numerous and deep, and due to their EC Comics' influence, I suggest that some reading into them to understand their style is due. Social commentary all the way through, with a lot of symbolism. Fallout's humor is secondarily based upon
parody, and not really intended in the style of Fallout 2. Pop-culture jokes = lame, usually, unless it's a funny bit in an adventure game, and then it had better be Sam & Max. Another one of EC Comics' titles was MAD, which is still around in some form today. Tales from the Crypt as another.
One of the major elements, one of the Dark Ironies of major importance to the Fallout storyline, is that a weapon that destroyed the world saved the world from that which was created to save mankind pre-war.
Biological weapons were used,
Counter-development of a retro-virus (FEV) to prevent infection of biological weapons.
Instead of stopping at making someone immune, or stabilizing the effects of the genetic changes, the military has intents to design a weapon.
Amusingly enough, the scientists in turn use some of the military prisoners as guinea pigs.
October 23 is a rather interesting date, given some events that occured on the date of the Great War bombs falling.*
Fast forward to The Master, perhaps one of the most in-depth villains ever. Simply because he isn't a Big Bad Boss, you don't need to confront him, and you can "attack" him in a number of ways.
The Master wants to use the FEV to unify the human race, using what was meant to save the US to infect and turn it into his creepy little empire.
The Master, for being intelligent and a powerful psychic...couldn't tell that there were no little super-mutants running about. A flaw is found in his perfect plan to unite the remaining world.
The Vault Dweller stops The Master with a nuke, a remainder of what destroyed the world, using it to stop the threat of what was supposed to protect the US.
The nuke destroys The Cathedral, ending the threat of The Master's plans.
The descendants of the military's remains help to contain and combat the mistakes brought about the military from before the Great War.
Many layers of dark ironies, things being twisted into what they weren't meant to be, and skillfully done.
It is a bit to wrap around if you aren't already aware of the connection, but let me explain a bit about the developers themselves, first, which I believe is the most important part. Many of the game designers behind Fallout have been around, designing long before Bard's Tale, and have finally been putting many of their ideas to code. All good developers are like this, in fact it was often how a character was brought to life in Ultima - they were an alter-ego of one of the designers, and treated like that. Once you can make a character talk, it isn't much more to give them a bit of a personality - mainly by showing their responses to the player's actions. This was put forth in Ultima, with people responding to how you act upon the world, and later developers built upon this. I *do* have to note that much of the old-school developers were friends with each other, and tended to like playing each other's games. They strove to out-do each other in what made them good, but not by lamely copying each other. Else, what point would there be to buy multiple games, only to find out that they lack character due to playing too much alike? So, each series was loved for what made it fun and often fugly, as some developers also helped each other with interface design. Criticism was taken and heeded, as it was often good and concisely put. And it wasn't drowned out by a number of console trash going on about how Fallout was a fun shooter for them and of course it should be a FPS of sorts.
This NPC response by followers was limited in Fallout, as there was much else being done, namely the depth of the world. It was a miracle, given the dubious design already in place at Interplay, with Descent to Undermountain. Troika's later games show an extension to the NPC reactions, most effectively with Arcanum.
Depth is what they were trying to achieve, in all aspects, including character depth. If it were not for Sierra insisting upon compromising the combat, the balancing would have likely been spot-on. The team at Troika are quite familiar with P&P mechanics, and this was their best attempt at accomplishing the impossible of mixing two time bases without having an extensive alternative character system or way of deriving stats, and combining RT and TB gameplay.
Another good dark irony is the original ending to Junktown:
If you helped the rigid, unforgiving sheriff, there was a reign of terror where people were afraid to break the law, else they were hanged or shot on the spot.
If you helped the owner of the casino, he is of dubious morality, yet forms a prosperous living for the inhabitants of Junktown.
This was to be THE quest design irony and destroyer of the cliché "help the good guy to help everyone, kill the bad guy to save everyone" mission/quest. The reason it wasn't used? Because it wasn't what people expected and they should be rewarded a bit more linear. Um...yeah.
See, even Fallout's discarded ideas are better than most of today's design. :D
* - from
http://www.cnn.com/almanac/9810/23/, many of these work well into amusing coincidences, given other characters and elements from Fallout 2:
# In 1864, forces led by Union Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate Gen. Stirling Price's army in Missouri.
# In 1915, 25.000 women marched in New York City, demanding the right to vote.
# In 1946, the U.N. General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow.
# In 1956, an anti-Stalinist revolt that was subsequently crushed by Soviet troops began in Hungary.
# In 1958, Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. However, Soviet authorities pressured Pasternak into relinquishing the award.
# In 1973, President Richard Nixon agreed to turn White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor over to Judge John J. Sirica.
# In 1978, China and Japan exchanged treaty ratification documents in Tokyo, formally ending four decades of hostility.
# In 1987, the U.S. Senate rejected the nomination of Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court by a 58-42 vote.
Now, another reminder about social commentary a la EC Comics:
Two dramatic events of the Senate debate were Senator Edward Kennedy's speech opposing Bork's nomination and the disclosure of Bork's video rental history. Within an hour of Bork's nomination to the Court, Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of it. Kennedy declared, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government."
(From Wiki, great for quotes at a moment.)
And holy fuck, does that sound like the US today. Well, except for the part about the blacks. Oh, shit, that's right, they have to vote at the tampered booths.
So, I guess what I'm trying to get across here is:
People have to be careful how they endorse fucking up Fallout's style, as each element was used for a purpose, and not arbitrarily chosen because it made a bunch of console trash tingle between their legs with graphics and twitch lameplay that would have made anyone in the 90's expecting depth sneer, as they did at how Ultima and other titles were going downhill. So why are shiny, shallow, shitty games ruling now? Which pretty much sums up Oblivion's design. And BioWare's. And Obsidian's. Hey, I notice a trend...
) - then generally the lowest skill level is still serviceable. From there, a significant change is difficult, because ideally, you don't want the highest skill level to destroy the challenge. So, you end up with a spectrum between workable and challenging. Hardly leaps and bounds.
