So here's a quick little write-up I did. First writing I've done in years so I may be a little rusty. Let me know if it's at least decent enough to post as a Steam review or something.
FALLOUT REVIEW by Fluent
So, having grown up with mostly consoles and rotary phones until I was about 13 years old (circa 1998), I missed out on a lot of RPG gems on PC. Gems that I wouldn't discover until almost 20 years later. At first it was an ad in GamePro magazine for Dungeon Keeper that made me so excited about the game I dreamt every day about getting a PC that could run it. My parents thought that would be a used TRS-80 from a yard sale, but that's another story. Point is, it wasn't until about 2012 that I really started to dabble in the PC RPGs from the past that I missed out on being primarily a console RPG player for many years of my life.
So, enter Fallout, the year is 2018. I've played Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the former I had defended in the past as being better than New Vegas, and the latter I have replayed recently and now understand what makes it one of the best CRPGs to have released in the past 10 years (if not ever). I recently fired up the first Fallout game after being hounded by Archangel for years to play it and see why everyone praises it like they do, so these will be my first impressions and thoughts on the game after completing it.
You're Not Going To Hold My Hand? aka Why Don't They Make Games Like This Anymore?
The first thing I noticed in Fallout was the lack of handholding, or in other words, organic, raw gameplay. I've come to prefer this style over the quest markers and glowing breadcrumb trails of modern RPGs, and this game delivers that in spades. You will have to actually pay attention to what people tell you, where they tell you to go, what rumors abound and more! Talking to an NPC is exciting because you are never know what they are going to say and what information they have on your initial quest to find a water chip for your vault. You're tasked with this because the previous chip broke and you have 150 days of water left to find a new one, and that is an actual, real timer in the game, which is pretty cool. The game is very forgiving with the timer as long as you pay a bit of attention to your surroundings, a running theme with the game.
When setting out from the vault you will come across small settlements. Keep in mind that the Vault Dweller is stepping outside the vault for the first time since the bombs had fallen, so he and the rest of the vault have no idea what to expect. What you find is, well, what you'd expect. Small settlements tending herds of Brahmin, two-headed cows for their meats, hides and whatever else they can get from them. Cultivated desert land of southeast California where water is scarce and bandits plague the lands like locusts, or better yet, radscorpions - giant scorpions who were mutated from the radiation to be 30 times their original size. Keeping in mind your goal is to find a water chip, you'll talk to the people around the settlements, see if you can help them or they can help you, all the while keeping in mind the handy information they are giving you. The nice part is that it's not so complex and huge a game world that you need a pen and paper nearby to write down notes, yet it's not so small that it's easily figured out. It really strikes a perfect balance in terms of "what do I have to remember here?" and "let me grab a notepad or open Microsoft Word so I can keep track of this mess", since the journal (your Pip-Boy) is sparse to say the least.
So while you'll find settlements, raider gangs, mutated beasts, you'll also be finding weapons, armors and ammunition in the scarce wasteland while keeping "find the chip" embedded in the back of your mind. One clue may lead you to a town, or a person who is familiar with water pumps, or perhaps a scientist who knows where vaults were located that also had similar water chips installed in them. As you organically piece together clues you get a serious vibe of "I'm doing this myself. This is awesome!" You can actually apply organic and raw logic to the game to piece together the puzzle of finding the chip. Once you start to do that it is extremely satisfying and rewarding to make progress. You also level up quickly in the game, and this increases the feelings of getting stronger and making progress. There are a myriad of skills to get good at, from lockpicking, small guns and melee weapons, to being a better outdoorsman, stealth and even gambling. What you invest in your core attributes from the start of the game and which perks and skills you pick will also influence how people respond to you, sometimes even giving you new dialogue options or choices you otherwise wouldn't get. Oh, and the game doesn't code these choices to even let you know that it's a "special" choice, you just have to again use your brain and figure out the right things to say to people. Say the wrong thing and you can have a gun aimed down your throat in the time it takes to press the button to launch a nuke.
Since everyone knows the details, I'll just keep giving my impressions of the game. The combat is slow but fun, from crunchy combat sounds to the satisfying spewing of blood and organs when you score a deadly critical hit. You can recruit followers (if you're clever enough to find them) who act on their own accord and generally do more good than harm (again, if you use your brain and stay out of their line of fire). You'll organically come across factions that have formed in the wasteland that you can help, hinder or do some trading with. Quests for NPCs and factions can be completed in a multitude of different ways, giving you options to use your build to the best of its ability as well as your own cleverness and wits. Exploration rewards you with new settlements to visit, leading to new problems to solve and more XP to get stronger and pack a bigger punch, if that is your thing. With no level-scaling you can easily find yourself in over your head if you try to kill a Deathclaw at low level, or go to an area with enemies much stronger than you are. Yet once you get strong enough, the feeling of progression is stronger still as you wreak havoc on enemies that previously would have given you trouble.
There's all sorts of cool items in the world, from a geiger counter that tells you how radiated you are to a Stealth Boy that cloaks you and helps you sneak around undetected. The weapon and armor selection isn't vast but satisfaction is again the name of the game; when you equip a stronger weapon or armor the difference is surely felt. It left me wondering why more modern games don't take the approach of having no level scaling and having items that make you feel more powerful from a seemingly simple upgrade. Scraping together enough caps to buy that new pistol or frag grenade set is again, satisfying and rewarding. The power curve is very natural and you feel like you're starting to become a force to be reckoned with in this desolate desert arena where anything goes.
Getting back to the factions, you'll find people have banded together as you'd expect them to to try and survive the hostile environment. Not every faction is immediately friendly; Raider gangs may randomly attack you on the map, and one wrong word to the leader at their camp and you're mincemeat. You'll find groups who seem to worship odd gods and have strange motives, and the further you dig the more interesting the lore becomes. You'll find simple gangs in areas like Junktown, a la the Skulz, a group of tough guys who start trouble in the small settlement, or The Regulators, who seem to have taken over the settlement of Adytum by force, and possibly even darker means. Each faction you come across plays realistically in their position in the wasteland and their motives for survival. Water Merchants rely on selling water and running caravans to all parts of the land, while the Crimson Caravan may send you on possibly deadly caravan-guarding missions that require firepower in case of attack. You'll even discover that strange creatures have banded together as well, but I'll leave out any spoilers so you can discover those fun details for yourself.
The main thing I took away from this game is that the praise from these games is not simply nostalgia-driven only. There is something inherent in their design that makes them a joy to play. The completely hand-crafted, non-scaled game world to explore, totally non-linear and logical, with every piece of loot meticulously hand-placed. The way you have to piece together clues and figure out your whereabouts as if you really are an outsider in this strange land. The loot that rewards you with serious power when used correctly, whether it's some mental-stimulating Mentats or military grade Psycho that you inject for that extra tough encounter to make you that much more dangerous, everything is satisfying and rewarding. It is that way because YOU figured things out, YOU learned the game and YOU made the discoveries, not because you are being led in a heavy-handed manner. I wish modern developers would take some ideas from these classic games, because much like the Gothic series, Fallout has a lot to teach about how to build a coherent game world that is rewarding to adventure in. Rather than a mouse in a wheel you feel like you are really exploring an alien landscape and using your own wits and the skills of your character to succeed. And that is why this game is a classic, and why I'm happy I could finally experience it a whopping 21 years after its 1997 release date.
Final score - 9.5/10, Ultra Classic. While the game is pretty short you'd be hard pressed to find another RPG that is as detailed and tight of a package as the original Fallout. Even if the graphics put you off a bit (they really shouldn't, they're still gorgeous) or the slow-paced gameplay, you should give it a shot and see what fuss was about, and in my opinion what the fuss should still be about. Classic CRPG gameplay that didn't cut any corners and gets you deeply immersed in the world of nuclear fallout.
Onwards to my next game, Arcanum. Thanks for reading!
- Fluent
