Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11175 in Video Games
• Brand: Interplay
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 95
• Format: CD-ROM

Amazon.com Review
Mad Max, Blade Runner, The Terminator, The Matrix--all the best sci-fi movies set on a futuristic Earth have one common message: things are going to be bleak, and it'll take a special kind of hero to make any sort of difference. Fallout is a superb riff on this theme, letting you play the role of the hero as you venture across a nuked United States on a quest to help your imperiled community of survivors.

Three generations have passed since The War, and all that time your "tribe" has been living in a self-sufficient fallout shelter called Vault-13. Unfortunately, its water purification system is broken, and it's your job to find either another chip or a safe water supply before the current reserves dry up. Alone, you leave the safety of the vault and embark on an unforgettable adventure.

There are several elements that elevate Fallout above similar role-playing games, but the detailed character statistics are at the top of the list. This is one of the few games that lets you truly fine-tune a character to your liking, and the skills, traits, and attributes you hone have a real impact on gameplay. A sneaky character with a great personality can easily steal items and talk his or her way out of a tough situation, while a character specialized in ranged combat can let his guns do the talking. Different character types will develop the plot in different ways, and it's worth going through the game again with a different character just to see how things change.

As the game progresses, you'll find that there are more important things happening in the outside world than the troubles your vault is having. In fact, it's possible to ignore the plight of your people entirely and focus on the bigger picture if that's the way you want to play the game. There are a few problems with this nonlinear play style in that you'll occasionally see things or hear conversations that make no sense, but it's a small price to pay for the chance to play one of the most ambitious role-playing games ever produced. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Compelling story set in a postapocalyptic future
• Detailed character stats and skills lets users play the game exactly as they want to
• Spiritual successor to the Commodore 64 classic Wasteland

• Nonlinear story line means sometimes events are triggered when they shouldn't be
• Some characters that join your party can be a terrible burden during combat sequences

Amazon.com Product Description
Set in the aftermath of a worldwide nuclear war, Fallout will challenge you to survive in an unknown and dangerous world. You will take the role of a Vault-dweller, a person who has grown up in a secluded, underground survival vault. Circumstances arise that force you to go Outside--to a strange world 80 years after the end of the modern civilization--a world of mutants, radiation, gangs, and violence.

Your immediate task is to find a replacement for the broken water purification controller chip. Without that chip, your fellow Vault-dwellers are doomed to dehydration or forced to leave the safety of the Vault for the Outside.

GameSpot Review
The past several years haven't exactly been kind to role-playing game fans. Very few role-playing games have been released since 1993, and those that have made it to retail shelves have largely been unsuccessful at combining playability and originality with the complexity that role-playing game fans love. The release of Blizzard Entertainment's action/role-playing game hybrid Diablo in early 1997 only increased role-playing gamers' anticipation for an equally playable game in a more elaborate, detailed world. After a four-year drought, the wait is over. Fallout is one of the best role-playing games to be released in several years and it succeeds in entertaining gamers by providing a fresh and compelling storyline, good graphics and sound, and attention to those little details that can transform a good game into a great one.

Fallout is an unofficial sequel to 1987's Wasteland, one of the most popular role-playing games of all time. While the overwhelming majority of computer role-playing games are set in some pseudo-medieval, Tolkien/AD&D-inspired world of orcs and battleaxes, Fallout is set in the future, several years after an exchange of nuclear weapons has devastated most of the world. Inhabitants who survived did so largely by sheltering themselves in giant underground vaults. Your character's life has been spent entirely within one such vault. A broken chip for your vault's water recycler forces your character to leave the relative safety of the vault to search for a replacement chip aboveground in the wasteland, where you'll encounter struggling communities of survivors, Road Warrior-esque gangs, human mutants, and even stranger creatures. Hardly a typical setting for a role-playing game, but the originality of the setting is one of the strengths of Fallout.

Fallout oozes style. Not content with extrapolating a plausible but unexciting hi-tech view of the future, Fallout's design team instead crafted a vision of the future that combines 1950s cold war American culture and early, primitive computer technology (complete with ugly green monochrome screens and an abundance of vacuum tubes), with advanced energy weapons and chemical compounds. Nuka-cola anyone?

Negotiations to allow Fallout to utilize Steve Jackson Games' popular GURPS character system fell apart, but Interplay's replacement character creation system is detailed and thorough. Almost every time a computer game is released that purports to be a role-playing game, a seemingly inevitable onslaught of debate ensues over whether or not that game is, in fact, a role-playing game (as opposed to a member of some presumably inferior wanna-be genre).

Fallout uses a hybrid system of character development, which is both level-based (your character gains character levels by accumulating experience points) and skill-based (your character has 10 primary skill types that can be improved throughout the course of the game). You can also give your character up to two optional traits (such as the ability to see and function better at night), each having both a positive and negative effect on your character. Gore-mongers will want to pick the "bloody mess" trait, which causes your victims to die in the most graphically violent way possible. Finally, every time your character gains three character levels you can add a helpful "perk" ability to further distinguish your character. Do you want to be a good-natured doctor with a knack for big guns, a nimble gymnast with an addiction, a ruthless assassin, or a lucky thief?

Interaction with nonplayer characters (NPCs) is a bit disappointing. Most of the nonplayer characters in Fallout aren't big on conversation and run around blithely and inconsequentially. Shades of the early Ultima games from Richard Garriott and Origin Systems, Stationary NPCs are generally important and will engage in menu-driven conversations. Mobile NPCs, on the other hand, will bark a short message at your character, which will be randomly chosen from three or so available options for that location.

Although you only control one character in Fallout, you can convince certain NPCs to join you in your quests, but you'll never be able to directly control their actions. Unfortunately, these NPC companions tend to take particular delight in blocking doorways or shooting you (and each other) in the back with semiautomatic weapons. You also won't be able to directly access your companions' inventory or otherwise instruct them to give you items or to equip better armor. Give an NPC a key item and you'll have to barter or steal from the NPC in order to get it back. Ingrates.

The gaming world is presented from an isometric perspective and the graphics are detailed and extremely similar in style and quality to Origin's Crusader games. A sighting bubble, which surrounds your character, ensures that you'll never lose track of objects that would otherwise be obscured as a result of the game's isometric perspective. The settings are suitably apocalyptic and ironic (junked cars are everywhere, but the prevalent mode of transportation is a two-headed cow caravan). Music is also well done throughout the game, with each setting having its own distinct and often haunting melody. Sound effects are less memorable, but adequate.

The world moves along in real time until combat is initiated. There is a large variety of weapons to choose from, including pistols, rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and plasma guns, and each is capable of killing your enemies in a suitably distinct graphical manner. Combat is strictly turn-based and becomes quite tactical, complete with character initiative, action points, and varying attack modes.

Although Interplay has recently released a bug-stomping patch, there are still a couple of annoying bugs in Fallout that may force you to backtrack and try certain tasks again. As the excellent and conveniently spiral-bound manual (the Vault Dweller's Survival Guide) suggests, save often. Gameplay is generally delightfully nonlinear, but occasionally the game's chronology gets garbled and quests are presented in an illogical sequence that can result in some inappropriate NPC conversations.

Even though these minor flaws bring Fallout's overall rating down a notch or two, Fallout is not only a worthy successor to Wasteland, it's also a role-playing game that is destined to become a classic in its own right. Fallout's detailed graphics, compelling plot, and intuitive gameplay should deservedly broaden its appeal beyond the hard-core role-playing game audience. Put simply, Fallout may be the best role-playing game to be released in years. --Desslock
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

A reinvention of the Computer Role Playing Game. Brilliantly unique.
Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 are available in a cheap bundle pack, but the bundle apparently does not include the amazing game manuals.

The Fallout games rank among the top few computer RPGs ever created. When the genre was in a slump, Fallout breathed fresh life into it. Fallout's originality, gritty post-apocalyptic environment, brilliant plot, and open-ended non-linear gameplay left an indelible mark upon the face of role playing.

Fallout has an isometric three-quarters view and features turn-based combat.

When nuclear fired rained from the heavens, incinerating most of humanity, a lucky few reached the safety of underground bunkers. You were born and raised in the womblike Vault 13, and its sterile walls encase the only world you have ever known. Fifty years after the war, the vault's water chip malfunctions, and you are sent outside to find a replacement. The door locks shut behind you, and as you exit the cave you are blinded by your first sight of the sun. You are alone in the blasted wasteland of California, a world teeming with danger: mutant beasts feed off of unwary travelers; the few decent farmers who plow the barren soil are murdered by barbaric raiders; criminals overpower lawmen; and a greater threat lurks over the horizon. You, the Vault Dweller, must adapt quickly if you wish to survive.

In a CRPG market dominated by fantasy archetypes of elves and wizards, the Fallout setting is radically distinct. It revitalizes tired fantasy conventions: the fallen, legendary kingdom is America; dark undead-infested dungeons are replaced by crumbling mutant-infested sewer systems; there is an unconventional stronghold of armored Paladins and Knights; and ancient buried scrolls are supplanted by scientific holo-disks.

The Fallout world is highly stylized, blending many influences into a unique package. It melds futuristic and retro styles, reflecting a futuristic post-apocalyptic world as imagined by 50's-era Americans, complete with vacuum tubes, blasters, giant mutants, and war propaganda. Fallout also drew inspiration from westerns, Mad Max, cheesy sci-fi movies, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams.

The unique character creation system does not involve classes or races, and focuses instead on attributes, traits, skills, and perks. It is simple to use and allows endless customization: a perceptive sniper can target a Radscorpion's eye across the screen, a skillful thief can creep past guards and rob merchants blind, a martial artist can kick highwaymen in the groin, and a diplomat can end conflicts without violence. Any combination is possible. The game's non-linear plot rewards unique characters by allowing multiple solutions to each quest.

Players have unprecedented freedom to shape their destiny without being herded along by a forced plot. Actions bestow a positive or negative reputation, and people react accordingly. Become a champion of justice or an enemy of decency. Assist the sheriff or the crime lord. Secure an alliance between two factions or set them at each others' throats. Nearly anyone can be killed, but prepare for the consequences. Also, play at least once with minimum intelligence - this limits conversational choices to grunts and causes people to treat the character as an idiot.

Fallout's low-resolution graphics were obsolete when it was first released, and may disappoint gamers who have been spoiled by modern graphics. There are few character models; towns seem to be populated by clones. Fortunately, the technical shortcomings are overcome by the brilliant art design. The original environments are visually compelling and the visceral death animations enliven combat.

The moody music helps create an immersive environment. The superb voice actors include Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver). The sound effects are also great.

The NPC allies in Fallout 1 are notoriously unreliable. They shoot the player in the back and block doorways at every opportunity. They cannot wear armor and do not gain levels. (Fallout 2 improved the NPC allies, allowing the player to change their combat behaviors, push them out of doorways, upgrade their armor, and watch them grow stronger.)

The game manual is wire-bound, thick, well-detailed, humorous, and illustrated. Game companies no longer produce manuals of this quality.

The game contains graphic violence, sex, and language. Some adult content can be removed through the control panel.

There exists a debate as to whether Fallout 1 or Fallout 2 is superior, and consensus will never be reached. Fallout 2 has much greater scope, with more towns, quests, NPCs, and guns. It has a much improved party control system. Fallout 1 is more cohesive thematically, while the sequel went overboard on non-thematic elements such as pop-culture references, Easter Eggs, mobsters, and yakuza. Fallout 2 suffers from a boring opening area, the Temple of Trials, which is especially dull when replaying the game for the fourth time.

While the settings for both games are fascinating, Fallout 1 proves more loyal to classic survival themes. Fallout 1 takes place soon after the nuclear war: resources are limited, shanty towns contain warring factions, little communication and trade passes between towns, and barter systems are rudimentary. Fallout 2 takes place much later: unified city states control advanced technology and uniformed armies, regular trade passes between strongly allied governments, and gold currency is widely accepted.

Both games are amazing and should be played in their proper order, as the sequel continues the plot to a great conclusion. Fallout 1 and 2 are perfect games for anyone who likes creative RPGs, post-apocalyptic themes, and imaginative stories.

They just don't make'em like this anymore.
I think the late 1990's were a golden age for the computer gamer. I remember I could walk into the local ComputerCity or BestBuy and browse rows and rows full of video games. Compare that now to maybe one row or less. *sigh* The good ole days!

One of the great relics of this golden age is Fallout. Fallout is a roleplaying game that takes place 80 years or so after a nuclear war engulfed the Earth. The adventurer's mission starts off trying to save a group of humans that survived the devastation by taking refuge in a vault. Their water purification system has failed and a replacement chip must be found. So you wander the wastes in search of this chip and find what is left of humanity.

The gameplay itself is spectacular. There are many ways to solve the quests in the game and violence is not a prerequisite. A lot of how you play the game is determined by how you build your character at the beginning. You could gear your character towards a warrior, a thief, a negotiator or even a scientist based on about 20 or so skills and traits. As the game progresses your character improves on those skills and gets "perks" along the way. Because every quest and encounter is dependent on your skills, outcomes can differ and so the replay value is extraordinary.

One of the things I love about this game is that it is geared toward adults. It can be as violent and bloody as you want depending on what preferences you set when you begin the game. Some of the language is also coarse and that too can be controled by the preferences you set. That said it should be noted that even though in its day it was considered edgey, it does not come close to the graphic nature of say GTA3, so things should be kept in perspective.

One last thing, if you can still get hold of it, the manual is absolutely awesome! It is spiral bound, beautifully illustrated and actually tells you what you need to know. This was another feature of the games that came out in the golden age, the manuals were complete and they would tell you most if not everything you need to know to play the game. Nowadays....well don't get me started.

If you still have this game, lucky you! If you do not have this game and are a big fan of CRPG games I highly recommend this classic treasure from Interplay!

P.S.

My only regret is I did not keep the beautiful box it came in.

Out of the dungeons!
I'd seen Fallout on the shelves ages ago, but at that time I was still pretty entrenched in the sword-wielding, dragon-slaying, quasi-Medieval fantasies that abound in this genre and the post-apocalyptic concept didn't intrigue me. I only play RPGs and refuse to pay megabucks for brand new titles, so years later my search for something to fill the gap left by solving Baldur's Gate/TSC finally led me the bargain table at my local games store, where in desperation I picked up the nicely priced Fallout 2, boxed as a "Gamer's Collection". Knowing that sequels also usually stand alone, and fascinated by the blurb on the box, I handed over my bucks. On navigating through the double layer of shrink wrap, I found "Gamer's Collection" meant I had also purchased the original Fallout. So now Fallout 2 is waiting patiently for my character to find the water chip; I'm addicted.

When World War III broke out 80 years previously, your family sought refuge in the the nuclear fallout shelter known as Vault 13. Eventually the chip used to produce fresh water fails, leaving only 150 days' supply. Your character draws the short straw and, with extremely limited resources and experience, is sent out into the radiation-soaked, mutant infested world to find a replacement.

Although Fallout is far from perfect, most flaws are compensated for by the great gameplay. However, the game looses a star from me in that you have very little control over NPCs in your party. Why give us party members if we can't control them? Ian and Tycho are great for carrying things (they seem to have endless capacities - great for trading), and in the early part, Ian saves your butt since he's more skilled than your character, but in battle they seem to do nothing but get in your way. You spend far too many APs just getting out of their way or positioning yourself so that your submachine gun's burst doesn't take them (and Dogmeat) out, too. Save often so you can restore after you've accidently killed your party. You cannot get them to wear better armour, and their idea of their "best weapon" may not match yours. (I understand this has been changed in Fallout 2.)

Half a star is gained back for the excellent spiral bound "Vault Dweller's Survival Guide". I've broken the backs of other manuals, because the damned things won't stay open, but the spiral binding solves that problem. I haven't tried any of the survival recipes, though.

The other half star is gained back for the excellent 50's "Reds under the bed" style of the interface and the manual, the wonderful introduction movie and the voice cast. This is the first RPG where I have actually heard of some of the actors credited in the voice cast (Richard Dean Anderson, Tony Shalub, Ron Perlman, Richard Moll, Ken Mars). It's quite strange hearing McGyver's voice in Junktown!

Anyway, stop reading this right now, buy Fallout and start playing immediately.