I really hate how long it took me in life to experience this masterpiece. While point and click isn't for everyone, at the very least it cant be overstated how good the writing is. The stellar voice acting and MASSIVE amount of dialog options really pulls you into the world. Honestly the combat is pretty easy to get into imo, and those SPECIAL stats matter enough to change how you play, but not enough to soft lock you into never being able to beat the game. I could go on and on but this is a must play, if it got remade (which honestly besides bug fixes it could stay mostly the same) i think it would be held as one of if not the best fallouts.

What if some of the most inspired worldbuilding and atmosphere that gaming had to offer was packaged within a near-unplayable pile of garbage?

Frustrating, Infuriating, slow, buggy, REALLY BUGGY, badly designed, and incredibly interesting.
Every time I felt like I was getting into a groove with this game it would throw some obtuse block in my way to prevent me from truly enjoying it. I tried really hard to love this game and part of me does, the other 75% of me wants to kick it down a stairwell

The original Fallout is one of the greatest takes on the post-apocalypse in any media — its writing and characters are some of the best, and it's worldbuilding is revolutionary.

Unlike the rest of the series, Fallout 1 is unapologetically bleak, harsh, and brutal. From the moment you leave your vault, throughout our journey in what was once California, all the way to your return to your home vault, there is virtually no reprieve from the bleakness of post-nuclear war America. In fact, it only accelerates all the way to the very end.

Fallout 1 is also home to one of the greatest villains in gaming. The Master's presence slowly reveals itself over the course of the game until its climax. With The Master, we are introduced to a reoccuring theme in the series: an individual, or group of individuals, obsessed with not only preventing another nuclear fallout or similar event, but seemingly absolve America of its sins — the "wrath and folly of a bygone generation," as described in another entry — an obsession ironcially leading to a new set of sins.

If you're coming from the 3D games, like myself, there's a few things to keep in mind. The retrofuturism of the series is a lot more subtle. Whereas Bethesda leans into so much (which I love, mind you) it almsot turns into retroism, the original Fallout uses it a lot more subtly. Yes, this is a CRPG from 30 years ago, so it's mechanically clunky, sometimes obtuse, and the character creation requires a full on guide if you don't want to brick your first playthrough. But it's absolutely worth playing.

In order to fully experience new Fallout TV series I decided to try and experience what's the whole deal with the wastelands. And I absolutely bounced off - had no idea how the world works, never earlier played CRPG, so I fucked up my character creation and was later killed by random Scorpions before even hitting the 2nd location.
I went away for a while. But the will for experiencing original Fallout was still in the back of my mind.
I learned that agility is the most important skill and not the Charisma (which is usless) and began the search for the Water Chip.
At this second try the weird, turn based combat was making some sense and I actually enjoyed it a lot.
Wonderful atmosphere that's causing some chills down spine, especially in the main quest that's absolutely chef's kiss in means of writing and slowly discovering the mystery in so many possible ways.
Cause game even if not so different in outcomes have really lots of possibilities to reach these outcomes so every now and then when I tried to help for search online there was no help. Game makes you think a lot (sometimes te solutions are fucking stupid like fixing the gate to temporarily shut it.)
Only 2 things are making me not put Fallout in the 5 favorites;
1. Companions lacks any character, and would really prefer any outcome of an ending for them or even say more stuff at the daily basis.
2. Military base that I probably spent around 4 hours to figure out - once I was captured and thought that's how it supposed to be. And second time cause I tried to beat the game with every companion alive so basicly my playthorugh was filled with quick saves. Decided to give up when these fuckheads where running around when I fought and these guys killed themselves.
But yeah, every tiny little thing other than that I absolutly adored and that was one of the most pleasant games I had and honor to play.

i'm not gonna bother to write a full Fallout 1 Is Garbage And Here Is Why-style review for what is an overrated game so here are my notes:

- character creation is so easy to fuck up because of how unbalanced it is. you can make a run more excruciating if you dont put enough points in agility, meanwhile endurance is just fucking useless, and how is charisma a dump stat when speech is one of the most important skills in the game???????
- inventory management and item use is so clunky and restrictive. good luck finding the right spot to use your rope
- have fun being softlocked in small rooms because your dog npc blocks the doorway. have fun opening doors anyway if it doesn't face the screen
- side quests are not marked in your status screen. these side quests are way more important to get basically essential loot ( e.g. power armor). they are also really easy to miss
- the game is honestly so glitchy if this was a bethesda game there would be gamer rage. questimportant npcs can die if you like leave the room. its exacerbated on modern computers. i had frequent mouse locks
- the time limit is annoying. not big enough to be important but still an unneccessary source of unknown stress for new players. why is it there?
- i found it kinda annoying that new vegas only gives you new perks every 2 levels. then fallout 1 gives you perks every THREE. FUCKING THREE. with levelling up being so goddamn slow its fuckyoutown
- the tone is way more serious and less tongue in cheek. for me personally too serious, i really miss having elvis impersonators and wacky social experiments. then it turned out you get humor at random encounters? didnt hbomb fucking lambast fallout 3 for doing that??????
- backtracking is annoying because you can move the camera past your characters but if you click on a space characters wont go there. theyll onky go if your camera contains your characters
- you will straight up not know what item to use on a thing unless you read a guide. have fun alt-tabbing while figuring out how to disable the force-fields in the middle of a countdown. AND THEN THE SOLUTIONS DONT WORK ANYWAY BECAUSE FUCK YOU.

well fuck you too fallout 1. anyone who says this hasn't aged to others with way less free time and more choice in other good games should be shot in the head vegas-style to induce amnesia and then forced to figure out how this game works without guides. for all the rest who do respect their time, go to fallout new vegas.

The game that kickstarted a very distinctive IP at least in my opinion. However, it is a VERY rough game even with patches. I spent a good 20 mins of my time fidgeting with an elevator because some NPCs kept blocking it. I used fixt only but I'd recommend ET TU if you're planning to play.

However I'd understand if someone were to skip it for two, since I've heard that 2 is an overall improvement. F1 isn't plot-heavy so you can recap it if that's what matters for you. It is a decent game but the jank is unwieldy and frustrating. It is a somewhat inaccessible game but these guys went so hard on the art and concept that I can't be hard on them.

Fallout 1 was always one of those games that kinda eluded me for the longest time. It was one of those games that I'd try once, get incredibly confused, and put it down never to pick it up again. Idk exactly where I'm going with this but MAN am I glad I finally decided to give it another shot since it really does hold up well for the most part barring the initial learning curve and some minor issues.

(For context, I played this with the Fallout1in2 mod that basically ports the game over to 2's engine with many of it's QoL enhancements, and I highly recommend you do the same if you do have any interest playing this. It's a little finnicky to set up with resolutions but it's very worth it.)

First off, the atmosphere and visuals are top tier imho, even all these years later. Sure, I already had some exposure to Mark Morgan's unnerving compositions thanks to it being featured in future games such as New Vegas but man is it as great as ever here. It effortlessly manages to get me sucked in every time. And the visuals and talking heads, while obviously dated by today's standards, have this sort of charm to it that persists all these years later I feel, helped even more by basically all of them having probably some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a game of this era next to maybe the original Thief games.

In general this game has this sense of liveliness despite the obvious limitedness when you really look at it from a bigger angle. There's only 12 named locations in total, with only about 7 of those having a good deal of side quests you can take on, but even with that each one just feels alive and believable, honestly I'd debate maybe a bit moreso then the best modern Bethesda entries. A part of that is the mind filling in the blanks a bit sure, but even still idk, everything in this game just feels really well thought out on the worldbuilding and writing end.

The way this game handles its pacing and building up the story period holds up so well. Again, even despite the limited amount of locations, you feel this sense of wonder as you find new named locations, and learn more about this world and what happened to it. I love as well how the children of the cathedral are seen here and there, usually offering free healing, lulling you into a sense of false security, only for the truth to become more and more apparent as you do more quests and build your way up to ending their plans.

What I also liked about a lot of this game's quests is that there was always at least 4 or so ways to complete it, really encouraging players to think outside the box in terms of their skills and also encouraging replay value further. I didn't even realize until I was done with the game that you could activate the warhead in the basement and potentially not even have to deal with The Master, which is just so cool to me. Stuff like that or being able to go to Mariposa early if you decide to let yourself get captured by the Mutant in Necropolis is just such cool details that make me wanna see how they play out another time. I admittedly haven't played a whole lot of CRPGs so this is probably commonplace there, but even then I really enjoyed it.

I will say that some aspects of character building aren't perfect- more specifically this game sort of shares the same issue Deus Ex has where some skills are kind of just pointless and useless (I can only think of maybe 2 whole points in the game where the trap skill would be useful) and that if you aren't building high agility for the extra AP in combat then you are really nerfing yourself for when you DO get in combat encounters, which IS mandatory at certain points.

Speaking of, probably my biggest issue with this game has to be the overworld random encounters. They aren't inherently bad per se, especially since you can just run out of them if you've got high agility but the ones you need to deal with on your way to Mariposa can be AWFUL if you don't have a lot of healing items (which even then probably wouldn't help that much). There were so many points where just one minigun super mutant would get a critical and instantly delete me from existence, EVEN WITH HARDENED POWER ARMOR. And if you somehow stumble upon two at once, or one with a flamer? That's a save reload right there. This part of the game alone I can't imagine it being possible to do in just 1 save or without saving period, since you WILL die at least once here unless you decide to grind beforehand. Doesn't help either that it's so far away from the Brotherhood base, and you're gonna be having to make 2 round trips at least; once to complete the "scout to the north objective" (because there's no way in hell you're gonna take it down with just you and your companions), and again to actually initiate the attack with help from the brotherhood. And the mutants don't go away either once you blow up the vats, so you'll still be seeing patrols on your way back. Again, I'm not against random encounters, but the amount of times I got cheesed because of RNG being in the enemy's favor is just too much to count.

Ironically, what I found was the best way to fast travel, was doing caravan jobs, since they don't show the map overworld screen and just fast-foward you to whatever encounters you see on the road (which aren't much, I think you can only get one random encounter per each trip), are easy to deal with AND you get paid even if you decide not to go back to the Hub. Honest to god, my grinding stat before I decided to go to the cathedral was alternating between Crimson Caravan and the Far Go Traders depending on which one had a leave date that was closer, and repeating until I felt I was good.

I think my only other issues is that the water chip time limit early on can be a bit daunting to newcomers (it really isn't, I think I only bought one shipment from the water merchants to extend the timer) but even then it's not hard to get it if you spend your time wisely and do some side quests to level yourself up here and there, and the game really does open up even more after that. That, and the UI does take some learning (I didn't even realize you could unload weapons for more ammo until halfway through the game), but once you do it becomes second nature.

Either way, this game holds up exceptionally well and I feel is worth a play if you're either already into Fallout, or you just like TTRPGs in general. No shit, with how popular games like BG3 were last year I see no reason why anyone who liked that game or general TTRPG systems couldn't get into this one barring the UI learning curve (entirely the point I'm aware, since the systems were based off of GURPS). And from what I'm aware, Fallout 2 is just this game but better and with more content, so I'm really excited to give that a shot once I can. Overall, a great time and one I'm finally happy I picked up.

Fallout 1's age is hard to overlook. I couldn't even start the game at first and then once I got the game running in compatibility mode, selecting my monitor resolution would instantly crash the game. I won't blame the original devs for this, but I will criticize the now Microsoft owned Bethesda for marketing and selling a game in this state.

Luckily, there exists a mod that ports the entirety of Fallout 1 into 2, which I used for my playthrough. It includes a number of quality of life features, like having more than 10 save slots and easier inventory management. The ui is still not very intuitive and also fairly clunky, but you can get used to it, even though some elements must've already been confusing in 1997.

Fallout 1 shines when exploring the world. Everything feels cohesive, there's simply a great sense of place and realism. The wasteland feels brutal and the game mechanics emphasize that, although it certainly takes some getting used to. While the Bethesda games are always build so that a player going into the exact opposite direction of the main quest will stumble upon something interesting, players venturing into the wrong direction at the start of Fallout 1 will most likely be instakilled by a random encounter with super mutants.

Even later on and equipped with better gear, a single critical hit can instantly kill the player character. It's annoying, sure, but it also makes the world believable. The lack of quest direction works similarly: it's confusing when compared to later games, but then again, why would anyone know where to find a working water chip in a radioactive desert? The only time I was actually disappointed by the game's logic was when I encountered a second time limit, which unlike the earlier water chip deadline was hidden from the player.

While I did immensely enjoy the writing, characters, story, and possible quest outcomes, I found the combat pretty boring. It's turn based, but positioning is pretty much irrelevant since everyone uses ranged weapons anyway and there's no cover. All players can do is shoot at enemies and occasionally reload or use a stim pack. Other turn based RPGs offer deep mechanics and choices while Fallout 1's combat only made me wish for a speed up option.

All in all, playing through Fallout 1 was still a worthwhile experience. I don't think that I'll ever play it again, but getting to play it myself and finally see where the whole franchise started was great. Hopefully Bethesda will eventually release a version with better compatibility with modern systems, so others can experience the game without having to install mandatory mods.

The Fallout TV show got me back into fallout like so many others, i wanted to actually try the original this time after having it in my steam library for like 10 years untouched.

There is so much i really like about Fallout 1, atmosphere, music, writing, the wasteland itself - and after a good 5-minute struggle to figure out how to even attack a rat or equip an item honestly the way the game controls does start to flow once you get the hang of it.

The pacing of the main story is very poor, almost none existent - i do like the initial hook to get the water chip, it's a great way to start the journey and get out into the world but after that i just feel it falls very flat.

The combat is also honestly just frustrating and this is where my enjoyment kinda stopped, loved exploring and being in the world and the combat was fine until you get further in and fight lots of enemies at once its just utter chaos and its very boring just watching the cpu take like 8 turns in a row and for your own companions having the intelligence of a fly.

Overall, I'm glad i played and experienced the original fallout, and it is really cool to see what Bethesda took from the original and what it changed.

I've attempted to get into Fallout 1 numerous times, never really sticking past the "Why can't I hit anything?" problem.
However, I just up and decided to watch a beginner's guide, specifically the Fallout Guide video by Games Twice-Over, and that got me started into what I can see as an amazing game.

The writing is STELLAR.
The structure of the world is understandable. You intuitively find out more about the world, and where to go very naturally.
The characters and factions are all interesting, I enjoyed talking to a lot of them.
The combat, if you're into it, works, at least if you actually spec your character correctly, and most importantly SAVE OFTEN!

My first playthrough was around 20ish hours. I'll definitely replay it some time later to see about getting better endings.
Overall, it still holds up extremely well to day, IF you actually understand what you're doing.

The one word I would use to describe this game is concise. On paper it is a small game, it only has 12 locations with not a whole lot of quests. However the game leverages numerous techniques to create a sense of scale such as; utilizing an overworld map, random encounters, and quests having numerous solutions all contributing to make the world feel greater than the sum of its parts.

Every part of this game has the goal of making the world feel believable, The Diegetic UI, the ambient soundtrack, the numerous options you have in completing quests, the unforgiving combat, and the lack of hand holding all combine to create a believable and immersive experience that you can complete in 10-20 hours.

I greatly enjoyed my time with Fallout, and I am excited to see what’s in store in Fallout 2.

Small town. A few brahmin herds, and a single watering hole. I step into the musty saloon. A local girl slithers up to me, complaining about her quiet farm life. She tells me about a local Vault - Vault 15. She mentions it by name. I press the "ask about" button and ask her about Vault 15. "Never heard of it" she says. I try to ask her about anything else whatsoever. She's never heard of anything. Alright. Keep your secrets honey... I tell the local gay man, Ian, he will get paid if he follows me forever until his eventual inevitable death. He agrees immediately and eagerly, because I am very "good at speaking".

We wander to the Vault that doesn't exist. We wander back, because we forgot to bring 50 ropes. We try again - the dungeon takes 10 minutes and nothing happens. A weapon is hidden in the bathroom smeared by 10 layers of poop, piss, pixels and blood. We find what we came here for (it's nothing), and go back to town. "Noo you gotta save my girl she's gonna get boiled in shit". I find the raider camp - I tell them I will fuck their mom. They let the girl go for some reason.

8 hours later my dog and all 3 of my friends I tricked in the same way as Ian the Twunk die in a single dungeon because they won't wear any clothes thicker than a dress shirt. It's a Mad Max reference or something. The travel time on the overworld gives me time to think. I think about the giant, barren wasteland. I think about how far and dangerous there is between settlements. I think about how no one has grabbed a broom in 100 years. I think about telling murder mutants where my family lives. I don't know what my meds do and I'm not sure how to find out. I found a backpack in this videogame that I simply couldn't figure out how to use - What? I think about why I have 4 CHA instead of 1. I think about the 2 hours I spent getting this game to run on a modern PC and a 4K monitor. I think about so far only having found one character that allows me to sex and cum in the entirety of California. It's lonely out here. Many games would throw sex and cum at me. Fallout? In Fallout it's about the lack thereof.

Eventually my player character completes their quests and drowns in an ocean of jank - jank that would later continue on through an entire genre shift, a new company, several new engines and somehow be recognizable still as the same old jank. After being stuck for half an hour I had to google an alternate solution for one of the final dungeons because it bugged out on me. Luckily there was one, because many quests don't have that kind of privilege. Some bugs in this game somehow persist in Todd Howards' Starfield. No one knows how. It's beautiful in a sense. A red string of jank.

This game is unfinished - like half the quests have cut content and an entire act of the game got left on the floor. It's a good basis. I hope the sequel will use it well. I hope someone mods it for Steam Deck controls.

(the following review was written in 2018 by a far younger me, it is transplanted here with minimal editing to preserve the past.)

I Don't Want to set the world on fire... but I do want the writers of these original games back on the team for fallout 5

Listen I wasn't no hype fan of fallout 1 and 2, but new vegas quickly became a favorite game of mine, to the extent i immersed myself deep into the lore of the franchise long before even setting foot into the "capital" of 3, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of the "dice based" way this game handles (call me a casual if you want) I still enjoyed what the first game had to offer in terms of atmosphere and old fashioned isometric gameplay.

pick this one up if you're not afraid of turn based "DND" style combat, and give it a whirl.

It may not be the most expansive or the most refined but I think Fallout 1 is probably overall the most consistent Fallout game. It's so damn good.

Fallout's world and storytelling is so well thought out and intriguing that it'd make you think that when Interplay made this game, they knew for certain that it would become a popular franchise. You can tell how much effort and detail was put into every facet of NPCs and locations within the game.

That and also the iconic and terrifying soundtrack by Mark Morgan doing all of the OST with the almost clay-like CGI, gritty aesthetic of the game really makes it so unique and truly an alive world.

Despite how gritty and desolate the world seems in this game, I truly appreciate that it isn't this freshly nuked desert with nothing but crazy raiders running around with random junk like Bethesda seems to love. All the major locations in this game have actual infrastructure with agriculture, larger town centers, homes and everything, not just a bunch of scrappy shantytowns. The first area in the game that you encounter after you leave Vault 13, being Shady Sands is the best example of this with a clear farm and an entirely crafted created adobe architecture of all the buildings despite being so remote from the rest of the major locations like The Hub and Junktown.

Despite the simplicity in the story, I love it so much. I love coming freshly out of the vault and you basically directly assume the position as a vault dweller seeing this new world, learning about all these different factions and a growing army of mutants who want to take over the wasteland. Again, it does such a good job at giving bread crumbs for the player to follow and get drip fed new information about the world.

My only issues with this game come to a few things. For example, the game has a few oversights and glitches that can make playthroughs where you wanna mess around with stuff a bit annoying. From what I know, the fallout 1 in 2 mod fixes a lot of these bugs and unintended gameplay issues.

Another example is the combat can feel a bit unforgiving and start to spike weirdly in different areas where it really shouldn't. It's happens more near the end of the game but it still can happen early on. An example of this would be in an area like The Hub where you can pretty much get every quest there done easily around the same level except for the one house with the guys holding the BoS initiate captive, they somehow absolutely destroy you unless you come all the way back there after getting power armor and better guns way later into the game.

This is more of a subjective complaint because some people may like this because it gives the game a better sense of flow, but I feel like in this specific case, it feels a bit confusing and jarring.

The final big thing is just an issue with a ton of older games that are a bit more esoteric compared to games we're used to now. The game doesn’t really do the good job explaining how to play it. This is an issue with a lot of older games that rely on manuals and strategy guides to teach the player how to play.

This game fuckin' rocks though, I really appreciate it and after completing it, it's given me even more appreciation for the Fallout series.

Bastante entretenido, aunque ha envejecido un poco mal. Jugablemente está bien y hacen lo que pueden con los gráficos. He notado un poco la diferencia en el tono del juego en comparación con los más nuevos. La historia está interesante, aunque te están mandando de un lado para otro. Eso sí, en cuanto a rendimiento me ha crasheado como 10 veces, así que eso... Lo recomiendo si te gusta Fallout ya de antes y te pica la curiosidad por ver cómo empezó todo, pero ahora mismo no es un buen punto de entrada a la saga.

Hm....
Personally, I think games should be more obtuse.
I mean this genuinely.

I didn't press F1 until hour 10 and realize that I can use skills on things. This was awesome.
That item on the ground? Personally I don't want it to be distinguishable from the background to any degree.
A timer marking my imminent loss causing anxiety anytime I waste time? This is awesome. Your daughter is kidnapped? Sorry bro - I got shit to do.
Peak obtuseness was me realizing that reading a book and failing a repair passed like 12 hours of time. At this point the radx I took started to wear off (the radiation system is also obtuse and awesome), and my character casually remarks that their hair is falling out and their body is hemorrhaging.

I go back to a certain area after a certain amount of time passes... OOPS! Gorsh, golly!
>I beat the game but I took a little bit too long
A GA A HORSH
You specced 1 intelligence and 1 agility ? ? That's real.

Half the settlements don't know a single thing about each other, aside from traders. This weird separation combines with how desolate the wasteland actually is, is super good.
My favorite example of this is every settlement acting like you're an insane child for believing in Deathclaws. Meanwhile, in a certain settlement, the citizens are like "Deathclaws? points they're over there. We can't go over there any more because of thems. We hired guards to stop them from MAIMING us"

Ok final thought - the Mutant threat? Awesome. Mutants one hit killing me? Awesome. A mutant escorting me to an end game location, only to either have me instant game over or beat me within an inch of my life, lock me up, and take all my items? These things are awesome. Didn't save recently? you're an imbecile.

teleports into Todd Howards home
Can I get more of this?
The gunplay in fallout 4 was awesome ........ BUT STOP!!! KNOCK IT OFF. no more speaking protgagnoinst.. Givem e .. world record for dialogue in gaming! spits at mr Howie NO MORE 4 CHOICES THAT ARE THE SAME?!? HAD TO MOD THAT OUT BRO!!!! Borderlandas looting ???? BLEEDING EFFECT ON MY GUN ; RNG DEATHCLAW ALPHA NUMERICAL DEAATHCLAW MOTHER +6,000XP holding bleeding sledgehammer and raider left arm? NO! Starfield ELDERS SCORL??? QUIT IT NO gets strappedi nto the sl;op feeding machine



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