fascinating as a game that's fundamentally structurally different to almost all modern RPGs of its ilk, fallout 1 hardly even has a traditional gaming narrative as much as it has a world

i have no idea if that's the norm for CRPGs of this era but i found it really cool and refreshing! the 'main quest' quite literally is just your three different objectives, which unravel themselves really seamlessly as you discover more about the wasteland

the only thing that i think really lets fo1 down is how buggy it can be, as well as some of its more questionable balancing decisions. i know generally when an RPG presents you with some kind of horrible disaster you're supposed to just carry on but it still stings having your companions hit for more hp than their entire (fixed!!!) health pool while fighting entirely level-appropriate enemies, it feels less like a mistake you're just going to have to live with and more like an obvious quick load point

still very close to being a masterpiece though. other reviews on this page have put it much better than i ever could but the atmosphere presented here and the ending will stick with me for a while, the master is a mindblowingly written and voiced character for a 1997 game, genuinely unbelievable stuff