Fallout

[calzephyr]

I finished playing the RPG classic Fallout this morning and I was surprised that the game was relatively short, in comparison to Baldur's Gate and Morrowind. At the same time, one is amazed by the antiquity of the game engine. There were some things that were pretty clunky, such as inventory management and navigating with a party. One of the things that frustrated me about the original Baldur's Gate was how party members would cluster around a doorway and there would be no way out. Several times I was trapped in washrooms for a few minutes. Come to think of it, Fallout has an odd preoccupation with toilets. Nuclear war can destroy just about everything but commodes! There was just so much to discover in the game and I enjoyed that.

I loved the retro future styling of the game, as well as its science, the main idea being that radiation makes things larger and stronger. And then there are the bomb shelters in the form of Vaults. Your character, the Vault Dweller, emerges from a sheltered vault into the post nuclear wasteland in order to repair the vault's faulty water chip.


At first the limited colour palette bothered me, but I got over it after a while. It's easy to forget that back in 1997 most people didn't have super duper colour monitors anyway. Just like the Vault Dweller, I stumbled around badly trying to figure out the turn based action point combat system. It took me four good save games before I made it past the rats!

Moreso than other RPGs, I found myself making many saves. The wrong dialog choice could lead to future silence from a character. I wasn't able to quiz Vree for the mutant autopsy disk, and I had several broken quests, such as the missing caravan quest, due to poor dialog choices. It seems RPGs never quite deliver dialog satisfaction either. For instance, you can tell Nicole that you'll share whatever you hear with her, but after several good discoveries, she still spits out the same conversation.

I had Ian, Tycho, Katja and Dogmeat for a party, although I lost Dogmeat somewhere in Adytum. He didn't get killed, he just disappeared after I explored the mushroom farm. Although it was nice to have help, Ian and Katja often got in the way, especially in the way of friendly fire. That's another thing, there wasn't much in the way of controlling the party. Just like in other RPGs, the weakest character would run straight for the baddest enemy! As I found better weapons, such as the flamer (which I loved!) and the plasma rifle, I began to leave the group because of friendly fire issues.

I ended up soloing the quest to get rid of the death claws, the upper cathedral level, the military base and the final confrontation with the Master. I have to say that the military base was one of the best RPG battles I have ever played. I managed to take out most of the mutants with the rocket launcher, but carrying the power armor, I could only carry so much...and I had to put the flamer aside. It took several reloads to finish the military base boss. I tried several ways of defeating his goons. The mutant lieutenant was easily dispatched with a rocket, but I had to do the tried and true method of luring out the enemy one by one. In my successful battle, both goons game out at once, which proved quite fortunate. Goon 1 stood in front of Goon 2 and Goon 2 literally cut him in half! I then forced Goon 2 to use up all his ammo while going up and down the hallway several times :-D The problem at this point was that I didn't have a huge energy weapons skill, so I missed a lot with the plasma rifle. I also made the neat discovery that if a weapon is on the ground, the mutants will try to pick them up. Goon 2 came across the empty flamer and I was so amazed!

The Glow was another area that I revisited a couple of times. I found the lower levels so intriguing, there was an odd moment of magic when power is restored. I guess it's because the area was so grim to begin with. Restoring the original lighting made it look a lot better!

The final battle itself was pretty rote (hide behind column, fire, hide behind colum), although I almost had to replay it. I thought I had paused the game, but I didn't, and ended up with half the time to leave before the cathedral exploded. There was some odd humour in the upper levels of the cathedral basement, such as when I dispatched the mutants on level 2. You can free some trapped humans on this level, and they come bounding out crying "We're free! We're free!" only to go splat seconds later :-D Similarly, in the little chapel, purple robed worshippers were cannon fodder for the super mutants in there. After all was said and done, only one worshipper was left, and he'd scratch his head every now and then :-D

The final ending was quite satisfying...in some regards the whole game reminded me of Monica Hughes' novel Devil On My Back, a Canadian young adult classic about a teenage boy that escapes from a dome in a similar setting. My favourite RPGs have always been the ones with good storytelling...I almost wish it could be made into a movie. It would be a good one!

Comments

[theredrage.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, isn't it? Did you learn the hard way not to give Ian a submachine gun? Hehe.

I had to solo the last parts too. I managed to keep Dogmeat alive until the military base, but there was no way he was going to survive that. If a super mutant didn't get him, the forcefields would!

The second one is really good too, and you can get some very *interesting* companions (without wanting to spoil anything, not all of them are human!). Your companions can also level up in the second one, and you can manage their behaviour and give them better weapons and armour. This way they don't constantly die all the time as soon as you mosey into a pack of deathclaws.

Plus, you can move them out of doorways :)

Make *sure* you patch it before you start playing it though, the original version had loads of bugs!

Did you find the super sledge? My favourite weapon, that! Nothing quite like the feeling of playing baseball using super mutants.