Sex, Drugs, And The Nuclear Apocalypse – Fallout Series

Posted in Features, Gaming by K-Star-Pro, September 27, 2010 at 4:48 pm | 5,257 views, 25 comments

hile I have, in the past, fondly reminisced of the video gaming “days of yore”, never have I done so with such intensity as for Interplay’s Fallout and its follow-up Fallout 2, both released in 1997.

I imagine at the mention of the Fallout franchise, some of your ears are perking up. You’ve probably played Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout 3, and you probably fall into one of three categories.

Maybe you’ve played through Oblivion five hundred thousand times and you can navigate the Imperial capital better than your own neighbourhood, and Fallout 3 just wasn’t expansive enough or open ended enough to hold your ADD’s interest. Maybe you’re really into Halo and Call Of Duty and you hated it because it required more than a pair of brain cells.

Perhaps, though, you thoroughly enjoyed Fallout 3, downloaded all four DLC packs, and maxed out all your character’s skills by the time you hit level 30. Perhaps to this day, you still wander the Capital (sic) Wasteland blasting Enclave soldiers while relaxing to the low-fi crooning of Billie Holiday, Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters, and The Ink Spots. I’m over two hundred hours of play time into Fallout 3, and I’m still finding things I haven’t done or seen. Hey— I can see that look on your face! Don’t you dare judge me, you greasy unemployed asshole.

Maybe Fallout 3 was your first title in the series. If it was, I’m convinced you’ve missed out. The first two titles were a very different beast from Bethesda’s reinterpretation a decade later, featuring turn-based combat, a pseudo-3D isometric perspective, and d20 rules that would make the most pungent Advanced Dungeons and Dragons player crack a yawn. No, the gameplay was nothing to write home about, as a fairly straightforward role-playing game of its time, but what the first two Fallout games lacked in mechanics, they more than made up for in atmosphere, something that has been lost in recent years.

The Fallout setting is very near and dear to the hearts of a lot of seasoned RPG veterans. In a nutshell, cultural progress stopped in the Cold War fever of the 1950s, and the idyllic science fiction fantasy came true. Art-deco robots serve humanity, cars are powered by atomic engines, and computers are a cross between 1980s mainframe terminals and 1920s typewriters. Then the world ran out of oil, the Chinese commies invaded Alaska, shit hit the fan, and the bulk of the world was destroyed in nuclear mutually-assured destruction. The rich and powerful were tucked away in giant underground shelters called Vaults, and the poor and ordinary were left to die in the nuclear waste.

From loosely-organized, Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic civilizations to hulking awkward mutants, Fallout had all the ridiculous charm of a nuclear black comedy, and the original developers, Black Isle Studios, captured it well with vivid settings, over-the-top characters, and an exceptional dialogue engine, especially for the time. In a world with no particular overriding government, there aren’t much by the way of rules, and murder, prostitution, and other things that would make a good Republican squirm are rampant and, frankly, the norm. A particular scene comes to mind in Fallout 2 when the player has the chance to try their hand as a stripper, even if you’re a man.

So, why is the seediness so toned down in Fallout 3? Not to shit on Bethesda, because they did a wonderful job of preserving the ambiance, but they’ve always been a little gun-shy when it came to sex and drugs, and Fallout got the same neutering as the rest of their titles. Real world drugs like Morphine receive names like Med-X because of the link to drug abuse in the real world, and when the player purchases “services” from the game’s prostitute, they instead lie down for a little nap. Terrific. Suddenly we’ve lost just a bit of that dark premonition of a world without order, and more than a little of the hilarity that ensued in these awkward situations in the first two games.

Why do I bring all of this up, then? Why am I ranting about games that were released anywhere between two and thirteen years ago? Because there is still hope! Bethesda may have purchased the Fallout license from Interplay when they shit the bed, but the shining ray of hope at the end of the tunnel of PG-flavored, M-rated games is the next title scheduled to be released in the series.

Fallout: New Vegas promises to use the same game engine as the first Bethesda title, which suggests similar gameplay mechanics. This is good, since these mechanics seem to make the game more playable by “ordinary people” – those of us who aren’t really interested in rolling up a d20 character and then trying frantically to manage our hundreds of thousands of stats and skills and checks throughout the course of the game. However, while Bethesda is publishing New Vegas, they are not developing it. It will not have anything to do with the storyline of Fallout 3. Instead, the game is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, who brought us the likes of Knights of the Old Republic 12: Jedi Hip-Replacement Surgery. Oh boy – are you excited yet?

Yeah, I know Obsidian’s track record isn’t perfect, but consider this: Obsidian was founded by people like Feargus Urquhart, who (with Tim Cain) helped design the original Fallout title, Josh Sawyer, who worked on the original (Interplay) Fallout 3 title, code-named Van Buren, which was canceled in 2003, and Chris Avellone, a designer for Fallout 2, the man who compiled the Fallout Bible. (A link to this is included at the end of this article, for those interested.) Most of us thought Fallout was doomed when we saw that none of the original crew were working on Bethesda’s title. We thought the spirit would be lost for sure. In a move of what can only be called blinding brilliance, Bethesda are allowing some of Fallout’s original developers to take a stab at the new generation. This bodes well for the mood and atmosphere.

Keep in mind that in the 1950s, Las Vegas was a far cry from its current image of glitz and glitter. Las Vegas really was Sin City back then, controlled largely by organized crime. I can only imagine what plans Obsidian have for the post-apocalyptic reinterpretation of the city, but one should expect plenty of debauchery. I would expect that New Vegas will have a much more satisfying path of events and quests for evil-karma characters than Fallout 3 did, but I can also imagine that the rewards for remaining “good” in a setting that lends itself so well to excess and self-indulgence will be all the sweeter.

My only fear, of course, is that Bethesda will veto some of the raunchier stuff, being the publisher and license holder for the franchise. While this thought makes me a sad panda, I’m personally hoping that Bethesda will allow Obsidian a little bit of leeway with the game, since it was they who originally conceived the setting. Even if the rating-knob gets turned down a little, it would be hard for the wit of the series not to shine through with such an all-star cast of developers. New Vegas is expected for a October 19 release right now. I’ve already got my pre-order paid in full, so now the game is waiting. At least this time it won’t be ten years. It could be worse, though – we could be waiting for Duke Nukem Forever! — oh wait?

The Fallout Bible, compiled by Chris Avellone, is available for your perusal at Duck And Cover