Fallout Fallout review

[SkiNNyBane]

I'll be the one to say it: Fallout is a REALLY GOOD adventure game... with mediocre RPG elements tacked on. Most of what's good about the game have nothing to do with gameplay, but rather how much agency you're given to interact with the nonlinear story progression.

The final level was the only time there was really an interesting gameplay scenario built from the mechanics with multiple approaches for different character builds. Otherwise, your skill choices are fairly meaningless and there are obvious right and wrong picks

Balance is abysmally lopsided. You're straight gimping yourself if you don't max AGI, INT is essential, CHR a dump stat even for speech; STR/PER/END/LCK form the actual basis of a build. Unless you go melee/throwing you're railroaded into Small Guns early, Big or Energy Guns late

It goes beyond trash skills. Repair and Science only have 4-5 uses each in the entire game, but these uses are critical. To offset this, you're handed free increases in these skills like candy so the investment is pointless (I tagged Science and finished at 107 without trying)

Combat is shallow, and there's not much else to the gameplay besides really awful inventory management. I challenge anyone to describe any character roleplaying beyond "do quest the normal way with combat, do quest the speech way, or play a stupid character for the funnies"

Where Fallout succeeds in presenting an immersive world to explore with unique locations and memorable characters. Visual presentation and sound design create an isolating atmosphere. It also uses the interactive medium for storytelling in some exciting ways I've never seen prior

I'd still recommend Fallout; it's an interesting game and the concepts are worth a lot, even if the implementation is lacking in many key areas. But save yourself some trouble and just use a character guide (not walkthrough), you won't miss anything of real value

 

[TomParker]

Careful now, pal. The No Mutants Allowed forum dwellers might get seriously riled up.

I'll be the one to say it: Fallout is a REALLY GOOD adventure game... with mediocre RPG elements tacked on. Most of what's good about the game have nothing to do with gameplay, but rather how much agency you're given to interact with the nonlinear story progression.

The final level was the only time there was really an interesting gameplay scenario built from the mechanics with multiple approaches for different character builds. Otherwise, your skill choices are fairly meaningless and there are obvious right and wrong picks

Balance is abysmally lopsided. You're straight gimping yourself if you don't max AGI, INT is essential, CHR a dump stat even for speech; STR/PER/END/LCK form the actual basis of a build. Unless you go melee/throwing you're railroaded into Small Guns early, Big or Energy Guns late

It goes beyond trash skills. Repair and Science only have 4-5 uses each in the entire game, but these uses are critical. To offset this, you're handed free increases in these skills like candy so the investment is pointless (I tagged Science and finished at 107 without trying)

Combat is shallow, and there's not much else to the gameplay besides really awful inventory management. I challenge anyone to describe any character roleplaying beyond "do quest the normal way with combat, do quest the speech way, or play a stupid character for the funnies"

Where Fallout succeeds in presenting an immersive world to explore with unique locations and memorable characters. Visual presentation and sound design create an isolating atmosphere. It also uses the interactive medium for storytelling in some exciting ways I've never seen prior

I'd still recommend Fallout; it's an interesting game and the concepts are worth a lot, even if the implementation is lacking in many key areas. But save yourself some trouble and just use a character guide (not walkthrough), you won't miss anything of real value

 

[SkiNNyBane]

Imagine having to be approved to post.

 

[Butter]

Why would you bother using a character guide for such an easy game?

 

[SkiNNyBane]

Why would you bother using a character guide for such an easy game?

B/c one does not know how ez a game is before one playeth it.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Fallout and Fallout 2 biggest weakness is undoubtedly combat. Looking at it from combatfag perspective:

- level design is not suited for tactical approach. Cities are more or less fine, but some extremely open, barren of cover maps are simply not fit for the gun heavy combat. This narrows the possible approaches to stealth, sniping and tanking.
- encounter design is simply trash. The biggest difference between the enemy types is either gun users or melee users. Hostile NPCs don't even have perks or traits, those available for the player and NPCs alike. Very little special traits for NPCs as well, like NPC being immune to crits or being heavily resistant to some kind of damage (it's almost there - Wanamingos, for example, have high mechanical resistances and very low for Fire damage).
- stealth system is really primitive and NPCs can't use it at all.
- lack of supporting tools - flashbangs, teargas, tasers, mines and such.
- equipment system is primitive. No distinction between headgear, torso and legs; no such things and NV or thermal goggles, different shoes and such. The irony of the game having Rubber Boots, but to equip them you have to take them in hands! No armor penalty as well, allowing for sneaking in Power Armor.
- the difference between different types of weapons is not pronounced enough - E.G., there's a little sense in using pistols as soon as you have rifles available. The system where each weapon type has it advantages and disadvantages kinda exist, but not enough.
- lack of crafting system a-la Arcanum or Underrail. This would have helped to put some of the skill to use - Science, Repair, Traps and such.
- Armor Class makes little difference, together with the lack of armor penalty removing the possibility of Dodger characters. For some reason, armor actually increases AC, making little sense for not wearing the heaviest set possible.
- lack of full party control.

Taking in mind certain factors this becomes more understandable. Interplay wanted Fallout to be real-time multiplayer game, so complicating the combat system would have been seen as a negative point and with it the game wouldn't have gained so much popularity. Modern gaymers encounter serious spike of difficulty when asked to threat a broken limb in Fallout, and certain sacrifices have been made. All of this shortcomings should have been fixed in the XXI century, but first the franchise fell into the hands of the known storyfag Sawyer, and then perished completely.

 

[buffalo bill]

I challenge anyone to describe any character roleplaying beyond "do quest the normal way with combat, do quest the speech way, or play a stupid character for the funnies"

I'm not exactly sure what "character roleplaying" is, but you can use dynamite to solve Shady Sands' radscorpion problem by blowing up the cave entrance—a non-combat, non-speech, non-stupid way to solve a quest.

 

[Kalin]

 

[Butter]

Why would you bother using a character guide for such an easy game?

B/c one does not know how ez a game is before one playeth it.

As a general rule, the Codex doesn't like difficult RPGs.

 

[EldarEldrad]

The final level was the only time there was really an interesting gameplay scenario built from the mechanics with multiple approaches for different character builds.

Which final level do you suppose is THE final level? There are a number of levels that can be called final in Fallout, depending on your actions.

But save yourself some trouble and just use a character guide

Codex 2020 in a nutshell.

 

[Jacob]

- Armor Class makes little difference, together with the lack of armor penalty removing the possibility of Dodger characters. For some reason, armor actually increases AC, making little sense for not wearing the heaviest set possible.

Isn't this the case for D&D too? I always assume wearing heavy armor means that you can avoid damage more easily because most hits hit you where you're covered by armor, which counts as a miss.

 

[Butter]

AC is supposed to be an abstraction that encompasses both your ability to dodge hits and your armor's ability to completely mitigate them. I don't see a problem with how Fallout handles this, but it would be nice if there were a movement penalty like Underrail has.

 

[EldarEldrad]

AC in Fallout isn't enough to play Dodger, you need AC and great distance between you and enemy to dodge consistently. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Fallout2 due to extremely high enemy skills.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Isn't this the case for D&D too? I always assume wearing heavy armor means that you can avoid damage more easily because most hits hit you where you're covered by armor, which counts as a miss.

AC is supposed to be an abstraction that encompasses both your ability to dodge hits and your armor's ability to completely mitigate them. I don't see a problem with how Fallout handles this, but it would be nice if there were a movement penalty like Underrail has.

Fallout has three-stage defense system: AC, which is akin to dodge and evasion, DT which completely blocks the damage less than it's number if not crit, and DR which reduces the damage based by its percentage. With DT and DR already in place (does D&D has DT and DR?) there is no need for AC to work anything other as dodge. Both AoD and Underrail completely removed the AC and replaced it with dodge/block - dodge/evasion skills.

AC in Fallout isn't enough to play Dodger, you need AC and great distance between you and enemy to dodge consistently. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Fallout2 due to extremely high enemy skills.

Fallout general formula for to hit chance is BTH = (Skill - 30) + ((PE - 2) * 16) - (HEX * 4) - (AC of Target).
Let's say, a Enclave guy with 7 PER and 115 Energy Guns skill, with a Plasma rifle that removes the range penalty below the certain number, in this case, 20 hexes - he has 165% to hit chance, capped at 95%. To reduce it to at least 50% the recipient needs an AC of 110 - which is completely unattainable.

 

[purupuru]

Dnd has damage reduction with respect to alignments and damage types (e.g. 3.5 stoneskin), though it is supplementary at most. Also there is elemental and magic resistance, which can be very crucial.
In both fallout games and Arcanum, AC just feel tacked on, like they added it because it's something familiar from tabletop games but didn't put enough thought into it to make it actually work.
Multiple defense stats can work though, I think deadfire achieves a good balance between armor/pen and deflection.

 

[Faarbaute]

If you call Fallout an adventure game instead of an rpg that just makes categorization meaningless. On another note, If the possibility of larping is what you find lacking then I believe you will find Fallout 3 more to your liking, OP.

 

[EldarEldrad]

Fallout general formula for to hit chance is BTH = (Skill - 30) + ((PE - 2) * 16) - (HEX * 4) - (AC of Target).
Let's say, a Enclave guy with 7 PER and 115 Energy Guns skill, with a Plasma rifle that removes the range penalty below the certain number, in this case, 20 hexes - he has 165% to hit chance, capped at 95%. To reduce it to at least 50% the recipient needs an AC of 110 - which is completely unattainable.

You are correct, but I specifically mentioned in my previous message that Dodger is valid option in Fallout1 only, not F2.

 

[SkiNNyBane]

 

[Mexi]

The turn-based combat is absolute shit, but everything else is great. If it had RtwP or something superior than these mental midget's TB garbage, it would've been a better game. Perfection can't exist, though.

 

[Trashos]

We wanted it to change the gaming world, and we wanted it to get everything right from day 1! We only got the former.

but first the franchise fell into the hands of the known storyfag Sawyer, and then perished completely.

Sawyer solved nearly all skill issues on New Vegas, tbh.

 

[Jigby]

AC in Fallout isn't enough to play Dodger, you need AC and great distance between you and enemy to dodge consistently. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in Fallout2 due to extremely high enemy skills.

Fallout general formula for to hit chance is BTH = (Skill - 30) + ((PE - 2) * 16) - (HEX * 4) - (AC of Target).
Let's say, a Enclave guy with 7 PER and 115 Energy Guns skill, with a Plasma rifle that removes the range penalty below the certain number, in this case, 20 hexes - he has 165% to hit chance, capped at 95%. To reduce it to at least 50% the recipient needs an AC of 110 - which is completely unattainable.

You can always reduce Enclave troopers PE with alcohol and due to the way drugs work engine wise (drugs applied to one char are applied to every char of that type on the map, IIRC fixed in sfall 4.1.7, so sfall has to be older) it's not even that tedious. Also fight at night, that's another 40% penalty or whatever that is. I'm not claiming that this is the most effective way of playing, I'm just making a toyplay argument here. Like I played a drunken master style character with Jinxed that got all of Military Base drunk and then watched Melchior cripple his limbs all by himself.

 

[almondblight]

Fallout C&C was kind of lackluster, to be honest. I only remember a few different places where you could pick sides, mainly the Hub and the Boneyard, and they were both cliche good side vs. bad side. When there's a vault rebellion, your only choice is to help the Overseer or do nothing. Most quests aren't mutually exclusive, so you can do everything for Decker then turn around and help the police take down Decker with no consequence.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I think my version of Fallout is bugged.

https://streamable.com/zlmiqg

 

[†††]

Balance is abysmally lopsided. You're straight gimping yourself if you don't max AGI, INT is essential, CHR a dump stat even for speech; STR/PER/END/LCK form the actual basis of a build. Unless you go melee/throwing you're railroaded into Small Guns early, Big or Energy Guns late

I keep reading this, and I won't deny those stats/skills are really good. But the thing is, Fallout isn't a hard game at all. It's pretty fun to play a "gimped" character, even balanced really. Unlike the sequel, which made things a lot harder, FO1 is light enough on the difficulty side that there's no downside on trying a less than optimal build. It also rewards out-of-the-box thinking, I remember having fun with a throwing build where I only used flares aimed to the eyes, pretty overpowered paired with high crit. While the C&C might be limited from a modern perspective, I still think it's a game that rewards playstyle choice.

 

[Horton]

so true words