Fallout
|
This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it. |
 This article is autistic and stinks of fanboy drooling over irrelevant horseshit. You can help 1d4chan by stripping it down to only the stuff /tg/ cares about. |
 This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess. |
>
"War. War never changes."
- – Ron Perlman
"War has changed."
- – Solid Snake, being a contrarian as always.
Fallout is a post-post-apocalyptic video game series, with a boardgame released in 2017 (see below), that takes place in America about a century or two in the future where America had been bombed so much that it has been left as a rotting, smelly and depressing wasteland that happens to have high as fuck raiders come up to you and attempt to kill you with a flaming chainsaw or a laser weapon.
Despite the setting, most of the games are fairly noblebright, with a darkly humorous streak and a series-long theme of rebuilding. The freedom of approach to how you interact with the world set before you is one of the main selling points of the series, though it has attracted criticism for becoming somewhat unfocused in both writing and gameplay. Some say that this was magnified by Bethesda, while others say it's always been like that. And that's all we'll say on that for now.
Plot and Setting
For those wanting an in-depth analysis of the Fallout storyline, the "Fallout Storyteller" Youtube series has a large number of (mostly accurate) episodes dealing with the subject and can be viewed here.
Basically, while technology continued to advance past the 50-60's, the culture did not, which is one of the biggest sources of hilarity in the game. Imagine a lady in a pink diner dress, high heels and curly, blonde hair run up to you with a nuke-launcher on the back and try to sell some drugs to you that could enhance you to the level of a Space Marine for hours.
Transistors were invented in 2067 rather than 1947 resulting in a society with computers that barely had 1MB of data storage and televisions were still black and white, but robots would clean your house and police your neighborhood while you yourself could own a disintegration ray hanging above the mantelpiece in case undesirables move into your neighborhood.
Some events still happened, such as Ronald Reagan and Nixon both becoming president. The US still landed on the moon in '69, but set up a moonbase and fought a war there against someone, but we don't know who. Vietnam occurred, but the United States openly participated in combat operations rather than simply attempt to defend the South. There are other divergences that occurred much earlier as well (possibly because aliens were monitoring and abducting humans throughout Fallout history, if that's canon) evidenced by the altered architecture in Washington DC. Hippies and McCarthyism, as icons of the 60's, remained right up until the end.
The United States reorganized itself into 13 commonwealths with the states functioning as counties and the old Maryland Cowpens Flag with 13 stars replaced the 50 stars of Old Glory. The US progressed through the women's liberation and civil rights movements, so by the time of the bombs falling, racism and sexism were mostly forgotten. Religion and society's perception/treatment of it appear to have remained unchanged from the 60's; so no Catholic church scandals or atheism movement.
One of the biggest differences is the miniaturization of nuclear reactors in Fallout, to the point that everything from cars to ammo cartridges for laser weapons have them. The cars that still remain, although mostly no longer functional, actually explode in a mushroom cloud if damaged sufficiently which is a little silly because explosions don't work that way, but the science in Fallout does work a little differently then ours...
During the lead-up to the end of the world, oil became one of the last major resources in the world as supplies dried up. The Middle East oil reserves were drained dry and the region ceased to matter on a global scale when they pooled their uranium into weapons stockpiles and gave the world a preview of what was to come. Europe had united into the "European Commonwealth" rather than the European Union, but when the Middle East blew itself away they turned inwards in petty wars over remaining resources until they had depleted themselves and ceased to matter on a global scale. The same thing happened to the Soviet Union, leaving only the United States and China as the remaining superpowers, which stood alone. Alaska became the only major source of oil left on Earth, although minor sources were still around but weren't worth the effort to pump due to diminishing returns. China began to run out of fuel while America refused to share their microfusion technology, resulting in the last great war occurring between China and the United States for control of Alaskan oil. The US annexed Canada in its entirety, turning it into one giant mobilization center to retain the great white Northwest and the South American nations like Brazil and Argentina were left to fend for themselves. China, along with deploying the expected numerical superiority, focused on small elite teams utilizing advanced stealth technology while the United States deployed atomic-powered robots and commandos in advanced powered armor.
To advance their chances of victory the US took the greatest minds of the world and created a secret facility contained underneath a mountain, which was dubbed "Big Mountain" somewhere in the deserts of the American southwest. There, scientists churned out amazing works straight out of science fiction, from technology that could keep a brain alive in a jar forever, to teleportation, to cracking the secrets of the Chinese stealth suits. They were given ample numbers of Chinese prisoners of war to experiment on, as well as American citizens (and hippies) who were disappeared during the paranoid McCarthyism of the extended Cold War. Despite the high casualties and useless horrors that came out of the Big MT, the six executives in charge of the site were given unlimited authority within.
Towards the end of the Resource War, American biologists were tasked with countering possible Chinese biological weapons, but their work took an unexpected turn. When the Army learned that test animals for the "Pan-Immunity Virion Project" gained mass and intelligence it took over the project and renamed it the "Forced Evolutionary Virus", hoping to use tough, intelligent super-soldiers to smash the Chinese hordes. The Army soldiers tasked with protecting the project while it went through involuntary human trials mutinied a few days before the bombs fell due to the exact nature of these experiments and the use of political prisoners as test subjects.
As nuclear paranoia grew, the United States government (or rather, the shadow government known as the Enclave) and the Vault-Tec Corporation initiated "Project Safehouse," a plan to build a number of underground bomb shelters known as Vaults across the country, each large enough to house around a thousand people until it would be safe to return to the surface and rebuild. Secretly, the Enclave designed most of the Vaults as social experiments to study how people handled long-term isolation and how suitable they would be for recolonizing Earth and potentially other planets. Those who couldn't get a place in the Vaults began coming up with alternatives, from personal fallout shelters to finding safe places for themselves and their communities to retreat to once the bombs fell.
Never the less America was able to push on to a seemingly inevitable victory, and American forces continued to fight deeper into Chinese territory. Although fourteen years of horrific war took it's toll American forces supported by incredible armor technologies, along with America switching to nuclear fusion (and eventually developing prototype fission engines) to eliminate the dependence on oil, meant that by the war's end American forces were laying siege to Beijing itself and pushing onward to many other cities.
The Enclave had planned on using a false alarm nuclear attack to drive populations into the Vaults, but the actual nuclear apocalypse occurred much sooner than expected. What caused it isn't entirely known and who fired first hasn't been declared canon. A computer in an underground army base, The Switchboard, shows the Chinese fired first and the Enclave made the same claim, but according to fallout 3's DLC aliens manipulated humanity into nuking each other by either making China think a nuke had been launched, or by launching their own nukes. Whatever the truth the United States and China both unleashed their nuclear arsenals at each other. The United States was devastated, with many major locations annihilated. The people in the Vaults hid away within, all suffering from the experiments needlessly with most Vaults falling to catastrophe as a result. The people who didn't get into a Vault attempted to survive as best they could. Most of those who did manage to escape annihilation had hidden in mountains, natural caves, or wilderness so far from civilization no bombs were launched at them.
The humans who didn't turn into Ghouls mostly became tribal societies with varying degrees of friendliness and/or savagery. Few tribes retained the civilized knowledge from before and were oftentimes extremely hostile to those they encounter, although many can be civilized enough to maintain friendly contact with other peoples. Some "control Vaults" opened up once the worst was over, jump starting the reconstruction of civilization with advanced towns cropping up using the Vault as a central location.
Fallout 1
Eighty four years after the bombs fell, a resident of Vault 13 in California is chosen to leave the Vault to find a replacement unit for the Vault's damaged water chip, which controls the water recycling system. So begins the story of Fallout 1. This Vault Dweller, in his search for his prize, discovers that the world is (sort of) safe to return to, as many others had. He also discovers a major threat to the nascent human rebuilding: the Master's Army. This army of Super Mutants is the tool of the mutant known as The Master, who intends to turn the entire human race into Super Mutants to untie mankind into one whole and bring an end to conflict and war. The Vault Dweller manages to stop the Master, though it is not known if he talked him down or blew him up, and return to the Vault with his prize only to be exiled for being "contaminated" by contact with the outside world. Many other inhabitants of Vault 13 choose to leave with him, traveling north and founding the village of Arroyo.
Fallout 2
The Vault Dweller's grandchild comes of age, passes a series of trials, and is then selected to find a sacred artifact from Vault 13: a Garden of Eden Creation Kit, which will rebuild the wasteland into a paradise. So begins the story of Fallout 2. This Chosen One, in his search for his prize, discovers that the United States government is (sort of) still around and had abducted the people of Vault 13. He later learns that they are called the Enclave and had also abducted his tribe in his absence when he found Vault 13 himself. So the Chosen One travels to the Enclave's base of operations, a Poseidon Energy oil rig, to free the captives, find the GECK, and destroy the Enclave, helping (or breaking) towns along the way.
Starting FAR more difficult than Fallout 1 with a capital F, the sequel had an incredibly hard early game hell until you can get decent guns and armor, made gun accuracy drop by half (so badly you would miss the next hex unless you have 60% minimum), but has virtually no time limit. Fallout 1 had a few hundred days until the epilogue would declare the towns in question lost to mutant armies and give a shitty ending.
In fallout 2 you have 13 years until the hard coded game gives a jumpscare and game over (But you can imagine the hard code game over as Enclave unleashing the FEV airborne to cleanse non-baseline humans), and you can recruit a staggering army on your own, from an old gunslinging trader, a leather-armored barkeep with an attitude and a sawn-off, a ghoul medic, a hulking tribal with a hammer attack that sends power armors flying, an itelligent Deathclaw, a Supermutant called Marcus, an Edgy, weedy, immature twat of a boy who makes drugs for criminals, fucks hookers and is a slave-torturing pervert, a dog, a cyborg dog, another cyborg dog, your wife and/or husband, and an A.I. actually called Skynet.
Fallout Tactics
In Fallout Tactics, the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel began inducting tribes into its ranks in small numbers while defending the Wasteland against threats such as an army of renegade robots. The main group of the Brotherhood is separated from this group, which takes over Vault 0 and continues pushing eastwards. Although the bulk of Fallout Tactics is non-canon, the basic story remained.
Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel
In Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel three Initiates to the Brotherhood, one strangely enough being a Ghoul despite how much the Brotherhood hates both outsiders and mutants, are sent to go find missing Paladins despite how illogical it is to send three fresh recruits after several high ranking veterans in power armor. They wound up being aided by the Vault Dweller, who was still alive at the time, and take out another Super Mutant army. At one point you wipe out the entire population of a town of Ghouls because they don't accept humans but you need to get to the other side and apparently can't be arsed to just walk around it, despite the fact you may in fact be playing as a Ghoul with absolutely no humans for miles who's entire backstory was humans wiped out his town...
The game constantly disregards existing lore worse than any entry of the series, abandons many existing Fallout staples like Nuka Cola and 1950's music and replaces them with early 2000's things such as Bawls energy drink and Slipknot music. That wasn't a joke, that was Brotherhood Of Steel. The game itself was just a poorly paced and uninspired version of the topdown adventure RPGs of the PS2 such as Champions Of Norrath or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. According to Bethesda the game is 100% non-canon. No matter what anyone says about Fallout 4, remind them about F:BoS.
Strangely, despite being named after the faction that is known for their Power Armor, its the ONLY Fallout game to not have Power Armor on the cover. In fact, the Power Armor doesn't resemble anything from past Fallout games when you do get it; its fucking purple (it's special Vault Tech brand power armour instead of the military grade stuff. Still shit though).
Fallout 3
The series turns into Skyrim/Oblivion with guns and good graphics. Many cheers were had...And sometimes RAGE. The beautiful graphics and faster pace was worth it...except the new power armor mechanics: a barely functioning FUCKING HUNK of metal that can't block damage for shit. Wear some leather jacket and inject your balls with heroi- I mean Med-X, and you'll have the same defense without carrying a ton of armor on you.
Two hundred years after the Great War, a civil war breaks out in Vault 101 after its head physician, James, leaves. His child then escapes the chaos in search of him. So begins the story of Fallout 3. This Lone Wanderer, in his search for his father, discovers that he was not born in Vault 101 as he had been led to believe, but in Rivet City, and his father had been working on "Project Purity" to purge the radiation from the Potomac River. Following his father's trail finds the Lone Wanderer trapped in the Tranquility Lane VR simulation in Vault 112 and having to endure Stanislaus Braun's sadism to escape. When they return to the Jefferson Memorial, they find that the Enclave has decided to take over the project. James floods the Purity station with radiation to keep it out of the Enclave's hands. The Lone Wanderer and Dr. Madison Li flee to the Pentagon, which the Brotherhood of Steel has converted to their base of operations in the Capital Wasteland. Elder Lyons puts the Lone Wanderer on the trail to find a GECK in Vault 87. Upon finding it (with the help of a friendly super mutant named Fawkes), the Enclave captures him and the GECK. The Wanderer kills the President Eden during his escape and brings the GECK back to the Jefferson Memorial behind the Brotherhood's assault and the awesome, anti-Communist super robot Liberty Prime. After dealing with Colonel Autumn, the Lone Wanderer is supposed to sacrifice himself in the radiation-filled control room to activate Project Purity. But that's bullshit, so the Broken Steel DLC allowed the Wanderer to survive or order a radiation-resistant companion to activate it instead and continued the plot to eliminate the Enclave's presence in the Capital Wasteland.
- The DLC campaigns for Fallout 3 were Operation: Anchorage, a simulation of the Battle of Anchorage from the Sino-American War; The Pitt, a trip to the ruins of Pittsburgh to resolve a crisis between slaves and raiders, Broken Steel, where you mop up the Enclave and open up post-game adventure; Point Lookout, a trip to the swamps of Maryland for open-ended adventure; and Mothership Zeta, where the Lone Wanderer is abducted by aliens, teams up with captives from across time, and takes over the ship.
Fallout: New Vegas
In 2281, the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion are staring at each other across the Colorado River, having fought over Hoover Dam once before. Against this backdrop, a courier is shot for his charge, a poker chip made of platinum, and buried in a shallow grave. He's dug out by a Securitron robot and taken to Dr. Mitchell of Goodsprings, who saves his life. So begins the plot of Fallout: New Vegas. This Courier, in his search for his prize, travels around the Mojave Wasteland in pursuit of his attempted murderer, Benny, the head of the Chairmen, who runs the Tops casino in New Vegas. Eventually, all three major players in the Mojave (the NCR, the Legion, and Mr. House) want the Courier to do their dirty work to gain control over the Mojave, but there is a fourth option: Benny's plan was to use a subverted Securitron named Yes Man to take over House's network and use the platinum chip (actually a data disc containing a firmware upgrade for the Securitrons) to secure control over New Vegas. Whatever the Courier chose, the Second Battle of Hoover Dam is inevitable and only one faction can win. Generally considered to be the best modern Fallout despite it's horrendously buggy state, often compared to the story rich earlier games instead of the more recent titles.
- The DLC campaigns for Fallout: New Vegas were Dead Money, where the Courier is kidnapped by a mad Brotherhood of Steel elder to pillage the Sierra Madre Casino's vault and is forced to work with a ghoul lounge singer, a Nightkin super mutant with a split personality, and a mutilated, mute Brotherhood of Steel scribe to achieve the goal(so buggy that without extensive console jury rigging, it's IMPOSSIBLE to finish it); Honest Hearts, where a trip to New Canaan goes wrong and the Courier has to help Joshua Graham, Caesar's former legate, save the tribals of Zion Canyon; Old World Blues, where the Courier is abducted to the Big Empty and forced to help the Think Tank, a team of deranged brains in jars, fight a former member of their team; and Lonesome Road, where the Courier goes to the ruins of the Divide to confront his past.
Fallout 4
In Boston at the zero hour of the war, new parents are admitted to Vault 111 and placed in cryogenic suspension. One of them is murdered, their infant child Shaun stolen, and the other refrozen. When the cryo systems fail, the only survivor of Vault 111 heads to the surface in pursuit of the man who ruined a family. So begins the plot of Fallout 4. This Sole Survivor, in pursuit of his (or her) prize- I mean child, discovers that two hundred years have passed. As he travels, he encounters the last of the Minutemen and goes to Diamond City (built on the ruins of Fenway Park) following a lead. He finds the people paranoid about an organization called "The Institute" replacing anybody they know with near-perfect replicas called synths, and further investigation points to the Institute having abducted Shaun. He can work with the Minutemen, the Brotherhood of Steel, or the synth emancipation group known as the Railroad to fight the Institute, or choose to join it instead. Generally considered to be the worst of the modern Fallout games, in a sense that a 8/10 game can be the worst in a franchise.
- The DLC campaigns for Fallout 4 are Automatron, where the Mechanist comes to the Commonwealth with an army of robots and allows you to create your own custom mix-and-match robots to use as companions or settlers; Far Harbor, where a case from the Valentine Detective Agency takes the Sole Survivor to an island off the coast of Maine, where the locals struggle with the Children of Atom and a mysterious fog that blankets the island while runaway synths live in a refuge built inside an old astronomical observatory, and is the largest DLC campaign Bethesda has released yet, being even bigger than the Shivering Isles from Oblivion; and Nuka World, which goes to a pre-War Nuka Cola-themed amusement park for shenanigans.
- There is also a series of "Workshop" packs that add new settlement items. Wasteland Workshop adds more settlement items and allows you to tame and train wasteland creatures; Contraption Workshop adds weapon and armor racks and stuff with moving parts; and Vault-Tec Workshop allows you to build your own Vault and perform experiments on its inhabitants.
On the Tabletop
Fallout: The Board Game
 This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it |
A 1-4 player game produced by Fantasy Flight Games.
RPGs
There are a few systems for Nuka-Cola addicts to get their fill on the tabletop. The first is Exodus, licensed under the d20 System, which was originally going to be an official Fallout RPG until the license-holders saw how shitty the final product was copyright disputes with Bethesda and Interplay prompted the publishers to file off the serial numbers and call it a "spiritual successor". It departs heavily from the canonical setting, and is mechanically weak, but a flexible GM will find it otherwise serviceable.
For purists, there is also J.E. Sawyer's Fallout Role-Playing Game, an original system that uses d100 rules, much like Dark Heresy only a thousand times more complicated. It is still in development and will probably never be finished, but all material can be found for free on its official wiki.
Originally, Fallout was going to be mechanically based on GURPS but due to Steve Jackson's signature controlling nature (the GURPS licence was pulled because SJ didn't like the vault boy icons) the GURPS licence was dropped and the series went with the SPECIAL system that is in use today. GURPS fans have created a Fallout suppliment that can be found here.
In addition, some cool anons have created a scenario book for Fallout that focuses on the Louisiana wastes. Check it out here. It's pretty good.
What appears to be the first official tabletop adaptation comes from Modiphius Entertainment in 2017: Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.
A new homebrew tabletop RPG based on Fallout, called Fallout d40, was released on the internet on Oct. 23rd, 2017, 60 years prior to the bombs dropping. It aims to give people a true Fallout tabletop RPG experience. The website for it is: https://falloutd40.wixsite.com/mainpage
Gallery
-
A Vault Girl pinup, wearing common Vault Tec clothing -
A naive young girl from California with stars in her eyes and a pneumatic gauntlet on her hand. And an Enclave eyebot. -
A common Mr Handy domestic robot -
T-45 version of Power Armour -
X-01 version of Power Armour -
Power Armour modified by raiders -
-
-
-
-
.jpg)
See Also
Brother Vinni for not-Fallout miniatures.