Fallout Series

The Fallout Series is a series of four role playing games (named Fallout 1,2, and 3 and New Vegas) and a series of more action oriented spin offs named Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel; both of which are considered non-canon by developers and generally ignored by the players. The first two were developed by Black Isle Studios, released in 1997 and 1998, the third was developed by Bethesda Softworks of Elder Scrolls fame and released in 2008; and New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and produced by Bethesda in 2010.

The main series revolve around the player character interacting with a post-nuclear war America in the years 2161 (fallout 1), 2241 (fallout 2), 2277 (fallout 3) and 2281 (New Vegas).

setting

The setting of the fallout series is in a alternate timeline post nuclear war America; with the first two games taking place in the California region, the third in the immediate area of Washington DC and New Vegas in the area of the Mojave Desert around Las Vegas.

background of the in game world

The Games timeline split off from the real world shortly after WW2 ended, with american culture staying at the 1950's while technology followed the path of the "World of the future; complete with fusion powered cars and robots, laser rifles and the world as seen in a leave it to beaver episode. Also kept from the 50's was the extreme (and in some/many cases justified) paranoia of communism. This state would last until the late 2040's, when oil supplies across the world began to run dry, and conflict broke out in the resource wars, seeing the united nations disband, fighting between the European commonwealth (this worlds EU) and the Middle east until the oil fields ran out; and eventually, America VS China for control of the alaskan pipeline (which also caused the United states to annex Canada).

Fear of the imminent nuclear war would cause the United states to start the vault program, which was designed to build a number of underground fallout bunkers that could hold a thousand people until it was safe to recolonize the earth. However, through the machinations of the semi-shadow government Enclave, most became social experiments that were never designed to actually save it's inhabitants. At the same time the American culture was on rotten stands, soon to collapse as the strain of the world began to take it's toll.

All of this would become pointless on October 21st, 2077, when the world slate was wiped clean in a 2 hour long nuclear bombardment that radically changed the world. It is not known who fired first, but as far as most people living in the wastes care, it doesn't matter.

Common elements of the series

Radiation: Radiation acts much like it did in the 1950's world of tomorrow, and instead of simply killing you or causing horrible problems, can mutate you into something more; or maybe, if your lucky/not so lucky, turn you into a ghoul, people who resemble the living dead and have very long lifespans.

Ghouls as stated above, people who have been subjugated to a immense amount of radiation and instead of dying of radiation poisoning, have turned into zombie like creatures. For the most part they are still human, just, different, but because of this they are horrible prejudiced against by most of the world, mostly because they look like zombies. In the later games, Feral ghouls were introduced, which for all intents and purposes are zombies and can not be reasoned with at all.

Super Mutants: Humans who have been subjected to a government made virus called the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), which was designed to create super soldiers. It worked to a degree, the subjects became strong, tougher, but at the cost of both intelligence (for some, many original super mutants are intelligent) and became aggressive to a fault and, as a major plot point in the first and third game, Sterile, forcing them to use more humans to keep the super mutant species alive. In the first game they were the main enemy and in the third a major sub-enemy.

World of Tomorrow idealism: The basis of the entire series, in the words of a fan, is "The American 1950's vision of the World of tomorrow, nuked to hell". The world of fallout contains the Radio still being a entertainment superpower, TV is cheap and still resembles the antenna sets, robots do the house keeping for mom who stays home to do what she has to; dad is king of the castle and the children are obedient to their elders.

Brotherhood of Steel: The decedents of a group of soldiers and their families who, shortly before the war declared themselves in desertion from the U.S. Army. They more or less worship technology and seek to take all advanced technology from the hands of the wastelanders, although the reason varies from, "simple selfishness" to wanting to protect them from it. They are very secretive and xenophobic, and besides a few members and the detachment on the east coast could care less about what happens to the world unless it threatens them. By New Vegas, they have fought a costly war with the New California Republic and lost, at least on the west coast and are slowly dying because of their refusal to change their ways.

Enclave:Like the brotherhood of steel, they have ties to pre-war America and also xenophobic, but to a much more extreme degree. When they first show up in Fallout 2, they are in power armor, and kill most of the people inside vault 13 (the first games player's home) and establish themselves as being opposed to what most of the wasteland. Later they kidnap the player characters home village for evil experiments. Eventually, on an pre=-war oil rig, ou fight the president, a man leading the plan to use a modified FEV Virus to infect the jet-stream and cleanse (Genocide) North America so "Pure Strain" Humans can reclaim it.You can choose to join them, but canon has you blowing up the oil rig; afterwards "President John Henry Eden" a super-computer summons the remnants across the continent to reclaim Washington DC, intended to activate and infect "Project Purity" to both purify and poison the waters for any creature mutated in the wasteland.

Reception

The mainstream Fallout games have been received very well by both critics and consumers alike. Fallout 1 is frequently ranked among the top 100 games of all time; Fallout 2 has an average review score of 86/100 on Metacritic, which also gives Fallout 3 an review score of 92/100.

The series has been roundly criticized for their complete disregard for morality, as they include drug use, theft, prostitution, slavery, and murder, although doing any of these actions usually results in a decline in your karmaic standing and a general dislike by he populace of the wastes.

External links

The Vault, a wiki designed around the series containing numerous guides and information