
Fallout’s Forgotten Revolution - steamboiler
http://hellmode.com/2010/06/11/fallouts-forgotten-revolution/
======
lionhearted
There was a very brief window where it was possible to make games like this -
where the game market was large enough to spend time making an expansive game,
but before the demand for highly polished games came in.

Daggerfall was the game in line before Morrowind and it had _a lot_ more
freedom, but it was a lot less polished and more glitchy. But there was so
much you could do - you could set a teleport spell in the daytime towards a
shop, teleport in at night, and rob the shop. That's the kind of thing that
makes a lot of sense that players always want to do in a game like that, and
Daggerfall let you do it.

But it was broken at times, dungeons would load broken configurations, and the
game wasn't polished with finesse. Morrowind is a much, much more polished and
overall satisfying experience than Daggerfall, but it's much more streamlined
(though, still immense amounts of freedom compared to a normal game).

There's other games that offer a great deal of freedom - Baldur's Gate and
Darklands come to mind. They came after the games market had started to get
much bigger, but before the standard became extremely polished. It'll be good
if there's a trend back towards more freedom, and eventually someone will get
pseudorandom design and encounters right in terms of polish. I've largely
moved on from games, but if someone can give a Darklands amount of depth in a
game with as many different choices as Fallout 2 and as much polish as a
modern game - well, I might have to block out a month at some point to waste a
lot of time with it. But, this seems like it's still quite a ways off.

~~~
ericd
Despite its lack of graphical flair, I enjoyed Fallout 1 and 2 more than any
other RPG to date, besides Planescape: Torment, and Baldurs Gate to a lesser
extent. It seems that a lot of the drive to create really compelling and
believable worlds and stories has been redirected to help sustain the huge
amount of effort required to keep up in the graphical arms race. It's
unfortunate, because I've found no correlation between graphical quality and
fun in the RPG genre.

~~~
lionhearted
Oh, me too, I was just explaining based on market forces, not my personal
preferences. Try Darklands if you haven't yet, it might be right up your
alley:

<http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/194/Darklands.html>

The list of games you like is very similar to mine - Planescape, Fallout 2,
and Baldur's Gate are some of my favorite games. The review on the Abandonia
page is kind of junk, but the screenshots will give you a little idea. The
combat is real time tactical with pausing - similar to Baldur's Gate, and the
majority of moral and skill-based choices are text based on beautiful hand-
drawn backgrounds.

It's a really, really hard game with a tough learning curve, you'll die a lot
before you get the hang of how to start and play, but it's really rich and
rewarding. Probably the most unique RPG I ever played - it's historical
fantasy set in the Holy Roman Empire, and the systems of the game are all
based on the superstitions of the day. You can pray to actual saints to help
you perform miracles, there's no magic per se - just alchemy that you mix from
different ingredients. There's so many ways to play it and so many different
options, but it is really hard and you'll get killed a lot in the beginning.

These sites have helpful info if you get into the game:

<http://www.darklands.net/index.shtml>

<http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/darklands/>

Try it out, if you like sandbox-style fantasy games with tactical combat,
detailed character customization, and don't care about graphics - this is
quite the game for you. There is a plot and a main story (there's actually
three of them), but you find it over time, you just start out the game trying
to get rich and famous and you can totally ignore the plot if you want. Maybe
worth a spin - you'll probably need Dosbox to get it working, also spend the
time to customize the sound in Dosbox so it starts playing, the sound on the
game is really, really good.

~~~
ericd
Oh yeah, I wasn't disagreeing, just throwing my two cents in the ring.

I'll have to check out Darklands. Not much time for gaming these days, but I
love the old DOS games as well, although they were before my time the first
time around.

If you've never tried it, you might like Mount & Blade, an indie game that's
more action oriented, but you can build your own personal army as you go for
fame and wealth. You can even get your own fiefdoms and castles and collect
taxes from those, protect them from opposing factions, etc.

------
pavlov
What about the Ultima games, have they been entirely forgotten as well? They
were certainly an important influence on Fallout.

In particular, Ultima IV pioneered the concept of a computer RPG protagonist
making ethical choices. Instead of "go kill the bad guy", the game simply
tasked you to excel at virtues.

Parts VI and VII were the first games to create a truly immersive RPG world.
The non-player characters would have a life of their own: during the day
they'd go to work, then enjoy a drink at the pub, and then go home to sleep.
Static and inventory objects could be used together in inventive ways --
making bread was the classic example. The plot lines were well-developed and
touched upon social issues.

(Ultima VIII and IX were developed in 1994-99, after EA had swallowed Origin.
Those games are travesties that are best forgotten.)

~~~
Confusion
And don't forget Ultima Underworld. Released in 1992, it sported 3D grahics
and a decent amount of choice in the game. You could alienate a race by
killing one of them and it would make the game much harder to finish. A nice
link: [http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/ultima-underworld-
co...](http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/ultima-underworld-corvus-elrod)

------
masklinn
> Of course, not every game was like this. Fallout was one of two games
> offering this much freedom. The other was Fallout 2.

There was at least a third one: Arcanum. If anything, Arcanum gave the player
even more choices as one of the choices of infinite graduations was the
player's navigation between technology and magic, which had consequences
throughout the whole game.

Arcanum was also the second game series I've known (after Fallout) where
playing "evil" throughout the game was actually possible and not a dead end.

~~~
swombat
You can play evil throughout the game in Dragon Age.

~~~
masklinn
Not for any value of "play" worth playing. Last time I checked, playing evil
in DA meant only being able to do the main quest (unless you start gifting
people all around, artificially giving quests back) and giving up pretty much
everything that would give any depth to the game. Not having any sidequest
does not a fun game make.

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TrevorBurnham
I think "freedom" in games is overrated. When game designers focus on freedom,
they necessarily sacrifice plot and character development. Games that offer
the level of freedom of Fallout 1 and 2 aren't in high demand for the same
reason that Choose Your Own Adventure books aren't regarded as serious
literature, or even pulp fiction.

There's a certain novelty to being able to do "anything" in a game world, to
be sure, but I much prefer games that offer small pockets of freedom within a
strong linear narrative. Mass Effect is perhaps the best example, with its
cinematic storyline and rich conversation trees.

~~~
_delirium
The end result is often an either/or, but the holy grail is that you'd get at
least some of both: a strong narrative that is _still_ a strong narrative even
after accommodating a wide range of freedom of the player, whose actions
meaningfully influence the narrative. You probably need some better AI to do
some runtime story management, though, since as you point out, choose-your-
own-adventure style isn't too satisfying. Sort of the computer version of what
happens in RL roleplaying games with a good DM--- they keep the story on
track, but incorporate a wide range of player actions into the story, so
there's both strong narrative and player freedom.

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pilif
One of the main reasons for me to play a game is their story. Over time I
noticed that the open world games that provide huge amounts of freedom can't
put too much polish into the story and it's presentation.

Of course that's not surprising: you can't spend too much work and polish for
a part of the game that with some luck nobody would ever see.

This is why I personally prefer more streamlined games of late.

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philk
The problem (at least from the perspective of someone who enjoys games with
lots of meaningful choice) is that the public in general seems to be happier
with fewer choices, more simplistic gameplay and absurdly expensive graphics.
So while it would be possible to smarten up today's games and offer more
choice the publisher who did so wouldn't be rewarded in the marketplace.

~~~
j_baker
You know, I can see where you're coming from. But I feel the gaming industry's
a bit like hollywood. You have the big blockbusters with fancy graphics and
big-name producers, which usually aren't as great as they're marketed to be.
But if you pay attention, there's a strong indie industry that is making a lot
of games that are smart, fun, and simple (without being simplistic). In fact,
the iPhone is turning out to be a good platform for this. Granted, there's
nothing like Fallout, but there is a surprising array of intelligent well-
written games there.

~~~
saint-loup
That's a bit simplistic. The indie sector releases a lot of crap, whereas the
mainstream industry allows the existence of awesome games like Crysis, wich is
a terrific aesthetic experience -- thanks to the graphics, and thanks to the
money that big companies can put on the table.

Disclaimer: I like Fallout, Planescape Torment and the like.

~~~
chipsy
That's also on the simplistic side. The main thing that big budgets support is
a particular style of design that scales to vast amounts of content - the
gameplay is simple and repeatable, typically revolving around a few
simple/interchangeable actions, but the environments and characters are
greatly varied, and in-depth scripted events and cutscenes are considered the
leading additive elements - the prime distinguishing factors. With current
game technology, the budget can effectively get as large as desired, and the
game's content will become correspondingly more and more polished and epic to
accommodate. Technology is very much in a background, supporting role, once
you're talking about AAA games.

At the indie end of the scale, budgets and schedules are too fractional to
support a content-scalable design well. That doesn't stop indies from trying
those, of course(the obvious way to make a new game is to clone an old game
and swap out or add more content), but the success is usually better found by
taking a specific approach to the gameplay - small, focused designs, rather
than sprawling, interchangeable ones.

The first two Fallout games sit at an intermediate stage on this axis, but I
actually still found them too big for my own tastes. To me, any game that
presents a seemingly endless bounty of content tends to start feeling
overwhelming. The last CRPG I really felt comfortable with, and explored every
last bit of, was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. That was a 1993 game, and many
other games from around that period(Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima 7) already go
past my comfort/scale threshold.

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gsteph22
Fallout was simply amazing -- the market will never support something so
cerebral, difficult, and stunning.

PS:T transcended the genre, though.

------
wgren
If you like choice & consequeces kind of RPGs, take a look at
Vampire:Bloodlines (available on Steam, install the fan patches), the Witcher,
and Obsidian's recently released Alpha Protocol.

What all these games (old and new) have in common is that they are often
described as unpolished. And they _are_ technically unpolished, because
creating the enormous amount of content takes time and resources, and makes
playtesting and balancing extremely difficult. On the other hand, the stories
and characters of these games are often very polished compared to the the
paper-thin stuff in most games. These days, the demand for better graphics
gamers have these days makes the equation almost impossible - it is just too
expensive to create the contents, lots of it which many gamers won't even see.

Witness the number of reviews that call the graphics of Alpha Protocol poor.
Personally I think the graphics are amazing.

------
j_baker
In case anyone's feeling nostalgic, you can still buy Fallout, Fallout 2, and
Fallout Tactics for $19.99: [http://fallout.gamesplanet.com/game-fallout-
trilogy2-interpl...](http://fallout.gamesplanet.com/game-fallout-
trilogy2-interplay.html)

~~~
gommm
Gog also has it <http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout> It's a nice service
without drm...

Another rpg that is very non linear is the Realms of Arkania serie (Based on
the German Das Schwarze Auge Roleplaying system)
<http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/realms_of_arkania_1_2>

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chaostheory
"Designed by Interplay in 1996"

My memory is hazy but I thought that the game was only published by Interplay.
It was actually designed and developed by Black Isle (most of its former
members are now at Obsidian).

There is also a big price for Fallout's complexity and freedom, that isn't
mentioned: bugs. Both Fallout 1 & 2 were very buggy. This just isn't
acceptable on console games (not to mention that hard drives aren't standard
on all consoles), which helps explain the lack of freedom in modern video
games.

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wgren
This article reminded me of something I've thought about - does any game
developer use high level languages for AI or core game engine? It seems they
all use C/C++ for most everything.

A few games have embedded Lua or Python for user scripting (i.e.
Vampire:Bloodlines used Python for dialoges and quest creation), and a couple
of games have started to require having .Net runtime installed... but does
anyone know of a core game engine in high level languages, and C/C++ is only
used for graphics?

~~~
chipsy
For the Jak and Daxter games, Naughty Dog used GOAL, an in-house Lisp dialect,
for almost the entire game.

~~~
teamonkey
For Uncharted they used Scheme.

[PDF] [http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-...](http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-In-Data-Compilation.pdf)

------
aw3c2
Totally offtopic but does anyone else find the left side very distracting? I
find it harder to read than usual. My eyes are drawn to the left (to the
navigation etc).

~~~
lindbergh
Oh, just use Safari 5's reader.

~~~
qw
Or, use Readability (like Apple did)

[http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-
reader-...](http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/08/think-safari-reader-looks-
familiar-thats-because-apple-used-op/)

------
metamemetics
The later game studio founded by the makers of Fallout 1, Troika Games, had a
lot of great forgotten RPGs. Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire
Bloodlines were all by them. They were pretty expansive but shippied with bugs
(that have all had patches or community fixes by now)

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GrandMasterBirt
In fallout being the bad/good guy is all about short-term vs long-term
benefits.

Evil - Kill everyone, get their guns, their bullets, their armor.

Good - Politically resolve situations. Often less/equal money. Requires more
diplomatic skills. Potentially less ammo, less guns, less armor. However you
can rob everyone blind and still play the good role :)

Its all about creating allies or trade routes or killing the hell out of
everyone.

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mkramlich
Great game. and before it came Wasteland and Fountain of Dreams. Fallout 3 is
a worthy continuation of the series as well.

~~~
gsteph22
Sorry, but Fallout 3 was nowhere near the first two Fallouts when it comes to
"Choices and Consequences".

It was fun blowing stuff up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But it wasn't a
true successor.

~~~
wgren
Agreed, but as Aaronontheweb said, take a look at Fallout New Vegas. Several
of the people involved with the original Fallouts now work AT Obsidian, and it
seems they want to bring a lot of the old feel back. Just to take a single
example, Stimpacks will be very rare now, and will slowly give back hitpoints
- they won't give you +100hp in the middle of a gunfight. Radiation will be a
lot more lethal too.

