• Damage@feddit.it
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    6 days ago

    My opinion is that only 2 Fallout games were made: Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.

    Fight me.

    • TaterTot@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      6 days ago

      Fight me.

      Okay, sounds fun.

      If we want to say there are more Fallout games than just 1 and 2, then we should probably admit that if Fallout 2 gets to sit at the “true Fallout” table, Fallout: New Vegas should probably get a chair too. A bunch of the original Black Isle developers who worked on Fallout 2 helped make it, and it continues the same regional story and factions. But then again, maybe having the Fallout 2 developers is not enough to make something “truly” Fallout. Maybe it is the isometric (actually skewed trimetric) view, classic CRPG style. Although once we open that can of radroaches, we get a whole new pile of questions.

      So maybe we can swing the other direction entirely and say there are fewer “true” Fallout games, and that only Fallout 1 really qualifies. That does have some logic behind it, since the original creators, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson, left during Fallout 2’s development. Their absence shifted the tone, cranked up the pop culture jokes, added a ton of fluff dungeons and encounters, and gave us a more scattered writing experience thanks to the team being split up to work on different sections of the game (Tell me San Fran feels even remotely in the same universe as New Reno). But even then, Fallout 2 still uses the same engine and gameplay loop, so you could just as easily argue it stays true to the original formula.

      But if we decide that gameplay matters more than the writing and development teams, then Fallout Nevada and Fallout Sonora belong on the list as well. They are fan-made, sure, but they run on the same engine and play almost exactly like Fallout 1 and 2. So now we are up to four “true Fallout games.” So our definition needs to rules those out to get back to “only 1 and 2”.

      So maybe the fan-made games do not count because they are not official releases? But if it being an “official release” is the only rule, then Fallout 76 suddenly joins the “true Fallout” club too, which probably tells us that the bar has to be higher than that.

      So if we say that a “true” Fallout game needs a mix of all the things above, like the original devs from the original studio working on the original engine with the original tone and the closest connection to the original story, then we come full circle and land right back where we started: Fallout 1 is the only true Fallout game.

      No matter how I slice it, I can’t find a definition that only includes Fallout 1 and 2…