Defining Fallout - General Idea of Fallout cRPG

[Sorrow]

So, I'm tired with clueless people arguing from opinions and feelings, not from solid knowledge.
I decided to prepare a short article about what is Fallout - not about our opinions about it but about what it was created for.

I. According to Fallout's lead designer - Chris Taylor:

What specifically inspired Fallout for you? What were the biggest influences?

Paper and pencil role-playing games were the single biggest influence. We had a goal of trying to recreate the tabletop gaming experience as best as possible. For the most part, I think we succeeded.

So it's a recreation of the tabletop gaming experience - which includes PnP-like mechanics - S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (it was intended to be a GURPS cRPG), detailed turnbased combat and isometric perspective which bears resemblance to table with miniatures.

These features were a result of conscious and purposeful decision of game designers, not technological constrains or fashion - a lot of contemporary and earlier cRPGs had RT combat/FPP view.

More on Fallout being a PnP game recreated on computer from official Fallout GURPS site:

The goal of the GURPS development team here at Interplay is to make a fun game that will be familiar to GURPS players and accessible to newcomers. Great care has gone into translating the GURPS rules to the computer version, and all the great things that you've come to expect from the system have translated very well. The turn-based tactical combat system uses the advanced GURPS combat, and is very fast to play.

The Program

Our programmers and scriptors are working hard to translate the GURPS rules into a fun and exciting game to play. We have implemented most of the GURPS combat, reaction and character creation rules. The "engine" is dynamic, and is designed to remain true to the Generic philosophy of GURPS. Most of the actual Fallout "game" will be handled via a scripting engine, that works directly with the core GURPS rules engine and our interface.

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II. On less mechanical (but equally important) elements of Fallout as an RPG (from Fallout Developers Profile :

In your opinion, what are the key ingredients that every RPG should have?

To me, key ingredients of an RPG include: Consequence of action, characteristics and decisions that matter and character creation and development that affect the game. It's a role-playing game. I should be able to pick a role and play it. And it should mean something.

In your opinion, what are the key ingredients that every RPG should have?

In a good RPG, you should be able to make a good variety of starting characters and then develop them in very different ways. Your choices should affect the game in meaningful ways, both in the ongoing game and in the ending you get. Of course, the game should be fun to play and easy to interact with, but that’s true for every genre of game.

In your opinion, what are the key ingredients that every RPG should have?

I think the heart of every great RPG is to let the player make choices and to have those choices matter in how the game plays out and how NPCs react to the player. Also, the player should be able to approach the game from a number of different angles, as a stealth character, a diplomat, a fighter, whether he wants to be good or evil, etc. Different endings depending on player choices is always a big plus for me as well.

I also am heavily in favour of letting the player create his character with a wide variety of options as opposed to giving the player a specific character to play.

I think that these quotes don't require any comments.

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III. Fallout 1 was a work of art - according to Tim Cain (the lead programmer of Fallout 1), it was a "grade B" project which given them a lot of artistic freedom - Tim Cain himself left the Interplay after some mysterious "people" (who could sue him for betraying their identity)

secondguessed what was good for the game, and they wanted in on it, since it looked like a "big thing" now, not some grade B product, which was what FO was viewed as.

So, the oryginal creator left Interplay after Fallout 2 stopped being an artistic project and became a product to sell to masses.
Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson left with him.

This is what we know about Fallout.


What you, people think about this?

 

[Tannhauser]

Sorrow, NMA is working on a similar article, which should be unveiled in the next few days (currently we are putting the finishing touches on it). While that doesn't mean you should stop, you might want to wait to see what our article covers, perhaps it will save you some work; or you can then decide to explore tangents our article doesn't cover.

 

[Briosafreak]

With some work I'll happily post it as a featured article on my blog, if you want. But I've seen the article from NMA and it is very similar.