I've had a profound love for Fallout since I was 14 years old. I remember the day I went to the city all by myself, charged with enough money to get myself the perfect gift: a brand new, just-released game. I didn't know about Fallout, so the excitement I felt sitting on the bus was all about knowing I was going home this friday afternoon to play something new. Something fresh. What I didn't know was that my life actually changed a few hours later.
This was back in 1997. The internet to me was all about the odd thrill of AltaVista queries like "Spice Girls nude" or "Scully naked", chatting with girls from around the country or playing games with my friends (mostly the original GTA and the classic racer Ignition). I didn't use it like people use it nowadays, for basic information. If I remember correctly, almost noone did, at least not boys my age.
Anyways. Back to that friday afternoon. I'm from Sweden. The town I grew up outside is pretty small. In 1997, that meant the available computer games was not many. As I walked into the store, and into the back where the only shelf of games was located I was thrilled. A few minutes later I was so disappointed. I couldn't find anything I didn't already have or had deemed unworthy, after testning it out at one of my friends places. As I was standing there trying so hard to get interested in something by looking on the boxes for the fifth time (in 1997 every game hade a box big like a freaking shoebox), the guy who worked at the store came out with a new pile of games. First one: no. Second one: no. Third one: no. The fourth one: hm.
I was usually a sucker for strategy games. XCOM was my favourite game of all time (I had both dreams and nightmares about the flashing red box notifying me I made contact for years during my teens). Settlers 2 was different, but brilliant all the same. RPGs? Not so much.
As I was reading on the back of the box of Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role-Playing Game I was really "hm". It was definitely not love on first sight. But, as I had went through what I considered the trouble of getting myself to town I wasn't gonna go home empty handed. It wasn't really because of the in-risk pointless effort of going into town that made me buy the game that day though, it was the definite knowledge of the boredom and disappointment for the upcoming weekend if I didn't bring something home.
Whattahell. Alright. This is it. The guy working in the store was surprised as I put my shoe-box on the counter. I was 14 years old. I was a little chubby and had a pretty geeky, though common, parted-in-the-middle haircut. I definitely wasn't a cool kid. He asked me if I knew the PEGI was 16, and I tried my coolest sayin' someting like "Yeah, man, that's alright". I don't think it worked in my favor. What did, though, was that he himself had played the game as he thought it looked interesting and was happy about someone else wanting to buy it. So I got to buy the game. Happy enough about going to the bus with that new game I was hoping for, I returned home.
So there I was, a few hours later. The installing process to long, as usual. Intriguing pictures during the process. Pretty psyched as I hit that red button next to "Play". That golden Interplay globe. The BoS execution, the Mr Handy commercial.
"War. War never changes."
I was completely hooked. I loved every bit of it. The character creation screen. The look and feel of the menus and everything. That first scary date with the radscorpion.
I had been playing a lot of games before Fallout, dating back to my mother bringing me and my brother a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old. I had been playing a lot of those games for hours. For hundreds of ours. But with Fallout, I was in love for the first time. No, really, the first time. The first girl I really fell in love with was 3 years later.
I loved it so much, I didn't really speak about it with anyone. I didn't want anyone else to ruin my story. Back then, "playthrough" wasn't in my vocabulary - it was my one and only story. The story of Marvin (I liked the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a lot as a kid, though I understood after playing for a bit the name wasn't the greatest fit but there was no way I was starting over). I cared more about my dog in the game than my cat in real life. More about Ian than my real friends. I don't know how many hours I clocked. Plenty, to say the least.
A few years later both me and the Internet had outgrown watching Ginger Spice's pre-fame nudes, and I was completely aware of the upcoming Fallout 2. Ahead of the Christmas the game was getting released in Sweden I did what I haven't done neither before nor after: searched my house for Christmas gifts. I was too old for that and could easily have bought the game myself, but I wanted to get every last potential tiny bit of excitement out of the fact that I was soon gonna return to the Wasteland. I didn't find the game. But I did find a receipt telling me my mom had bought it for me. Knowing I would be getting it on Christmas Eve (that's when the gifts are given in Sweden) I enjoyed the growing excitement. As I didn't speak of Fallout with anyone, there was noone able to ruin anything for me.
I enjoyed Fallout 2 as well. My love is perhaps strongest for that first one - there IS always something special about anything "first" - but Fallout 2 was probably a better game. At least it held more, and I couldn't get enough.
Years went by. I kept growing. Up, I suppose. In the fall of 2008 Fallout 3 was about to be released. Interplay wasn't involved. Betheseda hade bought the Fallout license a few years back. Bethesda had released Oblivion in 2006 and it was obvious they would turn Fallout into something similar. I bought and tried to play Oblivion so many times as some kind of preparing-therapy. But I could never make myself play it even the few minutes it would take to get out of the prison-cave or whatever.
The first time I saw gameplay footage from Fallout 3 I actually cried. A fucking first-person-shooter-guy (although sometimes in ugly third-person-view) walking backwards while firing MY precious 9 mm SMG.
I wanted to want the game so bad. The day of release I still hadn't pre-ordered. Though totally aware of the fact it was getting released, I went by a Game-store on my way home from work and bought it. I didn't play it that evening. Not the day efter either. When the weekend came I forced myself to do it.
The intro was okay. I tried so hard not to think about the old games, but to instead think of this Fallout 3, developed by fricking Bethesda, as a completely different beast. I managed to do so for a few minutes. The character creation and the being-a-baby is kind of alright. But the first time I saw myself in a Vault jumpsuit with a gun in my hand i third-person I wanted to throw up.
It took me years to complete Fallout 3. Fallout: New Vegas was a much better experience for me. I'd like to think I can control my feelings better as I get older, and knowing what I was getting myself into I gave F:NV a chance to prove itself on it's own merits, so to speak. "Okay, this is a Fallout game that's as much a FPS as it is a RPG". New Vegas has aiming down sights. To me, that was important. That made me not think as much "you fucked up my Fallout so much I can't actually stand it". Instead I was like "okay, your trying to at least make the game you're making the right way".
I will probably never play the actual third Fallout game. And soon I will play Fallout 4. I'm gonna try really hard to enjoy the game. I think it looks promising if one is able to see past everything that makes it not really Fallout...
As I write this I totally understand that this post is both long and pretty sad. But for the first time I found a place where I actually wanted to share my feelings about Fallout. So, thanks for that, guys. I think I'm gonna be better off now.
This was back in 1997. The internet to me was all about the odd thrill of AltaVista queries like "Spice Girls nude" or "Scully naked", chatting with girls from around the country or playing games with my friends (mostly the original GTA and the classic racer Ignition). I didn't use it like people use it nowadays, for basic information. If I remember correctly, almost noone did, at least not boys my age.
Anyways. Back to that friday afternoon. I'm from Sweden. The town I grew up outside is pretty small. In 1997, that meant the available computer games was not many. As I walked into the store, and into the back where the only shelf of games was located I was thrilled. A few minutes later I was so disappointed. I couldn't find anything I didn't already have or had deemed unworthy, after testning it out at one of my friends places. As I was standing there trying so hard to get interested in something by looking on the boxes for the fifth time (in 1997 every game hade a box big like a freaking shoebox), the guy who worked at the store came out with a new pile of games. First one: no. Second one: no. Third one: no. The fourth one: hm.
I was usually a sucker for strategy games. XCOM was my favourite game of all time (I had both dreams and nightmares about the flashing red box notifying me I made contact for years during my teens). Settlers 2 was different, but brilliant all the same. RPGs? Not so much.
As I was reading on the back of the box of Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role-Playing Game I was really "hm". It was definitely not love on first sight. But, as I had went through what I considered the trouble of getting myself to town I wasn't gonna go home empty handed. It wasn't really because of the in-risk pointless effort of going into town that made me buy the game that day though, it was the definite knowledge of the boredom and disappointment for the upcoming weekend if I didn't bring something home.
Whattahell. Alright. This is it. The guy working in the store was surprised as I put my shoe-box on the counter. I was 14 years old. I was a little chubby and had a pretty geeky, though common, parted-in-the-middle haircut. I definitely wasn't a cool kid. He asked me if I knew the PEGI was 16, and I tried my coolest sayin' someting like "Yeah, man, that's alright". I don't think it worked in my favor. What did, though, was that he himself had played the game as he thought it looked interesting and was happy about someone else wanting to buy it. So I got to buy the game. Happy enough about going to the bus with that new game I was hoping for, I returned home.
So there I was, a few hours later. The installing process to long, as usual. Intriguing pictures during the process. Pretty psyched as I hit that red button next to "Play". That golden Interplay globe. The BoS execution, the Mr Handy commercial.
"War. War never changes."
I was completely hooked. I loved every bit of it. The character creation screen. The look and feel of the menus and everything. That first scary date with the radscorpion.
I had been playing a lot of games before Fallout, dating back to my mother bringing me and my brother a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old. I had been playing a lot of those games for hours. For hundreds of ours. But with Fallout, I was in love for the first time. No, really, the first time. The first girl I really fell in love with was 3 years later.
I loved it so much, I didn't really speak about it with anyone. I didn't want anyone else to ruin my story. Back then, "playthrough" wasn't in my vocabulary - it was my one and only story. The story of Marvin (I liked the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a lot as a kid, though I understood after playing for a bit the name wasn't the greatest fit but there was no way I was starting over). I cared more about my dog in the game than my cat in real life. More about Ian than my real friends. I don't know how many hours I clocked. Plenty, to say the least.
A few years later both me and the Internet had outgrown watching Ginger Spice's pre-fame nudes, and I was completely aware of the upcoming Fallout 2. Ahead of the Christmas the game was getting released in Sweden I did what I haven't done neither before nor after: searched my house for Christmas gifts. I was too old for that and could easily have bought the game myself, but I wanted to get every last potential tiny bit of excitement out of the fact that I was soon gonna return to the Wasteland. I didn't find the game. But I did find a receipt telling me my mom had bought it for me. Knowing I would be getting it on Christmas Eve (that's when the gifts are given in Sweden) I enjoyed the growing excitement. As I didn't speak of Fallout with anyone, there was noone able to ruin anything for me.
I enjoyed Fallout 2 as well. My love is perhaps strongest for that first one - there IS always something special about anything "first" - but Fallout 2 was probably a better game. At least it held more, and I couldn't get enough.
Years went by. I kept growing. Up, I suppose. In the fall of 2008 Fallout 3 was about to be released. Interplay wasn't involved. Betheseda hade bought the Fallout license a few years back. Bethesda had released Oblivion in 2006 and it was obvious they would turn Fallout into something similar. I bought and tried to play Oblivion so many times as some kind of preparing-therapy. But I could never make myself play it even the few minutes it would take to get out of the prison-cave or whatever.
The first time I saw gameplay footage from Fallout 3 I actually cried. A fucking first-person-shooter-guy (although sometimes in ugly third-person-view) walking backwards while firing MY precious 9 mm SMG.
I wanted to want the game so bad. The day of release I still hadn't pre-ordered. Though totally aware of the fact it was getting released, I went by a Game-store on my way home from work and bought it. I didn't play it that evening. Not the day efter either. When the weekend came I forced myself to do it.
The intro was okay. I tried so hard not to think about the old games, but to instead think of this Fallout 3, developed by fricking Bethesda, as a completely different beast. I managed to do so for a few minutes. The character creation and the being-a-baby is kind of alright. But the first time I saw myself in a Vault jumpsuit with a gun in my hand i third-person I wanted to throw up.
It took me years to complete Fallout 3. Fallout: New Vegas was a much better experience for me. I'd like to think I can control my feelings better as I get older, and knowing what I was getting myself into I gave F:NV a chance to prove itself on it's own merits, so to speak. "Okay, this is a Fallout game that's as much a FPS as it is a RPG". New Vegas has aiming down sights. To me, that was important. That made me not think as much "you fucked up my Fallout so much I can't actually stand it". Instead I was like "okay, your trying to at least make the game you're making the right way".
I will probably never play the actual third Fallout game. And soon I will play Fallout 4. I'm gonna try really hard to enjoy the game. I think it looks promising if one is able to see past everything that makes it not really Fallout...
As I write this I totally understand that this post is both long and pretty sad. But for the first time I found a place where I actually wanted to share my feelings about Fallout. So, thanks for that, guys. I think I'm gonna be better off now.
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