The Digital Antiquarian on the history of Fallout

[PlanHex]

A trip down memory lane with the history of the making of Fallout at The Digital Antiquarian:

» The CRPG Renaissance, Part 1: Fallout The Digital Antiquarian

It goes through the state of the cRPG genre at Fallouts inception and release, Tim, Leonard and Jason making the game over pizzas or pancakes or whatever, and all the GURPS and Wasteland stuff you all probably already know, plus the usual "Ian blocked a doorway and bursted me in the back, this game sucks actually".
It's good, go read it.

 

[The_Proletarian]

Awesome! I was going to post this later, I was reading it now.

There's some nice information in there about the whole GURPS thing that I've never gotten my head around before. But he missed other things like that it was Brian Fargo who came up with the idea to organize the attributes so that the acronym spelled SPECIAL.

And I don't really see his point about it being boring to fight rats in the beginning since I didn't have a problem with that when I first played Fallout. And I also found Vault 15 fascinating to explore and not just a shore of fighting more rats. And it"s like he ignorera the fact that you will probably be visiting Shade Sands before going to Vault 15 anyway.

Also the interface isn't as unintuitive as he tries to make it out because I learnt it easily when I was 14 without even knowing English and a friend of mine played Fallout 2 already back when he was ten and he figured it out without knowing English either. So I think it must be pretty intuitive otherwise that wouldn't be possible.

e: He also complains about the time limit which is so stupid.

e2: He says you can't trade items with your companions and that you have to use pickpocketing as last resort. But can't you just use barter with them like normal NPCs?

 

[Lexx]

The Ian meme gets really tiresome. That said, am I the only one who actually never experienced getting shot into the back by him? It's over 20 years now and I can't recall a moment like that, ever.

Fo1 bartering with companions still cost money. At least taking stuff from them. However, using pickpocket on them is the superior way of swapping stuff anyways, since it's faster and you skip unnecessary interfaces. Even in Fo2 where bartering with them for sure costs no money this is very tedious and should only be used when wanting to switch armor or guns.

I never had issues with the rats in the beginning either. Especially since you can just run past them if you are really in a hurry.

Regarding the interface, I'm guessing this is more intuitive for us, because most games back then were played like that. Modern games are super dumbed down and don't need you to do half that stuff (swapping cursor mode etc), which is why those people find the old interface not intuitive.

 

[Resardiv]

The Ian meme gets really tiresome. That said, am I the only one who actually never experienced getting shot into the back by him? It's over 20 years now and I can't recall a moment like that, ever.

I 100% agree with you on that. It's gotten to the point where people trying F1 for the first time never bother experimenting with other weapons. SAD!