Fred and Loathing on The Internet

War... War Never Changes. Why Would Fallout?

2026-Feb-27

When you’re talking about Fallout, I suppose the game is what you ought to be talking about. That’s how it all started and I am confident it will continue in that form. Fallout may have started as a video game, but it has gotten bigger than just video games. Definitely bigger than PC-only turned-based RPGs.

Fallout has exploded out of the nerdy corners of PC gaming. Well, exploded might explain it’s more recent progress in the social zeitgeist. The first decade of Fallout was still a PC-nerd only affair. Now that we are almost up to the thirtieth anniversary of the first game’s release, there are now playlists on Spotify cataloging the music found in the games, and with some more added from around the same era of American pop music. Hot Topic has t-shirts with the retrofuturistic art or kitschy novelties that are replicas of in-game items. There is even a big-budget Fallout TV series now. I don’t know if it’s as popular as TV shows get, but it looks like it costs a lot of money to produce. I’ll assume a second expensive looking season and confirmation of a third means that it’s popular enough.

I’d like to say the reason why Fallout got so big could be answered simply because it was a fun game. All of them. All the ones I’ve played at least. The bare mechanics of the game are enveloping. Every way you play the game can be tweaked. Most every aspect of Fallout allowed every player to find their own style. Shoot your way through problems. Or blow them up. Or have your friends do the shooting and explosions. Or just sneak around to avoid all the violence. And then try another style once you beat the game once.

Lurking between all these aspects of how you can play the game is a vibe of Americana that lured me. Something that is more than just the rules about how many turns it takes to fire a 10mm pistol or the probability of stealing the shirt off the back of a junktown dealer. That big smiling 1950s cartoon Vault Boy beaming with optimism found on a rusty billboard among the ruins of nuclear holocaust was an artistic juxtaposition that pulled me into The Wasteland. The idea of an RPG that was not about dungeons, dragons, wizards, or the usual fantasy stuff was something I was looking for back when that’s the only thing video game RPGs would offer. Mixing in the broken optimism of post-war USA cemented this game into my personal hall of fame.

My journey began with Fallout 2 in 1998. That was followed by Fallout Tactics. ( I dug it. The game lets you have a deathclaw on your team! No other Fallout that I know of let you do that. ) Each game to me opened my eyes further as to what a video game could do. The first generation of games (1,2, and Tactics) were stuck in a 2D world. Within that flat game world that could only be seen one 800x600 pixels at a time, there was depth and width that I did not see in the console RPGs I played before.

On the internet I see memes about people thinking they’ll die of old age before Fallout 5 will be released. These voices ache and wine about Bethesda Interactive ( the current owners of the Fallout intellectual property ) not working fast enough to develop the game. They proclaim that the Fallout consumers want a new game now! I suppose I am a Fallout consumer. I even got a Vault Boy tattoo, so I branded the flesh with the game's mascot. Be that as it may, I do not sympathize with the ardent cries of fanboys who want Fallout 5 delivered right into their hands.

I ain’t saying I wouldn’t be intrigued with what the next game could offer. I hope some new developers put out a fine game that pioneers new concepts along the lines of its forebears. Fallout 2, 1, Tactics, 3, and New Vegas (that’s the order I played them) were each a joy to play. I had apprehensions about Fallout 4, which was released over ten years ago now.

Those previous iterations of Fallout before ‘4’ were such a joy to play that another romp in The Wasteland did not jump at my bones when it was released. There was just not enough left in me for exploring another map teeming with radiated oddities. I've done it before. Back in the isometric sprite days where the written story really had to carry the day. I did it again when Bethesda picked up the financial pieces of Interplay to put out 3D rendered forays into The Wasteland.

That first jaunt out of the vault door and into the blinding sun in 3D in Fallout 3 in 2008 was a 1990s dream come true. You could see over the horizon at what could be explored. The Wasteland was not a bunch of artistic elements like music, menu UI, costumes, or whatever could be done to let the player feel they’re in a vast explorable area of wacky radioactive adventures. The Wasteland was not a concept that could only be experienced as little playable hubs on a flat map. After the leap into 3D, The Wasteland was the ground you walked on, teeming with fun and scary stuff that appeared before your eyes.

When Fallout 4 rolled around seven years later, New Vegas had already done Fallout in 3D again. New Vegas brought with it some of the original developers from the 2D days of Fallout. Fallout 3 walked in 3D so that New Vegas could run. I played the hell out of that one. Probably more than any other of the series. So much that my Fallout meter was full.

At least for a while. I did get around to Fallout 4. What put me off about it was how I heard the game was more narrow. Less of a role-playing-game and more of a first-person-shooter game with elements of exploration and skills that could be leveled up.

It was that, and I regret not playing it sooner. Fallout 4 showed me that the Fallout universe's mojo is not just having a huge amount of choices to proceed with the story. It was The Wasteland itself. A playable area that is a sandbox with lots of toys available to mess around with. Fallout 4 is a stand-out example of visual storytelling doing the job instead of scripting out events. That’s what I like in a video game! A place where I can play, not be told what to do.

Fallout 5 can arrive whenever it arrives. I’ll take a look. Until then, I am very pleased with how much Fallout has provided in entertainment and even stuff to ponder about. It definitely gave me a curated look into big band jazz and super ancient country music. It sounds schmaltzy, but I’m just glad the game happened and got enough incremental success to eventually get an audience large enough to justify making a TV series set in the same Wasteland and continuity as the games. It was good enough for the mass of slackjawed TV-watching normies to like.