split/screen co-op

Word cloud of 5 Fallout intros. Click for larger view.

War, war never changes. It is one of gaming’s best-loved catch-phrases. But what does it mean? In what sense does war never change? Certainly, warfare — the ways in which a war is fought — has changed dramatically in the millennia leading up to Fallout’s fictional 2050s. Weapons, tactics, scale: every aspect of conflict has undergone transformation. Fallout’s world is not that dissimilar to our own and we can safely know as much.

Death and destruction are a staple of war but their scale differs vastly from conflict to conflict. Even the most advanced of energy weapons found in the wasteland is a relic from a past that is being forgotten and a far cry from the nuclear war that caused all the desolation. The game’s primitive, back-to-basics setting also suggests that the presumably constant factor may lie much deeper and closer to the roots of conflict than something as superficial as tools and means.

Why do people go to war? Perhaps there is a single fundamental reason underlining all conflicts.

bottle caps by ~avspoisoner on deviantART

On the surface, Fallout’s bottle-cap currency is a clever gimmick, that seems to lend realism to the world in which the games play out. Dig deeper though and you will find its very existence is logically unjustifiable.

The best science fiction out there has the double trait of being both an engaging piece of literature and a credible prediction for the future. Will currently existing systems and social features endure? How will they be transformed by future circumstances? What will be lost, what will be gained? The Fallout games look like they are attempting to answer those questions. But they ultimately fail to provide persuasive answers, as the example of the flawed monetary system in the game world indicates.

Fallout first aid kit I by dywa

If I were deterministically minded, I’d be likely to say something along the lines of “it seems as though I wasn’t meant to like the Fallout series”. My big Fallout marathon, which I was looking forward to so much, has been plagued by a number of misfortunes that could have shaken the will of one less committed to success.

But not me. Adamantium is weak compared with my determination to like the Fallout universe and the games set in it. I bandage up after each blow and carry on.

After the jump I recap what I have overcome so far: events that have understandably dampened my role-playing spirits somewhat but not to the point of giving up.

Oops. Was that a wall I just broke?

Something weird happened just now in Fallout 2. I was driving from Broken Hills to New Reno and I got one of those random encounters where the game asks you whether you’d like to meet so-and-so or not. This time it was “a man guarding a bridge”, which sounded intriguing and I opted to check him out.

Hit the jump to see what happened.

Omar Little

Meet Omar — my Fallout 2 character who is obviously inspired by Omar Little from The Wire. Actually, inspired is too inadequate a term: I basically tried to recreate the same guy within the confines of Fallout 2‘s desolate California.

Hit the jump for the full story.

Fallout by Karezoid

I’ve been plotting to do this for a while and finally the time has come. As I write this, Fallout is being installed on my hard drive and in a matter of minutes I will have embarked on my journey. Check out details after the jump.

PipBoy Pumpkin Fallout by CrossdressingKuja

There isn’t much of a pumpkin-carving scene in where we live, so we are left with only one option: to marvel at internet pictures of what somebody has carved somewhere else. Well, I guess, technically we have the option to carve pumpkins ourselves but who has three hours to do that?

Jump on for the answer.