Why Fallout Isn't Fallout - 20th Anniversary Analysis | Interplay vs. Bethesda's Fallout 

Thanks for taking this tour through the wasteland with me! Please consider supporting the channel... PATREON ► www.patreon.com/IndigoGaming BECOME A RU-vid MEMBER ► ru-vid.com/show-UCTRohxutThBffdcP3H6O0Zgjoin GET FALLOUT ON GOG (Affiliate link) ► indigogaming.link/Fallout

I live in Detroit and it's not THAT bad you just have to avoid the bands of raiders by hiding in all the burned down buildings.

Fallout 2 basically taught me english. I've had to buy dictionary to understand 8000 screens of dialogs. Very well spent time imho.

Fallout 4, in theory: I need to find my son who was kidnapped Fallout 4, in reality: I need to find a stock of militar duch tape so i can turn my pipegun into a death machine

Best part of fallout 4 was the weapon upgrading I spent more time looking for aluminum than i ever did for Shuan

Didn't Obsidian only have 16 months to create New Vegas? Despite the time constraints, I think they did a really good job.

There's a stranger drowning. ~Fallout 3~ I will save the stranger I will not save the stranger [barter] for more caps i might save the stranger [intelligence] the stranger is drowning Where's my dad? ~Fallout New Vegas~ I will save the stranger I will not save the stranger [barter] double the caps and I'll save the stranger I will kill the stranger myself Why's the stranger in the lake? Who is this stranger? [medicine] thanks to my medical knowledge I will easily be able to save the stranger [survival] uh, yeah, i totally know how to swim ~Fallout 4~ Yes Sarcastic yes Where's shaun? (yes) The difference between the last fallout games.

Fallout 3: Trying to get your dad back Fallout 4: Trying to get your son back. Fallout 76: trying to get your money back. Bethesda: Trying to get their credibility back.

It’s those imperfections that make fallout New Vegas great, because despite how flawed and glitchy it is, at its core it’s ambitious, funny, and you can tell it was made with the blood, sweat and heart of the fellas at obsidian despite being broke and having an outrageously short amount of development time. We will never get another game like it.

fallout 1 and 2: to join brotherhood of steel you must do an impossible task fallout 3 and 4: wow you are welcome in our ranks, total stranger, here's your vertibird and power armor

Wow...even in the 80's EA was destroying the gaming industry.

Chad Cameron responding to a groin shot with, "I have too many young already..." is probably the best unmentioned joke in this whole damn video.

I still think Fallout 2 is one of the best CRPGS of all time

Comparing a nuclear wasteland to modern day Detroit might be a little unfair, after all, they only had to deal with a few bombs and some radiation.

As someone who actually lived in Vegas for 10 years, I can tell you that the western influence is pretty spot on about Nevada as a whole and was my personal favorite part of New Vegas.

Fallout 1: hmm let’s just start as a vault dweller. Bethesda fallouts: *dweller* *dweller*

bruh i agree with most of this but if you don't want characters in the southwest to sound like they're from the southwest, then you might as well not play a game set in the southwest.

Calling new vegas bad for its setting and storyline is absurd.

Bethesda logic: if it ain't broken, then break it

Something I've noticed in later fallout games is how they treated the supermutent in the fallout 1n2 you can see that the supermutent are humans that forgot who they are and some still has thier humanity and seeing them struggle was really sad and you feel how they are trying remember and trying to live normally it's hurt breaking when you read some of the blogs in the master headquarters While in fallout 3_4 has made them into a comic relief ogres that you just kill

the only good part of fallout 4 was the overhaul of power armor. too bad they ruined it by giving it to you within 30 minutes and limiting it through fusion cells instead of gating it off by either needing training to wear or something.

As much as I did enjoy Fallout 4's gameplay once it was modded, it was a dumpster fire if you look at it from outside the box. Mind you, I actually worked on the Fallout 3: Broken Steel DLC as a 3D Artist, the biggest issue that the company had is that they drowned out any sort of bottom/up recommendations. Most of the guys were recommended to play Fallout 1 and 2 before working on the project and honestly, most just put in some hours on Fallout 1 which is why Fallout 3 felt so lack luster armor/weapon wise compared to New Vegas. Fallout 4's main downfall? Skyrim inflated upper management's ego. They saw the success of Mass Effect 2 and wanted to link it to games like that to capitalize on that crowd. They also have a huge problem within the company of pushing through the QA cycle to cut launch time. During Fallout 3, we had internal testers and they were given 2 weeks to bug test and submit. I have no idea how long Fallout 4 had but the major game breaking bugs that plagued the game at launch kept coming back and or were just swept under the rug. Which leads me to BGS's biggest issue. They burn through DevSys Ops and Technical Engineers like mad. During the 6 months I worked on Broken Steel, we averaged 76 hours a week in work. I wish that was a joke. IT was all about the Crunch baby, and Upper Management was always coming down to give us talks while we worked about how much of a great job we were doing and keep at it because we were awesome. 1-2 years of that of a DevSys Ops having to write major code for game mechanics and you can guess why problems keep coming up. If you can't, imagine a turn-over rate of necessary engineers to update game mechanics leaving and your new guys coming in constantly playing catch-up and trying to understand someone else's code even if they put in footnotes which means while one guy might have grasped why one bug was happening, the next guy might not and this lead to major bugs just getting ignored. All in the name of making that launch date. Is it wrong to have a job that has long hours at the end of a quarter or near the end of a project to make sure it comes out right? No, it happens in most industries, the problem with BGS, is that they pushed this mentality the entire time when we worked on FO3, so I can guarantee they were doing it for Skyrim and FO4. Fallout 4 was a "dumpster" fire because like usual, upper management wanted all the cool flashy effects, new mechanics, and more with burned out staff, most likely new coders because the others either left or took extended leaves of absences or issues that were voiced by lower staff were out right ignored in the name of making a dead line. This is literally what happens when corporate gets involved in technical and developmental aspects while having little idea how it really works and just bark out the phrase "just get it done." In the end, my experience with that gaming company pretty much killed my desire to work in that industry ever again. I did a bit of work for Wargaming.net as a Historical Consultant as well as with Gaijin for War Thunder, but other than that I basically didn't go back. While I didn't mind busting my ass working long hours, fuck, I was in the Marine Corps during war time for fuck sake, I really didn't like the idea of dealing with people who couldn't listen to problems from someone seeing them and watching those people who knew what the fuck was going on just getting ignored. There is a reason why gaming studios like Harebrain Schemes and inXile Entertainment came around and dropped games like Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun/Battletech and they did great. They cut out the bullshit from Corporate, went right to the consumer base and delivered what everyone wanted without feeling like they were selling their soul to do it. Fallout 4 was just that, the game that most of the developers just went in to get a check hating how much corporate didn't give a fuck about how they felt anymore. Fallout 76 basically just proved that point hook, line, and sinker.

My first experience with Fallout was Fallout 4. It was, to me, a cute, casual, open world fps with an uninteresting main quest. It was fun going around and collecting supplies and killing enemies, but never satisfying. Then I picked up the first Fallout for the first time. I was shocked by the complexity of the character creation screen. By the time I left the starting cave, I realized I was in over my head. No tutorial, no map, just a knife, a handgun, and my wits. The world was huge, but it felt small because I knew it wouldn't level down and go easy on me. Two quests in, and I already felt more connected to the world than in FO4, where everything seemed to be a sandbox for my entertainment, and no one important would die no matter what. The Fallout world should be hostile and gloomy. You should feel like you're walking through the skeleton of a colossal civilization, that, as great as it once was, has lost relevance in the brutal world of kill or be killed. One of the worst offenders against the true meaning of Fallout in my opinion is the mini-nuke. It reduces the nuke's status as a weapon of mass destruction and takes away the fearful reverence we have for the weapon that humanity used to singlehandedly destroy itself, turning it into a throwaway gag of a power fantasy weapon. It gives you the "oh, cool, what if I had the power to control a nuke" without realizing the horror and self destruction inherent to the weapon of mass destruction on which the entire franchise was founded. (EDIT: Wow! 600 likes? Uncle Barry's gonna be so proud!)

“Fallout 4 is a good game, but a bad *fallout* game”

I was raised playing fallout 3 and NV and because of this I’ve become obsessed with the game and going back looking at the art pieces that are 1,2 I love them. But looking at 76 it’s almost like going back to your childhood home and seeing it’s been replaced by a block of flats with a Tesco extra at the bottom of it

Todd Howard: makes fallout 76 you've lost karma

This video is way more relevant after fallout 76

Indigogames: Fallout isn't Fallout anymore. Fallout 76: Hold my Nuka-Cola

This shit makes me so sad knowing the new TV show that's coming out is "canon" and is going to outright ignore everything that makes the originals good

“Compare fallout 4 to modern day Detroit, and it doesn’t look all that bad” daaaaaaaaaamn

"It's said war - war never changes. Men do, through the roads they walk" -Ulysses

After the TV show this essay hits even harder now. I wonder in a couple months once the fanboying calms down people will think more objectively instead of calling any criticism "hating".

It's depressing to know this franchise is now Bethesda MMO cash cow and there gonna milk it until it's dead.

"Old Fallout's world was persistent, and challenged and threatened you but ultimately bent to your will with enough effort. New Fallout's world revolved around you -welcomed, guided and worked to bend you to its will." Best quote in the whole video.

You forgot to mention that Bethesda gave Obsidian a very unrealistic timeline in which to develop the game, and essentially forced it out pretty early when it wasn't ready (and yet they still made a better game than Bethesda has ever managed to with the franchise lol).

My 10yr old son's first real gaming experience was FO4. Then he played FO76 for a little bit. He was helping clean out our garage and found my old Fallout and Fallout 2 discs. I was very surprised to see how much more he likes them than the Bethesda games. He hasn't touched the newer games since.

6 years later, this is still one of the greatest gaming video essays ever made. It's fascinating how little of Fallout's modern fan base actually understands any of this.

"People spoken with a cowboy affectation, and said mean things." Probably the most laughable nit-pick I've heard about New Vegas.

And then Fallout 76 came out and proved you completely right.

This video is even more relevant after the tv series.

My parents explaining what happens if I don't do good in school: 4:51

Man, those death animations on fallout 1 were so cool

Imagine fallout detroit, where at the end of the game the twist is that the great war didn't happen, you just woke up in 2017 detroit.

Death animations in fallout 2 is one of the best ones done ever in any game even today, even though vermintide 2 and The Darkness 2 is a top pick aswell. Age of conan had some pretty good ones aswell

You know it's sad when a 'old' video critiquing a franchise hasn't aged a bit :(

Fallout new Vegas will FOREVER be my favorite the tone and emptiness that the empty casinos would feel like the brown tint even I loved that as well. And all the dlc they made was huge the big empty all of that.

came back to this 5 years later to find it again what a fine video indeed

Fans : If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Bethesda : Ok guys we got it. *Proceed to change and dumb down everything that wasn't broken*

I feel like new Vegas was very close to a perfect balance of the old and the new, and with mods I was able to bring it to that. But that's just me

Watching this again after the disaster that is the TV show, and boy does the video's ending really hit the point home. Bethesda never understood Fallout, and the TV show is the final nail in that coffin.

After watching the show I’ve just come to accept the fact Fallout as a whole is now just an amusement ride now-a-days. But is the show good?👍 yeah its pretty good. Is it fallout? No not really👎That concerns me because i feel as though peeps are gonna get the wrong idea about fallout as a whole.

I really enjoyed Fallout New Vegas. I thought it was the closest to the original Fallout games.

The voice acting was so amazing in fallout and fallout 2

In defense of F3, and the games following’s radios, I personally feel like it adds an extra layer of depth to the world. It feels like the last grip of hope in a grim, dark, and ultimately depressing wasteland of the once proud country of America. Not to mention the ignorance of the situation. Ignorance is bliss, yeah? The radio’s a perfect example of that. The second you turn off the radio, fallout’s grim nature seeps into everything you do. It all feels so ultimately dark. It’s the last grip of hope and bliss in the post-nuclear wasteland.

I have a feeling you will hate the new tv show

Fallout 3: I need to find my dad. Fallout 4: I need to find my son.

If they like remove the backstory of fallout 4 and start up at you waking up from the cyro sleep with amnesia like new vegas it would be in my opinion so much better because it will leave you with questions about yourself and instead finding your lost son it will be finding your lost self which will mean a better roleplay

One thing you lacked pointing out was in FO 1 or 2 if you scraped int. for strength or anything else the NPC's would treat you like you were stupid. Something missing in FO3

I'm currently attempting to play Fallout 1, 2, and then New Vegas. What I am really disappointed to see about Bethesda's Fallout games is how stuck it in "1950s" rather than the retrofuturism the original creators intended and that in Fallout 4 - 200 YEARS AFTER THE BOMBS DROPPED - seemingly no progression has been done? From what I can see Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas showcase this that in the chaotic world people are trying to restore some kind of order.

yeah but i feel new vegas deserves more credit. in 18 months obsidian did a phenomenal job, better than bethesda’s attempts

Bethesda responded to the backlash over Fallout 4's dialogue by completely removing the system from the next game. These guys do not understand Fallout at all.

16:00 ooooof. Yes, listen to desert wind from fallout 1. Billions dead within a year as people died and rotted all around, looted, killed and eventually all plants and nutrients died and killed the world creating a dust bowl. The original soundtrack expressed this perfectly. And the title too, desert winds, literally hearing the horrors of the past carried on desert, irradiated wind. It was, chefs kiss.

My head canon is that there are 3 different alternate histories. One branched off when the games say there was one and when bethesda bought it

Replaying Fallout 2 really put everything in perspective a lot better for me. 1 and 2 Really feel like this post nuclear world, whereas 4 just lacks that feeling. Along with that the good old games had a lot more creativity and got a lot darker themes. Fallout 4 is pretty much a slotmachine with flashing lights, images and funny sounds with literally EVERYTHING you do, really taking the grim nature out of the game, while every important NPC is protected from death so you can't kill somebody important and break a quest. Meanwhile in Fallout 2 you could easily destroy your only hope for progressing the main quest by killing the wrong NPC. Or going in such a dark territory that when you are to assassinate somebody, you could actually put a live time bomb on a child and tell it to run over to his dad so they both blow up. That's fucked up and dark, but the important part is you COULD do that, it was a option.

I think New Vegas is the route Fallout should go. It's a mix of both worlds and the blend is done greatly. They need to return to New Vegas' style of gameplay. They also should explore more of the world, the areas they are set in matter greatly and I don't think Boston was a good choice at all...

I can’t lie, turning on the oldies radio and walking around the wasteland takes me right back to being a kid playing on Christmas. It’s some solid nostalgia.

Bethesda doesn’t deserve the fallout IP

"Old Fallout showcased a world whose ethos was shattered by the nuclear bomb. New Fallout let you build a gun that fires nuclear bombs." Spot on.

It's amazing how far we can stray from the vision of a game we loved and yet still be blinded by the name.

This video is even more relevant now after the release of the TV show. Personally, I feel that it took everything bad Bethesda Fallouts had and doubled down on it, to the point where I consider Fallout to be a dead series for me. I wrote my own short essay about it, mostly for myself - to organize my own thoughts and process my feelings - but I might as well put it here since you seem to be still reading the comments years after. ========================== Fallout, at its core, was always a very bleak series. Dark, miserable, unfair... gory, even. But it was also always a hopeful one. In all Interplay games - 1, 2, New Vegas - people were rebuilding. Picking up what was left and putting it to use, again. This is probably not a very common sentiment, but the most powerful moment in the entire series for me was "PMV Valdez Sets Sail" cutscene from Fallout 2. Ancient and rusted, left in the dock for decades, the ship turns to life once more, losing layers of trash and debris as it slowly moves... this is what Fallout meant, to me. I wasn't against Bethesda until now. In fact, Fallout 3 was the first game I played, back when I was, like, twelve. I loved it! I couldn't express it back then, but I loved how utterly detached from itself the game was, the painful contrast between cheerful music and the bleak reality you find yourself in. It's something Bethesda added to the series. Neither 1, nor 2, nor New Vegas did this, but it's good in its own way. It means something to me, too. I don't think it's supposed to be jaunty or fun, it's supposed to clash with the environment and kind of highlight it. And yet, with the release of the TV show, it has become clear to me that Bethesda's vision of the series is fundamentally incompatible with what I want from it - hope. The quintessential "Bethesda Fallout" is not 3 or 4. It's actually 76, because it shows you the big picture. You may be doing something that seems vaguely good in the moment, but zoom out just a little bit, and you'll see a stagnant world, with clowns running around launching nukes for shallow, meaningless fun. "Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war, which never changes. There is no peace amongst the wastes, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of uncaring Todds."

If Starfield is anything to go by, Fallout 5 will probably be even worse than 4.

"I don't want my Midwest post-post-apocolyptic cowboy mailman simulator to have Midwest accents, it ruins immersion" Of all the criticisms towards New Vegas that might be the nitpickiest one I've ever heard, and absolutely wrong on immersion breaking.

The thing about Fallout 1 and 2 is that they convey a very clear message, a post apocalyptic world is harsh and unforgiving. In Fallout 4 however, a post apocalyptic world is fun and exciting. You need only watch the Fallout 4 trailer to understand that.

Fallout is literally one of my favorite game series and it’s sad how Bethesda has diminished it 😔

Fallout 1 & 2 are grim and intense like few games I've ever seen. I remember having to dedicate entire evenings just figure out where to go next. Bethesda's fallouts are easy to pick up, feel good games. I see why long time fans of the series prefer the original, but personally, after a long day of work and a bunch of other adult chores I prefer a Bethesda's simpler sandbox, I play, I run around and explore, I shoot bad guys, I customise my character, I feel good.

Did you know: the voice actor who voice the main character is fallout 3 and new Vegas also voiced Gordon freeman in half life 1 and 2.

I miss the dark atmosphere of 90s games

200 years is a lot of time for progress to happen, it honestly feels the worlds, and particularly the people, of fallout 3/4 are utterly incompetent because they're still living in barely constructed shacks, trash is everywhere in the major settlements, and they expect you to be the one to fix things up. Like, I *love* the basebuilding in Fallout 4, its honestly what draws me to the game, but 200 years worth of time and the best people can muster is a shack that would fall down if you looked at it funny. The United States as a whole is barely older than 200 years. Its not like the wasteland of Fallout 4 doesn't have cement mixing because Piper's dialogue with her affinity talks mentions that the wall in Diamond City eventually got repaired with, in her words "real brick and mortar". Its honestly easier to believe that the player character is only about 30 years older than the pre war.

This age really well, especially after 76.. hope Microsoft fix this series

16:50 good point. that ambient music practically sounds like the Earth itself is screaming in agony in slow motion.

New Vegas bones (reputation, leveling, etc) with Fallout 4 paint (customization, building, etc), plus a bit of a darker tone would be the perfect Fallout game.

If Bethesda actually took time to analyze the classic games, we probably would have got an actual third Fallout game with the other Bethesda Fallouts being similar. Instead, they said "50s apocalypse game, lets do that" and called it a day.

Played fallout 2 when i was 13ish. Mechanic npc forced me to marry his daughter after we got caught in action. I got her addicted to Jet, pimped her out a few times then sold her to slavery. Yeah, they don't make them like they use to(i mean games).

They need to make fallout darker physically and pathologically

I don't think the issue is that Fallout is a First Person Shooter, honestly I rather a FPS than an a turn based game. The issue is Bethesda's handling of it, and how they've tried to make it into a more linear story, compared to Interplay's old styled, open world options, with well developed characters, perks, stats, and reputation system.

I personally like the juxtaposition of Fallout's brutality and the upbeat 1950s pop-jazz. I also like enjoy turning the radio off and just listening to the tumbleweeds too.

I feel like a lot of people in my position would feel this way. But I have played through 1 and 2 more than 5 times each, never tactics or BoS. Now, with that being said, I have played 3, NV, and 4 at least 50+ times from start to almost complete finish every time, besides the mods, I think Bethesda made an awesome and addicting framework to the FPS/TPS RPG genre, the only game that makes me wanna replay over and over was the outer worlds, and that was made by the a lot of the devs from NV. I'm glad we have both iterations of fallout to explore and deep dive.

2:20 EA. EA never changes

Okay. That Vault Dweller getting blown in half and then desperately crawling back to the vault door in a vain attempt to return to safety before death was intense. The most recent Fallouts, including New Vegas(which I love dearly), don't really offer anything close to that.

They didn't actually remove the children. They just turned them invisible so European players had no way of stealing the items back from them. They had to wait to see it in shops. Funny tbh

I never played F1 or 2, but I specifically remember liking how much more violent and bleak NV was from F3, and also remembering how that atmosphere felt missing in F4.

still better face animations than andromeda's

Post 76 release, this video makes me want to cry. How far Fallout has gone down in flames as a franchise.

Never has this been more relevant than now, after the release of the Fallout TV show. On that note, how do you feel about Tim Cain's largely favorable take on it?

It speaks volumes that, in this remade era of Fallout filled with over-the-top, in-your-face pop culture references, inoffensive storytelling, and generic sci-fi retro-futuristic aesthetics, the best character in this entire franchise has been the Mormon badass Joshua Graham. Deep, introspective, and is brought about with a heavy theme of morality and religion. You can polish and shine Fallout into just another adventure shooter, but you can never erase its roots in post-apocalyptic grimdark. This franchise is practically made for it.

Fallout 76 is a disgrace to the Fallout series.

Wow, EA has a long legacy of being lords of evil.

Black Isle and Obsidian built worlds that were harsh, and had to be tamed through force, skill, and character growth. Bethesda built worlds that bend to the player's will immediately, allowing them to do whatever they wanted with little to no consequences. Essentially, Bethesda is better at creating sandboxes rather than RPG's now.

I find the facial animations in dialogue to be incredibly engaging. I never knew they were animated over hand made models. That's just awesome and really intuitive imo, and just makes me like it more. But yeah the original Fallout's were better

the title should have been "why fallout had a fallout"