The Fallout Series is a series of four role playing games (named Fallout 1,2, and 3 and New Vegas) and a series of more action oriented spin offs named Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel; both of which are considered non-canon by developers and generally ignored by the players. The first two were developed by Black Isle Studios, released in 1997 and 1998, the third was developed by Bethesda Softworks of Elder Scrolls fame and released in 2008; and New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and produced by Bethesda in 2010.
The main series revolve around the player character interacting with a post-nuclear war America in the years 2161 (fallout 1), 2241 (fallout 2), 2277 (fallout 3) and 2281 (New Vegas).
The setting of the fallout series is in a alternate timeline post nuclear war America; with the first two games taking place in the California region, the third in the immediate area of Washington DC and New Vegas in the area of the Mojave Desert around Las Vegas.
Background of the in game world
The Games timeline split off from the real world shortly after WW2 ended, with american culture staying at the 1950's while technology followed the path of the "World of the future; complete with fusion powered cars and robots, laser rifles and the world as seen in a leave it to beaver episode. Also kept from the 50's was the extreme (and in some/many cases justified) paranoia of communism. This state would last until the late 2040's, when oil supplies across the world began to run dry, and conflict broke out in the resource wars, seeing the united nations disband, fighting between the European commonwealth (this worlds EU) and the Middle east until the oil fields ran out; and eventually, America VS China for control of the alaskan pipeline (which also caused the United states to annex Canada).
Fear of the imminent nuclear war would cause the United states to start the vault program, which was designed to build a number of underground fallout bunkers that could hold a thousand people until it was safe to recolonize the earth. However, through the machinations of the semi-shadow government Enclave, most became social experiments that were never designed to actually save it's inhabitants. At the same time the American culture was on rotten stands, soon to collapse as the strain of the world began to take it's toll.
All of this would become pointless on October 21st, 2077, when the world slate was wiped clean in a 2 hour long nuclear bombardment that radically changed the world. It is not known who fired first, but as far as most people living in the wastes care, it doesn't matter.
Immediately after the war, chaos ruled as people tried to find a place to survive the bombs. Many people either died of radiation sickness or turned into ghouls, besides the lucky few who were killed by normal methods of death. To compound on a horrible situation, entire continents either sunk or rose, mountains were created and the entire world environment collapsed, with most of the planet turning into a barren wasteland; ontop of the black radiation filled rain that killed most surviving species after the war.
Common elements of the series
Radiation acts much like it did in the 1950's world of tomorrow, and instead of simply killing you or causing horrible problems, can mutate you into something more; or maybe, if your lucky/not so lucky, turn you into a ghoul, people who resemble the living dead and have very long lifespans. As the basis of the series is a nuclear war; radiation is everywhere: the food, the water, the ground, everywhere.
Ghouls are who have been subjugated to a immense amount of radiation and instead of dying of radiation poisoning, have turned into zombie like creatures. For the most part they are still human, just, different, but because of this they are horrible prejudiced against by most of the world, mostly because they look like zombies. In the later games, Feral ghouls were introduced, which for all intents and purposes are zombies and can not be reasoned with at all.
Humans who have been subjected to a government made virus called the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), which was designed to create super soldiers. It worked to a degree, the subjects became strong, tougher, but at the cost of both intelligence (for some, many original super mutants are intelligent) and became aggressive to a fault and, as a major plot point in the first and third game, Sterile, forcing them to use more humans to keep the super mutant species alive. In the first game they were the main enemy and in the third a major sub-enemy.
World of Tomorrow Idealism/Cultural Stasis
The basis of the entire series, in the words of a fan, is "The American 1950's vision of the World of tomorrow, nuked to hell". The world of fallout contains the Radio still being a entertainment superpower, TV is cheap and still resembles the antenna sets, robots do the house keeping for mom who stays home to do what she has to; dad is king of the castle and the children are obedient to their elders. Along with this, computers are still room sized, and if they are portable, they resemble early Macintosh's.
Brotherhood of Steel
The decedents of a group of soldiers and their families who, shortly before the war declared themselves in desertion from the U.S. Army as a result of scientists using unwilling soldiers for FEV tests.. They more or less worship technology and seek to take all advanced technology from the hands of the wastelanders, although the reason varies from, "simple selfishness" to "wanting to protect them from it". They are very secretive and xenophobic, and besides a few members and the detachment on the east coast could care less about what happens to the world unless it threatens them. By New Vegas, they have fought a costly war with the New California Republic and lost, at least on the west coast and are slowly dying because of their refusal to change their ways.
Like the brotherhood of steel, they have ties to pre-war America and also xenophobic, but to a much more extreme degree. When they first show up in Fallout 2, they are in power armor (Armor that makes them a walking mechanized division), and kill most of the people inside vault 13 (the first games player's home) and establish themselves as being opposed to most of the wasteland. Later they kidnap the player characters home village for evil experiments. Eventually, on an pre-war oil rig, you confront the president, a man leading the plan to use a modified FEV Virus to infect the jet-stream and cleanse (Genocide) North America so "Pure Strain" Humans can reclaim it.You can choose to join them, but canon has you blowing up the oil rig; afterwards "President John Henry Eden" a super-computer summons the remnants across the continent to reclaim Washington DC, intended to activate and infect "Project Purity" to both purify and poison the waters for any creature mutated in the wasteland. This plan also fails because of the player character and east coast Brotherhood of Steel. also revealing that the human second in command had no interest in the genocide part of the plan, merely wanting to activate Project Purity so the enclave could have the credit for saving washington and begin reuniting america.
Giant, underground fallout shelters designed to hold a thousand people comfortably til they could recolonize the planet. The exact number is unknown but thought to be around 115, spread across America. This in itself reflects the vaults were nenver meant to save even a good fraction of the American population; and also hides the true nature of the vaults: Social Experiments of the enclave to test various conditions on people (apparently to see how people would react during a trip across the void of space to a new home planet). Some vaults were normal, some vaults had annoying but understandable test ideas while others were simply cruel. See below for a few examples
- Vault 101 The door was never meant to be opened again, and the overseer was given omnipotent powers.
- Vault 12 The door was designed to not close, testing the effects of radiation on people.
- Vault 11 A social experiment where the group was to sacrifice one person every so often or they all died. When they finally did choose to say no more, there were 5 left, and it was revealed it was a test to see how long that would take and the door opened.
- Vault 43 populated by Twenty men, 10 woman and a panther
- Vault 55/56 in the former there was no entertainment tapes, in the later, only tapes of a bad comedian. tbhe later was predicted to fail first.
- Vault 68/69 in the former, 999 woman/1 man, in the latter: 999 men, one woman.
- Vault 92 Populated largely by renowned musicians, this vault was a test bed for a white noise-based system for implanting combat-oriented posthypnotic suggestions.
- Vault 106Psychoactive drugs were released into the air filtration system 10 days after the door was sealed.
- Vault 112Stanislaus Braun's personal vault, populated by him and a few others, where he tests a virtual reality program on the other residents; which has degraded to him simply killing them over and over
The mainstream Fallout games have been received very well by both critics and consumers alike. Fallout 1 is frequently ranked among the top 100 games of all time; Fallout 2 has an average review score of 86/100 on Metacritic, which also gives Fallout 3 an review score of 92/100.
Promotion of Homosexuality
The Fallout series has maintained a very liberal view towards homosexuality throughout most of the series, and sometimes seems to openly promote the Homosexual Agenda. Fallout 2 was one of the first games to allow same-sex marriage. Fallout: New Vegas includes a perk which allows users unique dialogue with members of the same-sex. This can include anything from simple flirting, to free sex with a male homosexual prostitute in Freeside.