Fallout Playing Fallout 1 for the first time

[BruceVC]

I am playing FO1 for the first time with the Fixt mod and Im about 6 hours into the game

Its good fun, its taken me time to learn some of the basic mechanics but now Im comfortable with that and the left and right clicking required. I still am enjoying killing rats in Vault 15 and I always appreciate the specific targeting of enemies that Fallout games provides, I like to aim for the head

Further updates to follow once Im 30 hours or so in

 

[normie]

>fixt
>30hours

 

[Sunri]

I am playing FO1 for the first time with the Fixt mod and Im about 6 hours into the game

Its good fun, its taken me time to learn some of the basic mechanics but now Im comfortable with that and the left and right clicking required. I still am enjoying killing rats in Vault 15 and I always appreciate the specific targeting of enemies that Fallout games provides, I like to aim for the head

Further updates to follow once Im 30 hours or so in

No way you can spend 30h in f1

 

[Baron Dupek]

30h is what you can spend in the sequel and fan projects (Nevada, Sonora, Olympus 2207 etc) while first game is quite short.
Beating if for the first time felt like a speedrun, unintentional

 

[MasPingon]

No way you play F1 one time.

 

[ArchAngel]

You can spend 30h if you go and explore stuff and not just follow main quest.

 

[Lemming42]

Fo1 is pleasingly brief, Fo2 (and NV) is just straight-up bloated in comparison.

Still the best Fallout game. Used to prefer Fo2 when I was younger but in retrospect I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, Fo1 is obviously better.

That sense of eerie surrealness, that ramps up further and further as you go deeper into the game, has never really been recaptured by any of the subsequent games. Fo2 went too far into comedy (and I'm saying that as someone who generally likes the comedy aspects of Fo2) and had too much jarring ill-fitting shit smashed together, while NV was much too mundane and grounded. Fo3 did actually try to recapture Fo1's tone of queasy unreality at times but the writing ability just wasn't there and it mostly came across as completely retarded. Fo4 is not worthy of mention.

Spoilers for BruceVC's sake:

Spoiler

the Cathedral is the best last dungeon in any game ever (and yes, it is the last dungeon, only a complete dickhead would do Mariposa last). No glorious battle against hordes of minions or any of the usual RPG shit. Just absolute horror and confusion that gets worse the deeper you go, and then the achingly sad final confrontation.

The corridor leading up to the Master has stayed with me ever since I first played the game. "A voice calls to you. You turn your head and see the image of a forgotten friend, obviously dead. The worms fall from her rotted jaw as your headache grows." Fuck!

 

[Sunri]

Fo1 is pleasingly brief, Fo2 (and NV) is just straight-up bloated in comparison.

Still the best Fallout game. Used to prefer Fo2 when I was younger but in retrospect I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, Fo1 is obviously better.

That sense of eerie surrealness, that ramps up further and further as you go deeper into the game, has never really been recaptured by any of the subsequent games. Fo2 went too far into comedy (and I'm saying that as someone who generally likes the comedy aspects of Fo2) and had too much jarring ill-fitting shit smashed together, while NV was much too mundane and grounded. Fo3 did actually try to recapture Fo1's tone of queasy unreality at times but the writing ability just wasn't there and it mostly came across as completely retarded. Fo4 is not worthy of mention.

Spoilers for BruceVC's sake:

Spoiler

the Cathedral is the best last dungeon in any game ever (and yes, it is the last dungeon, only a complete dickhead would do Mariposa last). No glorious battle against hordes of minions or any of the usual RPG shit. Just absolute horror and confusion that gets worse the deeper you go, and then the achingly sad final confrontation.

The corridor leading up to the Master has stayed with me ever since I first played the game. "A voice calls to you. You turn your head and see the image of a forgotten friend, obviously dead. The worms fall from her rotted jaw as your headache grows." Fuck!

Lmao I recently completed fallout for the first time and missed master room and just launched the nuke

 

[ArchAngel]

Fo1 is pleasingly brief, Fo2 (and NV) is just straight-up bloated in comparison.

Still the best Fallout game. Used to prefer Fo2 when I was younger but in retrospect I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, Fo1 is obviously better.

That sense of eerie surrealness, that ramps up further and further as you go deeper into the game, has never really been recaptured by any of the subsequent games. Fo2 went too far into comedy (and I'm saying that as someone who generally likes the comedy aspects of Fo2) and had too much jarring ill-fitting shit smashed together, while NV was much too mundane and grounded. Fo3 did actually try to recapture Fo1's tone of queasy unreality at times but the writing ability just wasn't there and it mostly came across as completely retarded. Fo4 is not worthy of mention.

Spoilers for BruceVC's sake:

Spoiler

the Cathedral is the best last dungeon in any game ever (and yes, it is the last dungeon, only a complete dickhead would do Mariposa last). No glorious battle against hordes of minions or any of the usual RPG shit. Just absolute horror and confusion that gets worse the deeper you go, and then the achingly sad final confrontation.

The corridor leading up to the Master has stayed with me ever since I first played the game. "A voice calls to you. You turn your head and see the image of a forgotten friend, obviously dead. The worms fall from her rotted jaw as your headache grows." Fuck!

Depends on how you play it. I can only compare it when I first played it which was without mods as both games were still fairly new (within few years of release). FO2 had QoL fixes as well as more weapons and bigger world to explore. This is what made me always like FO2 more. I played Fo1 again with mods few years back and I enjoyed that a lot but still I prefer FO2. FO2 made me want to replay it multiple times, FO1 was one and done (both times).

 

[normie]

No way you play F1 one time.

you very well can, the thing barely has content for 1 playthrough

 

[Maxie]

I am playing FO1 for the first time with the Fixt mod and Im about 6 hours into the game

Its good fun, its taken me time to learn some of the basic mechanics but now Im comfortable with that and the left and right clicking required. I still am enjoying killing rats in Vault 15 and I always appreciate the specific targeting of enemies that Fallout games provides, I like to aim for the head

Further updates to follow once Im 30 hours or so in

fallout like many shooters can be comfortably beaten in under ten hours

 

[Sunri]

You can spend 30h if you go and explore stuff and not just follow main quest.

I dont believe it, there is really not that much to explore here, it took me around 12 hours to beat the game and i wasted a lot of time juggling items between character because my pc had 2 STR and backtracking lmao

 

[Zlaja]

Did you try rat diplomacy?

 

[Butter]

No way you play F1 one time.

you very well can, the thing barely has content for 1 playthrough

"Muh replayability." Games that are fun can be played over and over again. That's the difference between classic RPGs and Kickstarter slop.

 

[normie]

No way you play F1 one time.

you very well can, the thing barely has content for 1 playthrough

"Muh replayability." Games that are fun can be played over and over again. That's the difference between classic RPGs and Kickstarter slop.

Yeah, that's very true. For Fallout 2.

 

[Butter]

I'd sooner replay Fallout 1 over every other Black Isle game + every Kickstarter era game. It's not perfect, but it kicks every kind of ass.

 

[normie]

I'd sooner replay Fallout 1 over every other Black Isle game + every Kickstarter era game. It's not perfect, but it kicks every kind of ass.

It plays like a tech demo for what would be Fallout 2. A proof of concept. Half of the skills are essentially unimplemented, half of the half that are implemented are weapon skills.
Fallout 2, Olympus 2207, Nevada and Sonora surpass it in every single way. It's unfair to even compare, it didn't get enough time to cook.

 

[skaraher]

First time i played Fallout 1 i went straight from Mariposa to Cathedral and skipped the whole Boneyard without knowing it was the endgame town. So playthroughs do leave you things to discover.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

You know, back in the old days, if a Codex member played Fallout 1 for the first time 12 years after joining (and 26 years after it came out), King Crispy would strangle them with his bare hands.

We are truly degenerating as a niche society.

 

[behold_a_man]

I'd sooner replay Fallout 1 over every other Black Isle game + every Kickstarter era game. It's not perfect, but it kicks every kind of ass.

It plays like a tech demo for what would be Fallout 2. A proof of concept. Half of the skills are essentially unimplemented, half of the half that are implemented are weapon skills.
Fallout 2, Olympus 2207, Nevada and Sonora surpass it in every single way. It's unfair to even compare, it didn't get enough time to cook.

Which 'half' is not implemented? I vividly remember, that all of the skills except traps and possibly throwing were somewhat useful in the first game (but not all character attributes - charisma was useless) - and that in the second game barter became useless. What was so spectacular about Fallout 2? Fighting mutants casually strolling around a ship inhabited by humans? Convincing hardened war criminals from the Enclave that committing genocide is morally questionable? Or maybe the idea of playing ~50 hours game with a lackluster combat and an uneven exploration?
I don't know any game that gave me experience similar to the first Fallout - short and sweet, not text-heavy (unlike Age of Decadence), allowing me to avoid half of the content if I wanted to, with only three dungeons - but all of them memorable. The Glow is the only location with radiation in the game - where it is possible to stay too long, then die on the way back from radiation syndrome; one of the few places giving some sort of story, and the AI. The cathedral was a journey into madness, and in the Mariposa base, I was able to penetrate it either from the bottom (after submitting to the supermutant in Necropolis) or the top - I don't think I remember any game, that gave me that sort of choice - and it made great difference depending on how I want to play the game (for example, it was much easier to play a pacifist going from the bottom).
I remember myriads locations in Fallout 2, that were completely uninteresting - rat caves, raiders' cave, wanamingo mine, Redding tunnels - all of them consisting of multiple levels. Why add those time sinks, if the combat is trash? And why bother replaying the game, if so much of the content is mediocre at best?

 

[Snufkin]

I'd sooner replay Fallout 1 over every other Black Isle game + every Kickstarter era game. It's not perfect, but it kicks every kind of ass.

It plays like a tech demo for what would be Fallout 2. A proof of concept. Half of the skills are essentially unimplemented, half of the half that are implemented are weapon skills.
Fallout 2, Olympus 2207, Nevada and Sonora surpass it in every single way. It's unfair to even compare, it didn't get enough time to cook.

Which 'half' is not implemented? I vividly remember, that all of the skills except traps and possibly throwing were somewhat useful in the first game (but not all character attributes - charisma was useless) - and that in the second game barter became useless. What was so spectacular about Fallout 2? Fighting mutants casually strolling around a ship inhabited by humans? Convincing hardened war criminals from the Enclave that committing genocide is morally questionable? Or maybe the idea of playing ~50 hours game with a lackluster combat and an uneven exploration?
I don't know any game that gave me experience similar to the first Fallout - short and sweet, not text-heavy (unlike Age of Decadence), allowing me to avoid half of the content if I wanted to, with only three dungeons - but all of them memorable. The Glow is the only location with radiation in the game - where it is possible to stay too long, then die on the way back from radiation syndrome; one of the few places giving some sort of story, and the AI. The cathedral was a journey into madness, and in the Mariposa base, I was able to penetrate it either from the bottom (after submitting to the supermutant in Necropolis) or the top - I don't think I remember any game, that gave me that sort of choice - and it made great difference depending on how I want to play the game (for example, it was much easier to play a pacifist going from the bottom).
I remember myriads locations in Fallout 2, that were completely uninteresting - rat caves, raiders' cave, wanamingo mine, Redding tunnels - all of them consisting of multiple levels. Why add those time sinks, if the combat is trash? And why bother replaying the game, if so much of the content is mediocre at best?

If Fallout combat is trash, then what games that have good combat you got in mind?

 

[Lord of Riva]

You can spend 30h if you go and explore stuff and not just follow main quest.

I dont believe it, there is really not that much to explore here, it took me around 12 hours to beat the game and i wasted a lot of time juggling items between character because my pc had 2 STR and backtracking lmao

The game is really short when you do not know what you are doing but I can't believe you can easily and quickly beat it without looking up where to go.

Fallout is not great because of it's story or gameplay but because of it's replayability that happens because you made a few shitty builds.

Could be that this was the case for me because I was a child but I can't imagine just blasting through it without knowledge first try.

 

[Lemming42]

I'd sooner replay Fallout 1 over every other Black Isle game + every Kickstarter era game. It's not perfect, but it kicks every kind of ass.

It plays like a tech demo for what would be Fallout 2. A proof of concept. Half of the skills are essentially unimplemented, half of the half that are implemented are weapon skills.
Fallout 2, Olympus 2207, Nevada and Sonora surpass it in every single way. It's unfair to even compare, it didn't get enough time to cook.

Neither Fo1 or Fo2 is fully fleshed out - go ahead and build a character with Doctor, Gambling and Outdoorsman as tag skills and see how many roleplaying opportunities that offers.

Fo1 though feels like a real attempt to recreate a tabletop campaign - it's not perfect, some quests only have one solution, some skills never come into use, etc - but it's a superb recreation of a short tabletop campaign in videogame form, in a way that few people have ever recreated.

Fo2 meanwhile feels like a pretty standard videogame; you're overwhelmed with content (a lot of it kind of crap), combat plays a larger role, and the setting, so tightly-written in Fo1, becomes a theme park of dissonant stuff that all feels compartmentalised (likely because each town was made by a different writer, afaik). The issues with Fo1's mechanics not being fully implemented aren't remedied, they're actually exacerbated.

Fo2 (and FNV, IMO) start to collapse under their own weight. There's just too much going on, a lot of it doesn't feel tonally or logically consistent, and the quests still generally aren't much more complex than in Fo1.

 

[Athena]

Neither Fo1 or Fo2 is fully fleshed out - go ahead and build a character with Doctor, Gambling and Outdoorsman as tag skills and see how many roleplaying opportunities that offers.

Gambling is super powerful in FO1, you can amass a fortune very early and buy top of the line equipment + skill books. Doctor is free exp, and in FO2 case you have a few instances where you can heal animals/people for immersion purposes, not to mention the Jet antidote questline. Outdoorsman is useless in FO1 but it helps with getting the special encounters in FO2, specially if you don't bring Sulik with you (who has high outdoorsman to begin with). Obviously with skill books you shouldn't tag it, but the existence of a nearly useless skill doesn't mean the entire system is bad.

 

[Lemming42]

Gambling is super powerful in FO1, you can amass a fortune very early and buy top of the line equipment + skill books. Doctor is free exp, and in FO2 case you have a few instances where you can heal animals/people for immersion purposes. Outdoorsman is useless in FO1 but it helps with getting the special encounters in FO2, specially if you don't bring Sulik with you (who has high outdoorsman to begin with). Obviously with skill books you shouldn't tag it, but the existence of a nearly useless skill doesn't mean the entire system is bad.

They may not be outright useless, but the game's skills clearly aren't all created equal. A player with no prior knowledge of what's coming could end up making a character whose skillset barely comes up in gameplay or quests. Someone might overestimate the game and think "oh yeah, I'll be a doctor with a gambling addiction who's also a great outdoorsman" only to discover that the game won't accomodate them at all and that there'll be no roleplaying opportunities offered to their build (in the form of things like quest solutions and dialogue choices).

(I also think gambling is pointless because the game's economy is so busted that you can become absurdly wealthy by the time you reach Junktown with any build, especially if you cleared the Khans and took the 9999 leather armours they drop)

But my point was in response to normie, who suggested Fo2 was better in this regard - I can't immediately think of any ways in which it was. The sheer volume of content means you get a couple more opportunities to use the neglected skills (healing the brahmin's broken leg with Doctor) but I don't see how the integration of most skills is any better than in Fo1. I think the skill system itself is good, I just question the idea that Fo2 made better use of it than Fo1.