Todd Howard recently said that he wanted people to experience Fallout 1 and 2 as they were, rather than remake them. Well, this'll make things easier: both games are currently free to keep as part of the Fallout Classic Collection over on the Epic Games Store.
Fallout Tactics is free, too, but I don't know whether Todd's cruel enough to want people to experience that one as it was.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>Sneaky new photos taken of the set of Amazon’s Fallout TV adaptation have been shared on Twitter that show one of the retro-futuristic series’ Red Rocket gas stations being built. While the chain’s distinctive rocket doesn’t feature in any of the snaps, all taken by J. Carson in New York state, you can clearly make out the Red Rocket branding on its sign and bright red atomic fuel pumps. The whole look is very post-apocalyptic, dilapidated with beaten up 1950s-style American cars parked around the forecourt.
]]>Yesterday, I used my amazing arithmetical reasoning abilities to surmise that there were only eight free games left to come from the Epic Games Store’s Winter Sale giveaway. I was wrong. Don’t look shocked, it happens. Today sees three of the earliest Fallout games being offered up for nothing. They’re Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood Of Steel. I already own all three elsewhere, as you might well too, but if you don’t then it’s a good way of picking up three classics of 90s PC gaming.
]]>With QuakeCon 2021 set to take place in a virtual fashion next week - and already being in the headlines thanks to an errant schedule listed a 'revitalized' Quake - GOG are offering some deep discounts on some of the best-known ZeniMax franchises including Fallout, Dishonored, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.
It's a great chance to pick up some fantastic shooters and roleplaying games at bargain basement prices, from recent releases to all-time classics. Here are my personal highlights, plus a big link to the sale itself.
]]>Awesome Games Done Quick (aka AGDQ) has started yet again, and just four days in has already blessed us with some unforgettable moments and absolute must-watch PC speedruns. The clips I offer up to you today involve one speedrunner whacking out a real life model to explain a glitch, one speedrun where everything went wrong but everyone had a fabulous time anyway, and one game developer exclaiming "frick cancer in the bum."
]]>Way back in the forgotten times of glossy paper games magazines, I remember my first exposure to what would become Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game. Early previews said Fallout was going to be a PC showcase of the GURPS pen-and-paper RPG system, but it grew into its own thing. Now, tabletop studio Modiphius have announced the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game, a freeform RPG expansion for their tabletop miniature tactics game. Curiously, there's yet another, more traditionally pen-and-paper version based on Modiphus's 2d20 RPG rule-set due next year.
]]>Folks who bought Fallout 76 last year can now grab ye olde Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics for free. Finally, your Fallout 76 purchase will get you a good game (several, even). The giveaway is the latest part of Bethesda's ongoing apology tour over the multiplayer survive 'em up's shonkiness. Unlike the trifling amount of virtuacash offered in apology for the £175 edition's garbage bag (Bethesda do plan to replace the bags), this is available to folks who have any edition. All Fallout 76 editions were wonky enough to merit apology gifts. All of it. The whole thing. Not that Bethesda call it an apology gift, of course.
]]>Democracy is on the brink of collapse. Caesar's Legion, the authoritarian slave state across the Colorado River, has launched a massive assault on the last, best chance for freedom in the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout. It's a grim certainty in Old World Blues that the New California Republic will fight Caesar's Legion: they're the wasteland's two superpowers, diametrically opposed ideologically, each expanding towards the other. I just thought I was better prepared. While Caesar was annihilating every ill-defended tribe to the west, I was rearming, inviting new states into the republic, and admittedly annexing a few tribes myself. With the game paused, I assess my options, reorganise my armies and ask, finally, does democracy die in 2279?
Old World Blues is a mod for Hearts of Iron IV which transports the World War II grand strategy game hundreds of years forward into the post-apocalyptic American west coast of the Fallout series. Players select a faction in the year 2275 and attempt to survive and thrive in the west coast wasteland. Structurally, it's similar to Hearts of Iron IV, but the content and style has been transformed. Old World Blues is tremendously fun, comparable in quality to the standard Hearts of Iron IV game, and it does a terrific job of translating Fallout to grand strategy.
]]>Since its foundation in 2003, Obsidian Entertainment has worked with seven different publishers. Commencing with LucasArts on Knights of the Old Republic II, Obsidian has since signed contracts with Atari, SEGA, Bethesda, Square Enix, Ubisoft and most recently, Paradox Interactive. In fact, up until Pillars of Eternity [official site], every single game Obsidian had made was funded and distributed by a different publisher.
This is a highly unusual state of affairs, and has proved precarious more than once in the company's history. But it has also provided Obsidian with a unique insight into how the world of publishing works, and how the relationship between developer and publisher has changed in the last couple of decades. This topic is especially pertinent today, as new methods of funding and distributing games have seen a significant shift in the power dynamic between developers and publishers.
I spoke to CEO Feargus Urquhart about how it all works (and doesn't).
]]>I forget which game it was, exactly. If I had to pick one, I'd say probably the text adventure Humbug. It doesn't really matter, as it's not really the game's fault, but I still remember the sadness of being told to go into the inventory and realising that while I was thinking of a big room full of bubbling liquids in interesting flasks and other cool science stuff, the game was actually saying 'look in your pockets'. Especially as if it was Humbug, it's a game about wandering around and exploring your crazy inventor grandfather's house. I must have searched for whole minutes, back in 1990.
There's never been a game that really harnessed that desire, but still, it explains a lot about one of my favourite things in RPGs - particularly those of the early 90s - that the inventory often was a place to experiment rather than simply pluck the correct item at the correct time. Even if then, as now, it's often been more accident than design.
]]>One of the main reasons I got into RPGs back in the day was that if you bought one, you were getting a lot of game for your money. That was important when there was only one birthday and one Christmas a year, and not much chance that some relative might pop their clogs in sync with Ultima VI coming out. Years later I no longer need the Grim Reaper's help to fill my collection, and other genres have done their best to replace scouring maps for objectives with, y'know, game, but there's still few that can match it in terms of raw Stuff. It takes a lot of content to fill an RPG.
This week then, I'm turning the spotlight on a few small bits and pieces from various games that I think back on fondly. Not entire games. Just a few ideas and moments from them that stuck with me, whether I liked the actual game they were in at all. Add yours in the comments, yadda yadda, you know the drill. Also, I thought I'd try and pick a few things that aren't brought up that often, hence the lack of, say, Heather Poe from Vampire: Bloodlines or any of The Witcher III's awesome stuff. Got that? Cool.
Note: you can browse through the list using the arrows alongside the image at the top of the page, or using the left and right arrows on your very own keyboard.
]]>Fallout. Fallout never changes. No, wait, that's not quite right. Fallout. Fallout has changed too much.
Resurrection [official site] is a Fallout 2 mod for all those who think that even the second game was a step too far from the original. Dispensing with many of the pop culture references with which the sequel was "overfilled", this brand new story, set in New Mexico in a time period between the two original games, returns to "the great atmosphere of decadence and hopelessness enjoyed by so many in the first Fallout game". All you need to play is a full version of Fallout 2. Downloads are here.
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>Bethesda are taking advantage of the encroaching release of Fallout 4 [official site] with plans to release a hefty collection of Fallout games. They're calling it, quite naturally, Fallout Anthology.
Put a circle around October 2nd in your calendars; the Anthology includes all five games in the Fallout series from the original through New Vegas, and all the relevant DLC in between. There's also space in its fake mini-nuke box reserved for Fallout 4, which is due out around a month later on November 10th.
]]>You might remember that a while back there was a rights kerfuffle involving sales of Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics. Basically, the license always belonged to Interplay, but it changed hands to Bethesda at the end of last year. The games were then removed from stores like Steam and GOG, presumably because with a new rights holder comes new terms, negotiations, etc. But now, finally, we can explore the wasteland in all its top-down glory once more, just as god intended before he left and let nukes happen.
]]>As the headline says, three Fallout games for free. GO AND GET THEM. These isometric beauties will vanish from GOG at the end of the year. The DRM-free store doesn't reckon it'll be allowed to peddle them after year's end as the current deal with Interplay will expire. After December 31st, the rights belong to Bethesda/ZeniMax. However, the magic of GOG means that if you add the free versions to your account in the next 47 hours (I'm an hour late with this post - SORRY), you'll be able to keep a copy forever. Go go go.
]]>Talented RPS writer chum Patricia Hernandez asked us if she could write about the influence of RPG-classic Fallout 2 on her life. We agreed, and what she came back with was a stark personal tale of how videogame fantasy can inspire interest, provoke thought, and ultimately change how we see the world.
]]>This "Macintosh Personal Computer" thing is never going to catch on, but folks like Valve and now GOG insist on humoring owners of these unnaturally pristine elf machines, so here we are. During its much-ballyhooed news-a-thon, GOG drew back the curtain on a new version of its service tailored to Macs, which brings with it 50 games (eight of which you receive free just for signing up) and some rather tempting deals. Speaking of, there's this insane 32-game pay-what-you-want Interplay special leading the charge in celebration of GOG's fourth anniversary. The tearful sort-of-family reunion would not, however, be complete without Geralt's permafrost tundra of a glare brightening up the room, so CD Projekt Red took the stage to demonstrate its Witcher 2 mod toolset. I'd say "imagine the possibilities," but imaginations are for people who don't have extremely impressive time-lapse videos. Check it out after the break.
]]>Joe Martin decides to explore Fallout 2 from the perspective of a character with no stats in the brain department. And, goodness, has a game ever responded coherently to attributed stupidity?
Fallout 2 is old, so there’s only a handful of flickery cutscenes and none of these ever show you your hand-built character actually doing anything. The intro, for example, where you’re told that you’re the Chosen One and must quest for the Macguffin of the Moment, focuses solely on the the half-blind village elder. Which is a shame, because I imagine how my character, Al, would react to this news would be... interesting.
]]>These'll be of little interest to the more ardent Fallout 2 vet, who's doubtless played all of these long ago, and is already preparing to spam-cry 'OLD!' below. If, however, if you're coming to the game fairly fresh or are replaying it for the first time in ages due to excitement about Fallout 3 or because GoG.com's made it so cheaply available, you might find much to delight and enrapture your young mind here.
]]>When I was writing my Fallout 3 piece last night, I was over at No Mutants Allowed - thanks for the links, guys! - and noticed that a long-in-progress project has been completed by modder killap. The Fallout 2 restoration project is a project which (er) restores Fallout 2. Not in a "makes the world a verdant paradise full of trees and flowers and girls without skin diseases" way, but in implementing a mass of content which was planned by the games' original developers, including six new areas and stuff and things which I'll include beneath the cut.
Er... the title's a Love Is All reference. Sorry?
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