Set in the aftermath of a world-wide nuclear war, Fallout will challenge you to survive in an unknown and dangerous world. You will take the role of a Vault-dweller, a person who has grown up in a secluded, underground survival Vault. Circumstances arise that force you to go Outside -- to a strange world 80 years after the end of the modern civilization. A world of mutants, radiation, gangs and violence.

Your immediate task is to find a replacement for the broken water
purification controller chip. Without that chip, your fellow Vault dwellers are doomed to dehydration or be forced to leave the safety of the Vault for the Outside. The core of the game revolves around your character. When you start Fallout, you can choose or modify one of three pre-made characters, or create your own from
scratch. The character creation system will allow you to make a vibrant, unique character. We are using a skill-based system to allow you to fine tune your character.

As you gain experience (roughly half from combat, the other half will
come when you solve adventure seeds and non-combat based stuff), your character will grow as you determine. No classes here!

Combat in Fallout is tactical turn-based. You can take as much time as you need to make decisions. Choose from different types of attacks, with a variety of weapons and attack skills. Weapons include: shotguns, flame-throwers, chain guns, rocket launchers, sledgehammers, brass knuckles and more.

If you were to take the Diablo and drop a huge nuclear bomb, throw in a few mutants, a couple of gangs, some high tech weaponry, you would have Fallout. Fallout is going to be a great game, it has all of the features that a great Role Playing (RPG) needs.

Easy character creation and development, creating a character is as easy as spending the points. You spend points to create a character as opposed to rolling randomly. You can customize your character by picking your starting traits and skills.

A trait is something that is innately part of your character, you don't have to be taught the trait. For example some of the traits are Bruiser - You do more damage, but you don't hit as much, Gifted you have higher attributes, but your skill percentages are lower, and Night Person - you have higher attributes during the night, but during the day your attributes are lower.

Skills are something that you have to learn (be taught), a skill is something that you can get better at. As you play Fallout, and use your various skills, they will get higher percentages as you get more proficient. Some skills are small guns, lock pick, steal, gambling, etc.

Once you have created your character it is time to start playing, one of the first and most important things to know about Fallout is that everything is turned base, and everything costs action points to do. An action point is some set of a turn, for example you may have 8 action points, but a to fire the uzi cost 6 action points well that means you only have four left to move or do whatever. This is a little bit different from Diablo were everything seems to progress along smoothly. The advantage of this method is that you are not under pressure to do something the computer will wait until you finish your turn. The disadvantage is that you don't have the seamless flow of combat and actions. This is a tradeoff, I think that in a true role-playing system you need the turn based approach because it allows for more complicated character skills and maneuvers.

At any rate the Fallout system works great, another important factor in a role-playing game is image quality and immersion depth. The image quality in Fallout is fantastic, just checkout the screen shots below, the scrolling is seamless, and quick. The immersion depth is to what lengths the designers have gone to truly make you think that you are actual involved in the story and not just looking from the other side. Fallout seems to have taken the Diablo approach and that is to have high quality graphics, and believable monsters, with ambient sounds to round out the mix.

When Fallout was originally being discussed it was going to be based on the GURPS role-playing system from Steve Jackson games. Later it came out that there were some problems using GURPS and that GURPS would not be used, and my hopes were dashed. I am here to tell that GURPS will not be missed, the new system seems to work great.

This is one game that can't come out fast enough. I would suggest that everybody download this one. And then when it comes out in the store go and buy it.

Screen Shots:

Related Links:

• Fallout Home Page
• Interplay Home Page
• Download Fallout Shareware

Goto Fallout:
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