Fallout! A post-nuclear role-playing game!

Lo you did it by hiding among the wreckage of a landfill, feeding on everything you could find and not always wondering what its dubious origin was. You escaped death and the world that fell into a pit, only to find yourself before an immense nuclear explosion and to hope that your raised thumb, behind which you hide, is long and wide enough to cover the atomic mushroom on the horizon.

Fallout, a landmark open-world video game released in 1997 thanks to Interplay and its visionary, or rather apocalyptic, programmers, fits into the genre of isometric real-time role-playing games. Similar to Diablo in terms of mechanics, in a certain sense, although the latter has a completely different setting and is oriented mainly toward the action side of RPGs, Fallout currently consists of four main installments plus some spin-offs, which expand the game world and shed new light, and shadows, on the post-apocalyptic world initially imagined by Brian Fargo’s team.

The first time I played it, I was fascinated by the starting point of the story: a vault, a bunker where a handful of survivors took refuge following a nuclear war between nations indifferent to human life and devoted only to profit and power.

For reasons that go beyond the protagonist's initial will (and this will be the case in almost all chapters of the series), we will have to leave this safe corner in the heart of America and venture into the wastelands, on a continent rendered barren and dangerous by the atomic fungus and turned into no man's land.

Con an setting that openly pays homage to the road movie Interceptor, starring a very young Mel Gibson, with its rival gangs willing to do anything for a gallon of gasoline or spoiled food, Fallout follows the typical RPG mechanics with inventory, status, and attributes such as Strength, Charisma, and Agility always at the player’s fingertips, the settings are evocative and desolate, as I was saying, and visually convey the sense of disorientation and unreality of the ‘new’ Earth.

A more relevant choice than ever, given the serious climate problems we are experiencing and the constant threat of a nuclear apocalypse; moreover, the game benefits from excellent world building: roaming the streets and warehouses in search of documents and survivors makes the experience unique, also thanks to the commendable screenwriting work carried out.

With chapters 3 and 4, now in the hands of Bethesda (Can you hear the drums and the oh-oh-ohms of Skyrim in the background too? Well, yes, it’s definitely them!), Fallout acquires an even more incredible depth: we could define it as the dystopian Elder Scroll, the sci-fi version of Skyrim if you prefer.

Playing in first person in Fallout guarantees exceptional immersion; moreover, the 3D graphics engine represents the worthy evolution of the isometric 2D of the previous installments. Earlier we talked about the thumbs-up and the theory, now disproven, of the atomic mushroom’s blast radius: Fallout’s iconic mascot with the thumb up, in fact, takes up this imaginative and unsettling warning that the American government of the 1950s spread to its citizens: if the atomic mushroom was completely covered by the finger, then you were at an optimal distance to avoid its nefarious effects.

The specter of nuclear power was still alive in people’s hearts, although it was others who really paid the consequences, as we know well…

The story of Fallout is therefore a complete and proper dystopia, in which the degeneration of large-scale nuclear conflict is imagined, with everyone paying the price, without exception, and in which technology, however, has remained stuck in the Fifties. A fascinating expedient, with which the developers were able to play with inventions, hybridizing weapons and objects in imaginative ways.

Fallout is one of those series that cannot be missing from your shelves, both for the intrinsic quality of the game itself, and because the covers, manuals and limited editions are really worthy, such as the limited edition of Fallout 3 for XBOX 360.

A little gem for fans of the genre that is increasing in value over time! If you find it, buy it!