Fallout (franchise)

Fallout is a media franchise of post-apocalyptic role-playing video games created by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, at Interplay Entertainment. The series is largely set during the first half of the 3rd millennium, following a devastating nuclear war between China and the United States, with an atompunk retrofuturistic setting and artwork influenced by the post-war culture of the 1950s United States, with its combination of hope for the promises of technology and the lurking fear of nuclear annihilation. Fallout is regarded as a spiritual successor to Wasteland, a 1988 game developed by Interplay Productions.

The series' first title, Fallout, was developed by Black Isle Studios and released in 1997, and its sequel, Fallout 2, the following year. With the tactical role-playing game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, development was handed to Micro Forté and 14 Degrees East. In 2004, Interplay closed Black Isle Studios, and continued to produce Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, an action game with role-playing elements for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, without Black Isle Studios. Fallout 3, the third entry in the main series, was released in 2008 by Bethesda Softworks, and was followed by Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment released on October 19, 2010. Fallout 4 was released in 2015, and Fallout 76 released on November 14, 2018.

Bethesda Softworks owns the rights to the Fallout intellectual property. After acquiring it, Bethesda licensed the rights to make a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) version of Fallout to Interplay. The MMORPG got as far as beta stage under Interplay, but a prolonged legal battle between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay disrupted the development of the game, eventually resulting in its cancellation. Bethesda argued in court that Interplay had failed to fulfill the terms and conditions of the licensing contract. The case reached a resolution in early 2012.

The ideas of the Fallout series began with Interplay Productions' Wasteland, released in 1988. At that time, Interplay was not a publisher and used Electronic Arts for distribution of the game. According to Interplay's founder, Brian Fargo, they wanted to explore a post-apocalyptic setting and created Wasteland for that. Sometime after release, Interplay decided to shift focus and become a publisher while still developing games. Fargo wanted to continue to use the Wasteland intellectual property but could not negotiate the rights back from Electronic Arts.

Still wanting to do something in a post-apocalyptic setting, Fargo and his team decided to make a new setting and game. They determined what aspects of Wasteland were positives and wrote and developed a new game around them. According to designer Chris Taylor, they took major inspiration from the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) and the films Mad Max 2 (1981) and The City of Lost Children (1995). The result was the first Fallout games, which were released nearly ten years after Wasteland.

Released in October 1997, Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, beginning in the year 2161. The protagonist, referred to as the Vault Dweller, is tasked with recovering a water chip in the Wasteland to replace the broken one in their underground shelter home, Vault 13. Afterwards, the Vault Dweller must thwart the plans of a group of mutants, led by a grotesque entity named the Master. Fallout was originally intended to run under the GURPS role-playing game system. However, a disagreement with the creator of GURPS, Steve Jackson, over the game's violent content required Black Isle Studios to develop the new SPECIAL system. Fallout's atmosphere and artwork are reminiscent of post–World War II United States during the Cold War era and the fear that the country was headed for nuclear war in the real world.

Fallout 2 was released in October 1998, with several improvements over the first game, including an improved engine, the ability to set attitudes of non-player characters (NPC) party members and the ability to push people who are blocking doors. Additional features included several changes, including significantly more pop culture jokes and parodies, such as multiple special random encounters referencing Monty Python and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and self-parodying dialogue that broke the fourth wall to mention game mechanics. Fallout 2 takes place eighty years after Fallout, and centers around a descendant of the Vault Dweller, the protagonist of Fallout. The player assumes the role of the Chosen One (Vault Dweller's actual grandchild) as they try to save their village, Arroyo, from famine and droughts. After saving the village, the Chosen One must fight the Enclave, the remnants of the pre-war United States government (as well as the shadow government in charge of the vault project).

Fallout 3 was developed by Bethesda Game Studios and released on October 28, 2008. The story picks up thirty years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear war that devastated the game's world. The player-character is a Vault dweller in Vault 101 who is forced to flee when the Overseer tries to arrest them in response to their father leaving the Vault. Once out, the player is dubbed the Lone Wanderer and ventures into the Wasteland in and around Washington, D.C., known as the Capital Wasteland, to find their father. It differs from previous games in the series by utilizing 3D graphics, a free-roam gaming world, and real-time combat, in contrast to previous games' 2D isometric graphics and turn-based combat. It was developed for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 using the Gamebryo engine. It received highly positive reviews, garnering 94 out of 100, 92 out of 100, and 93 out of 100 averages scores on Metacritic for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, respectively. It won IGN's 2008 Overall Game of the Year Award, Xbox 360 Game of the Year, Best RPG, and Best Use of Sound, as well as E3's Best of the Show and Best Role Playing Game.