Dogmeat – may you rest in peace buddy and yes, your death has been avenged.
Graphics: 8
Sounds: 10
Value: 10
Tilt: 9
Actual score: 8.9
Early in my Fallout adventures, I entered a town named 'Junktown', a name derived from because it was literally made out of junk. A man screaming in terror rushes up to me wanting me to somehow dispose of a dog that 'guarding' his residence (if you can call it that). After some persuasion, I managed to befriend the dog thus named Dogmeat.
Dogmeat and I travelled the vast countryside known as Southern California happily pursuing my quest directed from the Vault Overseer to locate another water chip. If I fail my quest, my vault (and most likely humanity) will die, leaving planet earth the 'left over scraps' of the nuclear holocaust that erupted 84 years ago (to be exact). Is there another surviving vault that also happens to have a spare water chip? Who knows? Well, finding another water chip will be one hell of a task for a person who has been living in a vault for their entire life.
So Dogmeat and I will be meeting the denizens of the wastelands – whether be raiders, traders, radioactive freaks or worse. Yet before venturing out, I need to create a character and the best thing is that, it's totally classless. So I decided to be some smart guy with a scientific background. Armed with small guns and laser skills, has a tendency to 'borrow' items that are not bolted down and walk into places where I shouldn't be in the first place. So let's call it an explorer of sorts and yes, Dogmeat gave me his paw of approval.
So, as you can imagine, the game can easily be completed by nuking everything you see or use diplomacy, or a bit of both. And because it's regarded as a RPG, it is stats driven and your success is determine by a dice roll being calculated out of sight. And the way to improve your character is to complete quests and kill critters. Each has an experience points earned from it and once reached a certain amount you gain a level for which your character grows.
The game is viewed via an isometric viewpoint so this can be helpful in a lot of situations. However the downside is that some items are hidden from view as the camera does not rotate and doors / boxes etc that are close to walls can be quite difficult to open. But that is a minor downside comparing to the overall gameplay of Fallout.
Graphically for its time, it's quite decent considering the environments are 2D and characters 3D. So you get to witness firsthand the results of a nuclear blast and the horrific denizens that come with it. So don't expect pretty flowers blooming up towards the lovely sun, picket fences or a family with 2.3 kids. Everything is gritty, dirty and downright ugly – the way it should be.
The sound quality is outstanding to say the least. Everything you hear has an impact that you will not soon forget in the short term. All weapons have a great punch to it (and some can even shock you with a loud bam), the ambiance music in the background is divine and the voice acting from those 'talking heads' are wonderful. And if you don't believe me, just listen to the final two bosses and judge thee.
Yet sooner or later, you need to enter into combat. Once entering in combat, it uses a turn based system where again your stats are compared to your enemies of who goes first, aiming, damaging, movement and so forth. I won't go into details as you'll learn this playing the game however, even though it may appear 'slow', it's very tactical that one mistake can be fatal, in which this happened to me...
Depending upon what options you choose, the game definitely has a cause / effect approach. This goes to what dialogue you choose and many more. Not everything will be resolved by a laser shot to the head as diplomacy can be quite effective as well. For example, my character, because of his scientific skills and reasonable intelligence enables him to have different dialogue choices. And if you play a dumb character (i.e. low intelligence), your dialogue will change as naturally, your character is nothing short of a mindless zombie, but entertaining to say the least.
There are many side missions to complete and quite frankly, Dogmeat and I weren't too fond of them. However the main storyline is absolutely brilliant and caught us off guard in more than one occasion. Great twists along the way however there is just one caveat – there's a friggin timer of 150 days to locate that water chip otherwise all your hard work will be over in a jiffy. Yet there are ways to increase that time if you know how; and no, shotgun diplomacy won't assist you.
So in real hours, it took me around 40hrs to complete, which is quite decent considering. That includes trying to complete all the side / main missions, discovering 'hidden' encounters (the outdoorman perk will assist you in this) and searching. Yet searching yields very little reward and strangely so, however maybe someone (or something) already looted it before Dogmeat and I arrived.
Fallout is a brilliant game to play as it does feel gritty, dirty and downright nasty. RPGs during that time were mainly reserved for fantasy however Fallout added the twist of replacing swords with guns. And the cause / effect did indeed ripple throughout the game. And because of the nature of turned based combat, I made just one mistake – and this mistake cost the life of my life long companion and only true friend of the wastelands, Dogmeat – may you rest in peace buddy and yes, your death has been avenged.