Anniversaries are a key part of the gaming space, and when you get the chance to celebrate the first game of a franchise? You take the opportunity to recognize and respect it. For many fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, Fallout is the standard bear that all other games can be held accountable to. The first game set the tone that another would eventually pick up and then make into something grander than anyone could’ve imagined. It might be hard to believe, but the first game was released 26 years ago. Proving once and for all that war never changes.
Before you ask, no, the game wasn’t made by Bethesda. They came around later. Interplay Productions actually created the game. Their desire for Fallout was simple. They wanted to make an RPG that wasn’t fantasy-based like so many others around them. As such, they went to the realm of post-apocalyptic stylings and then crafted an all-new universe that would stick around for decades to come.
What helped make the game stand out wasn’t just its deep RPG system but how the world felt. This wasn’t just a place that had been put through the wringer. It had people who were either trying to survive or trying to secure power. There was a lot of “grey area” in the wasteland, and the player character had to work their way through that.
The vaults were present in the first game, as were their iconic vault suits. Many of the things you would find in later titles were present in one form or another in the original title. Eventually, Bethesda would get the rights to the franchise and then show the world when they made the third mainline entry with beautiful 3D graphics and let people explore the world in first-person.
They would go on to make a fourth mainline entry, while Obsidian Entertainment would make a spinoff set in Vegas that many consider the best of the series. There’s also an MMO, but not many people like talking about that one.
Fast forward to now, and there’s even a live-action series being made for Amazon Prime that is likely to drop next year, and Bethesda is rumored to be working on a 5th mainline entry.
So when you put the pieces together, you get a game that was aiming to be different, succeeded in being that, and then later on was taken on by a team who helped take things to an iconic level. Not a bad life, wouldn’t you say?
