Yes, they were full of jabs at mid-century American bombast, but those jabs landed with a dry chuckle and left a bitter aftertaste. Let’s make one thing clear: I didn’t bemoan the lack of an option to kill children in Bethesda’s Fallout games, but those who did had a point. The narrative lines drawn between “good” and “bad” felt a smidge too sharply drawn. The Vault Boy kitsch skewed slightly too ebullient. Playing Fallout 3, the “Bloody Mess” perk felt a little too exuberant, zooming in on the carnage in “cinematic mode”. And yet from the start, there were subtle signs that something was off. They create worlds worth exploring, making them a sure fit for a new Fallout world. Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls series is expansive in every sense, rich with lore, full of surprises and adventure. This is a story about how my love for the world of Fallout died, how Fallout 76 didn’t so much kill it as bury it, and an attempt to burn those who engineered its demise in effigy.īethesda taking over the Fallout license to make a first and/or third person shooter experience seemed like a great thing.
And folks like Brian Fargo are making more. Nor is it a paean for the good, old days of turn-based isometric RPGs.
This is not a eulogy for Black Isle Studios, the creators of the original Fallout games.
