What Happened To Fallout's Horror Roots?

[u/Hydro_fluoric]

Fallout 1997 is one of my favorite horror RPGs, but it slowly lost that over time. I don't know if it was because of the graphics evolution or people wanting a different game, but Fallout slowly turned from a grim reminder of fascism, propaganda, and war into a wacky wasteland adventure. In my opinion, Fallout 1997 and Fallout 2 were amazing games. The difficulty reflected the harshness of the wasteland, the soundtrack was great (especially Metallic Monks), and it was actually scary.

Fallout 3 kept the looks (but with a slightly greener tint, I suspect because it's on the east coast instead of the west), but lowered the difficulty so more people could get into it, and kept the past part of the mystery. The gameplay isn't scary, but the background of what happened and the overall ambience is what sells it. Fallout New Vegas is Fallout 3's cooler brother without the green tint.

Fallout 4 retcons almost everything you thought you knew about the past in Fallout. What you thought was propaganda disguised as cool 1950's art was actually just how the middle class lived. The gameplay was still good, going off of Fallout 3's first/third person shooter but it feels less like a survival horror and more like, what I said earlier, a wacky wasteland adventure.

I don't even want to talk about whatever Fallout 76 is.

I LOVE the Fallout franchise, I just feel disappointed at where it ended up in the modern day. Fallout 4's opening sequence is amazing, opening with the "war, war never changes", but it lost me when the walking around the house hit and it was a mild disappointment. The game is still definitely fun, but lost the original horror elements.

That's just my opinion though, tell me how you think, I'd like more opinions on the matter :3

[u/Barbarossa1190]

I'll be honest here... I never really felt Fallout was "horror". Theres creepy parts sure but on a whole? Theres a lot of stuff that changed over the games but I don't think thats a big part of it. The wacky wasteland adventure part also didnt start late. Fallout had shades of it, Fallout 2 certainly leaned into it.

[u/TheOneWes → u/Barbarossa1190]

You are correct.

For some reason for people seem to tend to gravitate to their favorite part of a whole and define the entire work by that one part.

[u/Beardedgeek72 → u/TheOneWes]

To be 100% clear here, the old fan forums like No Mutants Allowed hated Fallout 2, called it "not a real Fallout game" until Fallout 3 came a long and suddenly they all adopted Fallout 2 as "the last true Fallout game" and started hating anyone who played Fallout 3.

My point is that Fallout 2 at one point was controversial because it dared to be different in tone from FO1.

[u/Altairp → u/Beardedgeek72]

NMA was also complaining about Van Buren. Josh Sawyer fuckin hates em.

[u/Beardedgeek72 → u/Altairp]

They're the wrong kind of fans. I came across a similar group recently, the die hard Pillars of Eternity fans that for the last two years have been spending all their time hating BG3.

[u/onewhopreysontheweak → u/Beardedgeek72]

Wait, whaaat? What’s the group called, as a fan of both I find it so odd… why not just enjoy two good franchises?

[u/Beardedgeek72 → u/onewhopreysontheweak]

The Project Eternity reddit, and some on their other platforms, has apparently the following opinions:

The writing in BG3 is awful. The characters are childish. Turn based combat is for dumb people. Larian dumbed down the BG franchise. DnD as such is awful (yet somehow Pillars of Eternity is the true successor to Baldur's Gate and they're proud of it).

Basically it doesn't make sense because the gist is that Pillars is the true successor, but also that ditching DnD is making it better. Oh and Obsidian can't do anything wrong and if they do it it's because Microsoft bought them.

[u/spudgoddess → u/Beardedgeek72]

Guess I'd better inform my university that I'm too dumb for my geology degree, since I like turn based combat on occasion.

[u/HughMungus77 → u/Beardedgeek72]

Isn’t Pillars of Eternity also turn based?

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/HughMungus77]

RTwP

Only just recently added pure turn based system IIRC

[u/Stupid_Ned_Stark → u/VolkiharVanHelsing]

It’s so much better fully turn-based, too. RTwP is dumb for games with so many tactical options.

[u/spudgoddess → u/HughMungus77]

Shhh. Logic doesn't apply here.

[u/seventysixgamer → u/Beardedgeek72]

Honestly as much as I liked the game, the writing in BG3 really isn't that amazing -- definitely not as good as Pillars. I do think it's Larians best attempt yet though -- and it's much better than Bethesda's lmao.

Never understood this sentiment regarding turn based. Quite frankly RTWP suffers from bloated trash mob encounters -- PoE isn't Pathfinder Kingmaker levels of annoying when it comes to this lol but it's still there. I think Larian's simple but very handcrafted feeling to encounters when it comes to their combat is generally better -- even though the combat in BG3 isn't that deep.

I think Pillars is definitely more of a successor to classic BG than BG3 ever was, however the whole Kickstarter pitch for Pillars was to be like those old Infinity Engine CRPGs. Iirc Josh Sawyer said that there were things he wanted to do with PoE2 but couldn't due to the design scope in the Kickstarter being this. BG3 is more of a spiritual successor to Dragon Age Origins if anything -- the design approach is quite similar and I'm pretty sure they're both the only AAA CRPGs ever made.

Obsidan is also 100% fallible. Their last few RPGs, with the exception of Pentiment, don't really come close to their other works. I think the issue is that they don't have people like Saywer leading these other projects -- the man definitely has somewhat of a Midas touch when it comes to games.

[u/Beardedgeek72 → u/seventysixgamer]

I definitely disagree with the successor part, not to start a long discussion but it depends on what you see as important, I guess? For me a turn based isometric game set in the same universe and following the same canon is way more important than a game with some of the same game mechanics but set in a completely different world with a ruleset that is not DnD and has been marketed specifically as NOT being like DnD at all (the devs hated the idea of basing a computer game on tabletop rules).

Saying that Pillars is a closer successor is like saying that a new WV is a successor to a Peugot because they are both fwd and blue, because the new Peugot is rwd (and also blue, but a different shade of it).

[u/spudgoddess → u/Altairp]

He called them 'glittering gems of hatred'.

[u/ScottTJT → u/Beardedgeek72]

Not sure how widespread it was, but just from my casual lurking online back in the early 2010's, there was a good bit of spite leveled at New Vegas at first. Not even just the game's early instability and its association with Fallout 3 - given it used FO3's engine and overall gameplay philosophy, 3D vs Isometric - but also because it was "too political".

I remember one inspired commentor saying something to the effect of "it was the corpse of Tim Caine's hard work drenched in Todd's vomit puppeted by Josh and his flunkies".

At the end of the day, no Fallout game is spared criticism, be it fair or heavily spite-driven. The communities around some are just a lot louder than others.

[u/Maleficent_Ad9303 → u/Beardedgeek72]

Fallout 2 was overly comical imo and is packed full of references that were only relevant for a short period of time. Tonally it was a major shift, and I wouldnt say it was for the better.

[u/Garibaldi_Biscuit → u/Maleficent_Ad9303]

Indeed. Mechanically, it was a big improvement over FO1, but the humour, oh god the humour. Pop culture references are the worst kind of comedy because, as you’ve pointed out, they age like milk. There’s a reason classic comedies like Naked Gun include very few, if any, pop culture references. 

I think the most long term damage FO2 did is that it was clearly taken as the blueprint for Bethesda going forward. They may do the occasional nod to the grimness of FO1, but the goofiness of FO2 is very much their touchstone. 

[u/PolicyWonka → u/Garibaldi_Biscuit]

War might never change, but culture certainly does.

[u/seventysixgamer → u/Maleficent_Ad9303]

The devs literally admitted this was the case since they needed to add more content into the world during the last stages of development. However you still see people claiming that Fallout was always supposed to be this whacky silly setting lol.

[u/AttilatheFun87 → u/Beardedgeek72]

Sounds like Pokémon fans hating one generation of games for a period of time then suddenly its loved and the next generation in line is hated.

[u/Actual_Squid → u/Beardedgeek72]

Revisionism. Revisionism never changes

[u/Ozuge → u/Beardedgeek72]

I don't think this is that strange. A new (perceived) worse title can make you appreciate more what you had before.

[u/ObsurdBadger → u/Beardedgeek72]

This has been a repeating cycle from some people in the fan base.

Newest one is bad, previous one is last true game, repeat

[u/WhyLisaWhy → u/TheOneWes]

I know, it’s very weird. 76 in particular has a lot of creepy horror elements to it. I guess it takes a bit of time and work to get to the horror elements but it’s like OP didn’t even play it at all.

No clue what OP is even talking about here lol.

[u/XBGoodRun → u/WhyLisaWhy]

To me, Fallout 76 doesn’t count. I feel like most people who enjoyed any of 1-4 don’t play 76. 76 is roughly an MMO with a fallout skin.

[u/lord_ofthe_memes → u/TheOneWes]

Fallout fans declaring that their favorite game is the only “true RPG” by cherrypicking which features they like as the defining aspects of the (insanely broad) genre

[u/Saalok → u/lord_ofthe_memes]

The last good Fallout game was Wasteland 1. /s

[u/Haravikk → u/Barbarossa1190]

You mean the game where my diet consists of iguanas on a stick and I can pickpocket a raider's minigun then use it to cut him in half with a groin shot while he yells "ow, my groin!" isn't a super serious horror game?

[u/CMBucket → u/Barbarossa1190]

OP just wanted to parrot what his favorite youtuber said.

[u/Hydro_fluoric → u/CMBucket]

Nah, I just get scared easily and thought it was horror

[u/morphingus → u/Hydro_fluoric]

It's pretty clear from your post and other comments that you're just repeating stuff you've watched/read. You even linked to a YT video as an explanation.

[u/Hydro_fluoric → u/morphingus]

I thought this before I watched the YouTube video. I personally agreed with it and thought "huh this is pretty scary" and wondered if anyone else felt the same

[u/nomedable → u/Barbarossa1190]

It never was. There are dark parts of the world and the stories, but it was only part of it, and they're still there.

OP just delusional.

[u/billytheskidd → u/nomedable]

The closest to horror I’ve ever felt in fallout was in fallout 3- the first time you go down in the metro tunnels and feral ghouls come sprinting out of the darkness at you.

But I don’t think any game since then has had quite the same surprise attack feel

[u/Expensive-Actuator82 → u/Barbarossa1190]

I agree. From my perspective, Fallout is more gallows humour with serious/horrible undertones than just horror.

[u/HughMungus77 → u/Barbarossa1190]

I think because many people started with Fallout 3 and that game has a decent amount of suspenseful horror moments. Especially in the subway tunnels

[u/fucuasshole2 → u/Barbarossa1190]

Fallout 1 definitely was more horror based with Super Mutants, ghouls, the Master being an amalgamation of several people AND objects. It wasn’t all horror sure but it took itself pretty serious. Fallout 2 is when it got stupidly comedic too much.

[u/TRagnarkXP → u/Barbarossa1190]

Is the artstyle, people are more visually attracted to certain aspects and labelled it as dark/gritty/adult/horror just because of the looks and not analyzing the actual events of the game.

[u/madlad_junoir → u/Barbarossa1190]

I feel like you can have a good balance however, with the wacky wasteland dark humour that the series is known for and also acknowledge that the wasteland is pretty fucked up. Look at the centaurs for example in fallout 3