It took me a while to get back into fallout 1 & 2. I can only implore you to try and stick with it, it's worth it once you get used to it. I had to refer to guide to help me relearn the ropes.

Combat at early levels can be pretty brutal, I died tons of times. Best advice I can give is shoot & move, shoot & move.

Hm. I was told it didn't have good voice acting, or so a friend of mine said.

So, shoot and move within each turn, right?

It's complicated to explain as it is all about stats. Range does help with guns (they are ranged weapons after all - you won't get hit by melee opponents if they can't reach you), but your skill and perception and the range affect your to-hit chances. Unspent action points count towards your armor class which reduces the enemies chances to hit you. Check out the explanations for the various skills and attributes in the character sheet. They should get you going for starters, you'll get the hang of it.

It certainly has good voice acting. It just doesn't have a lot of it as it is only for key characters.

Richard Dean Anderson I may not be a big fan of FO1 but the voice actors were chosen quite well.

It seems rather complicated...

It sounds more than it actually is. Read the manual, it will help -- and on top of that it's an entertaining read as it is not just telling you what buttons to press.

I guess I could do that...

The manual seems pretty interesting. I'm just reading all the lore stuff at the moment, but I see what you mean.

I've tried to play both of them, but I can't figure out the AP system. I've got no AP, I can attack. I have AP, and I can't? I'm SO CONFUSED.

Likewise. That confused me too. I assumed AP meant attacks left, but randomly it seems at times it won't let me attack, or move, or do something - even though I still have AP indicated as left.

How much Ap you have is shown by how many lights are lit up above the current weapon/item icon. Ammo for the weapon is along the right of it. Ap is used for every action you take during combat mode.

Entering your inventory uses up a lot. Try to use stimpaks and other items from the "click and drag" (holding left click over your item recipient and drag down to the backpack icon will open up a list of items to use) menu during fights to save ap. But, if you need to use a lot of stims you would open your inventory and use from there.

Oh. What does the number with AP mean then? Do movements use up AP also, or is it just attacks?

Movement, item usage, reloading ammo, environment interaction (opening and closing doors, etc), and attacks during combat mode.

I'd call it the best Fallout game in the series ~excepting a few needed fixes that arrived with Fallout 2; I'd also call it the best RPG of the series. I wouldn't call it the best first person adventure game though.

Not necessarily. APs directly equate to time; you spend your time as you see fit. Time [APs] can be spent on attacks, moving around, item use; object interaction, inventory access, or held in reserve to increase your defense during the round.

A lot of players new to Turn Based combat just assume that their PC stands still while attacked, and attacks enemies that stand still. This is a misunderstanding of what the game presents to the player. An easy parallel to understand it better it is seen in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie (if you saw it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsmrvuoQ2UU ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buE_jLEZrf4
The scenes where he anticipates the coming seconds ~while not exactly like TB combat~ are rather similar in what they present; and it goes without saying that they did not literally play out in stop & go fashion.

In context the combat in Fallout uses discrete sequential actions, but the fight is assumed fluid and ongoing. What's neat is that it allows you to actually do that kind of prediction ~though not always be right about it; the enemies are bound by the same rules as the player [except for the perks]... It's not like in FO3 where they can shoot forever without running out of ammo. You can come to predict and counter their actions.

One little quirk: The NPC AI was done in scripts out of necessity (There weren't supposed to be followers in the game, but they hacked them in late). This meant that they could not influence the AI as much as they would have liked... The result is that we have followers , but... in combat the AI can't see the PC ; this means that they can (and often will) shoot through your PC at their target: Don't stand between them and their targets.
Also (because of the same limitations), anything that you give them, you have to steal back from them ~but they never complain; trying to trade with them sees them try to sell it back to you. It's a flaw.

One major difference between design philosophy of Fallout 1 versus Fallout 3 is that in the Interplay games, you're not necessarily meant to be able to tackle every obstacle the game throws at you.

As an example, in Fallout 3 you might wander into tougher zones than were intended for your level but otherwise if you go into a dungeon you're expected to be able to get through it one way or another. Fallout 1 sort of gives you a series of obstacles and it's up to you to figure out if it's worth trying to get through it or if you should hold off until later.

It has been a couple of years since I played the game, so I'm going to be lacking in specifics. I'm not sure if Vault 15 was intended to be one of the very first places you go to, so that might be part of it. (You should at least be going to Shady Sands and working up some experience in there before heading out on your own too much.)

Especially in terms of combat - running away is actually considered a viable tactic in the old Fallout games. (Especially the random encounters - you're just not going to be able to tackle a lot of them early on. You do kind of hit a point where you're going to essentially be a walking tank of destruction though.)

The other thing to keep in mind is the sort of character you've made. If you haven't built a character for combat, then you need to be looking for other ways towards an objective. All character builds are (generally) equally "workable" but it's usually a matter of playing to your strengths. If you're putting more points into Speech than Small Guns, for instance - then yeah, combat's going to be tough and you have to lean on your companions more than your combat skills.

Anyway, even as a fan of turn-based games I have to admit that Fallout (at least in terms of combat mechanics) was no Jagged Alliance or X-Com. (Honestly, the mechanics didn't really hit their stride until Fallout Tactics, to my mind.) At the time, I thought the graphics were pretty good, though some parts have aged better than others.

The series' big selling point at the time was the degree of freedom (and most importantly meaningful freedom.) You can do whatever you want and almost every obstacle put before you has more than one approach to it. Many of the choices have later ramifications, and often not what you'd expect. Remember, this was before every RPG had a good/evil meter tacked on to it. This was a game that realistically tracked your actions and those choices impacted the world and the NPCs views of you, without really feeling a need to enforce a morality on it.

Honestly, Fallout 3 is more of a spin-off. New Vegas directly follows the story presented in Fallout 1 and 2. FO3 is the one that strays from the main series. Just because New Vegas doesn't have a number doesn't really make it a "spin-off"

Mine also.

[aka. 'Me To'; but it's true.]
To my mind, New Vegas is a Fallout 3 spin off; where Fallout 3 was spin off itself... One that was able to be called a sequel by fiat.
*Though one could say that New Vegas was 'spun off in the right direction', and closer to the originals than FO3 was.
(However I can't say that it looked the part better than Fallout 3; and that's while taking the desert location into account.)

Long story short:

Make a character with max agility (maximum AP for combat) + small guns. Instead of going into Vault15 go to the Shady Sands (it appearing on your map while you walking to the V15), speak with Ian and convince him to following you.

Kill everyone in the city to train combat, and take their stuff... kidding with these one , although its fun as hell.

From now on you won't die that easily. With max AP you can be almost a wizard in combat, and even if you are kinda confused Ian will kill stuff for you... at least at the beginning. Just save often - these dude can sometimes block you (happens to me in Vault15), and there's no option in Fallout1 to push him and clear the way!

Additionally:

Convincing Ian requires bottlecaps if you are using an all Agility PC; you'll have to get some... Don't attack anyone in Shady Sands expecting to then hire Ian.

Best tip is to read the manual until you are comfortable playing the game in Shady Sands and Vault 15; These are the safest places in the game.

Sorry I misread what you were saying. I thought you were arguing Wild Wasteland makes all of New Vegas non-canon instead of simply WW being non-canon which I would obviously agree with.

Indeed... It's been noticed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6UQ2QlRH0

That is a two week walk from the start of the game, and one of two end-of-game conditions; inside there the doors in the hallway will kill you if you are too low level of a PC. But Fallout will not stop you from going there, and offers not only a way in, but even a diplomatic way in and out again ~for even a first level character. I've had my level 1 PC in the supermutant's locker room ~while they were in there, and not at all hostile.


Yes. Interface changes, bug & flaw fixes, and a bigger map overall. It's a great game; I like FO1 better, but I'd pick FO2 if I could only have one from the series.


I don't agree, New Vegas has nothing in common with FO2 except the guiding principle of providing good roleplaying opportunity, and the Enclave... maybe something else I've not seen yet; in no way could I consider it a sequel to FO2. They are mechanically unrelated... it's like jeeps and jalopies, or Subs and Frigates. You wouldn't call Mario Cart a sequel to Super Mario; nor Super Mario a sequel to Mario Bros (I hope); and nither a sequel to Donkey Kong.

The temple can be walked through (or run through). The ants have animal AI ~practically giving you two turns to one, and if you are more than 6 hex from them and sneaking, you can end combat and walk on. I never bother to fight them at all anymore. The only fight is at the end, and even in that it's possible to talk him out of it.

Why not? The wackiest thing in it is the aliens and Bethesda made them canon already.

Because they are winks & nods to the player... The fridge with the fedora was Indiana Jones... That's to be made canon?

Fallout has always done this [yes... before Fallout 3], there is a dead whale in the desert in FO2 ~un-decayed, so it was recent at the time the PC found it: canon? It's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference, the plant was there too IIRC.

I don't recall anything that specifically identified that skeleton as Indiana Jones. I know it was a reference to the movie, but in-game it's just a corpse in a fridge.