Energy Weapons being a skill from the start in the first and second games, but the first Laser Pistol (or whathaveyou) you could find reliably not being for hours and hours into the game. And then when you finally got one, it was barely any better - if at all - than a regular pistol.
It did, however, teach me to be extremely cautious when choosing skills / perks / spells / friends in RPGs, as it seemed to be one of my first recorded instances of having developers put something they thought was fun or a good idea and then poorly implementing it / taking it halfway out / have it bug out.