I've been seeing a lot of debate as to what makes fallout fallout. Various opinions include writing/story/characters/moral choices, exploration, a mix of seriousness and humor, retro 50's future, post apocalyptic, post post apocalyptic, fallouts 1, 2, and nv, fallouts 3 and 4, rpg elements, world believability/realism//consistency, etc. Most discussions on this topic turn into one of the following: old fallout vs new fallout, bethesda vs obsidian/interplay/black isle, fallouts 1, 2, and nv vs fallouts 3 and 4, etc. We know that both bethesda and obsidian/interplay/black isle have both different and similar visions of what a fallout game is. It is very annoying consistently hearing things like "this isn't fallout", "bethesda ruined fallout", "It's a good game but a bad fallout game", "I want a real fallout", etc. So to you (in your opinion and taking all the games and all the developers into account), what makes fallout fallout?

In my personal opinion, a Fallout game is a game that takes place in the Fallout World, continuing the setting and themes of the previous games, which have generally been commentary on humanity, mainly its self-destructive nature in pursuit of short term ends (Resource Wars leading to the Great War), its intrinsic tribalism (us versus them mentality), and, despite all of that, its power to keep moving forward. A Fallout game does not have just that, but offers the player a variety of role playing elements to create themselves or a sort of wasteland alter-ego to explore this world and decide how they are going to go about learning and not learning these listens (maybe even one right after the other.

Now I am going to go through each game to say what I think about all of these factors.

Fallout 1 did a good job overall. It had some limitations that kept it from being the perfect model of this, such as how everybody besides the Unity was painted as generally good while the Unity was painted as generally bad, using cults and being hostile to you and everybody who has ever been friendly to you, and the fact that no matter what you grew up in a Vault, but that hardly mattered. Once you were in the Wasteland, the choices were flexible and the endless examples of self-destruction, tribalism, and progress were everywhere. My favorite example of its is Vault 15, where the four factions that emerged from it (Khans, Jackals, Scorpions, and Shady Sands) showed a variety of traits in those three categories (even though we really only get to know the Khans and Shady Sands in it, which were appropriate choices to pick consider they showed the opposite ends of the spectrum).

Fallout 2 was even better with factions but still gave a pretty focused background. The Enclave were about as reasonable as the Unity but those who were on your side were generally darker as well. The Brotherhood of Steel's ideology had reached its extreme and now instead of just seeming like a bunch of overall good military men, they came off as more xenophobic and secretive. Despite the fact that New California was being united under the New California Republic, they didn't really come across as absolute good guys. The fact that the NCR was modeled after the Old World US greatly contributed to the idea of mistakes being repeated.

Fallout Tactics had much less RPG elements but a great story to tell despite, or perhaps because of it. This is why I am generally ok with calling Tactics a sort of Fallout game. I enjoyed the Reavers and the MWBoS and Barnaky and how the entire region really comes across as broken by how far back so many have fallen. It's dominated by tribes, violent raider gangs, religions that worship the pre-war world, and an army of mysterious robots before the extremely militant MWBoS jumps in to make things even more complicated. I always appreciated how those who were considered the progressives of the Brotherhood of Steel weren't what we would consider modern day progressives (humanitarian, egalitarian types) but were violent, expansionist militants more closely aligned with fascism. The only thing really progressive about the members of the MWBoS is that they saw the value in recruiting outsiders to swell their ranks and dominate the landscape even further. I really hope that Obsidian will develop a game based around Chicago, what they could do with this faction would be incredible.

Fallout 3 was a step forward and backwards in a lot of different ways. It was my introduction to the series, but the more I play and think about it the weaker I feel it is. While I appreciate the gameplay of it a lot more than I do with the old games, the plot-line is about as linear as Tactics while trying to be an RPG. The story had a lot of conveniences, with the Enclave managing to make it all of the way to the Capital Wasteland with more advanced technology than ever before and somehow had a massive swell in numbers (they could have recruited from other bunkers or from a Vault or two but that was never established or explained) and how the Brotherhood of Steel happened to show up there around the same time. I can excuse a fair bit of it, considering how it was Bethesda's first steps into the series but they repeated a few of the same mistakes in Fallout 4.

Fallout: New Vegas is my favorite Fallout game and was a great mixture of the strengths of all of the previous games. They had the NCR, Caesar's Legion, House, and side factions that all represented the struggle between progress, self-destruction, and tribalism really well. The NCR is greedily willing to overextend itself. The Legion is the antithesis to the tribalism that came to dominate the Four Corners after the Great War, destroying tribal identity for the sake of progress but at the same time creating a rigid system and brand new society that will take much longer to destroy or change than it did to create. House represents how an otherwise (relatively) normal person who has seen self-destruction take its course could do whatever it takes, even abandoning a normal human life and lifetime and standing up to the most powerful forces in the post-war world to try to achieve his ends.

This one is put in spoiler tags because it has Fallout 4 spoilers. Be warned.