History VideoGame / Fallout1

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The intro film wastes no time in showing that the pre-Great War US Government very much was of the OppressiveStatesOfAmerica kind. We are shown a news segment labeled "Our dedicated boys keep the peace in newly annexed Canada", which consists of two US soldiers in Power Armor, brutally and summarily executing a kneeling, handcuffed Canadian insurgent. The executioner then {{double tap}}s the insurgent's still twitching body for good measure while his buddy is having a loud belly laugh at the now very dead man's expense. They then notice that they are being filmed, and proceed to cheerfully wave at the camera.

* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: The Master, who's only barely recognizable as human (or even humanoid) and talks in four different voices. The floor he's on isn't much better, covered from floor to ceiling in biomass.]]

** The Brotherhood of Steel, while still [[{{Masquerade}} very insular and cagey about its advanced technology]], is fully devoted to its professed creed of bringing civilization and technology to the wasteland: they're directly supplying major towns with weapons to aid their survival against raider groups and the like. The Brotherhood's members are also [[CodeOfHonour well-mannered]] and surprisingly accepting of outsiders. You can also beat the entire game without ever seeing them, or [[HiddenElfVillage even knowing that they exist]].

* EvilIsVisceral: Anything that has been affected by FEV turns into a disturbingly grotesque monstrosity: the more exposure it has, the uglier it gets.

* FalloutShelterFail: Vault 13's water chip wore out after eighty-four years, prompting the Overseer to send the Vault Dweller into the wilderness in search of a replacement.
* FatBastard: Gizmo: a horrendously corpulent [[DiabolicalMastermind crime boss]].

* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: [[spoiler: As it turns out, every single mutated creature in the wasteland, from Brahmin and Radscorpions to [[EldritchAbomination Floaters and Centaurs]], is a result of the FEV virus experiment GoneHorriblyRight.]]

** If you play with an Intelligence score of 3 or lower, you play as a bona-fide IdiotHero with altered "dumbspeak" options. You will be locked out of 90% of the game's sidequests as most [=NPCs=] will recognise you as the imbecile you are and not give you the time of day, and the sidequests you can still do will often see you [[NiceJobBreakingItHero screwing people over in your poorly thought out ways of "helping" them]].

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Master. [[spoiler:He reveals that he doesn't want to kill humanity so much as phase them out, converting them into what he genuinely believes to be a superior species. Revealing that this "superior species" is ''sterile'' and thus doomed to die out leaves him genuinely horrified and suicidal over his actions.]]
* WithThisHerring: The Vault Overseer sends you out with a 10mm pistol, ten magazines of ammunition, a knife, a Pip-Boy, and some medical supplies. That's it.

* BoringButPractical: The hunting rifle. A beaten-up, 5.56x45mm, semi-automatic rifle may not seem like much in a game with flamethrowers, mininguns, and rocket launchers. But it can be acquired very early on (from the corpse of Gizmo's assassin in Junktown), is very ammo efficient, uses a common ammo type (buying up the stock of 5.56mm rounds at the gun shop in Junktown means you'll never have to buy more for the rest of the game), has a low AP cost, and has decent damage and accuracy. As a rifle, it also has a bonus against armor, which means you'll have a big advantage in both range and penetration over enemies equipped mostly with pistols, shotguns, and submachine guns. It'll last you up until the point you start using [[InfinityPlusOneSword the laser and plasma rifles.]]

** The [[HandCannon 223. pistol]][[note]]You may know it as [[HeyItsThatGun "That Gun"]] from ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas''[[/note]] is the ultimate [[FiringOneHanded one-handed weapon]] for those who [[TheGunslinger prefer guns.]] It's actually a unique rifle chambered for 223. full metal jacket that has been [[AceCustom carefully and lovingly crafted to fit into one hand.]]

* AnyoneCanDie: Every single living creature in the entire game can be killed. [[{{Permadeath}} That includes your allies]]. It is impossible to resurrect anyone without [[SaveScumming reloading a save]]. As a result, it's a good idea to be careful when killing {{NPC}}s: you might just kill someone who's important to a major quest.

* UnwinnableByInsanity: It's possible to enter [[BonusDungeon The Glow]] without ''any'' Radaway, Rad-X, or at the very least a decent enough Endurance stat to protect against the radiation. You might make it out with the Brotherhood disk, but you won't even make it anywhere close to a city before you meet your demise to severe radiation poisoning. A sensible person would simply reload a save from before they entered The Glow, [[UpToEleven but if you were to use all 10 saves files after you entered The Glow...]]

The year is 2161: 80 years after [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt all human society was destroyed in nuclear war]]. The world is a largely inhospitable wasteland populated by lethal mutants and tiny communities of survivors who live a hardscrabble existence trying to grow crops out of terrible soil and toxic rain. Lawless [[DesertBandits raider tribes]] make their lives even harder by stealing what little they have at every opportunity. Luckily for you, though, your ancestors had managed to secure their place in Vault 13 -- [[UndergroundCity a gigantic underground city]] built specifically to survive the apocalypse. You've been there all your life, and [[RunningGag it's an okay place to live.]] There's plenty of food, clean water, and friends, and the Overseer keeps everything nice and orderly. But [[ArcWords life in the Vault is about to change]].

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: In his second to last log entry documented on the computer in the Mariposa Military Base, Captain Maxson writes that he convinced the men under his command to give the FEV scientists they executed a proper burial, and admits that after watching the last scientist die, having watched them all stick to their stories to the end about following orders from the government Maxson's proudly been serving, he finally believes them. He ends the log questioning what exactly he's turned into.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: In his second to last log entry documented on the computer in the Mariposa Military Base, Captain Maxson writes that he convinced the men under his command to give the FEV scientists they executed a proper burial and admits that after watching the last of the scientists die while sticking to their story about following orders from the government, the government Maxson served proudly under, he finally believes them. He can't help but question what kind of man he's turned into.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The Overseer of Vault 13 is convinced that life outside the vault is impossible. As such, he is ''absolutely bent'' on not letting anyone of the vault's residents try to form a community outside, despite the fact that the vault's water purifier is broken, the radiation count is low, and there are actually a few thriving communities living on the outside. None of that matters.

* TheUnintelligible: Playing with a low enough intelligence score results in the player character being so stupid that they can't even form coherent sentences. Unfortunately, this [[RealityEnsues makes it hard to get into a lot of sidequests or even barter]], because most [=NPC=]s are just too annoyed by you to be bothered.

* AnyoneCanDie: Every single living creature in the entire game can be killed. [[FinalDeath That includes your allies]]. It is impossible to resurrect anyone without [[SaveScumming reloading a save]]. As a result, it's a good idea to be careful when killing {{NPC}}s: you might just kill someone who's important to a major quest.

* DummiedOut: A small amount of content (though not nearly as much as in [[VideoGame/{{Fallout2}} the sequel]]) was dummied out or left unfinished when the game was released -- most noticeably a sidequest to find a spy in the Followers who doesn't actually ''exist'', rendering that subplot [[UnwinnableByMistake unfinishable]], or the fact that it's impossible to report [[ImAHumanitarian Iguana Bob]] to the cops. Some of this content can be restored with mods like Fallout Fixt.

* KarmaHoudini: Iguana Bob is most likely one. [[spoiler: He runes a store in the Hub which sells Iguana Bits and Iguana on a stick, the former of which [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies is actually human remains]]. While you can kill his suppliers, the quest to turn him in to the police was DummiedOut and while you can goad him into attacking you all the guards in the hub turn hostile if you dare defend yourself. This makes it very unlikely that the Vault Dweller will kill him, and the fact that his son is selling Iguana Bits in the sequel implies Iguana Bob lived to a ripe old age]].

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: The General Reputation[[note]]or "Karma"[[/note]] System serves to [[AvertedTrope destroy this trope]]. It measures how you are perceived by the general population of the wasteland. To simulate this, any and all major decisions the protagonist and everyone else in the game makes are being silently judged on a fairly simple system of how much help or harm they cause to the random people around them. Most of the game's quests include a scripted amount of karma gain or loss associated with how you chose to complete them. In general, you gain karma for explicitly ''going out of your way'' to assist a community,[[note]]Like say, putting yourself in mortal danger to free the population of an unimportant town from forced servitude.[[/note]] and you lose karma whenever your actions explicitly harm a community to benefit yourself.[[note]]Such as, staying quiet about criminal activity in order to get a cut of the profits.[[/note]] Both karma gain and loss are completely silent, and you do not gain karma for merely defending yourself from anyone unless you are killing explicitly evil characters... who tend to be [[EvilPaysBetter quite wealthy]] and ''very'' powerful. As such, it is often [[BeingGoodSucks very hard to gain good karma without dying horribly.]] You will generally have an easier time [[BetterLivingThroughEvil being evil.]]

* AntiGrinding: The main quest is timed, which discourages running back and forth farming random encounters on the overworld. After a major patch, taking too long will no longer result in a hard game over, but you will receive the worst possible ending for many of the communities.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler: The alternative ending has this outcome, should the Vault Dweller either side with the Master or fail to spot him and his forces in time..]]

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The Overseer of Vault 13 is convinced that life outside the vault is impossible. As such, he is ''absolutely bent'' on not letting anyone of the vault's residents try to form a community outside, despite the fact that the vault's water purifier is broken, the radiation count is low, and there are actually a few thriving communities living on the outside. [[ViolationOfCommonSense None of that matters.]]

* RealityEnsues:
** Shooting a woman in the groin hurts her every bit as badly as if she were a man. Plus you get a special message.
** If you play with an Intelligence score of 3 or lower, you play as a bona-fide IdiotHero with altered "dumbspeak" options. You will be locked out of 90% of the game's sidequests as most [=NPCs=] will recognise you as the imbecile you are and not give you the time of day, and the sidequests you can still do will often see you [[NiceJobBreakingItHero screwing people over in your poorly thought out ways of "helping" them]].
** You can actually talk down the BigBad from his evil plan, but not by trying to convince him that what he's doing is bad: [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans he's already convinced that he's doing the right thing by turning people into mutants because he believes it is the only way to unify the wasteland]], so he will just brush you off as an enemy of progress. You actually have to [[spoiler:discover before you talk to him that all his mutants are sterile so his attempt to "unify the wastes" will not last past a generation. He will try to brush you off as a liar, so you must either present him the evidence or counter by [[ArmourPiercingQuestion asking if any of his mutants have had kids]]. Only then will the penny drop.]]

* LostForever: A minor instance, there are a couple quests one can undertake in the Vault related to the water shortage, namely catching a water thief and pacifying a small faction of Vault residents considering leaving the Vault to settle the wasteland. Once you turn in the Water Chip to the Overseer, these quests can no longer be completed since the instigating problem causing them is now resolved.

* InkSuitActor: Some talking heads resemble their voice actors. The most notable example is Killian Darkwater, voiced by Richard Dean Anderson, who basically is Series/MacGyver without the mullet. Another example is Laura, who has long, blonde hair, like Creator/KathSoucie.

* FrickinLaserBeams: Three kinds of laser weapons exist in the game. Lasers are always the most accurate, but [[ForceAndFinesse not the most powerful]] energy weapons of any given type.

* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: [[spoiler: As it turns out, every single mutated creature in the wasteland, from Brahmin and Radscorpions to [[EldrichAbomination Floaters and Centaurs]], is a result of the FEV virus experiment GoneHorriblyRight.]]