The execution clip reveals a lot about the horrors of the prewar world. Note that the video was propaganda that the American government wanted people to see, not some leaked footage. Heck, the soldiers actually wave to the camera in a friendly manner! If the government is willing to show the American people something as horrifying as that, what even worse things have they done that they DON'T want people to know about? Play the game and you'll find out.
On the opposite side, imagine how apathetic or fanatical the general populace would have to be for that kind of thing being shown on broadcast television and not lead to a public outcry. Or possibly too preoccupied with their own neighbourhood going to hell to give much thought to what's happening on the other side of the border.
Not to mention various corporations and companies who put profit and lucrative government deals over pretty much everything and also engaged in ethically dubious actions (and that's putting it VERY lightly). In a way the Great War can be seen as a macabre form of Mercy Kill executed on an entire Crapsack World.
The Game Over screen as pictured above. The white fade out to the image of the skeletal remains of your character can be especially startling if your character dies of dehydration or radiation poisoning, as one might not even know what killed them and thus the screen seems to appear as a Jump Scare.
The Master's Lair was quite creepy at the time, as you recognize it as a Vault … but as you go deeper more and more of the Vault seems directly connected to some kind of biomass…
TheMaster of the Super Mutantshimself (Richard Grey), a Vault City exile who goes into hiding and accidentally falls into a vat of FEV serum, and undergoes a hideous transformation into a biomass that looks like a cross between a Centaur (see the Fallout 3 Nightmare Fuel page, not the one seen in the first two) and a Vault Terminal, whose only wish is to make the world "peaceful" by turning every man, woman, and child into a Super Mutant. The worst part may be that he believes he's right, unless you are charismatic enough to Heel–Face Turn him. How? The Super Mutants are a pre-War experiment for disposable super soldiers, and are thus STERILE. The Master's insane plan was doomed decades before he was born.
And not to mention that the introduction when speaking with The Master is quite unnerving. His voice, a combination of computers and all of the biomass he assimilated, randomly switches mid-sentence between the voices of several different people (both male and female) in a way that disturbingly emphasizes words.
You can find logs where he describes the progression of his own mutating body, first with horror and gradually the tone turns into eerie calmness. Early on he describes how a rat came near him, upon which a tendril shot out of his body and grabbed it. It didn't eat the rat, but assimilated it into its own biomass.
The pain in your head is maddening. You feel the sins of others wash over your soul. And it gets worse, as your sins answer them. Like madmen, they fight through your psyche, and in the process tear your personality apart.
Your head is pulsing with the intrusive thoughts of others. The pain grows and grows. Suddenly, as if it never existed, the pain vanishes. You fall to the ground and weep. But something does not feel right.
It's notable that the Vault Dweller himself refused to speak of whatever it was he had found beneath the Cathedral in the Boneyard. In his memoirs, he wrote " I still cannot bring myself to write of this discovery, but let it be known that when I left, the Beast was dead and the Master of the mutant army was no more."
If you get captured by 'Lou' (mind you this can happen as early as you can make your way to him through another mutant) you might actually wet the bed. The Lieutenant of the Master's army is a gigantic, strong mutant with an extensive vocabulary and sharp wit - the very definition of both brains and brawn together. This, coupled with his low, smooth tone make for an incredibly scary scene. You can remain relatively polite as he explains to you what he's going to do with you, until he asks you to tell him where the vault is. This is so they can enter and turn everyone into a better breed of mutants. Unfortunately, turning you into a mutant could have the side-effect of making you forget where your vault is, and who you are, turning you into a moron like many other mutants, so he doesn't want to do that if he can avoid it. If you say yes, you get the ending below. If you continue to say no, you'll get more and more beat as he gets more and more sadistic in hopes you'll tell him. Even through the game's old graphics, this scene is chilling. If you still say no, you will be captured to wait until you're turned into a mutant.
The ending where you side with the Master. You get treated to a scene where you are wrapped in bandages and squirming as you get dipped into FEV. The next thing you see is Vault 13 being invaded by mutants. The mutants start murdering everyone, including what looks like the Overseer as he has a futile last stand against the mutants made of iron. In the unpatched game, after 500 days (400 if you gave away the location of Vault 13 to water merchants), you get the same cutscene, except without the Player Character being dipped into FEV. You know who finally killed the overseer? It was YOU!
Remember those iguana treats, the ones that always provided you with a little extra health? And then going in to see good ol' doctor Morbid, and accidentally going into his basement to discover iguana bits are people!?
Unlike the later games, which often kept the real name of the various cities and landmarks, Fallout 1 either featured original locations built after the Great War like Shady Sands or Junktown, or pre-War facilities that dont exist in real life like the Vaults or the Mariposa Military Base. This creates a nasty shock when you get near the endgame and get directed to a place called "The Boneyard". Then, you're shown The Boneyard's title image, which happens to be a Pre-War map...
The journal of Captain Maxson, the founder of the Brotherhood Of Steel, which can be found deep inside Mariposa. It details the last days before the Apocalypse during his stay at the Mariposa Military Base, and the soldiers discovering exactly what their goverment had been up to for all this time...
Oct 10, 2077
I, Roger Maxson, Captain, serial number 072389 have started this log because it doesn't look good for any of us, and I'd like for people to know what really happened here.
All hell broke loose when we finally discovered what those scientist bastards were up to. The Colonel has locked himself in his office and seems to be having some sort of breakdown. The men are screaming for blood. They're looking to me for answers, and I'm not sure what to do. Someone has to do something, though, before this place sinks into an anarchistic bloodbath.
Oct. 12 2077
Every time we get a report from higher up things get worse here. The war is going in a very bad direction and this place is about to go into full mutiny, with all the chaos that entails. I stopped one of the men from executing a scientist today, and demanded that we interrogate them to find out what their orders were.
Oct.13 2077
I killed a man today. I was interrogating Chief Scientist Anderson and he was giving me the full details of their inhuman experiments. He said his orders came from the Gov't., but I didn't buy it. He started screaming about how he was following orders, how he was a military man, and I just shot him. I tell myself it was to keep him from causing a full mutiny among the men, but I'm not so sure.
Oct.15 2077
I tried again to speak to the colonel through the door, but he seems to have completely lost touch with reality. I broke down the door with several of the men just in time to watch him blow his head off. Right before he pulled the trigger he said he was sorry.
Oct. 18 2077
By killing the egghead, I seem to have confirmed my position as leader of the men. They follow me without question now. The interrogations invariably end up being executions. Shellman held out the longest, but the end result was the same. Her arguments about her orders were a bit too specific to be completely made up. I'm getting a real bad feeling in my gut about how this is all going to end up. I don't even lie to myself anymore about my reasons for executing the scientists.
Oct.20 2077
I finally replied to the outside world over our radio. I don't know why they never sent anyone here to see what was happening when we stopped responding to their transmissions. It doesn't make any sense. Well, they'll come now. I declared ourselves seceded from the union. They remember Jefferson Davis. What will history say about me?
Oct.22 2077
What the hell is going on? We declare ourselves to be in full desertion from the army and no longer under the Government's command and what happens? Nothing. Something bad is coming down.
About a week later, Maxson leads his men and their families on an exodus to the Lost Hills bunker, where they'll eventually found the Brotherhood. A week is all it has taken for surviving civilians to degenerate into the precursors to the Raiders out of desperation, who kill several of the unarmored members of the convoy, including Maxsons wife. The Raiders would go on to plague the post-War world for 200 years.
The backstory of Vault 12, the one that's in Necropolis. The Vault was built with a great care by those signed for its preparedness and were even awarded with the "Pressed Vault Suit" for their efforts. As the war started and the other vaults has been sealed, the population of the sprawling metropolis of Bakersfield desperately tried to run to the Vault, forcing their way in to protect themselves and their families. When the Vault became full, it appeared that the door simply... couldn't be closed, and the radiation filled the shelter, turning the helpless survivors of Bakersfield into ghouls. Learning from the semi-canonical Fallout Bible, this was intentional, as it the whole purpose of the Vault was not to save the people from the effects of a nuclear war, but to study the effects of radiation on them.
The travel screen can be rather unnerving when you think about it, as unlike the later games, which scaled down the regions they were set in, your character is actually shown traveling the full length of post-apocalyptic California. Just imagine having to leave the only home you've ever known, a cramped but safe bunker, to walk across miles of radiation blasted terrain, each step a risk of encountering something hostile and dangers that you've never seen before just to reach the few locations left in the world with a spark of life remaining.
Whilst the catharsis factor can make the act of murdering the Vault 13 Overseer for his betrayal incredibly awesome, that doesn't change how his death is absurdly gruesome. You shoot the guy in the back as he turns to walk back into the Vault, and peel away the left half of his torso, resulting in him desperately struggling to drag himself back to safety on pure dying instinct and residual nerve twitches, intestines uncurling from the wreckage of his stomach cavity behind him and his life's blood gushing from the gaping wounds of his chest, arm and leg. He manages to live just long enough to reach up with his remaining arm and weakly pound on the door, mindlessly hoping that somebody will hear him and come to save him, before he expires and collapses lifelessly to the ground. Then the Vault Dweller turns and leaves, dismissing the Overseer as just another corpse in his wake, and content to let the Vault save itself now.
), the soldiers then become glorified and a banner of the USA is shown…with far less stars than normal (it looks like the 13 star Cowpens flag