YMMV / Fallout

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Some fans have asked why The Master didn't think to keep a portion of "prime normals" (the Unity's term for humans untouched by radiation) as breeders to continue the species once he learned about the mutants' sterility, and while it's possible the writers didn't think about that potential solution, considering his total anguish at realizing how much suffering he caused it could also very well be that A. Since his goal was to turn every human into a super mutant and have the rest die off, keeping a section of the population human if he was never able to find a cure would go against his ultimate desire, and B. He might see having some people act as breeders even for a potentially short amount of time as going too far even for him.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Super Mutants with rocket launchers. They are unerringly accurate, can fire multiple times per turn, and can kill you with one critical hit even while wearing the absolute best armor in the game that otherwise lets you No-Sell the other mutant weapons. Fighting them often devolves into a Luck-Based Mission and just hoping that they either never get a critical or that they miss.
  • Deathclaws are fast, can attack multiple times per turn, No-Sell smaller firearms, and have nearly as many hit points as the Lieutenant. Thankfully, they only spawn in one area (Adytum), and are reduced to near-harmlessness by a suit of Powered Armor. Criticals can still one-shot you, though.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dogmeat was so well-received that he returned as a Secret Character in Fallout 2 and had Identical Grandsons in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
  • Despite his high standing in the Unity, the Lieutenant really isn't that important to the plot and you can easily bypass him, but his appearance, distinctive personality and casting makes him a popular and memorable character.
  • Killian Darkwater is only relevant in Junktown, but he stands out for being a Reasonable Authority Figure played by Richard Dean Anderson, looks like him and having a very cool name.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Shortly before release, the endings for the Junktown story arc were changed. Originally, helping sheriff Killian kill the casino boss Gizmo would have him become a zealot who enforces oppressive law and order on Junktown to the point it scares off traders, while helping Gizmo kill Killian the town would have prospered as a center of trade and gambling while he lines his own pockets. This was changed so that Junktown prospers under Killian's jurisdiction or becomes a Wretched Hive under Gizmo. Some fans prefer the original endings, which are more in-line with the Grey-and-Gray Morality the franchise is more known for these days, while the final endings are a simple case of Black-and-White Morality with a choice between backing a moral sheriff and a greedy gangster.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Later games, particularly Fallout 76, have been criticized for freely ignoring or rewriting existing canon. All of the games have had inconsistent continuity about various things, with even the first game being funky about it at times - for instance, deathclaws are treated as borderline cryptids in the Hub but are common knowledge just a little ways to the south in the Boneyard. This, however, could be explained away in that the different settlements simply don't keep up with each other about every little detail in the earlier days of the post-apocalypse, e.g. deathclaws are only common knowledge in the Boneyard because only the Boneyard really has problems with them, given that a group of them wiped out a local gang and took their headquarters as a lair. Later games were criticized for retconning more important things for less reason, most egregiously simply for the purpose of bringing back "iconic" factions and items in locations and/or time periods where they shouldn't be - just as an example related to the first game, the entire question of the Necropolis is rendered pointless by a sidequest in Fallout 4 that revolves around a ghoul child that's been locked in a fridge since the Great War, 210 years ago as of Fallout 4's setting.
  • The game also had a decent amount of cheesy pop-culture references, but they were accepted in this game as Easter Eggs at best, used sparingly and in situations where they still at least made some sense in the in-universe context where they pop up. Fallout 2 became criticized for its shout-outs because they were much more common and often used in contexts where it was simply not possible to make a reference to another work without ruining the tone the scene was going for, e.g. a slave being impossible to take seriously because he's blatantly quoting Back to the Future. It says a lot that New Vegas essentially made the shout-outs optional by locking the sillier ones behind the "Wild Wasteland" trait.
  • The series' use of weapons is another case; even from the first game, many of the weapons were fictional, at best attributed to real-life manufacturers (like a Glock plasma pistol) and not very appealing to look at. It wasn't too distracting because the game is an RPG first and an isometric shooter second, so the guns are less a major mechanic and more just one of many tools to use in any given situation. Fallout 2 also balanced it out by adding several more real-world weapons that were more appealing to look at. Fallout 3, however, transitioned the series to being primarily First-Person Shooter games, and suddenly the player was forced to spend much of the game staring right at and constantly using ugly weapons that made little mechanical sense. It wasn't too bad there, however, because the ugly fictional weapons were balanced out with about as many that were clearly based on real-world firearms and thus were easy to determine the function of at a glance, and once again New Vegas added several more real-world guns that were more appealing and mechanically sensible. Fallout 4, however, doubled down on the problems with them, primarily with its over-abundance of the butt-ugly, scrap-built "pipe" weapons that are used by just about everybody because the game's expanded modification system lets them be set up in every caliber and for every purpose, and even the purpose-built weapons have oddities in their designs like the fact that everything is set up for left-handed use. It's not helped that Bethesda's arsenals tend to have weird gaps (there are no pump-action, tube-fed shotguns in Fallout 3 or 4, your options being a double-barreled sawed off or a semi-auto one fed by detachable magazines^note downloading a mod to add a pump-action shotgun to Fallout 4 even requires another mod to fix the reloading - the game doesn't know how to handle weapons that reload one round at a time, even though they added such a weapon in Far Harbor, and so without that second mod every reload requires you to replace every shot that the tube can hold, even if you only fired one) and redundancies (3 has two 10mm pistols, but the one you get before leaving the starting vault is objectively superior to the other you have to fight and explore for an hour to find; same for the .32 pistol, whose ammo is put to much better use in the stronger and more accurate hunting rifle you will almost inevitably find first) to make players wish for more real-world guns to do the job, leading to the game's extensive modding scene.
  • Among other things, one of the complaints leveled at Fallout 3 was the inability to properly join the Enclave, and that the game more or less forces you to wipe them out, especially in Broken Steel. The original two games don't allow you to really join their respective villainous factions either, but it was accepted there because there were logical reasons why you couldn't. The Super Mutants in the first game are inherently opposed to you as a human being - you actually can join them, but it's presented as nothing more than a video where you're turned into one of them before you're forced to reload a save. The Enclave in 2 don't let you join them either, but that's because the Enclave in 2 are more or less a death cult that worships the old United States and regards everyone in the wasteland outside of themselves as a degenerate who they need to exterminate for the good of humanity. In contrast, the Enclave in 3 are nowhere near as genocidally evil, and even though they do have a plan on the same level as what they were up to in 2, not everyone in the Enclave is on board with it. Indeed, the game has some baffling ideas on where to draw the line on helping or joining the Enclave because of its need to offer good and evil endings combined with "evil" options that rarely stray from pure Stupid Evil territory: you are allowed to help them complete this plan, which will eventually kill you and everyone else in the Capital Wasteland, but you can't join the more reasonable majority who just want to secure the water supply without poisoning it, which is the same goal you are invariably helping the good guys achieve along the way. Tellingly, this would be something both Obsidian and Bethesda would rectify in later games, as every game since allows you to join any faction, including those the story sets up as the villains - even the Enclave in 76 - while giving them logical reasons for their villainy.
• Friendly Fandoms: Due to the somewhat bizarre and stupid nature of Sips' playthrough, he gets quoted a lot on the Fallout subreddit as well as giving his character, Mike Tyson, the Memetic Badass treatment.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Gifted trait. It gives you an extra point in each of your SPECIAL statistics in exchange for slower skill progress. The fact that there is normally no way to increase your SPECIAL stats after character creation but you can still max out all important skills with relative ease means this trait gives you a huge advantage for almost no tradeoff, especially if your Intelligence is high.
  • With a Gambling skill over 50%, you can go to the casino in the Hub, go to the dealer by the roulette tables, hold down the 1 and 4 keys to continuously bet 50 caps, and win over 60,000 caps within 10 minutes. With this infinite source of money, besides being able to buy tons of stimpaks and some really great weapons and armor, you can buy skill books from the library in the same area of town until you can't gain skill increases from them anymore, ending up with around a 90% level for each skill.
  • It is possible (and quite easy) to overlevel Barter skill to the point where you're able to sell items for more than their buying price. In other words, you can buy and sell the same item to any NPC back and forth until you obtain all their caps and items essentially for free.
  • The ability to Save Scum makes stealing ridiculously effective. Trade a shopkeeper something expensive for all their stuff, save, and then steal the item back, reloading every time they notice you. With certain shopkeepers whose stock regenerates, this is basically infinite money.
  • With a good Luck stat or Explorer, it's easy enough to find the Alien Blaster, the Limited Edition BB Gun, or both, potentially very early in the game. They're some of the strongest weapons around, and more than enough to trivialize most encounters.
• Goddamned Bats: Radscorpions are dangerous in the early game. They sport an armor class of 15, which makes them hard to kill, and the ability to poison you to deal damage over time. Worse, they tend to come in packs, meaning unprepared players are likely to be ganged up on and hit with an early game over. They become far less of a threat once the player acquires a decent weapon that matches their ideal combat skill, or wears anything other than a flimsy vault suit, both of which don't take very long to do. As a result, radscorpions turn into little more than annoyances with their ability to poison you.
• Good Bad Bugs: Only a handful of important characters had entries written for the "Tell me about" option, which lets you ask about any topic freely. Anyone who doesn't have a specific entry supplied for them has a series of generic responses amounting to "I don't know". This can lead to the hilarity of using "Tell me about" to ask characters about the town they live in, their job, or even prompt them with their own name, and they'll respond "Never heard of it, I don't know anything about that."
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's possible to convince Harry the super mutant that you're a highly advanced robot that simply looks like a human. Fast-forward to Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, where such things are commonplace in the Commonwealth.
  • The opening narration mentions Adolf Hitler and his rise to power in Germany. By the end of the 2000s, both Fallout and a certain video game series featuring Hitler would be owned by ZeniMax Media.
  • The same narration also mentions the Spanish Empire, which would be a major faction in another game published by Bethesda, Sea Dogs.
  • Set calls the Vault Dweller a "normie".
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The Vault Dweller was a mythical hero whose humble quest to save Vault 13 from dehydration accidentally led him into a conflict with a monstrous enemy that would forever shape the post-apocalyptic West Coast. Starting as an unlucky everyman forced into scouring the wastelands for a replacement water chip, the Vault Dweller would make allies of the local settlements and work with many immoral factions to gather clues that would lead him to accomplishing his goal. Finding the water chip led him to discovering a new breed of Super Mutant led by a mysterious Master that the Vault Dweller swore to destroy to save his people. Disguising himself as one of the mysterious Children of the Cathedral who worship the Master, the Vault Dweller infiltrated the Master's base and set off a nuclear bomb to end his plans before traveling to the Super Mutant military base and destroying the vats that created them. Saving the wasteland would ultimately make the Vault Dweller a legendary figure to the future people of New California and secure his legacy forever after.
  • John Maxson was the High Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel during the days of the Super Mutants' attempted conquest of the West Coast. A charismatic leader and skilled tactician, Maxson established friendly contact and trade routes with the local settlements and armed them with advanced weaponry exchanged for food and water. Keeping the Brotherhood isolated regardless, Maxson would regularly send outsiders seeking recruitment on suicide missions to scare off or get them killed. When the Vault Dweller succeeds at his mission, an impressed Maxson initiates him and sends him to scout out disappearing caravans to find proof of the growing mutant army. With proof of the military base, Maxson convinces the rest of the Brotherhood to take action and help the Vault Dweller end the Super Mutant threat.
  • Decker was a criminal mastermind and the true power in the Hub, the largest trading city in the wasteland. Decker built his criminal empire from scratch by slowly but surely buying out the major caravan companies and bribing the local law enforcement to ignore his illegal enterprises. Founding a high class bar as his base and running a loan shark gig for side cash, Decker will hire a suitably immoral Vault Dweller to assassinate key figures threatening his authority, including the head of the Water Merchants caravan and the local head of the Children of the Cathedral. Even if the Vault Dweller turns him in to the uncorrupted new sheriff, Decker proves wise enough to have foreseen his betrayal and plan a trap to wipe out all his enemies at once.
  • Loxley was the founder and leader of the Thieves' Circle and a posh gentleman seeking to emulate the tale of Robin Hood in the post-apocalypse. Loxley recruits only the very best thieves into his tight knit group and constantly moves his operations to avoid the wrath of Decker or the Hub police. Giving part of the Circle's wealth to the poor, Loxley nevertheless puts deadly booby trap that can kill or maim the unwary to protect his base while also using the maze of traps as the first trial to test potential new recruits.
• Memetic Loser: Ian is the first companion in the game and is quite useful, particularly during early-game areas such as the radscorpion cave and Vault 15. Unfortunately, many players will soon forget this thanks to his unfortunate tendency to shoot the Vault Dweller in the back if you give him an SMG.
• Nightmare Fuel: The game has its own page, seen here.
• The Scrappy: A lot of people loathe the Overseer for exiling the Vault Dweller at the end of the game because, if he sticks around, the next generation will look up to him and eventually want to leave the vault. It's to the point that the bad Karma/Bloody Mess ending where the Vault Dweller gorily executes him as he's walking back to the Vault is often seen as the most satisfying one. And even if he's spared, the second game reveals that he was eventually tried and executed for presumable treason.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The time limit. The player has 150 days to find a water chip, which is fine - if you follow the breadcrumb clues given in logical progression with the order you're nudged to explore the world, you'll find Necropolis and the water chip in plenty of time. However, there's a second, hidden, time limit that gives you 500 days to complete the game (400 if you hire the water caravans to supply Vault 13 with water), and at the end of the time limit the super mutants find Vault 13 and overrun it. A patch (and later, all versions of the game) removes the time limit, but replaces it with a new mechanic where numerous settlements are destroyed by the super mutants the longer you take. This means that getting the Golden Ending requires you to complete the game quickly, with the lowest time limit being 90 days to save the Followers of the Apocalypse. Thus, prolonged play to explore the world and do sidequests is actually penalizing in the end.
  • The "Tell me about" function in dialogue has you input keywords that an NPC will reply to. Frustratingly enough a lot of keywords that should make sense won't trigger a response (for instance Garl Death-Hand, the leader of the Khan raiders, has no idea who Tandi is, despite having kidnapped her). It's only there for flavor and isn't necessary to complete the game, which is probably why it wasn't brought back in Fallout 2.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Keeping Dogmeat alive can be a bit frustrating, especially in the last few levels where he's constantly in harm's way. To make matters worse, you can't give him any kind of instructions or tell him to stay put, meaning that he'll be the first to run into a fight. It is possible to make him survive the entire game, but it's tricky. Then again, by that point he is more trouble than he's worth and there isn't any other tangible reward other than a warm fluffy feeling. Indeed, the Vault Dweller's memoirs in the manual to Fallout 2 canonized Dogmeat dying along the way, basically stating it was due to his subpar AI without actually Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• Signature Scene: The final confrontation with The Master, not only for the fact the scene best describes the game as a whole, but for his... hers... their uncanny speech patterns.
• Strawman Has a Point: The Overseer banishing you despite all you had done was a horrible thing to do, but Fallout 2 shows that his predictions about the consequences of your actions for the vault proved essentially correct. Then again, they were the lucky ones in the end. They got to live.
• Tear Jerker:
  • For every animal lover, the first time Dogmeat dies. And the second time. And the fiftieth time...
  • Convincing the Master to kill himself. When you provide proof and successfully convince The Master his plan will inevitably fail, he enters into a Villanous BSOD before he activates the facility's nuclear device.
    The Master: But it cannot be. This would mean that all my work has been for nothing. Everything that I have tried to... a failure! It can't be. Be. Be. Be.
    Vault Dweller: Sorry, this isn't an option for you. Your race will die out after this generation.
    The Master: I... don't think that I can continue. Continue? To have done the things I have done in the name of progress and healing. It was madness. I can see that now. Madness. Madness? There is no hope. Leave now, leave while you still have hope...
  • Realizing that Harold and Richard Grey never learn that the other survived the incident at Mariposa and spend the rest of their lives thinking the other died there. In his audio diary, Richard says he believes Harold is dead or else he would have helped him out of the vats, and as far as Harold knows, Richard drowned in the vats. Even in the sequels it seems Harold never found out what happened to his old friend.
  • When the Overseer exiles you from the Vault at the end.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Radiation. The biggest source is in The Glow, which can be neutralized entirely by taking two doses of Rad-X (each gives you 50% radiation resistance, and they stack). The only other source are fruits, which give you a whopping 2 rads when eaten (you only start to get stat penalties at 150 rads, and die at 1000).
  • The "Tell me about" system is a holdover from Fallout's spiritual predecessor Wasteland, and lets you ask NPCs about any specific subject you want that you can type into the dialogue box. It is entirely superfluous; most characters don't even have entries of answers to give you, just a handful of important ones. When you do get an answer, it's either just flavor text that isn't helpful or informative, or it's information you could have learned about in their normal dialogue tree. Tellingly the feature was scrapped for the sequel.
  • When negotiating for Tandi's release from the Khans, you can offer to buy her freedom and Karl opens up a barter window where Tandi's portrait appears as an item he owns, and you have to trade for her like you would any other item of value. This is the only time in this game or the sequel that you can pay for something through the barter system, on all other occasions when purchasing anything outside of the bartering window, you have to offer the money straight-up.
• The Woobie: You, if you go with low intelligence. Nobody wants to talk to you and you find yourself limited in what you can do.