After Bethesda acquired the franchise, the games underwent a Genre Shift to 3D first/third-person shooters with real-time combat, similar to their famed Elder Scrolls series. As such, the Interplay/ Black Isle games followed in Wasteland's footsteps with turn-based combat and 2D graphics, using an isometric perspective. The series began life as a planned sequel or spinoff to the 1988 cRPG Wasteland, but due to licensing issues was retooled into a Spiritual Successor (the Wasteland series would later be revived by inXile Entertainment). Fallout 3 (Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania).Fallout: New Vegas (Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah).

Fallout 2 (California, Oregon and Nevada).

There are two coherent story arcs and settings in the main series: Subsequent games are set successive decades after the first, with the world continuing to evolve with new factions and adventures. Though humanity has slowly begun to rebuild itself with some established towns, civilization as a whole struggles to survive amidst scarce resources, vicious mutants, and those who have turned to a Rape, Pillage, and Burn lifestyle. The first Fallout begins almost a century later, in 2161. While some Vaults were nonetheless able to support relatively stable societies, many degenerated into anarchy, or worse. These shelters were supposedly meant to protect mankind from nuclear fallout - but in reality, the project doubled as a mysterious, government-sponsored social experiment, with most Vaults' inhabitants living in conditions ranging anywhere from 'somewhat unusual' to 'outright torturous'. The resulting 'Great War' lasted a mere two hours, but the atomic fire that burned the world was so incredibly destructive that it not only caused the collapse of global civilization, but irrevocably changed the planet's climate as well.Īcross the United States, pockets of humanity survived the bombs on the surface, in personal shelters, or by hiding in the Vaults: massive underground bunkers built by the Vault-Tec Corporation. No one knows or cares which side fired the first missiles, but once they were up, everyone else fired too. then, on October 23, 2077, the world ended in nuclear holocaust. Eventually, the two superpowers clashed over the Alaskan oil fields, hoping to secure just a little more of that black gold. Unfortunately, the good times would not last: the world's inefficient technology depleted fossil fuels even faster than in the real world, causing massive resource wars to break out worldwide while China and the United States began hoarding their last fuel reserves.

The shift towards nuclear energy gave way to technological wonders previously relegated to science fiction, from robot butlers to wrist-mounted computers. After World War II, the United States became an okay place to live.

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