So Fallout and Baldur's Gate are inextricably linked together for me, cause I bought them both at the same time, on the very same Fry's Electronics mission, in the summer leading into my Senior Year of Highschool. I actually thought they were from the same game developer, cause I didn't know there was a difference between developers and publishers, and they were both published by Interplay. Nobody knew who Bioware was back then, or I didn't, so I kinda thought they had the same thing going on. But where I was somewhat familiar with AD&D from the gold boxes, I had never really played GURPS before. For me GURPS had just meant like an off brand form of AD&D when it was being used to play in a modern setting. The G in GURPS stood for "Generic" but to me it meant Guns. So basically if it was Western, Modern, Sci Fi Future whatever, if there were guns involved. In any case, I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but it was somewhat familiar. It had Ron Perlman and Jim Cummings and some other familiar voices, that I wouldn't have recognized at the time, but which probably iced it for me hehe. On the wiki it notes A BOY AND HIS DOG as one of the main influences, and I fucking loved that flick. I think I watched it on Beta max with my dad, like way too young to understand what anything meant, but it had like the best mid 70s poster cover ever...!
Kinda funny, given that it's now 2024!!!? heheh
They also note Mad Max as an influence, which is kinda obvious, but I think Terminator 2 was still sorta top of mind for me as well, as it had only come out like 5 years before, so it was still playing on TV constantly.
For the first Fallout and it's sequel the vibe I got was basically this... and this... cause it's all set in a Korean war timeline, but like if that one had just gone off the fucking the rails lol.
I thought the new show pretty much nailed the sense of humor, and I was pleased that they leaned into the gore too, as I was a total Fangoria Magazine kid growing up! Pretty sure the plot keys off the later entries in the aughts, but it had plenty of callbacks, and it's kind of a funny setting to get hung up on any minor stuff that might be inconsistent. Like in the original it was all Vault 13, and the dirtier dozen. Vault Dweller was basically Charname, though it did have some presets for peeps that didn't want to dive in on Char creation. For attributes it was basically like a might and magic type thing where they kept it familiar there, but added Luck into the mix too. It had skills and traits which were familiar from AD&D but also Perks which were a novelty. They're essentially like feats in later editions of D&D, every couple levels you'd get a power up.
I have the same issue with a first person POV in RPGs, not quite as hardcore, but I would get motion sickness as well if watching someone else's screen. If I'm on the stick, I can hang though, so the later ones didn't shut me down. The first couple were ISO style, and they didn't start going 3D till the tail end of the aughts, when Bethesda took the reigns and we vaulted to 101. Also amusing for me, cause of the Freeway. Where I'm from it's 101, if you grew up down south it'd be THE 101, but whatever, kinda the new spin on the same old.
One thing you might try if you find yourself getting nauseous with first person POV is to letterbox the shit out of your display. The wider I can go on peripheral vision the easier it is on my eyes and my inner ear. Part of the reason first person POV is so rough, is because they often pillarbox the field of view and make it very narrow, which will fuck with my sense of balance. Just to give a weird example, playing golden eye on a 4:3 aspect screen where it was split top to bottom vs the same thing side by side. When the screen was divided horizontally I could play for hours and hours, if the screen was split vertically, I'd have to politely decline. Just makes dizzy, like to the point where I might have to leave the room even, and go outside for a smoke. It's just the way my eyes work. When the field of view is pillarboxed that feels claustrophobic to me, like wearing goggles and breaking a sweat. I gotta bang wide, or not at all, for some of these things.
Anyhow, just a rambler. A... and his dog! Can't argue with that! hehe
Smiling faces in the mushroom clouds! lol
ps. Oh wow I just realized the whole thing is on youtube, which also somehow sounds like a fallout inside joke
www.forbes.com
