Let's get down to business and answer the question everyone has been asking: yes, I'm enjoying the new season of Fallout. You might end up wondering how old Mike Drucker feels about it now. While I know some people get mad when Lucy roams around, I agree with the idea that she has a high charisma.
I always play those characters and they always say the silliest things, so I'm happy with that direction. My ideal roleplaying character is someone who tap dances their way out of every bad situation and eventually, somehow, kills a god. And who doesn't like a radioactive cowboy who says the phrase “your daddy” at least eight times per episode?
Why I replay the worst fallout game
But with the new season of Fallout, I decided to go back to a specific game. No, not the short but basic original Fallout. Not the better Fallout 2. Nor the slightly worse but still really good Fallout 3. Nor the best Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, despite being the most basic of season two. Neither is Fallout which I know people love but I missed that charisma-forward gameplay, Fallout 4. I'm not even talking about the almost-canon-but-not-quite Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. I'm talking about the weirdest and worst Fallout game – Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.
Now, before I get into this, let me say that game development is hard. You often have a short schedule and sometimes companies force you to make changes you don't like. So I don't want to be mean to the developers here. And if you worked on this game, I apologize for what I'm about to say.
If you're waiting for more fallout games, it's time to expand your horizons
After the success of the second season of the Fallout TV series, many people are looking for a new game. Guess what: it's already available.
I know this isn't how you wanted it to turn out, and I know you still dream about the missions where you walk into a huge open space and just kill a bunch of enemies who seem confused about where you are and then leave. That's about 99 percent of the game.
Let's start with the most obvious. The game is called Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel even though there is the game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. It's not confusing at all, and definitely a smart marketing move by a company that wants to differentiate its projects. One is a pretty decent strategy RPG and the other is a pretty far from decent action RPG.
Even though they're both about Wasteland's dumbest shitboots, I'm not sure who would ever think it was a good idea to name two very different games in a then minor franchise almost exactly the same thing. And don't tell me about the Game Boy Advance port of Splinter Cell because you know that's not what I'm talking about and none of us care enough to argue.
Brotherhood Of Steel has no idea what Canon is
Of course, a Fallout action RPG is a really good idea! In fact, that's why the last four mainline games were, say it with me, action RPGs! And it's built around the bones of a pretty good game: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. See how they didn't name it Baldur's Gate 2? That's because Baldur's Gate 2 already existed and not using that title made it easier to distinguish from the other game. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll stop with the name thing. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was a fun Diablo knock-off, although playing it now is a bit like having an 8-year-old with a loose sense of narrative and rules DM your D&D game.
But Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel is not a good game. And – more importantly – it's a worse Fallout game. Let me list how it's not canon for extremely understandable reasons!
Let's start with the opening. Forget Ron Perlman, we don't even get a “War, war never changes.” Instead, the intro oddly suggests that the Great Nuclear War took place in the 1950s rather than 2077. The game itself seems to be on the regular timeline, but it's a little jarring to see the same mistakes intentionally put into the game that people would later get mad at the AI for making.
Hey, it's not like they had previous games in the franchise they could look at. Oh, and it oddly uses graphics from other Fallout games when it gives way too much exposure even though this particular game looks and feels quite different.
Oh, let's get to that too. The retrofuture vibe is toned down in favor of a BADASS, HARDCORE, EDGY APOCALYPSE feel. There are still robots and mutants, but a lot of the sci-fi stuff is background noise in favor of some dirty rooms and a handful of NPCs who have a couple of lines each driving the story forward. What is the story? Super mutants are bad and the Brotherhood of Steel didn't do a good job of stopping them until you came around. Done.
There's Nothing Fallout About Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
Also, hey, I know Fallout games have characters in wild costumes. I know Fallout games sexualize a lot of characters. I'm fine with that. They are fictional adults who are theoretically born long after I am dead. But it's so embarrassing to see half the women in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel wearing these extremely skimpy metal bondage outfits that look like something your dad would wear in a magazine printed on butcher paper.
It's not sexy, it's just weirdly awkward and looks stupid, like a 12-year-old boy describing what he wanted from a game in a series he's never played. But don't worry, at least these women are made of about ten polygons each, so it's undeniably hot.
And you know Nuka Cola? Do you remember that? Much of the Fallout series. Can't have Fallout without Nuka Cola. Sorry, dammit, they replaced Nuka Cola with the product placement of the actual drink, Bawls. Which I love, love, love because if you don't know Bawls is real, it just seems like a really corny in-game joke.
Fallout's Reality TV competition series is officially underway
Give me protection.
And if you know it's real, you have to question how it's the only company besides Vault-Tec to survive the end of the world. Maybe instead of plain old bottle caps being currency, they could trade Snapple caps with fun facts on them! I don't know where the money from that product placement went, because it sure isn't in this game.
But they couldn't ruin the show's amazing sound design and sharp needle drop, could they? You already know what I'm going to say: no! Instead of old songs from the early to mid-20th century, we get heavy metal guitar riffs from bands like Slipknot. Which is cool, but not quite Fallout. Even then! Like, this wasn't the second game in the series to explore new things. We already had a lot of stuff established! It's so hard. Maybe this is some kind of ancient Borderlands? Does it feel better? I don't know.
Don't play Brotherhood Of Steel. Leave it to me.
And I know I've only briefly touched on the gameplay, but that's because the game only briefly touches on the fun. There is no open world, so don't plan on exploring. Entering a building requires you to confirm that, yes, you want to enter a building. And for some reason almost every building is massive inside? There is a bar you visit early in the game and it feels like a hell of a maze as you try to clear out the raiders. There are legitimately more rooms than raiders. I've gotten lost in this bar and usually it takes three drinks.
What else? What else? Leveling up gives you the great joy of choosing whatever 5% bonus you get next. Dungeons can have different looks and layouts, but they're mostly just masses of one or two types of enemies that run at you, get stuck in a doorway, and then wait for you to kill them. Sometimes these enemies will attack you and do no damage. Sometimes the same type of enemy will attack you in the same dungeon and do tons of damage. The logic of it probably makes sense somehow, but I don't know what it is and it's wracking my brain trying to figure it out.
You can also play a ghoul working with the Brotherhood of Steel. They don't like “abominations”, as far as I can tell from every Fallout game I've played. I can't go too hard on this though, as I know different Brotherhood factions have different levels of being a ghoul, but still – they're usually not too friendly towards ghouls! I don't know.
If there's one saving grace for Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, it's that it's not canon. You don't have to play it. I do it because I want to punish myself for existing on this earth. But you don't. You are missing nothing. Its story has no bearing on the series. No cool stuff that we would later love comes from this game. There are no bottles of Bawls in Fallout. None of these characters matter either. It's an action RPG that not only misses the point of Fallout, but somehow misses the point of action RPGs. It is beautiful in its tragedy. It is perfect in its sheer lack of direction. I love it.
- Released
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January 13, 2004
- ESRB
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M for mature 17+ due to blood and gore, mature sexual themes, strong language, violence
- Developer
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Interplay
- Publisher
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Interplay
- Engine
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creative engine
- Multiplayer
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Local multiplayer
