Fallout

Fallout is a 1997 role-playing game from Interplay. In a retro-futuristic world where the 1950s idea of the future never ended, a nuclear war has destroyed civilisation. Generations later, the water purification chip in Vault 13, an underground shelter, breaks, and one dweller is sent out to find a new one.

You create your character with a system called SPECIAL, seven attributes, plus skills and perks. The world is open: towns, gangs, cults and mutants, each with problems that can be solved in several ways, including by talking. Combat is turn-based, with action points and aimed shots at parts of the body, and it is often brutal.

It is one of the most important role-playing games ever made. Its world is grim, funny and morally grey, and it lets you solve its problems in ways the designers did not lay out step by step. Its art direction, the Vault Boy and the 1950s look, became one of the best known in games.

Its interface is old, and its combat is simple compared with later games. It is sold on Steam and GOG.

Fallout Tactics came out of Fallout's world and its rules: SPECIAL, action points, aimed shots and the Brotherhood of Steel. Fallout is mostly a game about one person with a few companions, where Fallout Tactics is about a squad. It is where the setting, the tone and the combat began.