This channel is still kinda brand new, and if you've got things you'd like to see me do with it, let me know! In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you'd gimmie that ol' Like-and-Subscribe!
Love it. Fallout was so fundamental to my gaming experience growing up in the 90s that I've actually replayed 1 and 2 in the last five years, and plenty of times in the decades before. It just always scratches an itch that almost nothing else can.
A small thing, but could you turn your camera's auto focus off when recording at a fixed depth? Sometimes when everything goes blurry it means I'm about to lose consciousness and it takes my damaged brain a second to realize that's just the video.
I got it with my dad at a Walmart in a dual-jewel case for 10 dollars the day before 7th grade. Went to Jack in the Box across the parking lot and read the case probably 30 times before we headed home and proceeded to play it together until about 3am.
I’ll add my 2 cents, though it probably worth less than that. I started with Fallout 3, and to this day it is my favorite game of all time. I think I experienced a variation of that “new frontier” feeling. I had three friends that got the game when it came out. Me, being a poor kid, didn’t have the money for new games all the time so I had to settle for stories. We’d sit around the lunch table at school and they’d tell stories of triumph over bands of raiders, the fear of super mutants and rad scorpions, and tales of utter horror of encounters with deathclaws and glowing ghouls. It was like listening to stories from people who had traveled to another continent. So I finally got the game and instantly fell in love with the chipper/existential horror of life in the vault. But finally I left the vault. And when the sunlight glare subsided and the wasteland stretched out before me.. I froze. I was absolutely petrified of what was before me. I aimed my little 10mm in every direction for probably 15 minutes. No game has ever come close to sucking me in to that reality before. Was the story a little wonky? Yeah probably. But I was so engrossed I didn’t even notice. Fallout is and always will be special in my heart.
Yeah, even having played the first game in the 90s, my first time playing Fallout 3 was like I stepped into another world. Totally engrossing experience. I had both feelings in two very different genres and different times in my life. Extremely inspiring too. As much crap as F3 gets in the community, it was a core memory. I still remember places and emergent events in F3 years later that feel like real places in my head, just as described in the video. KotOR also has a feeling similar to this.
I saw Star Wars in the theater. I was 10. From the first scene when the Imperial Star Destroyer makes its dramatic entrance, even my OCD-riddled, pre-teen clay brain knew that my world of movies would be forever changed. This shit is NEW. Up to that point, I had watched a ton of war movies and westerns with my Pops, and I could immediately recognize the tropes. But it was in space. It had effects I'd never seen or heard before. I saw it in the theater a further eight times. My allowance that summer of '77 went to Star Wars and popcorn.
My first experience with Fallout was in 96/97 when the demo was released. I didn't even have a home computer, but my friend did and he got the demo from a friend who'd burned it onto a CD. We booted it up, screwed around with the character creation, and wandered around the demo town (I think it was Junktown, but I didn't know that then), and everything was cool but also kinda generic. We couldn't really take on anyone in a fight, and the quest was basic, but there was a locked refrigerator that drew our attention. We must've played for HOURS looking for the key before we realized "lockpicking" was a skill. Create a new character, tag lockpicking, play the demo to get a level up, put everything into lockpicking, open the fridge and - there's a f-ing MINIGUN with ammo. Somewhere between the discovery of that minigun and the 4th person I obliterated with it, I fell in love with the game, to the point that when Fallout showed up in stores I bought the game, checked my bank account, borrowed some money from my parents, emptied the box, cut the back of the box out, and went back to the computer store with the "recommended system requirements" in hand to buy a PC. For fallout, I had no other use for a computer at that time. If I typed up and printed an assignment, my HS English teacher would reject it because it HAD to be handwritten. So yeah, I loved that demo SO MUCH that I bought an entire computer just for Fallout, and I never regretted it
Oh right the demo. I do not remember a lot of it, but I think there was a lady(?) with a minigun, who liked to blast you to bits if you tried to talk to her. I'm not sure where I got the demo from, but I think maybe it was a local PC gaming magazine that sometimes had a special editions bundled with a demo disk/CD.
The demo was Scrapheap, with the Fools (metal armour led by a woman with a minigun) vs the Hypocrites (leather armour led by a man with a minigun), and there was absolutely a minigun in the fridge. I don't remember being able to create your own character though. 1 of the premades was available, everything else returned a "Not available in this demo" or some such. I swear that demo was my life 😅
Started with Fallout 3 here. It was my introduction to RPG (I had not yet been bitten by the tabletop bug). Like you, I only knew of fantasy-flavored RPGs, and Fallout’s retro-futurism felt like such a fresh take. The lore, the visuals, and the soundtrack… my god, the soundtrack, was the perfect entry point into a genre that I never knew I loved.
Even though I had played Morrowind and Oblivion before playing Fallout 3, I definitely had a special moment of "This is POSSIBLE in games now?!" When leaving the vault and seeing the capital wasteland for the first time. While it wouldn't last forever, those opening moments of Fallout 3 were filled with an awe and a sense of wonder that I had not experienced in a game before.
"I scrounge around in my pockets, I might have had to borrow a dollar or two from some friends..." -- this reminds me of my (now-wife) and I in 1998. Neither of us owned a playstation, but we had PCs. Final Fantasy VII came out on PC. We wanted it desperately. But we were 16. We didn't have credit cards. We didn't have debit cards. We had cash. We were *exactly* 55 cents short of being able to buy the game. We were miles from home -- we had enough gas to get home, we lived in rural Pennsylvania and had to drive 60 minutes or more to get to a Walmart and we were going to have to skip dinner to buy the game because we'd have been broke -- but we wanted it bad enough that we were willing to do that. But we were 55 cents short. We had no friends around. No parents. Just my wife and I. We scrounged around her car *desperately* trying to find a few quarters and dimes in the seats, in the center console, anything. We couldn't find it. So we left Walmart, got dinner at like...Taco Bell...and came home. We eventually played it when both her family and I both got PS1s. But that little anecdote of yours distinctly triggers that memory for me and, to be honest, I'm glad we didn't find that 55 cents. Because then it's not nearly the iconic memory that it is for us now. If we find it? We play a neat game, sure. But we didn't find it. So we have a core memory instead. That's worth 55 cents and waiting six months to play a game any day.
I still love the original Fallout. I saw the random encounter with the Whale and bowl of petunias from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and accused of lying because no one else in my friend group ever saw it.
Having come to Fallout 3 fairly young around 12, and having only experienced Oblivion, and Skyrim beforehand, the post apocalypse part of Fallout felt wholly alien to me. Having played Fallout 1 recently, I can say the raw automosphere the game creates is unparalleled by any other Fallout, including 2 lol. 2 is where I start to see alot more of the quirkiness and campiness Fallout is now known for.
i was born in ‘98. when my parents let me play video games it was things like halo, call of duty, fps games with a linear story. while not new in theory or implementation, playing new vegas for the first time changed my goddamn life. the way you talk about fallout is how i feel about new vegas. of course, it felt new to ME, and not to the world, and for that, i see why fallout in ‘97 must have felt like a revolution. much love.
My experience was the same with Fallout 2. My brother played D&D, so I already loved the idea of creating my own adventures. The gameplay was so new and different. Fallout 2, also, sparked my love for 40s music.
I like your thoughts, your stories, how you think and your opinions. I'm all in on this channel, I dont have any specific ideas what you should do with it, but "what greg thinks about X" is definitely of interest to me.
I never played fallout. But I had a very similar experience to what you described with Half-Life in 1998. The storytelling, the cinema-like feel of the game, the realism of everything in the game. It just blew my mind. I was used to just running around in something like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D were the million clones that existed at that time. But half-life was like being in a movie. And a good one. I was 16. I didn't really play RPGs until later on, probably in my twenties or close to it. The first one I remember getting into that really changed everything for me was Morrowind... also from the Bethesda. That game consumed a ridiculous amount of my life. It really felt like you could go anywhere, do anything, and the game world would adapt to you and how you played it. And at that time I had never played anything like it. Maybe not true... I kind of now remember playing a lot of Deus Ex and really wanting to like it, because there was so much there to like and to love. But the gameplay really held that one back. It just felt clunky. Even though the concept of it was so huge and expansive and immersive. So maybe in some respects Morrowind delivered on what Deus Ex promised. For me and my own gaming experience, that is.
Born in '72. Saw Star Wars in theater, found D&D in 3rd grade, and had a similar experience as Greg with Fallout. Thank you for your kind words about the grognards, we can't help it.
Hello fellow '72 grognard. I didn't find PnP RPGs until 5th grade when my brother introduced me to Star Frontiers (yes I'm a rare unicorn that didn't play D&D as his first RPG 😉).
I was 27 when Fallout came out, and even though I'd played Wasteland, and been a D&D player since age 11, most video games I played before then, were simple arcde-y console games, JRPGs, text adventures, blocky attempts at deep RPGs (Ultima) and the occasional simpler graphic adventure game (i.e. Time of Lore on the C64) among rented NES, pirated Apple or C64 games, or picked-up-on-a-whim games from the EB Games bargain bin. Fallout, though... I played it on a friend's PC. And I was ... wowed. In love. It struck a chord, and I went out and bought it. Then I RAN to buy the sequel. No other game pulled me in quite like them, and I've owned every mainline game in the series since.
My intro to Fallout was Fallout 2. Primarily because that's when older cousins had just been exposed to PC games. At that time, I had no idea of how amazing it was and that it would be so legendary.
I played Fallout later on in life, but the game that really blew my mind as a kid was Morrowind. I remember seeing ads for it on Toonami, and telling my parents that I did not want anything for my birthday or Christmas, I just wanted this game when it came out. We went out the day it was available and picked it up for PC, and I remember we all went out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday before coming home and feeling so frustrated at the delay. I read the little manual that came in the box over and over in the car. I remember studying the installation screen images from the game while it chugged away on the family computer. The music of the title screen still gives me that same feeling to this day. And loading up a new game finally, hearing the sound of the boat in the tutorial, making my first character, and stepping foot out into the world, all I could see was endless possibility in front of me. And then I spent the next few hours getting in over my head, dying repeatedly, and loving every moment of it. I still go back to Morrowind every few years, and it still holds a big place in my heart.
I think I had a very similar experience playing Fallout New Vegas for the first time. I was more of a new comer to RPGs and the ones Ive played had little depth only ranging from bad choices to good choices and what sword you were carrying. But playing Fallout NV and seeing my actions having consequences on so many different levels, seeing the endings and results of my relationships with different factions was mind blowing. I got lost in the world with NPCs so tightly written that I will never forget meeting people like Easy Pete for the first time Your words really resonated with me on Fallout just that we experienced different parts of the series just in a very similar way :>
I’m 27 now, so fallout 3 came out when I was 11. I was subscribed to game informer for some reason and I remember getting the fallout 3 cover issue a few months before the game came out. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. Similar to your story about the original’s box art, the cover was this grimy green image of a brotherhood of steel member in power armor. I was down at my grandmas lake house and there wasn’t any internet. So I spent the weekend reading through the cover store and imagining what all these screenshots would be like to play through. The world was so alien sounding and the emphasis on choice wasn’t something I had seen in any other games at that point. When the game finally came out I did what the cover story said: blew up megaton and wandered over to tenpenny tower. Then I just sorta wandered around, making up my own stories. I stumbled across the main quest by accident after exploring an abandoned auto body shop. I didn’t play through the main quest the “correct” way with the GNR quest until my 2nd playthrough. Long story short, I think that sense of “I can go anywhere in this world” really stuck with me. New Vegas is my favorite game of all time and I had a similar experience with it. I don’t love where fallout is going in the new games, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it. It showed me what open world games could be and I think that’s why I love even more open ended games like Nethack and DnD.
I've never experienced the feeling from games, but I did get it from a concert. I always loved music, but one particular show completely expanded my understanding of the entire medium. It felt like being exposed to an ocean of magic, and that everything else up to that point had barely been tapping into it. It was almost religious. I've been to dozens of shows and have only experienced anything close to that one other time. But I feel pretty lucky to have experienced it twice, and I hope I can again in the future.
I know it's not the focus of the video but WOOO! Dark Sun! Such a wild setting, honestly a pretty interesting way to get into desolate world games like Fallout imo
I won't say I had the sense that I was encountering a new kind of media, but you did touch on the magic that Fallout 3 represented for me when I played it. For background's sake, my family never owned a very good computer, so my gaming was limited to consoles growing up. Nor did I get into to tabletop roleplaying until relatively late into my adulthood (I'm 36 now and started doing it at 32). My very first completed video game was Final Fantasy on the NES, and JRPGs have always been in the DNA of my media preferences. But Fallout 3, and particularly New Vegas were games that let me live in a world and influence its outcome in a way I'd never experienced before. And like you, I was utterly blown away by Fallout's aesthetic and atmosphere. I recognize the flaws of FO3 nowadays, but the eerie nature of crawling through ruined American cities with music like Fox Boogie, or finding a bombed out Georgetown brownstone built entirely off a Ray Bradbury short story I loved was completely captivating. I loved building my own character, and throughout the course of my play-through, I got a real sense of who she was, what decisions she'd make that I might not, and why. I took all those feelings into character design in New Vegas, where the entire world is regularly reshaped by your actions and who you align with, and built brand new characters for a brand new experience. And I've never been able to recapture that feeling of freedom until I started DMing my own TTRPG games earlier this year. Anyway, love this video. And I love hearing you geek out about stuff. Really enjoy the direction of this channel so far.
I remember playing Fallout 3 for the first time. I was totally fresh to the series and honestly thought I getting into some sort of FPS. My mind was totally blown by the SPECIALs, Traits, skills. The multiple ways to complete a task and how it effected the world around you. It did feel like a totally new thing to me, like nothing I had experienced before.
When I finally got my hands on Fallout, second hand from my local store, I was too young to realise just how unique it was. It was only through playing other RPGs (Diablo, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, FFVIII) that I realised nothing else is going to hit the same. Being presented with a situation and letting you decide what skills you were going to use to solve it, and who you were going to solve it for. To go from collecting evidence for Killian, to getting paid to to finish the job for Gizmo 🤯
Greg, I learned AD&D in the late 70s exactly as you described - a friend with a bag of dice. We lost ourselves in the Conan novels, in LOTR and Tolkien, and in our heads. I can only hope that your connection to Fallout runs as deep and as long-lasting. I loved this perspective on gaming (although in 95, I was in grad school and not gaming that way anymore). I look forward to more of this sort of video. A cinematography note. At the end of the video, when you were shaking your hands in front of you towards the camera, the frame started to shake to me. Almost like the auto focus was catching your hands then your face and back and forth.
I got into Fallout after playing StarCraft and MechWarrior, so those in game cinematics and the astonishing immersion they brought, prepared me for Fallout. In a lot of ways I've been repeating that same sense of what a game can be ever since, in my own work. Even making my own Fallout mods to recapture that feeling in a new generation of games.
As someone who was excited at the time that Interplay finally made another Wasteland-like game I certainly would argue the idea that there was nothing like Fallout, but I would never argue that Fallout helped ensure the post-apocalyptic genre kept its foodhold in gaming long-term.
This is 100% tangential, but the way you describe your experience playing Fallout at 15 is how I describe playing Dragon Age: Origins at 13. I think people who find RPGs in their teens are a lucky breed. I know for me it was so eye opening to play a game that was so different from the ratchet and clanks of my youth or the Halo titles of my pre-teen years. I really felt like I found something special in that little CRPG that I can’t quantify to this day. Honestly for me it’s like being an archeologist and discovering something new on every dig. I played that game over 80 times to completion, so there was a lot of digging! I hope any teenager that’s playing Baldur’s Gate 3 today is getting the same experience you got from Fallout and that I got from Dragon Age: Origins. It’s just such an enlightening and heartening thing to fall madly in love with a game.
As someone who played the 90s Fallouts in the 90s, I fully know what you're saying. My love affair with Interplay and Black Isle began with the first Fallout but it did not end there!
Thanks for describing in a much more succinct manner than I ever could how it felt to play Fallout for the first time. Fallout was a first true CRPG for me as well and I’m sure you can relate to the disappointment when I found out that I started my gaming journey at the very top as I thought surely there must be a ton of games like Fallout. 27 or so years later I’m still chasing that feeling.
I came into fallout 3 back on the ps3. I still remember encountering hunters selling strange meat just outside vault 101. I could never quite describe the wonder I felt when thinking about what else was out there. It was all new and exciting
I absolutely had the same experience with Fallout 3. When I moved out the guy that lived there before left a stack of 360 disk and at the time I was just playing Forza and CoD. I still remember loading the disk for the very first time without a single clue as to what could be on it. It seemed like every time I ever said "it would be sooo cool if there was a game you could do blank" and put it all in one game. I remember being blown away leaving the cave to vault 101 and seeing the wasteland. I was immersed from the very start and i don't think I'll ever have a gaming experience like that again.
My first Fallout was Fallout 3 in 2008 and I was 13. I felt the same way you felt about the OG. Ever since i layed eyes on the cover and that power armor I was enthralled
I love your takes on culture and media in particular. As one who has worked in traditional broadcasting for more than 20 years and now making the transition to digital media as well, this stuff is fascinating.
I absolutely loved this video! It made me feel when I truly discovered gaming for myself. I of course knew about video games; I'm in my early 60's. But I didn't really get it. Then my kids got me SDV when I was in my late 50's. I fell in love. I didn't know it was possible. Mind blown. Or so I thought. Then I saw Skyrim. I had to have it! It was mind boggling beautiful. I just didn't know a game could be created that was so beautiful. Rookie mistake...it wouldn't work on my old laptop. My kids helped my learn about the world of buying a gaming PC. Bought a new PC and just wow! Anyway, thanks Greg for helping me remember how it felt in the beginning. My kids are now the ones reminding me to go outside once in awhile.
My first experience with fallout that actually hit me with the “holy shit this is something I’ve never had before” was new Vegas. It was a whole world that, unlike other rpgs I had played like Skyrim, felt alive. It didn’t feel like everything was waiting for me. It felt like the 2nd battle over the Hoover dam was going to happen whether I stepped in or not,but I think the best and most impactful moment was lonesome road. You can completely talk down the big boss without using speech cheeks. It felt like the dm had said “no rolls prove it to me you can do it” and just by simply talking to him about nations and how destroying them isn’t something he wants truly and how his own morals would never let him do this if it wasn’t out of revenge. It felt like I, not the video game character I played as or it was me talking through the character, was talking to Ulysses. I’ve never felt it in any game ever since and that’s the immersion levels I only feel for worlds in books or ttrpgs. New Vegas felt like something no game could achieve. Plus there’s a robot who fist you called fisto and that’s hilarious.
I stumbled onto Fallout 3 as my first experience with the series and with real post-apocalypse in general at all in 2014. Im not sure if I realized I was walking into a whole world/series but it completely introduced me to a sci-fi post apocalypse theme and it was geniunely one of my first entries into RPGs at all which I had no experience in. It planted a seed in me and once it sprouted I completely fell into all the Fallout series with NV and RPGs in general and eventually Tabletop RPGs.
I'd love to hear Greg talk more about his Darksun game. Hearing about early D&D experiences is always interesting. I am so glad my friends got me into Fallout 1 and 2.
Fallout 3 was the first Fallout game I played, and I was probably around 14 or 15. I got the Game of the Year edition and it was the first open world RPG I ever played, and was an immensely formative experience. When I think of playing that game I get a memory of the cozy smell of my basement, that I spent hours upon hours in getting lost in the Capital Wasteland. Before that, I’d play competitive online games with my friends like Call of Duty or Halo, but never felt I was very good, and would associate playing games with the stress of not playing well or letting my team down. With Fallout 3, I could just be myself, learning how the world worked, learning the lore and gameplay at my own pace, which I learned is my favorite way to play a video game. So yes, I feel like I had a very powerful experience with Fallout 3 similar to how you experienced the first two games!
I only recently discovered the magic of the Fallout universe through the Amazon Prime series. I'm playing Fallout 4 at the moment and having an absolute blast! I can't wait to try New Vegas next. My first "holy shit this game is my entire life" moment was in 2003; Star Wars Galaxies. I would wake up, go to work, come home, and played SWG until bed every single day for 3-4 years. I still have fond memories exploring the deserts of Tatooine while doing jobs for Jabba the Hut.
I was stationed at Kessler AFB for training. Got a Military edition Xbox on base and Fallout 3. I came back to my room after training and played as late as I could. Absolutely loved the experience.
My son and I spent many a weekend afternoon wandering around Incredible Universe (later Fry's and last I heard a big empty building...) comparing computer components (back in the day when even I could build my own desktop), , discussing games, and with him having long involved convos with the other teen-age boyo's there. He definitely played Fallout.
Also an OG Fallout player (a little older at the time) and this largely sums up my experience with the game as well. Being less young and spongy (25) at the time, I don't think age is the thing. I think it's because it really was something new.
Sadly I never got to play Fallout 1 and 2. I have seen so many playthroughs over the years that It still feels like I played it ^^ I never could let go of the Lore and the Music. Its the main reason this channel exists currently. Fallout has that really special feeling almost no other game or setting have for me! Nuka Cola was the first thing!
Such a great video! You actually sound so excited like a 15yo boy who recently discovered Fallout and tells his friends about this bomb ass game, speaks of how much these memories mean to you! I'm glad you made this channel. What makes "How to Dring" so good is your passion, and Im happy to see more of it on more subjects.
Looking forward to seeing more vids on here! Just found your main channel relatively recently, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far. Keep on keeping on, my good sir!
Seems like a great place for this kind of content excited to have videos from both this and the original channel to look forward to. Keep crushing it Greg.
What a time to be alive that was. Fallout also came out a few years after the original X-Com, another game that redefined my expectations for PC games. My favorite part of Fallout was just how much there was to do, compared to many other games of the era. It just kinda let you off the leash, and you had only slightly better of an idea what to do than the protagonist would, emerging into the world for the first time. Only downside to getting to play all those games "back in the day" is that now we're old, lol.
I know it was a throwaway comment, but I discovered Dark Sun shortly after I started playing TTRPGS a decade ago. I had always hated fantasy genre stuff because of its tropes, and what you describe for Fallout I had for Dark Sun (and Planescape). It completely rewrote what I thought a genre could possibly be. I had the supreme pleasure of making my own Dark Sun 5e conversion and running a campaign with it for my group, and by the end they were all true converts too. They could see what I had seen, and could feel the creative fire radiating from it (Conan with big men, yes, but also a Stone Age Mad Max with environmental themes). Beautifully said on everything Fallout. I miss the sense of development 1, 2, and NV had. 3 and 4 just feel like zany Fallout-themed amusement parks in comparison. “Ride the super mutant infested mall!” “Explore the cannibal house!” “Slide down the ghoul sewers!” “Marvel at the darkly ironic pop song scoring a duck-and-cover outtake!”
Great video! re: the question - Fallout 3 was my first Fallout game and it *really* dragged me in. It felt distinctly different from the rest of bits I had played back then. Maybe cause it was one of the first RPGs I played.
For your question at 19:10, I felt that way about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It felt like I was literally transported to Medieval Bohemia. It's still one of my favorite games. The level of realism and accuracy to history, not to mention the sheer commitment to a grounded world in which the player could authentically transport themselves into, just absolutely immersed me as soon as I was able to run it. So, yes, it gave me that Undiscovered Continent feeling.
I started with New Vegas, and while I loved it, I was too young to understand it. It was only playing again I was able to see the depth and amount of choice you have. I love choose your adventure stories and it felt alot like that as well. In a way it was a new landmass I'd never seen in that it felt like everything I was doing had consequences. My biggest way of deciding how much I love a game is how effectively it can make me feel like I'm in a real, boundless world that I'm just a part of. At a certain point you hit the borders of a game and know everything their is within it, and that feeling goes away. New Vegas has never really hit that point where it feels like there's edges and it's part of why I love it.
I started in the Fallout universe at Fallout 3, and while I don't think it was anywhere near as ground breaking of an experience as you had with 1, it still felt like a new, revolutionary idea to me at the time. I hadn't really played many rpg's before that, so the sense of wonder of always encountering something new around every corner was amazing. Still one of my favorite games ever. Just a shame Fallout 4 and 76 fell short of capturing the key things I enjoyed most about 3.
I really liked this episode. Can relate to it on so many levels. We only had access to console gaming for the longest time as PC gaming was a bit expensive (for us.) Every so often I did get a wonderful PC experience at a friend's house. I am a late-comer to Fallout but it has been very special to me since 3. Really digging all the Fallout talk lately! Thanks for sharing, this was awesome!
For me, Fallout 3 was my first intro into Fallout. I loved the game and played the Broken Steel DLC. Once i'd played New Vegas(My Favorite), I was hooked with the world of fallout.
This vid reminds me of talking to my dad ab his experience growing up with games in the late 80’s into early 00’s as you show such genuine reverence and admiration for what the game means to you and for the piece of art that it is on its’ own. Could listen to earnest game fans talk ab their favorite game(s) forever.
The timing of this video is crazy! I just bought Fallout 1 today because of a huge sale over on steam and already sunk a bunch of hours into it. I'm obsessed with the world of Fallout and played 3, NV and 4, but the first two always seemed unapproachable because of their age. Now that I finally gave it a try I do think it feels a little dated, but definitely in a charming way. Not only did this video made me even more excited about playing it, but you also made me remember my first fallout game (3) and how it totally blew my mind, so thanks!
I feel like you have a lot in common with Lee from Cinemawins in some pretty important ways. You’re probably around the same age and thus experienced similar booms in pop culture. But you both also have a deep love for the original media from the 80s and 90s. The passion you both have for these things is what elevates and separates your shows from others. How to drink could just be a cocktail recipe show but instead it’s a way to discuss and celebrate history and culture and philosophy or whatever you want to discuss and explore that given week.
I got hooked into Bethesda games with the Elder Scrolls series and then played Fallout 3 for the first of post nuclear world. The Elder Scrolls games were an easy transition from Dungeons and Dragons with a similar setting, swords, boards, magic, and archery. But since then, I've played hundreds of hours of Fallout games. I love them too!
Ok ok I haven't even watched this video or the TV show or played the games, but I got the first two for free on Epic or something and because of your constant passion about Fallout and the clear impact it's had on you, I'm gonna go play those games first and then I'll come back and watch all these videos with the designer and whatnot. You've finally convinced me. I'll check back in a year.
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I’d ever seen played and it definitely felt like discovering something entirely new. I had grown up playing quite a few games from Windows 98 through PS2, GameCube, and 360. When my girlfriend lent me her copy of F:NV in college it was the first time I’d played an rpg with that immersive, with that unique a character, and with that much consequence to player choice. Other than maybe Cyberpunk: 2077 and Outer Worlds I’m hard pressed to think of any other games that do what Fallout does.
I'm a little surprised you talk about the Road Warrior so much and just said Dark Sun was Conan+Bug men and not Conan+The Road Warrior with a dash of Heavy Metal. That said, this was a lot of fun to watch. Thank you.
Looking forward to seeing you talk about other pop culture stuff. I got into AD&D in 1987 and have been playing ever since. Have a bunch of friends who have played Fallout since 97, but I didn't get into it until the show. I talked one of those friends into running our mixed exposure group in a TTRPG of Fallout.
I was introduced to Bathesda games in general with FO3, my first year of College. My whole life changed in many ways during that time but stepping out of vault 101 for the first time was unlike anything I had experienced in a game before.
I grew up on the NES / SNES but one game that I had this same experience with was called Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Being a general history nerd it blew me away how they recreated down to 1:1 details of Normandy and real life missions and battles. It really hooked me so much that I got into WWII collecting and reenacting. I still remember going and picking up my first M1 Garand.
I was 10 years old when fallout 3 came out and I remember being in a video store and seeing the Power Armor on the cover and wondering what it was. I had never played and RPG before and was floored when I starting playing, not knowing what I was doing but being enamored with the choices and sense of exploration
Right there with you. Playing the first Fallout, sitting through the intro for the first time you immediately knew this was different. I'd loved computer RPGs already, with Richard Garriott's Ultima series being a favorite of mine. The presentation of Fallout was on a new level...it really showed what people with vision could do when given CD-ROM sized storage to work with.
Great video man! As one of the younger generations, I grew up with stuff like UA-cam, I knew what fallout was before I ever played it, so I didn't really get that same experience, so I'm really glad to hear what it was like for you guys back in the day, thankyou for sharing and I can't wait to hear more stories like this one. Maybe you could do a kinda campfire chats thing, tell some stories, have something 'on the rocks' to sip and pivotal tension building moments 😂. Anyhow, great vid, keep it up 👍.
Thanks for the fallout vid my dude. Currently enjoying 76 and this helps feed that fan vibe. Btw if you havent played it yet, theres loads of brewed beverages, mixed drinks and more in it. Nukashine and many of the beers im sure youd enjoy. That and its the the "cannonicly" earliest chronological fallout. So you get to see the origin of "ghouls" and smoothskins. And more. Live long and prosper greg.
Nailed it on the Bethesda comment. Their games, while fun in their own right, are a 1st/3rd person FPS/Action-esq game dressed in Fallout clothes. They took all the "Whoa! Thats so Fallout" bits that fit into the originals as part of the world and made them the focal points for recognition, which totally misses what made the originals what they were. Slapping Nuka-Cola and Bottlecaps on something doesn't make it Fallout, it makes it a theme park. New Vegas being the exception as it recaptured a lot of the experience of the original(s) for me, especially dome of the DLCs. New Vegas felt more like the ISOs because I was in a world that seemed as if it had, and would, continue to exist whether or not my character was in it. Rather than a world that solely existed for my character to play around in. And I think that is something Bethesda misses the mark on with their other games (even outside of the FO franchise). In the attempt to make their games grandiose and immersive, they miss all the granular bits. The lovingly crafted and arguably meaningless details. The subtle yet insane attention paid to seemingly random things that you probably don't notice but would make the world feel so empty if they were gone. Especially the moments of storytelling that are just so innately relatable to the human experience they manage to reach through the fantastical, and often absurd setting to place you firmly in it, for better or for worse. (New to the Channel, always glad when the UA-cam machine puts me in front of good things.)
Late, but I’ll throw in my experience. I came to Fallout right before New Vegas. I’d been a long time Oblivion fan, and at a friend’s house I got the chance to try Fallout 3. I didn’t even get out of the vault, but I was shook and hooked by the theme. I was used to pretty forests and pastures in Oblivion, and the tone change was jarring but great. New Vegas came out a few months later, and I got it at release. Immediately died to Cazadores and quit the game for 2 weeks. The design choices were also so different from Oblivion, and I fell in love with it.
I stumbled into System Shock in the 90’s and that was a game changer for me- it was so immersive and SCARY! The monkey sounds… and then came Half-Life which really became a litmus test for other games moving forward. I actually did not start playing Fallout until Fallout 4- very late to the series. Early on I was into 1st person shooters- and I think that has stayed with me- I don’t think I can explain how Half Life felt when it came out- so good, and cemented my love of pc gaming.
My Mom was Obsessed with Beauty and the beast back in the day. I never watched it my self, so I didnt know Ron Perlman's voice until he played Johner in Alien Resurrection..
So I will say, when I played Fallout 3 in I wanna say 2008 I know it was a time period where it felt like the post-apocalypse as a setting idea was coming into its own in the USA. While I had a sense that there had probably been earlier ones, that was when it felt like post-apocalyptica was starting to show up more in the culture as an accepted setting for media.
This channel is still kinda brand new, and if you've got things you'd like to see me do with it, let me know! In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you'd gimmie that ol' Like-and-Subscribe!
Love it.
Fallout was so fundamental to my gaming experience growing up in the 90s that I've actually replayed 1 and 2 in the last five years, and plenty of times in the decades before.
It just always scratches an itch that almost nothing else can.
Do a fallout 1 play through !
Yes Fallout 1 play through!
You’re a great storyteller, maybe some backstory on your own life and work in a story or two from your past?
A small thing, but could you turn your camera's auto focus off when recording at a fixed depth? Sometimes when everything goes blurry it means I'm about to lose consciousness and it takes my damaged brain a second to realize that's just the video.
The world deserves to see photos of industrial goth era Greg.
The greatest part about being born prior to 1990 is that there are very few photos of ones teenage years.
I like to listen to Greg talk about things. I'm here for that too. I am missing Midnight Local content.
I got it with my dad at a Walmart in a dual-jewel case for 10 dollars the day before 7th grade. Went to Jack in the Box across the parking lot and read the case probably 30 times before we headed home and proceeded to play it together until about 3am.
That sounds like an amazing memory!
@@MisterMeaner3000 it was. I wish I knew what I ate at Jack that day lol. I do know we also got 1602 which my dad did NOT care for.
That sounds amazing. I had a very similar experience with Jagged Alliance and my not yet at the time Stepdad.
I’ll add my 2 cents, though it probably worth less than that. I started with Fallout 3, and to this day it is my favorite game of all time. I think I experienced a variation of that “new frontier” feeling. I had three friends that got the game when it came out. Me, being a poor kid, didn’t have the money for new games all the time so I had to settle for stories. We’d sit around the lunch table at school and they’d tell stories of triumph over bands of raiders, the fear of super mutants and rad scorpions, and tales of utter horror of encounters with deathclaws and glowing ghouls. It was like listening to stories from people who had traveled to another continent. So I finally got the game and instantly fell in love with the chipper/existential horror of life in the vault. But finally I left the vault. And when the sunlight glare subsided and the wasteland stretched out before me.. I froze. I was absolutely petrified of what was before me. I aimed my little 10mm in every direction for probably 15 minutes. No game has ever come close to sucking me in to that reality before. Was the story a little wonky? Yeah probably. But I was so engrossed I didn’t even notice. Fallout is and always will be special in my heart.
Yeah, even having played the first game in the 90s, my first time playing Fallout 3 was like I stepped into another world. Totally engrossing experience. I had both feelings in two very different genres and different times in my life. Extremely inspiring too. As much crap as F3 gets in the community, it was a core memory. I still remember places and emergent events in F3 years later that feel like real places in my head, just as described in the video. KotOR also has a feeling similar to this.
I saw Star Wars in the theater. I was 10. From the first scene when the Imperial Star Destroyer makes its dramatic entrance, even my OCD-riddled, pre-teen clay brain knew that my world of movies would be forever changed. This shit is NEW. Up to that point, I had watched a ton of war movies and westerns with my Pops, and I could immediately recognize the tropes. But it was in space. It had effects I'd never seen or heard before. I saw it in the theater a further eight times. My allowance that summer of '77 went to Star Wars and popcorn.
My first experience with Fallout was in 96/97 when the demo was released. I didn't even have a home computer, but my friend did and he got the demo from a friend who'd burned it onto a CD.
We booted it up, screwed around with the character creation, and wandered around the demo town (I think it was Junktown, but I didn't know that then), and everything was cool but also kinda generic. We couldn't really take on anyone in a fight, and the quest was basic, but there was a locked refrigerator that drew our attention. We must've played for HOURS looking for the key before we realized "lockpicking" was a skill.
Create a new character, tag lockpicking, play the demo to get a level up, put everything into lockpicking, open the fridge and - there's a f-ing MINIGUN with ammo. Somewhere between the discovery of that minigun and the 4th person I obliterated with it, I fell in love with the game, to the point that when Fallout showed up in stores I bought the game, checked my bank account, borrowed some money from my parents, emptied the box, cut the back of the box out, and went back to the computer store with the "recommended system requirements" in hand to buy a PC. For fallout, I had no other use for a computer at that time. If I typed up and printed an assignment, my HS English teacher would reject it because it HAD to be handwritten.
So yeah, I loved that demo SO MUCH that I bought an entire computer just for Fallout, and I never regretted it
Oh right the demo. I do not remember a lot of it, but I think there was a lady(?) with a minigun, who liked to blast you to bits if you tried to talk to her.
I'm not sure where I got the demo from, but I think maybe it was a local PC gaming magazine that sometimes had a special editions bundled with a demo disk/CD.
@@DaronMGL that was definitely a different demo than I had
The demo was Scrapheap, with the Fools (metal armour led by a woman with a minigun) vs the Hypocrites (leather armour led by a man with a minigun), and there was absolutely a minigun in the fridge.
I don't remember being able to create your own character though. 1 of the premades was available, everything else returned a "Not available in this demo" or some such. I swear that demo was my life 😅
Greg is such a great story teller. This makes me want more of the memoir!
Started with Fallout 3 here. It was my introduction to RPG (I had not yet been bitten by the tabletop bug).
Like you, I only knew of fantasy-flavored RPGs, and Fallout’s retro-futurism felt like such a fresh take. The lore, the visuals, and the soundtrack… my god, the soundtrack, was the perfect entry point into a genre that I never knew I loved.
Even though I had played Morrowind and Oblivion before playing Fallout 3, I definitely had a special moment of "This is POSSIBLE in games now?!" When leaving the vault and seeing the capital wasteland for the first time. While it wouldn't last forever, those opening moments of Fallout 3 were filled with an awe and a sense of wonder that I had not experienced in a game before.
"I scrounge around in my pockets, I might have had to borrow a dollar or two from some friends..." -- this reminds me of my (now-wife) and I in 1998. Neither of us owned a playstation, but we had PCs. Final Fantasy VII came out on PC. We wanted it desperately. But we were 16. We didn't have credit cards. We didn't have debit cards. We had cash. We were *exactly* 55 cents short of being able to buy the game. We were miles from home -- we had enough gas to get home, we lived in rural Pennsylvania and had to drive 60 minutes or more to get to a Walmart and we were going to have to skip dinner to buy the game because we'd have been broke -- but we wanted it bad enough that we were willing to do that. But we were 55 cents short. We had no friends around. No parents. Just my wife and I. We scrounged around her car *desperately* trying to find a few quarters and dimes in the seats, in the center console, anything. We couldn't find it. So we left Walmart, got dinner at like...Taco Bell...and came home. We eventually played it when both her family and I both got PS1s. But that little anecdote of yours distinctly triggers that memory for me and, to be honest, I'm glad we didn't find that 55 cents. Because then it's not nearly the iconic memory that it is for us now. If we find it? We play a neat game, sure. But we didn't find it. So we have a core memory instead. That's worth 55 cents and waiting six months to play a game any day.
I still love the original Fallout. I saw the random encounter with the Whale and bowl of petunias from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and accused of lying because no one else in my friend group ever saw it.
Having come to Fallout 3 fairly young around 12, and having only experienced Oblivion, and Skyrim beforehand, the post apocalypse part of Fallout felt wholly alien to me. Having played Fallout 1 recently, I can say the raw automosphere the game creates is unparalleled by any other Fallout, including 2 lol. 2 is where I start to see alot more of the quirkiness and campiness Fallout is now known for.
i was born in ‘98. when my parents let me play video games it was things like halo, call of duty, fps games with a linear story. while not new in theory or implementation, playing new vegas for the first time changed my goddamn life. the way you talk about fallout is how i feel about new vegas. of course, it felt new to ME, and not to the world, and for that, i see why fallout in ‘97 must have felt like a revolution. much love.
My experience was the same with Fallout 2. My brother played D&D, so I already loved the idea of creating my own adventures. The gameplay was so new and different. Fallout 2, also, sparked my love for 40s music.
I like your thoughts, your stories, how you think and your opinions. I'm all in on this channel, I dont have any specific ideas what you should do with it, but "what greg thinks about X" is definitely of interest to me.
I never played fallout. But I had a very similar experience to what you described with Half-Life in 1998. The storytelling, the cinema-like feel of the game, the realism of everything in the game. It just blew my mind. I was used to just running around in something like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D were the million clones that existed at that time. But half-life was like being in a movie. And a good one. I was 16.
I didn't really play RPGs until later on, probably in my twenties or close to it. The first one I remember getting into that really changed everything for me was Morrowind... also from the Bethesda. That game consumed a ridiculous amount of my life. It really felt like you could go anywhere, do anything, and the game world would adapt to you and how you played it. And at that time I had never played anything like it. Maybe not true... I kind of now remember playing a lot of Deus Ex and really wanting to like it, because there was so much there to like and to love. But the gameplay really held that one back. It just felt clunky. Even though the concept of it was so huge and expansive and immersive. So maybe in some respects Morrowind delivered on what Deus Ex promised. For me and my own gaming experience, that is.
Born in '72. Saw Star Wars in theater, found D&D in 3rd grade, and had a similar experience as Greg with Fallout. Thank you for your kind words about the grognards, we can't help it.
Hello fellow '72 grognard. I didn't find PnP RPGs until 5th grade when my brother introduced me to Star Frontiers (yes I'm a rare unicorn that didn't play D&D as his first RPG 😉).
I was 27 when Fallout came out, and even though I'd played Wasteland, and been a D&D player since age 11, most video games I played before then, were simple arcde-y console games, JRPGs, text adventures, blocky attempts at deep RPGs (Ultima) and the occasional simpler graphic adventure game (i.e. Time of Lore on the C64) among rented NES, pirated Apple or C64 games, or picked-up-on-a-whim games from the EB Games bargain bin. Fallout, though... I played it on a friend's PC. And I was ... wowed. In love. It struck a chord, and I went out and bought it. Then I RAN to buy the sequel. No other game pulled me in quite like them, and I've owned every mainline game in the series since.
My intro to Fallout was Fallout 2. Primarily because that's when older cousins had just been exposed to PC games. At that time, I had no idea of how amazing it was and that it would be so legendary.
I played Fallout later on in life, but the game that really blew my mind as a kid was Morrowind. I remember seeing ads for it on Toonami, and telling my parents that I did not want anything for my birthday or Christmas, I just wanted this game when it came out.
We went out the day it was available and picked it up for PC, and I remember we all went out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday before coming home and feeling so frustrated at the delay. I read the little manual that came in the box over and over in the car. I remember studying the installation screen images from the game while it chugged away on the family computer.
The music of the title screen still gives me that same feeling to this day. And loading up a new game finally, hearing the sound of the boat in the tutorial, making my first character, and stepping foot out into the world, all I could see was endless possibility in front of me.
And then I spent the next few hours getting in over my head, dying repeatedly, and loving every moment of it. I still go back to Morrowind every few years, and it still holds a big place in my heart.
The fact you’re friends with Tim Cain is badass. Been following you for a few years, love to see how you’ve grown man. ❤
I think I had a very similar experience playing Fallout New Vegas for the first time. I was more of a new comer to RPGs and the ones Ive played had little depth only ranging from bad choices to good choices and what sword you were carrying. But playing Fallout NV and seeing my actions having consequences on so many different levels, seeing the endings and results of my relationships with different factions was mind blowing. I got lost in the world with NPCs so tightly written that I will never forget meeting people like Easy Pete for the first time
Your words really resonated with me on Fallout just that we experienced different parts of the series just in a very similar way :>
This is exactly how I feel about Fallout. I was 17 when it came out. I still mourn that I didn't get another entry of what was Fallout to me.
I'm consistently amazed how similar Greg and my life experiences have been.
Dark Sun being your first campaign setting explains sooooo much.
I’m 27 now, so fallout 3 came out when I was 11. I was subscribed to game informer for some reason and I remember getting the fallout 3 cover issue a few months before the game came out. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. Similar to your story about the original’s box art, the cover was this grimy green image of a brotherhood of steel member in power armor.
I was down at my grandmas lake house and there wasn’t any internet. So I spent the weekend reading through the cover store and imagining what all these screenshots would be like to play through. The world was so alien sounding and the emphasis on choice wasn’t something I had seen in any other games at that point.
When the game finally came out I did what the cover story said: blew up megaton and wandered over to tenpenny tower. Then I just sorta wandered around, making up my own stories. I stumbled across the main quest by accident after exploring an abandoned auto body shop. I didn’t play through the main quest the “correct” way with the GNR quest until my 2nd playthrough.
Long story short, I think that sense of “I can go anywhere in this world” really stuck with me. New Vegas is my favorite game of all time and I had a similar experience with it. I don’t love where fallout is going in the new games, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it. It showed me what open world games could be and I think that’s why I love even more open ended games like Nethack and DnD.
I've never experienced the feeling from games, but I did get it from a concert. I always loved music, but one particular show completely expanded my understanding of the entire medium. It felt like being exposed to an ocean of magic, and that everything else up to that point had barely been tapping into it. It was almost religious.
I've been to dozens of shows and have only experienced anything close to that one other time. But I feel pretty lucky to have experienced it twice, and I hope I can again in the future.
I know it's not the focus of the video but WOOO!
Dark Sun!
Such a wild setting, honestly a pretty interesting way to get into desolate world games like Fallout imo
Oh man, Dark Sun was an absolute blast. Basically post apocalyptic d&d, and I was hooked from the first time I played it.
I won't say I had the sense that I was encountering a new kind of media, but you did touch on the magic that Fallout 3 represented for me when I played it.
For background's sake, my family never owned a very good computer, so my gaming was limited to consoles growing up. Nor did I get into to tabletop roleplaying until relatively late into my adulthood (I'm 36 now and started doing it at 32). My very first completed video game was Final Fantasy on the NES, and JRPGs have always been in the DNA of my media preferences. But Fallout 3, and particularly New Vegas were games that let me live in a world and influence its outcome in a way I'd never experienced before.
And like you, I was utterly blown away by Fallout's aesthetic and atmosphere. I recognize the flaws of FO3 nowadays, but the eerie nature of crawling through ruined American cities with music like Fox Boogie, or finding a bombed out Georgetown brownstone built entirely off a Ray Bradbury short story I loved was completely captivating. I loved building my own character, and throughout the course of my play-through, I got a real sense of who she was, what decisions she'd make that I might not, and why. I took all those feelings into character design in New Vegas, where the entire world is regularly reshaped by your actions and who you align with, and built brand new characters for a brand new experience. And I've never been able to recapture that feeling of freedom until I started DMing my own TTRPG games earlier this year.
Anyway, love this video. And I love hearing you geek out about stuff. Really enjoy the direction of this channel so far.
I still have my original Vault Dweller's Survival Guide sitting on my desk!
I remember playing Fallout 3 for the first time. I was totally fresh to the series and honestly thought I getting into some sort of FPS. My mind was totally blown by the SPECIALs, Traits, skills. The multiple ways to complete a task and how it effected the world around you. It did feel like a totally new thing to me, like nothing I had experienced before.
When I finally got my hands on Fallout, second hand from my local store, I was too young to realise just how unique it was. It was only through playing other RPGs (Diablo, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, FFVIII) that I realised nothing else is going to hit the same. Being presented with a situation and letting you decide what skills you were going to use to solve it, and who you were going to solve it for. To go from collecting evidence for Killian, to getting paid to to finish the job for Gizmo 🤯
Greg, I learned AD&D in the late 70s exactly as you described - a friend with a bag of dice. We lost ourselves in the Conan novels, in LOTR and Tolkien, and in our heads. I can only hope that your connection to Fallout runs as deep and as long-lasting. I loved this perspective on gaming (although in 95, I was in grad school and not gaming that way anymore). I look forward to more of this sort of video.
A cinematography note. At the end of the video, when you were shaking your hands in front of you towards the camera, the frame started to shake to me. Almost like the auto focus was catching your hands then your face and back and forth.
I got into Fallout after playing StarCraft and MechWarrior, so those in game cinematics and the astonishing immersion they brought, prepared me for Fallout. In a lot of ways I've been repeating that same sense of what a game can be ever since, in my own work. Even making my own Fallout mods to recapture that feeling in a new generation of games.
As someone who was excited at the time that Interplay finally made another Wasteland-like game I certainly would argue the idea that there was nothing like Fallout, but I would never argue that Fallout helped ensure the post-apocalyptic genre kept its foodhold in gaming long-term.
This is 100% tangential, but the way you describe your experience playing Fallout at 15 is how I describe playing Dragon Age: Origins at 13. I think people who find RPGs in their teens are a lucky breed. I know for me it was so eye opening to play a game that was so different from the ratchet and clanks of my youth or the Halo titles of my pre-teen years. I really felt like I found something special in that little CRPG that I can’t quantify to this day. Honestly for me it’s like being an archeologist and discovering something new on every dig. I played that game over 80 times to completion, so there was a lot of digging! I hope any teenager that’s playing Baldur’s Gate 3 today is getting the same experience you got from Fallout and that I got from Dragon Age: Origins. It’s just such an enlightening and heartening thing to fall madly in love with a game.
As someone who played the 90s Fallouts in the 90s, I fully know what you're saying. My love affair with Interplay and Black Isle began with the first Fallout but it did not end there!
Thanks for describing in a much more succinct manner than I ever could how it felt to play Fallout for the first time. Fallout was a first true CRPG for me as well and I’m sure you can relate to the disappointment when I found out that I started my gaming journey at the very top as I thought surely there must be a ton of games like Fallout. 27 or so years later I’m still chasing that feeling.
I came into fallout 3 back on the ps3. I still remember encountering hunters selling strange meat just outside vault 101. I could never quite describe the wonder I felt when thinking about what else was out there. It was all new and exciting
I absolutely had the same experience with Fallout 3. When I moved out the guy that lived there before left a stack of 360 disk and at the time I was just playing Forza and CoD. I still remember loading the disk for the very first time without a single clue as to what could be on it. It seemed like every time I ever said "it would be sooo cool if there was a game you could do blank" and put it all in one game. I remember being blown away leaving the cave to vault 101 and seeing the wasteland. I was immersed from the very start and i don't think I'll ever have a gaming experience like that again.
My first Fallout was Fallout 3 in 2008 and I was 13. I felt the same way you felt about the OG. Ever since i layed eyes on the cover and that power armor I was enthralled
Walking out of the vault for the first time in Fallout 3 … there’s just nothing that compares
I love your takes on culture and media in particular. As one who has worked in traditional broadcasting for more than 20 years and now making the transition to digital media as well, this stuff is fascinating.
I absolutely loved this video!
It made me feel when I truly discovered gaming for myself.
I of course knew about video games; I'm in my early 60's. But I didn't really get it.
Then my kids got me SDV when I was in my late 50's. I fell in love. I didn't know it was possible. Mind blown. Or so I thought. Then I saw Skyrim. I had to have it! It was mind boggling beautiful. I just didn't know a game could be created that was so beautiful. Rookie mistake...it wouldn't work on my old laptop. My kids helped my learn about the world of buying a gaming PC. Bought a new PC and just wow!
Anyway, thanks Greg for helping me remember how it felt in the beginning.
My kids are now the ones reminding me to go outside once in awhile.
My first experience with fallout that actually hit me with the “holy shit this is something I’ve never had before” was new Vegas. It was a whole world that, unlike other rpgs I had played like Skyrim, felt alive. It didn’t feel like everything was waiting for me. It felt like the 2nd battle over the Hoover dam was going to happen whether I stepped in or not,but I think the best and most impactful moment was lonesome road. You can completely talk down the big boss without using speech cheeks. It felt like the dm had said “no rolls prove it to me you can do it” and just by simply talking to him about nations and how destroying them isn’t something he wants truly and how his own morals would never let him do this if it wasn’t out of revenge. It felt like I, not the video game character I played as or it was me talking through the character, was talking to Ulysses. I’ve never felt it in any game ever since and that’s the immersion levels I only feel for worlds in books or ttrpgs. New Vegas felt like something no game could achieve. Plus there’s a robot who fist you called fisto and that’s hilarious.
I stumbled onto Fallout 3 as my first experience with the series and with real post-apocalypse in general at all in 2014. Im not sure if I realized I was walking into a whole world/series but it completely introduced me to a sci-fi post apocalypse theme and it was geniunely one of my first entries into RPGs at all which I had no experience in. It planted a seed in me and once it sprouted I completely fell into all the Fallout series with NV and RPGs in general and eventually Tabletop RPGs.
Love watching you nerd out about Fallout! I'm grateful this was in my recommended, I didn't know you had this side channel.
I still recall the goosebumps i got when i first started any games of the Fallout series i played. And i still get them sometimes.
I'd love to hear Greg talk more about his Darksun game.
Hearing about early D&D experiences is always interesting.
I am so glad my friends got me into Fallout 1 and 2.
We only played a few session of Dark Sun, and I was given a pre gen thri-kreen warrior
"War. War never changes." It still gives me chills every time I hear it.
Right?! Apparently Tim wrote that during a commercial break while watching the Simpson’s
@@GregFromHTD that's awesome. The video of your chat with him has been sitting in my watch later. I think it need to rectify that now.
Fallout 3 was the first Fallout game I played, and I was probably around 14 or 15. I got the Game of the Year edition and it was the first open world RPG I ever played, and was an immensely formative experience. When I think of playing that game I get a memory of the cozy smell of my basement, that I spent hours upon hours in getting lost in the Capital Wasteland.
Before that, I’d play competitive online games with my friends like Call of Duty or Halo, but never felt I was very good, and would associate playing games with the stress of not playing well or letting my team down. With Fallout 3, I could just be myself, learning how the world worked, learning the lore and gameplay at my own pace, which I learned is my favorite way to play a video game. So yes, I feel like I had a very powerful experience with Fallout 3 similar to how you experienced the first two games!
I only recently discovered the magic of the Fallout universe through the Amazon Prime series. I'm playing Fallout 4 at the moment and having an absolute blast! I can't wait to try New Vegas next.
My first "holy shit this game is my entire life" moment was in 2003; Star Wars Galaxies. I would wake up, go to work, come home, and played SWG until bed every single day for 3-4 years. I still have fond memories exploring the deserts of Tatooine while doing jobs for Jabba the Hut.
I was stationed at Kessler AFB for training. Got a Military edition Xbox on base and Fallout 3. I came back to my room after training and played as late as I could. Absolutely loved the experience.
My son and I spent many a weekend afternoon wandering around Incredible Universe (later Fry's and last I heard a big empty building...) comparing computer components (back in the day when even I could build my own desktop), , discussing games, and with him having long involved convos with the other teen-age boyo's there. He definitely played Fallout.
Also an OG Fallout player (a little older at the time) and this largely sums up my experience with the game as well. Being less young and spongy (25) at the time, I don't think age is the thing. I think it's because it really was something new.
Sadly I never got to play Fallout 1 and 2. I have seen so many playthroughs over the years that It still feels like I played it ^^ I never could let go of the Lore and the Music. Its the main reason this channel exists currently. Fallout has that really special feeling almost no other game or setting have for me! Nuka Cola was the first thing!
Such a great video! You actually sound so excited like a 15yo boy who recently discovered Fallout and tells his friends about this bomb ass game, speaks of how much these memories mean to you!
I'm glad you made this channel. What makes "How to Dring" so good is your passion, and Im happy to see more of it on more subjects.
Looking forward to seeing more vids on here! Just found your main channel relatively recently, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far. Keep on keeping on, my good sir!
Seems like a great place for this kind of content excited to have videos from both this and the original channel to look forward to. Keep crushing it Greg.
What a time to be alive that was. Fallout also came out a few years after the original X-Com, another game that redefined my expectations for PC games. My favorite part of Fallout was just how much there was to do, compared to many other games of the era. It just kinda let you off the leash, and you had only slightly better of an idea what to do than the protagonist would, emerging into the world for the first time.
Only downside to getting to play all those games "back in the day" is that now we're old, lol.
I know it was a throwaway comment, but I discovered Dark Sun shortly after I started playing TTRPGS a decade ago. I had always hated fantasy genre stuff because of its tropes, and what you describe for Fallout I had for Dark Sun (and Planescape). It completely rewrote what I thought a genre could possibly be. I had the supreme pleasure of making my own Dark Sun 5e conversion and running a campaign with it for my group, and by the end they were all true converts too. They could see what I had seen, and could feel the creative fire radiating from it (Conan with big men, yes, but also a Stone Age Mad Max with environmental themes).
Beautifully said on everything Fallout. I miss the sense of development 1, 2, and NV had. 3 and 4 just feel like zany Fallout-themed amusement parks in comparison. “Ride the super mutant infested mall!” “Explore the cannibal house!” “Slide down the ghoul sewers!” “Marvel at the darkly ironic pop song scoring a duck-and-cover outtake!”
Great video! re: the question - Fallout 3 was my first Fallout game and it *really* dragged me in. It felt distinctly different from the rest of bits I had played back then. Maybe cause it was one of the first RPGs I played.
I started on 3 when I was far too young, and to this day, I have that map in my head. It had a profound impact on my interests.
For your question at 19:10, I felt that way about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It felt like I was literally transported to Medieval Bohemia. It's still one of my favorite games. The level of realism and accuracy to history, not to mention the sheer commitment to a grounded world in which the player could authentically transport themselves into, just absolutely immersed me as soon as I was able to run it. So, yes, it gave me that Undiscovered Continent feeling.
I started with New Vegas, and while I loved it, I was too young to understand it. It was only playing again I was able to see the depth and amount of choice you have. I love choose your adventure stories and it felt alot like that as well. In a way it was a new landmass I'd never seen in that it felt like everything I was doing had consequences.
My biggest way of deciding how much I love a game is how effectively it can make me feel like I'm in a real, boundless world that I'm just a part of. At a certain point you hit the borders of a game and know everything their is within it, and that feeling goes away. New Vegas has never really hit that point where it feels like there's edges and it's part of why I love it.
I started in the Fallout universe at Fallout 3, and while I don't think it was anywhere near as ground breaking of an experience as you had with 1, it still felt like a new, revolutionary idea to me at the time. I hadn't really played many rpg's before that, so the sense of wonder of always encountering something new around every corner was amazing. Still one of my favorite games ever. Just a shame Fallout 4 and 76 fell short of capturing the key things I enjoyed most about 3.
I really liked this episode. Can relate to it on so many levels. We only had access to console gaming for the longest time as PC gaming was a bit expensive (for us.) Every so often I did get a wonderful PC experience at a friend's house. I am a late-comer to Fallout but it has been very special to me since 3. Really digging all the Fallout talk lately! Thanks for sharing, this was awesome!
For me, Fallout 3 was my first intro into Fallout. I loved the game and played the Broken Steel DLC. Once i'd played New Vegas(My Favorite), I was hooked with the world of fallout.
This vid reminds me of talking to my dad ab his experience growing up with games in the late 80’s into early 00’s as you show such genuine reverence and admiration for what the game means to you and for the piece of art that it is on its’ own. Could listen to earnest game fans talk ab their favorite game(s) forever.
The timing of this video is crazy! I just bought Fallout 1 today because of a huge sale over on steam and already sunk a bunch of hours into it.
I'm obsessed with the world of Fallout and played 3, NV and 4, but the first two always seemed unapproachable because of their age.
Now that I finally gave it a try I do think it feels a little dated, but definitely in a charming way.
Not only did this video made me even more excited about playing it, but you also made me remember my first fallout game (3) and how it totally blew my mind, so thanks!
I can't believe I caught this early and it was just what I needed at the time.
This is amazing hearing how Greg connected to the original Fallout games. Would love to hear more stories like this
I feel like you have a lot in common with Lee from Cinemawins in some pretty important ways. You’re probably around the same age and thus experienced similar booms in pop culture. But you both also have a deep love for the original media from the 80s and 90s. The passion you both have for these things is what elevates and separates your shows from others. How to drink could just be a cocktail recipe show but instead it’s a way to discuss and celebrate history and culture and philosophy or whatever you want to discuss and explore that given week.
I got hooked into Bethesda games with the Elder Scrolls series and then played Fallout 3 for the first of post nuclear world. The Elder Scrolls games were an easy transition from Dungeons and Dragons with a similar setting, swords, boards, magic, and archery. But since then, I've played hundreds of hours of Fallout games. I love them too!
Ok ok I haven't even watched this video or the TV show or played the games, but I got the first two for free on Epic or something and because of your constant passion about Fallout and the clear impact it's had on you, I'm gonna go play those games first and then I'll come back and watch all these videos with the designer and whatnot. You've finally convinced me. I'll check back in a year.
This was Morrowind and Deus Ex for me as a young kid. Found them by accident and my head exploded with the sheer scale and passion in both
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I’d ever seen played and it definitely felt like discovering something entirely new. I had grown up playing quite a few games from Windows 98 through PS2, GameCube, and 360. When my girlfriend lent me her copy of F:NV in college it was the first time I’d played an rpg with that immersive, with that unique a character, and with that much consequence to player choice. Other than maybe Cyberpunk: 2077 and Outer Worlds I’m hard pressed to think of any other games that do what Fallout does.
I'm a little surprised you talk about the Road Warrior so much and just said Dark Sun was Conan+Bug men and not Conan+The Road Warrior with a dash of Heavy Metal.
That said, this was a lot of fun to watch. Thank you.
Looking forward to seeing you talk about other pop culture stuff. I got into AD&D in 1987 and have been playing ever since. Have a bunch of friends who have played Fallout since 97, but I didn't get into it until the show. I talked one of those friends into running our mixed exposure group in a TTRPG of Fallout.
I was introduced to Bathesda games in general with FO3, my first year of College. My whole life changed in many ways during that time but stepping out of vault 101 for the first time was unlike anything I had experienced in a game before.
I started Fallout with the third game. But inhabited so many other virtual worlds before so I understand that sense of excitement and wonder.
I'm too young to have a similar experience with FallOut, so this is great! I like how you took the opportunity to record your own oral history of it.
I grew up on the NES / SNES but one game that I had this same experience with was called Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Being a general history nerd it blew me away how they recreated down to 1:1 details of Normandy and real life missions and battles. It really hooked me so much that I got into WWII collecting and reenacting. I still remember going and picking up my first M1 Garand.
I was 10 years old when fallout 3 came out and I remember being in a video store and seeing the Power Armor on the cover and wondering what it was. I had never played and RPG before and was floored when I starting playing, not knowing what I was doing but being enamored with the choices and sense of exploration
Right there with you. Playing the first Fallout, sitting through the intro for the first time you immediately knew this was different. I'd loved computer RPGs already, with Richard Garriott's Ultima series being a favorite of mine. The presentation of Fallout was on a new level...it really showed what people with vision could do when given CD-ROM sized storage to work with.
Finnally another upload on this channel, been waiting.
Somewhere out there is a legend who did, in fact, beat The Whiz
Great video man! As one of the younger generations, I grew up with stuff like UA-cam, I knew what fallout was before I ever played it, so I didn't really get that same experience, so I'm really glad to hear what it was like for you guys back in the day, thankyou for sharing and I can't wait to hear more stories like this one. Maybe you could do a kinda campfire chats thing, tell some stories, have something 'on the rocks' to sip and pivotal tension building moments 😂. Anyhow, great vid, keep it up 👍.
Thanks for the fallout vid my dude. Currently enjoying 76 and this helps feed that fan vibe. Btw if you havent played it yet, theres loads of brewed beverages, mixed drinks and more in it. Nukashine and many of the beers im sure youd enjoy. That and its the the "cannonicly" earliest chronological fallout. So you get to see the origin of "ghouls" and smoothskins. And more. Live long and prosper greg.
My favorite cocktail UA-camr joining the ranks of Fallout UA-camrs? Is this Christmas?
Great video Greg. I think you might enjoy giving 3 another try, but it's always great seeing you talk about the classics
Nailed it on the Bethesda comment.
Their games, while fun in their own right, are a 1st/3rd person FPS/Action-esq game dressed in Fallout clothes.
They took all the "Whoa! Thats so Fallout" bits that fit into the originals as part of the world and made them the focal points for recognition, which totally misses what made the originals what they were. Slapping Nuka-Cola and Bottlecaps on something doesn't make it Fallout, it makes it a theme park.
New Vegas being the exception as it recaptured a lot of the experience of the original(s) for me, especially dome of the DLCs.
New Vegas felt more like the ISOs because I was in a world that seemed as if it had, and would, continue to exist whether or not my character was in it. Rather than a world that solely existed for my character to play around in.
And I think that is something Bethesda misses the mark on with their other games (even outside of the FO franchise). In the attempt to make their games grandiose and immersive, they miss all the granular bits. The lovingly crafted and arguably meaningless details. The subtle yet insane attention paid to seemingly random things that you probably don't notice but would make the world feel so empty if they were gone. Especially the moments of storytelling that are just so innately relatable to the human experience they manage to reach through the fantastical, and often absurd setting to place you firmly in it, for better or for worse.
(New to the Channel, always glad when the UA-cam machine puts me in front of good things.)
Late, but I’ll throw in my experience. I came to Fallout right before New Vegas. I’d been a long time Oblivion fan, and at a friend’s house I got the chance to try Fallout 3. I didn’t even get out of the vault, but I was shook and hooked by the theme. I was used to pretty forests and pastures in Oblivion, and the tone change was jarring but great.
New Vegas came out a few months later, and I got it at release. Immediately died to Cazadores and quit the game for 2 weeks. The design choices were also so different from Oblivion, and I fell in love with it.
I stumbled into System Shock in the 90’s and that was a game changer for me- it was so immersive and SCARY! The monkey sounds… and then came Half-Life which really became a litmus test for other games moving forward. I actually did not start playing Fallout until Fallout 4- very late to the series. Early on I was into 1st person shooters- and I think that has stayed with me- I don’t think I can explain how Half Life felt when it came out- so good, and cemented my love of pc gaming.
My Mom was Obsessed with Beauty and the beast back in the day. I never watched it my self, so I didnt know Ron Perlman's voice until he played Johner in Alien Resurrection..
So I will say, when I played Fallout 3 in I wanna say 2008 I know it was a time period where it felt like the post-apocalypse as a setting idea was coming into its own in the USA. While I had a sense that there had probably been earlier ones, that was when it felt like post-apocalyptica was starting to show up more in the culture as an accepted setting for media.
Ah yeah do a dark sun d&d episode. I loved the psionics and magic system. Such an under rated setting
Greg... Greg never changes.
Thank you for the history, and the passion 🍻