Fallout (video game)

Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game is a 1997 role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. In a mid-22nd century post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic world, decades after a global nuclear war between the United States and China, Fallout's protagonist, the Vault Dweller, inhabits the underground nuclear shelter Vault 13. After customizing their character, the player must scour the surrounding wasteland for a computer chip that can fix the Vault's failed water supply system. They interact with other survivors, some of whom give them missions, and engage in turn-based combat where they battle until their action points are depleted.

Tim Cain began working on Fallout in 1994. It began as a game engine based on Steve Jackson Games's tabletop role-playing game GURPS. Interplay dropped the license after Steve Jackson Games objected to Fallout's violence, and Cain and designer Christopher Taylor created a new character customization scheme, SPECIAL. Although Interplay initially gave the game little attention, the development ultimately cost $3 million and employed up to thirty people. Interplay considered Fallout the spiritual successor to its 1988 role-playing game Wasteland and drew artistic inspiration from 1950s literature and media emblematic of the Atomic Age as well as the movies Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog. The quests were intentionally made morally ambiguous. After three and a half years of development, Fallout was released in North America in October 1997.

Fallout received acclaim for its open-ended gameplay, character system, plot, and perceived original setting. It won "Role-Playing Game of the Year" from GameSpot and Computer Games Magazine, was nominated by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the Spotlight Awards, and is often listed among the greatest video games of all time. Fallout has been credited for renewing consumer interest in the role-playing video genre due to its setting, open-ended plot, and gameplay. Fallout was a commercial success, selling 600,000 copies worldwide. It spawned a successful series of sequels and spin-offs, the rights to which were purchased in 2007 by Bethesda Softworks.