Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, also known as Fallout: BoS, is an action role-playing game developed and published by Interplay Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles. Released January 13, 2004, it is the fourth installment, following Fallout Tactics, and is the first to release on consoles.

Background
The game takes place in Carbon, Texas, beginning in the year 2208, 47 years after Fallout and 33 years before Fallout 2. The player character is called the "Initiate" and chooses to control one of three characters, including Cain, Cyrus, or Nadia, who have all pledged their allegiance to the Brotherhood of Steel.

Gameplay
The game contains some light platforming elements, such as jumping across bottomless pits and crouching under lasers. Skills have the same function as perks in other Fallout games. Each playable character has some skills that are unique to them. The game allows for two-player co-op multiplayer. Due to no split-screen, the players share the same screen, and the camera restricts the players' boundaries, forcing the two players to stay close and move in tandem.

NPCs can be interacted with, resulting in consequences for some dialogue choices. The game has quests given by these NPCs, and there are several side quests the player can do for rewards. Some NPCs are merchants that will buy and sell, with Jesse being chapter one's merchant and a pair of ghoul brothers for chapter two.

Apart from multiplayer, if the player unlocks the Man's Best Friend skill, a dog named Dogmeat follows the player and attacks enemies. This skill is not available for Cain players. If Dogmeat is defeated, they will return at the next save point.

Combat and Equipment


Combat in Brotherhood of Steel is real-time, and there is no V.A.T.S. Players can crouch behind obstacles, lock onto enemies, and dodge rolls to avoid damage. Certain melee weapons can also be charged for greater damage as well.

There are 56 weapons in total, including 6 glove weapons, 3 club weapons, 4 hammer weapons, and 7 bladed weapons for 20 Melee Weapons. There are 3 Small Guns, pistols, 3 burst-fire, 3 rifles, 2 shotguns, and 3 weapons that can be dual-wielded for 14 Small Guns and 8 Big Guns. There are 2 Energy pistols, 5 rifles, and 1 weapon that can be dual-wielded for 8 Energy Weapons and 6 Explosives. These weapon types overlap; e.g. a homemade laser pistol is a homemade weapon, an energy weapon, and a gun type. The highest damage weapon, other than the Mini-Nuke, is the Shredder, a Big Gun with 480-606 damage.

There are four location types of armor: headgear, chest, gloves and boots. The eight successively more protective grades of armor, in order: cloth, leather, riot, metal, combat, Tesla, power armor and advanced power armor. The advanced power armor chest piece offers the most protection of all locations and grades.

Chapter One
Brotherhood members have gone missing in Carbon, and the chosen Initiate is tasked with searching for the paladins, starting with the nearby town. The Initiate is welcomed by a prostitute, Ruby. Armed thugs loiter in town and harass Armpit, a bartender. Armpit is grateful the Initiate saves him, and steers the Initiate in the direction of the shifty mayor of this lawless town, Richard.

Chapter Two
In Los, the Initiate looks for mutants. The search leads to the Church of the Lost, a cult based inside the city. A Brotherhood paladin, Rhombus, asks the Initiate to kill the cult leader, Blake. Blake and the Initiate fight, and after recovering a key from the dead cult leader, the Initiate escorts Rhombus to a truck where he had hidden the key. During a subsequent battle with Attis, the mutant general, the Initiate is knocked unconscious and left for dead, with their left arm cut off.

Chapter Three
Mary, a young woman who has lived her life in the Vault-Tec Corporate Vault, finds the Initiate and guides them to safety. The super mutants begin infiltrating the vault and begin slaughtering its inhabitants. A mutated Attis begins growing inside the vault, infecting those inside. The Initiate must initiate a self-destruct sequence and escape via a monorail car. During the explosion, Cyrus, Nadia, and Cain are seen watching Los from the city's outskirts.

Locations
The action takes place in only one zone per chapter. A zone is composed of many locations. A player character can return to previously visited locations until they enter a new chapter and a new zone (Carbon, Los or the Vault-Tec Corporate Vault Laboratories.) They can also sometimes not be able to visit a new location until the storyline advances. There are 50 separate maps of varying size in the game, the primary locations include those as followed.

Playable
One chooses one of up to six playable characters to control as the player character. There are no party members. The last three unlockable characters on the following list become available to control after the player completes a chapter in the game.
 * Cain: Cain is a ghoul who decided to join the Brotherhood after super mutants destroyed his hometown, Necropolis. He can use heavy and dual weapons of medium build, but he cannot maneuver well with the former and cannot run while using the latter.
 * Cyrus: Cyrus was born in a tribal farming village, but he started roaming the wastes after his village was destroyed by super mutants. He later decided to join the Brotherhood as a soldier. Of heavy build, able to use and maneuver well with heavy weapons. He cannot equip dual weapons and cannot run while firing any weapon.
 * Nadia: Nadia spent her childhood as an orphan living on the streets. Although she adapted to life there, she decided to join the Brotherhood when she witnessed several of its members engaging in an act of philanthropy. Of light build, she can equip dual weapons. She cannot use heavy weapons. The weapons she can equip, she can fire while running.
 * Patty: Has the same access to and restrictions on weapons as Nadia. She has +10 to her Base Armor value, and bonuses to the following skills: +20% bonus to Bargaining, +80% to Gun Damage, +25% to Desert Soldier and +25% to Future Woman.
 * Rhombus: Unlike the first four characters, Rhombus has no restrictions or bonuses to weapon class in regards to equipping or movement. Rhombus has a Base Armor bonus of +30. He has a +100% bonus to Melee Damage, and +50% bonuses to Explosive Damage and the skills Heavy Hitter and Wastelander.
 * Vault Dweller: This powerful player character can be selected for use only in a new game, and as with Rhombus, has no weapon class restrictions or bonuses. He has a stacking unarmored Base Armor value of 20, and +100% bonuses to Melee Damage, Gun Damage and Explosive Damage. Additionally, +20% bonuses to the Slayer and Fortune Finder skills, and +100% to the Heavy Hitter and Wastelander skills.

Development
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was initially pitched in September 2001 as a non-Fallout game titled Future Shock, which was envisioned as a "squad based first person shooter." In January 2002, a small team of "8 or so" people was assembled to produce a demo to demonstrate basic gameplay, which was to be real time combat "from an isometric view in a Fallout setting."

Upon completion of the prototype, lead designer Chris Pasetto stated that management at Interplay Entertainment loved it, seeing it as the "start of a great game" and an "excellent way to expand the Fallout universe." Members of Black Isle Studios who had previously worked on Fallout also took interest in the game, providing the team with materials "from timelines and bibles" to assist in development. It was determined that the game would "stay within the guidelines of the Fallout universe" and not contradict the events of prior titles, while also treating it as a "different type of game for a different audience" with its own setting, characters and events that fit within the greater Fallout universe.

Work on the game from the initial prototype was done using the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance engine, another title published by Interplay Entertainment. The engine was first used as a "stepping stone or framework for the technology" that comprised Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Chris Pasetto iterated that aside from some of the core systems and the rendering engine, the majority of the engine's contents were either revised or rewritten. He added that while the graphical capabilities were "phenomenal," the engine was "fairly limited" in terms of their gameplay needs. With more focus on ranged combat, as well as mechanics "new to the game landscape" such as targeting, strafing, dodging and using cover and explosives, "sweeping changes" were made by the team.

Announcement and Release
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was first announced on March 12, 2003 via an Interplay press release, though a forum board on GameFAQs had been established earlier in February, as well as listing on EB Games. An accompanying website was also established, leading to a page with the game's logo and the splash message "The Official Flash Site is Coming Soon!" The press release described the game as a "gritty and darkly humorous 3rd person action adventure game transports players into the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the highly acclaimed and successful Fallout PC franchise," with Executive Producer at Interplay, Scot Lane, stating they were "very excited about bringing the Fallout universe to console gamers."

On April 30, 2003, the official website went live and published its first Developer Diary, written by Producer Chuck Cuevas, describing how the project originated and how it had been "about 12 months" since the initial prototype shown to Interplay had been completed. The game was first demonstrated publicly at E3 2003, hosted in Los Angeles, California on May 14–16. On May 22, 2003, Chuck Cuevas described in the second Developer Diary that the art team was wrapping up level artwork as they "head for Alpha."

On October 22, 2003, it was announced via press release that the game had went gold. Production of the game was completed prior to Christmas 2003, with designer Dan Kingdom stating that the game's design elements were finished "quite a while back" and that the time in-between was used to implement those design elements. On January 14, 2004, the game was officially released and began shipping to retailers, with a suggested retail price of $49.99 and an ESRB "Mature" rating.

Music
The soundtrack background music and music by bands, such as Slipknot, Killswitch Engage, Celldweller, Meshuggah, Skinlab and musician Devin Townsend.

Voice
All voice acting citations are from the Internet Movie Database. Fallout: BoS is the first Fallout game to not feature the introduction voice-acted by Ron Perlman, who is famous in the Fallout series for the line, "War...war never changes." The narrator of this game is Tony Jay, the Lieutenant from Fallout.

Marketing
Promotional items were given away prior to the release of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. One item was a press kit given away by Interplay to members of the media. It contained an asset disc, a water bottle, a first aid kit, and a Maglite flashlight. Some of the kits contained a promotional video named 'A guide to post-nuclear intimacy' and several condoms. The video's background song is a looped instrumental version of "A Nuclear Blast" by Craig Stuart Garfinkle.

Reception
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel received a Metacritic metascore of 64/100 on PS2 and 66/100 on Xbox.

Behind the scenes

 * The credits for the game mentions "Thanks for the laughs: www.duckandcover.net, www.nma-fallout.com". These fansites criticized the game, even before it launched.
 * The game's manual has a list of tips and mentions: "Save, save and save again. If you find a save game console, use it. Don't come crying to us because you ignored one and now have to replay the last fifteen minutes again. Life is a harsh, unforgiving wasteland. Get used to it."
 * In the game, the Vault Dweller gives the Initiate a canteen with the Vault 13 logo. This item previously appeared in Fallout, Fallout 2 and would later appear in Fallout: New Vegas, if pre-ordered from Gamestop and in the add-on Courier's Stash.
 * There is a townsperson who says "His name is Robert Paulson" when the raiders attack Carbon, a reference to the 1999 film Fight Club.
 * In a trailer, Nadia mentions she was born "just after the bombs fell" despite that the game takes place over a hundred years since the Great War. On the game's website, it was clarified to be a mistake that slipped through recording, and that "just" should have not been said.
 * Interplay was sued by Snowblind Studios for using their engine, which Interplay previously contracted them for to create Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Snowblind claimed that Interplay used their engine without their consent for Brotherhood of Steel, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, and the GameCube version of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. They also claimed that they were entitled to certain royalties on the exploitation of their product. The two studios were engaged in this legal conflict between 2003 and 2004. On April 19, 2005, the litigation ended with both companies signing an agreement, determining that while Interplay would be allowed to work with materials already using the Snowblind engine, they would not be able to use it for any future games.
 * A text string in the game's files reads "OUT OF FUCKING MEMORY" and it can be seen if the .elf file is extracted from the .iso and viewed in the Ps2dis assembly program.

Videos
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Intro Fallout Brotherhood of Steel Cain trailer Fallout Brotherhood of Steel trailer 1 Fallout Brotherhood of Steel trailer 2 Fallout Brotherhood of Steel Cyrus trailer Fallout Brotherhood of Steel Nadia trailer