Fallout Tactics

Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, abbreviated as FoT, or FoT:BoS (not to be confused with Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel), is the third title in the Fallout Series, but isn't a traditional RPG (so it wasn't entitled Fallout 3). Instead BoS focused on squad-based combat and introduced near real-time combat, called "continous turn-based" by the developers, to the Fallout series. FoT action takes place in the midwest, rather than the west coast as the previous Fallout titles did.

An interesting note is that the History Channel's host of Mail Call, R. Lee Ermey, voices General Barnaky, who plays a major role throughout the game.

The game is also filled with numerous spelling and grammar errors; English majors be warned. It also is considered a major disappointment by most fans, not only for the numerous contradictions and liberties taken with the setting, but also because fans really wanted Fallout 3.

Gameplay
Unlike the previous two Fallout games, Fallout Tactics emphasizes tactical combat and strategy. Players are not able to respond to non-player characters, but they can still trade and gamble. Instead of towns, Fallout Tactics centers around Brotherhood bunkers and missions. The bunkers serve as a central point for the Brotherhood, and players can obtain the services of quartermasters, mechanics, personnel yeomen, and medics. Characters from completed missions occasionally visit the bunkers.

After receiving a mission briefing from the general in charge of the bunker, the player's squad can then move to the area where the mission will take place. Although this is usually a town, it can also be a factory, military encampment, or a Vault. There, the player is given a map of the area marked with objectives and notes.

Combat in Fallout Tactics is more complicated then in the previous two Fallout games. Unlike those, which featured an individual turn-based system, Fallout Tactics features three modes of combat: Continuous Turn-Based (CTB), Individual Turn-Based (ITB), and Squad Turn-Based (STB). In CTB, everyone can act at the same time, and action points are regenerated a rate based on Agility. ITB is the system used in the original games. STB is a variation of that; each turn is given to a squad. Other changes include the ability to change stance, modifiers for height, and setting sentry modes, which let characters shoot automatically in CTB upon encountering an enemy.

Story
With nuclear apocalypse looming over the world, several vaults were constructed to contain the best and brightest of humanity. By being shielded from the imminent death, the offspring of these people could reclaim and repopulate the Earth. However, before the entire network could be completed, nuclear war broke out. One of the vaults became militaristic and technology-driven. Using their superior weapons, they were able to claim the surrounding wasteland. The members of this vault formed the Brotherhood of Steel, an organization dedicated to unlocking new and better technologies.

A split soon formed in the Brotherhood, however. One faction supported allowing tribals (human outsiders) to join the organization to prevent a lack of troops. The other faction wanted to keep the Brotherhood pure. The faction supporting the tribals was sent across the mountains on great airships to destroy a mutant army. A lightning storm struck down the ships, however, and they were forced to land. Free from the Brotherhood members who wanted nothing to do with the tribals, the new Brotherhood was able to grow.

Quotes

 * If Interplay had allowed more time (and money), MicroForte would have been in a position to deliver a better game. That's fairly typical of the publisher/developer relationship. It just hurts more in this particular case, because there was a higher expectation of quality due to the Fallout name. The project wasn't completely on schedule in reality, but that was due to a couple of changes in direction during development and wasn't due to any major problems with the developer. Interplay should have taken a step back, slipped the game 3-4 months and released a higher quality game. That doesn't mean I take any less responsibility for my duties on FOT and my failure to keep the FO lore as close to canon as possible.  - Chris Taylor (RPG Codex forum)
 * Something else that I remembered: when we (IP and MF) sat down for that original week of pre-production design, the game was strictly turn-based. We had discussed how we wanted to implement TB/RT or some sort of hybrid, and the decision was made to do TB combat only (RT until combat, just like FO1/2). The TB combat wasn't ready in time for the 2000 E3, so we showed a quickie RT combat (as is common for those demos, much was faked under the hood). That particular demo was one of the main reasons RT combat went in. - Chris Taylor (RPG Codex forum)
 * Keep in mind that the amount of testing on Fallout Tactics was tragically short. IIRC, Interplay recieved the first full beta/fully playable to the end on a saturday. The following wednesday, after one - maybe two - revs, it was sent off for mastering. That's an amazingly short amount of time (most projects have at least a month between fully playable and gold mastering, RPGs usually have longer). Myself and a few others asked for more time to do more testing and we were denied. There was a strong desire to get the game out as fast as possible by someone at Interplay. I don't think it helped that I had walked out of a marketing meeting a month or so earlier, so my opinion towards the end wasn't well received. Additional testing time would have allowed: more bug fixes, better balancing (especially in Turn-Based, since the limited amount of testing time, most of QA was testing in real-time) and more tweaks to the game system. It would not have allowed for any major changes to the story, characters, plot and game system. In hindsight, we should have not implemented both TB and RT. It did end up costing us a substantial amount of QA time and resources. Or, we should have kept RT only for multiplayer. That would have given us a little more time for balancing the single-player campaign. MicroForte wasn't responsible for nearly as many problems on FOT as Interplay was. And I would be surprised at the amount of problems Interplay's QA department was able to find, except I know how hard they worked and the problems they were working against. They did as good as job as anyone could have done under the circumstances. Of all things, I'm still bummed we never got a song in for the intro movie. I had wanted "Jesus Just Left Chicago" by ZZ Top. Chris Taylor (RPG Codex forum)

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