Although Fallout was transformed into a first-person Elder Scrolls-style series after the first two games, it retained a unique blend of freedom-oriented roleplay and narrative prescriptivism that helped it stand out from other Bethesda games like Skyrim. When discussing the development of Fallout 3 at Brighton Digital 2020, Todd Howard described the unique challenge balancing freedom and storytelling in the series.
Fallout is distinct from many of its contemporaries. While RPG fans are likely to enjoy series like Mass Effect, there are only a few games that deliver the same balance that the best Fallout games have to offer, giving the player real roleplaying freedom while still delivering a compelling main story. Here are the games that any Fallout fan should check out.
Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines
While The Elder Scrolls often sees its protagonists rise from obscurity to become a hero of ancient prophecy, Fallout's protagonists more often find themselves thrown into the deep end of the story's main conflict by pure coincidence. In Fallout 3 and 4, the player character ends up with the fate of the setting in their hands while pursuing the truth about a missing family member. In Fallout: New Vegas, a delivery job gone-wrong and a lucky survival sees the Courier become central to the city's future by accident.
2004's Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines begins with a premise that will be familiar to most Fallout fans - a near-death experience. The game starts with the nameless player character's murder and resurrection by a vampire in early-2000s Los Angeles. Siring new vampires without permission, it turns out, is frowned upon in the vampire community. The player's killer-turned-sire is executed for their crime, but in a twist of fate the player's life is spared.
Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines is not a great looking game, but as any fan of Fallout 3 or New Vegas will attest, looks aren't everything. The game offers the player the chance to roleplay as someone who has just had a whole new world revealed to them, and it isn't long before their coincidental creation leads them deep into a conspiracy that could put the fate of all vampires on the line. With some extremely memorable NPCs, plenty of dialogue options, and that classic Fallout blend of freedom and tightly-wound storytelling, Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines is a game any Fallout fan can sink their teeth into.
Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3
The original Fallout CRPGs are considered the spiritual successor to 1988's Wasteland, developed by Interplay. The successful crowd-funding of a sequel back in 2013 helped revive the genre, and while it might take a minute for fans of the first-person Fallout games to get used to a top-down perspective, Wasteland 2 and 3 have a lot to offer fans the franchise.
As in Fallout, the games take place in a post-apocalyptic world. Wasteland's world, however, is slightly grittier than Fallout's sometimes silly setting. Like the original Fallout CRPGs and New Vegas, Wasteland takes place in the American Southwest, blending sci-fi and western tropes to create a compellingly bleak world. The Wasteland games are certainly harder than the Bethesda-made Fallout titles, but their world has a sense of scale Fallout lacks, and overcoming the wasteland's challenges is made more rewarding by the series' steep learning curve.
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic
While BioWare's later heroes like Mass Effect's Commander Shepard would come to have personalities of their own, the player character of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is literally a blank-slate. Waking up with a nasty case of amnesia on a ship under attack by the Sith, the player ends up with the fate of the galaxy at their fingertips. They also find themselves fighting alongside some of BioWare's best-written companion characters in a more morally gray version of the Star Wars universe than most fans might be used to. In fact, KOTOR introduces the idea of Gray Jedi, force-wielders who walk the line between the light and dark sides of the force.
It's hard to say that Knights of the Old Republic doesn't give its character a preset backstory, but the protagonist's amnesia ensures that the player and their character's perspectives are brilliantly aligned, making for a particularly immersive roleplaying experience. As with Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines, the graphics of the early 2000s have not aged as well as they could have. It won't be long, however, for most Fallout fans to find themselves looking beyond KOTOR's visuals and roll-based combat to see one of BioWare's best stories.
Not only that, but the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas worked on the sequel, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords. This game follows a Jedi who was cast out of the order ten years ago, only for that to see them survive the near-extermination of the Jedi by the Sith in the five years after the first game. A spot of bad luck followed by a lucky survival will be familiar to New Vegas and Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines fans, making for a particularly immersive RPG experience that is centered on survivors rather than chosen ones.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Set in a cyberpunk near-future filled with exploitative corporations and enhanced humans, Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a few differences with the Fallout games. However, it also boasts a tone and strength of storytelling to match the best Fallout has to offer. The protagonist Adam Jensen may be a character in his own right rather than the blank-slate many Fallout fans are used to, but like the best Fallout games, he ends up getting to the heart of a massive conspiracy through a strange mix of horrible luck and fortunate escapes.
The game begins with Adam Jensen working as a security guard for a company that is experimenting with human augmentation. When a terrorist attack leaves most of the employees dead - including Jensen's former lover - Jensen alone is saved through extensive cybernetic augmentation. What follows is a fantastic, underrated RPG experience that sees Jensen uncover the truth behind that twist of fate, just as the Courier investigates the reason they were shot over their last delivery in Fallout: New Vegas.