The original Fallout game is unique in that it presents the Vault Dweller with a time limit to complete the main questline. These deadlines push a sense of urgency onto the player, making each completed quest feel much more rewarding — from finding the Water Chip for Vault 13 to helping settlements across the wasteland of Southern California.
That said, Fallout’s canon ending doesn’t wrap up well for the Vault Dweller. On the contrary, it tells a grim tale of an exiled hero.
Finding the Water Chip in Fallout
At the beginning of the game, the Fallout overseer of Vault 13 explains that the facility’s water purification device has broken down and that they require a Water Chip to get it up and running again. Thus, the Vault Dweller must leave the safety of the vault and brave the dangers of the wasteland to find one. The player is also given a deadline: 150 days.
Should the Vault Dweller succeed in acquiring a Water Chip, they must return to Vault 13 and speak to the overseer again. He’s overjoyed that the vault has a stable source of potable water again but expresses concern over the Vault Dweller’s reports on the wasteland. He explains that the growing super mutant population in Fallout is worrying, so he sends the player out once again to eliminate the source of the creatures.
Dealing with the Super Mutants
After doing some investigating, the Vault Dweller learns of the Unity, an organization of super mutants created by an individual known as the Master. The Master believed that humans ought to subject themselves to the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) of Fallout to remove the inequalities that plagued regular humans. This transition would then bring about a new beginning for the mutants of the wasteland.
In classic Fallout RPG fashion, there are multiple ways to confront the super mutants and ultimately stop the Master. After destroying the source of the super mutants in the Mariposa Military Base (either through force or infiltration), the player must find the Master and stop them once and for all. One way to do this is to nuke the Master’s base, but that requires a very high Science skill. Another viable method is violence. However, the Master is a very powerful enemy and will prove challenging to defeat.
Arguably the best method of getting the Master to stand down is through the Speech route. This requires either a very high Speech skill or a special holodisk from the Fallout Brotherhood of Steel’s head scribe, Vree. The contents of the holodisk reveal that those who’ve been infected with the FEV are actually sterile, meaning that the Master’s goal of propagating super mutants across the wasteland simply isn’t possible. Upon learning this, the Master tries to deny the facts, but the futility of their plan soon dawns on them. They feel guilt for all the things they did in the name of progress and a sense of hopelessness settles in. The Master tells the Vault Dweller to leave then detonates a nuke, killing them and the super mutants within the base. This marks the end of the player’s mission and triggers the game’s ending cutscene.
Fallout’s ‘Good’ Ending
With the source of the super mutants taken care of and the Master dead, the player is automatically taken back to Vault 13. There, the overseer speaks to them, expressing their gratitude for the Vault Dweller’s actions. They’ve not only saved the inhabitants of Vault 13 but also the rest of the region from the super mutant menace. Unfortunately, the overseer admits that he cannot welcome the player back to their home vault in Fallout.
The Vault Dweller of Fallout is a hero worth emulating, which is exactly what the overseer doesn’t want in Vault 13. He doesn’t want the younger vault residents to look up to the Vault Dweller as it might give them ideas about leaving the facility. That would mean losing the best of the next generation, which would then leave Vault 13 unable to sustain itself. Thus, the overseer ends his lengthy explanation with: “You saved us, but you’ll kill us. I’m sorry. You’re a hero… and you have to leave.”
The game then ends with a cutscene of the Vault Dweller simply walking out to the vast wasteland (unless the player has the Bloody Mess Fallout perk, which grants a special ending). It’s a bitter end, especially considering everything the player has done for Vault 13. They undertook what was essentially a suicide mission, and they’re rewarded not with a hero’s welcome but exile.
That said, sometime after the end of Fallout, the Vault Dweller meets up with a group of vault residents who left Vault 13. Together, they traveled the wasteland and, eventually, set up their own settlement alongside other wastelanders. This would become Arroyo, the village where the Chosen One of Fallout 2 would be born.
Fallout's Super Mutant Ending is Even Worse
There’s another main ending in Fallout, and it’s arguably the bad ending. This requires the player to join the Master and his army. The Vault Dweller will be turned into a super mutant in the process, as shown in a gruesome cutscene of them being dropped into a vat of acid. They’ll also reveal the location of Vault 13. This then triggers a cutscene of the super mutants invading the vault and killing off all its inhabitants. The ending slide even says that the Vault Dweller personally took the overseer’s life.
As far as endings go, both the good and bad endings of Fallout are pretty depressing, though at least the canon ending leads to the establishment of a healthy wasteland community. The super mutant ending, in contrast, will inevitably lead to ruin as the super mutants have no way of creating more of their kind other than by infecting humans. Once they’ve infected the last human in the wasteland, that marks the beginning of their end.
Fallout is available now on PC.