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The new Vegas Tribes having to learn to read, write, do math, and every casino game on earth along with customer service etiquette in the span of like a month or else this gambling Walt Disney Knockoff they’ve never met is going to gun them down with big fuck machines they’ve seen for the first time in their life. Not to mention they have to learn how to tie a tie:

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The original Fallout had one group of raiders. That was the name the game map gave to them - 'Raiders' - but they were in fact known as the Khans. They were a relatively minor faction, being tied to quests in the first town the player is likely to visit, but we learn a lot about them in their brief appearance.

Many of the Khans are given names and dialogue, and will tell the player about their history - including how they came from the same place as the people of Shady Sands, Vault 15, and feel entitled to share in the town's wealth. Some see their raiding life as a way to claim control of the post-war world - ruling through strength and fear, believing that old ideas of morality died with the rest of the world. Others treat it as just another job - they support their group by trading, maintaining equipment, preparing food, and other everyday tasks.

In short, the Khans are a fully-realised community, as much a part of the story as any other. We learn that their brutal leader, Garl Death-Hand, took command after killing his abusive father. The player can kill him, or negotiate with him, or impress him with acts of cruelty, or even challenge his nihilistic views by convincing him that they're his father, back from the dead. Killing Garl and destroying his compound is treated as the best choice for the region as a whole, and is confirmed to have happened in the next game in the series, but it's certainly not the only option.

Fallout 2 has two groups of raiders. One - again marked 'Raiders' on the map - turn out not to be raiders at all, in that they're not attacking towns to steal their wealth. Instead, they're a mercenary company, hired by a disreputable businessman from one town (New Reno) on behalf of another town (Shady Sands again, now the capital of the New California Republic) to harass a third town (Vault City) to convince them that they need outside help in maintaining their defences. It's part of the game's major subplot about the three societies competing for control of northern California and western Nevada.

The other group are the New Khans, founded by Garl's son Darion after the original Khans' defeat. These Khans aren't nearly so fearsome as their predecessors - they mostly operate in secret, hiding behind a group of squatters who have moved into the ruins of Vault 15 and pretending to help them restore it for use. Darion is wracked with resentment over what happened to his father's crew and guilt for having survived, and his gang ultimately present little real threat to the outside world.

What I'm getting at here is that, in the world of Fallout as it existed in those early games, 'raiders' were not a major factor. There was one group who conducted raids as part of their regular economic activity, but only against particular communities - Shady Sands saw them as raiders, but to the Hub, they were just traders. Raiders only existed in a particular context - they had particular interests, beliefs and opportunities that would not always be possible or applicable.

Most of the games' conflict came not from the existence of raiders but from bilateral political and economic competition between groups with overlapping but not identical interests, which was reflected in their respective ideologies. We see this in Killian and Gizmo fighting to control the future of Junktown, and in the Master's attempt to reshape the world with the Unity while the different groups of New California try to retain their independence.

We particularly see it in Fallout 2, with its three-way battle for economic domination between the constitutional democracy of the New California Republic, the mafia-ruled narco-state of New Reno, and the elitist technocratic slave state of Vault City. Which of these groups continue to rule and expand, and which crumble, is what ultimately shapes the region's future - with control of Redding and its gold supply as the linchpin.

While the Enclave are the story's primary antagonists, they're chiefly characterised by their refusal to engage with this new socio-economic order - they believe that all outside authorities are illegitimate, and all outsiders non-human, and their only plan is to release a bioweapon into the atmosphere and kill literally everyone on Earth but themselves. The Enclave's defeat is necessary for New California's survival, but, otherwise, they change very little about how people live their lives. They're like Darion's New Khans on a larger scale - relics of a fallen order, robbed of their purpose, hiding in an old bunker and driven by nothing but resentment of having been left behind.

I might, in future, talk about the contrasting depiction of raiders in Fallouts 3, 4 and 76, and about New Vegas's use of raider and bandit groups like the Khans, the Legion, the Fiends and the White Legs. For now, I think I've made my point - that raiders are not a fact of life but a product of a particular place and time, and much less relevant to the universe of Fallout than other forms of competition and violence.

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Since there are so many people getting back into fallout games, its time for my regular promo of the only mod guides you need for making New Vegas, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 as stable as possible

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stop!!!!! With the fallout show posting in the fo1 and 2 tags jesus christ!!!!

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the fnv tag went from occasional fanart to absolute spam from the show :/

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my boy talks about unusual cases

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Uh hey so how come the enclave scientist in the fallout show is named after a real life holocaust survivor

Like this shows up immediately when you Google the name. Literally unmissable if you do a basic search of the name. Did nobody check first or was this intentional

What the fuck

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Someone: "Wouldn't fucking a Ghoul kill you? The radiation and stuff?"

Me:

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I joked about this in the tags of another post, but I don't think it's mentioned enough that the first two Fallout titles deliberately used stylized stop motion puppets to depict their characters!!

You may think "Oh maybe that was just easier at the time than making them realistic" but NO!! Tons of games used real life FMV footage in the exact same way Fallout used its stylized puppets!

It's also part of why the OG fallout models still look way better than any of the modern ones!

The original Fallout creators deliberately wanted all their mutants and ghouls to look like fucked up claymation dudes and the more the series strays from that the worse off it will be!

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4 has the best combat and most hand holding. The companion system is great, the story is lackluster, and the enemies are generic. Fun and a good place to start if you're not great at video games, but not the greatest intro to Fallout lore. The DLCs are fun.

New Vegas has by far the best story, NPCs, and roleplaying. Also has the most options for pacifist play. Only play on pc; the glitches are killer and mods are necessary. Look up recommended builds before creating your character to make the game easier.

3 was a lot of people's first. Has a lot of fun moments, but I wouldn't recommend starting here unless you're playing with someone whose favorite is 3. Built on the same system as NV, but with Bethesda's love of hand holding, so it might be good practice before starting NV?

76 has some fun lore, but it's an MMORPG. Might be fun for a WOW or Genshin fan, but not really like other Fallout games.

1 is fun if you're an old-school Sierra, Myst, or Zork fan. It's brutal, confusing, and low fidelity. Make sure you look up the manual and a few different guides. Learn to love dying or don't play 1.

Don't play 2 until you finish 1.

Tactics is a tactical strategy game. If you don't know what that means, you won't enjoy it. Not technically canon.

Don't play Brotherhood of Steel.

I’ve seen your posts about fallout since the tv show came out and other things regarding it, and now I’m interested in playing the games. Where should I start?!!

oh god baby ok i hope someone else sees this and can guide you further because i tried playing all of them and they were too complicated and difficult for me so i stopped BUT the first one i played was fallout 4 because it was the newest and the shiny graphics made my crow eyes twinkle!!

it’s a very easy venture into most of the lore, and gives you opportunities to also like research some bits and bobs here and there! it’s most best for roleplaying but i find i can get by when i just imagine away the main storyline lmao

my brothers favourite game is new vegas and it is understandably (from what i can tell) most peoples favourite too, but i suck ass at it and refuse now to play any title in the franchise without my beloved hancock lol

so i would say start with fallout 4! and then you can be better than me and check out the other titles if the lore intrigues you enough! going to be straight up with you and say avoid fallout 76 because i played 40 minutes and my ass was BORED plus it’s online based so :/

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“oh gee i love fallout new vegas i just wish it was mentioned a little more by bethesda” [monkey paw finger curls]

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Like let's be real it may also be fueled by pettiness but mostly they want the Fallout lore to be consistent and to be able to make more games in the franchise in the West Coast without it contradicting existing worldbuilding. They don't want post-post-apocalypse "nonsense". They don't want society rebuilding. They want fun guns and an apocalypse setting they can plant some uncomplicated enemies and a Power Armor suit on. But that's not something the existing worldbuilding in the West Coast can support. So it has to go.

And very few people play Fo1 and Fo2 anyway so retconning that directly is not necessary, you can just gloss over the glaring discrepancies. But you can't just gloss over New Vegas. So you don't! You nuke it. Problem solved. Now the lore is consistent over all Bethesda Fallouts and the show and we can forever and always stuff the main themes and message of the original games up our collective asses.

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I just wanted to say, I think you're the best artist to depict Porter Gage that I've seen! I love your drawings of your sole survivor and Gage, he looks so true to character, and your artstyle is so captivating!

Thank you! Honestly I don't think I ever drew the same Gage twice - zero consistency ;^)