I am once again tapping my 'Todd Howard genuinely loves Fallout' sign: He's an OG Fallout 1 fan and still hasn't given back the disc he nicked from his brother

Male and Female Vault Dweller holding guns and cresting a hill with ruined city in background

(Image credit: Bethesda)

The cross I bear—probably the heaviest burden borne by a human being in history—is that I'm doomed to annoy basically all the loudest segments of the Fallout fan community. Do I love the direction Bethesda took the series in with FO3 and FO4? Not really. Do I think the studio—and especially FO3 and 4 director Todd Howard—harbours a secret hatred in his heart for the games Bethesda didn't make, or that he's some Johnny-come-lately who probably doesn't even like Fallout 1 and 2? Also no.

How do I know this? Because I feel it in my soul. Also, Howard pointed out he's been a Fallout fan since the first game in Game Informer's recent oral history of the series, so there's that too. "I was at Bethesda at the time when [Fallout 1] came out. It’s my brother who actually played it first. He’s like, 'Have you played Fallout?' And I said, 'I haven’t had the chance yet.' He said, 'You’ve gotta play it.'"

He loved it, of course. "I loved the vibe of that game," even moreso than other games—tabletop and otherwise—that went for something similar, like Gamma World and Wasteland. "The rules of the world and the vibe of the world, they were just brilliant and so unique."

Howard had the precise opposite reaction to Jackson, and now recalls that he particularly loved "the Vault Boy and the way it would wink at the player in certain ways." Jackson, meanwhile, disliked the juxtaposition of the breezy Vault Boy and the game's violent content. But it was part of the first game's potent admixture that meant Howard "played it to death."

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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