Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (PS2)

In almost any long-running series, you’ll eventually get a black sheep or two, and for the Fallout series, one of those emerged early on in the form of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Core Fallout titles had been focusing on developing open worlds for their turn-based role-playing gameplay, valuing choice and world-building in their design, but in an attempt to appeal to broader audiences, Fallout’s first release on consoles would end up shifting towards a strange direction, becoming a linear hack-and-slash RPG with more in common gameplaywise with Diablo than the previous Fallout titles. Naturally, such an abrupt shift in game design would be off-putting to long time fans of the series, but Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel seems like it was designed as a desperate attempt to keep the series from dying out. Unfortunately, the compromises made to the series vision seemed all for naught, as Interplay still went bankrupt, but Bethesda would eventually breathe the life back into the series that made it both mainstream and critically acclaimed. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was Interplay’s last gasp, one that pushed them to make something that felt quite different but didn’t have the strength it needed to reinvigorate the series.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel does carry over the series’s setting and history, taking place far in the future and in a post-apocalyptic wasteland from an alternate history where nuclear energy was heavily embraced after World War II and culture barely progressed from the ideas of the 1950s. However, the game doesn’t really do all that much to explore this world, carrying over familiar elements like the large green super mutants and the zombie-like irradiated humans called ghouls but not spending much time delving into the history or current state of this irradiated world. Oddly enough, the game chooses to embrace metal music instead of 1950s songs this time around, with songs from groups like Slipknot and Killswitch Engage backing cutscenes and dramatic moments, and while it’s certainly different, it doesn’t seem like an ill fit for the title’s edgy tone. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel focuses more on its core story rather than trying to develop any strong identity for the world it takes place in, but even that’s a bit of a foggy mess. The player begins the game by picking either a man, woman, or ghoul who has just joined the Brotherhood of Steel, the group’s aim in this game being to keep peace in the wasteland. They set off to meet with higher ranking members of the group to complete their initiation, but when they encounter raiders in the small town of Carbon, their desire to do right and find answers about the Brotherhood spurs them to help out. You’re on the tail of the missing Brotherhood of Steel members for quite a while, heading to new areas on the vague promise they might show up, but the broader goal of the game does eventually evolve in trying to foil the super mutants who aim to increase their already considerable strength so they can rule the wasteland.

 

The story carries you forward between locations, usually each chapter having one long interconnected and mostly linear path to follow. Along the way you can meet characters who will lightly develop where they are and inform you about the world’s unique creatures like radscorpions and deathclaws or elements like the vaults that were developed as fallout shelters. These characters can also give you some optional objectives to complete, these sidequests mostly taking the form of doing some small task while continuing along the main path of the story. Finding items out in the combat zones is the most common form this takes, but there are more involved diversions like the gladiatorial arena. Even when you get on the more solid plot path, it’s not much of a journey as there are very few meaningful moments in the plot that progress it, cutscenes and dialogue seeming to be more preoccupied with potty humor or idle prattle. For the most part, you will be pushing through large twisting areas filled with goodies to loot and plenty of enemies on your way to fighting a boss. The player is able to equip up to three weapons at a time, easily able to swap between them as they need to whether it’s because it will work better in the situation or because of ammo limitations. There are quite a lot of options to be found here, with metal gloves, sledgehammers, and blades for close-range melee combat, pistols and rifles in both regular and laser varieties, flamethrowers, shotguns, dual-wielded weaponry, grenades, miniguns, and plenty more for battles that take place from afar. Almost every weapon has some justifiable use and factors like speed of use or reliability make it important to vary up your arsenal, with most weapons only becoming less useful when you’ve got a stronger replacement for them. Ammo conservation and the general strength of melee will mean it still has a place even as you gradually find or buy better and better weapons along the way, and the long-range options of course let you stay out of trouble or move around more during combat. The game is viewed from a top down perspective and most enemies will only attack when on screen with many that like to get in close and attempt to crowd you, meaning you can lose health in a hurry if you aren’t able to hold them back. Healing stimpacks aren’t too hard to come by though and are a decent investment whenever you find a trader to buy them from, so the fact your dodging options aren’t quite the best at avoiding damage doesn’t mean you’re doomed to die. However, the game does seem to acknowledge it can be a bit heavy on aggressive enemies, placing save points liberally around levels so you can routinely set up checkpoints to come back at if you die. There are some annoying death traps in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel though, such as awkward jumps over instant death pits and laser grids that can instantly end you if they touch you, so taking the game up on frequent save spots is recommended to avoid those becoming annoyances.

Enemy AI can be a bit buggy, with some enemies running in circles or inexplicably rushing off to stare at corners during combat, but this can almost be a relief in the harder combat challenges. Battles are about quick action and dealing out damage as fast as you can, the only strategy cropping up here being how to deal with special enemy types. Enemies like flamethrower wielding soldiers or exploding ghouls can’t be fought up close safely, and while things that do like to get in close and hit hard usually are better handled at range, long-range weaponry often finds more use against the kind of foe that likes to hang back and fire or has a weapon that can mow you down if you try and run through its bullet spray. Regular combat is simple enough that it’s not hard to get caught up in the easy carnage you can dish out, slaying foes speedily and moving onto the next batch without having to worry much about the upcoming opposition. The need to shift up your play and approach does keep it from being totally mindless, although once you’ve become strong enough over the course of the game, it can be much easier just to run past all the enemies in an area instead of having to face them down to progress. Bosses put up a better fight than most enemies, having long health bars that can take some time to chip away. Some of them have tricks or skills to keep you moving or force you to be more selective in your weapon use, while others are huge bullet sponges meant to test how well you’ve held onto ammo for the more important fights. They’re not without their weaknesses, one boss I just stood in place and held down the attack button, letting my minigun chew through them as they failed to do much in response, but other battles can reward outside the box thinking such as finding a small gap in their defensive position to toss explosives through.

 

Along your journey, you aren’t just finding better armor and weapons. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel does carry over the series’s skill system, the player earning experience through quest completion and defeating enemies that can be used to level up their character. Each of the playable characters and the unlockable ones have unique stats as well as some skills specific to them, such as the ghoul Cain being able to get the ability to heal when he’s irradiated. The game offers a co-op mode where two players can play through the story simultaneously to make things easier,  but the limitations characters have don’t preclude any of them from being good choices for your main story character. They technically have some extra dialogue options during plot points as well, but it’s nothing too meaningful and doesn’t effect the course of the story. The skills have a greater impact on play though, and there are plenty of general upgrades to pick universal to all members of the cast. Buffs to stats and weapon proficiencies are the most common, meaning over the course of the game you can tailor your character to be better at the attacks types you prefer. Outside the more noticeable and unique skills like’s Cain’s radiation healing though, the game progresses at such a reasonable curve that you don’t often feel the effects of smart stat allocation. It’s more akin to avoiding weakness than increasing strength since you’re usually on the level to handle your foes but still need to heal up after facing a few of them. It does at least give you things to work towards, with some skills only available at later levels or by saving up skill points across levels for bigger payouts.

THE VERDICT: While a general lack of world-building and the shift away from strategic turn-based combat may make Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel almost heretical to Fallout fans, the odd truth of the title is that its shift towards accessible hack and slash action coupled with light RPG elements does hit the marks the developers were aiming for. It’s not too hard for players to attach themselves to the mindless mayhem of shooting apart enemies in a raunchy post-apocalyptic wasteland, but the design decisions made for broader appeal are still felt strongly. The story and world are barebones and have little to get invested in, so the combat has to carry the weigh despite its simple design. Loot, level progression, and seeing new areas are small rewards for pushing through similar groups of enemies without too much difficult opposition, with most enjoyment in the game coming from tapping into primal reward systems rather than hooking players with inspired design.

 

And so, I give Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the PlayStation 2…

An OKAY rating. Looking beyond its oddness as a member of the Fallout series, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel is just a plain hack and slash placed awkwardly into a well-loved game world . Sure, you do more shooting than slashing, but it’s still trying to capture that instinctual thrill of overcoming opponents in droves. The small shifts in how you need to attack and the loot scattered around environments pull you out of the combat so it does not become wholly monotonous, but for players who need more than just the constant basic battles to keep them engaged, there aren’t too many systems with that level of depth present.

 

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel could have kept some of the complexity of its forefathers while still engaging in the elements meant to generalize its appeal, but it pushes a little too hard into acceptable design rather than possibly alienating customers at a time Interplay needed a big hit to survive. Isolated from its franchise context, the game doesn’t really have an huge glaring flaws or enticing attributes, landing it squarely into the genericness that Interplay had hoped would make it appeal to the masses but didn’t quite work out for them in the end.