RELATED: A Complete Timeline Of Fallout Games
Set in an alternate timeline post-apocalyptic United States, players throughout the existence of the franchise have been able to explore a number of reimagined iconic American settings with that trademark Fallout aesthetic. With so many games and so many stories spanning such a large amount of time, keeping track of the Fallout games in chronological order can certainly be a challenge, but one absolutely worthwhile for fans of the series.
Updated on January 4, 2022, by Jack Pursey: The Fallout series has been a staple of gaming’s post-apocalyptic genre for many years now, and with Microsoft’s recent purchase of Bethesda, players can expect plenty of future releases from the franchise.
For those new to the series, or people who perhaps want to revisit some of the older titles, it can be difficult to know where to start. Playing through the games chronologically is a great way to experience the series’ full story, which is why we’ve listed them according to the Fallout games’ timeline. However, to give even more information to players before diving in, we’ve updated this list to include a few more key details such as each game’s main story completion time, available platforms, and insight into how each game holds up today.
7 Fallout 76 - 2102
Release Date: October 23, 2018 Available Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One Main Story Completion Time: 34. 5 hours
Although it’s the most recent game to come out, Fallout 76 is chronologically set earliest. The game takes place in the year 2102 and covers an event that is incredibly significant to the wider lore of Fallout. Serving as a prequel to the main games, it is set 25 years after the nuclear war that devastated the world during the era of reconstruction.
The player controls one of the lucky (or arguably unlucky) few who survived the bombs in the Vault-tec-made shelter, Vault 76. These are the characters controlled by real people who populate the world of Fallout 76. The goal of these chosen few is to re-settle the wastelands and try and get the world back on track.
When the game was first released, discussions around it were, unfortunately, not about the story, world, or online play, but about the number of glitches that many players were encountering. Thankfully, the game is in a far better state today, which will undoubtedly please Microsoft, as their purchase of Bethesda has made the Fallout series one of their flagship franchises. With the financial backing of Microsoft, Fallout 76 could receive fresh, high-quality content for many years to come.
6 Fallout (1997) - 2161
Release Date: October 10, 1997 Available Platforms: MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, OS X Main Story Completion Time: 16 hours
While the residents of Vault 76 returned to the surface just 25 years after the great war, many of the people living in vaults are still underground by the time of the first Fallout game. This includes the player character, a dweller in Vault 13. The protagonist is sent by the vault’s overseer to the wastelands to replace the water chip, a device used for the recycling of water.
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Development on the surface world at this point in the chronology is fairly modest, even by the standards of the wastelands. But there is a settlement in the game called Shady Sands. The protagonist of the first game is unable to return to their home vault at the end and by remaining on the surface, helps to kickstart the development of the wastelands.
The original Fallout kicked off the series with a bang, wowing fans and critics alike, and winning GameSpot’s Role-Playing Game of the Year award in the same year that Final Fantasy 7was released. The game does, of course, fail to hold up visually compared to the series’ modern releases, though in terms of gameplay, particularly the freedom of choice available to players, Fallout is still an engrossing experience.
5 Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood Of Steel - 2197-2198
Release Date: March 15, 2001 Available Platforms: Microsoft Windows Main Story Completion Time: 25 hours
The world of Fallout at this point on the timeline is still far from the landscape of many major factions and civilizations that many are familiar with. However, in the late 2100s, there are still early signs of what the world would become. This is because of Fallout Tactics’ look into one of the franchise’s most consistently represented factions — the titular Brotherhood of Steel.
Fallout Tactics is an interesting entry, as while most of the games will allow the player to explore different factions and groups as an individual and then decide if they wish to join one, this game starts the player out as an initiate member of the notorious Brotherhood of Steel. By the later games, the brotherhood has become a militaristic and technological superpower, so it’s fascinating to see them at a much earlier stage of building up the military strength.
Although Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood Of Steel lacks many of the series’ quintessential features, its fairly central placement in both the chronological and release order of the games gives players a nice change of pace when playing through the franchise in order. Moreover, the game’s turn-based combat has a surprising amount of strategic depth to it, which makes it a great alternative to games like XCOMfor Fallout fans.
4 Fallout 2 - 2241
Release Date: October 29, 1998 Available Platforms: Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows Main Story Completion Time: 30. 5 hours
Although it takes place almost 100 years after the first game, Fallout 2 serves as a kind of direct narrative sequel to it. The player takes control of a descendent of the original game’s main character who leads the humble surface village of Arroya (originally founded by the vault dweller of the first game).
This is a major point in time for the Fallout chronology as it shows the first signs of major development in the new America. After the player obtains the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, they help the village of Arroya become a major city as part of the New California Republic who would go on to become one of the biggest and most significant factions in the whole series.
Fallout 2 didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and kept its core gameplay very similar to its ground-breaking predecessor. Although this drew some criticism at the time, the second game refined many of the original’s features and mechanics, making it the best way to play the old-school style of Fallout games. In a recent 2021 list, PC Gamer included Fallout 2 in a list of the greatest PC RPGs of all time, an opinion that is shared by many who have played it.
3 Fallout 3 - 2277
Release Date: October 28, 2008 Available Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Main Story Completion Time: 22. 5 hours
The first of the 3D games and likely the first game a lot of fans played, Fallout 3 continues the series of world events established previously. However, it does jump to the opposite side of the country from New California over to the remains of Washington DC giving the player a fresh and oddly beautiful new location to explore. By now in the chronology, a proper sense of civilization can be felt in the post-war United States, though still a somewhat crude one.
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Fallout 3’s placement on the timeline puts it well after the age of vaults. Despite this, players will remember in the introduction of the game the protagonist is shown to have been born and raised into adulthood within a vault. This is because Vault 101 was intended as an experiment to see a group of survivors living indefinitely in a vault, rather than until they can return to the surface to settle the wastelands. This makes the primary vault of the game rather unique as it continues its activities after everyone else has moved on.
Despite its huge mainstream success upon release, Fallout 3 doesn’t always seem to get the respect that it deserves today. Granted, many of its mechanics and open-world features have been improved upon since, but it’s important to remember that, for many people, Fallout 3 was the first open-world game that they played. Because of this, the moment when the player leaves the vault was special for many players, as they suddenly had a level of freedom that they’d never experienced in gaming before.
2 Fallout: New Vegas - 2281
Release Date: October 19, 2010 Available Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Main Story Completion Time: 27. 5 hours
Returning to the West 40 years after the first great cities were being built in Fallout 2, the New California Republic is now a fully operational federal government with territory spanning almost the entirety of the West coast of the US and stretching into Nevada. They still face struggles however as they fight a brutal war for control against Caesar’s Legion. The game takes place four years after Fallout 3 on the timeline.
Uniquely, the player character of Fallout: New Vegas is a courier instead of a vault dweller making it the only main game to have a protagonist entirely from the new society developed from the wastelands. The region may be more developed than in games further back on the timeline, but in true Fallout fashion, there are still plenty of terrifying monsters populating the vast desert region.
Fallout: New Vegas is one of the key reasons why, as mentioned before, Fallout 3 doesn’t seem to get much adulation today. Although there was little to no visual improvement, Fallout: New Vegas did raise the bar for role-playing freedom not just for the Fallout series, but the role-playing genre as a whole. Bethesda handed New Vegas’ development duties to Obsidian Entertainment, who certainly didn’t disappoint, creating one of gaming’s most diverse and engrossing adventures.
1 Fallout 4 - 2287
Release Date: November 10, 2015 Available Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One Main Story Completion Time: 27 hours
The latest game chronologically, Fallout 4 takes place 10 years after the events of Fallout 3 and only a few years after Fallout: New Vegas. The player can now explore a region known as “The Commonwealth” which is the remains of Boston and some of the wider New England region.
While officially the furthest into the future chronologically so far, Fallout 4’s opening does provide a playable glimpse of pre-war America. Initially being set in 2077, which is the earliest playable time, the bulk of the game takes place 210 years after the bombs dropped, as the main character (known as the sole survivor) is cryogenically frozen, finally emerging in 2287.
Fallout 4 is a somewhat divisive entry in the series. Although it offered one of the best open worlds, new base-building mechanics, and some impressive technical features, the game stripped away much of the player’s freedom in favor of a more railroaded adventure. This wasn’t seen as a bad thing by some people, and the game reached an impressive 88 Metascore, though many were disappointed that the excellent role-playing aspects of New Vegas weren’t expanded upon.
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