Fallout Case Files 1: NCR (New California Republic)

New California^[1] (officially the New California Republic, often abbreviated toNCR) is a large, democratic federation of 700,000^[2] based in California, with holdings in Nevada, Oregon, Mexico (Baja) and along the Colorado River. The NCR emphasizes and claims to support a myriad of old world values, such as democracy, personal liberty, and the rule of law. It also strives to restore general order to the wasteland, the improvement and development of infrastructure and economic systems, and a basic common peace between the people. Though appearing to be a benevolent entity of governance, the ability to control the land it claims to protect, the fidelity of those who live under their rule, and the widespread corruption within their political system has been questioned by many, without a clear response by the NCR themselves.

The New California Republic was born from the remnants of the survivors of Vault 15 and the small walled community they founded, Shady Sands. Under the leadership of Aradesh, and with the assistance of the Vault Dweller (who savedTandi, Aradesh's daughter and a future president of the NCR), the community prospered. Trade routes with other settlements allowed cultural exchange, and a movement to form a national entity gradually took root and won popular acceptance.

In 2186, the town of Shady Sands changed its name to "New California Republic" and formed a trial council government to draft a constitution. Four more settlements joined the council, and in 2189 the NCR was voted into existence as a sprawling federation of five states: Shady Sands, Los Angeles, Maxson, The Hub, andDayglow.

By post-apocalyptic standards, the NCR is a paragon of economic success and good ethical character: political enfranchisement, rule of law, a reasonable degree of physical security, and a standard of living better than mere subsistence are daily realities for its impressive population of citizens. ^[3]

Currently, the NCR is in a state of transition, with rapid economic growth and a sea change in political leadership endangering its grand humanitarian ideals. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Mojave, where the occupation of Hoover Dam has improved access to electricity and water, but at the cost of straining its budget and embroiling its armed forces in a morally corrosive imperialist project.

The NCR government's aim is to annex New Vegas as the republic's newest state. While it already controls Hoover Dam, its treaty with Mr. House and the three families compels it to allot 5% of the dam’s electrical and water production to local use free of charge. Adding insult to injury, the NCR is locked into protecting New Vegas from invasion by Caesar's Legion even as it receives not one cap in tax revenue from the Strip's highly lucrative resort operations. NCR citizens in the Mojave have largely come here for economic reasons, whether as paid citizen soldiers or as prospectors and fortune-seekers.^[4]

Fallout New Vegas story

The protagonist is a courier working for the Mojave Express, known simply as "the Courier". The game begins as the Courier is ambushed by a mobster named Benny (voiced by Matthew Perry) en route to New Vegas to deliver a mysterious item known as the "Platinum Chip." Benny shoots the Courier and leaves him/her for dead, taking the Chip for himself, but the Courier is rescued by a Securitron named Victor and brought back to good health by Doc Mitchell (voiced by Michael Hogan) in Goodsprings.^[9] The Courier then embarks on a journey across the Mojave Wasteland to locate and confront Benny.

The game proceeds according to the player's decisions and involves many different events, factions, and characters. The main storyline follows the player's pursuit of Benny to both settle the score and retrieve the Platinum Chip. Along the way, the Courier encounters many groups of people with various problems that he/she can choose to assist with, ignore, or otherwise sabotage, resulting in positive or negative karma. Eventually, after finding Benny and the Chip, the Courier finds him/herself in the middle of a conflict between three major factions: Caesar's Legion, a group of Roman-esque slavers, the New California Republic (NCR), an expansionist militia government, and Mr. House (voiced by René Auberjonois), the enigmatic de facto ruler of New Vegas, in command of an army of Securitron robots that patrols the city. Each of the three sides aim to control the Hoover Dam, which is still operational and supplying the Southwest with power and clean, non-irradiated water; thus, control of the dam means effective control of the region. It is revealed that Mr. House, a human from before the Great War and surviving via a contained life support chamber, ordered the Platinum Chip's delivery before the war. The Chip is a data storage device with a program that can upgrade the Securitrons to a greater level of combat effectiveness, and was stolen by Benny as part of a scheme to take over House's security and claim New Vegas for himself with the help of a reprogrammed Securitron named Yes Man.

The player has the option to pursue one of four paths: fighting for Caesar, the NCR, Mr. House, or taking up Benny's plans to take New Vegas for their own with Yes Man's assistance. After a line of quests where the player deals with outsider factions to determine their role in the looming battle, the player is notified that Caesar's Legion is attacking Hoover Dam, and they must take part to decide the outcome. As the Legion strikes the Dam, led by the fearsome Legate Lanius, the NCR defends its position under General Lee Oliver. Depending on the faction sided with up to the battle, the player will either conquer the Dam for Caesar's Legion, defend it for the NCR, connect the dam's systems to House's network so either he or Yes Man can take control, or destroy the dam for good to bring an end to the war over it. The game concludes with a narrated slideshow showing and explaining the results of the player's actions, the battle for Hoover Dam deciding the faction that comes to power over New Vegas and the Mojave, and the fates of the various other factions based on how the player negotiated with them and which of the major factions emerged dominant.

Fallout New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is an action role-playing video game in the Fallout video game series. The game was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. It released for Microsoft Windows,Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in October 2010. Downloadable content and expanded re-editions followed in 2010–2012.

The game is based in a post-apocalyptic, open world environment around the area of Nevada, California, and Arizona. The player takes control of the character known as the Courier, who is hired by a delivery service to take an unknown package across the Mojave Desert to the New Vegas Strip. During the delivery, the Courier is intercepted, shot in the head, and left for dead by a mysterious man who steals the package. After being found by a friendly robot, Victor, and healed by a man named Doc Mitchell, the Courier is thrust back into the desert to seek revenge and recover the stolen package. By doing this, the player becomes caught between various factions competing for control over the desert and its most valuable asset, the Hoover Dam, ultimately coming to shape the future of its inhabitants.

Even though it directly succeeds Fallout 3 in order of Fallout game releases, offers a similar action role-playing experience, and shares its engine and legacy content with Fallout 3, New Vegas is not a direct sequel. It marks the return of some elements found in Fallout 2. The game was a critical and commercial success, shipping more than 5 million copies altogether.

Obsidian Entertainment presents new features and improvements in Fallout: New Vegas that are implemented upon the foundation of Fallout 3. For example, the original Fallout 3version of the Gamebryo engine was reworked to accommodate the extra lights and effects of the Las Vegas Strip.

The game's combat is centered around the "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System" feature, or "V.A.T.S.", which is from Fallout 3 with the addition of several new V.A.T.S.-specific attacks.^[8][9] Use of certain melee weapons trigger unique animations. Additions are new weapons, a weapon modification system, a better over-the-shoulder view for third-person combat and the ability to use the iron sights on almost all guns except several larger weapons that are shot from the hip.^[10] The game allows firearm modifications such as mountedtelescopic sights, rate of fire modifiers and increased magazine size.^[10] Crafting also plays a role in weaponry, with the ability to make ammunition such as hand-loaded rounds. A plant-harvesting system similar to that of The Elder Scrolls series allows the player to use plants to create special meals, poisons, and medicines.

The quantity of factions prompted developers to reintroduce the reputation system that was absent in Fallout 3.^[11] The degree of faction loyalty influences the player's reputation with that faction,^[11] which affects the behavior of the faction's non-player characters (NPCs) toward the player and reflects the impact of selected choices in the world.^[11] Karma is also a factor and is independent of faction reputation. For example, the player can rob a faction member, lowering their karma, but leaving their reputation unchanged provided the faction does not learn of the robbery. Character attributes, skills, reputation and karma affect dialog options with NPCs. Skills have a larger effect on conversation choices.^[9] Whether a dialogue option will succeed or fail is shown up front, and entirely dependent on skill level, rather than both skill and chance as in Fallout 3.^[9]

Companion behavior and tasks are controlled using the new "Companion Wheel", removing the need to enter conversation to give commands. The new Companion Wheel offers command execution by selecting commands that are presented in a radial menu. Game director Josh Sawyer has stated that the Companion Wheel offers ease of companion interaction.^[11] Examples of companion commands include setting and changing combat tactics, default behavior towards foes and usage frequency of available resources. The player can have one humanoid and one non-humanoid companion at the same time, and receives a unique perk, or unique advantage, per companion. These companions can be upgraded if the player completes a special quest related to the companion, and unlike Fallout 3 dismissed companions are sent to the player's house instead of returning to their original locations.

In New Vegas, the player can visit casinos to participate in minigames to win currency, including blackjack, slots, and roulette.^[12] A card game called Caravan, which was designed specifically for the game, can be played outside of the casinos.^[13]

Fallout: New Vegas takes place during the year 2281, four years after the events of Fallout 3, and 204 years after the Great War of 2077. The former city of Las Vegas (now called "New Vegas") and its surroundings are divided among various factions, but there are three major powers competing for control of the region: The New California Republic (NCR), Caesar's Legion, and Mr. House. The NCR's military, returning from Fallout 2, is now overextended and mismanaged, but controls the majority of territories in the Mojave. The slave-driving, Roman army-styled Caesar's Legion, formed by its leader, Caesar, conquered and united 86 tribes and now plans to conquer New Vegas. Mr. House, the mysterious businessman, controls New Vegas with an army of "Securitron" security robots. There are other factions and groups such as the Boomers, a tribe of heavily armed former vault dwellers who have taken shelter at Nellis Air Force Base; the Powder Gangers, a violent group of escaped convicts; the Great Khans, a tribe of drug dealers and raiders; and the Brotherhood of Steel, technology-craving remnants of the U.S. Army who are attempting to secure any technology that could cause significant harm. Landmarks featured in Fallout: New Vegas are the Hoover Dam, which supplies power to the New Vegas strip;^[9] Nellis Air Force Base and the HELIOS One solar energy plant.^[14]

Fallout 3 Story

The introductory sequence introduces the player to their character's father, James, a doctor and scientist in Vault 101. James frequently makes comments about the player character's deceased mother Catherine, and her favorite Bible passage, Revelation 21:6, which speaks of "the waters of life".

The main quest begins after the player is forced to flee Vault 101 when James leaves the vault, throwing it into anarchy and causing the paranoid Overseer, the leader of the Vault, to send his security force after the player. The search for James takes the character on a journey through the Wasteland, first to the nearby town of Megaton, named for the undetonated atomic bomb at the center of town, then the Galaxy News Radio station, whose enthusiastic DJ Three Dog gives the player the moniker of "The Lone Wanderer". The player travels to Rivet City, a derelict aircraft carrier now serving as a fortified human settlement. Here the player meets Doctor Li, a scientist who worked alongside the player's father. Doctor Li informs the player of Project Purity, a plan conceived by Catherine and James to purify all the water in the Tidal Basin and eventually the entire Potomac River with a giant water purifier built in the Jefferson Memorial. However, continued delays and Catherine's death during childbirth put an end to the project, and James took the player's character as a newborn to raise them in the safety of Vault 101.

After investigating the Jefferson Memorial, the Lone Wanderer tracks James to Vault 112, and frees him from a virtual reality program being run by the Vault's sadistic Overseer, Dr. Braun. James and the player return to Rivet City, and James reveals he sought out Braun for information on the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.), a device that contains the components needed to finally activate Project Purity. James and Doctor Li lead a team of Rivet City scientists to the memorial with intent to restart the project, but the memorial is invaded by the Enclave, a powerful military organization formed from the remnants of the pre-War United States government. James floods the project's control room with radiation to stop the Enclave military leader, Colonel Augustus Autumn, from taking control of it, killing himself (but Autumn survives), his last words urging his child to run. The Lone Wanderer and Dr. Li flee to the ruins of the Pentagon, now a base for the Brotherhood of Steel and now known as the Citadel. With Project Purity still inoperational even with the Enclave occupying the site, the player travels to Vault 87 to find a G.E.C.K. and finish James's work. The player finds the Vault to be a testing site for the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus), and the source of the Super Mutants in the Capital Wasteland. After the player acquires the G.E.C.K., the Wanderer is ambushed by the Enclave and captured.

At the Enclave base at Raven Rock, the player is freed from their cell by the Enclave leader, President John Henry Eden, who requests a private audience with them. En route to his office however, Colonel Autumn defies Eden's orders and takes command of the Enclave military, ordering them to kill the player. Fighting their way to Eden's office, the player discovers Eden is actually a sentient ZAX series supercomputer who took control of the Enclave after their defeat in Fallout 2 on the West Coast thirty years ago. Eden wishes to repeat the plan of then-President Dick Richardson using Project Purity, infecting the water with a modified strain of FEV that will make it toxic to any mutated life. This plan will kill most life in the wasteland including humans, but the Enclave, due to their genetic "purity" as a result of their isolation, will be immune and free to take control of the area. The Wanderer, provided with a sample of the new F.E.V., is given a choice to either leave peacefully or convince Eden to self-destruct the entire base. The Lone Wanderer escapes Raven Rock and returns to the Citadel.

With the knowledge they possess, the G.E.C.K. and the means to activate Project Purity, the Brotherhood assault the Jefferson Memorial, spearheaded by a giant robot named Liberty Prime. In the control room of Project Purity the player confronts Colonel Autumn, and has the choice to persuade him to give up or kill him. Dr. Li informs the player that the purifier is ready to be activated, but the activation code must be input manually, and also that the control room is flooded with lethal amounts of radiation. The Lone Wanderer is forced to choose between sending Sarah Lyons of the Brotherhood inside the extremely irradiated purifier or entering themselves. Whoever enters into the chamber inputs the code hinted at throughout the game, that being 21:6, and dies from a radiation spike.

If the "Broken Steel" DLC is installed, the player survives if they activate it themselves, but they also have the option of sending one of their radiation-immune companions to enter the code and start the purifier with no casualties. The player also has the possibility to enter the F.E.V. sample into the water prior to activation, having adverse post-ending effects on the game's side quests.

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, and is the third major installment in the Fallout series. The game was released in North America, Europe and Australia in October 2008, and in Japan in December 2008 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse that devastated the game's world, in a future where international conflicts between the United States and China culminated in a Sino-American war in 2077, due to the scarcity of petroleum reserves that ran the economies of both countries. The player character is an inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter designed to protect up to 1,000 humans from the nuclear fallout. When the player character's father disappears under mysterious circumstances, the leader of the Vault initiates martial law and sends security forces after the player, who is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington, D.C. to track their father down. Along the way the player is assisted by a number of human survivors and must battle myriad enemies that inhabit the area, now known as the "Capital Wasteland".

Fallout 3 was critically acclaimed and received a number of Game of the Year awards, praising the game's open-ended gameplay and flexible character-leveling system. The NPD Group estimated that Fallout 3 sold over 610,000 units during its initial month of release in October 2008, performing better than Bethesda Softworks' previous game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which sold nearly 500,000 units in its first month. The game has received post-launch support with Bethesda releasing five downloadable add-ons. The game received controversy upon release, including the use of and the ability to be addicted to morphine and other drugs including alcohol in the game for Australia, religious and cultural sentiments in India over the cattle in the game being called Brahmin, and sensitivity in Japan due to a weapon that launches mini nuclear bombs called the "Fat Man" and a quest involving the detonation/disarming of an atomic bomb.

The game starts with the main character as a newborn, whereupon the player determines the race, gender, and the general appearance of their character. As a one-year-old baby, the infant reads a child's book titled You're SPECIAL, where the player can set the character's starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. primary attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. The character gains a set of Skills with base levels determined by these attributes. At age 10, the character obtains a Pip-Boy, a computerized wristwatch which allows the player to access a menu with statistics, maps, data, and items. The character also obtains their first weapon, a BB gun. At age 16, the character takes the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (G.O.A.T.) to determine the three Skills they wish the character to focus on.^[6]

As the character progresses through the game, experience points are earned that are used to achieve levels of accomplishment. Upon achieving a new level, the player receives a set of skill points that can be assigned to improve any of the Skill percentages. For instance, increasing the lock pick skill grants the player the ability to pick harder locks to unlock doors and supply crates. A Perk is granted at each level, which offers advantages of varying quality and form. Many Perks have a set of prerequisites that must be satisfied, and new Perks are unlocked every two levels.^[6]

An important statistic tracked in the game is karma. Each character has an aggregate amount of karma that can be affected by the decisions and actions made in the game. Positive karmic actions include freeing captives and helping others. Negative karmic actions include killing good characters and stealing. Beyond acting as flavor for the game's events, karma can have tangible effects to the player, primarily affecting the game's ending. Other effects include altered dialogue with non-player characters (NPCs), or unique reactions from other characters. Actions vary in the level of karma change they cause; thus, pickpocketing produces less negative karma than the killing of a good character. However, the player's relationships with the game's factions are distinct, so any two groups or settlements may view the player in contrasting ways, depending on the player's conduct. Some Perks require specific karma levels.^[7]

Fallout 2

Fallout 2 is a role-playing open world video game developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay in 1998. While featuring a considerably larger game world and a far more extensive storyline, it largely uses similar graphics and game mechanics to those of Fallout.

The game's story takes place in 2241, 80 years after the events of Fallout.^[2] It tells the story of the original hero's descendant and his or her quest to save their primitive tribe from starvation by finding an ancientenvironmental restoration machine known as the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK).^[3]

Fallout 2 is a role-playing open world video game. The player is free to move at will until they enter into combat. Combat gives them a number of action points to move, fire, check their equipment, reload and the like. When a player uses up all of their action points, they end their turn and enemies start theirs. If the player survives unharmed, he or she has their action points restored. Injuries and poisons can reduce the number of action points available both in a single term and semi-permanently until combat ends and the player can be treated. Combat and completion of jobs or quests rewards the player with experience points with which they can level up their characters and apply beneficial perks to become more suited to the dangerous post-apocalyptic world. General gameplay consists of traveling and interacting with local inhabitants and organizations to complete goals and aid or inhibit the NPCs. The player's actions dictate what future story or gameplay opportunities are available. Mature themes such as alcohol consumption, drug usage and sex are present.

Organized crime, prostitution and slavery are major elements of the setting. Character creation is based on the SPECIAL role-playing system.

In 2241, the primitive Arroyo suffers the worst drought on record. Faced with the calamity, the village elder asks the direct descendant of the Vault Dweller, referred to as the Chosen One, to perform the quest of retrieving a Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK) for Arroyo. The GECK is a device that can create thriving communities out of the post-apocalyptic wasteland.^[3] The player, assuming the role of the Chosen One, is given nothing more than the Vault Dweller's jumpsuit, a RobCo PIPBoy 2000 handheld device, a Vault 13 water flask, a spear and some cash to start on his mission.

The player can eventually find Vault 13, the supposed location of a GECK, devoid of the majority of its former human inhabitants. The Chosen One returns to find his village captured by the remnants of the United States government known as the Enclave. The Enclave often terrorizes the inhabitants of continental United States with their supreme arsenal of advanced technology. The player, through various means, activates an ancient oil tanker and engages its autopilot, thus allowing him to reach the Enclave's main base on an offshore oil rig. It is revealed that the dwellers of Vault 13 were captured as well, to be used as test subjects for Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV). Vault 13 was supposed to be closed for 200 years as part of a government experiment,^[2] making them perfect test subjects. The Enclave modified the Forced Evolutionary Virus into an airborne disease, designed to attack any living creatures with mutated DNA. With all genetic impurities removed, the Enclave (who remain protected from radiation) could take over. The player frees both his fellow villagers from Arroyo and the Vault 13 dwellers from Enclave control and subsequently destroys the Enclave's oil rig, killing the President of the United States Richardson as well as a genetically modified Secret Service enforcer Frank Horrigan. In the end, the inhabitants of Vault 13 and the Arroyo villagers create a new prosperous community with the help of the GECK.

Fallout 1

Fallout (1997)

Released in 1997, Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, beginning in the year 2161. The protagonist, named the Vault Dweller, is tasked with recovering a water chip in the Wasteland to replace the broken one in his or her underground shelter home, Vault 13. Afterwards, the Vault Dweller must then thwart the plans of a group of mutants, led by a grotesque entity named the Master. Fallout was originally intended to run under the GURPS role-playing game system. However, a disagreement with the creator of GURPS, Steve Jackson, over the game's violent content required Black Isle Studios to develop a new system, the SPECIAL.^[5] Fallout's atmosphere and artwork are reminiscent of post-WWII America and the nuclear paranoia that was widespread at that time.