Fallout Made Free For 20 Year Anniversary

Fallout released exactly 20 years ago today, in September 1997. To commemorate this special occasion, you can now download and install Fallout 1 on Steam for free. This special offer only lasts until 11:59 PM Pacific Time tonight, but once you have it in your library it should be there to stay.

In Fallout 1, you play as a vault dweller who has agreed to go on a mission to recover a water processing chip so that your vault can thrive with clean water once again. In your journey, you discover what horrible things Super Mutants have been doing, and you must put a stop to them.

One thing many fans are suggesting is installing a mod called FIXT. Aside from bug fixes and quality improvements, this mod reverts the game back to its original design. When Bethesda acquired Fallout they initiated a patch that censored out certain aspects of the original game. In the modern releases of Fallout 1 and 2, all children NPCs were removed to avoid child-killing controversy. In doing so, the Childkiller reputation, as well as the encounter with the bounty hunter Avellone, were rendered inaccessible. Some words were changed to avoid drug references. All incidences of the word "drug" were changed to "chem" and "addiction" with "craving." While the chem phrasing was something that remained part of the Fallout universe, addiction was reimplemented in later games.

Having played through Fallout 1 personally, this is an incredibly well-made game for its time that is worth getting. It allows a level of freedom and diversity in its problem-solving that has been lost on many of today's modern games.

You can get the game yourself from the Steam Store, or by visiting the Steam page browser link.

Good luck, Vault Dweller.