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The Monthly Musings at Destructoid brings a curious article on turn based combat followers, with a few references to Fallout:

If there’s one genre that I’m not only familiar with, but whose gamer base I am intimately familiar with, it’s the oft-maligned turn-based strategy. While the genre has evolved fairly steadily since its inception, I find that the user base is split into three major demographics: the old guard of history wonks and simulation junkies (let’s call them simulationists); a second, younger generation whose obsession is digging through abstract rules systems and breaking them (we’ll call them gamists); and a third, newer generation, whose interest in the tactical aspect of the game is secondary to other parts of the game such as narrative (the narrativists). Conveniently, all three generations are represented in my family. My uncle is an aging simulationist, I am a gamist, and my brother is a narrativist.I hope to talk about where these three agree, and where the three tend to diverge. More after the jump.[…]

SIMULATIONIST TBS GAMES TO CHECK OUT:
Football Manager
Out Of The Park Baseball
Harpoon
Panzer General
Steel Panthers
Anything made by Shrapnel Games
Silent Hunter

GAMIST TBS GAMES TO CHECK OUT:
Civilization 1-4
Jagged Alliance 1 & 2
X-Com: UFO Defense
UFO Aftermath Series
Master of Orion
Galactic Civilizations II
Space Empires I through V
Star Command
Toribash (indie!)

NARRATIVIST TBS GAMES TO CHECK OUT:
Fallout 1 & 2
Fire Emblem titles
Final Fantasy Tactics titles
Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle titles
Anything by Nippon Ichi
Shining Force 1-3
Operation Darkness (Upcoming 360 game)

A fun article, worth a read.

Standardization In The Console RPGs World

In the GameInformer April issue we’ve talked before there is a ten pages piece about Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol, with several references to Fallout, like this one by Fergus Urquhart:

The RPG genre is changing, you can’t go off and make Fallout again. But I think, with Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion, and a lot of the other RPGs that are coming out, you’re starting to see a movement in the RPG genre.

I’ll guess it’s a movement in standardization, since they all look a like, with gunplay real time combat with a pause, third/first person view and the dialog system of ten years old adventure game Blade Runner. Maybe Fallout 3 will have a more elaborate dialog system, that could be nice, we’ll see, but for the rest they are all becoming the archetypal simplified console western RPG , with guns and more reliant in player reflexes and not character skills and attributes. But maybe Obsidian is really trying to do something different, let’s see what Chris Parker has to say:

We knew we wanted to do something different. Something that didn’t involve a d20 system, and with more action. Something faster paced, more compelling, and that did a better job blending player skills with character skill.

I rest my case.