My stock testing character was an Unarmed/Speech/Science build, and obviously I just couldn't keep up with the endgame encounters while totally unarmed. Remember, this was '96-'97, so there was still some debate about whether all builds should be equally viable or whether some builds had specific payoffs that might give you other hurdles (for instance, if you tagged Lockpicking, Gambling, and Outdoorsman, you were probably setting yourself up for a very difficult game with a few shining moments of payoff).Īs we approached the end of the dev cycle, it became apparent that some weapon classes were just not keeping up. If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons, you were taking the trade-off of a slow start in exchange for a long-term payoff. If you tagged Small Guns, you had an edge right out the Vault at the outset, because you could certainly kill those Giant Rats and Mole Rats much more quickly. might have something different to say about it - was that each weapon skill group had its own rewards. The initial design goal - as I recall it Chris T. Chris worked up the systems for damage thresholds, AP, and so on, and many people on the team contributed their ideas on the use of various weapons. When Fallout was converted over to the SPECIAL system, Chris Taylor and a lot of the other team principals had to rebuild the weapon systems from scratch.