Before Bethesda got their claws into it and turned the franchise into a fully-rendered, first-person (no sane person ever shifted to third) 3D adventure, the Fallout games were PC-exclusives that used simple isometric environments. It was that original layout which made a turn-based combat system make sense. So why did VATS appear in the later games? The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System from Fallout 3 and New Vegas was mainly a throw-back to the original franchise's combat, and it felt like it. Action points, slowing down the action and all the rest ruined the immersion for some, making the frenetic firefights seem more like chess games with more gore. It felt like old hat that, and it feels even more anachronistic knowing that VATS will be returning in Fallout 4. This is the generation of high definition graphics, motion controls, virtual reality that actually works. Why still trying to integrate the combat of tabletop RPGs into a video game? Why not use that production time on... literally anything else?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
