It took me about 17 years but I finally finished the game last night.
It feels good!

Now, I can't be hold responsible for all 17 years, some of them I was not available and some of them I was stupid..
One of the issues I was having was I kept running out of time to find the water chip. I would keep exploring the wasteland, wasting time regenerating my health by resting, doing side missions and not figuring out the whole water caravan thing.
But I did it this time.

If I have to say two negative things about the game is that I went to the military base (which I dealt with wearing only brotherhood combat armor) and wanted to try the different endings. So, first I accept his proposal, and of course got the video ending. Then, for the real, went there and kicked ass (with my third effort) only to get as reward....nothing. No video, no credits, nothing. I thought it was the worst ending. It took me about half an hour to decide to go back. You see what I was doing wrong was after exiting the base, I waited for the countdown, while still in the general area, not going to the "wastelands map". How should I know? I wasn't getting a death message or anything.
That pissed me off a bit.

So, when I went back I double checked the mission and decided to leave the area too, and suddenly the game continued. Then I went ahead and dealt with the cultists. All of them. :)

OK, one more thing, how was I supposed to know to use the lockpick command on the fraking bookshelves ? That was BS number two and I had to check a walkthrough for that.

Well, there's your problem. One of the cultists will take you directly to the Master without having to deal with the secret door. Another one will come by and use the secret door from time to time.

My problem the first couple of times was with the Military Base. I found one of the solutions for dealing with the yellow force fields, except it was the one that doesn't work because of a bug. That was the only thing I needed to check a walkthrough for, everything else I managed on my first run. Though Necropolis was pretty tough that first time.

I am not sure what the problem you mentioned is/was? I went to deal with the cultists with great pleasure.

For the yellow doors, I didn't really have to find a way to shut them down, but I did. Explosives work fine too, the one time I tried them.

If by "deal with" you mean "kill," then you lost two opportunities to bypass or find/open the secret door.

Sure, explosives work, Repair works, and so does rigging a radio to toggle them on and off. Hacking in to the security system by way of a back door in the game files does not work, even though it is supposed to. Since that was the method I found first, I kept trying to make it work rather than looking for other options.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to the military base first, took care of that problem and then dealt with the cultists.

:)

Congratulation trusteft,

I´ve been trying to finish Fallout since original release too, but could never get through it.

Last time I tried (year ago), I was really optimistic to complete the game, but got stuck under the cathedral in a bug.

Thank you Floid. One way of doing things is to save often in 4-5 slots, and have 2-3 slots for (as I call them) "chapters" of the story. This way if something goes wrong, such as a bug, you don't have to play back more than an hour at most.

I leave the rest of the slots (2-3) for quicksave (ie when I know it is safe but I save anyway) and for special circumstances.

I wish you to get the strength to go back and finish it. The feeling you get when you do is....fantastic. :)

Just finished it as well.

Dissapointed with the lack of cutscene endings. Was hoping for footage of what occurred rather then just the voiceover, kinda lame. Liked the ending on the whole though outside of that, damn cool. It's hard for me to justify playing through the game again differently JUST to hear a different few sec voiceover description of what occurs.

The Master was awesome. I did not expect him to look like that, even with all the stuff the game provides you with him being merged with other beings and technology, still just didn't expect some twisted blob of computer and meat. Very cool. B oss fight too easy though.

They used up their CG budget on the Cathedral\Base explosions I guess :p

Fallout does have some flaws but lack of cutscenes is not one of them.

Meh it's an almost 20 year old game. Can't have cutscenes for everything.

Personally I liked the voice over and felt like it was really powerful at the time. Have to remember games where your decisions actually mattered and shaped the gameworld in some meaningful way at the end wasn't the norm. We're spoiled with the legacy of Fallout now.

Yeah, he's pretty good. One of the most memorable characters in the history of computer games.

Scores of games have ripped off Fallout's style in one way or another since it first came out in '97.

I just finished it for the first time a couple weeks ago, too. I started the series in Fallout 2 years ago and loved that one. When I found a copy of F1, my Win98 machine wasn't able to play it.

Funny thing is, I was always hesitant to play F1 because I heard about the time limit. Little did I know that the time limit only pertained to the water chip, and once you completed that mission, the game became open play.

I was also surprised about how many celebrity voiceovers there were in F1...I kept looking for talking NPCs just to see if I recognized their voices :)

There was originally a timer for mutant invasions of various settlements, which was removed by patches post-release.