Layers in game design give a designer a large amount of flexibility without sacrificing consistency. This means that the designer can basically take actions to alter elements within the game with very clear consequences, but it also means that they are restricted to a small set of actions.

Fallout is a game that is very good about having basically no mechanics that exist in a vacuum; the fact that it is a character-driven experience plays into this quite a bit, and the nature of the world is such that it makes sense to restrict things to a particular level, but we'll look at the reasons for this and a couple of the concessions that they make today.

While you don't need to read most of the other parts of this series without jumping in, Part 1 defines many of the terms and explains many of the concepts that I will be diving into without further ado.

Where Does Fallout Have Mechanics Outside Layers?

Not very many places.

All right, the secrets of the universe have been revealed and it's time to go home!

The largest places that I see unlayered mechanical content in Fallout all revolve around the inventory system, which includes things like how the items are stored (a list, which is not a particularly complicated element), and the way that they are used (interaction directly or through two active slots).

More interesting from a mechanical perspective is the uses that many of these items have. For reference, in something like my own game Hammercalled, gear is a layer: it has defined rules for how it interacts with the game and each object fits into a schema: weapon, armor, or tool.

Fallout doesn't have this system: though there are similarities between weapons and armor (not enough to form a layer worth diving into), activated items generally function in a mechanically distinct manner from other items (e.g. some items can be used to heal the player, but they don't all work the same).

Again, in theory you could form this into a layer or quasi-layer, but I think that it's easiest to say that there are individual mechanics floating in such a manner that they are presented as similar, even though I suspect that they are merely placeholders for the same sort of effects that you'd see occurring in the game world.

Likewise, the game world isn't mechanically defined as a layer in and of itself (outside the combat system), though it does use a hex-grid based system (3D coordinates in a real-time world are used for the modern titles), and that's something that's worth noting. While there are scripted events that occur, they are largely based on narrative events (e.g. talk to a doctor and get healed), so I don't think they would count as a layer either.

In short, the few mechanical things that occur outside clearly defined layers in Fallout are either relatively insignificant to the game (e.g. carrying stuff) or are handled by narrative events.

It is worth noting that a lot of the Bethesda games based on Fallout have fairly hefty systems going on behind the scenes; things like NPC AI having a lot of values and the like, but they're generally not player transparent and there is often a lot of false detail there. Bethesda's AI is very multi-layered with behavior (aggression, confidence, and other directives), essentially having a tag layer and a scalar layer that work in tandem to determine what AI do, but even then the majority of NPCs are either hostile or not, and the criteria to change them between the two states all fall into scripted events (pursue a certain dialogue path, steal items, attack the NPC). This doesn't give them that much more agency than an NPC in the original Fallout, where behavior is less heavily defined.

Characters other than the PC still feature the same mechanical layers as the PC.

Freedom for Narrative

One of the things that's important here is that there is sometimes a trend to over-mechanize games, and one of the strengths of Fallout is that it doesn't do that. Especially in tabletop roleplaying, there is sometimes a move toward making the story unfold in a way that follows mechanics, rather than mechanics that follow the way you want a story to unfold, and that focus can be an important part of what goes into making a game work. Fallout is heavily built around telling a particular story, but it doesn't force it.

Rather, the player has content that drives them toward a certain direction, rather than hardcore mechanical direction. Compare the gameplay "loop" of Fallout and you'll find that it's almost entirely a linear movement toward the horizon. In a lot of modern games, mechanics drive the gameplay loop by integrating survival mechanics or other forms of adaptive difficulty to force players into constant movement, but Fallout achieves this by making the player curious.

This isn't to say that survival mechanics are necessarily bad; it's simply a different way to play. Blending them with a complicated story can overwhelm players, but they can also lead to interesting and dynamic events that can be tied into more scripted sequences.

The matter comes down to the idea of emergent play: do players experience set-piece showcases or respond to events that are unfolding within the mechanics of the game universe?

Fallout is typically very focused on the former; one of the reasons why the recent Fallout 76 was so reviled is the fact that it abolished a lot of these show-pieces while implementing survival and resource management emergent play, creating an off-brand experience for many players.

Many of these emergent systems require either bloating layers or implementing new mechanics that aren't truly a part of any other layer. Compared to Fallout's rather limited number of off-layer mechanics, they can have a really poor return on investment when it comes time to actually design a playable and enjoyable game.

Wrapping Up

Fallout relies heavily on the use of its design layers to keep its game mechanics coherent, something which its classic and mcuh-beloved design bears testament to, but even it has certain mechanics that don't fit neatly into the existing layers.

Elements like these are often necessary for games, but can lead to interesting challenges and unintended consequences for both designers and players.

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You can find Part 2 of this series through this link, Part 3 through this one, Part 4 here, and Part 5 here.