If I like the new Fallout TV Series, which of the Fallout games would you recommend?

Amazon just released a new TV series based on the hit Fallout video game franchise, and while TV series or movies based on video game franchises have not always honored the source material, we can only hope this one meets our very high expectations. So far, fan reactions have been relatively positive.

If you haven’t played the series before, the basic premise of Fallout revolves around the experiences of various Vault-Dwellers in a post apocalyptic America set in the late 21st, the 22nd, and 23rd centuries. Like most post-apocalyptic settings, there is both a reversion to savagery and regression in culture and technology for many of the characters you encounter, with pockets of futuristic technologies. If you enjoy the series, it makes sense that you may want to give the game a try. But with so many games in the franchise, where do you start?

I asked on our Discord server — and a few others — which game to try first, and Bethesda also recently published their welcome to the world of Fallout guide for potential new players. Our Discord members have for the most part recommended starting with Fallout 4, whereas Bethesda recommends starting with the original Fallout game. A Reddit thread I found suggested started with Fallout 3, which is where I started this weekend just past. My preferred weapons so far have been a baseball bat and the laser pistol I just found.

As the first game in the series was released in 1997, and Fallout 1 & 2 were recently made available for free with an Amazon Prime membership, but even so you may find you have some technical difficulties getting some of the older games to run. Fallout 3 on Steam had a major patch issued in October 2021 to make it compatible with newer operating systems like Windows 11. If you don’t want to mess around with patches and game loaders and mods it might be easier to skip straight to Fallout 4. The earlier games are also available on the XBox Game Pass, and the recent games are available on XBOX, PS4/5, Windows, and Steam.

While earlier games in the series are single player RPG shooters, Fallout 76 is a persistent world MMORPG shooter. I’m told by our resident fanboys (looking at you @flanageddon) that the community in Fallout 76 is very welcoming to newcomers, but I can’t swear to that. Still, if you’re more into MMOs than shooters, that could be a solid contender for a starting point, too.

So who among our readers are watching the new series? If you’re not familiar with the franchise are you looking to give the games a try? If you have played the games before, where would you suggest a new player start?