The Fallout games are massive RPGs strung together with a variety of different systems and mechanics, but the one that’s unique to the franchise — and arguably its most iconic gameplay feature — is the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS.
VATS carried over from the original isometric Fallout games, and is a special function of your Pip-Boy. When used, it slows time bullet time-style (it works in real time in Fallout 76) and allows you to lock onto an foe’s individual body parts, with a chance-to-hit percentage on each calculated by your character’s stats and skills.
With how big of a role VATS plays in Fallout’s moment-to-moment gameplay, it’s rather shocking to hear that the mechanic just barely got over the finish line before Fallout 3’s launch.
Again, it’s hard to imagine the games without it, and I’d argue Fallout 3 would have been worse with its absence; its gunplay feels quite dated, but VATS did a lot to make it tolerable.
This also begs the question: if Fallout 3 didn’t get VATS, would we have seen it come to Obsidian Entertainment’s 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas, or Bethesda’s next entry Fallout 4? It’s impossible to say, but it sure is interesting to think about. I do think Fallout 3 would have been criticized for feeling too clunky without VATS, perhaps driving developers to make sure the system was present in future releases (and improve gameplay feel, as they did with Fallout 4 and 76).
One thing’s for certain: without VATS, we wouldn’t have one of the best videos on the internet in which a Fallout 4 player uses it to target a Fat Man-wielding baddie, watches in horror as a nuke slowly whistles towards them while their character awkwardly reloads with the system’s shaky action cam, and then subsequently lucks out as the projectile misses by a whisker.
Note that all the Fallout games are playable on Xbox systems and Windows PC with Xbox Game Pass (though the old-school ’90s titles are PC-only).
Do you use VATS a lot when you play Fallout games, do you aim manually instead, or do you use a combination of both approaches? Let me know what your playstyle is like in the comments.
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