I'm from Pittsburgh and with the announcement of The Pit I'm considering trying this out? I love Skyrim but never really got into Fallout. I've been sort of turned off from the post-apocalyptic setting given... all of the world... but idk!

As a first Fallout experience, do you think it'll be worth the shot? Curious what the community thinks!

Play New Vegas instead.

I'd sooner recommend either 3 or New Vegas as a first Fallout game to play, and I'm sure that those who still like older RPGs will say Fallout 1 and 2. But if you don't really care about story and just play a post-apocalyptic survival game with people, I guess you could make worse decisions.

I love Fallout 76, but that comes with some big caveats. Fallout 76 is more of a weird test bed for Bethesda to figure out how online games work than a full game on its own (its effectively Fallout 4 with a bunch of shit added). West Virginia is the weirdest, most fun world they've ever built in a fallout game, and one of the more recent updates makes it easily explorable at any level. But the whole game is also built around the mostly cosmetics storefront that you can spend real money in (by buying currency). You do get enough to buy stuff you want, but the grind is real. The multiplayer aspect is almost always ignorable, apart from a few select situations where pvp can be forced on you. The basebuilding is basically just imported from 4 but with some new weird features, and they've taken most of the penalties out of the survival stuff. Also since its an online game, it doesn't have a developer menu or mods, which is a gigantic bummer.

More or less my takeaway is that 76 is cool, but if you're more interested in The Pitt its actually from a Fallout 3 expansion, that I guess they're revisiting? Or telling the story of how it got that way? 76 goes on sale regularly and is on Game Pass, so if you're determined to grab it you don't have to drop full price on it.

I've been thinking about this because one of my friends (who mostly plays FPS games) has been playing Skyrim recently and he loves it. We were talking about Fallout games which I said he might want to check out next. I'll tell you the same things I told him

• in general Skyrim is much more forgiving, especially when compared to New Vegas. You have to worry about shit like radiation and weapon/armor condition, fewer ways to heal yourself, animal poisons are much deadlier, ect...
• Not as much variety in the combat - it's all guns basically. You can choose from big guns, small guns, energy weapons, but that's about it. You're still just shooting guys, and the combat also isn't as fun or satisfying as Skyrim I'd say (more dice rolls related to your levels)
• Admittedly less variety in the environment. Fallout 3 is all green and gray-tinted wasteland, New Vegas is just a big desert. Obviously there are towns and landmarks, but a lot of the map is just kind of empty...
• The writing, at least to me ,is a lot better. Especially in New Vegas. It's funnier, the characters are more interesting, setting is cooler, more shocking twists and turns
• In general the games have way more tech issues/open world jank than Skyrim

So either New Vegas or 3 to start with, keeping in my NV is tougher across the board, but has better writing and characters, plus more systems to play around with. I played 3 first and it blew me away but that was 2009

I'll be "that guy" and say you should try to play the original Fallout. I think it's on GOG. Personally, I never really cared for the direction Bethesda took the series. They tried really hard to shoehorn it into the Oblivion/Skyrim mold and I never really felt like that worked.

The original is very much it's own thing (although given modern sensibilities, maybe too much of its own thing).

I would recommend Fallout 3 if the shooting didn’t feel positively ancient. As others have said, it’s where The Pitt first appeared. It’s been a long time since I played it, but I think you can go up the entire US Steel building? Just try not to expect too much faithfulness, they used the Sixth Ave bridge at the Liberty Tunnel iirc.

If the upcoming DLC is your main draw, I would recommend jumping into Fallout 76. That way you can get your feet under you before experiencing the thing you want to see, without feeling obligated to finish another thing first. FO76 also has a different tone than the others that might be more enticing in the current environment. I haven’t loved the game but I’ve put a decent amount of hours into it, and I saw it’s now “mostly positive” on Steam. Free of the release debacle baggage, you might enjoy it!

FO76 on Game Pass makes it worth checking out. It's not incredible, but it's fine for that particular price.

If you do go back to FO3, keep in mind that The Pitt isn't a huge area, it's just part of a DLC. And it was pretty broken when it came out. I'm not sure if those issues were ever fixed.