Fallout is a franchise renowned for its in-depth, often branching quests that propel the player into immersive social and combative encounters. Every Fallout game has an opening quest that will engage players in the story ahead, and the dangers that exist out in the wasteland.
These quests are often multi-stepped, packed with interesting and unique characters, and can be completed in a variety of ways using a plethora of tactics, techniques, and builds.
7 Fallout Shelter - Getting Started
In the interest of covering the entire Fallout franchise, Fallout Shelter's opening quest (if it can be called that) is a typical mobile-game tutorial quest that introduces players to the micro-transaction currency right off the bat and teaches players the highly basic loop of the game. In terms of efficiency, this quest is great, but it offers very little engagement or interaction.
The starting quest to Fallout Shelter is just a simple introduction to the daily life of the Vault that players will be taking care of. It offers no real gameplay or difference in quests from what players will expect daily.
6 Fallout 76 - Reclamation Day
The opening quest to the highly disappointing Fallout 76 is just as meager as the game's initial launch. The quest leads players through a vault, directed by cardboard cutouts of the iconic "Vault Boy".
The path is linear and lined with various items, and the only gameplay is through a basic tutorial. The quest is completed once the player has made their way along the path and out of the vault's exit.
5 Fallout Tactics - Brahmin Wood
The first mission in the 22-mission-long single-player campaign, "Brahmin Wood" tasks the player with defeating a raider leader named "Horus" and a secondary objective of freeing several hostages. This quest is highly simplistic and, due to the nature of the game (it is an experiment in real-time strategy for the franchise), doesn't feature a lot of the interesting decisions usually present in Fallout.
However, the mission does feature a lot of fair combat encounters for the player to get their footing, and having a secondary objective with the added pressure of keeping the hostages alive keeps things interesting.
4 Fallout 2 - Finish Temple Of Trials
The starting quest of the second Fallout game is a much simpler and shorter opening than its predecessor; the player is sent into the titular temple and asked to face a series of encounters. The final task of this quest is to reach the inner sanctum by making their way past an NPC named Cameron, who guards the door.
In true Fallout fashion, there are several ways to handle the Cameron situation; players can either fight Cameron in unarmed combat, steal the key to the door from him, or use Intelligence/Speech to talk him down. Overall, this quest introduces players to the combat of Fallout 2 while also giving them a taste of the immersive and branching gameplay options.
3 Fallout New Vegas - Ain't That A Kick In The Head / Back In The Saddle
There's not much to say about the first quest the player is given in Fallout: New Vegas, as it is mostly just a slow, methodical, and thematic walk-through of character creation. After completing this, however, the player is introduced to NPC Sunny Smiles, who teaches the player how to shoot and takes them through some low-stakes encounters under the guise of the game's second tutorial quest, "Back In The Saddle". This second quest is much more engaging and allows the player to interact with the world and get a grasp of the game's mechanics. However, it is rather tedious, and Sunny Smiles is arguably not the most charismatic of NPCs.
Although Fallout: New Vegas' starting quest(s) are rather lackluster if players let her, Sunny Smiles will set the player down a path toward the quest "Ghost Town Gunfight"; although this is a side-quest, most players will see the quest out as it is the most immediately interesting thing to do in Goodsprings.
The quest sees players deal with a threat from nearby "Powder Gangers", one of the game's many factions, and features all of the standard gameplay in the franchise; convincing people, bartering, making moral decisions, and combat. It's also possible for players to help the Powder Gangers instead, triggering the quest "Run Goodsprings Run".
2 Fallout - Find The Water Chip
The first quest players will be given in the original Fallout is a fetch quest to find the titular water chip. It's a simple quest, but one that introduces players to the world of Fallout and gives them a clear and concise reason to leave the vault they started in.
The quest also takes players across several locations, giving them plenty of opportunities to meet new characters, level up, find gear, and rack up a plethora of side-quests. More importantly, the quest gives players agency, giving them room to go out into the world of Fallout and make it on their own, rather than being tutorials in a Vault for hours.
1 Fallout 3 - Escape!
Although "Baby Steps" is technically the first quest in Fallout 3, it - along with the subsequent quests, "Growing Up Fast", and "Future Imperfect" - act more as a well-decorated introduction to the game's character creation than an introduction to the game itself, and aren't comparable to the other quests listed.
After selecting stats, tagging their skills, having some social interactions, and learning (very briefly) how combat works, the player is woken up by Amata and told that their father has left the vault, the security team has been ordered to attack them, and the place is infested with rad roaches.
This frantic quest plays off of the immersion the game has built up throughout the aforementioned quests, using the introduced characters and lessons that the player has been taught to provide a climactic payoff right at the start of the game before the player has even left the Vault. Not only this, but it provides the player with the ambiguous but well-motivated goal of finding their father in the Wasteland.