Fallout Fallout 2 is way worse than I remember it.

[NecroLord]

"San Francisco is the worst but it’s not intertwined with any other major area."
Yeah, this part was dumb.
smaug Lil brutha, are we even playing the same game? San Francisco is a major area and is essential to progressing to the endgame area.

 

[smaug]

"San Francisco is the worst but it’s not intertwined with any other major area."
Yeah, this part was dumb.
smaug Lil brutha, are we even playing the same game? San Francisco is a major area and is essential to progressing to the endgame area.

It's the most disconnected area from the other major plot/quests areas (New Reno/Vault City/NCR/Broken Hills/Redding) . It's a shitty area tacked onto endgame progression (although the town has some cool quests with the oil tanker and such).

 

[9ted6]

Is there a way to slaughter your ooga booga nigger village in Fallout 2 that I didn't pick up on? I mean, personally do it. What a disgrace to the Vault Dweller.

I have no desire to play a game for the lulz, and the premise of Fallout 2 soured the entire experience for me.

How is that a disgrace, nigga?
Again, some of you people just shit on a great game for the strangest of reasons...
They are mostly descendants of the Vault 13 people who left in an exodus with the Vault Dweller after he was banished from the Vault by the Overseer.
The Chosen (you, the Protagonist) is descended from the Vault Dweller.

It's not a strange reason at all. Fallout 1 was a race against the clock to save your vault in a gritty, post apoc world. Very atmospheric.

Somehow that person's decendents (not that far removed) become a retarded african/native tribe with shamans and spears. It's not only them either, the whole setting becomes a similar characature. Like I said, I'm not playing a game for the "lulz", especially when it's the sequel to a game like Fallout. The improvements gameplay/QOL wise are not significant enough to overlook that.

Explain to me how these complaints are "strange"

Exactly. Fallout 1: leave this futuristic bomb shelter to find a water chip because the one you have's almost broken, end up encountering a scientist who's using a bioweapon to mutate people to supposedly accelerate human evolution and is coming for your people next.
Fallout 2: leave your village to go on a Disney temple ride then head west because a magic hag maybe read about a terraforming kit once, then fight SNL skit republicans who need to experiment on tribals because they're evil even though they're going to kill all tribals anyway.

Yes the gameplay is better but everything else is so much stupider. It's not storyfagging to want a half decent reason to invest your time in the game and FO2 puts alot of emphasis on its dumb story.

And yes, the Master having psychic cultists was also stupid. They appear for 2 minutes at the very end of the game and aren't relevant to anything else or even mandatory to encounter that I can remember. That stupidity doesn't make up the entire plot. Fallout 1 wasn't great but 2 never takes itself seriously but tries to ask us to take it seriously.

 

[smaug]

Is there a way to slaughter your ooga booga nigger village in Fallout 2 that I didn't pick up on? I mean, personally do it. What a disgrace to the Vault Dweller.

I have no desire to play a game for the lulz, and the premise of Fallout 2 soured the entire experience for me.

How is that a disgrace, nigga?
Again, some of you people just shit on a great game for the strangest of reasons...
They are mostly descendants of the Vault 13 people who left in an exodus with the Vault Dweller after he was banished from the Vault by the Overseer.
The Chosen (you, the Protagonist) is descended from the Vault Dweller.

It's not a strange reason at all. Fallout 1 was a race against the clock to save your vault in a gritty, post apoc world. Very atmospheric.

Somehow that person's decendents (not that far removed) become a retarded african/native tribe with shamans and spears. It's not only them either, the whole setting becomes a similar characature. Like I said, I'm not playing a game for the "lulz", especially when it's the sequel to a game like Fallout. The improvements gameplay/QOL wise are not significant enough to overlook that.

Explain to me how these complaints are "strange"

Exactly. Fallout 1: leave this futuristic bomb shelter to find a water chip because the one you have's almost broken, end up encountering a scientist who's using a bioweapon to mutate people to supposedly accelerate human evolution and is coming for your people next.
Fallout 2: leave your village to go on a Disney temple ride then head west because a magic hag maybe read about a terraforming kit once, then fight SNL skit republicans who need to experiment on tribals because they're evil even though they're going to kill all tribals anyway.

Yes the gameplay is better but everything else is so much stupider. It's not storyfagging to want a half decent reason to invest your time in the game and FO2 puts alot of emphasis on its dumb story.

And yes, the Master having psychic cultists was also stupid. They appear for 2 minutes at the very end of the game and aren't relevant to anything else or even mandatory to encounter that I can remember. That stupidity doesn't make up the entire plot. Fallout 1 wasn't great but 2 never takes itself seriously but tries to ask us to take it seriously.

I think this argument is disingenuous. Both main quests are to go out and find the thing your hometown village needs in order to save everyone. In F1, the twist is that you end up finding out about a secondary plot about mutants hell bent on world destruction while just looking for a simple water chip which isn’t a smooth plot transition at all. The secondary twist in F2 is slowly learning about The Enclave, a group which acts as a shadowy organization who’s doing something strange behind the scenes (bent on world destruction of the “unclean” humans just like the mutants), so it’s functionally and aesthetically the same plot. And even then, the GECK plot line isn’t that relevant throughout the game. You can ask a lot of questions about it (just like the water chip) but the main chunk of content of the game is essentially disconnected from your village plot, it’s exactly the same as F1. There isn’t a strong emphasis on its dumb story as you claim and even then its stupidity similar to F1, so if you’re going to complain about the story it should be about originality.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I think this argument is disingenuous

It's not disingenuous, I just don't understand hoe you're not grasping the jarring difference between the 2 and why that puts off anyone who expects a more cohesive product. It doesn't have to be perfect, evidenced by FO1, but FO2 goes way overboard especially considering it's an (almost) direct sequel.

Looking at it in isolation:

1. Your vault is on the verge of losing their water, which will spell the end of the vault and all those within it will be cast into the wasteland as a result. Most of the game still emphasizes this and the feeling remains focused on this until you stumble upon a different threat.

2. Your mudhut village elder with a bone through their nose heard about some agricultural kit one time, so you go to different places with factions that might as well characatures, even becoming a pornstar, 4th wall breaking dialogue, etc. You then stumble upon some wannabe US government Republicans who have your mudhut tribe captured.

Now bringing in the fact these 2 are not only in the same setting, but supposedly your mudhut tribe is a descendent of the PC in 1..that's too jarring of a difference to care about any changes.

That destroys the setting, atmosphere, and hook for the plot.

Agree about both games fucking uo by not letting you side with the *big bad*.

 

[Lemming42]

Fallout’s strength/appeal was never story or writing to begin with.

It's almost the entirety of the appeal, surely. What else is there? Quest design in F1/2 is decent but not exactly shit-hot, combat is serviceable but simplistic, and environmental interaction is pretty middling with several skills being effectively useless (Doctor, etc). Reactivity/C&C (which are not especially fleshed out in Fo1/2) are only interesting insofar as the plot and setting are interesting.

The games wouldn't be at all engaging were it not for the writing, setting, and audiovisual elements. Hence people shitting on Fo3 while fellating NV, even though those two games are near-identical save for a substantial difference in writing quality.

 

[CHEMS]

I always hated the fact that energy pistols are said to be so powerful in-game, but they're just disappointing. They made possible for the Salvatore family basically dominate New Reno, firepower wise, but it's a moot point since in the mechanics they barely scratch anyone if you don't have a very specific set of perks. Fallout 2 NPCs are just too HP bloated, there's not much space to roleplay builds, laser pistols or otherwise

 

[NecroLord]

They appear for 2 minutes at the very end of the game and aren't relevant to anything else or even mandatory to encounter that I can remember.

Check your memory.
You need to ask their leader to give you a Psychic Nullifier to protect yourself when entering that long corridor that leads to The Master.
Otherwise you take damage and lose Perception points permanently and are blinded...

 

[CHEMS]

They appear for 2 minutes at the very end of the game and aren't relevant to anything else or even mandatory to encounter that I can remember.

Check your memory.
You need to ask their leader to give you a Psychic Nullifier to protect yourself when entering that long corridor that leads to The Master.
Otherwise you take damage and lose Perception points permanently and are blinded...

It's endgame, i usually pull through the corridor of revulsion and fight the master

Also you can get to the master without even going through the vault, Morpheus'll take you there

 

[behold_a_man]

It's almost the entirety of the appeal, surely. What else is there? Quest design in F1/2 is decent but not exactly shit-hot, combat is serviceable but simplistic, and environmental interaction is pretty middling with several skills being effectively useless (Doctor, etc). Reactivity/C&C (which are not especially fleshed out in Fo1/2) are only interesting insofar as the plot and setting are interesting.

The games wouldn't be at all engaging were it not for the writing, setting, and audiovisual elements. Hence people shitting on Fo3 while fellating NV, even though those two games are near-identical save for a substantial difference in writing quality.

For me, I think the appeal of Fallout 1 lies in the combination of not overstaying its welcome (including sparsity of combat and writing, giving the game an ounce of inscrutability), the distinctiveness of each place, nonlinearity, and how dramatically the build and some decisions can influence the playthrough. The combination of those allows one to test some build and finish the game in a completely different fashion in, like, 10 hours while still having fun. I don't think I saw a game that got all those elements correctly (Age of Decadence, for instance, was very linear and had too much writing for its own good, I believe).
From my perspective, setting and audiovisuals were pretty much immaterial, I think.

 

[9ted6]

They appear for 2 minutes at the very end of the game and aren't relevant to anything else or even mandatory to encounter that I can remember.

Check your memory.
You need to ask their leader to give you a Psychic Nullifier to protect yourself when entering that long corridor that leads to The Master.
Otherwise you take damage and lose Perception points permanently and are blinded...

The point stands that Fallout 1 only gets dumb at the very end of the game with the psychics and the Master not considering sterility. Fallout 2 is dumb the whole way through. Its story is like a string of barely related locations built to feed you pop culture references.

 

[CHEMS]

I never used the psychic hat thingy because i didn't trust those people inside the vault, always believed it to be a trap lmao

 

[SharkClub]

"Psykers are dumb and don't fit Fallout despite appearing in the first entry in the series that defines what Fallout is."

Truly an epic take from some retard who thinks Fallout 3's dueling superhero town is the height of the genre.

 

[deuxhero]

Psionics in Fallout should be done like Fallout 1: Whispered about and dismissed the entire game then only seen in a single unexplained unhighlighted (relative to everything else in that moment) instance and never mentioned again. Sort of like the way F1 handled Deathclaws.

 

[Goldschmidt]

I fail to see how being bad at the game makes repair checks less frequent.

"I hadn't played Fallout 2 (or 1) in several years, mainly because I remembered it mainly for the awful interface, bad controls (using skills on things requires selecting the skill from a menu or memorizing the hotkey"

I stopped reading there.

I had to memorize that for calculus 2 and you have trouble remembering. 1- sneak, 2- lockpick 3- steal 8-repair ect...?

Who memorizes this for calculus when you can derive these things by simple logical/mathematical reasoning?

 

[Cologno]

People memorize things because most aren't logic machines. I imagine a decent basis in math is required, which...I certainly didn't have one. The American school system is pure shit. I took a rudimentary prep class in college that covered algebra I took in sixth grade. The instructor didn't waste time and explained fundemental rules and why formulae and functions worked the way they do. Boom, still couldn't do calculus, but it was at least approachable.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I tutored someone in first year university who got a 90% math score in a smaller town in Canada (in highschool), but was completely lost and didn't know how to interpret a simple linear function. Was supposed to be helping with derivatives. Everything was going badly, so I tested her fundamental knowledge and that's how I found out she couldn't tell me anything or graph a simple example I gave like y=2x+5, or explain how those constants manipulate y=x.

What a failure of a society you people have

 

[NecroLord]

I tutored someone in first year university who got a 90% math score in a smaller town in Canada (in highschool), but was completely lost and didn't know how to interpret a simple linear function. Was supposed to be helping with derivatives. Everything was going badly, so I tested her fundamental knowledge and that's how I found out she couldn't tell me anything or graph a simple example I gave like y=2x+5, or explain how those constants manipulate y=x.

What a failure of a society you people have

Math is racist.

 

[Lemming42]

The Psykers aren't even dumb, the whole game has a pulp kind of feel with surreal shit all over the place. The sentient Raccoons, if included, would not have been dumb either; they make sense in the setting (and do canonically still exist since they're mentioned on the holotape in The Glow). And the sentient Deathclaws are fine too.

There's a big difference between psychic abilities existing in humans as in Fo1, and "here's an entire town which is an inexplicable, overlong, and extremely boring homage to Big Trouble With Little China, and also has scientologists haha tom cruise". The former is a science fiction concept which has no reason not to exist in the setting, the latter is nonsense that's also irritating as fuck. There's nothing wrong with the idea of a city of Chinese migrants who came from a tanker (or whatever, I forget the backstory), nor is there something inherently wrong with the idea of a cult like the Hubologists. The problem is that both ideas are used in the most dogshit unimaginative ways and end up acting as vehicles for more tedious-as-fuck longform pop culture references, which the game has already bored you to fucking death with by that point.

With Fallout as a setting it's less about ideas making logical sense and more about whether or not they further the mood and themes the game is going for. Necropolis for example doesn't necessarily make a great deal of actual sense, but the idea of a "dead city" with twisted, blackened buildings lurking somewhere out there in the desert is superb, very eerie and evocative. The problem with a lot of Fo2's stuff isn't that the concepts don't make logical sense - because even when they don't, that's not necessarily a problem in itself. The problem is that they're just used in the shittest ways imaginable.

 

[pOcHa]

Why is the dog a “Blud?”

It was a small fire, not nearly big enough for any roverpak to spot from the outskirts of the city.

No smoke. And after Blood had eaten his fill, I carried him to the air-duct a mile away, and we spent the night inside on a little ledge. I held him all night. He slept good. In the morning, I fixed him up pretty good. He’d make it; he was strong.

He ate again. There was plenty left from the night before. I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry.

We started off across the blasted wasteland that morning. We’d find another city, and make it.

We had to move slow because Blood was still limping. It took a long time before I stopped hearing her calling in my head. Asking me, asking me: do you know what love is?

Sure I know.

A boy loves his dog.

whenever i remember this book/movie now - i picture Fedora Master

 

[Fedora Master]

Dog bros before human hos

 

[NecroLord]

The Psykers aren't even dumb, the whole game has a pulp kind of feel with surreal shit all over the place. The sentient Raccoons, if included, would not have been dumb either; they make sense in the setting (and do canonically still exist since they're mentioned on the holotape in The Glow). And the sentient Deathclaws are fine too.

There's a big difference between psychic abilities existing in humans as in Fo1, and "here's an entire town which is an inexplicable, overlong, and extremely boring homage to Big Trouble With Little China, and also has scientologists haha tom cruise". The former is a science fiction concept which has no reason not to exist in the setting, the latter is nonsense that's also irritating as fuck. There's nothing wrong with the idea of a city of Chinese migrants who came from a tanker (or whatever, I forget the backstory), nor is there something inherently wrong with the idea of a cult like the Hubologists. The problem is that both ideas are used in the most dogshit unimaginative ways and end up acting as vehicles for more tedious-as-fuck longform pop culture references, which the game has already bored you to fucking death with by that point.

With Fallout as a setting it's less about ideas making logical sense and more about whether or not they further the mood and themes the game is going for. Necropolis for example doesn't necessarily make a great deal of actual sense, but the idea of a "dead city" with twisted, blackened buildings lurking somewhere out there in the desert is superb, very eerie and evocative. The problem with a lot of Fo2's stuff isn't that the concepts don't make logical sense - because even when they don't, that's not necessarily a problem in itself. The problem is that they're just used in the shittest ways imaginable.

Necropolis was the result of the Vault's Door not being able to close.
The ghouls are former Vault residents who got mutated. Vaults were originally meant to study human behavior in a Post Apocalyptic World in some sick Social Engineering and Experiments program.