Wyrmlord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2008
- Messages
- 28,886
How much do you know of the Master, the Nightkin army of Unity, and the Children of the Cathedral from just a conversation with the Master?
Very little.
Instead, the game doesn't give any major exposition. You are left carrying the pieces of the background from ten different places - Harold's story of Dr. Richard Grey, West Tek Research Facility records on FEV research, the brief limited explanations by the Lieutenant of the Master's Army, the brief limited explanations by Jain, Morpheus, other major Children,.etc, the diary of Dr. Richard Grey from Mariposa Military Base, the Brotherhood experiment results, and more.
In other words, Fallout didn't turn to complete exposition mode onto you, and instead worked the narrative into its medium. It also did it in a way that had you figuring what to do and where to go - a part of the problem solving in the game. It's also likely that you'll end Fallout the first time having little idea of what really happened, perhaps no idea, or only as much as you wanted to know.
On the other hand, Fallout 2 has two long speeches by the President of the United States and the head of the Enclave Chemical Research Facility about the history, background, and bizzare motivation of the Enclave. To make it worse, the Enclave's plan to exterminate American mainlanders is so completely contrived that it seems unfeasible and makes no sense - even though the Enclave is full of sane, balanced, unmutated human beings, and not the mentally broken creatures of the FEV experiments and the delusional fanatics of the Cathedral. The latter's plan still makes more sense!
TLDR: Fallout's narrative works better as a game; Fallout 2 does a lore dump on you.
Very little.
Instead, the game doesn't give any major exposition. You are left carrying the pieces of the background from ten different places - Harold's story of Dr. Richard Grey, West Tek Research Facility records on FEV research, the brief limited explanations by the Lieutenant of the Master's Army, the brief limited explanations by Jain, Morpheus, other major Children,.etc, the diary of Dr. Richard Grey from Mariposa Military Base, the Brotherhood experiment results, and more.
In other words, Fallout didn't turn to complete exposition mode onto you, and instead worked the narrative into its medium. It also did it in a way that had you figuring what to do and where to go - a part of the problem solving in the game. It's also likely that you'll end Fallout the first time having little idea of what really happened, perhaps no idea, or only as much as you wanted to know.
On the other hand, Fallout 2 has two long speeches by the President of the United States and the head of the Enclave Chemical Research Facility about the history, background, and bizzare motivation of the Enclave. To make it worse, the Enclave's plan to exterminate American mainlanders is so completely contrived that it seems unfeasible and makes no sense - even though the Enclave is full of sane, balanced, unmutated human beings, and not the mentally broken creatures of the FEV experiments and the delusional fanatics of the Cathedral. The latter's plan still makes more sense!
TLDR: Fallout's narrative works better as a game; Fallout 2 does a lore dump on you.
Actually, the only real narrative is the forced cutscene where you get shown how evil Frank Horrigan is (slaughtering innocents etc) or some small tidbits about the enclave here and there. The rest is just you fucking around in a themepark world - which isn't bad - but I prefer a bit more tighter narrative.
