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Fallout 2 was always incline

agris

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No, Fallout 1 isnt better than 2

“Chris Avellone” said:
For those of you who swear by the older Fallouts, I did want to address some potential horse blinder aspects of “oh wow, the older Fallouts were so much better.”

I mean Fallout 1 was. It was pretty damn good. And that voice cast! Dammmmn.

However, Fallout 2 and what followed — the console game Brotherhood of Steel — weren’t as good. I’d argue they hurt the franchise more than people “blame” Fallout 3, 4, and 76 for doing.

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/fallout-apocrypha-tv-series-review-part-1-c4714083a637

Fallout 2 themepark enjoyers on suicide watch rn

(ps MCA’s medium post would make a good news item Saint_Proverbius )
 

Lyre Mors

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Clearly, especially in terms of RPG gameplay. I don't know if he's just talking in terms of lore and tone, but even still, the question still stands: what?

Too bad he doesn't post here anymore. Some clarification would be interesting.
 

Butter

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Fallout 2 is vastly superior to everything Bethesda have made post-Morrowind, but it also laid the groundwork for all of their retardation in Fallout 3, 4, and 76. "Fallout 2 did it first" is an evergreen excuse whenever they pull a Kid in a Fridge or Megaton.
 

Lyre Mors

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Yeah, but in a lot of ways Bethesda took it even further and piled on way more inconsistencies in the long run. I guess I get the argument from a "domino effect" standpoint, but overall still strikes me as a strange stance to take.
 

Ryan muller

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No, Fallout 1 isnt better than 2

“Chris Avellone” said:
For those of you who swear by the older Fallouts, I did want to address some potential horse blinder aspects of “oh wow, the older Fallouts were so much better.”

I mean Fallout 1 was. It was pretty damn good. And that voice cast! Dammmmn.

However, Fallout 2 and what followed — the console game Brotherhood of Steel — weren’t as good. I’d argue they hurt the franchise more than people “blame” Fallout 3, 4, and 76 for doing.

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/fallout-apocrypha-tv-series-review-part-1-c4714083a637

Fallout 2 themepark enjoyers on suicide watch rn

(ps MCA’s medium post would make a good news item Saint_Proverbius )

He hates pretty much everything he made on the past, being highly critical of your own work is fine if you actually care about what you create.

Only morons would take this as an unbiased opinion however.

Fallout 2 still owns fallout 1
 
Last edited:

Saint_Proverbius

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Yeah, but in a lot of ways Bethesda took it even further and piled on way more inconsistencies in the long run.
It's been a long time since I've played Fallout 3, but that Wasteland Survival Guide thing was just really dumb. Megaton in general was really dumb, but the Survival Guide quests were well over the top. The fact you'd leave the vault on a mission to find your dad and get distracted by someone claiming to write a book which involves you repeatedly hurting yourself was just really silly. People building a settlement around a nuclear bomb that's leaking radiation was also stupid. Supposedly rich people living in a standing skyscraper with no plausible means of supporting themselves that want to set off a nearby nuclear bomb to improve their view is retarded as shit.

Little Lamplight was impossibly bad considering it's 200 years after the bombs and it's still populated by kids who get kicked out when they're 18? Makes no sense at all. Other than the replenishing the population thing, the people most capable of tracking their ages to that degree would be the ones getting kicked out. Also, the people most physically able to resist getting kicked out. Also, it's right next door to the vault full of supermutants that are actively looking for people to dip to replenish their population. There's the slavers who apparently sell slaves to no one, since there's no slaves anywhere else in the game. You'd think in 200 years, the supermutants would have found that. Actually, it would have made more sense that the supermutants had found it and the slavers managed to work out a deal with them to catch humans for them, which would explain why there's no slaves anywhere else and why the supermutants didn't attack places like Little Lamplight.

Bethesda bragging about how their designers just do their own writing explains a lot of why things are so disconnected in Fallout 3. They did really lean in to silly shit in that game. I think it's obvious Fallout 2 opened the door for things not making sense because the designers thought it was funny, and Feargus even admits they didn't do a lot of coordination between the designers. It's interesting that what Feargus admits was a mistake, Bethesda gives Ted Talks on how things should be done. But yes, Bethesda did take that ball and run with it.
Fallout 2 still owns fallout 1
Bigger != Better
 
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Fallout 2 is vastly superior to everything Bethesda have made post-Morrowind, but it also laid the groundwork for all of their retardation in Fallout 3, 4, and 76. "Fallout 2 did it first" is an evergreen excuse whenever they pull a Kid in a Fridge or Megaton.

Yes it's all the fault of Fallout 2. If not for that game Bethesda would've produced masterpieces of writing.
They wouldn't have made it any less retarded if they only had Fallout 1 to go on. It just would have been a different flavor of retarded.
 
Last edited:

Faarbaute

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When I played Fallout 2 as a kid, a lot of the cultural references and easter eggs just flew over my head, as a non-anglo, cultural illiterate.

I'm thankful for it.
 

smaug

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When I played Fallout 2 as a kid, a lot of the cultural references and easter eggs just flew over my head, as a non-anglo, cultural illiterate.

I'm thankful for it.
As a zoomer who is interested in and getting familiar with 70’s/80’s/90’s pop culture, I actually enjoyed the pop cultural references and attempting to identify them.

Even Fallout1 aside from the special has a decent amount of references. Junktown is A fistful of dollars (or yojimbo), and many of the general aesthetics of the game are ripped straight from Mad Max etc. Not that it’s a bad thing necessarily. Although F2 uses them too much as a crutch which I would agree with.
 

Faarbaute

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When I played Fallout 2 as a kid, a lot of the cultural references and easter eggs just flew over my head, as a non-anglo, cultural illiterate.

I'm thankful for it.
As a zoomer who is interested in and getting familiar with 70’s/80’s/90’s pop culture, I actually enjoyed the pop cultural references and attempting to identify them.

Even Fallout1 aside from the special has a decent amount of references. Junktown is A fistful of dollars (or yojimbo), and many of the general aesthetics of the game are ripped straight from Mad Max etc. Not that it’s a bad thing necessarily. Although F2 uses them too much as a crutch which I would agree with.
Yeah, I can see it being enjoyable from that angle as well.

Although, for me, It would still be a distant second to the untainted experience I had of being able to engage with the game as its own thing, first and foremost, and not as a collection of cultural references and memes.
 

Roguey

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Even Fallout1 aside from the special has a decent amount of references. Junktown is A fistful of dollars (or yojimbo), and many of the general aesthetics of the game are ripped straight from Mad Max etc. Not that it’s a bad thing necessarily. Although F2 uses them too much as a crutch which I would agree with.
As far as I remember, Fallout's non-special encounter pop culture references make sense in context. "Prime Choice Select is made of people" is a reference to Soylent Green, yes, but it's not out of the ordinary for the character to shout a thing like that in that situation. Likewise the "They killed Kenny" reference when Kenny dies.

Meanwhile in Fallout 2, much to Chris Avellone's eternal shame, you have some ignorant tribal quoting the Godfather verbatim and asking questions about the lyrics to Elton John's Rocket Man. How would the PC even know these things? Chris wasn't thinking about it, he just put them in there because he thought it'd be funny. Additionally, while all the fourth-wall-breaking references to how you're playing a computer game are funny, it ultimately damages the setting. The devs are saying they're not taking any of this seriously (in contrast to the first game), so why should you?
 

thesecret1

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The devs are saying they're not taking any of this seriously (in contrast to the first game), so why should you?
This is the core issue there. Not that the game isn't super serious grimdark post-apo misery or that there are silly things like super mutants or radiation ghouls, but that the writers don't respect the setting. They remind you "hey this is just a game and games are for kids, here's a joke LOL" - in a game where decisions are meant to matter, that's terrible.
 

NecroLord

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The devs are saying they're not taking any of this seriously (in contrast to the first game), so why should you?
This is the core issue there. Not that the game isn't super serious grimdark post-apo misery or that there are silly things like super mutants or radiation ghouls, but that the writers don't respect the setting. They remind you "hey this is just a game and games are for kids, here's a joke LOL" - in a game where decisions are meant to matter, that's terrible.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Fallout 2 devs don't respect the setting.
For example, you lose Karma points if you steal from your fellow Arroyo tribe members. If the excessive pop culture references don't bother you heavily, Fallout 2 is still a great game and the last pure Fallout experience.
 

JarlFrank

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Fallout 2 respects the setting in some areas, but completely makes a joke of it in others.

It's one thing to have pop culture references in dialog occasionally, but to design entire locations around it goes too far. And FO2 does that. The Hubologists are just "Scientology but post-apocalyptic!" New Reno was the devs wanting a classic mobster noir city with casinos and organized crime, including 1930s mobster clothing for all the mobsters, just like in classic mafia films!

FO2 may not be as retarded as FO3, but it follows the same spirit.
 

Beans00

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The only area in F02 super out of place is san fran IMO.

My conversation with JarlFrank about this.

265TC5o.png
 

Ryan muller

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Fallout 2 respects the setting in some areas, but completely makes a joke of it in others.

It's one thing to have pop culture references in dialog occasionally, but to design entire locations around it goes too far. And FO2 does that. The Hubologists are just "Scientology but post-apocalyptic!" New Reno was the devs wanting a classic mobster noir city with casinos and organized crime, including 1930s mobster clothing for all the mobsters, just like in classic mafia films!

FO2 may not be as retarded as FO3, but it follows the same spirit.
Theres nothing wrong with New reno, a few people dressing themselves as mobsters for guarding specific cassinos for rich families isnt implausible or completely out of place.

I have to go with beans, the only place that really feels retarded in some ways is San fran.
 

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