- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
Fallout 2 as a whole is just infuriating to me.
Long autistic rant about a 25 year old game:
The tutorial temple was completely unnecessary and you're without a decent gun for a good few hours regardless of your build.
The first game had much better pacing attached to it. You start off with a weapon based on your character's strengths, you go through a small rat filled cave you can easily breeze by, find a nice comfy town to learn the game's mechanics, a simple side quest that gives you multiple options to complete. (Kill all the radscorpions yourself, kill them with Ian's help, or just bomb the opening to the tunnel and save yourself ten minutes). None of the locations overstay their welcome and they all have this sense of cohesiveness from a story telling perspective. It's a very tightly designed game that still allows plenty of room for exploration and side quests. 2 however went in the opposite direction and was an absolutely bloated and unfocused mess. Especially if you're playing the Restoration mod which adds in things that were probably scrapped for a good reason. (The one exception being Sulik's actual side quest which was never finished in the original release. Why do you gotta do my bone nosed friend dirty Black Isle?)
New Vegas, like 2 also had a ton of stuff in it, but it had a more engaging narrative in my eyes and almost every side quest was related to the main story in some way, making the world feel organic, connected and giving your choices that much more meaning. 2's locations and quests mostly have nothing to do with the main plot besides the slavers in Slave's Den and the Mordinos in New Reno. Everything else just feels completely disconnected and simply shows how the world's changed since 1. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, but it makes the game really drag in places as I want to get to the good parts about it.
And might I say that the Oil Rig has got to be the worst designed final area in a Fallout game. If really limits the amount of things you can actually do. If you aren't a fully decked out combat build with a high crit rating or a guy with high speech, (or in the restoration project, high speech AND high science) you're in for a slog. The final area in Fallout 1 gave you the option to directly kill the Master, talk him down or simply set the atomic bomb that's guarded by only two mutants in the bottom floor to explode to complete it. You had several options to get through it.
The Oil Rig gives you some options, but most of it boils down to whether or not you grabbed the Presidential Key off President Richardson. No matter what you do, you either have to kill him, (which alerts the enemies around you) or use an exploit in the game's system that lets you overdose him with Super Stimpacks with absolutely no objection from him or anyone around him. If you don't have the key, you're forced to deal with Frank Horrigan's turrets no matter what you do. If you don't have high speech, you have to kill the Enclave guys by Frank no matter what you do. In that situation, unless if you're exclusively focused on combat, have the high crit perks as well as exploit the AI's pathfinding, you're essentially fucked.
Giving the player options like stealing the key off of Richardson, turning the turrets against Horrigan without the key or not punishing a player to such an unnecessary degree because you didn't have high speech would have substantially improved this section.
There is an option to convince the guy who made the updated FEV virus to spread it amongst the oil rig killing all the uninoculated people there, but that only includes the people dressed up in Vault Suits. The guys in Enclave armor and the President stay alive, which ultimately makes this option completely worthless if you aren't a combat build.
I really can't help but feel that due to the game's rushed development cycle, a lot of potential options are either outright omitted or don't work the way they're supposed to. I've played the game like four times and every time I get to the Oil Rig, I'm reminded as to why I don't play the game nearly as much as 1 or New Vegas.
And that electric floor puzzle room. What in the fuck is a puzzle room that belongs in a fucking platformer doing in my Fallout? All that room serves to do is padding. It makes no use of your character's skills. It just requires memorization and trial and error. The minigames in 3 and New Vegas made better use of character skills than this.
The one thing I feel the game did a great job on was how companions were handled. You had more control of them and you can have a fairly decent sized party depending on your Charisma. Whenever I play New Vegas I always have mods that balance the game so high charisma characters wouldn't be as individually powerful so they have to rely on having lots of companions.
The first game had much better pacing attached to it. You start off with a weapon based on your character's strengths, you go through a small rat filled cave you can easily breeze by, find a nice comfy town to learn the game's mechanics, a simple side quest that gives you multiple options to complete. (Kill all the radscorpions yourself, kill them with Ian's help, or just bomb the opening to the tunnel and save yourself ten minutes). None of the locations overstay their welcome and they all have this sense of cohesiveness from a story telling perspective. It's a very tightly designed game that still allows plenty of room for exploration and side quests. 2 however went in the opposite direction and was an absolutely bloated and unfocused mess. Especially if you're playing the Restoration mod which adds in things that were probably scrapped for a good reason. (The one exception being Sulik's actual side quest which was never finished in the original release. Why do you gotta do my bone nosed friend dirty Black Isle?)
New Vegas, like 2 also had a ton of stuff in it, but it had a more engaging narrative in my eyes and almost every side quest was related to the main story in some way, making the world feel organic, connected and giving your choices that much more meaning. 2's locations and quests mostly have nothing to do with the main plot besides the slavers in Slave's Den and the Mordinos in New Reno. Everything else just feels completely disconnected and simply shows how the world's changed since 1. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, but it makes the game really drag in places as I want to get to the good parts about it.
And might I say that the Oil Rig has got to be the worst designed final area in a Fallout game. If really limits the amount of things you can actually do. If you aren't a fully decked out combat build with a high crit rating or a guy with high speech, (or in the restoration project, high speech AND high science) you're in for a slog. The final area in Fallout 1 gave you the option to directly kill the Master, talk him down or simply set the atomic bomb that's guarded by only two mutants in the bottom floor to explode to complete it. You had several options to get through it.
The Oil Rig gives you some options, but most of it boils down to whether or not you grabbed the Presidential Key off President Richardson. No matter what you do, you either have to kill him, (which alerts the enemies around you) or use an exploit in the game's system that lets you overdose him with Super Stimpacks with absolutely no objection from him or anyone around him. If you don't have the key, you're forced to deal with Frank Horrigan's turrets no matter what you do. If you don't have high speech, you have to kill the Enclave guys by Frank no matter what you do. In that situation, unless if you're exclusively focused on combat, have the high crit perks as well as exploit the AI's pathfinding, you're essentially fucked.
Giving the player options like stealing the key off of Richardson, turning the turrets against Horrigan without the key or not punishing a player to such an unnecessary degree because you didn't have high speech would have substantially improved this section.
There is an option to convince the guy who made the updated FEV virus to spread it amongst the oil rig killing all the uninoculated people there, but that only includes the people dressed up in Vault Suits. The guys in Enclave armor and the President stay alive, which ultimately makes this option completely worthless if you aren't a combat build.
I really can't help but feel that due to the game's rushed development cycle, a lot of potential options are either outright omitted or don't work the way they're supposed to. I've played the game like four times and every time I get to the Oil Rig, I'm reminded as to why I don't play the game nearly as much as 1 or New Vegas.
And that electric floor puzzle room. What in the fuck is a puzzle room that belongs in a fucking platformer doing in my Fallout? All that room serves to do is padding. It makes no use of your character's skills. It just requires memorization and trial and error. The minigames in 3 and New Vegas made better use of character skills than this.
The one thing I feel the game did a great job on was how companions were handled. You had more control of them and you can have a fairly decent sized party depending on your Charisma. Whenever I play New Vegas I always have mods that balance the game so high charisma characters wouldn't be as individually powerful so they have to rely on having lots of companions.
Basically 1>NV>3>>>>>>>>>>>>>>2.
I only placed 3 there because I'm petty.
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