Yeah, Richardson as dead-set in his plans because anyone not part of his group had "too much background radiation." It also helps that outside of him not being convinced, he believed everything would go his way since you're pretty much a nobody to him, a tribal that should be in the test chamber or some incinerator or the waters rather than being someone that's "equal" to him as a person. He wouldn't count on some tribal being able to convince a scientist to release the virus to kill Enclave civillians or finding someway to kill Richardson quietly. He knew that if you tried to kill him normally or get in a fight with base personnel, you'd be fucked especially if you weren't equipped and had a build capable of killing off base personnel whose worst armor and equipment was a suit of regular power armor and a plasma rifle.
The scientist should have been harder to convince than Richardson. He's some idiot politician, the scientist is the one whose work was gonna make this all possible. If Richardson is shown that his plan would just end with most of the Enclave becoming inbred hicks who die from paper cuts, he should back down, whereas it should be the scientist who's like "Fuck you, I'm not stopping the plan, this is my life's work, and we'll get rid of all the mutants, I'll be the savior of humanity!" The scientist should be the one harder to convince, not Richardson, because the scientist guy was the one personally working on this crap to begin with.
Much as inbreeding could wipe out the Enclave, I'd assume that with whatever control vaults they had and any vaults still around before they were revealed to get fucked up some time after Fallout 2 the Enclave would still get enough people to diversify the gene pool such as Vault 3, Vault 34, and Vault 101. As for not being able to talk down Richardson, I imagine the reason he wouldn't be swayed no matter what the Chosen One says or does to convince him is mainly because you're one person on an oil rig crawling with power armored troops outfitted in the best equipment possible. The Enclave would no doubt be cliched bad guys but then again, they had enough firepower to scream fuck you to anyone in their way thanks to their arsenal such as vertibirds, gauss rifles, and advanced power armor. They'd make short work of anyone in their way whether it was tribals larping as Romans or the brotherhood of steel who had power armor and laser weapons. Richardson can't be convinced just because you maxed out some stat and want to be able to change his mind makes him more realistic as a character, not less.
Most vaults don't even have that many people to begin with. At most, they can stave off inbreeding for a short while, before it also starts to affect them. Also, the fact that the Enclave can beat down anyone from the Legion or the Brotherhood should make it easy for them to conquer the wasteland and just force everyone to work with them, so it shouldn't be that hard to talk Richardson down when you can present him with an alternative to having his people die out from inbreeding. Not to mention the fact that considering their science corps went full technobabble on the FEV and turned it from something that makes mutants to something that kills them, I'm sure a cure for mutation isn't impossible to them.
I'd buy this whole thing more if Richardson wasn't such an idiot. "Let's go wipe out all of humanity, even though our biggest base is an oil rig with a handful of people!" Again, it shouldn't be hard to explain to him that by the time their numbers are big enough to occupy California, let alone the rest of the US, they'd all be inbred dipshits bleeding to death from mere paper cuts. Maybe if his forces controlled vaults that had thousands or maybe even millions of pure humans in cryostasis, then I'd buy it, because he'd have all he needs to revive the human race once every mutated creature dies. But his biggest base is some oil rig on the ass end of the country, while his other bases aren't bigger than that.
People like to talk about how FO2 has a great, well-written story quest, all I see are villains with brains the size of a walnut. Richardson is an idiot whose needlessly evil plans will end with his people becoming inbred hicks who die from paper cuts, and Frank Horrigan has a fist for a brain. As someone who came into Fallout through New Vegas, this was completely underwhelming for me. All this talk about how great the stories of the original games were, and this is what I come across. The Enclave's potential is wasted on such idiots. The presentation of the Enclave as villains in Fallout 2 is so good, from how they look and feel, to how ruthless they are, but to find out that their leaders are such idiots ruins the whole thing.
If I were to compare this to say, Star Wars, playing Fallout 2 is like falling in love with the Empire from Episodes 4 and 5 of Star Wars, marveling at how they're such a cool villain faction that make for really fun bad guys, only to meet the Emperor in EP6, and he turns out to be a gibbering retard. (That was originally the plan, until they decided to change him and make him into a villain more evil and intelligent than Darth Vader, which was for the best, in the long run.) At least with Fallout 3, Eden only wanted a localized genocide to get rid of the mutants infesting the capital, and Autumn had the balls to even defy that and just go warlord to recruit outsiders into the Enclave. That makes much more sense than the Enclave wanting to genocide everyone in the outside world when their largest base is some puny Oil Rig that isn't even as big as a city.
The last page is so autistic you guys made me hate Fallout. I hope you're happy.
Also Tunnel Snakes rule.
You're acting as if Fallout fans weren't autistic to begin with. People who whine about minor differences with the Enclave and the Brotherhood from Fallouts 2 and 3, not to mention people who whine that Bethesda "ruined the franchise forever" were always autistic as hell. Look up any video whining about why Fallout 3 isn't real Fallout, and all the arguments there boil down to autistic nonsense that wouldn't matter in the long run.
Also, the Tunnel Snakes ain't got shit on the Kings.
