Fallout 2 (Mac and PC)

At this point the tale of the Vault Dweller has been obscured by the mists of time but it’s assumed that he thwarted the villainous Mutant Master and was exiled from Vault 13. Being a symbol of connectedness to the wastes he was sent into the Northwest so that the Vault members would leave en masse. There he met a tribe and led them with wisdom and experience — and more than a little resentment about the whole exile thing. This tribe settled in a little village they called Arroyo and thrived for a generation. Sadly, ill fortune has begun to plague the small village. Failing crops, spreading sickness, and afflicted children mark Arroyo’s decline. As a descendant of the Vault Dweller the people turn to you, their Chosen One, to find something called a Garden of Eden Creation Kit. A GECK is a device that can make any plot of barren, irradiated wasteland into a flourishing paradise. If you can find it in time then Arroyo can be saved but a GECK is a rare thing and the wasteland is a dangerous place… what I’m saying is good luck.

History

Fallout 2 was developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment, just like its predecessor. Tim Cain still directed and Brian Fargo still produced but lots of the team changed around. Between Fallout 1 and 2 there was a mass exodus from Black Isle as team members couldn’t get satisfying answers from Interplay concerning the structuring of their new team. Having an engine and a setting all ready made more time for developers to create a larger world with more items and more systems.

Tim Cain, hard at work yet again.

Fun fact: This exodus created Troika, the developers who would create Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Fallout 2 was released on September 30th, 1998. It’s competition was Pokemon Red and Blue (Gameboy), Metal Gear Solid (PS1), and Resident Evil: Director’s Cut (PS1).

Experiences

This game is difficult and expansive. I’ve spent hours wandering the wastes in my Highwayman or on foot trying to find cities, hidden encounters, and taunting raiders into ill conceived fights for caps and experience points. All this in order to grind in the empty hopes that someday I’ll have enough health to survive a Super Mutant’s mini-gun barrage. There are a lot of towns and a lot of quests, far more than Fallout 1. If you’re willing to risk nasty encounters and radiation poisoning you can find interesting things — although this creates a bizarre situation where it’s unclear whether radiation means ‘go away’ or ‘come closer’. I ventured out in search of new places and new people to help — or murder and rob — but it was never enough. I was never strong enough to reliably defeat my enemies and never tough enough to reliably survive. I’m not sure if I was playing the game wrong. I eventually resorted to using a character creation guide to make what the community regarded as the strongest character. This incredible difficulty might just be a result of the game’s 90s game design sensibilities. Save early and save often, I suppose.

Gameplay

What I wrote in the Fallout 1 review concerning gameplay will basically cover things here. Different quests, same mechanics, more perks, more items.

The major gameplay inclusion is idiot mode. If your character has 2 intelligence or lower they will be known as the Dim One. This completely changes the game as your character will be too dumb to communicate with normal people. That being said among other idiots and the occasional animal your character is considered a genius. Your only hope for a sensible interaction with the non-dim of the wasteland is to munch on some brain-boosting Mentats — but be careful to not get addicted. So if you’re looking for something silly then go forward, Dim One.

Behold, a conversation with the otherwise dim Torr through the eyes of a moron.

The Gush

There is only one game in the Fallout series in which it is possible to recruit a Deathclaw as a companion. It’s this one. If you be pure of heart then you can convince the erudite albino beast to join your quest. Even though he can’t equip anything his hide serves as decent armor and his claws can rip through enemies like a blade through tender Brahmin steak.

Art by Igliang. Goris is his name and he’s a real cool — and deadly — dude

New Vegas was good at offering multiple ways of completing a quest and it learned everything it knows from Fallout 2. But as the saying goes New Vegas didn’t teach everything it knew so it’s got some tricks up its sleeves. So broaden your mind, think about the ramifications of your actions, and how you want to solve a problem. Because if you think it will work, it probably will.

The cast of returning characters from Fallout 1 is respectable but not too immense. Harold and Tandi return — I always love to have a chat with Harold — but they’re joined by Mr. Bishop, Marcus the mutant sherrif, and First Citizen Lynette of Vault City. All these characters come with their own custom portraits and distinct attitudes and stories. And these are just the really big major characters because there are so many out there just waiting to be met!

This game has got a lot of humor in it, straight up. Some of the jokes land, some of them don’t, some of them break the fourth wall but in the end it left me in stitches.

HA HA! Censorship jokes.

The Kvetch

This game has got a lot of blind corners, so to speak. There are a lot of quest solutions with unforseen circumstances and a lot of quest circumstances with unforseen solutions. I’ve spent too much time talking to every character wondering if they’re able to help with one of the many quests I have active. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which NPCs are vital, simply important, or mere peasants that spout off stock dialog because of the model re-use. It’s also difficult to tell sometimes what will set certain characters off and force an unwanted firefight. In short, I said to save early and save often and I meant it. This is the 90s, saving and reloading was the solution to this problem. But I don’t find it to be a satisfactory one.

Fallout 2 is hard as balls. I’ve made characters who were nearly unable to pass through the tutorial area despite being created to be as powerful as a level 1 wastelander can be. It wasn’t made with modern sensibilities in mind and sometimes your character literally will not have the skills to complete a quest to your satisfaction. It’s just incredibly difficult to create a satisfactory balance between making a character who can survive to the late game and being able to dominate late game threats. In short, do you remember that point in Fallout 3 where you got your power armor and became an unkillable death machine? That never happens here. At least Ron Perlman has something sarcastic to say every time you die.

The Verdict

Do you remember my Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor review? I said there that the enjoyment derived from the game was from mastering a series of systems and sending the game a big F U by beating it. Fallout 2 is like that but with more characters that I give a damn about and far more ways to influence the world. You’ll more likely need the guide than you did in M&M VII but the wasteland you’ll be exploring is so much more diverse and interesting than most other game worlds, especially of the time. This game will make you care in a way that M&M VII doesn’t. You can purchase it on Good Old Games or Steam for $10. If you were still interested in exploring the wastes then I suggest picking it up and keeping the Fallout wiki open on your browser for WHEN you get stuck or lost.

Next Week: Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.

Just kidding, I meant to say Fallout: Tactics

Still joking, it’s actually Inside

Fallout 1 (PC)

Look at that Windows 95 logo. Just look at it! Then look at that Mature Rating.

 In 2077 the world was plunged into a wave of nuclear fire. A 2 hour barrage of non-stop nuclear weapon launching left the world an irradiated wreckage. Humanity endured in small part to a series of underground vaults that were constructed with the purpose of saving people– well except for all those experimental vaults that destroyed their denizens in a myriad of terrible ways. It’s 2161 now and Vault 13’s water purification chip has unceremoniously died and if they’ve elected YOU to go get a replacement somehow. You have 150 in-game days to find a water chip and return it to the Vault but surviving in the wasteland will prove more difficult than the search.

I like how the starting equipment matches this image. You’ve got a small pistol and a knife, go kill some giant scorpions.

 

History

Fallout was developed by Interplay Entertainment, it was meant to be a successor to the apocalypse themed game Wasteland. Interplay couldn’t get the rights to the Wasteland name so Interplay’s boss, Brian Fargo, named it Fallout instead. A team of 30 pumped this game out in 2 years with 3 million dollars to burn. The opening music was supposed to be “I Don’t Want to set the World on Fire,” but a copyright claim had it changed to “Maybe” instead. Eleven years later, “I Don’t Want to set the World on Fire” would grace our ears as Fallout 3’s opening tune.

Producer, Tim Cain, pictured here programming the whole engine of Fallout 1 himself. That bag on his head is magical because he performed this feat in a mere 6 months.

The game was supposed to have complicated moral dilemmas, working with the sheriff to kill a crime boss sends the sheriff on a head trip but killing the sheriff fills the crime boss with enough regret that he reforms– I think that’s really cool and if the game dropped enough clues to these men’s true natures it could have been a really compelling turn of events– but we got sort of simple moral choices instead. There’s no easy way to put it, but this game was one of the first that allowed, but heavily discouraged– seriously, some NPCs won’t even talk to the player if tale of this heinous deed reaches them– the player to kill children. This lead to heavy and buggy censorship in foreign releases, the children’s sprites were just made invisible. They’re dialogue still hangs in the air and they can still be killed, invisibly leaving no gore, with an errant grenade or other explosives.

The game gives you a “perk” that calls you objectively evil (twice!) for killing children. Good on you, game.

Fun Fact: Fallout was originally supposed to use the Generic Use Role-Playing System– or GURPS for short– rule set but Steve Jackson Games was so repulsed by the levels of violence and gore in the game that they refused to license their system for it.

Fallout was released on September 30th, 1997. It was going up against Hexen II (PC), Grand Theft Auto (PC, PS1), and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II– that’s a mouthful– (PC). I guess it was just a time for violent videogames.

Nostalgia

Have any of you ever played a game that seemed like a game you played when you were a kid? I swear that I played Fallout when I was super young, too young to figure out what was going on or even how to play. I remember walking around in a wasteland town but that could have been any game that takes place in a dusty town. I probably didn’t play it at all actually. And why is it even important whether I did or not? Maybe I want to feel like I was part of the history, playing a game before it was classic. Maybe I just want to clarify the memory. Or maybe I need to accept that I might have dreamt it when I was 20 and that it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna go with option 3 and move on to the Gameplay section.

But it seems so familiar! Like every other dusty saloon in every other isometric game.

Gameplay

The main quest of the game is to get the water chip for Vault 13 so the player will have to do a lot of investigating and do a lot of travelling. An interesting point is that you can ask special NPCs about certain topics which requires you to actually type out the term you want to ask about. So, pay attention, it could lead to important information that’s NECESSARY to beat the game.

The wasteland is a dangerous place filled with raiders, mutant animals, mutant people, other mutant people, and mutant mutants– did mutant stop being a word for you too– so your character had also be really good at killing things unless he or she wants to end up on the menu for some mutant mutant. And I mean really good at killing dudes because you’ll typically be outnumbered, outgunned, or be facing an 8 foot tall beclawed monstrosity.

Or whatever this thing is.

The player enters combat automatically when he approaches an enemy or concludes dialogue that would lead to a conflict. The combat is turn based in which each character has a set number of action points determined by their perks and agility. Certain weapons and attacks cost variable action points so smaller weapons can get fired more in a turn as opposed to that honkin’ sniper rifle that takes 8 action points to fire. Moving, reloading, and opening your inventory also cost action points.

Check out this character sheet! I know that having a higher skill percentage is better but I don’t know what the actually difference between 50 and 52 small guns is.

The game’s attributes effect your skills starting values and you tag 3 skills which get a 15% boost and level up twice as much when skill points are spent on them. Strength also effects your character weight carry limit and melee damage, Perception effects a lot of skills and effects how close enemies start in random encounters, Endurance effects a few skills and gives the player more health, Charisma increases Barter and Speech and allows the player to recruit more companions, Intelligence effects a bunch of skills and gives the player more skill points to spend at level up, Agility increases the amount of action points and when they act in a turn, and Luck effects all skills a little bit and increases the players critical hit ratio– luck also increases the chance of finding beneficial random encounters on the map.

LIKE FINDING THE TARDIS!

The Gush

There is stuff everywhere in this game. There are computer terminals with lore and lockers filled with items.

Just about every skill is useful– I’m looking at you Traps skill, YOU’RE ON THIN ICE!

There are traits that give the player useful attributes that come with penalties so you can customize your character in such a way that suits your play-style.

The claymation and voice acting for this game is really good. The claymation heads show a lot of emotional range, even if it’s a little simple as does the voice acting.

You can also use the Vault Assisted Targeting System– VATS for short–  to aim at particular areas to hinder your opponents.

This can prove to be really useful, blinding opponents or making it impossible for them to use larger weapons.

Did I mention the simple fact that this game has…

…UFOS!?

The world feels appropriately desolate. It will feel like you’re wandering around a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Kvetch

The camera lacks a zoom so it’s difficult to see small objects on the ground. If you drop a grenade in a cave it’s basically lost forever.

This game is unpleasantly difficult. I’ve started combats in which the first turn is just me taking three times my maximum health in damage and getting blown away. I guess I walked into the wrong neighborhood.

Time for a rant. You only have 150 days to get the water chip and if you fail it’s game over. I saved my game with 12 hours of play with only 10 days left on the clock to find the chip. Long story short, I was super far from where it was because I got a lot of lost. I didn’t have multiple saves so that save was just doomed. There was no way to salvage it and no way to get the water chip in 10 days so it was just in an infinite game over cycle. Veterans of this era in gaming would call me a fool for not having multiple saves for one character but I was indeed a fool… and I wasted 12 hours… so that’s “fun”.

It seems like 150 days is more than enough time but only if you spend all your time looking for that chip. Side questing has to be kept to a minimum. It’s all about getting that XP and those clues until you get the water. At least that was my experience– and it was a really stressful one.

It’s really easy to break the game, sort of. If your gambling skill and luck are high enough then you’ll never lose a gambling game, this gives the character a theoretically infinite amount of currency if they’re willing to mash some buttons for awhile. That being said, all the money in the world won’t buy you enough to live. No matter how many stimpacks you have it never seems like it’s enough.

The Verdict

It’s unfair to judge a game based on its sequels. This game was incredible for the time but I’ve been so spoiled by modern gaming that I found it to be un-fun levels of hard. I’d say that I’m playing it wrong but I looked up character building guides, quest completion guides, and full spoilers for wear to find the water chip but I still couldn’t get my shit in order enough to fight Super Mutants. If it’s the only game you’re going to play all year then it definitely has the content to support that through all the deaths. But there are so many games now that it’s unreasonable to ask for such a commitment from the player.

Bottom line, play this before you play any of the other Fallout games if you want to really enjoy it, however unlikely that is to happen. If you’ve already played Fallout 3 or New Vegas and still want to play the classics then go ahead, it’s fun just to experience the past. But if you want to play a classic that’s better designed then I recommend skipping to Fallout 2.

Next Week: Chrono Trigger