Fallout 1 VS Fallout 2

R

Robb Stark

Wasteland Survivor
I know this type of thread may have been done to death in the past, but im new here so I thought it be cool to discuss this...

Personally I have played Fallout 1-3 and New Vegas and I have come to enjoy them all for different reasons, fallout 1 is my second favorite in the series. (My favorite being Fallout 3, that is a lengthy and tedious discussion for another time. I probably shouldn't have said that on NMA but I could give less of a fuck tbh)

Anyway I view Fallout 1 as a far superior game to Fallout 2. Not to say Fallout 2 was BAD or anything I enjoyed it a lot. However imo Fallout 1 had arguably the best story in the series, it was coherent, it was a tighter experience, the areas felt more varied , the combat was balanced, the combat was far more entertaining, the areas were more interesting and finally the humor was on point. Being a short game doesn't mean its a negative, quality over quantity. Even better if a shorter game fires on all cylinders more often than a longer game (Fallout 2).

Also is it just me o did progression/leveling up feel better in Fallout 1? By the time you fought the master you probably had hardened power armor, a great gun (alien blaster is the best imo) and were level caped. Opposed to Fallout 2 were you could end up anywhere at any level and get your ass kicked.

The pacing in fallout 1 just felt better, most people would experience certain locations at a certain in a certain order. In other words it gently nudged you in the right direction where as fallout 2 throws you out into the wasteland and tells you to do whatever the fuck you want. There is a lot of freedom in that granted (you can beat the game in 2 hours if you go for the San Fran run, but at the cost of pacing. Lets also not forgetting the god awful beginning of the game *cough* temple of trials *cough* arroyo *cough* Klamath *cough

Again im not hating on FO2, just stating why I feel FO1 was better in my opinion. (Also as stated above don't make this a FO3 thread because I stated it was my favorite, leave it be for now its ok to comment on it lets just not to this into some messy internet fight ya know? :?)
 
One day wait for a response is not much to ask, but yeah, as you've said yourself this type of topic has been done to death, so no wonder people aren't exactly getting into it.

But here I am and I am typing a response. In sum, for me FO1 is the best, standing shoulders above the rest of the games. FO2 is an good game when it is patched up, otherwise it is okay. There is little to no coherence in the story, the game is very long (patches make it longer, but better) and lots of things make zero sense in it. When it comes to logic, FNV is a far superior game.
 
F1 got a better story and better places or at least 1 place.. God i love the glow :P But F2 has more things to do and more replayability AND you can move people out of the way + set up your companions. So in short it depends on preference.
 
While the topic was discussed to death, it is unfortunate that most threads are page away. It would be nice to have some sort of index/list of links toward topics, so you could just wander into those and see what users from the past already said about it. Thread Acheology is nice but not compelling for everyone, while the things said in the past can be very precious.

Personnally, i prefer Fo2, but i agree that the main plot, the relationship between "species" and the overall atmosphere of Fo1 are pretty awesome. Also, the backstory is also pretty huge with all the event from the post-war pre-Fo1 past that i would want to see. (birth of the BOS/Harold & Grey expedition/Grey evolving into the Master/Vault 15 population split/Foundation of the Hub/BOS vs Vipers war etc...)

On the other hand, the Fo2 humor hit me in the right spot, same with the lampshade hanging & fourth wall stuff. I like when the medium isn't afraid of looking into itself. There is also fair share of real world satire. But most important, there is much more things to do that actually do impact your relationship with the other cities. Last but not the least, many of the best location are in Fo2. (New Reno, Broken Hills, Vault City, to name a few...)
 
I heard some people considered both fallout 1-2 post-post apocalyptic games. I thought fallout 2 was post-post apocalypse not fallout 1.

What do you guys have to say about it?
 
Fo2 goes further but civilization had already made many progresses in Fo1. Sure, there is place like the Glow in which no one goes, but if you take places like The Hub or Boneyard, i think those are pretty much advanced.

But i really don't see those as post-post-apocalyptic, but as actually post-apocalyptic. The way i see it, in order to be really "post" apocalyptic, you have to get over with the apocalypse and see the world of after, the rebirth according to new rules, new world, new species etc... The apocalypse is just an excuse to change the rules, change the world.

If you take game like Metro or Dead State, it seems to me that those games are still apocalyptic and not much "post". It is the world of still trying to survive what caused the end of the world as we know it, and not much the world after yet.
 
Yeah I got into an argument with this one guy who kept saying Fo1 and Fo2 were post-post apocalyptic. Where I argued they were still post apocalyptic, where as post-post was a dystopian story like half life 2, long after the major event.

(Off topic abit but did you like the metro games? Also would you consider fallout 3 post apocalyptic or just apocalypse?)
 
IMO, there is no such thing of post-post-apocalyptic. If i am not wrong "post" means after. After after is still after.

As long as we are in a state enough after the apocalypse to see the rebuild, and still yet before every influence from the apocalypse was removed, it is still post-apocalyptic.If all influence was removed, it isn't post-apocalyptic nor post-post-apocalyptic but just another distant future. The apocalypse and the post-apocalyptic era are just things of the past.

For instance, all space setting that mention an ancient race long extinct. For that race, the apocalypse was long long before, but for the human commoner, this apocalypse is one of many, long forgotten, like there was a lot of actual apocalypse in human history, like the glacial era, the fall of Roma, the multiple world world war (there was more than two), the plague, the settlers for the natives, etc... We cannot really say that we live in a post-post-apocalyptic world as the influence of these bloody events already disapeared or is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

About other games, i would say that Fo3 is still quite apocalyptic while Fo1-Fo2-FoT or even FoBOS are post-apocalyptic.
I would put Metro as apocalyptic too, as the survivors are still on the process of coping and trying to survive the event and the new threats it created, rather than rebuilding or making new plans for the futures.

The Walking Dead comics seems pretty apocalyptic for me, until the time skip, in which the various villages survived many years, built new infrastructure, made to last decades, and disregarded what is now useless for these new communities. It is a bit unclear to me if The Last Of Us is apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic as, in one hand there is surprise for the future in how the virus will evolve and there are still survivors trying to find their way, and on the other hand, there already some new cities with their own rules, and ways to sustain themselves for decades.

On the other hand, a game like Remember Me isn't much post-apocalyptic but a future of its own. Sure, there was an apocalypse, there are still some wasteland and untamed areas, but for the most part, the world has put these events behind and has most done its work of rebuilding. For most Paris inhabitants, the Wasteland isn't even a thing. It is even going further with Shadowrun. There was apocalyptic events decades ago, with the birth of magic, the wrath of dragons and the fall of some government, but by the time the series happen, quite everything was rebuilt. There are a few wasteland/no man's land here and there, but those places are mostly ignored because of radiation, like our current Fukushima/Tchernobyl. Those places are even rarer than in Remember Me. There is no way you could call Shadowrun apocalyptic or even post-apocalyptic, yet the apocalypse happened. It is just thing of the past.

I didn't play much Half-Life 2, but from what i played, it seemed to me between apocalyptic & post-apocalyptic, leaning toward apocalyptic. There is indeed some recovering/rebuilding, but the human being is quite the underdog, with the so many threat around that they don't know how to fight. In a way, they are still trying to survive the apocalypse, with no way to be sure that they will actually survive it.
 
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Well, there is still a difference between a setting right after the world has gone down the shitter, and a setting in a world that is recovering well already- which New Vegas is.
 
A fiction set right after the world has gone down the shitter is not post-apocalyptic yet, but still apocalyptic.
 
That's why Fo1 is post-apocalyptic and New Vegas is not.
 
You're right, this has been discussed to death.

Anyway, I find it's a very difficult question to answer. It comes down to preference really.

Fallout 1 provides an incredibly atmospheric post-nuclear experience in a perfectly concise package. It's beyond amazing when you first play it, but due to the aforementioned conciseness replays often become quite lacking in terms of variety.

Fallout 2 however provides a much larger and lighter experience with lots of variety, not only in player choices but also with companions, weapons and equipment. Some (including myself) feel that the freedom of Fallout 2 comes at the cost of the absolutely spot on atmosphere and writing of the first game.

So it comes down to what you prefer.

Do you want a concise and heavily atmospheric post-nuclear experience? Fallout 1 it is.

Do you want to explore a massive western themed post-apocalyptic world whilst having buckets of fun blasting everything in your way, with endless replayability and options? Fallout 2 is for you.
 
naossano said:
I am tempted to think that you didn't actually read what you answered too...
Click to expand...

I never do.

/Edt: And still Fo1 is post-apocalyptic and *not* apocalyptic. The bombs dropped many years back.
 
Fallout 1 will always have a special meaning to me, as it was my first experience with retro RPG's and led me to play games like Wasteland and Planescape: Torment etc. However, I do prefer Fallout 2 simply due to the higher replayability value. I do like the atmosphere, story and characters in Fallout 1 better, but after playing through the game for so many times, there simply isn't anything left to do. One big difference would be the concept of stupid characters; In Fallout 1 you would simply just speak in grunts and get barely any quests, but in Fallout 2 it's actually beneficial to be stupid in some situations, and who could forget the hilarious conversations with Torr or Algernon etc. :D

So, basically, Fallout 1 for the story, characters and atmosphere, and Fallout 2 for the replayability, humor and game length.
 
Eh, I like fallout 1 more than 2. I'm sure it's been said a lot before but it's more consistent with itself when fallout 2 is just blaaeh all over the place but fallout 2 has Goris, Marcus and the car... and I'll be honest it's hard to argue with how awesome those 3 things are. I think I like 1 and 2 more than 3, though I'm not a FO3 hater, I do enjoy the game. New Vegas takes number 1 for me, it brings the whole series full circle for an awesome showdown with the legion. I loved watching every faction in the fallout universe team up to kick their teeth in because everyone, BoS, great khans, NCR, Followers, agreed on one thing, that no matter what shade of grey you land on, we can all agree that the right thing to do was to make those bastards suffer and that's what they did, in my ending at least and that's why FNV is number 1.
 
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Lexx said:
And still Fo1 is post-apocalyptic and *not* apocalyptic. The bombs dropped many years back.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The only game of the series i tend consider as not "post-"apocalyptic is Fallout 3.
It is not the world after, but the world still suffering from the blast.
I Fallout 1, the world is well enough advanced to consider it as the world of after.

Villejh >

Fallout 2 also has Myron, Sulick, Vic, Cassidy, New Reno, Vault City, Broken Hills, the NCR and the hubologist, which i wouldn't want out of the franchise.
 
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