Fallout 4 vs Fallout 2

I'd agree that both Fallout and Fallout 2 are unattractive games (though they looked quite good at the time they were made - what's Fallout 4's excuse for having graphics that are seven years out of date?), and even that Fallout 2's main storyline was a hot mess - but there's absolutely no comparison between Fallout 4 and Fallout 2. Fallout 4 has hardly any RPG to it, it's little more than a shitty Borderlands clone. And I have played it.
 
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Lanfear said:
I'd agree that both Fallout and Fallout 2 are unattractive games (though they looked quite good at the time they were made - what's Fallout 4's excuse for having graphics that are seven years out of date?), and even that Fallout 2's main storyline was a hot mess - but there's absolutely no comparison between Fallout 4 and Fallout 2. Fallout 4 has hardly any RPG to it, it's little more than a shitty Borderlands clone.
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I agree with you, but what exactly made Fallout 2's main plot a hot mess? I never really saw any issues with it but then again I mainly focused on all the side activities like becoming a porn star and a championship boxer than I did with the main quest.
 
I did an entire topic in the General Fallout Discussion subforum about it. The basic premise is so idiotic it makes you wonder if they thought about the story for more than three seconds. I'll sum it up pretty simply (and I'll limit myself to the first hour or so to make it more concise. If I bitched about the whole thing, you'd be an old man before you finished reading it.)

We need to find the GECK to save Arroyo. Nobody knows where Vault 13 is despite the village being descended from the citizens of Vault 13. Nobody even bothered to write it down anywhere, despite it being the holiest of holy places for this tribe. Okay... Worse, nobody knows how to freaking dust off a Pipboy and keep it even slightly maintained despite the fact that it's an incredibly useful device and would presumably come with some sort of user's manual, meaning that it doesn't have the map from the first game on it. Furthermore, despite the entire village being at stake, they send ONE person, with little more than a spear and a spandex jumpsuit, out on a wild goose chase into the desert. In Fallout 1, it kinda made sense because they didn't want a riot on their hands if people found out about the water situation, but in Fallout 2, the whole village knows what's going on and there's no reason not to send out a few more people. Hell, if this village is so bad, why not leave and reestablish your village elsewhere? It doesn't seem like many other places (except one I can't remember the name of) are suffering this major famine, so why not just move further north or further south? Better yet, why are we tribal? Did we really regress that much in the intervening eighty years?
 
Ragemage said:
I agree with you, but what exactly made Fallout 2's main plot a hot mess? I never really saw any issues with it but then again I mainly focused on all the side activities like becoming a porn star and a championship boxer than I did with the main quest.
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The Enclave as a faction was just far too cartoonishly villainous compared to the much better written super mutants from Fallout. I've never liked the Enclave, from the moment I encountered Richardson. Black Isle tried way too hard to make us hate them.

I still don't agree with most of Ben Soto's complaints about the game, though, which strike me as either nitpicky (the idea that the location of Vault 13 could be forgotten and its existence elevated to near mythical status within the span of a few generations is not especially far fetched; a lot can change over a few generations) or applicable to 99% of video game narratives in existence (you're the sole person being sent out to perform this or that task because of course you are, you're the protagonist in an RPG).
 
Ben Soto said:
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I'm going to break up what you put there into several points:

1. Arroyo wasn't always a simple tribal village. It was originally made up of the Vault Dweller and people who left with the Vault Dweller to spite Vault 13. Obviously no, they wouldn't know where Vault 13 was because the original inhabitants of the village all hated Vault 13. They left on purpose because they thought the overseer was full of shit and joined the Vault Dweller. The Vault Dweller isn't going to care about his old home because they kicked him out. Why remember it?

2. The Pip Boy is in bad shape because once the original Vault 13 settlers died out their descendants didn't know anything about Vault 13, only that it was extremely important to the founding of their village. Thus why they worship it. Of course the pip-boy wouldn't be taken care of, the descendants put it in a temple for over 100 years under supervision. It isn't going to be spic and span after that.

3. Arroyo is tribal, because 1, after the original Vault 13 survivors died out and during the time of the Vault Dweller, tribals from surrounding areas came to Arroyo to set up camp. Eventually due to all these tribals mingling and settling in with the Vault 13 apostates, their cultures slowly mashed together and eventually one overrode the other. Think of it like when Spain invaded the Aztec Empire. Spain managed to pretty much wipe out the entire history of the Aztecs save for their temples and archeology. Their culture died out with them. It's pretty much the same with Arroyo. When the original Vault 13 inhabitants died out without really talking about the vault, the tribals became the majority and thought Vault 13 was a holy site, not a simple home that these original inhabitants wanted to forget existed.

4. Okay, I won't fault you on sending the Vault Dweller alone. That one is pretty unexplained. Though I would attribute it to the fact that, once again, Arroyo is based off tribals who only know sparse bits about Vault 13 and the Vault Dweller's quest. Because they worship Vault 13 and the Vault Dweller, wouldn't it make sense they would want to recreate the Vault Dweller's journey by sending you alone? Because the Vault Dweller was sent out on his own and changed the world, in their minds that means you too must be like the Vault Dweller and save the world by yourself, just like that great hero.
 
Ben Soto said:
Furthermore, despite the entire village being at stake, they send ONE person, with little more than a spear and a spandex jumpsuit, out on a wild goose chase into the desert.
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The Chosen One proved him/herself to be worthy in the temple of trials, that's why they sent them alone. The Chosen One completed a type of "Rite of passage" which is common throughout our current history and is also to be more punishing in various tribes through history. The opening and main quest is a play on this but something that those with some form of thought are able to grasp.

A wild goose chase as defined on wikipedia is "A task whose execution is inordinately complex relative to the value of the outcome." But that is subjective, as I found value in the quest, but you may not have. The objective to retrieve the G.E.C.K. was actually a misdirection of plot. If you were to pay attention (read and listen), there were many suggestions at the futility of the "main quest."

Discovery, fact finding and character development is what makes a Fallout game for me and I feel that I was given ample opportunities to do so during the main quest of Fallout 2 and would not expect it differently.

Fallout 4 fails at those three things, the reason is because, even if there was discovery and fact finding, it would not matter because you can not develop YOUR character. You can only progress through Emil's character that he wants you to play. The absence of character or substance that I can inject into a Fallout game removes my desire to discover as that character would need to be built exactly how I would play and react exactly how I would react and not do the thinking for me. I don't play as monotone, neutral psychotic vacillate. Fallout 4 is not a Fallout game, just like I am not a dirty old shoe. It is a title that has been painted all over it to make it appeal to people like you.

Fun fact: there are currently 25,281 monotone, neutral psychotic vacillates online, are you one of them?
 
Lanfear said:
The Enclave as a faction was just far too cartoonishly villainous compared to the much better written super mutants from Fallout. I've never liked the Enclave, from the moment I encountered Richardson. Black Isle tried way too hard to make us hate them.
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I <3 Enclave. Frank Horrigan is awesome.
 
Earth said:
I <3 Enclave. Frank Horrigan is awesome.
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He was a giant joke though (even his name was a film reference), and I got the same feeling about pretty much the entire Enclave. Like they'd come up with the idea whilst baked and it somehow stuck. Fallout 2 was just a goofy-as-fuck game in general, really. It's actually still my favourite of the original series, but if I were to be brutally honest I'd say that that's in no small part because it's the one I played first (well, also because there's a lot more fun stuff you can do in it), and that the first game was much more compact and better realised.

Fallout 2 is like the Baldur's Gate 2 of the Fallout series for me. I like it more than the original, but it's kind of a guilty pleasure because I know it's a silly game with a pretty dumb plot and the original was actually better made in most regards.
 
Fallout 2 had a mediocre main story added with complex characters and a great setting, that had a really interesting 'political' war between New Reno, Vault City and the NCR. In my opinion the setting was better then Fallout New Vegas, because I find a cold war between a growing super power, criminal gangs and small but technologically advanced and racist city far more interesting then outright war between evil, grey and grey factions.
 
General criticisms aside, it's very unfair to compare the two. Fallout 4 has a vastly improved engine and gunplay on Fallout 3, as well as numerous other key features and a bigger map, whilst Fallout 2 is essentially more Fallout 1. It's more packed with content, sure, but ultimately it's the same program with little advantages in terms of software that could have allowed it to be comparable to the leap between Fallout 3 and 4.

It's more like if Fallout 4 had just been done in the Fallout 3 engine in its entirety.

That said, Fallout 2 is everything that people wanted out of a Fallout sequel (though I personally found the constant pop references kind of annoying) whilst Fallout 4 is the first step in Bethesda's plan to turn Fallout in a shooter, making it almost entirely unlike what most fans were expecting.

TL;DR Fallout 4 had all the advantages in the world over Fallout 2 and it still got beaten.
 
Dr Fallout said:
Fallout 2 had a mediocre main story added with complex characters and a great setting, that had a really interesting 'political' war between New Reno, Vault City and the NCR. In my opinion the setting was better then Fallout New Vegas, because I find a cold war between a growing super power, criminal gangs and small but technologically advanced and racist city far more interesting then outright war between evil, grey and grey factions.
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It's true, the interplay between Vault City, NCR and New Reno and all the ways you could change the outcome of the balance of power were well done. I found this far more interesting than the main story.
 
Lanfear said:
It's true, the interplay between Vault City, NCR and New Reno and all the ways you could change the outcome of the balance of power were well done. I found this far more interesting than the main story.
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Redding really acted as the showdown for these factions, one of the objectives of all the factions. Of course it had some interesting characters, side quests and locations which made a good location in it's own right. Not to forget the way you can change the political system and leadership of the NCR, the domination (or destruction) of a certain gang and turning Vault city into a more tolerable (or powerful) place.
 
Or you could just screw VC over completely and make NCR devour them as a snack. It was nice, all of the little things they let you do throughout the game that had an impact on the world in the end. Fallout 2 was probably the first game I played that offered much in the way of clear choices and consequences.
 
Lanfear said:
Or you could just screw VC over completely and make NCR devour them as a snack. It was nice, all of the little things they let you do throughout the game that had an impact on the world in the end. Fallout 2 was probably the first game I played that offered much in the way of clear choices and consequences.
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Agreed, I loved how you weren't just a noble hero (I wasn't) but a political, influential or plain history changing figure that due to his or her actions made history.
 
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