Sorry, no, damn goofiness over the top isn't Fallout 2 to a tee. I know it's a popular legend but like many of the kind, it's simply not true. It's just stand out so much at time, and itching the wrong way in my case, that those silly terrible parts have stuck to the game legend like a swarm of locusts, and they proliferated ever since.
What's good in Fallout 2 are societies like Vault City, NCR, even Reno when you forget the little too much 50's gangster trip, and the rest of the world trying to find it's place between the three while all sort of different people, including you, try to prosper on all this, or simply try to survive the changes in the wastes for most.
Why would you need to be distracted, and why would you even want to? My guess is that without Cain and so many people working on different parts of the game to go fast, they didn't take the job so seriously and felt free to add whatever bad delirium showed up in their mind at the time.
Going back to OWB, you wrote it yourself:
The moment to moment gameplay is shit though. A massive fetch quest with annoying combat, on an annoying map, in an annoying engine, in an annoying perspective. Some of the enemies are interesting, but they couldn't pull it off in such a shitty engine, and under the time constraints. The Y-17 trauma harnesses in particular could have been so much more. Imagine if rather than being trash mobs, you met them inside somewhere claustrophobic, and they didn't start shooting until you'd had long enough to realise what they were.
And neither the story nor characters are paying the fret, not even the quarter of it to justify this waste of time. I would have expected this kind of thing from Bethesda, not Obsidian trying their best at making a fallout game out of their engine. If they coudn't provide a better experience, and story, and dialogs, then I stick to my original thought. They should have scraped OWB from their mind and use the money/time on the main game.
Mobius certainly isn't a Ravel by any comparison, and his stupids comments while I was trying to hold on to my own brain while enduring the rest made it worst.
Take honest hearts. Most of it is a lot of fighting/exploration, ok. But the map is kept on a reasonable scale and the ennemies aren't litteraly in every damn corners, making these aspects tolerable.
And the story/characters are written well enough to give you incentives at seeing the end yourself, instead of giving up to watch it on youtube.
I sure hope it's also the case of the two remaining DLC I have to try.
Though, when I heard about hearding some Bighorners or go fight even more monsters side quests for the tribes of Zion, I just said: 'Euh, you know what, I already have my schedule full of similar stuffs to solve your main problems here. Maybe a other time. Or better, you should just do these things yourself because I won't have the time. Good luck'.
The stealth suit. Sure, a old voice recording that would likely say the same 'sexy' things to anyone killing you and taking it off your still hot body. Sure it must be the best companion, but don't mind if I just take your word for it. Good for you if you like OWB, I simply can't and consider it a bad joke as is the worst of Fallout 2.
