Slaughter Manslaught
Vault Senior Citizen
To me, the story revolved around these three cities rather then the GECK or The Enclave. All the minor towns (Gecko, Redding, Broken Hills) in the area were all part of this story arc. It was a fantastic and engaging story of power struggles, moral gray shades and frustration.
The fact that none of these three cities were 'perfect' or 'good' made the plot so interesting and so different from everything else. Vault City was an elitistic xenophobic oligarchy, NCR was a corrupt tolitarian state (my thoughts went to the former Soviet Union or China) and New Reno was... well... New Reno.
As for the size of the cities. I found it plausable and it didn't hurt the feeling of a nuked-out wasteland, especially since its a nuked-out wasteland that has been rebuilding itself for the past 200 years. Not like in FO3 when you still can find skeletons, electricity and leaking steam pipes like if the bombs went off two days ago.
What this guy said.
Fallout 3 has NOTHING as good as that plot.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with the size of the cities in Fallout 2. Jeeesus, people, Fallout 2 happens 80 years after. I don't think it's non post-apocalyptic, just DIFERENT, but still Post-Apocalyptic. To me, both Fallouts had a main theme that Fallout 3 lacked. Fallout had "Survive in the wasteland" theme, while Fallout 2 had more of a "Prosper in the Wasteland" theme. Both were good, consistent themes. And Fallout 3's theme was... uh, eeer, ahem, uur... I dunno, "Act Like a Dumbfuck in the Wasteland."