Fallout 2 has always been the go to game Bethesda fans use to justify a lot of the crap in the Bethesda games. Oh, you don't like a village of literal children, people playing pretend democracy, or people cosplaying as super heroes or vampires? Well, Fallout 2 had a scorpion playing chess. Forgetting that most of the out there things in Fallout 2 were out of the way, meaning the player had to kind of search hard to run into these things, which is the opposite of Fallout 3 where you had to go through the village of literal children to progress the main story.
I disagree that it's "Out of the way" - Like the Chess Playing Scorpion, you just wander into a building and talk to a guy. Seymour the talking spore plant is also right out in the field, openly saying "Pssst over here,I got something to say to you" on a loop until you talk to him.
But yeah, I feel like the silly elements in Fallout 2 are often overblown in discussion. Like yeah, you have stuff like the talking sporeplant or the scorpion playing chess, and the occasional fourth wall break, but like, the majority of towns will have a lot of drama and intrigue that's meant to be taken seriously, and then a bit of goofy side quests.
Like Broken Hills, the town with the scorpion in is kinda the area where this contrast is best felt: You have:
-Stuff that's meant to genuinely be impactful, like Marcus and the whole history with Paladin Jacob, the missing people, the caravan master whose stealing uranium to sell elsewhere, etc.
-Comedic moments that don't feel too jarring: Hitting a Ghoul with your car, the treasure hunt
-Stuff like the Sporeplant and the Scorpion which are honestly the most egregious examples of this in the game.
And that's true all over, you go into a town and it's clear what you're meant to take seriously and what you're meant to take as a joke. Like Modoc, likely the first NPC you see is one of the caravaneers in town who will point blank tell you "This town is dying", you go to Trader Jo, and he'll tell you that the town will die in a drought if you don't help them, if you let Jo take over Ghost Farm, he'll sob saying that he accidentally shot some of the children there, and will never forgive himself.
But then Modoc also has the Shotgun Wedding, or blowing up the toilet and covering the town in shit to retrieve the gold watch
on top of all that.
Whereas Fallout 3 is the other way round, most towns have the ridiculousness first, and any actual meaningful content second. Little Lamplight the town of children is first, any problem they have with slavers is second. Places like Canterbury Commons or the Republic of Dave straight up exist solely for the bit
, and given how the worldbuilding in the game is so weak that it's not even clear what people are eating, that really says something.
