Retcons you’d like (excluding Bethesda’s lore)

I reread Stacy's story now, and will admit that there's some warrant for suggesting housecats may be extinct in the Fallout world -- but only in and around human settlements. This sound is frequently heard in many desert maps of FO2, and it sounds like a cat to me -- presumably a feral or wild one.

 

I'm getting flashbacks to mass NPC fights like the Regulators versus Blades.

*Shudder*

 

Well hopefully the big fights would happen off-screen while you sneak into the oil rig to blow it up. I imagine it would be like Mass Effect 3 except not disappointing.

 

I loved starting that fight; same with starting a three-way war in New Reno.

*It's possible to keep Zimmerman alive past the Regulator fight.

 

I don't often feel the need to max out combat speed but that fight is definitely one of those times.

 

I mean debateably, the Enclave's actions in the Wasteland were all working towards the modified FEV. They got Chemicals from the Salvatores to work on it, they mined the FEV over in Mariposa, and bought and captured slaves to work on the FEV, they kidnapped Tribals and Vault Dwellers alike. I think the entire way the Enclave interact with the main plot is written around the assumption they use FEV.

But I also agree that there is something dissapointing about the Enclave's end goals.

People on this forum will often talk about having negative experiences of the end-game, and will often attribute it to San Fransisco, but honestly, I think San Fransisco gets a lot of shit for flaws which ultimately come down to the Enclave being a massive dissapointment. It's fine to have unambigously evil villains, I didn't personally mind the sillyness in most characters being contemporary 90s Clinton Impeachment references, and Frank Horrigan and President Richardson were pretty compelling characters.

The problem is that Fallout 2 has spent it's entire main story creating a complex world with a functional economy, and a genuine focus on material scarcity and how even seemingly minor objects have vast implications for dealing with this economic scarcity (You start off repairing a Distillery in Klamath so the local bar can afford to undercut alcohol prices, since most of the Wasteland's alcohol is mass-produced by the Wright Family, later in the game developing a cure for Jet addiction means handing over power to a fascist state, and recovering an advanced piece of mining equipment from a recently destroyed mine can literally shift the balance of power in the entire wasteland)

What makes Fallout 2 great is that the material scarcity of this world means that they don't need incredibly over the top stakes. Literally controlling a tiny piece of advanced, hard-to develop technology can permanently change who holds power in that economy.

Then final act in the game comes and: you have an entire faction able to create technology that outright surpasses that of the old world while solely using whatever shit they can salvage from a single decaying oil rig, and their entire plan is literally so high-stakes, so impossibly huge in magnitude that it effectively amounts to "We're literally going to wipe out all life on earth". And the jump from "This one tiny piece of ancient mining technology decides which mine becomes more succesful, which will decide who controls the flow of gold and therefore who ultimately controls the economic sphere of Northern California" to "We literally have the ability to mass-produce higher quality technology than the brightest minds of the pre-war United States, and are using that to literally kill every single character you've met in the game in an instant" feels like a jump that's never justified, and feels like a jarring addition to a game that despite it's silliness, was actually incredibly deliberate in what it included.

I mean it didn't have to be this shit: the game takes a lot of care explaining how the Enclave acquired the FEV, how they acquired the chemicals to modify the FEV, how they got the test subjects for their project, and how they utilised multiple sources of Slaves both from trading with the Slaver's Guild, and striaght up kidnapping them from Redding. And for the most part their impact on the gameworld was actually that cross between small stakes but big consequences: the fact that the Salvatore's are acquiring Laser Weapons is both a minor point, and literally their entire plot to take over New Reno. The way the Enclave are set up is consistent with the rest of the game, and could have leant itself easily for a much smaller-scale, much more logistically sensible version of their current plan. The Intrigue is set up fantastically.

But then at the last act of the game it feels like a rushed Doctor Who plot point(Don't know if the originals are like this, I'm a casual and only watched nu-Doctor Who), where after having all this intrigue and excellently built suspense, the writers suddenly decided "Hey, this concise intrigue based plot isn't significant enough, let's drop everything and make the bad guys have a secret plot whereby the entire world is at stake literally unfolding right now", and just overlooked the entire logistics of how it works, throws in the most high-tech faction seen in the game so far with practically zero of the scarcity seen in other high-tech areas like Vault City, and decides "Hey, the entire world is at risk if you don't hurry", and that's just it, game over, have fun everyone.

And because the stakes are too big to comprehend, and the logistics don't make sense, you have to switch off your brain, and suddenly there's no tension any more. Everything is so impossibly yet unjustifiably grand, that you don't appreciate what's actually at stake here. If there's literally a Dalek coming out of a fucking ark ship every single second, you don't appreciat the power of a Dalek. If there's literally an Oil Rig with the ability to end all life on earth, you don't really appreciate the actual consequences of their plot, because it has no consequences, it's literally there to be the highest-stake plot imaginable.

Like, I'd love to see a version of Fallout 2 where the final encounter with the Enclave, these villains the game has been building up to so much, didn't feel like a rushed, over-the-top array of plot contrivances that take away from what was otherwise a pretty awesome and well-thought out game.

 

Yeah, I realize that the Enclave acquiring and experimenting with FEV is the root of all their involvement in the world, and I struggle to come up with another way they could use FEV to accomplish their goals that wouldn’t involve the complete eradication of the human race outside of the Enclave.

 

1. Most of the Wasteland's creatures are no longer man made, biological weapons. They're the result of decades of evolution sped up by radiation and the scarcity of resources. Death claws are the "mash-up of DNA" of nearly every reptile on Earth. Spore Plants, Cazadors, Night Stalkers and such are now really just exaggerated mutations.
2. A clear list of all the animals that are extinct.
3. Dogs are solely a staple meat. Having one as a pet is considered taboo. They still exist because they'd be easy to breed. It would also make Dogmeat more special, because people would mock the player as a werido. They'd be immediately recognized as something only a Vault Dweller or someone obsessed with Pre-War America would do.
4. Redding also becomes abandoned after the end of Fallout 2. I prefer the ending of the town "being torn apart by three greedy vultures" being the best possible ending happening no matter what the player does. "You can't save everyone" is a theme Fallout should bring back. Also story wise, it would break the illusion of the player being a Mary Sue. I'll admit I only chose Redding because it's the location I visited the least and could be possible considering the situations it was in.
5. The player moniker in Fallout 2 should've been The Tribal. All RPG monikers should be what most NPCs would call the player. The only time the Chosen One title is brought up outside of Arroyo villagers is in Dialogue Options where the player is talking about themselves.
6. The partnership between Gecko and Vault City is canon.
7. The good ending for the Den is canon.
8. Fallout 2 Companion Fates!
Based on my playthroughs and imagination. For the sake of story, this ignores the Charisma rule:
Party history 1(in order of recruitment): Sulik, Vick, Miria, Cassidy, Lenny
Miria is killed by Raiders in the beginning of the party's trek back to the Den to retrieve the Highwayman.
Later, Vic is killed by Chad while investigating the caravan skimming in Broken Hills.
Party history 2: Sulik, Cassidy, Lenny, Marcus, Myron, Goris
Goris leaves the party after sensing Vault 13 is gone.
Lenny is eaten alive by Wanamingos under Redding.
Party history 3: Sulik, Cassidy, Marcus, Skynet (cybernetic brain)
Party retrieves Goris.
Party arrives in San Francisco. Overwhelmed with joy, Cassidy has a heart attack but lives. He's MIA until it's time to confront the Enclave.
Player dumps everyone in San Francisco so he can infiltrate Navarro.
Party history 4: K-9
Party enters the Poseidon Oil Rig, but only Player ventures ahead so they don't alert the base. Party waits inside the tanker for Player's command.
Party history 5: Alone
In the final battle with Frank Horrigan, Player calls Party to fight. K-9 is immediately shredded by Frank's minigun arm. Skynet sacrifices himself by self destructing up against Frank's leg; dislocating his knee.
Game over.
Party history 6: Sulik, Cassidy, Marcus, Myron, Goris
Besides Marcus' and Myron's fates already confirmed, only Sulik and Cassidy resides in New Arroyo with Player.
Goris leaves shortly after helping found New Arroyo to start his own Intelligent Death claw den in Mexico.
Assuming the partnership between Gecko and Vault City is canon, both communities learn of Lenny's death and honor him with a medical degree for students in the City's university called "The Lenny Grant".

 

I hate irradiated water. I know fallout isn’t supposed to be realistic, but I hate the idea that most water seems to be irradiated, including the oceans, even after most radiation has long fallen out of the atmosphere. Although perhaps I’m venturing into Bethesda lore territory, as fallout 3 and 4 were the biggest offenders, it’s the whole damn plot of fallout 3.

I’m okay with the idea of water being irradiated because it was contaminated recently/being actively contaminated by pollution or something, but not from the war itself. I’d prefer to think that water scarcity issues in the fallout universe are due to the bombs evaporating much of the inland water and rendering most of the planet too hot and dry to support large reservoirs.

 

Eh, to my mind taking the FEV, Genetic Engineering aspect out is kinda just killing the point of it even existing.

Why?

Dogs have been companions for humans for centuries, they've consistently given an edge in hunting, and in a lot of coutries are primarily used as Guards.

They seem like they'd fit right in to the post-apoc.