Stance on the 80 year gap between Fallout 1 and 2?

Ugly Kid

Ugly Kid

Still Mildly Glowing
Curious as to how others feel about it because I have a bit to say myself. Do you dislike it? Are you fine with it? Why yes and why no?
 
Personally I think it's a bit much. Seemingly so did the developers since the next game would've took place only 13 years later. New Vegas is only 40 years later. I feel like 40 years is more than enough time to take place between the games overall.

I think the only reason it's 80 years later is so you can play as the Vault Dweller's grandchild. I feel like being the Vault Dweller's grandchild doesn't necessarily add to Fallout 2. You could still probably roleplay as his grandchild though.

An argument I see defending the 80 year gap is the NCR wouldn't be as advanced but I disagree. You don't need 80 years for the NCR to get to where they were by Fallout 2. Caesar's Legion was around for less than 40 years by New Vegas.

I also think Tandi, your average human wastelander, being over 100 years old is far fetched in the Fallout universe. You could argue she gets to be over 100 because of how well operated the NCR is which I won't disagree with, I still just feel iffy about it.
 
Ugly Kid said:
I also think Tandi, your average human wastelander, being over 100 years old is far fetched
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Yeah, and don’t forget about Darion, who is also around 100 years old and is still a competent fighter. And they also originally planned on having Ian in the game too, whom would presumably be even older. Add on the fact that ZAX says in the first game that Super Mutant lifespans shouldn’t be more than 10% longer than a standard human lifespan, so all the Super Mutants should be dead by Fallout 2. But I don’t mind that retcon as much.

It almost seems like the game was originally supposed to take place much earlier, like only 40 years or so after Fallout 1, but they changed it later for some reason.
 
It was probably so Arroyo would have had plenty of time to forget life in the vaults and become true tribal. So there would be no one alive that came from the Vault, as to justify why they all forgot tech and all of that stuff.

If it was only 40 years, there would be people in Arroyo who knew the Vault Dweller and/or people that were still originally from the vault, so the whole "mystic sacred GECK object" wouldn't make any sense anymore, they would know what a GECK was and the tribe wouldn't have had time to devolve into a "sacred mystical magic tech" culture.
 
Risewild said:
It was probably so Arroyo would have had plenty of time to forget life in the vaults and become true tribal. So there would be no one alive that came from the Vault, as to justify why they all forgot tech and all of that stuff.

If it was only 40 years, there would be people in Arroyo who knew the Vault Dweller and/or people that were still originally from the vault, so the whole "mystic sacred GECK object" wouldn't make any sense anymore, they would know what a GECK was and the tribe wouldn't have had time to devolve into a "sacred mystical magic tech" culture.
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When you put it that way it makes a lot of sense. Do you think there could be any way we could reduce the time and still have the tribal religions?
 
Only if the older people constantly lied and pretended that tech was magic to make the younger ones believe it. I guess they could do it because they were trying to not rely on tech and wanted their tribe to live isolated and dependent on living with nature and all of that.

So it could work if the older people did that and then at the end the Chosen One found out that they were lying all along. Although if the game was 40 years after FO, then the Chosen One being aged from 16 to 35 (age limits imposed by the game) would mean that he could have been anywhere between 24 and (only) 5 years older than the end of FO, so he could have been one of the first to be born in Arroyo.

I guess the 80 years past FO is also to allow the Chosen One to be played as up to 35 years old and still not know about Vaults, tech and the outside world.
 
I can see the reasons why you don't like the time jump, I would agree that 40 years would be a sensible jump for the two games. But at the same time I dont mind it either since the story for fallout 2 was really well rounded.
 
You could speed up the timeline and keep the tribalism by having the Vault 13 settlers killed by Arroyo tribe.

Using their equipment and supplies the tribe would prosper and settle down. But as the supplies end and equipment breaks down, the crops start to fail and the Arroyo can not sustain it's much bigger population.

Hakunin would ramble about what they did and believing that the drought and sickness are the punishment.
Elder on the other hand would lie to you about being descendants of Vault Dwellers, hoping that when you find the Vault 13 they'll provide help to people that might be descendants of their compatriots.

Your quest for Vault 13 would attract the attention of the Enclave and they'd use GPS trackers of V13 equipment and discover the village. Believing Arroyo to be the people who left the V13, they'd take the tribe to the Oil Rig (where through tests they'd discover that it's not the case).

You could discover this by taking a DNA test in Vault 13 and comparing it with the database or by finding the data on the Oil Rig.
 
I think it could make sense for Arroyo to have existed prior to the Vault Dweller's exile. The residents of vault 13 merging with the tribals could explain why the vast majority of them see vaults as magic and still allow you to be descended from the vault.

Also does anyone else find it strange that a bunch of vault dwellers made their own tribe from the ground up? Joining a tribe instead makes more sense to me.
 
Ugly Kid said:
Also does anyone else find it strange that a bunch of vault dwellers made their own tribe from the ground up? Joining a tribe instead makes more sense to me.
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It's kinda explained why and how it happened in the "Vault Dweller's memoirs":
Vault Dweller's memoirs said:
My Return to Vault 13
I was not treated to a hero's welcome when I returned to Vault 13. The Overseer met me outside the massive Vault door, and told me point blank that while my services to the Vault will always be remembered, he could no longer trust me or what I had become. He said something along the lines that I had saved the Vault, and now I must leave. Bastard.

And so, I left.

The days and weeks that followed were hard on me. I had met few true friends outside the Vault, and they had died following me. Now, my family had kicked me out and said that I could never return. I screamed. I cried. Slowly I came to realize that the Overseer may have been correct. I had changed. Life outside the Vault was different, and now I, too, was different. But I have never forgiven him for doing what he did to me.

I wandered the desert, but never moved far from the mountains that shielded the Vault from the rest of the world. Perhaps I wanted to return, and force my way in, or plead for them to take me back. Fortunately, it did not come to that. I found a few wretched souls, a small group of Vault dwellers, who upon hearing of what happened to me, had decided to leave the Vault and join my side. They knew little of the outside world, and would have died if it were not for my assistance.

Together, our little group moved north, away from the Vault, and away from that old life. Slowly, I taught them what experience had taught me. And together we learned to thrive.

The Tribe
Over time, our ragtag group turned into a tribe. I fell in love with one of them, and we raised a family, like all of our tribes people.

We founded the Village, beyond the great cliff. It is a secure home thanks to our hard work. We would send scouts back towards the Vault, to help others who thought like ourselves, but that slowly came to an end. We no longer head in that direction. I often wonder what became of Vault 13, and the other Vaults, but I never had the time to go exploring again.

I taught the others the skills they would need to survive and grow strong. Hunting, farming and other skills to feed us. Engineering and science to build our homes. Fighting to protect what was ours.

My love and I led the village and the Tribe. The Tribe grew, and grew strong with our help. But all things come to an end. Our sons and daughters are now the leaders. I'm sure that the Tribe will continue to grow strong under the leadership of our children.

My love perished years ago, and not a day goes by that I do not think of Pat's face. I see it every time I look at our children. This journal is our legacy to them, to their children, and to the rest of the Tribe. That is my story, and I am sticking to it.

-The Wanderer
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I honestly think the jump was a necessary one to really show the progress of the world. Fallout 1 was without a doubt post apocalyptic, you had places like the Hub which while it was a massive trade location and a blueprint for society to come, you still had people living in adobe mud huts, tents, and rusty shacks surrounded by car wrecks disconnected from each other. The actions of the Vault Dweller in the first game is why in Fallout 2 you really see the start of the post-post apocalypse with the rise of the NCR and their government, Vault City and their fleshed out society, and a resettled Reno whose stable enough to go back to a society who thrives off degeneracy gambling, drinking, junking, and whoring away rather than pure basic survival needs, etc.
164 years is a perfect amount of time after the war to explain the existence of tribals and why they’ve reverted so hard back to primitive beings (which some people already don’t like/find realistic, so halving the time skip to 40 years only would be even harder for people to believe).

Fallout New Vegas only being 40 years after Fallout 2 makes way more sense than if Fallout 2 was only 40 years after Fallout 1 I think.
 
There's a few lines of dialog that make it sound as though they originally wrote the game to only take place 50 years after Fallout 1, and then they probably rewrote the date later.

I think that the 80-year gap is appropriate for what they set out to do: it's key for explaining how the Arroyo Tribe went from being educated Vault Dwellers to shamanistic agrarians, and it's key for the progress of the wasteland from living in bombed out husks to actually rebuilding or building new settlements from scratch (and I would also say that living an agrarian, pre-litere lifestyle is a form of progressing away from living in an irradiated rust shack with holes in the roof).

I think that the gap is regrettable because it seriously limited the ability for recurring characters between the installments. Tandi pushes believability, Darion is a clever retcon but not enough is done with the Khans and his age makes him even less believable than Tandi, and that leaves us Ghouls and the retconned age of Super Mutants to recur. For a series where the end of the game emphasizes your impact on the people around you, I think it would be nice to see more of that impact in the next installment, whether through an individual or their family, town, organization, whatever.
 
Nowadays I feel it was a bit too long, myself.
I understand what they want to go with, but I think 50-60 years would have been more reasonable.

JunjiItosGio said:
164 years is a perfect amount of time after the war to explain the existence of tribals and why they’ve reverted so hard back to primitive beings (which some people already don’t like/find realistic, so halving the time skip to 40 years only would be even harder for people to believe).
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The Official Game Guide for FO2 has the diary of the Elder of Arroyo, and there are interesting parts where the Elder (and possibly even the Vault Dweller himself) seems straight out not be a big fan of high-technology and city-living. Plus, they were living in the ass-end of civilization and the Vault Dwellers seem not to have brought much technology with themselves - they seem to have the Pipboy, some Holodisks and the Elder's old gun.
 
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