And here I was thinking everybody agrees that the Temple Of Trials is the worst location in Fallout 2. 
How wrong I was.
How wrong I was.
I think most people won't include Temple because it's the opening but yeah it's probably the most boring. I'd vote for San Fran as well if you hadn't said that Rise
naossano
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Same as most.
Frisco and Shady Sands feel like the most underwhelming locations.
But it seems more about the game losing its momentum once we are done with New Reno\Vault City and the surrounding locations.
It get back a bit of its edge at Redding, as it is still connected with the other cities, and at Mariposa\Navarro\Oil Rig, as it is related to the main quest. But most of San Francisco is its own thing, and its own thing is a lot more thin than the rest of the game.
Frisco and Shady Sands feel like the most underwhelming locations.
But it seems more about the game losing its momentum once we are done with New Reno\Vault City and the surrounding locations.
It get back a bit of its edge at Redding, as it is still connected with the other cities, and at Mariposa\Navarro\Oil Rig, as it is related to the main quest. But most of San Francisco is its own thing, and its own thing is a lot more thin than the rest of the game.
And here I was thinking everybody agrees that the Temple Of Trials is the worst location in Fallout 2.
How wrong I was.
I think the phrase "worst location" makes most people think of locations on the world map rather than subsections of those locations. The TOT is a subsection of Arroyo, which is IMHO a successful location overall. It's a little short on quests but has good NPCs and does a fine job of establishing the quaint and humble beginnings of the character.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
Arroyo is good and I think it's presentation would be even stronger if it wasn't right next to a gigantic empty temple.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
Every area is the worst area in Fallout 4.
Luckily Fallout 4 isn't in Fallout 2, which this thread is about.
ResetRPG
Algebraic Geometry and Dandelion Soup
Ahh, my bad. I misread the thread. I'll delete my post then since it's off topic.
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Since we're having the Shady Sands debate, I thought I'd get my thoughts on the issue across:
I'd honestly say Shady Sands is kinda a hit and a miss, more than being the 'worst' strictly speaking. The way you find Vault 13 once you get to Shady Sands for instance, feels kinda arbritrary: do one of 3 quests to find the location of The Vault. I appreciate there being multiple ways to find it, but it feels like a lot of the ways to get it just feel overly-complex and railroady. The whole Fake Vault 13 thing is something I respect the game for: you can be tricked, but in the context of what's already an overly-complex set of steps, it just feels kinda punitive to the player.
Keeping to the topic of Vault 13, it feels like the dev's were at an impass: it would be unsatisfying to just stumble across an isolated Vault in exploring the map, and as the final town before you reach it, Shady Sands is inherently the place where you're getting closest to your goal and thus has to do something with how you find it, but at the same time the actual implementation of it feels kinda dumb
In terms of quest design, I'd say it's actually pretty good. The Slave Pen and Rangers conflict is a funny premise immediately: slavery's banned in the NCR, so slavers just set up shop literally an inch outside it's borders, that's quite a funny concept, and being able to resolve this conflict feels like it really fits the location.
Moreover, in simply the ability to play Cowboy in the NCR, the game does something clever whereby it introduces a series of economic propositions by having you play them. What the game wants to convince you of is "Shady Sands economy is primarily compromised of exporting herds of Cattle, so the Stockmen's association is the most powerful force in town, but they're having trouble with the Deathclaws from Vault 13 eating their cattle, so since they're the best paying people in town, they're hiring whoever they can to sort out the Deathclaw problem" And it introduces all that simply by giving you a quest. Even though it suffers that same problem as feeling arbritrary and railroady, it's one of the IMO, best ways to find Vault 13. You immediately learn of the Economic system of Shady Sands, and have a plausible reason they're connected to Vault 13(The Deathclaws), all by doing a simply Cowboy quest. It takes a basic Quest premise and expands it in to something incredibly meaningful.
But here's the problem: the things you can do in Shady Sands would be remarkable in literally any other game, but because this is a Fallout game, every town does something similar, and it's there you start to notice the failed potential. @Atomic Postman put it best when he said "The questing is poor considering it's the capital of a nation". The quests do establish a lot of things in a very clever way, but the thing is the main overarching conflicts in the town: the differing personalities on the NCR Council, the corrupt Vice President, the wealthy Cattle Baron who's the most influential man in town, all that kinda feels like you're just being shown it. You're shown how the NCR political system works, with very little chance to interact with it.
If you're not working for Mr Bishop or Vault City, you have no interaction with the political system of the NCR whatsoever, the political factions determining NCR history are ultimately meaningless to the entire plot because you can't really do anything with them. You can do business with the NCR but that's it. If they had more quests with political intrigue, playing on the NCR Council to get what you want, then it would be a solidly excellent location, but since you can't do that it seems like the whole "Being the capital of a Republic" thing is just props and window dressing to a location which is otherwise just a cattle town. You are being given a guided tour of a Republic like it's a series of exhibits in a museum that you're not allowed to touch. The most impact you can ever have on this area without explicitly working for one of the other two Wasteland Powers is whether you stop a murder/suicide.
So ultimately what would otherwise, in my books anyway, count as genius game design, kinda gets flattened because you're so used to it by that point, so the actual scope of interactions in the town feel like stuff you could get in any other town, and not the type of interactions you'd expect from the capital of a growing nation.
On paper, it's not a bad location: but partially due to limitations on how they could have designed it, and partially because the quests feel underwhelming compared to what they could be, it comes across as worse than the rest of the game.
I'd honestly say Shady Sands is kinda a hit and a miss, more than being the 'worst' strictly speaking. The way you find Vault 13 once you get to Shady Sands for instance, feels kinda arbritrary: do one of 3 quests to find the location of The Vault. I appreciate there being multiple ways to find it, but it feels like a lot of the ways to get it just feel overly-complex and railroady. The whole Fake Vault 13 thing is something I respect the game for: you can be tricked, but in the context of what's already an overly-complex set of steps, it just feels kinda punitive to the player.
Keeping to the topic of Vault 13, it feels like the dev's were at an impass: it would be unsatisfying to just stumble across an isolated Vault in exploring the map, and as the final town before you reach it, Shady Sands is inherently the place where you're getting closest to your goal and thus has to do something with how you find it, but at the same time the actual implementation of it feels kinda dumb
In terms of quest design, I'd say it's actually pretty good. The Slave Pen and Rangers conflict is a funny premise immediately: slavery's banned in the NCR, so slavers just set up shop literally an inch outside it's borders, that's quite a funny concept, and being able to resolve this conflict feels like it really fits the location.
Moreover, in simply the ability to play Cowboy in the NCR, the game does something clever whereby it introduces a series of economic propositions by having you play them. What the game wants to convince you of is "Shady Sands economy is primarily compromised of exporting herds of Cattle, so the Stockmen's association is the most powerful force in town, but they're having trouble with the Deathclaws from Vault 13 eating their cattle, so since they're the best paying people in town, they're hiring whoever they can to sort out the Deathclaw problem" And it introduces all that simply by giving you a quest. Even though it suffers that same problem as feeling arbritrary and railroady, it's one of the IMO, best ways to find Vault 13. You immediately learn of the Economic system of Shady Sands, and have a plausible reason they're connected to Vault 13(The Deathclaws), all by doing a simply Cowboy quest. It takes a basic Quest premise and expands it in to something incredibly meaningful.
But here's the problem: the things you can do in Shady Sands would be remarkable in literally any other game, but because this is a Fallout game, every town does something similar, and it's there you start to notice the failed potential. @Atomic Postman put it best when he said "The questing is poor considering it's the capital of a nation". The quests do establish a lot of things in a very clever way, but the thing is the main overarching conflicts in the town: the differing personalities on the NCR Council, the corrupt Vice President, the wealthy Cattle Baron who's the most influential man in town, all that kinda feels like you're just being shown it. You're shown how the NCR political system works, with very little chance to interact with it.
If you're not working for Mr Bishop or Vault City, you have no interaction with the political system of the NCR whatsoever, the political factions determining NCR history are ultimately meaningless to the entire plot because you can't really do anything with them. You can do business with the NCR but that's it. If they had more quests with political intrigue, playing on the NCR Council to get what you want, then it would be a solidly excellent location, but since you can't do that it seems like the whole "Being the capital of a Republic" thing is just props and window dressing to a location which is otherwise just a cattle town. You are being given a guided tour of a Republic like it's a series of exhibits in a museum that you're not allowed to touch. The most impact you can ever have on this area without explicitly working for one of the other two Wasteland Powers is whether you stop a murder/suicide.
So ultimately what would otherwise, in my books anyway, count as genius game design, kinda gets flattened because you're so used to it by that point, so the actual scope of interactions in the town feel like stuff you could get in any other town, and not the type of interactions you'd expect from the capital of a growing nation.
On paper, it's not a bad location: but partially due to limitations on how they could have designed it, and partially because the quests feel underwhelming compared to what they could be, it comes across as worse than the rest of the game.
This thread has the wrong title then. It should say "The worst settlement in fallout 2" instead.
Naitor295
WURM FÜD
This thread has the wrong title then. It should say "The worst settlement in fallout 2" instead.
You just quoted something that answers your question, by the way i can't even change the thread's name now, and "settlement" doesn't sound as cool as "location"
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No worries mate.
I was joking all this time, I guess I should remember that new members won't know about me and my somewhat "trollish" behaviour yet. Sorry about that.
Funnily enough, the Abbey was the place that saved Fallout 2 for me, I was almost ready to stop playing it until I stumbled across this area.
I never liked the Abbey. The map style alone is completely not Fallout 2. Same with the EPA, tbh. I'm always skipping these locations.
/edit: To clarify a bit, I'm not saying the maps are ugly - just that they aren't in style of the original Fo2 maps.
/edit: To clarify a bit, I'm not saying the maps are ugly - just that they aren't in style of the original Fo2 maps.
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megamike15
It Wandered In From the Wastes
i agree with the monk temple. it feels really out of place in the fallout setting. it would have fit better in a fantasy rpg.
I also have to say SF was the worst with the exception of tanker. From what I remember the location was remade 2 weeks prior to FO2 deadline and it shows. Colin McComb is not that good of a designer it seems.
Aesthetically it also doesn't make sense: everything is new and squeaky clean with maybe one ruin. And the city was described as "hit hard by nukes."
It doesn't feel like a PA town at all, more like an unfinished prototype. And I would probably replace Hubologists with the Shi. That organization feels like a big Easter egg.
Aesthetically it also doesn't make sense: everything is new and squeaky clean with maybe one ruin. And the city was described as "hit hard by nukes."
It doesn't feel like a PA town at all, more like an unfinished prototype. And I would probably replace Hubologists with the Shi. That organization feels like a big Easter egg.
If the location was made 2 weeks before deadline, you really can't blame it on the designer.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
The monk temple, the Abbey, was directly inspired by the post-nuclear novel Canticle for Leibowitz in which a post-nuclear monk order become keepers of lost knowledge and technology. I always felt it was superfluous in the Fallout setting because this same idea had already been adapted into the Fallout setting (with a motif more suitable to Fallout's cynical message of humanity) through the Brotherhood of Steel in the original Fallout.
With the Power Ranger-ization of the Brotherhood in the later series, it can be hard to forget that their original portrayal was effectively "Monks with guns"
In this case we can. Let me clarify, the SF version we got was the second iteration of it. The initial version, also by McComb, was so bad they had to scrap it 2 weeks prior to shipment.
He has a track record of doing some really bad design, all the way back to his TSR D&D days.
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It has been revisited in Van Buren too.