Sorry I'm late to the party, How's everyone doing? @Mr Fish please don't change the chicken avatar for at least one week, thank you.
@DirtyOldShoe Thinking of sticking to this one. I finally got around to checking up my external hard drive and looked for my old avatar of an edited SMNT-Michaelangelo and I couldn't find it so... Shit. All my old NMA avatars are gone. So, fuck it. Gotta use something as an avatar and this is the best one I could find among the avatars left over.
There's a difference between bringing a more humorous tone to the franchise and straight up throwing in screwball wackiness for shits and giggles. The latter is how we got Fallout 4. Fallout 2 has more than enough material to make up for stuff like the Rat God and Brain, but it doesn't make those moments any less out of place; criticism where criticism is due, and so forth. I wouldn't even have minded as much if they'd been properly explained or were less related to the wider world; as it stands, the fact that both Brain and Keeng Ra'at are given no reason to exist is a massive pet peeve of mine and the fact that Brain, in particular, is the leader of a cult strikes me as unnecessarily quirky.
Yea Fallout 2 is not anywhere near the level of stupid that Fallout 4 is on. If the "fun/whacky" writing of an otherwise serious game makes me cringe and quit the game, it's a problem. This happens multiple times in Fallout 4.
It's not just Ghosts or the sperm whale carcass middle of nowhere; even more central themes of Fallout 2 like New Reno, Shi, Vault City and Enclave are rather silly. Fallout 2 felt like a high fantasy setting with every cool and nonsensical idea thrown into the mix (FEV and radiation=magic=everything is possible). This game could be named as "Deadpool in the Wasteland" and nobody would notice the difference. Even in your face juvenile jokes were there...
Just played a bit fallout 2 myself. The explanation as to why the folks in ghost farm don't send someone to modoc themselves is a bit dumb.
Didn't they say they dislike sunlight and the surface or something?, That seems like a totally legit explanation. You wouldn't after living underground your whole life. Random Encounter, wasn't supposed to be a serious canonical part of the game. It's supposed to be a reference to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where the Improbability Drive turned two nuclear missiles in to A Sperm Whale and a Bowl of Petunias. Everyone always says those things are silly, but to be honest I don't see why. I mean, with New Reno, yeah a city run on gambling isn't exactly a plausible thing, but a city of sin like New Reno, with drugs and prostitutes out in the open seems very much like the kind of thing you'd expect from a post-apoc. As for The Shi, yeah the whole borderline racist asian stereotypes gets tired very quickly, but they are incredibly plausible as a faction. Vault City I don't see what you're complaining about, they didn't seem silly at all. Enclave, yeah they are comicbook level villains, who are obviously supposed to be Nazis in Space, but they are written in a way that explains each phase of there plan, and why they do it. Don't see why having a cliche villain is bad if you back them up enough.
@JO'Geran they mentioned the sunlight problem yeah. But they also said that they're so used to having blackness over their heads when confronted with the sky they freak out and feel a strong "falling up" sensation. So they spaz out and clutch the ground. I don't know but that's pretty funny/silly to me for an otherwise serious quest. Well not too serious I got a real Scooby doo vibe early on in that quest. But still.
Nothing is more hypocritical and cowardly then making an ultra violent 'M' rated game, and then scrubbing all the mature and thoughtful themes the setting can provide for the sake of the children you know are playing anyway. Sure, banking on a ten year old buying this game to rip a raider's head off with a chainsaw is A-OK. But let's not challenge their intellect a little, and have have them develop their reasoning and questioning skills a bit with tough situations that'll challenge what they believe. We can't have mature themes, let's think of the children here! Bethesda's worst crime is that they patronize kids with a belief that they don't want to have their mind opened up. They think that kids are dumb, and they just want to homerun a deathclaw with their swatta, sending their ragdolls flying into the BoS blimp with stadium crowd sound effects. I guarantee you that there are philosophy majors who started their journey by playing Fallout 1 when they were ten out there. What is Fallout 4 going to inspire this generation to do? Teach them to spend their money better?
Especially when Obsidian pretty much wrote the guidebook on how to make a proper fucking Fallout game 4-5 years prior. Bethesda has literally no excuse for the garbage that is Fallout 4. Every new "innovation" they've put into the game is used to market console gamers who can turn their brain off for a few hours, kill shit, and move on with their day. It has no long-lasting impact. Fallout 2 is a game that IIRC had a bit of a hard time during development. I believe I remember reading that Tim Cain left early on and it had no creative director or something akin to that. Obviously it doesn't excuse some of the random shit in Fallout 2, but Fallout 2 overall is not a bad game. A lot of people appreciate Fallout 2 because it's still a fun game with fantastic characters, designs, atmosphere, soundtrack, and lots of memorable moments. At least that's the way I see it, I mean I know there are people on this site that don't care for Fallout 2 nearly as much as 1, but as someone who is a relative new comer to the series compared to others, I think it's fine.
Well, even in the real world today there are people who suffer from Casadastraphobia, now imagine someone who lived underground for all his life, including being born underground, never seen the sky even on pictures and then coming out and seeing the vastness of the sky... I bet it would be traumatising for many people.
This is exactly what Fallout 4 is. Dumbed down FPS for console kids that has none of the mature story elements of previous games. Bethesda games are getting so dumbed down that pretty soon even the console kids are going to start saying "Bethesda games are stupid."
I like to think that myself, but then I see "gems" like this one posted on Bethesda.net and I honestly have to wonder. So in one Far Harbor quest, Bethesda tries something just a little bit different than yet another Radiant "Kill-Loot-Return" mission, and this guy writes a pseudo-intellectual dissertation on how his "immersion" is completely shattered and he just can't play the game any more. This is why we can't have nice things.