Fallout 2

aka: FO2, Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
Moby ID: 239
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

The sequel to Fallout starts eighty years after its predecessor. When the First Vault Dweller was forced from his home, he walked north until he found some new friends and founded a tribe in a suitable place. But some years after his death, the tribe is dying. The Elders decide that one of the tribe members, the "Chosen One", must find salvation, a universal tool called G.E.C.K. (short for "Garden of Eden Creation Kit"). Sadly, the hero's only clue are the ancient disks the Vault Dweller has left, and the only equipment are his clothes and PipBoy. With courage and determination, the proclaimed Chosen One leaves to save his village, unaware of the consequences his actions will carry.

Visually and gameplay-wise, Fallout 2 is very similar to its predecessor. Combat and character growth are handled the same way, using the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute system and relying on skills to customize the protagonist. The sequel's environments are vaster than in the first game, with more non-playable characters populating it. There are more varied dialogue options and ethical choices presented to the player during the course of the game, as well as new weapons, armor, enemies, and a few minor gameplay additions, such as a car the protagonist can drive.

Gameplay-related changes mostly involve the player character's companions. Characters who join the party can now level up, equip armor, and follow specific strategies, as opposed to the almost complete lack of control over party members in the first game. Some characters are also harder to recruit, requiring specific quests to be solved or a certain Karma level. A reputation system is added, which works similarly to Karma (good and bad deeds), but only within the same town or community.

The quests in the game are more numerous and typically involve more complex situations and larger scope. Fallout 2 introduces quests and moral decisions with mature subtext: the player can choose various lifestyles for the main character, including getting married and divorced, becoming a slave seller, a porn star, or joining the mafia.

Spellings

  • 異塵餘生2 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 辐射2 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

187 People (178 developers, 9 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 49 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 409 ratings with 14 reviews)

More of the same, thank God!!

The Good
Fallout 2 picks up generations after the intial game ended. Vault dwellers have left their confines and are either assimilated into the new urban structure or live as tribes. Your character, a tribesperson, is given a similar quest to his/her ancestor's, to boldy go- seek out new life, new civilizations, and hopefully turn a profit.

Fallout 2 doesn't make any graphical leaps from F1, but gameplay is more refined. Tweaking of teammates has now made them more reliable and better armed and armored. Unarmed combat is now a viable choice, too.

The story is grander than the original game, involving more areas and more character interaction. Once again, your decisions and actions have wide reaching effects.



The Bad
It would have been nice to see some tweaking of the engine. Also, while Fallout has always referenced pop culture, this game did it a little too much. Other than that, this was an excellent game.

The Bottom Line
A gritty, immersive rpg set in the wastelands of post-WWIII America.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2005

Mad Maxx beyond beyond Thunderdome.

The Good
This game is a brilliant sequel to the original Fallout, which I might add, revitalized the RPG gaming industry. Fantastically detailed with excellent mechanics and an engrossing and complex plot, Fallout 2 is a wonderful game that just keeps getting better as you play it. Unlike many RPG's out there it is possible in Fallout 2 to be either Good or Evil as the game has plot paths to allow either type of character to succeed. This gives the game an extra level of complexity that most other games lack, because there are often 2-3 (sometimes even 4-5) ways of accomplishing any plot goal, versus the typical RPG solution of "you will do things the way we think is correct or you will die." The game world is really well developed and plunges you into a post-apocalyptic nightmare world of mutants, gangsters, slavers and outlaws, where anything goes. And the ending... let's just say it is one of the more satisfying endings I've encountered in a computer RPG.

The Bad
Although it is petty considering the overall scope and level of internal development in this game, some of the subplots and some of the gameworld history, esp. later in the game were not as well developed as other, earlier plots. Basically some of the plot aspects in the last quarter of the game failed to go anywhere or add much to the game.

The Bottom Line
A post-apocalyptic amorality tale brilliantly executed with a touch of ironic wit and an opportunity to kill many many things!

Windows · by Joseph Bell (31) · 2000

GREAT RPG; blood, guts, more guts and blood and even RPGing!!!

The Good
(1) Unlike most RPGs you get to roleplay with a variety of educated replies. If you pick the right ones, you get more information. And, if you screw up, too bad. You don't get to ask the other questions for the most part. I always hate in the RPGs where you tick off a person and then ask them another question and they act like you're their friend.

Even better, if you have a high intelligence or good speech skills, you're rewarded with more dialogue options.

(2) great graphics; great noises; all the weapons and noises of dying people, if that's your thing, are fairly believable. You can even click BLOODY MESS as a perk to see some really gruesome visuals.

(3) you can have more allies; you can outfit them with better armor and weapons; all have different personalities which means they may or may not be good in combat; may leave you if you tick them off;

(4) opponents are tougher; you get away with less mistakes; positioning is much more important;

(5) the storyline is multilayered; the game lasts about three times as long as the original fallout; much more to do;

(6) as it is longer, you effect more of the world at the end of the story;

(7) new and better weapons to penetrate power armor; a problem in the first FALLOUT;

(8) less linear; there is a time limit of sorts but only for about 10% of the game; thereafter, you can meander all you like w/o running out of time;

(9) more perks and such to make yourself toughter; look for THE SLAYER!;

(10) less bugs; be sure to go their website and get the PATCH update if not included;

(11) get to use a car in this game to drive around and move quickly;

(12) usual opponents from FALLOUT are turned on their head; the enemy isn't always the enemy;

(13) chance to meet more women in the game if that's your thing;

(14) much tougher wandering encounters; happens more often, too;

(15) bandits are much tougher; watch it!

(16) the game rewards you if you choose to go down the dark path or the path of light

The Bad
(1) You need a lot of time to play this game; like 50 hrs I would say or more;

(2) If you're big on logic or environmental issues, there are too many monsters and no creatures to prey on except a small number of humans. I walk around fighting things left and right and then find some safe peddler out in the middle of nowhere. Geesh.

If you can overlook that though, not a big deal.

(3) It's a 2D game for those who can stand it. I played this before 3D was really big.

The Bottom Line
Worth finding and playing.

Windows · by StorytellerShannon (14) · 2009

[ View all 14 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
SOLVED: Is Fallout 2 a buggy game? MichaelPalin (1414) Dec 10, 2010
Valve To Be In Serious Financial Problems ... Slug Camargo (583) Aug 27, 2010
A problem St. Martyne (3648) Aug 25, 2007
Weird screenshots in the manual Zovni (10502) Aug 3, 2007

Trivia

Bess

In Modoc, if you fix Bess the Brahmin's broken leg, she will follow you around the town and even fight on your side in combat. While not immediately beneficial to have a cow as an NPC, it is good for a chuckle. Try using the "Push" icon on her -- yes, even the post-apocalyptic world has cow-tipping. In the end, you can also sell her to the slaughterhouse and get 100 servings of beef jerky in return.

Censorship

In the game's options, you can adjust the game's violence level:

  • US Release - 4 violence levels available - no cuts
  • UK Release - 3 violence levels available - the most brutal setting is blocked
  • German Release - 2 violence levels available - the two most brutal settings are missing

The German and UK version includes further censoring. For example, there are no children in the game.

The absence of children as NPCs makes at least one side quest unsolvable: a boy who has fallen into the well of his father's farm cannot be rescued from it because he simply isn't in it. All other elements of the quest function normally, however. Even the boy's dog who is supposed to lead the player to the boy continues to follow him around.

Endgame

After you finish the game, you can continue playing. You can even use the tanker and go back to the Enclave, only to find the countdown set on the same time you left the Enclave at!

GOG release

In December 2013, Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics were given away for free on the download distribution platform GOG. This was the last month Interplay had the distribution rights for the games before they went to Bethesda. The games were pulled from GOG on 1 January 2014. They were readded to the catalogue with Bethesda as publisher on 26 August 2015.

Logo

In Fallout 2, Interplay's logo of "For Gamers by Gamers" was changed to "For Mutants by Mutants".

Low Intelligence

Playing a character with extremely low intelligence can disable huge amounts of the game's option for the player (because the character is so dumb that he/she can't even talk properly, not to mention skills like "Science"), but there are some unforseen - and humorous - bonuses:

When playing such a character, people will call you a retard and refuse to talk, as you won't understand a thing. Beginning with the Elder in Arroyo, you can find some pretty funny dialogues that way.

Then in Klamath, when talking to Tor, the local idiot, dialogue options suddenly become surprisingly eloquent. This is so funny, that personally I can't find a proper way to describe it - see for yourself. :)

There is at least one quest available only for stupid characters - killing officer Jack for Mira in NCR.

The whole thing with getting the tanker operational is easier for stupids. When you finish the quest of stealing the Vertibird plans for Matthew from Brotherhood of Steel in San Francisco, he fixes the ship, making it ready to go! Your dumb-ass hero only has to push a big button inside the tanker, just skipping the FOB, NavComp and Fuel quests!

If you're interested, search for "The Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide" by Per Jorner - it's most probably the largest and most precise Fallout 2 guide in existence, it contains much more fun stuff about playing retards. There's even a whole chapter simply called "Stupid".

Mac release

A Mac version was planed to be released simultaneously with the Windows release, but due to poor sales of the original's Mac port, this idea was eventually scrapped until 2003. So it came out five years after the original Windows release as a full price Mac game.

Patch

The original release was quite buggy, to the point of having completely non-working sections of the game (like boxing in New Reno) and though the eventual patch that got released solved most of the problems was not too big in size it presented a major problem: it invalidated all your saved games.

Obviously, this was met with lots of anger and frustration from people who had gotten nearly halfway through the game and had to start all over because they couldn't, for instance, talk to a party member no more. The commotion caused the development team to promise some sort of utility that allowed you to convert your saved games, but they eventually (as you can read in the Fallout 2 website) ended up just advising to download one of the character generating hacks that circulate the net to speed up your catching-up process.

Despite the official patches to the game, Fallout 2 still had a few bugs which more or less were an annoyance (mistakes in dialogue, typos, quests becoming unable to complete). Unfortunately, Interplay more or less ignored these bugs and concentrated on their other projects (namely Baldur's Gate). In April 2003, almost five years after the original release of the game, Black Isle Studios released an editor, scripts, a script compiler and accompanying usage documentation. Fans have sought to make the proper fixes, and in turn, tweak the game to be more coherent, namely modifying map graphics and item properties/locations.

Recipes

Following the tradition of the original, Fallout 2's manual comes with another couple of recipes. This time "The Big One" Pancake, and the "Carrion Kabobs".

References

  • Another tie-in to the original Wasteland game -- in the New California Republic, your character can join the Rangers! This will get you a badge and a map, as well as some experience points. Note that in this game, the main goal of the Rangers is to eliminate slavery -- so if you're playing a Slaver character, you might as well forget it.
  • Fallout 2 pokes fun at collectible trading card games - specifically Magic the Gathering, and even has a bit of fun with one of the then-developers at Interplay. In the city of Gecko, you'll meet a Ghoul named Wooz. He's He's terribly addicted to the trading card game within Fallout 2 - which is called Tragic: the Garnering. For those who know him - Wooz is a dead ringer for one of Interplay's own developers at the time. It's none other than Bill Dugan - otherwise known as "Weez."
  • In Modoc, if you take the board off the well and descend, you will notice many coin pouches, and as you pick the first one your character will say "This is MY dream, MY wish, and I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back." which is exact reference to The Goonies movie from 1985. In the movie, a group of kids are in search of a lost pirate gold. In the process, they run through some well and were about to give up the whole hunt for gold, one of them starts gathering all the wish coins from the well. As another asks him why he is doing that, those coins are someone else's wishes, he replies in same sentence used in this game.

References: Bridge of Death

Before you talk to the robed guy, the player's character mentions that it would be a good idea to save. The robed guy stands at the south side of a bridge, keeping you from crossing it. Being it your choice whether or not to save, if you talk to this guy he'll give you some questions to answer before letting you cross the bridge. First, he'll ask you your name and the purpose of my quest. Then, the next question is which NPC survived from the original Fallout game. If you choose "Dogmeat", he'll go away and say something along the lines of "Why do I always get such stupid jobs!" However, if you choose the bottom response, which is basically asking the guy to elaborate more on the last question, his body will explode, thus allowing you to pass. You can search the body and get his robe. Although it looks like any other robe and sells for the same ordinary-robe price, it is the strongest laser-repelling armor in the game.

If you answer the question wrong, however, a two-headed brahmin will appear. You cannot kill it and it will kill you in one blow. This encounter is reminiscent of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Secrets

If you hold shift while on the main screen and click on the "credits", some designer quotes pop-up.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

The underlying RP system for this game (developed by Interplay) is called S.P.E.C.I.A.L. This is an acronym for the seven primary statistics your character has: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.

Van Buren

Black Isle Studios started working on a sequel, code named Van Buren. The new game was to feature vastly improved isometric rendering of the game tiles and smarter interaction with NPCs.

Unfortunately, Black Isles Studios was shut down supposedly after completing 90% of the game. Soon afterwards, Bethesda Softworks announced that they were creating a Fallout 3 game, which ended up being a largely different game.

Awards

  • PC Gamer
    • October 2001 - #4 on the "Top 50 Games of All Time" list
  • Pelit
    • 2007 (15th anniversary issue) - Best Game Ever Reviewed (Reader's Poll)

Information also contributed by קרן·山猫, Alexander Schaefer, CaptainCanuck, Der.Archivar, DreamWeaver, Entorphane, FireConvoy, KSlayer, LepricahnsGold, LittleYoda, MAT, Mirrorshades2k, Sciere, Scott Monster, Thomas Hufstetler, twinmoon, VVP, WildKard, Zovni and Evolyzer

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Related Sites +

  • Duck and Cover
    One of the most well-known Fallout fan sites.
  • Fallout 2 Mods
    A listing of mods for Fallout 2. Includes a very useful fix by an independent which boosts the random encounters in the game to make them compatible with today's faster CPUs.
  • Fallout 2: Survivor MOD homepage
    MOD for Fallout 2 focusing on weapons in the game plus various general bug fixes.
  • Fallout Wastelands - The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide
    Good source of files, information, Walkthroughs and even news(!) about Fallout series and Fallout 3.
  • No Mutants Allowed
    Another good source of files, information, Walkthroughs and news. Special attention to PipBoy2000 Section (open new window with lots of editors and tweakers) and Humor Section (really funny things about Fallout 1)
  • Post-Nuclear Survival on Mac OS X
    An Apple Games article about the Mac version of Fallout 2 (September, 2002).
  • The Vault
    Wiki based encyclopedia about all things Fallout.
  • Wasteland Merc MOD homepage
    A MOD replacing the original Fallout 2 campaign with a mercenary-themed scenario.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 239
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Droog.

Macintosh added by chirinea. Windows Apps added by Koterminus.

Additional contributors: Vincent Valentine, Rebound Boy, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, retinadesgastada, chirinea, Kabushi, Zolansilverspear, Carl Ratcliff, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Evolyzer.

Game added August 21, 1999. Last modified December 21, 2024.