Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game is a 1998 role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Productions. It is a sequel to Fallout (1997), featuring similar graphics and game mechanics. The game's story takes place in 2241, 80 years after the events of Fallout and 164 years after the atomic war which reduced the vast majority of the world to a nuclear wasteland.[4] The player assumes the role of The Chosen One, the grandchild of the first game's protagonist, and undertakes a quest to save their small village on the West Coast of the United States.[5]
Fallout 2 Game
Fallout 2 was well received by critics, who praised its gameplay and storyline, and considered it a worthy successor to the original Fallout. Its bugs and limited updates to the formula of the first game attracted criticism. In 2008, the game received a direct sequel: Fallout 3, developed by Bethesda Game Studios.[6]
Fallout 2 is a role-playing open-world video game. The player is free to move at will until they enter into combat. Combat gives them a number of action points to move, fire, check their equipment, reload and the like.
General gameplay consists of traveling and interacting with local inhabitants and organizations to complete goals and aid or inhibit the NPCs. The player's actions dictate what future story or gameplay opportunities are available. Mature themes such as alcohol consumption, drug usage, and sex are present.
Tim Cain announced Fallout 2 via a Usenet posting in December 1997, and wrote that it "should take 11 months".[7] Cain later clarified that the sequel entered development before the launch of Fallout, as the previous game had "really caused a buzz in the studio about six months before it was released".[8] According to co-founder of Black Isle Studios Feargus Urquhart, Interplay was experiencing financial difficulties at the beginning of 1998, which according to Urquhart, gave the studio "basically nine months to make the whole game".[9] In order to reach this deadline, many staff were taken from the Planescape: Torment development team and made to work on Fallout 2. Additionally, the development team were also made to work crunch time to make up for a lack of manpower and time.[10]
Fallout 2 received positive reviews, according to the review aggregators Metacritic and GameRankings. It was a finalist for the "role-playing game of the year" awards from Computer Gaming World, GameSpot, CNET Gamecenter, IGN and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, all of which ultimately went to Baldur's Gate.[22][23][24][25][26] The editors of GameSpot wrote, "A bigger, better Fallout, this sequel to 1997's RPG of the Year was populated with more characters, more places to go, and more things to do."[23]
Positive reviewers praised the gameplay, storyline, and worthiness as a successor to the original Fallout, while detractors criticized frequent bugs and lack of improvement over the first game. Daniel Morris of GamePro praised the mix of action and character interaction as well as the non-linear gameplay.[12] IGN applauded the developers for the sizable game world, the writing, and "not fixing something that wasn't broken."[15] Game Revolution praised the game's depth and storyline but criticized its graphics and interface.[27]
Fallout 2 was a commercial success.[28] In the United States, it secured third place on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for the first week of November 1998. It was absent from the weekly top 10 by the following week, but debuted at #20 for the month of November overall.[29][30] Fallout 2 sold 123,000 copies in the United States by March 2000. GameSpot writer Desslock considered these "very good sales, especially since the overall [worldwide] figures are likely double those amounts."[28] According to Keza MacDonald of Eurogamer, Fallout 2 was unsuccessful in the United Kingdom; she noted that the game and its predecessor totaled just over 50,000 sales combined in the region.[31]
In 2013, GamesRadar ranked Fallout 2 number 68 on their list of top video games of all time.[32] That same year, IGN ranked it as the 28th best role-playing video game ever.[33] In 2015, PC Gamer ranked the game #3 on its list of best RPGs of all time.[34]
In retrospect, the designers of Fallout 2 expressed reservations about the game, with Chris Avellone calling it "a slapdash project without a lot of oversight". Retro Gamer described Fallout 2 as "an impressive feat, yet still one that rubbed Fallout diehards the wrong way."[8]
The story is set 80 years after the original Fallout in 2241. A resident of the village Arroyo known as the Chosen One, who is also the grandchild of the protagonist from the first game, has been tasked to find a G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit). The G.E.C.K. is a device believed to be able to fight back against the village's starvation and drought.
Fallout 2 uses a character creation system called SPECIAL. S.P.E.C.I.A.L is an acronym and initialism of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. These are the seven basic attributes of every character in the game. They are used to determine the skills and perks of the given character.
There are 18 different skills in the game. They are ranked from 0% to 300%. The starting values for those skills at level one are determined by the character's seven basic attributes, but most of those skills would fall between 0% and 50%. Every time a level is gained, the player will be awarded skill points to be used to improve their character's skills, equal to five points plus twice their Intelligence. The player may choose to "tag" three of the 18 skills (though later a fourth skill may be tagged). A tagged skill will improve at twice the normal rate. Some non-player characters can also improve Skills via training.
Active skills may be selected and used on the player, non-player characters, and the environment to accomplish tasks. For example, a player may use First Aid to heal themselves or allies, or use Repair to fix a generator. Active skills can also contribute to the in-game dialogue. For example, someone with a high Science skill could talk to a scientist and get a better response out of them than if they had a low science skill.
Books found throughout the game world can improve Small Guns, First Aid, Science, Repair, and Outdoorsman skills, up to a maximum of 91% skill value; using a skill book after that will do nothing to raise the skill any further. Books are scarce early in the game, and the max cap can make books less useful later on. Vault City and San Francisco are good sources of books.
Skills start off at a lower rate than in the first game, and the various skills are also more important. Previously, skills like Unarmed, Doctor, and Traps were used sparingly, but now, all skills are useful to a degree. The maximum level of a skill was increased from 200% to 300%. Another notable change is that a skill, after reaching 100%, requires more than one skill point to increase, up to six skill points per 1% (2% if the skill is tagged) increase after 200%. The Unarmed skill, in particular, was made much more sophisticated by adding different types of Punches and Kicks depending on the player's Attributes and skill level. Several new Perks were added while most others were retained, allowing a greater degree of customization. The Friendly Foe perk of Fallout is now a default feature in Fallout 2.
Karma is accompanied by Reputation, and while Karma affects the player as a whole, Reputation affects how the player is received in a single town. While Karma is achieved by doing good things and killing villainous characters, Reputation grows based on how the player helps the city, usually by completing sub-quests. By nature, Reputation and Karma tend to grow parallel to each other. As in Fallout, good and evil characters react differently to players with different Karma. Also, the player can acquire certain titles (Gigolo, Made Man, Slaver) based on their actions that also affect the game and how others react to them.
Recruitable non-player characters were very simplistic in the first game, and the only control the player had over them was to designate a specific weapon for the non-player character to use and how far away they should stand. In Fallout 2, team non-player character control became much more sophisticated, with non-player characters being able to gain levels, equip armor and be issued orders before and during combat, ranging from when to run away to when to heal themselves, as well as ordering them to holster their weapons. The non-player characters also possess distinct personalities and characteristics, similar to previous games. The recruiting process has also been made more complex, with some non-player characters refusing to join the player if they have negative Karma or before a certain quest has been completed. Finally, there is a limit to the number of non-player characters a player can recruit (depending on the character's Charisma), as well as a larger number to recruit (over a dozen).
The game's overall subject matter was generally more mature, with drugs and prostitution becoming major elements of the setting. The use of strong language remains uncensored, with an optional dialogue filter. In the game, players can join the Mafia, become a Porn Star, get married, and subsequently divorced, and prostitution is a strong recurring theme. Slavery also becomes an important subplot, and players can either side with the Slavers or join their opponents (such as New California Rangers) who try to stamp slavery out. Non-player characters can be bought and sold as slaves, as well.
Fallout 2 began development before the first Fallout released.[1] Early in the game's development, three of the creative leads from the first game, Timothy Cain, Jason D. Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky left the Fallout 2 project. Tim left in particular because he was unhappy with the direction the game's design was going in, and he also felt that other employees at Interplay created a hostile environment towards gay people. Tim had been in the closet during this time. Because the three leads of Fallout left, this meant that the developers of Fallout 2 had more creative free reign. 2ff7e9595c
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