In this video, I discuss Fallout 2 in depth, analyzing its gameplay, story, and presentation in order to answer the question: is it really better than Fallout 1?
TIMESTAMPS:
Part 1: 0:00-11:17
Part 2: 11:17-15:47
Part 3: 15:47-19:41
Part 3.5: 19:41- 23:41
Part 4: 23:41-28:22
Part 5: 28:22-32:55
Part 6: 32:55-37:14
Part 7: 37:14-44:49
Conclusion: 44:49-47:08
Special thanks to my friends Callum, Fei, and Will for their voicework.
Thank you so much for watching, please feel free to let me know what you liked and what you think I can do better in my next video. Cheers
#fallout #fallout2 #classicfallout
I personally don't mind that you can't persuade Frank horrigan since you can persuade the soldiers to aid you to take him out and to be honest it would be weird to talk him out considering the condition he is in
It also highlights why Lanius is a poor final boss; He really has no reason to be talked down to. The man would charge the devils armies by him self, but tell him "But what about RESOURCES?!?! HMMMM?" And he just goes, well shit. better just leave. It feels unrealistic considering The Master needed hard evidence. but Lanius just backs down immediately. Frank Shouldn't back down. he's not this game's Master. He's the Lieutenant.
@@Neogears1312 I’d argue that Lanuis backing down isn’t dumb on his part considering he is a tactician. We’re explicitly told he is a great leader in terms of battle and war, and he even shows uninterest in political reasonings unlike Vulpes and Caesar. The way the Courier talks him down isn’t through a change in ideology, rather the Courier expresses it like a tactician would: He can’t hold both Arizona and the Mojave, his resources would be stretched too thin and he’d repeat the same mistakes of the army he’s been fighting tooth and nail with. Plus it also brings home how like Graham and others say, Lanius will ultimately be the Legion’s downfall.
@@charlestonobryant807 And not to mention that the Lanius you fight might not even be the real Lanius. Plus there are some implications Lanius isn't what he presents himself and that it's much more just a story to scare everyone, be it the Legion soldiers or Legion enemies.
@@Neogears1312 It makes sense to an extent, Lanius knows the ins and outs, strengths and weaknesses of the Legion. He would know what the Legion can or can’t be capable of. He’s not a mindless patriotic brute like Horrigan, who believes the Enclave IS and always will be the solution, he’s smart and rational like any other human would be when presented with a reasonable argument.
@@OXY187 lanius was not a sadistic sociopath, he’s a symbol of the legion, instead of a a person like graham. This is implied often, as the origins behind him is different from soldier to soldier.
There's an actual explanation for those water chips in vault city: As you might know, vaults are experiments. Vault 13 was "Isolation" vault, and had to live with the stress of always having to change a water chip every few months, and live with the stress of the fact that when the Water chips are gone, they will die. VaulTec messed up installed a fully functional water chip in vault 13 that did not broke for 80 years, so they never needed one until Fallout 1 happens. Vault city was a ""control vault"; no experiments there. So, they need GECKs to ACTUALLY bring civilization back, they need 3 exactly if I remember correctly. In vault city (Vault 8) there was a requisition for 3 gecks: One made in Washington and 2 in new york. Before the war, the New York Gecks Arrived, but another requisition form got mixed and vault 13 got Washington GECK and Vault 8 got a shipment of water chips. The whole story that develops in both games is because of two small fuckups from VaulTec before the war.
Ignacio Manzolillo i had no idea lmao that's brilliant
PD: The writer, chir avellone, actually said that the info you found on Vault City about expertiments was a joke, yet bethesda took it seriusly
@@Alf_Pacino wait, what? i always heard it was someone's design decision during fo2, that Avellone didn't favor
@@halfbakedchannel6065 in the fallout bibke the team said it was bad writing. And that rhey went to far
@@halfbakedchannel6065 it's a bit of both, Avellone is hypercritical of a lot of his work and pretty much wrote the FB all on his own, so it is very much possible that he didn't write that entry (FO2 development was all over the place) and disliked it so much to dismiss it as a "lol jk".
i actually like that you can't talk Frank down. he's SO brainwashed with propaganda and nationalistic fervor he will not question any terrible thing he does and never back down. which is chillingly prescient...
also, in regards to the enclave, i actually like the game taking a pretty hardlined stance against fascist eugenics and showing them as only bad. that's a personal preference, but i would still say they are more nuanced in their beliefs than F3's Enclave.
@@visitor5451 the Enclave aren’t really fascists though, they’re something else entirely really.
@@archdornan5617 To most people, "fascist" us just a hollow word used for anything they don't like. I roll my eyed pretty much any time anyone even says it anymore. I'm not sure what the Enclave is exactly, but it's a more imperialistic descendant of a capitalist liberal republic. Sure it may be alot different in some aspects but it tries it's best to embody their ancestors
@Starless LMAO where do you think eugenics was invented?
@Starless You mean like forced sterilization? The United States forcefully sterilized African American, Latina, and Native American women throughout the 20th century, and it's still being done to prisoners today. Or starvation? The US Army nearly hunted bison to extinction in order to deprive Natives of the plains of their source of food. Or outright murder? What do you think the police are for? The Nazis directly based their sterilization programs on what the state of California had been doing, and their concentration camps were based on Native American reservations. Capitalists love eugenics.
Odd, cause Redding never felt as a comic relief to me. On the contrary, it had this feeling of desperation and sour, with all those addicted to drugs miners and barely functioning mines, the feeling that NCR, Rino and Vault City use and exploit Redding without caring so much about the people in there, only about gold. Also that story from Mariposa where Enclave used Redding miners to retrieve the virus and then left them to die and mutate. And there was that supermutant Melchior who used to be a miner and whose son runs on the Redding streets bragging that his father is a great magician. All of it adds a very sad and dramatic flavour to this town, in my opinion.
Honestly I get where he’s coming from and you are right, Redding is a pretty sad and desperate town. It is a place where the desperate are coping to get by, it’s such a real problem tons of people face today but it is watered down by how goofy some of the things are. Once again it’s the same problem as Modok, I should care for this father’s desperation to find his son, I should care about these desperate miners turning to substance abuse to cope with their hopeless prospect of fortune, I SHOULD care about little Melchior Jr talking about his missing dad whom I just murdered in Mariposa. But it is hard for me to care when these hard hitting stories are watered down with a funny Lassy reference or miner owners and Frog brothers having goofy nicknames from characters in Literature.
Well, Melchior was a great magician - look at his magic room from which he just materializes various dangerous creatures of the Wastes!
i feel that Frank Horrigan not being persuadable is alright. The whole ending of Fallout 2 does have issues in comparison, to honestly all the other main fallouts, but the oil rig specifically is pretty good actually, because what it is looking to do was merge the two sites from fallout 1 ending, and give you pieces of all options. You can stealth, and go guns blazing, you can get a good ideaoligical conversation with the president (though him not setting off an alarm does break the immersion a bit), and you get to talk the soldiers into helping you, get to rig the place to explode (though horrigan doing it himself does neuter that aspect) and you can talk a scientist into abandoning the modified FEV project with the implication that he was thrown for a loop when meeting you as he had been isolated all this time. So while certainly not perfect, i don't think it goes against Fallout principles or even necessarily make for a weaker enemy to have him not be persuadable. But certainly elements could have been far better. Just my 2 cents i really enjoyed the video, especially as you have come in to fallout even later than me, i got in at Fallout 3
I chalk it up to Richardson being dumb as a brick due to being inbred and never having been in any actual danger before so he assumes he can talk his way out of it.
Three steps forward two steps back, either way you’re making progress.
“I see this as an absolute win.” - Marvel super mutant
It also could mean they were trying lotsa new ideas
You can't just go left from NCR to find Vault 13, the location will be completely missing on the map until you learn from someone or from a terminal where it is...
maybe mods
Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but in regards to the Highwayman and it’s impact on the setting. According to the developers in the Fallout bible, specifically 5 and 6, the answer to why there aren’t any other cars came down to two things: game logic and development time. Basically the idea was that the highwayman would be a lot less special if you could just go to New Reno and steal someone else’s car, and it was also not feasible to implement working cars for NPCs into the final game. Doesn’t make it any less of a shame but it’s nice to know those paved roads in the NCR are used for more than just decoration. Also in you’re wondering, the working vehicle to living person ratio in Fallout 2 was said to be about 1:200 although most of those vehicles are large construction or farming vehicles.
oh thats really cool
Yeah very cool to know, thanks, friend!
I feel that one thing was overlooked... ... that should never be overlooked ... Myron, baby!
I won’t lie, I was born after years this game was released, And many of the references went straight over my head, thus allowing me to appreciate more the game itself, as I wasn’t drowned in references. I think this allows for what I think two viewpoints to form, the old and new fans of fallout 2
This game is 4 yrs older than I am but I get what you mean for sure. What I can definitely say is that while I think the references are too much, they've definitely aged better than some references in games 10 years younger than them (I still laugh at some fallout 2 jokes, borderlands 2 maybe not as much)
Sup yung bluds
i feel the same way as an early 2000s kid, AND a norwegian so i got even less of the references. first played fallout 2 this year actually, instantly one of my 6 favourite games of all time together with new vegas, fallout 1 is JUST below to me simply because fallout 2 has so much more content, but i agree with most of the assessments of the video about the things it did alot better
hate the people on Navarro? despite being Enclave soldier I found some of them quite charming, like the scientist and his "sweetie", Sgt. Dornan, the kitchen's cooker and the two mechanics in the base
A lot of them are very charming and fun to talk to. My meaning was moreso from a moral level seeing them as representatives of their faction and its ideology if that makes sense
@@ramblelime Yes I get it now, thanks for the answer
@@ramblelime Also this might not make sense and be lore breaking, but if you have low INT character and talk to the guy near the locker with power armor, he won't mock you for your disability or want to "cleanse" you, infact he says he has a brother who is also "slow", so he helps you out and is nice to you(which is a rarity for low INT characters since they usually get negative reaction from NPC'S). Either it means Enclave aren't as purity obsessed as they could've been or... More grim implication, is that they're inbreeding hard and genetic defects are growing in the Enclave. Wish we got clues as to what's the actual answer
or not everyone does what is expected of them @@danielsurvivor1372
@@danielsurvivor1372honestly the inbreeding part is probably what happened. An oil rig usually has about 200 workers so having a gene pool of lets be generous and say it’s doubled 400 is bound to get into some inbreeding
About the spirit dreams and shaman, I understand that some people in the Fallout universe have mildly psychic abilities, such as the child at 188 trading post in NV, or Melchoir in Mariposa.
Yeah, psykers definitely exist in-lore. Just criticizing its use as exposition in this instance
@@ramblelime Great review, yet it's kinda retarded having to apologize publicly for using someone elses reference and having to tie them to political cliches in order to 'not get stained'.
@@ramblelime especially since like you said; its so utterly pointless, you meet him later anyways and not knowing anything of the tribe's situation would likely have been more impactful when you did see him lying on the ground dying
@@Helperbot-2000 Other means (like a limited use long range radio, or even runners that find you periodically) could have been used to deliver the same message without the drawbacks.
@@Sorain1 thats also true, then they could suddenly stop comming to make you wonder why
Its unfortunate this game was so rushed. It came out 1 year after the original and the studio was under pressure to put out another money maker. If they had 6-12 more months to hash it out I bet they could have come up with a more solid narrative and maybe drop the over use of references to current culture. Possibly without that pressure Tim Cain and some others might not have left. With that said, I still enjoyed this game . When I first saw the intro back in 98' I jumped when the enclave soldiers opened fire on the Vault dwellers.
I'm actually glad I've played F2 before F1. After playing sequel I had assumptions about mythical ancestor and savior of Wasteland. Then I played as him. And it torn my heart apart :(
As always, i'd be happy to hear what you liked, what you disliked, and what you think I should do next. More on the way.
About the 'spirit dreams', there are psychics in the fallout universe since the original fallout (they were part of the unity). You continue to see them in new vegas and fallout 4 with the kid under the overpass at the trading post on the 88, who takes off his 'medicine' to tell you his 'thoughts' and mama murphy who basically gives you 'get outta jail free cards' for a couple of missions by getting her stoned outta her mind. Now does fallout 2 expressly state that the drugged out old man is one of the psychics? I don't think it does, but I've always assumed this was the case and it kinda falls in line with the other few psychic characters in the series. The fever dreams are him reaching out and contacting you using his mind to keep you on your quest for the holy geck.
@@joshuawilloughby2696 even if it fits in the lore, it's a lazy plot device imo. Just because it fits doesn't mean it's good
@@ramblelime I can agree with that, all I was saying is it fits in lore wise.
@@joshuawilloughby2696 sweet. I should've mentioned that psykers exist when i talked about it. Does kinda seem like i'm coming at it from a lore perspective rather than a story writing perspective
@@ramblelime you're fine, that is how I thought you were coming at it, because if you missed the psykers in the first game, it would make no sense for him to be sending you fever dreams to talk to you outside of maybe some weird religious aspect. I still rather him over Murphy's 'here is a code that will let you skip chunks of missions and fire fights if you give me pot and morphine.'
So, a couple of nit-picks I have about your statements on the temple of trials! For one, your unarmed skill starts higher than your melee skill, so it's almost always better if you don't focus on melee to unequip the spear. Part of that was on you not paying attention to your skills! The other is that the temple of trials as a whole is completely shit, and they were forced to add it into the game with only 2 weeks left for development, and that's why it's so awful, design-wise! The reason for this was because the higher ups at interplay demanded that they include a tutorial section in the opening game because one of the complaints they had heard (and the only one they seemingly cared about because it involved money) was that Fallout 1 was too hard to figure out the basic gameplay of, so they wanted Black Isle to force players to have to use all the basic functions, stupidly enough.
I consider temple of trials important because it is common in tribals to have rituals, an no one would choose random person and call them choosen one. But the one they presented was bad
The missing kid quest is very good. I never saw that famous US movie about a dog, so when I played it I had no idea of any references. Now using a rope to go down wells and all is an old tradition in fallout which this quest subverts by giving you a red herring that you immediately fell for. The boy is actually alive and well with the Skags, you can go and talk to him and once you make peace with Modoc he is returned to his parents and you get a wholly new armor as a reward. "Doing a funny"... some people =)
Lassie was like a dozen movies, and decades worth of tv shows, not mentioning all the books and other media.
@@coolcoolercoolest212 huh, i had never heard of it before today
Love some classic fallout discourse. Fallout and Fallout 2 I consider together as my favorite game ever. So of course I have some opinions on your opinions, haha! Firstly, I support the "everyone's going to die" mcguffin hunt if only because almost ANY character can get behind that as a motivation. "Find your Dad," "get revenge" and "find your son" kind of pigeon-hole you into either roleplaying a specific character or not really caring about the main questline. Secondly, the Enclave deserves a little more love than you gave it, even though I agree that The Master was a more cohesive and satisfying villain. Navarro had enough characters in it that it DOES humanize the Enclave. There's a friendly, gossipy cook, a scientist who's dating a guard, and the two techs with a professional rivalry! Just people, living lives and following the wrong guy's orders. And last, I know all the silliness is contentious among us fans, and I do agree that San Fran fails as a final settlement, but dammit at least they TRIED something. Some areas worked, some not as much, but I've played Fallout 2 more than 1 because while 1 is a tighter narrative its more serious and consistent tone kept it kinda dull. The humans in the settlements all talked more or less the same and so many characters just felt more lifeless. Letting your writers get sillier has some real value to it I think. Anyway, good video. I enjoyed it. Love to the classic Fallout community!
Re: Frank Horrigan, it seems extremely unlikely that he'd be talked off of his high horse so easily. Besides, the real "final boss" of Fallout 2 is the president, who's willing to talk to you ad nauseam. Frank Horrigan is a terror-soldier and is never presented as having anything resembling a consistent ideological or ethical basis for his actions-- he's "only following orders," as it were. In fact, I can't remember who it was, but there was a Japanese politician who was assassinated by a young fascist leading to WW2. He tried to calm his attacker down saying, "Can't we have a discussion about this?" To which his attacker replied, "No discussion is necessary" -- and shot him. This is the very core of the fascist worldview which the Enclave is meant to evoke, and giving it a "peaceful solution" would detract from the themes the designers are working with. And, to be honest, @ramblelime, your video kind of convinced me that Fallout 2 isn't as good as I remember from my last playthrough 5-10 years ago or so, but the themes of Freudian melancholia -- a sort of pathological grieving over a lost world, with the remnants of a desperately desired though irrevocably lost United States becoming a literal monster in the body of Frank Horrigan -- remains, I think, the absolute finest philosophical point in the game.
Okay commie
Frank Horridan is so far gone in his ideology, he ain't about changing his ideas lmao
Heard the take on Frank and went to the comment section to put my take, but saw a bunch of other people have the same opinion as me, but tossing it in anyways; Not being able to talk him down is fine, not every choice in a game needs to be in a player's control, not everyone can be persuaded, it's gamey and power-trippy to even insinuate such a drugged up madman could be persuaded. The Master was an idealist, Frankie Boy was a fucking monster, and wanting to wax philosophical with every antagonist is a trope i really want to see lose some ground, it's great to humanize some antagonists, but force of nature antagonists/pure evil ones/unreasonable ones are fine & can be written well in conclusion to my miniature comment essay in response to a single thing on a video essay: frank the tank is a cool antagonist that reminds the player that they're living in a world, not a pseudo-intellectual's power fantasy
If I could change anything about any one of my videos it'd probably be that take. Considered for a while taking the vid down bc of how badly I put it but figured it would just be better to let it be and move on
@ramblelime everyone has or poorly worded takes every once in a while, in the end it's just u voicing ur opinion about a game!
You did a phenomenal job on these two videos! I thought I'd watched every Fallout analysis on KZhead, but I'm super stoked to have found these gems. Great job man, I'm excited to see more from your channel in the future.
So I found this on Reddit, and it was a nice surprise This was well thought out and I agree on many points. What other video ideas do you have in mind? Will you perhaps cover Van Buren, NV, or maybe Tactics? Or will you branch off to other series like Mass Effect or The Elder Scrolls?
The problem with covering a lot of the other fallout games (new vegas specifically) is that I don't feel like I have a lot to add to the conversation- everyone knows exactly why new vegas is good and why 3/4 aren't. I haven't given tactics a try but i'm planning on it and it might be something I get to. I have a script going about Disco Elysium right now and another about walking simulator games. I'd also love to get to vampire: the masquerade, morrowind, and mass effect. I have a lot of stuff i'm looking forward to working on. I'm super glad you liked the video!!
@@ramblelime 3/4 are good in their own ways and brought mainstream attention to a series that’s definitely unique in almost everything it does. I would’ve loved to start the series with the original two but I was 1&2 respectively back then and got into 3 when I was around 11/12 after watching my dad play it with the only exception at the time was that I couldn’t be an evil character. 3 is more or less a light remake of 1 in a new area with the same end goal of getting purified water to a civilization and 4 tries it’s best to expand upon it like 2 did with many factions and choices for the character but ultimately falls flat due to boring faction storylines and characters. People complain about the RPG elements but I think they did okay with the leveling system since it makes each level up have instant, noticeable changes to your character instead of adding a few points to skills every level with it only really doing much every 25 points like being able to pick or hack the next level of lock/terminal. The settlement building is cool but poorly implemented and kind of boring with a small amount of items you can put into each settlement preventing you from building something on par with the likes of Diamond City.
@@ramblelimebased
Hey ramblelime, I really enjoyed the video and it seems you have a really good feeling of a solid format after only a few videos. There’s definitely a much larger audience out there for the content you’re producing. I look forward to seeing what you produce next and am happy to say you’ve earned another subscriber! God bless
Caleb Mellstrom thank you so much! I hope one day i can reach some more people. More is definitely on the way!!
32:10 I've seen this brought up a lot and it's unfair. Psykers have been part of fallout lore since fallout 1. The Master in fallout 1 has psionic abilities, he attempted to give these abilities to his followers. You can find 4 of these psychic HUMAN followers in the Cathedral. The village shaman in fallout 2 is also a psyker. Fallout New Vegas has the kid that can see the future. I want EVERYONE to know this about fallout. Psionic powers are 100% canon since fallout 1.
It's not about canon, really. It's not lore-breaking, I understand that now even though I may not have when i wrote the script, but i still stand by the criticism because it's just bad storytelling. It's lazy and abrupt. There are so many other ways they could've motivated the chosen one to back to arroyo, but a spirit dream is a pretty tone-breaking, cheap way of going about it, I think. That's my only problem with it
Haven't finished the video at all as I just started but wow, just wow. The microphone bit is hilarious but the audio quality and how you talk gives off professional KZheadr vibes. Really good, subbing for that one
great videos for both F1 and F2. finally made by someone who doesn't wonder why is a shop owner attacking you if you enter his shop during the night etc. nice work!
I think that Fallout 2 certainly suffered from how much content was left unfinished, but the game should be judged in its final official state, not the restored state. I played Fallout 2 first, so it was my gold standard for Fallout tone for a long time, but I absolutely agree that the first game had the supreme ending of possibly any RPG I’ve ever played with the Master. I always found the Oil Rig very frustrating, but I’m just not clever enough to do that damn electrified floor puzzle without a walkthrough. Do you have any experience with the spin-off titles? I never played Brotherhood of Steel, but I very much enjoyed Tactics when it came out, even if it didn’t really get the lore right.
I agree 100%-that's why i uninstalled the restoration patch before this run! I've never tried the spinoffs but do own tactics. Might give it a go at some point
@@ramblelime now you should try Falliout 1.5 and Fallout Nevada. Or Megamod if you dont want vanilla
my big critique with this is that at the start you lement how the game starts the exact same and wish they had taken a different route. but then at the end youre also sad that they took a different route for the end boss rather then trying to do master 2.0
Restoration project adds a few good places (EPA), interesting people (pre-war soldier, spy or a psycho as a follower) and interesting things to do (for instance, you can buy looted Lieutenant's armor for Marcus), as well as a number of fixes (a mixed bag, I felt like being able to do, say, Toxic Caves or Tandi's quest with INT
EPA was the plueprint for the Big Empty Old World Blues
_Don't_ tell him about the EPA, he'll whine for hours about a "huge dumb immersion breaking location" and "incoherent writing being all over the place"
@@The-jy3yqdon't make an assumption like that, it's never simply a case of "I don't like this" just "I don't like how this was executed" It's always possible for an idea to be executed in a way that can make it more palatable to someone even if other attempts haven't succeeded in that.
I’m Truly on a roll with finding awesome channels lately. Came here after DJ Peach Cobbler’s (who I also found in the past month and a half) recent video and I am a big fan of your stuff as well! Keep up the great work!
Fallout 2 is the superior game, but FO1 is my favorite because the mood was so strong. I felt sadness for the waste that the war represented, for the waste of people like the Master flaying to make things better and working at cross purpose, but also a bit of hope that things could get better and I helped. There was no such strong emotions in FO2. The only other time I felt like that in Fallout was at the Sierra Madre.
Lesson learned: The less time you take on developing a game the better chance of it becoming a great game.
I absolutely love that Frank Horrigan is the only antagonist in the entire series that can't be talked down.
Well, of the Black Isle/Obsidian Fallout titles.
If you think about it the main goal in every fallout game are similar. Find something or find someone. Fallout 1: Find the water chip Fallout 2: Find the G.E.C.K. Fallout Tactics: Find Vault 0 Fallout 3: Find your lost dad Fallout NV: Find the unlikable asshole who tried to kill you Fallout 4: Find your lost son Fallout 5 be like; .... Find a unique health item to cure your sick sister...
My understanding of the "3 step forward and 2 step back" First step forward: Just generally more stuff to do gameplay vise. Besides less unique guns, we get more stuff improving gameplay, like how Charisma now allows you to have more than 1-2 companions of f3/4/NV. First Step Back: Main story is way more boring in F2. And it's not just the main quest objective being boring, it's also main baddies being boring. We went from Super Mutants which were mysteriously shown to be on par with Deathclaws, then shown them as evil and who want to find your Vault and later on you meet their boss and he had perfect explanation of their faction you even have an option to talk him down but it takes both good speech+ knowledge of infertility of S. Mutants to convince him to stop his madness or even join him if you want to rp as "evil" or genuinely believe his cause and you didn't learn the truth(also aren't Super Mutants immortal? So I guess that's also the reason to get dipped into sauce)He's just brilliant antagonist. Same doesn't happen with F2. The faction is unironically generic bad guys, and you can't join em(it makes sense atleast unlike in F3, where we are prime normal from the Vault and yet we still aren't pure enough to join Enclave) Also Frank Hoorigan, he has the most badass voice I've ever heard, but damn is he shallow. He's just "I'm ultra patriotic now die" Ig it's ok, but I'm bumped we can't talk out last boss with both high speech and learning their flaws. Lanius from NV was a step up from Hoorigan(showing they learned from mistakes) he like Hoorigan only appeared infront of you at the end, both have badass voices + filter and both have this "I'm not here to talk, time to die" shtick. But unlike Hoorigan there is a legitimate reason to convince him to stop and we can stop him with speech, barter, or even *hidden knowledge* if you talk to... Ullyses I believe. Aka even more ways to solve conflict then even Master. Who only had violent option, convince he's wrong and he does s*icide, or sneakily explode his location. I got off rails, let's go back. Second step forward has to be lore building, besides Enclave we get even more interesting locations and factions being build. We see consequences of BOS isolationism, we see NCR prosper, we see Marcus ex-Unity member create a new town with BOS guy. We see a lot of interesting lore stuff going on. Second and last step forward is the... *Atmosphere* So many pop culture references. Alot of the time F2 has so many goofy moments that if F3/4 did em, Bethesda would be called out for them. F2 still better than 3 or 4, but that's because gameplay is an actual RPG with tons of quests and multiple ways to solve em, but the atmosphere sometimes ticks me off Final step forward would be how meaty the game is, specifically talking about RPG elements, the quests, the choices, the ending cutscenes. I think I'm kinda repeating my 1st point but really, F2, enclave and some goofy moments aside is just a good case of sequel. It does most of the good stuff from f1 and expands on it.
Technically Lone Wanderer isnt a prime normal. He was born outside the vault to parents who lived most of their lives up to that point in the wasteland (as far as we know). So genetically he'd be just another mutie to them.
@@dantenastasi2278 Oh, well technically they didn't know that right? I don't remember Enclave mentioning that you aren't prime normal in F3 so I assumed the Enclave thought you did came from Vault. Even then it wouldn't justify F3 Enclave not letting you join them since it seems like only crazy AI wants to poison non prime normals and the Autumn seems like ok guy but he just irrationally hostile to us, our father
Very well made video, I disagree with a few of the critiques but your ideas are structured very well and give a lot to think about
I wanted to give a little response to your bit about the car's price: in terms of Smitty, to me he comes off like someone who's fairly happy where he is and doesn't really see much in the way of improving his life, he makes a whole point of saying he doesn't really wanna go anywhere and doesn't care to have the car for himself. with this in mind 2000 bucks is probably enough to cover whatever he really wants to do with his life and besides most people in The Den are so poor that that's already way out of their price range. I will say though the fact that the guys who steal your car only want 3k to buy it off of them (which by your 10mm SMG metric is just 2 more 10mm SMGs) was a bit weird to me.
Frank Horrigan's sheer unflinching anger _is_ a point-of-characterization unto itself. Sometimes, you approach a situation with empathy and understanding, and the man on the other side of the table doesn't want to hear it. Some people just fucking hate you for who and what you are, and there's nothing you can do to personally to deprogram their hatred. Violent supremacists cannot be defeated by giving them a platform and trying to learn from them. I think that the portrayal of the Enclave in Fallout 2 is very good at exposing and exploring this theme, and I _do_ think it comes with an appropriate level of nuance. You can try. You can be the most earnest actor in the world. But you won't be able to talk everyone down from the rage and violence of their worldview.
How are you only getting 1k views, this content is high quality and well put together. I really hope you get the attention you deserve.
I appreciate that a ton man. the algorithm has blessed my 1.5 video so fingers crossed that the luck persists
@@ramblelime That video is how I found your channel, honestly all your fallout videos are stellar. I, and hopefully many more will definitely be sticking around!
It's the good but not great entry of the first four games. There are more flaws than most fans are willing to admit, and there are people who just reflexively hate it for not being the type of game they like. A cycle has repeated so far with Fo ~ FoNV, 2 ~ 3, Tactics ~ 4, FoBoS ~ 76, but I have a sneaking suspicious we aren't getting anything better than the lower tiers.
God bless the Enclave!
Iirc Todd mentioned that they primarily focused on Fallout 2's narrative for drawing inspiration for Fallout 3. It seems that it was taken to be more fun and lighthearted - more palatable for a wider audience. They were right about that, surely. It is very unfortunate that Bethesda hasn't dared or wanted to add much nuance to their ideological groups since Morrowind. If blame was mine to give, I'd waggle my finger at the decentralized nature of their world building. The Imperium vs the Stormcloaks almost got there, although the inept, inefficient and classist bureaucracy of the Imperium was discarded (present in some of the in-game books but not shown in the interactions) which heavily leaned the scales in their favour. Anyway, it's sad that they haven't taken advantage of the narrative opportunities a post-apocalyptic setting offers considering they had two strong examples to lean on.
Even if its very unlikely, but what if the fallout team was making fun of the people who got all these pop culture references by addressing the issue of how much we let our minds rot with Tv & that no one is reading books anymore. Sure most people got the Lassy reference in Fo2 but how many of you knew about the fact that Cesar in Fallout NV was inspired & cited philosophical principles of Georg W. F. Hegel? I genuinely cared about Modoc. Mostly because the breathtaking soundtrack was so beautifully haunting I guess. According to Brian Fargo & or Chris Avelone they stated that there hasn't been a consistent supervision in each section of the developement process. So basically everyone could do their own fockery lol. Which clearly shows but its not the same goofy circus we have in Fallout 4. Tone wise Fallout 1 is the most grim But Fallout 2 may be the "best" fallout game as a whole. Great essay btw
It always felt like the game was too rushed (and it was a buggy shittin mess on launch) and it shows in the fleshing out of the locations. Sadly, it feels like the title bethesda took most of the humor from. The ending of fo1 left me almost feeling jaded in a way. Fo2.. I had no real emotion. The Restoration patch definitely shows they had so much more planned, and it seems more evident that while they had to cut a lot of cool locations, they didn't have time to polish the ones they left in. You ought to give Tictacs a go next
really doesn't surprise me that fallout 2 fans get pissy over rightfully calling out stonetoss as a fascist
i think i'm one of the few people that does not care about the ghost in the den. ghosts can exist no matter the setting. but i have seen so many up in arms about the fact there is a physical ghost in fallout.
The "problem" I have with it is that I've met many people who have criticized the Bethesda era Fallout titles for being too over the top, childish, or ridiculous for their supposed setting. My counter to that is to point to all the insane crap that took place in the Interplay Fallouts, especially Fallout 2 with its ghosts, talking Deathclaws, BDSM Super Mutants, and mole-men. Not to mention the absolute plethora of pop culture references that the devs stuffed the game with (Tardas, anyone?). I have nothing against the older games, but some of their fans have a real bad case of "pot calling the kettle black". Case in point, the entire population of "No Mutants Allowed", which is one of the most insular and toxic communities I've ever encountered in a gaming fandom. Their rose-colored lenses are practically impacted into their skulls, they're so tight.
@@DovahFett the problem with Bethesda's fallout is they double down on fallout 2's issues instead of trying to fix it. Bethesda has this habit of just doing whatever they want retconning and ignoring things lore wise to fit the story they want to tell. it works in elder scrolls as that's an anything goes fantasy setting but it really hurts when doing the same thing with fallout.
I mean ghosts and psychic powers are canon too. So maybe the shaman had some psychic powers.
Yea it's not necessarily lore-breaking and even if it was that wouldn't rlly be the problem, my only issue with them using it is that it feels like a lazy way to do exposition
Man, my friends didn't play classic fallout, I haven't had the opportunity to voice opinions about a lot of the things you mention in this. Surprisingly I agreed with you on almost everything you said, and found myself anticipating your next critique, because it's how I feel about it. lol. This is my all time favorite game. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Who was your favorite companion in FO2?
2:20 all these years, I never noticed the Elder had a bong
Can you actually just go straight to Vault 13 because once I found out the NCR was the future shady sands I thought I would be really clever and just go straight to Vault 13 but I walked up and down the entire line stopping on every single square and I never found it until I went to Vault 15 and got the info for it?
Yeah canonicly Broken Hills becomes a ghost town because diffirent species cant live together . Dispite all efforts theyre just too diffrent to coexist.
😨
Wait. Didn't the city become a ghost town because they mined up all the resources in the area and there was no reason to stay? That had nothing to do with an inability to coexist.
Great video as usual. Are you going to come back to making Fallout videos now that the show has released?
Its hilarious that in the base game you can become a Made Man in all 4 crime families if you do it in a certain order! Unfortunately the only mod worth anything fixed that exploit, mod in question was Killaps Restoration Project. There is nothing better then smashing bishops wife and daughter right under his nose, while also being his right hand man! LMAO
Great video. Looking forward to analysis of New Vegas.
Sulik I believe has a Jamaican accent
I think cars in the Fallout lore aren't supposed to be that rare, they just don't really appear in the games that much besides 2 and tactics due to engine limitations. it doesn't really make sense that after 200 or so years they wouldn't know how to rebuild cars
I think the producer of Fallout 1 (that left Interplay during the early development of Fallout 2) said he wanted to make the tutorial skippable, but the suits above him said no (and never gave him a good reason) :( Edit: his name is Tim Cain. he has a KZhead channel I recommend watching to any Fallout fan
The first time I played Fallout 2, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had to look up guides just to get basic equipment and where to go to next, and some areas (Such as Redding and Modoc), I completely passed up in an attempt to complete the main story. The first time I played Fallout 1, I did a lot of the side content, naturally came across good gear, and beat the story within a relatively short amount of time, all while looking up absolutely nothing about it. I think, to me, at least, this shows how disjointed Fallout 2 is compared to 1.
43:14 honestly its part of the themes of fallout 2 back in the temple trails at the start of the game your last opponent tells you if you talk yourselves out of the you will not be able to do so always. and this is it.. this i that fight you cant avoid.
I started with Fallout 2(among the classics), because it was most endorsed than the 1st. Since it is more "complete" in terms of content and gameplay, I'd prefer this one instead of the 1st, who felt sooo lacking or empty due to the passing of 2 to 1. Fallout 1 still relevant of course in the series, and I still recommend it for the fans of the series.
Dude, I found this channel through DJ Peach Cobbler, and I think you deserve at least 200k right now. This is such a masterpiece!
Man I'm so happy someone else fees the same way I do about 1 and 2. great videos!
intro - the hero's journey.
Great content!! How does this have so few views? Earned a sub, commenting to bump the cruel youtube-algorithm
better retrospective than most.
Do you plan on doing an analysis of every Fallout game? Would love to see it.
Working on a series covering all the big fallout mods right now, but eventually i'd love to. Fallout new vegas would be hard to talk about though, sorta feels like everything that's there to say has been said. Dunno. Stay tuned!
great video my man
Redding, NCR, new reno and vault city are all in a power struggle to decide who controls northern California. It's an easily missed B plot but it's in the same vain as New Vegas. This is the point after the apocalypse where humanity has moved past the "state of nature" or the day to day survival that the fledgling towns of fallout 1 (and i guess 3) have to deal with. Vault city has grown to the point that people can live a life similar to that of prewar America, and Fallout 2 shows this, and I wish that was a bigger focus of the plot, but it's still there in some respect. Both fallout 1 and 2 share a thesis of Humanity will always prevail. We're too stubborn to die. Fallout 1 is just more explicit about it.
I disagree with a lot of your points, but I like your intellectual view of things regardless. Earned a sub
Thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Fallout 2 got tedious, and downright contrived, at points. And even though the Horrigan fight was foreshadowed in the Temple of Trials, it still feels like the game spit in my eye by forcing me into a boss fight at the end.
Fallout 2 and New Vegas both benefited from having most of the work done for them already. They just needed to focus on writing quality and system integration. Which also made it so both games suffered from a rushed development. Since again, "most of the work was already done". In NV's case. So many assets are borrowed from Fallout 3 that the best graphics overhaul for new vegas is the Fallout 3 HD Graphics overhaul. There was a very similar relationship with Fallout 1 and 2.
Amazing Video
Sir, you have earned my subscription :)
Dude I didn’t use skills at all in the first game. I completely forgot it existed
I think both 1 and 2 are just as good and funny aspects isn’t bad but I understand why some dislike that aspect it
You see Frank 4 times before the boss battle, not once at the start like you say
The cutscene where the ship takes off (at about 39 minutes in) looks like a scene from Homeworld.
42:04 You also see him in Deathclaw Vault cutscene and in BOS bunker as well, both are recorded videos of him committing crimes, the Deathclaw one is especially sad since he essentially outpowers a fricking deathclaw with just FISTS and has NO remorse for what is essentially sentient being. P.S. Although maybe it's just restoration patch only features hense you didn't saw it
I play fallout like a good karma serial killing lunatic so I always used melee lol
5:10 what do you mean its unskippable? you can finish the temple of trials without killing a single ant. all you need to do is to end combat when you break line of sight, it's that easy! that's how I did it on my first try
I think it's funny how people will hold up fallout 2 as the beat the franchise can be. But then say bethesda has been ruining it's tone and lore with specific choices, but Fallout 2, Tactics, Bos, and even the canceled plans all seem to be the direction Bethesda chose to follow. Jokes, lined with lots of dark comedy and a depressing world, but constantly detoured for lols. I've played 1, some of 2, and seen lore on tactics and BOS. I read the lore bible and i've played all the newer games several times over. Despite the ovwrall polish quality and the genre direction of 76 itself, it all still feels like fallout to me. As inconsistent and occasionally broken as all hell as it is
You are totally correct. Pretty much every classic fallout/NV gatekeeper who constantly complain that "Bethesda doesn't understand Fallout" is actually the one who doesn't really understand it themselves.
@@youarealwayscorrect the biggest thing i see toted by classic fans is the dev that said "we strives to create a better world, not a better plasma gun" or whatever. But like... ya'll made tactics. And fucking BOS. I don't want to hear it XD at least 76 feels like it could 100% fit into the worlds of 3, nv, and 4. Is it all the same in terms of the story? No. But people wanted a multiplayer game and it's a damn fun one with all it's updates. And you just have to read the lore bible to see why its all works. Because it pulls from the lore bible like ak absolute chad XD
@@voltrainertactics was made by a different team in Australia
Fallout 2 had lots of its wacky comedic moments, sure, but its humorous aspects were intervowen with more serious topics, and intertown politics at play. Bethesda never created anything like Vault City or new Rhino, they never go into cultures or economies of their towns, and they go too far with "scavenging survival" aspects when it was never the point. Bethesda towns exists in a vacuum, Fo2, even with all clown stuff has lots of good writing and interconnected world with different interests at Pkwy
@@tastethecock5203 If i had the energy to actually explain to you how not only were there powers at play in both 3 and 4, and definitely 76, that lead to why those locatioms are what they are, i would do so. But i don't. Because if you can't pay enough attention to the games worlds and stories and the causes for why they are how they are, i don't care to explain it to you.
This is kinda weird, but I always disliked how in fallout their isn't really people still argueing about Communism and capatalism.
Isn't there, though? I mean, they don't call it by their names directly, but you could easily make the point that the followers of the apocalypse are a socialist faction and something like mr house's vegas strip is a capitalist faction
@@ramblelime eh, the followers are more like the peace corps (remember when that was a thing back when the game game out?) But I meant more like people actually having real ideological conflicts. Not just factions that, I dunno do stuff. I guess I get how it's hard to write this because nowadays these ideologies are little more than buzzwords
@@nkosig4995 I mean dude literally just gave you an example, followers of the apocalypse are literally an anarchist group, and Mr house is as ancap as they come, the whole conflict of "capitalism vs communism" is played up to mock the red scare that ran rampant in the 60s so it kinda wouldn't make sense for the pre war forms of communism and capitalism to take place seeing as there is giant mutant lizards and 8 feet tall mutants roaming an irradiated wasteland, of course if you actually understand the definitions of the terms you can certainly attribute political leanings to the factions in New Vegas for example, Caesars legion being auth right fascists, house as ancap/ libertarian etc.
A century plus after the bombs blew the old world away, why would you expect people to be discussing the merits of old world systems of governance they probably don't even know about? To them it's just a barter based economy, it's how it's always been. Maybe some Ghouls will remember, but it's hardly relevant anymore.
Like commented and subscribed 👍
Actually Modoc is not as bad as you think, sure the outhouse explosion is hilarious the fist time you do it it has a nice quest with a neighboring settlement, and Klamath had a Pinky and the Brain reference along with a car upgrade and a good amount of porn mags needed for a late game cheat item. The towns i disliked the most is Redding and Broken Hills. Although in hind sight Redding is not that bad as Broken Hills content wise its still a flawed settlement with lots of cut content, mainly being a point of interest for caravan runs and an aliens refference, however Broken Hills has NO CONTEND what so ever there is a Marcus point of interest, if your fist fallout was Bethesda Fallout, but aside from shoveling shit and beating a scorpion at chess this location should have been removed from the game entirely, even the endgame slides barely mention Broken Hills as if its was an afterthought!
The sarge is a meme of the character from Full Metal Jacket. He still makes me laugh every time i come across the bastard.
What was wrong with the old mic? I always knew to invest in melee weapons in each fallout game, as a matter of course... It's the apocalypse. The bullet factories are all closed. The sword factories never close.
I thing that not being able to convince Horrigan to change his mind says a lot about society. Which is fitting for Fallout 2 being all about society.
Frank is a good soldier, he does what he's told
My friend unindents Fallout 1 because he couldnt figure out the combat system on his own and hated the graphics. I laughed because I remember not knowing how to do combat in F1 myself but it was rewarding when i was teaching myself through experimentation and observation.
32:13..maybe is i more of a psychic thing. the master in the first game had physic powers..it wouldnt be a stretch that this is also sort of result wasteland mutation
Trinston was here.
The NCR use trucks in New Vegas so idk how super duper expensive the highwayman would be. my head cannon is that the highwayman is a total piece of shit (constantly breaks down) that the chosen one somehow just barely keeps together.
But the video is great, you get all the elements that was done right and wrong and explain it very well. I do agree with you on every fallout related word in this video exept the Frank Horrigan part. I do think, that it's cool that you can't win over him by talking. He's not as smart as the Master, he's just a grunt, a fanatic grunt. There's no point in talking with people like this.
You can reference something without endorsing it. Nobody with anything of worth to say genuinely cares whether or not you don't like stonetoss.
1. Frank Horrigan was never about depth to me. There were two types of Enclave soldiers to me, those who were normal enough to care about their livelihood and families (like how you convinced some soldiers at the Oil Rig to join you), and the loyalists who believed in the Enclave's fucked up and racist cause. Frank fell into the latter for me, and it was a lot about his loyalty to this organization made him intimidating and not just his stature. I don't necessarily have a problem with him being unconvinced of whatever you'll say to him, because if I can tell the Master that he doesn't know the word sterile then I can pretty much beat FO2 without focusing much on combat (but then again I'm not really a fan of mathematical combat for Fallout so...). 2. I'm surprised you never talked about the Enclave scientist who you can convince that their plan to exterminate the Wasteland is messed up and that humanity is still humanity even with the radiation. If you were looking for more dimension with the Enclave then that's one of the things you can do in the Oil Rig. 3. You also never talked about the companions in the video, especially Goris. Surprising to say the least.
*me just strolling by and meeting Marcus*: oh look! an actually friendly and intelligent mutant Marcus: ill dip your ass too dont get it twisted. Me:....well nvm then....
I'm kind of surprised you didn't talk more about the Intelligent Deathclaws of Vault 13, since to me they are something that fits so perfectly into Fallout. They are a man made creation of war, their existence is just there to be shot at and to kill. And yet thanks to their intelligence they learned that they're just used and that there's a different way to live without fighting. The fact that all they really want is to live peacefully is something that genuinly surprised and cemented Fallout 2 as my favourite game, just because it had the balls to make a group of giant murder lizard a sympathetic faction of peace. And in every playthrough of Fallout i do, i make sure to do everything i can to keep them safe. I still wish they were brought back in FNV as the Deathlcaws inhabiting the Quarry, but that's probably just me. You also seem to have missed Gorris, the talking Deathclaw Scholar Companion. Atleast if the footage is anything to go by.
32:20 Uhm... and what about mutants with psionic powers in FO1? =)
Roman Markoff also bad, however in fallout 1 the fact that there are mutants with powers like that isn't used as cheap exposition delivery like it is in fo2, so, slightly more forgivable
Maybe this is me, but Frank being an unrelenting Machine of Death is genuinely better characterization. Why is he so devoted/committed? Because he spent his entire life being experimented upon and forced fed propaganda. If he HAD engaged in conversation, it would be wildly and violently off course No, I think you should’ve been able to talk the President down and Frank refuses. He’s not even a person anymore, he’s the Enclaves perfect tool. Hell, for as much as he loves to throw around ‘Mutie’ he’s more mutated then you are!