Windows

Fallout 2

Trivia

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".

On the "bridge of death" encounter (man in robe guarding bridge) ("Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see."), if you make the man explode by asking HIM a question, 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.

Contributed by LepricahnsGold (42894) on May 03, 2008.

Unicorn B. Lynx's trivia contribution mentioned an encounter "somewhere between Navarro and San Francisco." The purpose of this trivia contribution is to elaborate more on the encounter itself.

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.

Like Unicorn B. Lynx said, 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.

This encounter is reminiscent of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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."

Contributed by twinmoon (2111) on Dec 25, 2006.

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. Little has been revealed after that initial announcement.

Contributed by Santa (847) on Jul 13, 2006.

According to an earlier Trivia post "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". While this is the true reason why the sequel was never released, Fallout 2 was eventually ported to the Macintosh. 2003 saw the release of Fallout 2 for MacOS X. So it came out five years after the original Windows release as a full price Mac game!

The original Fallout has also been re-released for OS X.

The absence of children as NPCs in the German version of Fallout 2 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.

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). With the release of the editor and script compiler by Interplay (and subsequent demise of both Black Isle and Interplay), 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.

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 on this site.

Contributed by Sciere (119181) on Jan 08, 2004.

As in 2003 Black Isle released their editor to fallout 2, some fans come together and fixed a lot of the bugs from the game and made little changes to the game. The latest fanpatch you can find under http://www.nma-fallout.com/files/index.php?action=category&id=31

Contributed by Der.Archivar (602) on Nov 30, 2003.

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

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! Now that was a short trip... ;D

Contributed by Unicorn B. Lynx (63268) on Mar 01, 2003.

I had a very amusing encounter somewhere between Navarro and San Francisco. A robed guy approached me and said I had to answer some questions. First, he asked me to tell him my name and the purpose of my quest. Then, he asked me what NPC survived from the original "Fallout". I chose correctly "Dogmeat", and he went away, saying something like: "Why do I always get such stupid jobs!"

Contributed by Unicorn B. Lynx (63268) on Mar 01, 2003.

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...

[Editor's note: The German version includes further censoring. For example, there are no children in the game; they are replaced by grown-ups.]

Some copies of Fallout 2 came with a free Player's Guide and Gamemaster Guide for TSR's Alternity science fiction roleplaying game in PDF form. You can tell if yours has if if a green leaflet came on your box and you have an Alternity folder in your game cd.

The music played in the opening sequence is "A Kiss to Build a Dream On", as performed by Louis Armstrong.

'Fallout 2', along with 'Fallout', were together named the #4 games of the Top 50 Games of all time, by the editors of PC Gamer magazine in the October 2001 issue.

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.

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.

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

The original release was the buggiest thing this side of Ultima IX, 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 (like me) 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.

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.

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".

If you hold shift while on the main screen and click on the "credits", some designer quotes pop-up. Beware, these are not for kids!

Initially, Fallout was planned to use Steve Jackson Games' GURPS system, but Interplay & Steve Jackson disagreed over the content of the game, and thus they parted ways. Fallout uses an internally developed system.