Fallout 2

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

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 397 ratings with 14 reviews)

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

Flexible role-playing in all its glory

The Good
As a sequel to one of the most perfectly crafted role-playing games in history, all Fallout 2 had to do is preserve every single element from its predecessor, give us new locations with new quests, and we would have accepted it with gratitude. However, the developers went further and expanded Fallout with utmost generosity. Fallout 2 is not just bigger: it is more colorful, more varied, and the freedom of role-playing it offers is positively staggering.

I won't discuss the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system or the series' design philosophy in detail in this review, since they are pretty much identical to the first game. I'll therefore specifically refer to things Fallout 2 does better than its predecessor in this section.

For starters, the game world is much larger. Those who say it's too large miss the whole point of world size in free-form RPGs: you go where you want to go, not because a scripted plot takes you there. There are only a few requirements you have to meet to reach the ending - everything else is entirely up to you. Which means that you can complete Fallout 2 without even having seen some of its major locations. If this is not replay value then I don't know what is. You are basically given a gigantic playground where you can do whatever you want.

The new locations are not just bigger - they are more interesting and more diverse. The "sinful" city of New Reno or the Chinatown in San Francisco are just examples of memorable locations that break the post-apocalyptic monotony of the wasteland. There are more setpieces, more unique and unusual quests, and a richer setting that includes, among others, tribal villages, haunted caves, secret bases, encounters with ghosts, aliens, etc. You never know how the next location you decide to visit will look like, or whom or what you are going to see there. And you can even use a cool retro car for easier transportation.

Larger and stylistically more heterogeneous world paired with the fantastically flexible design philosophy of Fallout results in even more choice. Role-playing in this game ranges from being a naive provincial kid respecting his traditions and choosing a spiritual path devoid of any violence to a greedy slave trader and maniacal child killer who betrays and backstabs everyone who trusts him. High intelligence will help you to get through this game's complex world without a single combat engagement, but nothing can prevent you from drugging yourself, stealing powerful energy weapons and mowing down populations of entire cities.

One of the most important improvements over the original is party management. No more stupid companions who will go fight some critters in the corner of the map while you are being demolished by tough deathclaws. You now have a combat management menu available, accessing which allows you to tell your friends exactly what you want them to do. They will attack, according to your instructions, either the toughest enemy, or the one who is currently attacking you, or any enemy of their own choice. They will finally be able to wear the armor you give them. They will use any drugs if you tell them so, or will fight until the bitter end without healing themselves even once.

The interface is still a bit wonky when dealing with your companions, but at least you gain some of the much-needed control. Also, party members are noticeably more interesting than the somewhat bleak figures of the first Fallout: there is more dialogue and much more insight into their personalities, which also leads to different reactions to your deeds and less erratic behavior.

The Bad
The problem with sequels to great games is that no matter what the sequel tries to do it cannot change too much, for fear of damaging the delicate balance of components responsible for said greatness. They can mostly only go for quantity - expanding the game world, adding characters, items, etc. Thus, even the best sequels will always be accused of either copying too much or, conversely, adding unwanted content.

In a game like Fallout 2, this is much less of a problem, since the majority of content is optional - if you don't like a certain town, just don't visit it; if you think a certain quest is ridiculous, don't take it. Still, I can see where much of the criticism leveled at the game is coming from: in an effort to add as much content as they could, the developers sometimes crossed the line between meaningful additions and random stuff they had to put in just because they liked it. The humor, for example, is mostly hit-and-miss, and can be a bit jarring with its pop culture references, somewhat disrupting the genuinely grim atmosphere the original game boasted. Also, the main plot is frankly silly, with confusing pacing and continuity problems, and a cartoony showdown in the end.

The Bottom Line
Fallout 2 is a classic case of quality sequel-producing: more content, more variety, and tweaked gameplay mechanics that make it even more exciting than its venerable predecessor. If you disregard minor problems commonly encountered in sequels, you'll be rewarded with an incredible role-playing game, a vast universe full of gaming goodness squeezed onto a single CD.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2014

Better game mechanics than the original, but not quite as "edgy"

The Good
(This assumes you have played the original Fallout.)

Primarily, Fallout 2 fixed a lot of the annoying game mechanics found in the original Fallout. Things like...

  • NPC interaction is vastly improved; you now no longer need to use the "steal" skill to move items, and you can give specifics for equipment use and combat behavior.
  • You can push NPCs (and other in-game characters) out of the way. This is a Good Thing, especially if you have ever gotten stuck in the original because an NPC was blocking a doorway you needed to go through.
  • You can transfer more than 999 items of one type at once. This is a big deal for money, so you can spend more than 999 dollars at a time.
  • Allies in combat are highlighted in green, and neutral/non-combatants are yellow. The green was a perk (Friendly Foe) in the original Fallout, but now comes standard. Which is nice, because all those guys in leather jackets can start to look alike.

There are a ton of areas you can explore, and dozens of new items and weapons. Each area has a number of minor quests you can complete, and there are quite a few hidden areas that will only show up under certain circumstances. It is easier to play this game as a "bad guy" than it was to play the original game that way, and replayability is high because there are so many choices your character can make.

The Bad
While the game does introduce some more "adult" topics such as racism/slavery, organized crime, drug farms, and political corruption, overall the story just seems a bit more... well... goofy. Some examples:

  • Myron the super nerd NPC
  • You can become a porn star (really, don't you have anything better to do?)
  • The stereotypical "shotgun" wedding
  • Joining the mafia (kind of interesting, but not very realistic)
  • The car (a "Deus Ex Machina" item; it just means that overland travel is too slow and you have to carry too many items at once to successfully complete the game)
  • The Hubologists (a blatant mockery of Scientologists)
  • The aliens; I guess they needed "tougher" bad guys than just mutants, so they had the aliens land (plus, they just look silly)
  • There are a number of "special" random encounters that are tie-ins to various movies (the bridgekeeper, the tin woodsman), or are just plain odd (the exploding cattle)

I could go on, but you get the point.

One other thing I found annoying is that this game is really, really hard to get started with. Since your character is a "tribal", you are limited with your initial equipment and surroundings. It takes way too long to get a decent weapon, and the initial encounters (particularly the geckos/fire geckos) often left me saving and restoring more than I would have liked.

The Bottom Line
Less of a true post-apocalyptic style adventure than the original, but definitely worthwhile. If you liked the original, the improved mechanics will be a welcome change... just don't expect quite as "gritty" of an adventure.

Windows · by Mirrorshades2k (274) · 2005

[ 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 (10503) 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 January 01, 2014. They were readded to the catalogue with Bethesda as publisher on August 26, 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 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 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. Beware, these are not for kids!

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

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.

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. Little has been revealed after that initial announcement.

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)

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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 March 28, 2024.