- Post nuclear apocalyptic retro-future.
- Improved combat AI for friends and foes alike.
- More dangerous weapons, tougher armor, and new skills and abilities.
- Super-mutants, robo-dogs, and ghouls.
- Real-time movement with , turn-based combat on an isometric perspective graphics engine.
.com
----
You are the Chosen One, the direct descendant of the Vault
Dweller. The village elders have selected you to wear the sacred
Vault-suit of your grandsire and, in time, to ascend to the
leadership of your people. First, you must prove your devotion to
your people. Your tribe needs help.
If you are truly the Chosen One, then you alone are capable of
cling the heritage of the Vault Dweller, to take back your
birthright. Among the many wonders described in hallowed yellow
pages of the Vault Dweller's Survival Guide is the Garden of Eden
Creation Kit. The GECK is said to have the power to turn the
harsh Wastes into a fruitful paradise. The Vault Dweller's
Survival Manual promises the redemption of the GECK to all Vault
Dwellers.
Your tribe has survived more than ten years of drought, but now
their reserves are at an end. You must find Vault 13 and cl
the technology that your tribe needs to survive. If you fail in
this quest, your tribe will surely die. You must travel the
perilous Wastes on a holy quest to find Vault 13, the same Vault
that cruelly cast your grandsire out into the Wastes 80 years
ago. The Vault owes you. The Vault owes your tribe. Now it's time
to collect.
From the Manufacturer
---------------------
In this postnuclear role-playing game, you are the Chosen One,
the direct descendant of the Vault Dweller. The village elders
have selected you to wear the sacred Vault-suit of your grandsire
and, in time, to ascend to the leadership of your people. First
you must prove your devotion to your people. Your tribe needs
help. If you are truly the Chosen One, then you alone are capable
of cling the heritage of the Vault Dweller to take back your
birthright. Your tribe has survived over 10 years of drought, but
now their reserves are at an end. You must find Vault 13 and
cl the technology that your tribe needs to survive. If you
fail in this quest, your tribe will surely die. You must travel
the perilous Wastes on a holy quest to find Vault 13--the same
Vault that cruelly cast your grandsire out into the Wastes 80
years ago. The Vault owes you. The Vault owes your tribe. Now it
is time to collect.
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Review
------
The original Fallout provided gamers with the rtunity to
truly "role-play" a variety of highly personalized characters in
a stylish, postapocalyptic setting. Since Fallout was almost
universally heralded as 1997's best role-playing game, it's not
surprising that developer Interplay Productions decided to
quickly follow up on the success of the original game with a
sequel using a substantially similar game engine. Fallout 2
improves the already impressive -combat and
character-development systems of Fallout, allows gamers to
explore a more expansive gaming world without imposed time
constraints, and accordingly, is in many ways an even better game
than its predecessor. However, the initial release of Fallout 2
is also afflicted by a number of bugs and other gameplay quirks,
which suggests that the game was released before it was
thoroughly play-tested and debugged. But even though Fallout 2
was released prematurely, it still delivers an outstanding
role-playing experience.
Fallout 2, like the original game, combines real-time movement
with , turn-based combat. The isometric perspective
graphics engine is now capable of a couple of new tricks, such as
depicting "glowing" torches and similar items, but is otherwise
almost identical to the one used by its predecessor. While there
are a couple of new tunes, the haunting and apt music is largely
recycled from the original game. Fallout 2 is essentially a "more
of the same" sequel that adopts many aspects of the original game
with only minor tweaking, but the development team did make a
number of notable improvements to certain elements of the game's
design.
In Fallout 2 you assume the role of the Chosen One, a tribal
ancestor of Fallout's vault dweller, 80 years after the events
that transpired in the original game. Your character's people
have carved out a modest settlement in an isolated corner of the
futuristic Californian wasteland, but they realize that their
attempts to eke out a meager existence are doomed to failure
unless they find a "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" to revitalize
their village. While your character's main quest is to retrieve a
GECK, in the course of your search you'll encounter assorted
communities of misfits and monsters, ranging from rtunistic
gangsters and elitists willing to exploit the less fortunate, to
radiated, war-time survivors, supermutants, and evolved critters.
Perhaps even more so than its predecessor, Fallout 2 contains
dozens of subtle and more often not-so-subtle references to cult
movies, television icons, and other aspects of popular culture.
You'll likely recognize characters and elements from varied
sources such as professional boxing, Monty Python, Martin
Scorsese films, and Scientology, all incorporated into the
sometimes strangely familiar world of Fallout 2. With a brothel
in nearly every town, a variety of sexual character traits and
perks, foul-mouthed companions, and the Dirty Harry-esque ability
to graphically blow your enemies' heads clean off, sex and
violence clearly play prominent roles in Fallout 2's world.
The character creation and development systems are almost
identical to those in Fallout. Your character has ten primary
skills, up to two optional traits, which both benefit and
penalize, and a large variety of enhancing "perks" (several of
which are new) that become available as your character completes
quests and gains experience levels. The skills are all straight
from the original game, but some of the more exotic skills such
as "science" and "repair" are considerably more useful than they
were in Fallout. The Fallout games both allow you to create truly
individualized characters, which you can then role-play
essentially as you see fit. In the Fallout games you can choose
to play a righteous avenger, a nonviolent scientist, a
self-motivated bigot, an evil sociopath, a jinxed moron, or some
personalized variation of these character types, and you'll
experience the game quite differently depending upon your
character's attributes and actions.
The core of Fallout's accled combat system was
migrated to the sequel with only a few, notable changes. There
are a number of new modern and futuristic weapons available, and
budding Jackie Chans will be pleased to learn that there is also
a variety of new unarmed combat options. In Fallout, you could
ignore most of the weapons in the game by advancing almost
immediately from using rudimentary knives and spears to rocket
launchers and turbo laser s. Fallout 2, however, requires you
to rely upon weaker or moderately powered weapons during the
early stages of the game and appropriately limits access to the
otherwise unbalancing BFGs and incinerators until later in the
game.
Like the original game, in Fallout 2 your character can be
accompanied by a number of computer-controlled nonplayer
characters. Unlike in Fallout, nonplayer characters can now wear
armor and gain proficiency in skills as your character does,
making them more consistently useful during the course of the
game. While in Fallout you were forced to use the "steal" command
to trade items with your companions, you can now trade with your
party members using a new - you guessed it - "trade" interface
option. You can also get nonplayer characters to move out of your
way, if need be, which was a somewhat glaring omission from the
original game.
Also new is an interface to allow you to customize your
companions' actions in combat. While the available options will
vary depending upon each companion's inherent personality, the
interface is intended to permit you to influence the way a
companion reacts in certain situations. Unfortunately, at least
in the initial release of the game, the companions don't seem to
always react in a manner consistent with their settings and tend
to occasionally run away in terror when commanded to fight until
they drop. The path-finding abilities of nonplayer characters
could also use some work, as they have a tendency to gleefully
parade through visible mine fields or other hazardous areas. A
patch, currently in beta form, intends to address, among other
things, the bizarre reactions of nonplayer characters in certain
circumstances. Unfortunately the patch is required for a variety
of other purposes as well.
Black Isle has already issued a couple of versions of a beta
patch that purports to fix most of these problems, but the patch
invalidates previously saved games. Fortunately, most of the
game's bugs are minor, and even in its originally released state,
the game can be played to completion. Still, it's disappointing
that the game wasn't thoroughly debugged prior to release, and
gamers not content to overlook the game's bugs and quirks may
find the game an occasionally frustrating experience. But even in
its current state, there are numerous little design details that
collectively raise Fallout 2 above its competitors, such as the
detailed conversations nonplayer characters occasionally have
between themselves, the "special" encounters, the comic-
ghouls who appear in a variety of situations, and some absolutely
inspired quest objectives and solutions. The core elements of
1997's best role-playing game are intact and, in several ways,
have been improved. Highly recommended. --Desslock
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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