gavin gold wrote:

@IRORIEH When I think about good dialogue in a game, I think about Bioshock. It's concise, it's well written, and it is always important because it always adds something to the plot, to the world or to the characters. Dialogue that has absolutely no purpose and adds nothing to any of those is just the devs jerking themselves off to how smart they think they are.

Think about it this way, people can generally agree that realism in games is a good thing (if there's one thing you can always count on is people complaining that x mechanic doesn't make sense, or it's too gamey, or that it's wrong because it doesn't mirror the way it happens in real life), but if I gave you a game where you have to sit for hours to file taxes, would that be fun? No, there's such a thing as becoming too realistic. Similarly, dialogue that is complex and intricate is a good thing, when the protagonists do it, because it serves a purpose. If every character in the game is just waiting to give you a speech, that's both pointless and tiresome.

By the way, and here's why I say the devs are not that great at writing, people have to learn to get to the point. Just because what you're saying is interesting doesn't mean you can take 2 hours to get it out. I can't tell you how many times I was playing NV and going through some endless pointless dialogue going "JUST SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET TO THE IMPORTANT PART". Those scientists at Big Mt in particular are insufferable.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about what some random guy behind a desk thinks. I'm not trying to be rude here or anything, I just genuinely don't care.

Now, to your other question, I started playing simply because people told me it was good and I wanted to give it a try; I'll give almost anything a try. And I went in with an open mind. In fact, I wanted it to be fun; I like the franchise. And I gave it like 10 tries before rage quitting.

But I will defend my final statement. You can't roleplay as a pacifist. You can in the sense that it is possible for you to make that character, but you will get eviscerated, because there's as much combat as there is in any other game. If your character isn't good at fighting, you're screwed. For you to be able to play as a pacifist or a scientist or something like that, you'd have to be able to bypass combat altogether.

And again, everything in your post literally confirms what I said, even down to the part about Bioshock which is a great game, but certainly not an rpg. I'm sorry if you don't like dialogue and lore, but that is literally every RPG ever. KoToR, Dragon Age, TeS, Mass Effect... You're going to get into situations where you have to listen to dialogue, it's how the world is built, it's how the story is developed and yes I'm sorry but in a game with complex faction mechanics and choices to consider you will have to listen to the opinions and thoughts of random people because it's more interactive than listening to or reading a log.

The RPG is built on this. How the hell do you build a world, an entire universe with various factions, sub factions, nations, wars, alternative histories, religions and deep lore without dialogue? And no, it doesn't have to be concise, just so that you can go and shoot something if you get bored. It's storytelling. I've spent years studying this so I have a fair idea of how the general concept of storytelling works. Besides, comparing Bioshock, a very contained narrative with a tiny central cast to a sprawling narrative with dozens, if not a hundred plus character, dozens of locations, tons of quests and side quests is just a case of apples and oranges. I don't have time to explain how RPGs work and the concept of world building at length, but your hyper focus on all this seems more to me like a big reach to just avoid admitting this game isn't for you.

Again, everything here screams "I don't like it" and that's fine, but you're substituting "I don't like it" for "it's bad" when it's kind of clear you don't really get what it is. Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean it's bad. I don't really like Fallout 4 for example, but it doesn't mean it's a bad game. It just doesn't appeal to me. I don't need to find reasons to dislike it and convince others that it's bad just because.

If you can't do pacifist runs of Fallout 2 how are there so many guides, both video and text, explaining how to do it? I don't get why you're so hung up on something that can literally be disproved by a Google search.

@IRORIEH

- Being verbose is not a virtue. Not saying there aren't some people who might love it, but it doesn't equal good. I have no problem listening to dialogue, far from it. If the character has something interesting to say, I'm happy to listen. I'm arguing against the notion that overtly complex or excessive dialogue is high quality dialogue.

- Storytelling is based on engaging the reader (or player in this case). Dialogue that serves no purpose is not storytelling. Is just wanna-be-writer devs jerking off. House, Ulysses, or Caesar can -and should- have complex personalities, but when every random NPC is prepared to give you a speech, and one that doesn't really say anything on top of it, that's not good storytelling, that's filler.

- I was using Bioshock as an example because, to me at least, it's the epitome of storytelling in games. I have played other RPGs. I have played TES, I have played Fable... They make an excellent job at storytelling and building an immersive world around the player, are they are not nearly as verbose.

- I agreed nearly from the beginning on the fact that the format might not be for me. I am arguing from my perspective. So what? Am I not allowed to say the game is bad based on the flaws as I perceive them? Isn't that exactly what the people who hate FO4 do? In fact, I think I'm being far more fair. I judge the game as an RPG. Most people judge FO4 as an RPG even though it's supposed to be an FPS with RPG elements.

- And finally, I am sure it is possible to make a character that is not combat oriented and, through other skills, reduce the amount of fighting that you engage in. In order to truly roleplay as a pacifist, you'd have to be able to avoid combat altogether. And you can't. The very first mission involves combat. You might finish the mission without combat, but you still have to fight your way through. And I don't see how that changes in any other Fallout, except perhaps that the customization was much deeper in the classic ones.

I wish you hadn't been told that it was viable to try a pacifist run on a really hard game (especially if you didn't grow up with games from that era.) It's technically possible, but winning the top jackpot in the lottery is also technically possible. But not likely on a first run without a million reloads or reading some guide about "how to win fallout 2 without killing, step by step." They might have destroyed your chance to enjoy the game. You unknowingly selected "hugely difficult hard mode" basically, and the fact that it's so easy to accidentally select "really hard mode" without knowing it, I guess, is a valid complaint... not all skills are equal, but yeah, science is still at times hugely useful, just not against radscorpions... usually.

I think my first character had tagged science, guns, and speech. I learned how lethal the world was and avoided or talked my way out of unnecessary fights. Don't go for a 1 or a 2 in any stat, that's basically catastrophically crippled/brain dead. Eventually learned energy weapons much later on, which were the mysterious "light bringers" rumored to be able to slice people in half.

But as for wandering encounters (I bet I know which ones you're having trouble with) it's often best to just immediately run away at low levels, even with someone skilled in guns, and try a different direction. Later on you might be able to fight battles for the hell of it, but early on, no sense in fighting for no reason when you can just flee. At worst, these random animals and such are a waste of ammo.

Unpopular opinion, but I didn't super-love fallout 2's combat system. The companions could be useful, but were tactically idiots (never, ever give them automatic weapons or explosives, or stand in front of them while they're shooting.) Thank goodness you get the car eventually.

I preferred Jagged Alliance 2 and x-com for tactical turn-based combat, so I avoided battles that I didn't see as worth fighting in Fallout 2, whenever I could. You want me to fight, buddy? Make sure it's for a worthwhile cause or well-paid. Otherwise, fix it yourself, Preston.

But then, for it was about the dialogue and the chance to change the world with my choices in so many ways. Fallout 2's dialogue system and how choice mattered was completely revolutionary at the time. The rest of the game was just extras. It's never been fully replicated.

@Sirdanest At first, I tagged energy weapons, speech and barter, jut like in NV. I picked the sex appeal and gifted traits. Then I set the attributes like this: S6 - P6 - E6 - C7 - I7 - A6 - L9.

Is at this point that I start to realize I've been lied to. But I kept going.

Because I kept dying to ants after missing 40 times in a row, I decided, with a lot of pain in my soul, to untag my beloved energy weapons and instead tag unarmed combat. :insertvomitingfacehere:

Then I realized I actually had a spear so I tagged melee instead. Knowing full well I'm wasting a tag because the moment I find a damn gun I won't be using melee again, but I'm sick of missing, so fine.

Turns out it didn't help that much. The god awful combat system still has me missing about 60% of the time, even with melee only slightly under 50. I had to turn down the combat level to wimpy (it was in normal btw). But hey, at least I could finish the first dungeon.

I kept going until I found the damn robot next to the crashed vertibird. I tried to run, because just by looking at it I could tell it's more than I could handle. But it kept giving me the same message "You can't end combat with hostile creatures around".

Honestly though, I could put up with all that stuff. Ultimately it's just that the game is not fun, it's a chore. Because even if I had gone for a combat monster, there's absolutely nothing good about the combat system.

If I want to make the world my own I'll just play Fable 3. I don't play games to read dialogue.

When you picked up one of the older RPGs or turn-based strategy games of this era; everything from the Crescent Hawks to X-com to Fallout; you got the game in the box with the manual, yes. Nobody had figured out how to make 'tool-tips' appear when you hovered over something with a mouse, and some even fought illegal game copying by putting absurd questions in games you needed to answer from the manual and by putting information you really needed into the manual that came with it. By starting one of the Fallout 1/2 games without the manual or having looked into it beforehand, you were handicapping yourself from the start; and yes, this is a bad thing. Newer games are more intuitive and give more information inside the game itself at every step, helping you make informed decisions.


Then you have interface issues which are actually a subset of the 'Didn't look into it or read the manual'; quite a bit of the interface requires several clicks and interactions to resolve, and to know how to do it, while a more modern game would have a big shiny button to resolve it in one click and give you a warning that the trade you were about to make was unfair for you. This includes the combat interface, where the different kinds of attacks, which cost different amounts of action points, do different damage, have different accuracy values, are important to be aware of in order to have your non-combat-god character actually handle himself against a swarm of dog-sized insects.


A good way to look at it is Xcom/Xcom 2, the new versions; at normal and higher difficulty, these can be brutally difficult games; but not even close to the difficulty of easy mode in the classics(And you could have more people on a mission back then as well...). Even if we tuned up the difficulty on the new versions, all of the interface upgrades we've made to games over the years help tremendously. You look at the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and compare it to Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2, and the difference is truly ridiculous in terms of how much easier to use the interface is.


All that being said, that brings us to the areas that are more questionable. Part of the whole point of role-playing games is that not all of the dialogue or information needs to be important to the central plot. It isn't about telling the story of saving the world from a bunch of inbred morons on a oil rig, its telling the story about your character and his adventures in the wild. Is it a good thing that you now have a navigational marker telling you exactly where the target location is, as opposed to the older games that gave you directions about where to go via dialogue, and had NPCs that you could ask for directions? Mixed bag; its definitely -easier-, and makes things faster, but a bit immersion-breaking for your pip-boy to be able to tell you exactly where each of the six bandits is at all times.



And when people bring up the lack of dialogue options in fallout 4, it really is as bad as he asserted in that initial comment; even worse, sometimes. You aren't even able to say no in some of Fo4s conversations, your responses end up being 'Yes', 'Enthusiastic yes', or 'Sarcastic yes', or 'Run away to avoid finishing this conversation', which isn't actually a valid response, just what you have to do if you don't want to agree, while in fallout 1/2 there would have been a variety of options that might have left that NPC hating you, liking you, afraid of you, or told you why he was doing what he was. If the institute was in Fallout 2, and the guy running it was still your son, "Why the hell are you unleashing packs of supermutants on the commonwealth, murdering people, dismantling organized towns/cities, and overall just being a classic sadistic monster? How am I supposed to -not- want to kill my own son after learning what sort of evil he is?" If it were Fallout 1/2, you'd have been able to resolve the Institute portion of the quest by convincing 'Father' to turn from the path of evil, in large part by being skilled and thorough enough to present him proof the Institute was evil, and convincing Maxson to allow the synths to live, by hunting down evidence, finding good synths, hell, from some of the things you do in fallout 1 maybe you'd convince him -he- was a synth so he'd either kill himself or work with you. In fallout 1, you can win the game by doing research and being intelligent/capable when you walk up to talk to the final boss. (Granted, as you've learned, beating the game without combat skill requires both luck and capability in building your character)



I suppose the big thing is that the latest Fallout games do -very- well at the 'Game' part, even better than 1/2 did, and while 3/New Vegas do 'okay' at the 'Role-Playing' part(Honestly, New Vegas is still my favorite Fallout game overall), 4 is a failure at it, both in terms of ability to define your character and tell their story through the game. When you start fallout 4, you can change how your girl, or guy, looks; but who they are is defined already. You are a former soldier if you're a guy, or a former lawyer if you're a girl. You don't pick any skills; there aren't any skills; so even that limited bit of background has zero impact on the game other than a few dialogue choices with an old robot and being able to see your degree in the house. It'd be nice if you could've decided to be a female soldier; maybe a medic, all things considered; or a male lawyer, and get a few advantages from it.



If I could take all the dialogue, characters, and story from Fallout 1/2 and incorporate them into the interface of one of the newer turn-based rpgs like the various Shadowrun games, with all the advantages of a modern interface, then, much how the shadowrun games are much better RPGs than Fallout 3/4, so would Fallout 1/2 be. Instead, I'd say it comes out fairly close to even; all of the cool things about Fallout 2 are awesome; but wrapped in a very dated, unfortunate, package.

I personally think that the character creation shouldn't have allowed tagging (or at least included a warning) of energy weapons. It really screws you over if it's your first blind playthrough, it's definitely an example of "accidental secret hard mode" for a new player.


I seem to remember having to fight ants either unarmed or with a spear, and my character didn't have skill in either. I think I ran past a number of them... ran away a lot. From... everything I could run from, that didn't require a kill for quest completion, until I had a gun, and even then ran away a lot.
Running away constantly almost never happens in unmodded modern rpg games, now that I think of it. Maybe only in Kingdom Come where running away is so useful early game, I can't think of anything else where running away from enemies who aren't quest-important-kills is such a common strategy.


I'm tempted to re-install and check for myself what happens again without a melee/unarmed character. I don't remember it being so incredibly horrible, but it's been a really long time. If running from/past the ants doesn't work, then that's a flaw. The game does throw things at you that are in some cases a really bad idea to fight.

There's no doubt its dated though. You know one of the weirdest problems with older games is not the graphics, but things that they absolutely could have done better on. User interface, ease of use things like hotbars, not warning you that some character builds are insanely, insanely harder, sensible control layouts(like, wtf was up with Gothic's control scheme? What's wrong with the controls used by... every other game?) Playstation 1 games sometimes were known for having inexcusably, crazily bad controls and cameras that were only present in some games, where others worked just fine; I mean, not just bad but crazy-pants bad. Shadowrun and Larian's original sin feel a lot easier to jump into than some games from the 90's.

@Acekiler My thoughts exactly. I found the game so bad I can't even believe the franchise made it past the first one.

@Duloth

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And when people bring up the lack of dialogue options in fallout 4, it really is as bad as he asserted in that initial comment

Except I have played fallout 4 and I know it's not. I have said before, here and in other posts, that I don't think the dialogue was a step in the right direction, at all. I don't think that always having 4 choices was a good thing, since some conversations will merit more options, and it does get somewhat limited at times. But what people do is they take one example of bad dialogue, which I think exists in every game, and they make it seem like every conversation is like that.

Now, here's the thing. You shouldn't be able to talk your way out of everything. It makes no sense that every single person is willing to have a battle of wits with you. Some people are just not willing to listen to reason, they're too invested in what they believe. In some situations it does make sense, but the idea that you can convince Lanius to retreat peacefully even as his troops are literally storming Hoover Dam, and despite the fact that taking it has been their only goal for years, is ridiculous.

What is the point of building a complex world and characters with deep personalities and motivations if they're just going to throw it all away when a stranger with a witty tongue comes along? No, you shouldn't be able to convince Maxson to stop killing synths. His hatred of every non human is what defines him and the BOS. In fact, I was incredibly disappointed when I found out you could convince him to let Danse live. That's completely out of character.  

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When you start fallout 4, you can change how your girl, or guy, looks; but who they are is defined already. You are a former soldier if you're a guy, or a former lawyer if you're a girl. You don't pick any skills; there aren't any skills; so even that limited bit of background has zero impact on the game other than a few dialogue choices with an old robot and being able to see your degree in the house. It'd be nice if you could've decided to be a female soldier; maybe a medic, all things considered; or a male lawyer, and get a few advantages from it.

OK, so? How is that different from any other Fallout? Hey, maybe I want to start NV with something other than a courier. Maybe I want to start FO2 with something other than a dirty tribal.

Also, skills don't define a character. Actions do. Skills are just statistics. And they didn't eliminated them completely, they just replaced them with perks.

But dude, I keep coming back to the same thing. It's not about dialogue (only I've been spending some time on it because IRORIEH wanted to discuss that). It's about everything else. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that the dialogue and story are great (I don't agree but let's say so). But everything around it, the combat, the game mechanics, everything... is infuriating. It feels like it might do so much better if it was a visual novel because there's nothing fun about the game itself.  

@Sirdanest OK, so, let's leave aside the fact that if I am playing a game I'd like to actually play the game, rather than run away. I get it, sometimes you're going to find something that's too tough for you, but what's the point of a game where all I can do is run?

Also, the only thing I could actually run away from were the plants in Arroyo, because they didn't move so I could get far enough from them to end combat. Any other enemy chased me around, so all I could do was fight.

But look at all the things we've been saying. All the bugs, the lack of direction, the way you can easily screw yourself without even knowing, how you have to do research and use a calculator and take notes, the awful combat system, the awful UI...Which is exactly why I can't believe people complain about FO4 when this is what they rate as good.

Fallout 1 and 2 are niche games, just like arcade shooters (RIP Unreal/Unreal Tournament). The reason people love it was because of them playing the old games when they were young and new people playing them and enjoying the gameplay, world building, story, or the dark humor that the games projects.

Additionally, the games are genuinely more expanded in terms of roleplaying compared to the newer ones. Most of the dialogue is more in terms about learning about who your talking to, possible skill checks, alternative paths, etc. You can get useless information that does nothing, but it's cool useless information (sometimes information that can straight up skip the end boss). You can straight up be a pornstar, mafia boss, and boxer in Fallout 2 for example. It about as useful as all the radiant quests found in Fallout 4, but creates very interesting side quests that is sorely lacking in some of the 3D Fallout games.

The combat is just old school RPG slop for you, I can't even defend that. The combat is just, TRY to hit your opponents and do as much as you can or mOrE NumBeRs.

Fallout 4 just lacks that personal choice in my opinion, they should have ditched voiced protagonist, stick with their original dialogue tree, ACTUALLY MAKE YOUR CHOICE MATTER, and get rid of the settlement system, I know it suppose to represent like the idea of civilization coming back, but it served no purpose other than giving people a way to play Minecraft in Fallout 4 and wasting majority of the DLCs. Seriously 2 whole DLCs that were somewhat decent DLCs and a bunch of settlements mods.

So this robot... you ran to the edge of the map and into the exit zone, and couldn't exit combat/leave the area? That's got to be a bug if that's what happened. Although, I forget again that maybe you didn't know that was how to run away? It occurs to me now that introducing old games to new players is going to be very, very hard because people of this day and age aren't "read the big, fat instruction manual" types, usually.

Anyway what perks did you use?

I can't defend the combat system as being something glorious, it was my least favorite part. But it sounds like something else was going on that turned an already clunky system into something blatantly malfunctioning.

But anyway, I think we've stumbled right into the reason that some people hate fallout 4 so damned much. You've got Rage, and Borderlands... a little like Fallout on some levels, but certainly not with a deep plot and dialogue system of New Vegas or Fallout 2. And yet the people who hate Fallout 4 don't spend that much time absolutely screaming up a storm at Rage. They don't care.

We old-timers really DID play games to read. Not exclusively, but yeah, reading was part of rpgs. Then people came aloing and ripped the franchise out of our hands and said, "Young people don't like reading in games. Your beloved series is now more and more a shooter."

I bet if fallout 4 had been a completely new franchise about rebuilding the world with settlements, it wouldn't have received that much hate. Old-timer Fallout players would have shrugged and ignored it, like they (I guess?) ignored Rage.

I'm disappointed with Fallout 4, but only disappointed (rather than enraged beyond all compare), because at the risk of being a broken record, I knew that it was a Bethesda game, and modded it with hundreds of mods, like I did with all the previous games. Still, I feel uneasy when I see players saying that they don't like reading (even though that's fair, we all like different things,) ... because Bethesda is listening. And my most beloved turn-based, reading-heavy series is probably gone forever.

Hell, I'm shocked that X-com was rebooted as something other than an arcade shooter in this day and age. Maybe *crosses fingers* Bethesda will bomb with fallout someday that someday someone else will be able to try, and we'll see a modern update of fallout 1 and 2.

@joshwist55 Right, look at these too together:

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You can straight up be a pornstar, mafia boss, and boxer in Fallout 2 for example.

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get rid of the settlement system, I know it suppose to represent like the idea of civilization coming back, but it served no purpose

Do you see where I'm going here? You first praise FO2 for having completely useless and unrelated mechanics, then you bash FO4 for doing the same. BTW, the idea of settlement building almost certainly came from the Hearthfire DLC back in Skyrim, which actually turned out to be one of the most popular DLC ever for a Beth game. Considering that, and how Minecraft is the most popular game ever, I would say that most people would disagree with you on that.

@Sirdanest

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So this robot... you ran to the edge of the map and into the exit zone, and couldn't exit combat/leave the area? That's got to be a bug if that's what happened. Although, I forget again that maybe you didn't know that was how to run away? It occurs to me now that introducing old games to new players is going to be very, very hard because people of this day and age aren't "read the big, fat instruction manual" types, usually.

It was some damaged robot next to a crashed vertibird in an area next to Klammath, NW border I think. Whenever you start combat there's a square thing that activates in your hud, looks like one of those industrial iron doors you find all the time, and it has two buttons, one that ends the turn and one that ends combat if I remember correctly. You can't end combat if there are enemies around so you have to get away, then press the button to exit combat mode and be able to walk around normally again. Anyhow, I had figured out how to do it because I did manage to run away from the plants in Arroyo, but like I said, It only works if there's enough distance between you and the enemies. And if you can't exit combat you're pretty much screwed because the green area near the border that lets you walk between different areas doesn't work, so I couldn't return to Klammath (or go anywhere else for that matter).

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Anyway what perks did you use?

If you mean in FO2, I didn't even know there were perks. I never got to that point. Killing ants and radscorpions only got me enough xp to level up twice, so I'm guessing you earn them every few levels? at least every 3.

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We old-timers really DID play games to read. Not exclusively, but yeah, reading was part of rpgs. Then people came aloing and ripped the franchise out of our hands and said, "Young people don't like reading in games. Your beloved series is now more and more a shooter."

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Still, I feel uneasy when I see players saying that they don't like reading (even though that's fair, we all like different things,) ... because Bethesda is listening. And my most beloved turn-based, reading-heavy series is probably gone forever.

But dude, when I want to read, I go and pick up a book. Most novels are far better than anything Beth devs can come up with. If I play a game it's not to sit and read a ton of dialogue it's to experience the gameplay.  

And besides, I can understand how that might be disappointing but Beth never made an Oath to make every single Fallout game an RPG. They created a franchise. It's natural that it will evolve as time passes and technology gets better. FO4 is by far the most successful Fallout ever. "The Best Fallout" (which to be fair, I like a lot), NV, is third. The classic ones didn't even make as much as the train wreck that is FO76, so even that.  

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I bet if fallout 4 had been a completely new franchise about rebuilding the world with settlements, it wouldn't have received that much hate. Old-timer Fallout players would have shrugged and ignored it, like they (I guess?) ignored Rage.

Yeah, I've made that argument before. It's about the preconceived notion of what a Fallout game is supposed to be, not about the actual quality of the game.

@gavin gold
It's just not your game then, can't change your opinion and I'm not trying to. Fallout 2 is old and there is a reason why people view the older games as a niche. Fallout tactics later changed the gameplay into real time strategy but they were still stiff with the gameplay, I personally played it but can't get into the real time system, too chaotic.

There are better alternatives in those times like Baldur's Gate for example, haven't played it but it is just DND THE GAME.

Fallout 4 is just okay, I got burned out of the game after playing it day zero and I just don't like the new gameplay style. I rate it a 6/10, an average score for me, just not my cup of tea. Creation Club just made it worse as now its constant updates for mods.

It still doesn't give me hopes on Bethesda with how ridiculously stupid they are right now, Elder Scrolls 6 does not seem like its gonna be in its best state, especially if Creation Club is on it day 1 or later on.

I actually played Fallout 1 and 2 very recently.  I started with Fallout 3, and didn't really appreciate New Vegas until years later.  I modded it up on my PC instead of playing it on my XBox and really dove in deep, finding the characters, and the world to be much more interesting than the bleak and lonely world of Fallout 3, though I still give Fallout 3 credit for being atmospheric with its dying world.  I knew going in that the first two games were completely different experiences, favoring a much more table-top oriented style play, and I have to say...I really didn't have much trouble with it.  Maybe it's just the countless hours of those pen and paper games I played over the years, maybe it's just the fascination with how those old systems were implemented and functioned, deep diving into them until I understood them inside an out, but something really "clicked" for me while playing them.  It might've even been a carry over from Morrowind, because of the random dice roll nature of it?

I think what really kept me going was that...I knew it was a system I could work out and eventually break if I played it just right.  Just like many of the games that inspired it, there's ways to really break the game with your stat priorities, and just a general knowledge of how it's played, where to go, who to talk to, and what to get.  I like discovering things like that, it's how I really got to enjoy games, like Dark Souls.  Soon after my first run, I was making a mad dash southward and getting power armor at my first level by planting explosives in people's pockets, finding all the best chems and stealthily taking out prime targets for massive level boosts...it's a blast.

But that being said, if none of that sounds fun to you, there's nothing wrong with the game, and there's nothing wrong with you either.  You were not made for each other, and that's a simple fact.  No-one on either side did anything "wrong".  You didn't fail to appreciate the game, and the developers didn't fail in exactly what the intended the game to be.  You just have different preferences.

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Anyway what perks did you use?

If you mean in FO2, I didn't even know there were perks. I never got to that point. Killing ants and radscorpions only got me enough xp to level up twice, so I'm guessing you earn them every few levels? at least every 3.




That seems impossible that you didn't know there were perks so something very, very strange is going on. I just quickly booted it up, and right there in the chargen you get to pick two perks right away... it's absolutely impossible to miss, and it's impossible to skip. If you chose something like "good natured" it would screw over your combat skills a little, for instance.

Completing quests and accomplishing things get you the levels. Random fighting without cause is worth fairly little. They're just obstacles to make life risker. Normally these sorts of random encounters are there for you to grind on in many modern games, but grinding isn't really a thing back then, since just following the plot will usually level you up sufficiently, if I recall. Although if you gained two levels from grinding the random scorpion encounters... then maybe grinding actually IS a thing after all and I just never tried it. But you were coming along pretty well for not having gotten too far in the game.
It doesn't have a level cap, but if I recall, typical end-game level was around 20 to low 20's., so gaining two levels just off of random ants was actually fairly decent progress considering endgame is level 20 content.

@Sirdanest The ones you get to choose at the beginning of the game are called traits, I think. Perks are the ones you pick when you level up.

Anyway, I mentioned before I picked Sex Appeal and Gifted.

The two levels was from simply fighting all enemies in the first mission and then the plants in Arroyo, which I did precisely to start raising my xp early on. Those weak enemies are usually the easiest way to build your skills early on. I think that's the biggest issue. In FNV and FO4 I'm always glad to see enemies because fighting them is fun. In FO2 I was hoping I wouldn't run into enemies because fighting them was so unpleasant.

"Dude, do you know what that sounds like? Like some old guy working on his typewriter scoffing at a young guy with a laptop going "Bah, these youths. In my day we didn't have fancy spellchecking devices. We actually did the job we were supposed to do!""

So, I'm using that quote to kind of point out your general attitude. As you might have noticed, today I kind of "stalked" your posts, because I liked your mods/additions to the mods of others very much( Especially the pyromaniac one, it's my default NV mod), and ended up  commenting on a few of them before I knew it.

But I gotta say, and in a very straightforward way since you were quite straightforward too with people, what comes to your personal character you sound kind of like an entitled ****. And it would be kind of forgiveable if you were an entitled **** with a good taste and say, with above average of a, ummm, perception of the world. But you ain't. You're a sham ("sham" is the word for pal in Irish ; ) ) that likes himself some beer and pizza. And that's fine. But that's very basic. Role-playing games, or story-driven games for that matter, never were very basic. They were never meant to be beer and pizza. That's action-rpgs, and especially arcade, casual action-rpgs. Like Fallout 4, that's your beer and pizza and that's why you prefer it. Or Bioshock. Bioshock is a great game, but it's  blockbuster game, it's an "everyone went to the cinema to see it" kind of game. It's the smarter type of blockbuster, not Michael Bay level, but it's still, just a mass appeal, simple movie. Say, Christopher Nolan does Dark Knight type of movie. And you like that.  And again, that's fine (I like all of that too. Beer and pizza. Michael Bay. Christopher Nolan... Okay, I don' like Christopher Nolan films, but I like Dark Knight trilogy and Momento, so lets leave it at that). But come on. Don't act that if you can't dig it, then that's the true standard, and whoever disagrees is basically a moron (which is something that you said specifically in another post about Wild Wasteland perk). Because that's what makes a true moron, believing that anyone who doesn't think the same way as you, is one. Especially when you are yourself, such a basic person.

I'm gonna tell you my experience with Fallout 2. I'm not that old. 30. I played it when I was what, 13 I  think. No manuals, no shit, a pirated version. Also, my first rpg, before that I only played shooters, fighting games and some quests. Nobody adviced me it, I just liked the cover in the shop. I didn't like the combat, in fact I tried it, didn't understand how combat works and quited before finishing the first temple location.  A month later I reinstalled it. I thought, okay, I can't kill my way through ants like Rambo, and I don't like this turn-based whateverthefuck this stuff is, what else can I do? I have these skills and stats that are called Intelligence, Charisma, pickpocket, speech, etc. What can I do with them? Can I use them to go through this game?
Long story short, in a week I was already finishing this game for the first time, with my entire kill list so far been ants in the tutorial starting dungeon, and occasional quest targets. And I didn't need to kill most of those. It was just my choice. In a few combat situations that I let happen, I relied on companions of my char, I would just send them ahead, see them do the work, while my char gathered exp like the true braniac he was. In other moments, it was just stealth. You can fucking talk through about 95 to 99 percent of this game, and make it all abou exploration and story, so don't say it's bullshit because you can't do it. I was 13 old. And I could it. And after that I created combat heavy character, and guess what? I still don't like it, turn-based stuff, with the exception of Heroes franchise, was never my gig. And that's fine. I would never say it's shit because it's not about the actual gameplay. It's about my taste.
I didn't had any other problems you described with Fallout 2, because those weren't even matter of taste, those were matters of using common sense (Vic question, descriptions question, buying an item for exact amount it costs question (That's the real world thing, sham, you never pay the genuine price of an item, you pay at least a little bit more), doctor and first aid question (Like, you can't the difference between the first aid and doctor? For real?...), etc). I mean I was a 13 old kid who never played such complicated games before, and I did not have trouble navigating through it because, hey. Sometimes flexing your brains a bit doesn't hurt. Because using a calculator for such things like 2+2, come on.
But in general, you ain't like that, and that's okay. Just don't think you're the smart one because of it. Just. Don't.

And another thing. "Game devs not such a great writers." Buddy. There's a profession(s) called game writer/game designer (Who often at least partialy also a writer, just like a great film director is a bit of  a writer and everything else that involves filmmaking). They literally do that, create/write games with amazing settings and stories rivaling the great films and books, that those of us who aren't stuck only in the pizza/beer spectrum, do really love, and basically play games exactly for that. Their great writers. VTM - Bloodlines/ Redemption. Arcanum. Fallout 2/ NV. Planescape: Torment. Heavy Rain. Grim Fandango. The list goes on and on, and to genuinely think what you thinking, is kind of a self-insult, dude.

Hello! I'm new to GUN posting so please forgive any misuse or misformatting I may do.

Fallout 1-Tactics are some of the strangest games to get into nowadays.


As someone who grew up in the 2000's with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 etc. Most video games I played growing up were 3rd person or 1st person real-time shooters. So honestly it was very difficult for me to go back and play Fallout 1 and 2, I don't blame you for disliking a game because of the genre it is in, or the way it feels, but there is one thing you got to remember. The original Fallout games were difficult on purpose.

back in the 90's you couldn't boot up a game, select Easy or Very-Easy and just run along through the game, games weren't as accessible nor as open as they are today. If you played games back then it wasn't just a casual past time, you wouldn't just boot up Fallout and play for an hour and not play it for another week. These games built themselves off of D&D which is an even more intense playstyle in and of itself, and much like D&D you had to understand what you were doing. You had to read and in a way, study the game. How perks worked, how stats affected gameplay, etc. That was the norm of RPG's at the time. Some people prefer newer RPG's like myself, I'm a huge fan of The Witcher 3, Mass Effect 1-3, Fallout 3-4, the list goes on, as much as these games like to say how deep they are, they really aren't. Not like how "classic" RPG's were.