Fallout 2
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| Fallout 2 {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
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| Developer(s) | Black Isle Studios {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single player {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Macintosh {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
Fallout 2 is a computer role-playing game published by Interplay in 1998. The second game takes place 80 years after the first Fallout, in 2241. It tells the story of the original hero's descendant and his or her quest to save their primitive tribe from starvation by finding an ancient environmental restoration machine known as the "Garden of Eden Creation Kit," or GECK.
The player does eventually acquire a GECK by finding Vault 13, less its former human inhabitants. He returns to find his village captured by the remnants of the United States government known as "The Enclave". The player, through a variety of means, boards an ancient oil tanker to The Enclave's main base, an offshore oil derrick.
It is revealed that the Vault 13-Dwellers were captured as well, to be used as test-subjects for FEV(see below) (Since they're untainted by radiation, it makes them perfect targets). The Enclave has created an airborne disease to destroy all living people on Earth, in order to allow Enclave citizens—the only people not mutated at all—to take over the planet.
The player frees both his village (Arroyo) and the Vault 13 Dwellers from Enclave control, and destroys the Enclave's oil rig entirely.
The fact that in both games the character is raised in an isolated community works nicely with the plot structure, allowing the character to be as ignorant about the game world as the player would be and explaining why the map you start with is almost completely unexplored.
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Real-world references
Town names are often derived from real-world references. For example, Modoc is the name of a Native American tribe and a national forest in California, USA (Modoc National Forest). The player-character’s home village, Arroyo, could be named for any number of different locations ranging from parts of Arizona, to different areas of Mexico. Several of the towns are based on real cities, including San Francisco, Redding, Reno and Klamath Falls. Broken Hills, a uranium mining town in the game is a reference to the town of Broken Hill in Australia where Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior was filmed, though the photograph that appears when the character arrives there resembles the remains of Broken Hills, Nevada a Ghost Town.
There are other cultural references, typically in the form of dialogue which occur throughout the game. Some examples are more overt than others. For example, the Hubologists that the player encounters in Fallout 2 resemble the modern Scientologists in many respects, including the presence of "celebrities" named Juan Cruz and Vikki Goldman, likely meant as references to real life scientologist Tom Cruise and former wife Nicole Kidman. Also, in a datadisk given to the player at one point in the game, it outlines the hubologists view of the afterlife, which is almost exactly the same as Scientology.
Other notable references include most of the random encounters. While many of these include parties of yakuza, bounty hunters, mutated scorpions, etc.; others include references to Star Trek, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One particularly witty, if esoteric, reference is a character found in the town of Gecko named "Gordon of Gecko". The player can undertake a quest from him, and the dialogue leading up to this paraphrases Gordon Gekko’s "Greed is Good" speech from the film Wall Street.
Also, in the mining town of Redding, one of the Mines is run by a character named "Dangerous Dan McGrew"- the victim in Robert Service's well-known poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew". The name also was Rimmer's alias in the Western AI game featured in the Red Dwarf episode "Gunmen Of The Apocalypse."
Trivia
- The song that plays during the intro sequence is Louis Armstrong's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On". The Fallout intro song "Maybe" reappears in the sequel, being sung by a minor character as floating text.
- Holding Shift and clicking the Credits button in the beginning game menu brings up a series of humorous/lewd comments by members of the Interplay team that developed the Fallout games.
- "Mentats", a drug in the series that temporary raises your intelligence, is named after the human computers in the Dune universe.
- The reason why Vault 13's water chip malfunctioned is "explained" in a random encounter, in which the character discovers a portal similar to the Guardian of Forever. If he enters it, the player is transported to a small section of Vault 13, devoid of any other characters. When he interacts with the only computer he can, he breaks the Water Chip, ensuring the events of the player's past continue as they should. This encounter, like all special encounters, is only a joke and is not considered canon. Also Vault 8 contains several thousand water chips from an accidentally mixed-up shipment that sent Vault 13 the secondary GECK. The real reason the water chip malfunctioned was due to a series of tests by The Enclave to put the different vaults under experimental conditions. Vault 13 was considered a "test group" by the Enclave. Vault 8's GECK went to Vault 13 and Vault 13's extra chips went to Vault 8.
- "War. War never changes" is the famous phrase uttered in the intro by Ron Perlman. The phrase is one of the foremost iconic catch-phrases of the game.
- "Nuka Cola" is a blue cola in a coca cola shaped bottle, in the game, obviously a reference to the real and actual Coca Cola.
- Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, secretly included one of his tracks from his album Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. Untitled Disc 2 Track 6 "Windowsill" can be heard clearly in some parts of the game. He may have done this under the pseudonym EFX which appears in the game credits. It is unknown why he chose to do this, and what relationship he had with Black Isle.
- The Red Ryder BB gun makes an appearance in both series of Fallout. This is a reference to the classic computer game, Wasteland, on which the Fallout series itself is loosely based. In turn, Wasteland was referencing the Christmas movie A Christmas Story (1983) In which the movie's main character wants nothing more for Christmas than a Red Ryder BB gun.
- In the ghoul town of Gecko, the barkeep at the pub teaches the PC about a collectable card game called Tragic: The Garnering, a reference to real-world card CCG Magic: The Gathering. Several of the cards he mentions have parallels.
- After beating the game by destroying the Enclave base, you can go to the priest in Reno (located in the western section of the town) and talk to him. Doing this will cause him to give you a "Fallout 2 Manual" item that ups all your stats and skills to max added as a goodie/easter egg by the developers.
- There are recurring posters of Maynard James Keenan of the band Tool. They were taken from the liner notes of their album, Undertow, and appear in almost every town/city in the game.
- The music playing when you enter the town of Redding changes, but one track you will hear comes from the soundtrack to the TV miniseries The Stand from the book by Stephen King, which was about a world devastated not by nuclear war, but by a supercharged version of the flu. The name of the track is titled, "Project Blue," and it played at the beginning of the miniseries. The artist's name is W.G. Snuffy Walden.
External links
- The Vault, A Fallout wiki, hosted by the fan site Duck and Cover.
- Duck and Cover, Fallout Fan Site
- #Fallout, The official Fallout IRC Channel, Hosted by Duck and Cover
- No Mutants Allowed, Fallout Fan Site
- FIFE, Fallout open source engine that tries to replace the old Fallout 2
- Fallout LARP Terminal- Czech LARP in a postapocalyptic world inspired by Fallout (Czech)
- Nuclear Winter Studios A Fallout modding and fan group.
- Fallout Corner One of the most famous Polish Fallout fansites.
- Fallout discussion A LiveJournal community for Fallout discussion.
- TeamX A Russian Fallout modding group.
- Fallout Fan Fiction Duck and Cover's Fan Fiction section housing such classics as "fallout sitcom" by Sir Pooperscooper.
- New Reno RPG A free-form IRC-chat-based RPG set in the Fallout 2 world and setting.
- Vault BR Brazilian Fallout Community.
Mods
- Mutants Rising A mod currently in production for Fallout 2.
- Wasteland Merc 2 A mod for Fallout 2 with mmorpg features such as cooking, mining, fishing and crafting weapons, armors and ammo. 60+ custom missions and 19 custom locations. RELEASED.
- Survivor A mod for Fallout 2 with a new concept and innovative ideas. RELEASED.
- Survivor2 A mod for Fallout 2 with a completely new story currently in production.
- Fan Made Fallout A mod for Fallout 2 that has been in production for 4 years.
- Fallout Yurop A mod for Fallout 2 that takes place in Europe.fr:Fallout 2