Commentary: 11 ways Fallout 2 was better than Fallout 3

I have a feeling this little article might ruffle a couple of feathers, in the gaming flocks. After all, game reviewers are going bat-balls crazy for the game. Some reviewers think the game is better than water; others believe it better than Gears of War crossed with Final Fantasy 7, etcetra. Some reviewers think Bethesda does better work than Dostoevsky.

Don't get me wrong. Fallout 3 isn't good -- it's great. One of the best games of the year, easily...but even still: could it have been better? Are mods going to bring Fallout 3 to incredibly new heights, like mods made a gem out of the rough diamond of Bethesda's Oblivion?

Fallout 2 is probably my favorite RPG of all time. So, understandably (I hope), any game I'm going to compare to Fallout 2 is going to come up short. Well Fallout 3 is the sequel to Fallout 2, right? Well I'm going to compare them. And guess what -- Fallout 3 is going to come up short.

Here's my brief list of 11 ways Fallout 3 fell short of Fallout 2. In no particular order.

1. Tag skills 

Bethesda completely missed the boat on the whole notion of 'Tag Skills' from the original games. In the originals, you picked three tag skills at the beginning of the game. They were your character's specialties. You want a medic with a good throwing arm that can pick locks? Pick Medicine, Throwing, Lock Picking. For the rest of the game, every time you level, and skill point put into a tag skill will be doubled. So, like, it's easier to become proficient at your character's specialties.

This isn't how it works in Fallout 3.

In Fallout 3, you pick three tag skills at the beginning. These tag picks give you a +10 bonus to the skill and... that's it.

How dumb is that? Not sure why the crippled the Tag skills. Why not just give the player an extra 30 skill points to allocate when he makes his character? It would have the same in-game outcome.

Another criticism of the skills: In Fallout 3, like Oblivion, many characters are going to be masters of everything in the game. This wasn't really possible in Fallout 2 -- well not to the same extent. Stuff like tag skills and actually having to specialize gave your character more... character.

Oh yeah: Fallout 2: 18 skills. Fallout 3: 13 skills. Enough said.

2. Items that magically boost stats

Only a small handful of items in Fallout 2 modified your skills or attributes. Not so in Fallout 3. This time around, we have leather jackets that magically give you bonuses to melee combat. What's up with that? Having a dictionary in my pocket may prevent me from making less errors when writing something like this out -- sure. But what if I'm wearing a shirt with a dictionary on it? Should that cut down on my grammatical errors? No, I don't thinke so.

And bobbleheads. There are 20 or so bobbleheads in the game. The all magically give you stats. I don't want to feel like my character is gimped if I don't track down some damn bobblehead hiding on some ledge some place that I'm never going to find without a in-depth walkthrough. Screw the bobbleheads. 

3. Dumb weapons

The Fallout games never strived for realism, sure. But at no point in Fallout 2 did I build a weapon that shoots rail road spikes.

And the Fat Man launcher? Oh man. Don't get me started. I'm just going to pass on that one.

In Fallout 2 you could make molotov cocktails with gasoline and a bottle. Fallout 3, you can make a Rock-It Launcher that'll launch tin cans and plungers at people.

I'll stick with the molotov cocktails.

4. Random encounters

There was a bunch of cool random encounters you could have in Fallout 2. Sometimes you'd come across trading caravans that you could slaughter. Some were more rare, like the Cafe of Broken Dreams. Some were non-combat encounters -- people in the Wastes that you could talk and trade with.

In Fallout 3, enemies are all over the place, according to what zone you are in. There aren't really any random encounters per se -- which is another reason why the Luck stat isn't as much as big deal in Fallout 3 either.

Bethesda, here's a free idea you should use in Fallout 4. I won't charge you for it. Bring the Outdoorsman skill back. Any time you fast travel, to a skill roll on the Outdoorsman skill. If you fail, you run into a random encounter. And 'random encounter' doesn't have to mean 'Random people that want to kill you.' It can be other stuff instead... like roleplaying game type stuff.

5. Difficulty levels

This one will be short. Fallout 2: difficulty levels make combat harder, and all skills rolls harder. The game is much harder.

Fallout 3: higher difficulty levels gives your enemies more health... and that's it. On the harder difficulty levels Fallout 3 is only harder because you run out of ammo more often.

Ho hum.

6. Open world freedom

Fallout 3 has a lot of this. But not as much as Fallout 2.

In Fallout 2 if you knew what you were doing you could go right from your starting point in the game to the final location. Sure, you wouldn't be able to beat the opponents with out some tricks, but you could do it.

In the entire south-eastern quarter of the Fallout 3 map you are in a city that has invisible walls everywhere. There basically only one way you can go. You are on a quest train track that starts at one location, has 13 (or whatever) stages, and ends.

Don't go down that street dude. There is a big pile of rubble blocking the path. Strangely, just like the other 40 streets.

Just follow the path through the open world.

7.Immersion free NPC's

Most of the dialogue in the game is not memorable, consequently, most characters are forgettable. Many times half way through conversations I just clicked right through to the end bit, where they dispense the quest or what-not.

People like the wasteland super-hero Antangonizer just would not exist, even after a nuclear war. Give me a break.

So many characters are just so unbelievable -- even by RPG standards. The NPC's don't exist as non-playing characters. Most exist solely as pieces of game mechanic furniture -- like the Nuka Cola machines everywhere that somehow, amazingly, all still have Nuka in them. They are function. Not personalities.

I don't want to battle through a legion of Super Mutants, climb through a tunnel, then run into this strangely dressed guy deep in the wreckage of the Wasteland that greets me by saying, "What would you like to purchase?"

In the real world, I've never met anyone anywhere who introduced himself, and then thirty seconds later offered me some money to nuke a city. I wish there were more NPC's in the game that didn't give quests or heal you or trade with you -- they are just like, you know, NPC's that are doing there own thing.

8. Ghouls

In Fallout 2, most ghouls were like radiated, semi-mutated ex-human being people. You could talk with them. Have them join you as team members. Ghouls were people too, in Fallout 2.

In Fallout 3, ghouls are zombies. Besides that one dude Gob, in Megatown, ghouls are stupid zombies that immediately attack you on sight.

I realize RPG's need random enemies to kill. Sure. But why did Bethesda have to make them ghouls? Why not anything else? They had the whole wasteland of creativity at their disposal. They could have made you fight anything. Like L. Ron Hubologist cultists. Or mutated raccoons.

Every time I shoot a ghoul I want to cry. I think to myself: "Damn! That ghoul could have been innocent!" 

Maybe it was all a misunderstanding.

9. Open ended quests

Not much tops Fallout 2 when it came to open ended quests. Let's take one of the better examples in F2 -- dealing with the Slavers in the city called the Den. The Slavers have a buddy of yours, Vic, that you want to rescue. There were many ways of getting this done.

You could go into the slaver headquarters and shoot them all up. If you were a explosive traps guy, (like my guy was), you could go in the building and plant dynamite, then leave, and blow everyone up. If you had high intelligence and high speech, you could convince the slavers to stop trading slaves, and get them to free Vic. If you were a jerk, you could join the Slavers, get a slaver tattoo on your forehead that would have consequences for the rest of the game, and sell your tribal companion into a life of servitude. If you were a chick with a decent charisma, you can have sex with the head slaver guy for Vic's freedom.

The vast majority of quests in Fallout 3 are like this: go talk to this guy. Kill everybody in your way. The end. 

Some of the quests, if you have a high speech skill, you can lie and not have to kill the dudes.

Yay. Woot. Let's RPG it up. Let's go kill all the enemy dudes and get the magical hamster or super Frisbee or W-ever-TF they want me to get. Yay this is fun. 

10. Not-so-funny humor

There were parts of Fallout 2 that made me laugh out loud, even before the acroynm LOL was even around.

Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has them and they all stink.

That last paragraph was a pair of lines that  I remember from a game that came out more than 10 years ago. Do you remember any lines from any games that you played 10 years ago? Do you remember any lines from a game -- say, Fallout 3 -- that you played last night? All hail Fallout 2.

Some of the characters are often so un-funny in Fallout 3 that I wish the game had a strangle button.

Like when that ditzy chick in the supply store came up to me, asking me to go hunt molerats for her. Her voice is so grating. Her character is annoying.

Where is that strangle button?

"Oh you are such a sweet heart for getting severly wounded for me so I can study wounds for my book. I hope it didn't hurt! Tee-hee-hee-haw-haw."

Strangle. Strangle.

11. Complete abandoning of any sort of realism

Bethesda, listen up.

Years after a global nuclear holocaust you will not find unopened boxes of macaroni all over the place. You will not be going through a sewer and trip over a box full of 5.56 mm ammunition.

People will not be launching mini-nukes at super-mutants. Not even every once in a while.

Drinking water mixed with radioactive waste will not fix you up after being shot five times in the face with a shotgun.

People will not be all friendly and nice to me in the barren wasteland. Some people will be jerks. Many won't even have quests for me. Some won't even care about me at all.

Forlorn offices in abandoned dilapidated factories will not have working computer terminals that control robotic guards.

Every-day dudes will not have robotic butlers, after a global thermonuclear war.

In the end...

In the end, Fallout 3 is a lot of fun, is one of the better games I played this year. But it isn't three-quarters of the RPG that Fallout 2 was. I'm sorry  -- it's just not. Maybe with mods. But not at the moment.  

Next time you see someone saying that in some ways Fallout 2 was better than Fallout 3, please, be easy on him. Cut him slack. He at least has an argument worth listening to.

And if you never played Fallout 2, then please, please, I beg of you, don't trash the game. That's just not right. You just don't know what you are talking about.

If 30 megaton bombs were falling from the sky and I could only install two games on my Pipboy 3000, I'd pass on the F3, and double-install Fallout 2.