Once I’d beaten it the first time I read a walkthrough to see what I’d missed and it explianed that you can get straight to the final area from the start. I guess the guy used that technique. Of course doing so you miss out on a lot of the story and fun stuff that way.[/quote]
Yes, exactly.
The fact that you can speed-run Fallout 2 is actually illustrative of its strengths. The game was so persistently nonlinear that practically everything you could do was a sidequest. And yet the game managed to COMPLETELY hide this from the players, to the point where people can say that speed-running F2 is ridiculous. :)
Yes, the guy went straight to the final area. He diverted to steal some Power Armor, kill the Emperor’s Assistant, and claim credit with the Hubologist leader, so that he could actually use the ship to get there. Once he got there, the power armor allowed him to walk around in freedom, while Speech and Science helped him to convince a scientist to blow the place up, and some Enclave soldiers and defense turrets to kill Frank Horrigan for him.
Okay, yeah, y’all are obviously right once I think about it a little bit.
I’m just the type who can’t avoid sidequests. No way. To me avoiding sidequests in an RPG is like simulating games in a sports title. I’m frankly amazed that I ever finished Baldur’s Gate 2 or Morrowind.
Well, actually I tried heading for the final area directly after leaving the village the very first time I played the game. It’s a pretty natural route after all, when you think about it. I didn’t know it was the final area at the time, I just wandered aimlessly in that general direction, and eventually I gave up as I couldn’t avoid the random encounters with centaurs and wendingos, or Enclave patrols. Plasma pistols are a one-shot kill when you’re lvl 2-3, so I gave up pretty quickly.
Well, actually I tried heading for the final area directly after leaving the village the very first time I played the game. It’s a pretty natural route after all, when you think about it. I didn’t know it was the final area at the time, I just wandered aimlessly in that general direction, and eventually I gave up as I couldn’t avoid the random encounters with centaurs and wendingos, or Enclave patrols. Plasma pistols are a one-shot kill when you’re lvl 2-3, so I gave up pretty quickly.[/quote]
A friend of mine stumbled into San Francisco and then Navarro completely by accident, right out of the gate. He got the Advanced Power Armor at level 2, then spent absolutely forever levelling. Weirdo.
Of course without playing the game all the way through (or reading a walkthrough), you wouldn’t know where the final area is.
Actually I kinda did something similar on my first time playing Fallout 2, seriously. As soon as I left the starting village I headed south on a lark - just to check out some of the encounters, see what I could find down there, check out how large the map was etc instead of going directly to where I should have gone.
20 minutes later I had advanced power armor, a turbo plasma rifle with plenty of ammo and enough exp to level high enough that I felt pretty godlike. Of course I reloaded after that but for some reason it put me off playing the game for quite a while, it was just there in the back of my mind irritating me. It was totally my own fault for letting curiosity get the better of me, but I was still kinda miffed that I had managed to stumble upon the best stuff in the game so quickly.
I got over it though and came to love the game (though the original remains my favourite RPG) :)
Totally exact same experience here. I played it for the first time last fall and stumbled into San Fran and got all those goodies. I also was inexplicably irritated about it afterwards. Dropped the game shortly thereafter and never looked back.
Being able to stumble into places where you shouldn’t and not knowing what effect the things you do when you get there will have on the rest of the game (because you don’t have much context in which to judge the new NPCs/factions you react with there) is one of the things that makes me utterly despise the open-ended or non-linear type of game.
I’m just stupid enough to need the developer to think proactively and protect me from me.
Everyone complains about the flip side though too, when progress is artificially limited by plot. If San Francisco wasn’t “there” or you weren’t able to discover it until you’d talked to a certain person, even if you’d walked through it on the map, people would’ve complained about that. To a lesser degree, that argument would carry over if you weren’t able to get all the equipment goodies just because you hadn’t triggered the right dialogue option somewhere. I think I prefer the Fallout lack of limitation, though it could always be improved by more legitimate limitations. I don’t know where you guys got the power armor that early, but if you stole it from someone, maybe they could’ve made security tighter in shops that sold more valuable items or something.
I started F2 over last night, and patched it to 1.05.1 via the latest unofficial patch. Has anyone tried this?
It’s weird… I haven’t seen any fixed bugs yet… there are a lot of creative changes, seems like. That or they’re just overzealous… but damn, when I got to Vic’s shack and the pipe rifle wasn’t there, I was totally thrown. It ended up being at the Golden Gecko, where the 8mm pistol should have been. Dialogue is changed as well… I dunno. The game seems a little bit harder. Not sure if I prefer it to 1.02 or not.
I know, you’re right. I’m not trying to say what developers should do, just that the open-ended thing always puts me on edge and bugs me. I find myself saving before EVERY dialogue because I absolutely MUST know every possible outcome from all choices, I haveta constantly reload to take every conversation tree and play every mission every possible way, etc. It makes the game seem completely disjointed and kind of incoherent. It’s just me, and I know other people like having less direction. That having been said, I think the Fallouts do it about as well as it can be done.
And IIRC, if you can get to Navarro without getting melted or turned into a cinder by a random patrol encounter, if you have the right skills (I think speech and lockpicking) you can lie your way into the base and get yourself the Power Armor plus other nice goods and services right after leaving the first town.
I know, you’re right. I’m not trying to say what developers should do, just that the open-ended thing always puts me on edge and bugs me. I find myself saving before EVERY dialogue because I absolutely MUST know every possible outcome from all choices, I haveta constantly reload to take every conversation tree and play every mission every possible way, etc. It makes the game seem completely disjointed and kind of incoherent. It’s just me, and I know other people like having less direction. That having been said, I think the Fallouts do it about as well as it can be done.
And IIRC, if you can get to Navarro without getting melted or turned into a cinder by a random patrol encounter, if you have the right skills (I think speech and lockpicking) you can lie your way into the base and get yourself the Power Armor plus other nice goods and services right after leaving the first town.[/quote]
You don’t need lockpicking. You need speech if you have your heart set on lying your way into the base, but a submachine gun will work just fine :).
Though you can’t get into Navarro before you talk to the BOS guy in San Francisco… one of the very, very few times the game prohibits you from entering an area from the map before doing some plot thing to make it available, and definitely the most major.
