I've been playing Fallout 2 again, and it's so much fun to play, which is great considering it's age (26 years old)
Fallout 2
This game is an isometric RPG. It plays from a top-down angle, and the Role Play elements are there, even though each person starts the game the same way.
It's interesting though that your character can be unique based on the attributes you stack into. Some traits can help with combat, and others can aid in talking, there are also other things like Luck, which can give each action taken by the player success or failure.
Alongside the main attributes, there are skills, like gambling, which can be fairly game-breaking if you have high luck, and many points put into it.
Starting off, you are fairly weak though, and every encounter can be potentially life-threatening, and game-ending. Luckily, it's fairly easy to pick up a couple of companions early in the game, and they really help you out in the early game.
During the game, you can recruit a maximum of 5 companions, and each slot is based on your charisma, every 2 points of it gives you another slot. You can even cheat it a little by boosting your charisma with chems to recruit them and they'll stick around even after the effect wears off.
Here's an example of what the game looks like. You can see your hud at the bottom of the screen.
Characters
There are a handful of voiced, and animated characters in the game who you can talk to. Each of the sprites on the main map can look no different than a regular npc until their face appears and they start speaking as you click on them.
The writing is really good, and each character feels very unique, even just based on nothing but their writing.
I love the style of each animated character, they all look fairly ugly, but it works with the genre and type of game this is and it really suits the tone.
By the look of it, the characters are created with clay, and the stop motion look gives an eerie feeling, which is common with that particular format and it also works to make the player feel uncomfortable.
Here is an example of what the characters look like. This is Tandi, who was in the first Fallout game as a teenager who you have to save from a raider group called the Kahns, who played a pretty big role in New Vegas - my favourite Fallout game. A lot of the people who created and worked Fallout 1 and 2, went on to form Obsidian who went on to make Fallout: New Vegas after the rights of Fallout were sold to Bethesda.
Tone
It's hard to really put a finger on the tone of this game. While it's dark and feels very grim at times - based primarily on the design of the world, characters, and as well the story and writing.
Beneath all of this darkness though, there are carefree attitudes funny jokes, and pop culture references which Fallout became known for.
The first game tends to be a bit darker a lot of the time, however, this one was where the sense of humor came out fully and where the writers weren't afraid of having some fun.
It's great that they're able to do so without taking away from the story or distracting from the atmosphere of the game as a whole.
I've never actually completed this game, so I'm really looking forward to doing so in this playthrough.
A few years ago I picked these games up and was playing them on an old laptop, and during that time I got pretty far into it, but then got a new computer and had to start the game over again.
At the time, starting from scratch wasn't a great feeling, but now enough time has passed that I've forgotten much of the game, so it seemed like a good time to get started once more.