Fallout 2 #4: Back at it Again.

A long time ago (like... two months ago or something) i started to play Fallout 2 again and post about my experiences while re-playing the game. However, I stopped playing Fallout 2 some time after downloading KOTOR 1 and shortly after that I had to format my pc to fix some issues. Long story short; I forgot about Fallout 2 thanks to KOTOR and had to format my computer.

I did keep the savefiles on a separate USB, and I even had some extra screenshots that I haven't used at all. So while i download the game again I decided to write a little post with whatever pictures are left from before i had to delete everything.

You can read the last episode here and it's about Sara (that's our main character) saving some two-headed cows from giant scorpions or some stuff.

_{This fella here is Torr, the sole defender of Brahmin (two-headed cows) in Klamath.}

See Sara's on this "holy quest" which consists of asking people about a device by the name of "G.E.C.K" that is sure to save her people from starvation and dehydration and in order to find it she must ask a trader by the name of "Vic". But she has to find him first, so she defaults to doing the best second thing she can: Asking everyone about the GECK and then just doing some random sidequests.

Right know, Sara's just done helping this guy by the name of Torr and she returns to the town of Klamath to ask about sidequests and/or Vic's whereabouts.

_{Pictured here is an angry doggo.}

Shortly after returning to Klamath Sara finds a somewhat angry dog and decides to give him/her some dry meat she got from... somewhere. The dog happily eats it and then gives Sara a key.

You may ask "Guub, where does a dog keep a key?" the answer is: I don't know and I don't want to know.

This decision will later prove to be one of the worst decisions I've ever in my life, or at least in this game so far.

After giving the dog some meat Sara walks towards the Buckner House. Because if Star Wars is to be believed, important story elements will always show up at bars.

She then asks the owner some questions, she redirects her to her daughter, Maida Buckner, saying "she's the one who handles the gossip around here".

Sara then goes and talks to Maida who explains that she doesn't believe Torr's story about "bugmen" killing the brahmin she believes someone may be rustling the brahmin and making them feel scared, all the while scaring poor Torr who, in case you haven't realized, is a little special.

Now here's where this gets interesting, in the original game there were several clues that pointed towards someone or "some people" rustling the brahmin and scaring Torr, the clues are still there but there is no actual way for the player to gather said evidence and expose the culprit. Thanks to the mod i'm using however there's an actual questline that involves solving said case.

Going back to what Maida said, you can actually talk to the owner of the bar, Ardin Buckner, and tell her you'll try to solve this mystery.

There's several ways one can try to do this, for example, in the last episode Sara can find these two guys:

_{Pictured here are the Dunton brothers.}

Talking to them reveals nothing, unless you fulfill certain requirements and then you can actually help them steal the brahmin from Torr. But if we explore that area a little we find a little cottage that (i think) belongs to them, inside you can find a piece of evidence that suggests someone is using the pincers of a dead giant scorpion to cut the brahmin and to, possibly, scare Torr.

Giving this evidence to Ardin Buckner triggers the next cutscene:

Right now, telling her that we believe the Dunton's to be responsible for this does nothing, since we have the evidence that someone is doing something, not the evidence that implies the Dunton's are doing something. No problem, we'll just have to go searching in their house.

_{This is the Dunton's house.}

All we need to do know is enter, since for some reason they don't lock their door.

_{Remember to lock your doors people, thieves are a real issue.}

The first order of business is to search for whatever can be of use to our investigation. So we'll raid the fridge first.

_{What? I have my priorities.}

_{After searching the fridge for evidence, Sara walks to the backyard. Ignore the poodles of Brown.}

_{Inspecting the Brahmin reveals that they're clearly someone else's}

And with this evidence we can finally prove that the Duntons are responsible for the Brahmin rustling. Of course, we can also bring this issue right to them... But that's not a good idea, so let's just talk with Ardin and see about getting a reward or something.

But now that we've told Ardin about the Duntons there's nothing really stopping us from talking to them about this issue, so we'll do just that.

This decision will also prove to be one of the worst decisions I've ever made in my life.

_{Y'know your brahmin look kinda suspicious.}

_{Come at me bro.}

And then combat starts.

Let's talk about combat in fallout, at least in the original 2: see there's this thing called "Random Number Generation" that will mess you up more than you can actually imagine, examples of this are when your companion fires their minigun at an enemy that is in your direction and they hit you but also score a critical hit against you and completely destroy your poor character, those situations where you somehow miss and fall to the ground for a billion turns and let your enemies destroy you and there's also that occasional moment where your gun just blows up in your hand, yes this actually happens.

Fallout 2's combat makes it so that the player has to save before any encounter because the tables can (and will) turn on you at the worst/best moments.

This is specially worse in the beginning, where the player doesn't really have a way to fight back reliably (and by that i mean, fight back and not miss every single attack) and made even more worse because of the fact i didn't heal before this and that i'm still poisoned.

During this encounter i had the brilliant idea of running away but the dog that i fed the dry meat before has been following Sara ever since and he's blocking the exit and keeping her trapped in here.

Knowing all of that you can get an idea of how this battle went... And if you don't, I'll tell you: It doesn't go well.

Most of it is my fault, since Sara doesn't have any weapons that she can use to fight back properly and the only means of healing will give her some debuffs in important stats, adding the fact that she's not at maximum health and that she's currently poisoned makes surviving more difficult and if that wasn't enough, the game keeps knocking her down and giving the Dunton brothers critical hits.

But the same moment i feel that all hope is lost, this happens:

You didn't see it?, I'll give you a close up:

_{Sweet mother of god, this is just beautiful.}

When a character is knocked down every other character gets a bonus to their chances of hitting said character. Using VATS, which is the game's targetting system that lets you target specific parts of your enemy's body to deal damage to those areas and possibly cripple them, I make Sara hit the area that's guaranteed to give me even more of an advantage, the groin.

Thanks to this little advantage Sara has a chance of (almost) 100% to hit the Dunton's nads and she does so, repeatedly, again and again, until he dies. But here's the other thing, out of all the areas that one can target in VATS the groin deals less damage and has a lower chance of dealing critical hits BUT, it has a bigger change to inflict knockdown AND you can also knockdown a person that is already knocked down. I swear this makes sense.

Sara then proceeds to beat the stuffing out of the first Dunton easily and then hits the standing one in the crotch, she knocks him down and repeats the same process until...

_{Hey, the dog moved away from the door during the fight.}

In the bodies of the dead brothers I find some brass knuckles that Sara can use to give her punches some extra "oof" and some other stuff I'll sell for some cash. Best part of this is that the town doesn't even react to their deaths, if anything the players gets some good karma with the town for killing the Dunton brothers. What a day.

Sara sells whatever she can't keep and goes to the "good" bar in town. There, she meets this guy:

Who trains her in unarmed combat, which is what Sara's using right now so that's good. And then Sara goes to the other part of town she hasn't been in yet, which is known as "Trapper Town".

You may ask, "Why is it called Trapper Town?" It's because a bunch of people known as Trappers live there, they're basically hunters who hunt Giant Gecko's and sell their hides for profit.

This man explains a little bit of the story of the town and then goes on to speak about the rat problem they currently have; for some reason the rats seem to be invading their territory and killing more and more people, it go to the point where they had to block off the rat infested area of town. This being fallout the only thing really blocking the rats is a door, and let me tell you that that's not enough, rats always find a way in.

Putting two and two together, Sara remembers the dog she gave some meat to and decides to see if the key the dog vomited gave her works on the door. It does and this lets us explore the remaining part of town.

_{Sara's lured in by the promise of sticks that go "boom" and hurt people real bad.}

_{There were no guns and her disappointment is immeasurable.}

_{She then finds some rats, many of them.}

_{With the training she just received and the brass knuckles the rats are no mach for her.}

This rat killing thing goes on for a while...

Until Sara finds a dead body and levels up from killing rats, this is the perfect opportunity to wait a little bit and recover health.

She then stands perfectly still for 24 hours and recovers all of her hp.

_{Yup, the healing item decreases perception. Using it over and over again will just make your character blind.}

This makes the side effects from the "Healing Powder" disappear and gives Sara all of her perception.

She then sees a hole that goes into some mines, probably infested by rats, and with the intent of leveling up again she goes down, into the darkness

_{Dude it's really dark down here.}

And then... nothing, since this is the last of the pictures I have left from before. So I guess I'll have to leave this here 'cause I have nothing else to add.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you have a nice day. See you next time!