I've played 'Fallout', 'Fallout 2', and 'Fallout: Tactics'. I understand that 'Fallout: Tactics' was called that because it did not follow the storyline for 'Fallout' one or two.

When the third one came along, I thought, "Oh, goodie, it's continuing the main storyline!", but there was never any mention of any past 'Fallout's and I was kind of let down.

Just tossing that out there.

Bethesda owns the franchise now,their game was not a spinoff. So it was called Fallout 3.

And there are plenty of references to the first two games.

I haven't played the first 2 games and I STILL saw the references. Although I didn't know what they meant until later after snooping around wikia and had some of those "oooooh that's what that was for" moments.

There is no 'Main Storyline' it was different storys. Fallout and Fallout 2 where great, but I like Fallout 3 more in terms of feel. Personally, I am glad they brought the game to the other coast. It lets us see what happened to the other part of the country as well.

Exaclty how does FO2 follow the storyline of FO1?

The onlything that applies there is that both FO1 and FO2 are on the West Coast... while there's tie-ins with FO1, it's not to the level as a direct story continuation, more along the lines of what we see with FO3- "Yeah, this is what so-and-so did."