It was a symptom of a larger problem with Fallout 2. Fallout 2 had its moments such as the political situation between Vault City, New Reno, the NCR and Redding, and I consider it a fantastic role playing game, but the darker and maturely handled content was buried under a mountain of silly, juvenile content.

This guy right here nailed it.

Did you enjoy the extremely forced and idiotic NWO plotline (along with some good old "muh land" just to make it a bit [censored]tier), the impossible premise of vault-dwellers becoming tribals, the many poorly written characters and just in general the stupidity of the game? I myself found it extremely underwhelming especially right after FO1.

Oh yeah, I barely remember that. I need to replay FO2, maybe there's a bit more to the game than I remember.

No I don't enjoy [censored] parts of any game. But I can filter the [censored] out if I think the better outweighs it.

Every Fallout game has lost fidelity from the previous one; like the 'copy of a copy' effect. There were mechanical improvements... Fallout 2 had plenty. Tactics improved upon Fallout 2's TB combat; but even so like Fallout 2, it was even further from the source than Fallout 2 in several aspects. Then came FOBOS, which transitioned to 3D and lost all aspect of Fallout Tactics combat; becoming a realtime action shooter akin to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0SL_pATfrQ ~but still with flimsy RPG elements...

The teams brought their own [sometimes erroneous] conception of the game, its setting; and what is and is not appropriate in context of that setting. Eg: Fallout had what appeared like a giant footprint in the sand, and what appeared to look like a space ship... where Fallout 2 had the [recently dead] whale carcass from Hitchhiker's Guide, and a crashed shuttle craft from the Enterprise. Fallout had a lunatic inhabiting a used car lot, Fallout 2 had the bridgekeeper from Holy Grail ... and Brain from Animaniacs ... and a chess playing scorpion ... and a spell casting supermutant ... and a ghost ...

Its just that information isn't spood fed to you that makes it mature.. Your view of the NCR could be based on spoon-feeding of information or it can be created by your own opinions.. Fallout 3 had just straight up spoon-feeding and you fought for the good guys who were perfect in everyway. The NCR is not some perfect entity in the western wastes.. It is an oligarchy controlled by Brahmin-Ranchers who couldn't care less about the Mojave and its peoples.. They just want money and resource when it comes down to it..

The Modoc quest springs to mind and the gecko quest (I hate first citizen Lynette).One of the most poignant moments in Fallout 2 IMO is the

but it does involve the enclave.

As styles said Fonv sets a good example for tone (and just about everything else IMO).It has a heterogeneous blend of wacky light hearted moments (fisto, psychic boy, talent pool quest etc and then fonv deals with cannibalism, slavery, corruption, the journals of a mans eventual suicide and Lilly's mental issues (quite sad if you think about it )etc.

But Fallout isn't about the day to day gloom and doom of survival in a post-apocalyptic world like the walking dead is for example, there is going to be hardship obviously but they aren't the focus of the narrative but rather long term progression is via rebuilding society. So I don't want to see this "Just the whole horror and constant danger of not only the creatures in the wasteland but the people".

Also I've never really noticed the overwhelming juvenile humor in Fallout 2 to the extent that it tarnishes the game

Sure there's a porm studio, a scorpion you can compete against, a talking spore plant, hakunin, 4th wall breaking random encounters, hubologists and so on but there's still lots of maturer/darker content as well.Though having said that I also feel Fallout 2 is a step down from Fallout 1.