okay, it will be hard for me to explain what sort of answers i'm looking for, so try and understand me here
I played FO3 full, and its my favourite game, I done heavy research on FO and FO2 and even related games like Wasteland and stuff. I rly am thinking about gettin the originals. but am not sure what sort of feelings they will give me, in terms of what FO3 gave that made me love it.

If you called FO3 working your way up from the dirt, to a god what would you say about the first two?
If you said the Further along in the game you get, The less important charcter creation becomes, what would you say about the first two?
That feeling you get when playing FO3 for the first time that normally dies by the time you find lamplight, if it lasted say 65% of the story, how far along in your first play through in FO and FO2 does that feeling last?

I know these questions are heavily based on personal opinion and are some what hard to properly comprehend unless you had the same feelings as me, but any responses would be nice. thnx

Wow, you're asking some abstract questions. This will be difficult to answer. For starters, the first Fallouts are difficult to compare to Fallout 3. Obvious is of course the different perspective, iso-metric view. More important however, is that gameplay is revolved around other things, other priorities. Fallout 1 and 2 are more based on storytelling, character-interaction and choice and consequence. Your character will not be a god after level 8, he will have flaws no matter how perfect you're trying to build him up. SPECIAL and skills are much more determining for the kind of gameplay you'll get. This way you can play different roles, and even have the possibility to create a pacifist character that will never kill a living thing. Hope this explains a little bit.

To answer your questions:

Fallout 1 and 2 are working your way up from the dirt, especially Fallout 2 will give you a hard time in the beginning. But you will never really become a god, you're just a guy trying to do the 'right' thing and surviving the harsh world.

Character creation and development stay very important throughout the first games. SPECIAL has a significance that can't really be compared to Fallout 3. Forget about being a good shot with mostly any gun if you have a Perception of only 4, no matter how much points you put in Small Guns. The perks you get to choose for your character are once every 3 levels and the ones you are able to choose are restricted by both your SPECIAL attributes and your skill-levels. For instance, the Survivalist perk in Fallout 2 requires an Endurance of 6, an Intelligence of 6 and your Outdoorsman skill at 40%, otherwise this perk won't even show up on your list at a level-up.

Your last question is a little too abstract for me to answer. What kind of feeling are you talking about? I did play Fallout 3, but something tells me I didn't feel the same thing at all

I'll give this a shot (without trying to get into a "this one's better than that one" sort of debate...)

I had more of a sense of this in Fallout 2 than either of the other two games, to be honest. Simply because you start out at pretty much literally rock-bottom. In that game, you're going to be glad you spent the time doing the quest that gives you a sharpened spear; and early on you're going to treasure even a pipe gun and hope you can keep enough ammo around to keep it working. The beginning of that game really felt like it was a struggle just to survive; and left you making some really tough choices.

It's easy to be the good guy and take the high road when you're sitting on top of a mountain of stimpaks and bristling with weapons - it's much more meaningful a decision when you're bruised and bloodied and looking for a couple of caps just to buy some healing powder (which isn't as good as a stimpak - which you can't afford, anyway - and lowers your PER on top of it.) I'm also just a fan of the item progression ladder in that game - I think it was very well-balanced, where you spent a decent amount of time at each tier of climbing towards the "best" stuff in the game.

Character creation is probably the most important choice you're going to make in Fallout 1 and 2. Arguably too important, considering you're going to have to live with those consequences for the rest of the game. It can be a downer to make a weakling character, only to find out a few hours in that you're never going to be that great with anything heavier than a pistol (at least until you get enough skillpoints in to negate the negative modifier.) But yeah - a character with 100 in all skills (which isn't that terribly high in the previous two games,) and drastically different attributes are still going to play quite differently; as opposed to Fallout 3.

I guess that depends on what feeling you had playing Fallout 3 for the first time, that died by the time you found little lamplight...

I'll give it a shot too
It looks fun - like some sort of personality test for FO fans.


I'd say: "In FO1&2 you work your way up from the dirt to a god"
I'd furthermore say that you don't know what that sentence truly means if you haven't played FO2
In the beginning 'dirt' will sound like a commodity (btw: which one was it that featured dirt merchants?) and by the end it feels like your enemies drop dead by themselves when you're around.


I'd say character creation is never unimportant - I've always looked forward to my next perk no matter how strong my character already was.


ehhh... well...
you'll probably get a brand new feeling playing the old games anyway...

I think both Fallout and Fallout 2 have that feeling, moreso than Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 it's still quite easy to just stumble upon powerful equipment and the like right from the moment where you exit the vault. Now, in the previous games, you can most certainly find powerful equipment early on if you know exactly where to look, but there is more of a ladder to get better and better equipment. Like others have mentioned, in Fallout 2, it's especially rough in the beginning where it could potentially take quite a while before you find a decent gun.



Definitely not much in the first two. One of my personal beefs is how little the SPECIAL system matters in Fallout 3. In the other two, you will really define your gameplay experience in the character creation. The main SPECIAL stats are *much* more important than in Fallout 3. Tagging skills in Fallout 3 simply raises their starting value with 15 (I think?). In the older games, tagging skills will make raising those skills cost less skill point at every level up, whereas the non-tagged skills will cost more skill points to raise. Perks don't come every level (think it's every third level?), and there is also something called Traits in the character creation that can only be selected at the start of the game.



This one is very subjective of course. In Fallout 1, I never get that "drop-off" in fun factor. This is partially because Fallout 1 is actually not that big of a game, but the content there is very non-filler. It's very solid throughout. Fallout 2 varies a lot more in quality (though it's also bigger), and that drop in fun factor can occur to me pretty much at random depending on what I do in the game. When following the main story however, I would say that the last city you have to go to as part of the main plot, that's where I almost always lose interest or at least have to struggle a bit to keep going. I guess what remains there is like, I don't know... 20% of the plot stuff? I can't really remember the story progression in Fallout 2 at the moment to tell the truth.

In Fallout 1 and 2 you can't "become a god" or max out everything (aside from the easter egg post-game bonuses in F2.) Once you get PA in F1 or APA in F2, most of the enemies in the game will be nothing compared to you, but Super Mutants brandishing miniguns or Enclave soldiers with Plasma or Pulse weapons can still take you out with one critical hit or two.

The Enclave was something to fear and respect in F2.

all of these responses are so good, this is exactly what I was wanting, thanks all!
too those asking what I meant by "That Feeling" that dies by lamplight...

This is very hard to explain. That feeling the first time you opened the doors to V101, hearing that ear-shattering 16 tone door move, with police after you, and no idea what you will face beyond that door.

That feeling you got, first entering the Capitol Wasteland, and the immense bright light from the sun blinds you for a few seconds, and you get to have a "scenic overlook" (off topic, i think to wording: "Scenic Overlook" was bleek, realistic, funny and generally well placed, props beth)

That feeling when you first make it to megaton, and are greeted by a friendly cow boy, and then walking through the town, seeing men tending to the ground, hearing brahmin mooing and the Confessor's loud preaching: "BEHOLD...Atom's...", all the while weirder out by a Nuclear bomb!

That feeling you get, first leaving megaton to go to springvale, scared of just what you might find out there.

That feeling you got when you finally made it to rivet city, after battling your way along the Patomic from megaton.

That feeling you got, meeting Mr Burke and simply thinking about the proposition...

THAT feeling (i really loved this feeling, and that what made me like FO3 so much) If you still don't know what feeling I mean...wow

This thread has rly made me wanna get FO and FO2 ow (mainly FO2, from poverty beginings, seems very fun and rewarding. but The original is just something I gotta try)

I think I understand what you mean, but it wasn't exactly the same for me. Of course leaving Vault 101 was a thing Beth took good care of, that was special. But most other situations in Fallout 3 you describe here weren't that special to me, in my memory they pale to dozens upon dozens of situations my character got into in both Fallout 1 and 2. A moment where you're thrilled to go through an unknown area, but at the same time frightened because you have no clue whatsoever what's on your path and what's going to happen. It's just my opinion here, but I felt much more purpose in the various locations and people in Fallout 1 and 2 than I do in Fallout 3. Rivet City for instance was a huge letdown for me, because when I finally got there, I was walking around for half an hour, finally finding the people that I wanted to speak to about my father, they made it easy for me and just told me where the hell he is. And that was it, goodbye Rivet City. Sure, you can do more there but there is no real need to, because you have found what you were looking for. In the first two Fallouts you weren't pointed in the right direction by the people of the Wasteland, you just had to figure more things out for yourself. That leads to a different kind of exploration that, for me, was much more exciting.

Well, as far as the "feeling" thing goes, that's obviously pretty subjective; but honestly, most of the stuff you pointed out as examples are things you're not really going to experience in the original Fallouts, just by virtue of their design. (I mean, stepping out of the Vault for the first time in Fallout 1 is accompanied by a little paragraph down in your text box - it seemed pretty neat at the time, but let's face it - it's kind of hard to compare that to actually experiencing it for yourself like you do in Fallout 3.)

I still found, myself, that I could get pretty "immersed" into what was going in the previous games, though. For myself, I always got the feeling that everything I said or did in the game really carried weight - it was very possible to make the "wrong" decision or pick the "wrong" dialogue with people (so much so that I got into the habit of quicksaving before talking to almost everyone.) And Bethesda is very good with the little details; but so was Interplay in their own way. I have to admit that I miss how in Fallout 1 and 2 it could make a real difference whether or not you were walking around town with your gun drawn, for instance.

But anyway, the "feeling" you get when you play the originals is going to, by it's very nature, probably be a good deal different than what you got playing Fallout 3. On the other hand, it's still the same thing where you never know what's going to be around the next corner. My first times through, I could never wait to get around to finding the next town or important location - and you could spend days just dealing with the sidequests in one of those places.