I did a quick test for you with falche, lowered my INT to 2 points and yes I can read books without any drawback in skill points.Edit: I only tested it for Fallout 2, but I expect it will be the same for Fallout 1.

Thanks.

Would have been funny if you couldn't.

One other good thing about setting a low initial INT: you could pump the extra stat points into STR to max it out and easily blow through the Temple of Trials in FO2 thanks to the boosts to melee and unarmed. Made a good base for a 'Hulk SMASH!' type of character. I never actually made one as I didn't care for melee or unarmed in those games due to the overwhelming superiority of high-skill ranged weapon use, but you could turn that base into a pretty powerful character with the right perks. You'll go through a lot of stimpacks though, and they're not that easy to amass.

I often did use melee in the early game, however I never really developed it except for one case when I wanted to fight the guy in San Fransisco, because I could get much more mileage in the mid-late game out of ranged weaponry. One big advantage of using melee in the early game was that it let you save money that would otherwise have been sunk into 10mm rounds for the Pipe Rifle or 10mm Pistol.

I never really used drugs either since withdrawal really hurt, although it's true you could get some pretty good combat effects going if you did.

I don't know if you ever tried this, but if you had a character with 10 INT you could get some priceless reactions from at least some of the more arrogant characters when you showed them you understood better than even they did what they were talking about.

Back to topic, I have to say I much preferred the spread of equipment and items in Fallout 2 over Fallout 3 (and Fallout 1, as well.) In #2, I rather liked how you started out at the very bottom "rung" of the equipment ladder, and (considering a standard play-through - ie, not "exploiting" knowledge of the map to run out and grab some Power Armor right off the bat, etc,) how you generally spent a decent amount of time each step "step" along the way. (Like: you finally save up enough money for some Leather Armor, and by the time you get the Customized Leather Armor, it's still a valuable upgrade that you spend a noticeable amount of time cherishing.)

I seem to remember a pre-release interview with Todd Howard, where he mentioned that he wanted to make use of the item condition mechanic to make some of the higher-level weapons and equipment more available early on in the game - to give the players a taste of what would be out there without making them wait for the most of the game to be able to find it. Ostensibly, I think the idea was that the player would find a high-level item with near-zero condition and be able to play around with it a bit before it broke. Which I think was actually an honorable motive. But the downside was that if you happened to come across something like that, all you really had to do was take it back to a merchant and get it repaired - basically you were getting a high-level item before you were really "supposed" to have access to it. (And ammo was something I rarely found to be all that much of a limitation, for the most part.)

I think that's something that could have worked out - but perhaps needed to have been thought through a little bit more.

Still, what I enjoyed about Fallout 2 was how you'd get to Klamath as a near-penniless tribal with little of any real value to barter with, and even the most basic of necessities was well outside of your price range. I still remember saving up every penny and trading in almost all my disposable good just to be able to buy a couple of actual stimpaks, so that I wouldn't have to rely on those Healing Powders quite as much - and how buying just two of those completely cleaned me out.

The relative scarcity of certain items in Fallout 2 (and of course, towards mid-game this was much less of a consideration - an aspect that's been present throughout all of the Fallout series,) was something I felt really added to the setting and atmosphere. Buying those stimpaks wasn't like going to the drug store to pick up medicine - it felt like I was buying a rare Pre-War artifact that had miraculously managed to stay intact through all of those years. An item that was valuable not just for it's usefulness, but as a rare artifact of the nearly "magical" Pre-War civilization.

Well, considering that this thread has 8 replies, and the original counterpart has 11x as many I am forced to conclude that: FALLOUT 3 IS BETTER!! My plan worked perfectly. :woot:

I would suggest imagining the F03 world in the isometric FO1&2 format. Strip away the graphics, and i don't think anyone can honestly say there would be much to that game (relatively).

On the other hand, imagine having FO1&2 remade with FO3 style graphics, keeping the characters and dialogue etc... That would be AMAZING.

I imagine i'm not the first to think of this though.

OMG that would be perfect! if they just kept EVERYTHING else the same. dialogue, characters, towns, quests, friends, enemies, decisions.. and built FO 1 and 2 in the 3D real time style that would be so amazing. :vaultboy:
please bethesda, hear our pleas!