As part of DualShockers’ week-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of Fallout, every day our writers recall a moment from the series that stuck with them over the years.
Starting with Fallout 3, Bethesda granted us a first-person view of life after nuclear annihilation, but the first two Fallout games were a spectacle for the imagination. The series originated with just a pixilated bird’s-eye view of the dreary new world and one fixed, north-facing camera.
The graphical superiority of the more modern games is evident, but the sense of imagination required to enjoy the original two made them even more immersive. And while the series has always prided itself on well-written characters, the second installment gives us something we haven’t really seen realized in the main-series games since: a full party. The first game’s protagonist largely wanders the world alone, save for his ill-fated dog and maybe a hired gun. And while Fallout 4 has even let us build homes for the friends we’ve made along the way, the series has persisted with a feeling of isolation, right down to the names of its protagonists, like The Lone Wanderer and The Sole Survivor.
That’s really one of the key selling points of Fallout 2 — assembling your party and laying waste to the wasteland as a team. The sense of group camaraderie, however strained, only increases when you acquire something no one else in the world seems to have anymore: a functioning car. If you can fix it up, the Highwayman provides much faster travel speed on the overworld map, and the trunk eases the burden of carry weight, meaning you and your friends can loot as many guns, bullets, and iguanas-on-a-stick as you see fit, essentially turning yourselves into a traveling merchant caravan if you choose.
All this for the cost of a few energy cells, a small sidequest, and $2,000? Absolutely worth it.
So how do you get the team together? Well, some of the more modern games have seen Charisma become a common dump stat, not really serving any special purpose beyond skills that can be raised by leveling up, but in Fallout 2 it means something. For each party member you want to add to your crew, you need an additional two charisma (e.g. a character with six charisma can’t have more than three companions along for the ride). You can bump up your total party size through a particular trait, but you only get one new trait every few levels and there’s certainly more interesting ones out there. So if you want a diverse party, your Chosen One better be a charmer.
For me, four was the magic number. Two come early on in the game, as the main questline sends you to find Vic the Trader in the town of Klamath. Vic’s not very helpful at first — he’s clumsy with both his hands and his tongue, frequently dropping both his pistol in combat and the ball in conversations, but he can be used to fix things if his repair skill is higher than yours. He also gets the participation award for most improved gunslinger, as his level-ups will eventually have him scoring headshots with ease, and I can’t help but be proud of seeing my bumbling man-child finally grow up.
Before you get to Vic, you’ll probably stumble across Sulik. As one of the few companions with audio and video in his conversations, he really stands out, although that could just be because he often consults the spirit of Grampy Bone, the quite spectacular piercing in his nose. When you encounter Sulik, he’s in quite a bit of debt, but I’ll gladly pay it all off to add him and ol’ Grampy to my crew.
Cassidy, who turns out to be the father of Rose of Sharon Cassidy from Fallout New Vegas, is old, crotchety, foul-mouthed, and not good for anything except blasting things with a rifle or shotgun. So he’s in, obviously.
Lastly, what would a road trip be without an intelligent killer dinosaur in an oversized bathrobe, disguising himself about as well as The Thing wearing a trench coat and fedora? That’s Goris. He’s a deathclaw. He can talk. And he just wants everyone to get along. He is best boy.
Of course, there are plenty of others you can pick up along the way, but it’s up to you to decide who’s the right fit for your team, who can best serve mankind by staying in their place, and who deserves to be lying dead in a pool of their own blood (it’s Myron. Myron has to die).
Whoever you choose, Fallout 2 will take your imagination on the road trip of a lifetime. Because wherever you’re going, you don’t need roads.
