Not at all. Only a few major NPCs had a voice.
It was 1998, man!
Anyway, if *that *was what kept them from having more meaningful dialogue options… I’d rather go back to no voice, thanks.
I’m regretting taking the experience point boosting perks. I ended up hitting lvl 20 half-way through the main quest and with a number of side quests remaining. I hadn’t realized that there was such a low level cap :smack:
Yeah, a low level cap and no real reason to take that perk. You can level up to the max level easy enough by just running the main quest and a few of the side quests.
Got it on the 29th, finished the story on the 3rd. Playing pretty solid through the weekend, although a lot of dossing about on side-quests since I’d read that the end is just that - you don’t continue with that character after, which is kinda disappointing.
Initially I didn’t realise the penultimate quest was the penultimate quest; going into Vault 87 turns out to be a lot lot more. If I’d know I’d have stocked up on Stim packs, I had 1 left by the end, even with medicine skill at maximum!
Nope. Almost none of it was spoken.
Edit: already answered above.
As much as I would agree with the sentiment of more options, even if less is spoken, people would have complained. They expect it now a days.
I think fallout 2 was originally intended to have animated/spoken dialogue, since some of the characters you meet early on (Sulik, Tree head dude) had it, but I’m guessing they realized it was too expensive/time consuming and ended it there.
So anyway, I’m just starting. Can I get some tips for character creation? I played Fallout 2 mostly as a Diplosniper, but I’m not sure how much int/char/speech skills matter in this game with the more limited dialogue. My very early char already took that experience perk so I’m probably going to restart it anyway.
If I visit a location and just look around and get items and kill things, will I still get a quest item from someone for that location?
For example, if I would have visited the Arlington Library would I still have gotten the quest item from Moira?
And would I just have to go back to the Arlington LIbrary to do the quest?
One niggle about the ending, though;
Big spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t completed!
When you’re outside the chamber with Lyons, I had the rescued Super Mutant from Vault 87, Fawkes, following me (who also, hilariously, waltzed into the Brotherhood of Steel’s HQ with nary a raised eyebrow). So, chamber floods with radiation but needs to be shut off? Why not send the freaking radiation-proof mutant in and tell him the code? He’s right there! But, no, I have to be all noble and sacrifice myself, also despite having enough RadAway and RadX to drink the Potomac several times with nary an upset stomach. A real “mommy, why didn’t they use Phoenix Down on Aeris?” moment, there.
Oh, and there are definite unique dialogue options for different skills and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes; the ones I’ve seen are mainly intelligence, medicine, explosives, I’ve seen a science one towards the end too.
The problem you cite is apparently something a lot of people have trouble with, not just in what occurs but how it’s handled. I can’t believe it’s something they couldn’t make work a bit better than they did.
Finn’s post above has some pretty good tips for min/maxxing. Speech seems like it would be helpful, as my low-speech character keeps failing the speech challenges and ends up having to do everything the hard way. Charisma doesn’t seem to do much, at all. I pumped mine to 6 just so I could get the Animal Friend perk. Intelligence is by far the most powerful stat (10 INT gives you 20 skill points per level, plus a lot of better dialogue options), followed by Agility (governs your action points). Small guns are the most prevalent type of weapon, and a high repair allows you to keep your weapons doing maximum damage without paying through the nose (keeping my weapons close to 100% allows me to 1- or 2- shot kill almost everything, even outside of VATS). Science/Lockpick – try to have at least one of these relatively high (you find a lot more mechanical locks, but a nearby terminal will also unlock many doors and safes), and a high Science will also provide you some better dialogue. A decent Medicine skill will not only add to your dialogue options, it’ll unlock some quests, as well – and make those precious stimpacks last you longer.
I wouldn’t worry about min/maxing though. The game is pretty easy to play through with whatever character concept you come up with (my current, and first, play-through is a smart do-gooder, tagged Science, Repair, Explosives - have all three tagged skills plus small guns maxxed at 100 at level 13, and I’m probably just a little more than halfway through - the ability to 1-shot-kill 3 super mutant brutes with a single grenade nearly breaks the game, but hoooo boy is it fun!). My next playthrough will probably be a bad-karma martial-artist, even though a close-quarters character seems to be pretty broken in this game (I guess I’ll just have to max out sneak early on so I don’t get kited all over the place, or medicine, so I can eat stimpacks like candy while i soak up bullets and rockets while closing distance).
It depends on the quest. I know that’s not very helpful 
Theoretically, you’re not supposed to be punished for exploring places, but there’s a few quests that are buggy and you’ll trigger the scripting when you visit an area which can potentially break the quest for you later on. So far, I haven’t run into this (and I’ve even picked up quest items for quests I didn’t know about, and when I did encounter the questgiver later on, I was able to just hand in the item I had been carrying around).
Remind me what tagging skills does. I seem to recall it gave you bonus points when you assigned points to that skill, but I didn’t notice that happening in this case.
Tagging a skill just boosts it by 15 points. There’s no doubling up on points spent on it, like you could in Fallout 2. Which is part of why it’s almost totally useless later on in the game, unless you really, really, really need an extra 15 points in something.
Alright guys, help a Fallout Brother here, how do you unselect something after you make it a hotkey item? I have the 360 version…yeah, yeah, I know. My PC could run it well, but 21" Viewsonic vs 52" XBR…I got weak. What happened was I accidentally got vodka assigned to a hotkey (wish it was RL) and can’t get it off. I don’t like getting drunk by accident.
Actually, I really don’t like the whole hotkey system on the 360 and hardly use it because it’s too easy to accidentally use a stimpack when you are only down a few HP. Switching to the rifle, oh no, I pressed the D-Pad a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction. I defy any of you to use a hotkey you assign to the corner slots.
I know I should have gotten the PC version, but it looks and sounds awesome on the home theater. If they ever come out with a viable mouse/keyboard combo for consoles…I will hardly use my computer again. Can’t figure out why the console guys aren’t working on this night and day…it would absoultely kill PC gaming. Seriously, the only reason I game on my PC is the mouse/keyboard beats the crap out of any controller.
It’s not just that. It’s modding, it’s MUCH higher graphics quality, it’s the scale, scope and gameplay difference of exclusive PC titles AND it’s the mouse and keyboard 
Believe it or not I have a 5.1 surround system on my PC and though my screen is 24" I’m also sitting 2 feet from it (not 10), giving me a much more immersive and more personal interaction with games. Granted, that’s not for everyone, but it’s a plus in my book.
Two ways I have done it.
First, map another item to the key. If you map something that you have mapped to another key, it clears the other one. You can then keep it on the new key or move it back.
Second. Drop the item that’s mapped to the key. You can pick it back up again and the key will still be cleared.
This is from the PC so YMMV on console.
I know what you mean. Two things I’ve done that help:
- Put “primary” weapons/items on the cardinal directions for quick use.
- Hold the keypad down when trying to use corner items. The item doesn’t get used until you release the pad, so you can roll to different items and make sure you’re selecting the right one. Slower, but uses the correct corner items most every time.
One thing I don’t like about the PC controls implementation is the lockpicking minigame. I can tell that they had it set up for the controller’s two analog sticks so that you can slowly play with both to pick the lock.
But the keyboard is not analog and it’s hard to keep from braking the pin. Anyone found a strategy for this on the PC?
Also, the ability to try and retry the hack minigame ad infinitum kind of defeats the purpose.
Thanks, but I don’t like the switching and dropping and picking up again, but if it works…I’ve gone through worse for a game. Hell, I still have nightmares about adjusting stuff in DOS to even play a game (yeah, I’m old). It just really pisses me off that they brag about how their console is “as powerful as a PC or even MORE powerful”, but can’t get a simple thing like a fucking mouse and keyboard to work. I know they don’t want to gimp the guys playing with controllers, but if they can’t work a mouse…um, yeah, that’s a complicated piece of tech there, don’t want to put an eye out.
It really shouldn’t matter on a single player game, only with online would console guys get pwned. Seriously, the only thing I use my PC for now is checking e-mail, DL to my I-Pod , and posting here. I loved the mods for Oblivion, but I don’t have time for them now so I got to go with the vanilla game. Oh, and it is beautiful on the big LCD and sounds awesome on the surround sound. Can’t wait for the DTS patch for SOCOM on the PS3.
Bingo! That comes from them trying to make a game for the PC and consoles at the same time…both lose. Either the PC version gets simplified controls or the console gets awkward controls. Can’t compress the number of keys on a PC keyboard to something usable on a console without REALLY cutting down on options. Equally hard to scale up console controlls to a keyboard with VASTLY many more buttons.
All comes down to cost…hard to make the same game for two really different systems. That’s why Morrowind was so awesome and Oblivion…uh, wasn’t. Morrowind was made for PCs and ported to consoles, and Oblivion was made for consoles and ported to PC. Easy to see the difference…Hell, just look at the interface of the two games.