In a post-nuclear future, the descendant of the hero from Fallout must leave his tribe in search of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, the last chance of survival for his people. Once you get the G.E.C.K., however, the game is not over. Someone is kidnapping (or killing) people. It will be up to you to find out the truth and stop the evil.
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Deep in Oasis, at the northern edge of the map, you'll find Harold, a ghoul who has literally become one with a tree, now known as Bob. Harold first appeared as a mutated ghoul in the original two Fallout games, and his transformation into a sentient tree is one of the series' longest-running character arcs.
The ruined settlement of Shady Sands that keeps popping up in flashbacks isn't just set dressing, it was once the capital of the New California Republic and the largest post-war settlement in the original two Fallout games. Seeing it wiped off the map in the show is a genuinely heavy moment for anyone who's followed the series that long.
The Temple of Trials, the opening dungeon almost everyone complains about, only exists because Interplay's publishers took one look at the finished game and demanded a proper tutorial. The devs had to bang it out in a matter of days right before launch, which is basically why it feels bolted on. It's still one of the most hated openings in RPG history.
The Bozar was supposed to be a slow, accurate sniper rifle. Somewhere during development someone accidentally flagged it for burst fire instead, turning it into this absurd automatic hand-cannon. The team liked the happy accident so much they just left it broken, and it became one of the best late-game weapons in the game.
Before launch, Black Isle ran a Fallout trivia contest online and through an Australian gaming mag. The two winners, Lucas Kawarski from Poland and Cameron Rapmund from Australia, got themselves written into the game as actual villagers in Arroyo. A later patch even swapped the placeholder names Dumar and Standing Fist for Cameron and Lucas to make the tribute official.
At the Fallout 2 launch party, guests were handed a promotional plush gecko stuffed into a tin can, made to look like a bit of wasteland snack food. The original idea was actually 'dog meat in a can', but the team couldn't source a decent dog plush in time, so the gecko got the job instead.
If you play through the game without sleeping with anyone, you can earn the reputation title 'Virgin of the Wastes.' It sounds like it should matter, but it's purely cosmetic flavour text with zero effect on dialogue, quests, or stats. Pure bragging rights only.
Wander far enough and you can stumble on a special encounter where a shuttlecraft called the USS Torres has crash-landed, surrounded by three dead crewmen in red uniforms. It's a straight nod to the old 'redshirt' trope from the original Star Trek series, where anyone in a red shirt was basically dead on arrival. Loot their bodies and you'll find Hypos, which work like Super Stimpaks minus the HP penalty.
Work on Fallout 2 actually started before the first game hit shelves. Not long into it, three of the original creative leads, Tim Cain, Jason Anderson, and Leonard Boyarsky, walked away from the project. Cain in particular never felt Fallout needed a sequel at all and wasn't thrilled about decisions like making the Temple of Trials impossible to skip.
