I've heard some people throw around that the devs of Fallout 2 said the only reason you can kill Frank Horrigan is because you need to be able to finish the game, and that in lore the Chosen One would stand no chance against him. I've even heard that he should have survived the oil rig exploding in lore. So is any of this true or is it just rumors? Does anyone have a source where the devs say this?

This might be a hot take but I always thought there was a bit too much cultural decay from fallout 1 to 2 when it came to arroyo. I mean, these were people descended from vault dwellers, educated people who understood technology. Why are their immediate descendants seemingly so primitive and ignorant of the world around them. Like, understand they'd have their own culture and practices over the course of 80 something years, but they basically become a totally different group of people within a single generation. It's just... too drastic in the time since the first game.

Am I wrong here? If we ever see arroyo again, do you think they should be reworked and reconned a bit to be more realistic?

See the map on the oil rig floor where president is

The main thing about the village of arroyo that doesn’t make sense is for them to be so primitive and superstitious after only 80 years. Treating anything related to vault 13 and the vault dweller with religious reverence and confusing technology with mysticism.

This wouldn’t be a real problem if it took place a much longer period of time after the first game, say at least 200 years but it does not make sense for them to be so superstitious after only 80 years.

Arroyo was founded by the vault dweller and other…vault dwellers after he was banished at the end of the first game, meaning the villages founders where educated, civilized people, yet the village has become primitive and superstitious after only 80 years.

The elder acts like a superstitious primitive even though her old age should mean her parents generation would’ve been the people who came from vault 13 yet she refers to it has the “holy 13” it makes no sense for her talk the way she does. Her behavior would make sense if this was many generations after the founding of arroyo and not less than a century ago when the older residents like the elder would’ve personally known the vault dweller.

Did the Enclave's genocidal attitude towards wastelanders start with Richardson? Maybe he didn't necessarily invent it or was the first, but was he the one who made it actual government policy? The wiki claims the Enclave's ideology started in the 2140s but I have no idea where this information came from.

Personally I like the idea of Richardson starting or atleast making official the ideology we know the Enclave for, it gives him importance and unifies the faction in a way, but that's besides the point.

I know he's green but before his transformation was Frank a black man? His voice actor is so I naturally assumed he was.

He also doesn't really have a west coast accent. In some of his lines he sounds like a southerner, which makes sense as Michael Dorn is from Texas. Just curious on anybody's thoughts.

So I'm on a bit of a lore binge and just reading the wiki entries to get a basic understanding before watching videos on the lore or playing 2 myself when, as I read the G.E.C.K entry on the wiki, I see that there are two G.E.C.Ks we can find during the quest to get one for Arroyo. One from Vault 13 and one in Control Station ENCLAVE. Now I assume that according to the post 2 lore, the Chosen One didn't get the second G.E.C.K as I couldn't find any information on whether or not they did, or even if they got one from Vault 13 or the Oil Rig, just that they used one to fix the drought problem of Arroyo and turn it from a village into a city. So is it ever said which one they used? If they got both?

One of the Vaults in Fallout 2 was Vault 8, a control vault that open up after 10 years and founded Vault City.

From Fallout 2 - Information gathered by the Chosen One from Vault 8 Central Computer

“From what you can make out in the archives, two GECKs were part of every Vault's standard inventory package. Only one was shipped to Vault 8, however… Due to a shipping error, it appears Vault 8 received a box of surplus water chips intended for another Vault. The other Vault most likely received Vault 8's second GECK.”

They were referring to Vault 13 in the text. The home vault from the original Fallout.

I bring this up because in Vault 8 you can find water chips everywhere. You can find up to 420 water chips. These are the same water chip’s that you were sent out to find in the original Fallout game and the same type of water chip that breaks in Vault 33.

I just found this fact amusing.

I mean enclave is a powerful faction do you think they would succeed in the long term logistically and strategically. Especially without the existence of Chosen One

Like the dude is a California/Oregon village boy who never saw a functioning car and when he acquires the Highwayman, he knows how to drive it perfectly?

Hello everyone,

While I'm playing Fallout 2 for the first time, I did have some lore interrogation. The beginning of the game explains how you come from a small tribe worshipping vault 13. But when entering others city, such as Klamath, you understand that there's a lot of others tribes all around the place, having different cults and, let's be honest, living like cavemen for most of them. My question is : how would you explain that for only 3 or 4 generations , people kinda forget about every aspect of modern civilization, and just went full tribesman, such as Sulik ? Do you think it's a reasonable take to say that after a nuclear holocaust, people would turn to this kind of social organization?

I think this aspect is less present in the other games (even in FNV, the great Khans looks more civilized).

Edit : Thanks for those replies, it makes more sense to me now. I never realised how well thought is the world building in the fallout series.

Sounds like a dumb question I know, but I can’t recall if it was ever officially stated that the original deathclaws(not the intelligent ones) were made with FEV or just generic sci fi genetic engineering. I’m aware the tv show has them show up early in the anchorage invasion before the creation of FEV in 2075, but I wanted to know if we got lore confirmation of FEV not being used before then.

sorry to answer my own question, but I actually found maybe half an answer. It looks like they were intended to be made from FEV according to Scott Campbell himself, but I have not found out if they ever put it into words in the game:

“Was it always a big scaly lizard thing? Nope. My initial design for this terrible creature was a the apex predator of the wasteland, a mix of wolverine and brown bear, mutated by the FEV. It could survive any environment and feared nothing; a legendary force of nature that struck terror into the hearts of men! Unfortunately, the artists took one look at my concept sketch and said, 'Dude, that's way too much hair.' It was true. The Wolverine-bear was very furry, and there was just no way around it. So here's what happened: the newly formed Black Isle started work on what would be Planescape: Torment. One of the first art pieces was a monstrous creature called a Tarrasque. It was sculpted in clay and was then point-by-painstaking-point digitized into a 3D model. As Planescape moved forward, it turned out that the Tarrasque wouldn't actually be featured in its design, leaving that tasty model in disuse. Thus, the furry wolverine-bear became a hairless reptilian biped. (Take a look at page 339 of the D&D second edition Monster Manual. Holy cats! It's a Deathclaw!)”

— Scott Campbell, Origins of Fallout No Mutants Allow

I know Frank Horrigan is a super mutant of the second generation but he has all perfect tens in his stats so is he dumb or not?

I just read through all of her dialogue, and she never brings up the Chosen One's ancestry, or the history of the tribe.

The only mention I've been able to find of her being related to the Chosen One is in the Fallout Bible, there's nothing in-game or in the game manual.

Citizen class made up of original settlers? Check.

Non citizens are slaves? Check. They think that slavery is "enlightenment" for them? Check

Consuls? Check. Proconsuls? Check.

At the start of the Roman Empire, it was called the "Principate". Why? Because it meant the Emperor wasn't called an Emperor. He was called "First among Equals", or in other words - "First Citizen". Check

I'm honestly surprised i can find so little information on people comparing Vault city to Rome when it's so obvious it's inspired by it to the smallest details.

I'm really curious what the hell happened to the chosen ones little tribe. So The Chosen One bring the geck to the Village and what happened. Do we know what happened to them during any other game. Is it safe to say they may have join the NCR? (For clarification I haven't yet finished Fallout 2, I'm at Vault City and still learning the lore.)

They required FEV-2 from the Mariposa ruins, so they would need some mainland operations to occure. But once the Chemical Corps had extracted what was needed, why bother sending out more men into the mainland?

In fallout 2 there's one settlement that doesn't allow player characters and their followers to hold weapons while in its walls and that settlement is shady sands now called ncr. However ncr makes sense for why they would be against open carry, being the capital of growing state that trying to unite and civilized the wasteland but why is vault city obsessed with order and stability not the same? Even people with day passes can brandish their guns, why's that? Is it a design choice on black isles part or is there a lore reason?

I was thinking, since the Enclave had it as a base and we know that China had spies all over the US, it's pretty reasonable to believe that at least one of them would have found out about the Oil Rig, and if so, when the war started, why didn't they nuke it?

The Enclave hates a lot but one thing I don't think they necessarily do is hate super mutants. Think about it, through out all their appearances (even as late as the show) the Enclave have been using and experimenting on super mutants for their benefit, including their strongest ever tool, Frank Horrigan. The Enclave only hate irradiated creatures and main land mutants because they are not the creation of the Enclave, they hate the ghouls because they are corrupted and mainland mutants not because they are modified but because they are owned by someone else. TLDR: Ghouls suck cause they are impure,contaminated,TAINTED. and mainland muties suck cause they are not enclave, Frank is cool cause he is a Enclave super soldier

These things are so weird and simultaneously get a lot and very little fanfare in the game. The big fanfare is that they are mysterious and called Aliens throughout the game except when you find them in the mines. We clear them out and kill the matriarch and that's about all we get from them in game. The fallout Bible goes on to declare that this generation of wanamingos will be the last because they are actually engineered creatures and were built to die off at some point. That bit really confuses me because it just raises more questions than answers:

What were they engineered from? What is their designed purpose being a giant head with little feet and noodle arms? Why are they seemingly localized to this area of the wasteland?

Then there are some more meta questions: why invent the Deadman switch for the wanamingos? It stands out as uncharacteristically responsible for the scientists of the fallout world. It also seems way too random and convenient that this generation is to be the last. Like, they were designed to breed but only for about 1.5 centuries? That's way too long if that was supposed to limit them and keep them from spreading too far. And it's weird to introduce this monster with almost no in game explanation and then insist that we just happen to wipe out the brood queen of the last generation and this is the last time players will probably ever see them.

It almost feels like they aren't happy about wanamingos' introduction into the fallout world and are trying to write them out of the setting after the fact.

They have a completely different appearance from the ZAX series. Is there any relation? MODUS’ mainframe from 76 appears to have a somewhat similar design philosophy as well. Curious what you guys think.

Iirc this is kind of a big twist in fallout 2s narrative, and... Arguably the exact point the main story actually becomes clear (at the end of the game lol). Fallout 2 is a big game though so I was wondering if I just missed any indication of how the enclave found arroyo in the first place.

I'm making a small force for the tabletop wargame for fallout, and am trying to get a gauge of what a squad of soldiers, or group of civilians would have in terms of weapons and armour.

I figured they would have T-51 somewhat commonly, and combat armour. But would they have any iconic weapons, or weapons taken from the Chinese submarine?

The only reference i have is the few guards in fallout 2, since they didn't really display much of a military presence.

And assuming that the chosen one gave the vertibird plans to the shi, would they have developed a large airborne presence in san fransisco?

Why was the Den part of the trade route between Vault City and New Reno.
They could have saved a lot of time if the chemicals went straight to New Reno instead of taking the detour and going nortwest and then down again to New Reno.