Fallout 2

Fallout 2 expanded the post-apocalyptic vision of the first game in 1998 to a scale few expected at the time. The player begins as the Chosen One, descendant of the hero from the first game, and sets out from the impoverished village of Arroyo to find a device that can save their tribe. The journey leads through the casinos of New Reno, cities ruled by criminal families, all the way to a secret organization with its own vision for humanity's future. The game uses the SPECIAL system, meaning seven basic attributes complemented by skills and special traits that fundamentally change the style of play. Combat is turn-based and works with action points and aimed shots at individual body parts, so even an ordinary skirmish demands careful thought.

Technically, it's an isometric two-dimensional engine with pre-rendered graphics that ran reliably on an ordinary Windows 95 or 98 setup and did not require 3D acceleration. The world is divided into locations connected by a wasteland map, across which travel carries the risk of random encounters. The visuals lean on dirty browns and grays, a retro-futuristic design straight out of the 1950s, and black humor hidden in item descriptions. Mark Morgan's music works with ambient soundscapes and dark synthetic themes that underscore the wasteland with silence rather than melody, and the result counts among the best-realized atmospheres of its time.

Reviews praised above all its freedom: almost any task can be solved through violence, persuasion, stealth, or circumvention, and the game rarely tells the player they're not allowed to do something. At the same time, it was known at release for a considerable number of bugs, which were addressed through patches and later community fixes. Its influence on the genre was significant, since Fallout 2 showed how an RPG could combine moral grayness, satire, and open-ended problem solving. Today entry is harder due to an unfriendly interface and a tough start where the character is very weak, but anyone who pushes through will find a game that, in freedom of decision-making, still outdoes most new titles.