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Comment by jimmies | Hacker News Reader

All of my favorite games ever are the 2D-era RPGs that I didn't play when I was young: Fallout 2, Chrono Trigger, Zelda Link to the Past. While CT and Zelda are relatively polished, Fallout 2 stands out as a piece of programming crap: buggy and crashes every so often, contents were cut left and right -- but boy, do I love that game. I feel like 30% of the contents were cut in the final version.

Thankfully that game has an incredible amount of people who love it, and it must be known to most people who play Fallout 2 by now: the "recommended" way to play Fallout 2 was to install the Restoration Patch. It restores all the cut contents back, and makes the game feel way more completed. Fallout 2 RP is one of the best examples of community patches I have seen.

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You could write almost the exact same post for Knights of the Old Republic II. Great game, but it's clear where they ran out of money.

Obduction seems like it ran out of money at the end as well. It's really well designed and polished, with logical Myst-style puzzles and Dark Souls-style shortcuts. And then the last "level" is 30 seconds long and followed up by an awful looking cutscene. I still recommend it if you like Myst, but it is incomplete.

In that case also go and have a look at Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. It was released 14 years ago and fans are still working on and releasing patches for it.

It's amazing how much dedication fans can have.

Re: Fallout 2, I never played it, started at Fallout 3, but one thing Ive observed playing Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4, Oblivion and Skyrim, Bethesdas quality sucks. They may be good at creating a good rpg world and story, but the stability and quality of the underlying software sucks. From the crashes (which made New Vegas nearly unplayable at launch) to the stupidity of the AI followers (I need your help-wait where are you? Did I accidentally kill you? Nope, followed randomly shows up half our later like nothing was wrong).

I agree with your point regardless but just a side note that New Vegas was actually dev'd by Obsidian and not Bethesda Game Studios like the rest of your examples.

But they used a lot of tech (like the game engine) from Bethesda Studio to develop New Vegas. (a bit like they developped KOTOR 2 and NWN 2 using tech from Bioware)

Oh you absolutely have to play through the first two Fallout games, with appropriate restoration/community patches in place, of course.

They are milestones in CRPG storytelling, visual style, gameplay design and dark humor.

And if you want another game that follows in the same footsteps, give Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura a try. It's set in a fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution, with all the friction between magic and tech that would result in. Like with FO1 and FO2, there are community patches to tweak the gameplay balance a bit (especially the one to boost firearms a bit, otherwise they're a bit weak compared to spells).

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