Arroyo & Chosen One nonsense

[Reawakened]

I played fallout 2 again recently and thought the story is a bit stupid.. why did the vault dweller go far into the north? He could've just went to shady sands.. or any other place on the map.
And why exactly is Arroyo a tribal village? They don't even have guns, if some slavers or raiders wanted to, they could probably take a bunch of people with not much problem.
Maybe if there wasn't a connection between the vault dweller and chosen one it wouldnt be as bad..

 

[Atomic Postman]

>why did the vault dweller go far into the north?

Why not? Human beings are not always utility maximizers that make the most optimal decisions, they oftentimes make decisions for arbitrary or irrational personal reasons. Why did the Vault Dweller explore anywhere on the map that wasn't absolutely necessary in Fallout 1 to his quest? Why did he do anything but the most necessary objective? Because he's the kind of person who would do that, explore unknown territories. Besides, an additional reason could be that the Vault Dweller as of his memoirs was pretty distraught and had lost all his companions and friends, and those places that weren't connected to them he wasn't a huge fan of (Junktown, the Boneyard etc) so he would just want to put his arduous journey behind him for good.


>And why exactly is Arroyo a tribal village?

Ask yourself why an exiled Vault Dweller who had an extremely traumatic journey wherein he saw first hand the horrors of nuclear war, mutation and twisted powers of technology beyond his comprehension combined with settlements of people living in bombed out buildings killing and cheating eachother would want to create an agricultural survivalist community that didn't have to rely on technology. Is the degredation of their education in just a period of 80 years a little bit too quick? Yes but I think it's thematically appropriate and a cool idea so in terms of suspension of disbelief I put it up there on the shelf with the giant radioactive scorpions.

>if some slavers or raiders wanted to, they could probably take a bunch of people with not much problem

Arroyo was hidden and isolated beyond a desert canyon, if they wanted to they could cut the bridge and be fine. They only got truly raided when the Enclave arrived in Vertibirds.

 

[Reawakened]

hey this is a very good explanation, especially in regards to his journey to the north

 

[laclongquan]

In term of game story

1. Mariposa is broken so the mutant army moving east, which mean from MB to V13 to Shady Sands in term of direct eastward. Or to Junktown/The Hub as southeastern. Or northeastward. It's like a bubble so the group of V13 migrants would be wise to veer wide of it, so that's mean north, northeasterly.

2. Why not Shady Sands you asked? Shady Sands was surrounded by at least three major groups of raiders: The Khans, Vipers, and Jackals. Even if we crush the Khans, there's still two more left. In term of security Shady Sands was not that safe.

3. Why not Shady Sands, you asked? In term of land it's fully occupied by V15 migrants already. And even after 70 years there's no other major town around it. So the original V15 migrants already capture the best (and only) land around.

4. Back to point one, the migrants would travel north, northeasterly. On that direction there's no major agriculture center in the next 70 years: New Reno is a tourist town, and Broken Hills is mining. So instead of continuing inland with further prospect of more drought and less water, they would try to hug the coast line, which there is still no possible great land to farm, even 70 years later.

5. So around the horizontal line of New Reno they would have two direction, continuing northward and later on get to Modoc which is the major farm later. Or they continue seawardly and finally get to Arroyo, which is very good in term of security (that chasm) and existant infrastructure (that big honking stone temple and waterfall)

To be frank, it's like a flip of the coin at that time. Modoc is a better location with Vault City nearby just opened up about 50 years. But well, Vault Dweller must not have gotten any data at all concerning Vault 8 location so he follow the original criteria: safe, easy to defend, and easy to do agriculture, and hugging the sea coast.

As for tribal, tehre's a big article on anthropology here, the which I will spare you and conclude: it's extremely unavoidable considering the size of V13 migrants at that time, and their location of Arroyo. V15 can form medieval village in Shady Sands thank to Junktown and earlier's outgoing group of Khans. V8 has the benefit of several towns around so they form a semi-feudal Vault City with citizens as nobles. But Arroyo has no nearby town (both Klamath and The Den formed much later), so tribal society is the only possible result.