Posted May 08, 2024
I've beaten Fallout 1 with my three builds: sniper, burst fire, and melee, playing various playthroughs on good and evil. There are far more opportunities to be good than evil in the first game. There are hardly any evil quests. A lot of enemies including raiders, super mutants, and most of the ghouls in Necropolis, all raise your reputation for killing them. You also gain reputation for blowing up the Cathedral and the Military Base, all of which are necessary to beat the game. Other tasks including getting the water chip raise reputation as well.
Fallout 2 has many more opportunities to be evil and many quests have an evil option as well as a good option, though the good option always gives more experience points. Due to the increased difficulty level and that enemies even at the start of the game have more health points than Fallout 1, including bounty hunters, I tend to wait until later before doing the evil karma quests, such as becoming a slaver, till after getting the GECK from Vault 13. Raiders, mercenaries, super mutants, and other hostile enemies give me karma for killing them, making it quite difficult to maintain evil karma.
In fact, in the first two games, the only way to actually end the game with enough evil karma to blow away the Overseer or reach Demon Spawn rank, seems to be going on a killing spree, wiping out towns and settlements. In Fallout 1, I find that you can avoid gaining lots of positive reputation points by using the infiltration method to blow up the Cathedral and the Military Base. Outside of slaughtering towns, I gain most of my bad reputation wiping out the Blades in Adytum. I also gain most of my evil karma in Fallout 2 killing the citizens of San Francisco after formatting the Emperor.
In Fallout 3, I haven't yet tried being evil, but I know that you can't raise your karma above 1000 or lower it below -1000. Normally hostile enemies don't give you karma when you kill them, except for human characters with Very Evil karma such as Mr. Burke, or even the Ant Queen. Most of the other companions don't even come close to being as powerful as Fawkes who requires good karma. While it's also possible to be neutral, the only benefits for being neutral are having access to Butch and Sergeant RL-3, and there is also a perk which gives you 30 points to Speech skill as long as you are neutral.
New Vegas is practically impossible to be evil without stealing, hacking owned terminals, or going on a killing spree, due to all those enemies that give you karma from killing them such as feral ghouls, fiends, powder gangers, etc. I know there is a mod that disables the karma gains you get from killing those enemies. But the only benefit to being evil in my opinion is getting the Ain't Like That Now perk which increases your attack speed and action point regeneration rate, yet the increased attack speed has not effect on automatic weapons, either ranged or melee. Even if being neutral, the only benefit is the Just Lucky I'm Alive perk which increases all critical hit damage further, stacking with Better Criticals.
It's like the game producers intended for you to be the hero of the story instead of being a villain like in many other games. So with all this in mind, is there even a point to being evil? Or Neutral?
Fallout 2 has many more opportunities to be evil and many quests have an evil option as well as a good option, though the good option always gives more experience points. Due to the increased difficulty level and that enemies even at the start of the game have more health points than Fallout 1, including bounty hunters, I tend to wait until later before doing the evil karma quests, such as becoming a slaver, till after getting the GECK from Vault 13. Raiders, mercenaries, super mutants, and other hostile enemies give me karma for killing them, making it quite difficult to maintain evil karma.
In fact, in the first two games, the only way to actually end the game with enough evil karma to blow away the Overseer or reach Demon Spawn rank, seems to be going on a killing spree, wiping out towns and settlements. In Fallout 1, I find that you can avoid gaining lots of positive reputation points by using the infiltration method to blow up the Cathedral and the Military Base. Outside of slaughtering towns, I gain most of my bad reputation wiping out the Blades in Adytum. I also gain most of my evil karma in Fallout 2 killing the citizens of San Francisco after formatting the Emperor.
In Fallout 3, I haven't yet tried being evil, but I know that you can't raise your karma above 1000 or lower it below -1000. Normally hostile enemies don't give you karma when you kill them, except for human characters with Very Evil karma such as Mr. Burke, or even the Ant Queen. Most of the other companions don't even come close to being as powerful as Fawkes who requires good karma. While it's also possible to be neutral, the only benefits for being neutral are having access to Butch and Sergeant RL-3, and there is also a perk which gives you 30 points to Speech skill as long as you are neutral.
New Vegas is practically impossible to be evil without stealing, hacking owned terminals, or going on a killing spree, due to all those enemies that give you karma from killing them such as feral ghouls, fiends, powder gangers, etc. I know there is a mod that disables the karma gains you get from killing those enemies. But the only benefit to being evil in my opinion is getting the Ain't Like That Now perk which increases your attack speed and action point regeneration rate, yet the increased attack speed has not effect on automatic weapons, either ranged or melee. Even if being neutral, the only benefit is the Just Lucky I'm Alive perk which increases all critical hit damage further, stacking with Better Criticals.
It's like the game producers intended for you to be the hero of the story instead of being a villain like in many other games. So with all this in mind, is there even a point to being evil? Or Neutral?
