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Whether you’ve been with the Fallout franchise since the very beginning, jumped onboard with
Bethesda in Fallout 3 or just picked up your first Fallout game this week, chances are
you’ve had a pretty great experience. For a series spanning almost two decades and multiple
developers, not to mention huge shifts in gameplay, the Fallout games have been able
to remain surprisingly consistent in most ways. Sure, some of the games you probably
like better than others, but at the end of the day picking up a Fallout game almost always
means you’re in for an interesting world, challenging gameplay and a very good time.
However not every game in the Fallout series managed to see the light of day. In fact the
history of the franchise is littered with planned sequels and original concepts which
fans never got their hands on. Some of these games didn’t even make it out of pre-production,
while others managed to get pretty far along in development. This week we’re going to
be talking about some of the most interesting ones and you guys can decide if their cancellations
made us all miss a great game, or if we ended up dodging a bullet.
Let’s start with a game that came very, very close to actually happening: the original
Fallout 3, or Fallout: Van Buren as it’s usually called. Developed by Black Isle Studios
and Interplay in the early two-thousands, Van Buren was planned to be released only
on PC in either 2003 and 2004. The game followed a character named The Prisoner and it began
by giving the player an interesting choice in who they wanted that character to be. The
Prisoner could be an innocent that was imprisoned because of some misunderstanding, or they
could choose to be a criminal and take bonus traits that would help them out later on.
Van Buren was also going to be set in the American Southwest, around the same area that
would later be used in New Vegas. Ironically, this version of Fallout 3 also began its story
in a very Bethesda way plot-wise, starting out in a prison before a massive battle allows
you to escape. As you can see from this tech demo that was leaked in 2007, the gameplay
has a lot more in common with Interplay’s early titles than it did with Bethesda’s
first person experiences. But, much like the Fallout 3 game that would eventually get released,
it was going to allow for real-time combat instead of just turn-based. Apparently the
team had planned to include both systems and they wanted to allow the player to choose
which one they preferred. In the end, the game’s engine was about 95% complete, with
much of the dialogue and the majority of the game’s areas finished. However, by 2003
Interplay was starved for cash. It’s not really known if they weren’t happy with
the game or they simply didn’t have the money to continue, but the franchise was sold
to Bethesda shortly after Van Buren’s cancellation, eventually giving us the Fallout 3 we all
know today. Bethesda was very unhappy with the leak of the game’s tech demo too, saying
“Releasing someone else's unfinished product, or assets from it, is not something we intend
to do." But Van Buren wasn’t the only Fallout game
in development around that time to not make it out the front door. 2004 marked the cancellation
of the third-person action shooter Brotherhood of Steel 2. It didn’t make it nearly as
far as the other game, but we still know quite a bit about what the game was going to be,
thanks to a company design document that was leaked in 2009. It’s an interesting peak
into what could have been. The original Brotherhood of Steel game was the first game in the franchise
to really focus on the console market and although it got pretty decent reviews, it
didn’t exactly sell as well as Interplay had hoped. So the sequel seemed much more
focused on making the game’s controls simpler than the first game, while emphasizing a morality
system that sounds very similar to the one found in Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic.
When Bethesda bought the franchise however, they decided not to move forward with the
project. Moving on, did you know that their was a Fallout
first person shooter being developed long before Fallout 3? Way back in 2000 actually,
when Interplay planned the badly named Fallout EXTREME. Not much about the game has been
leaked beyond a few pieces of concept art, but what we do know about it is pretty surprising.
Extreme would have been completely different from the RPG’s we know and love today. In
a story that globe trotted from America, to Canada, to China, it would have seen the Brotherhood
of Steel battling other factions all across the world. The game would have been a squad-based
first person shooter and would have included multiplayer modes like Death Match, Capture
the Flag and Assault. Obviously a huge departure for the series. Someone at Interplay didn’t
like the idea though, as the project was stopped dead in its tracks after just a few months
of development. That wasn’t the only time Interplay tried
to do something different with the Fallout series though. Even after selling the franchise
to Bethesda, the company retained the rights to create a Fallout MMO. Seeing the success
of World of Warcraft, Interplay wanted to capitalize on the genre by introducing their
own series to the market. And they tried. For a very long time. In fact, we probably
shouldn’t even include this one on the list because technically Fallout Online is still
in development...and it has been since the mid two-thousands. In that time the game has
gone through the hands of many different teams and directors and has yet to see the light
of day. So what do you guys think? Is there Fallout
games on here you wished you could of played? Or how about some you’re glad never made
it? Let us know in the comments below. Now on to some comments. This week we have
an interesting theory from commenter Blake Barto who thinks that the story of Nick Valentine
in Fallout 4 was actually inspired by the cult classic Sega CD game, Snatcher. One of
the few non-Metal Gear games developed by gaming legend Hideo Kojima. The game follows
a detective through a futuristic dystopian world complete with androids, it even touches
on many of the same themes as Fallout 4. Thanks for that comment Blake.
Next we have our shoddy comment which comes to us this week from Geralt of Rivia, who
says “I don't really get the point of trivia in a YouTube video liked this. Can't we just
Google it? Nice video though.” Well yeah Geralt, you could do that but that’s called
CHEATING, we expect better from a Witcher. Speaking of trivia, the answer to last week’s
Skyrim question was C) The Markarth incident. We have a tougher question this time though.
What was the name of Conrad Kellogg’s now dead wife?