Bethesda purchased the license to create Fallout 3 and a future Fallout 4 from Interplay to a great deal of negative feedback from the Fallout community. However, the news this year that Bethesda had gone the whole hog and was now the owner of the Fallout license didn't create as much controversy. Maybe gamers were resigned to the fact that Bethesda were holding the reins for their much loved game. One thing is certain, Bethesda have kept a completely low profile on what is happening with the Fallout game which has left only a lot of idle speculation in its place. Up until last year there was a small development team working on the game itself. It was declared that once production of Oblivion was complete the same production team would then begin working on Fallout 3. Of course, there has been the usual gaming gossip mill saying that Bethesda will turn Fallout in to a first person RPG game in much the same vein as the Elder Scrolls series, however, all of this is just speculation.

Fallout was released in 1997 by Black Isle Studios. Black Isle was a game developer who released several highly successful role playing games including the Balder's Gate franchise. Even after creating these successful games the developer still could not stay afloat. It is interesting to note that three key members of Black Isle went on to create Troika games (Tim Cain, Jason Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky). Maybe, as was indicative of their management style and not the quality of software they produced, Troika was also destined to go out of business. They released some highly successful games too, such as Arcanum and Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. The Fallout franchise was a hot property. It was established and had a large active fan base. It was rumoured that at the time of Black Isles going out of business that Interplay were working on Fallout 3. It was codenamed Van Buren, however, not much has been seen or said about this development. This was followed by the news in July 2004 that Bethesda purchased the Fallout license from Interplay with an agreement to develop two more single player games.

Fallout and Fallout 2 helped to pioneer the notion of open ended game play in video games. It was one of the few gaming franchises which had been developed up until that point in time which offered you a massive amount of choice and a gaming environment which would respond to that choice. If you killed a child in game you would be known as a child killer and this would affect the way every other NPC responded to you. They had created not only an open world for gameplay but a completely dynamic environment in which to play in. There were many other things which made Fallout a memorable game. Not just because you could become a porn star or a boxing champion, but decisions in the game did come with moral repurcussions which impacted on the society your character inhabited. There was also the sheer number of choices you could make in the game as well. Reputation was not just something which would affect your character at a local level, it would affect you at a global level. You were able to hone your skills at a thief and pick pocket nearly anyone in game. You could become a world champion boxer if you wanted or a gangster. The other aspect of the game was the sheer number of pop culture references. The game was a tribute to many different things in popular culture. This included references to Big Trouble In Little China, Monty Python, Doctor Who, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and others. Some of the references were hidden in easter eggs, others were contained in dialogue. There was something in Fallout which would appeal to everyone no matter how you chose to play the game.


Iconic images of the Fallout series; Fallout 2 used the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats system developed in the original Fallout.
While things have been quiet on the Fallout 3 front an forum post has surfaced this week from one of the artists working on the game, Grant Struthers. He very quickly offers a disclaimer about his experience with Fallout 3 and the fact that his point of view of the game would be "incomplete, inaccurate and/or irrelevant" and funnily enough, he then goes on to comment about those things which is he says will be incomplete, inaccurate and/or irrelevant. He says this about Fallout 2:

"I like the setting and dialogue and I like how your skills affect you ability to communicate with people a lot. I don't, however, agree with you on the combat system. To me, it feels like an excruciatingly slow Diablo. I don't see it as being particularly more involving, just much, much slower. To each there own I suppose [sic]."

However, a lot of the Fallout community enjoy the turn based combat in Fallout. I don't believe that the combat in Diablo is particularly involving just because it is faster. In fact, with many of the minor characters you fight in Diablo the combat is nearly over before it has started. Hence the nickname "hack and slash".

What is also interesting is what Grant Struthers had to say about the decision making process behind games development at Bethesda. (Do we then count the following statement in the category of what he prefaced his comments with, "incomplete, inaccurate and/or irrelevant"?)

"I would like to say something about working here. We are not in the business of making games solely for other people. We do not make our decisions based of market research, trends, polls or other such nonsense; and our business folks, while very good at their jobs, stay almost completely out of the development process. (Hey, they sign the checks, so we have to at least tell them what we're doing.) ... We simply try to make games that we think will be fun to play. We want to play these games and enjoy them, and we want other people to like playing these games as well. If we were only in the business of making money we would be selling WWII football games for the DS. (And I wouldn't really want to work here anymore.)"

Not that I have ever seen a WWII football game on the DS yet, I am sure some crazy developer might be considering such a title if they were operating on Mars.


left- Fallout 1, right - Fallout 2
Games development does come down to numbers or dollars. The proposed budget for the Fallout MMO is $75 million dollars (including development and marketing). This is a massive amount of money to develop a single product and what gamers seem to forget in the process of a game's development is that developers are first and foremost businesses. They have to survive in the day-to-day world of their business operations in order to make games. This means they have to find the best way to develop a new product, reach enough of their target audience to make a profit and, hopefully, make enough money in order to develop and produce further product. This is the nuts and bolts of game development now. There are very few developers who can survive making games in their own garage any more. Of the $75 million budget for the Fallout MMO nearly half of that budget is associated with marketing. That is advertising the game so that they make enough sales to cover their costs and make a profit. If this means that Bethesda is going to make decisions around the franchise in order to guarantee the long term survival of the game and make enough money from the product by deviating from what the core fan base want then, I believe, that Bethesda will do this. For them it is more than just taking a legendary franchise and appeasing a core number of the fan base. It is about making a product, using the Fallout world, which will create enough revenue for them to continue making the product at a profit.

When Bethesda first bought the Fallout License they released this statement. Vlatko Andonov, president ofBethesda Softworks, said,

"We're extremely excited about this opportunity and what it means both for Bethesda and for Fallout fans around the world ... Fallout is one the great RPG franchises. Millions of Fallout games have been sold worldwide, and fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of a Fallout 3 title. Bethesda's proven expertise in this genre, building on our experience and the tremendous success we have enjoyed with our cutting-edge Elder Scrolls series, will enable us to create the next chapter of Fallout that is worthy of the franchise."

Since then Bethesda have not been prepared to release any information about Fallout 3. Interviews with the developers have not given the fan base a lot of information and, sometimes, the fans have taken what little has been said and twisted it so that it was turned against Bethesda. Pete Hines, in an early interview said,

"I don't think we could make a great game without staying true to Fallout ... obviously turn-based combat has worked well on consoles, since KOTOR blew people away last year and FF [Final Fantasy]has a very large and loyal following. I think what we're finding out is that the stereotype of what a console gamer is, or what they want, isn't necessarily what it used to be. You can't define a game just by what features it has, you really have to define the experience."

Ultimately, this is a test of more than just the creative backbone behind Bethesda. This is the type of experience which will establish them as being more than just a run of the mill developer with a successful fantasy franchise. It is an opportunity for Bethesda to really show the gaming public that they could be one of the best developers of our time. I believe it takes more than a single successful franchise to take a developer beyond the realms of just an everyday game maker. Further to this, I am sure that it is on Bethesda's mind to bring the Fallout universe to a new generation of game players and a new generation of gaming technology. Ten years is enough time in gaming to bring a new generation of 15+ gamers in to the marketplace for them to be able to make this game succeed on its own merits without necessarily appeasing the core established Fallout fanbase from 10 years ago. Surely, this group will have to be considered as one of their primary target audiences as much as the existing fan base as Bethesda develops Fallout 3.


Images from Fallout
Having said all of this, I'll let Grant Struthers finish off the argument himself, with something he said recently, and you can start to make up your own mind,

"Fallout will be very different from Oblivion and it will be a game that I guarantee we will not release until we are happy with it. Will you like everything about it? No, of course not. Will you like anything about it? I have no way to guarantee that for you, but that's ok, because as stated earlier, we are not in the business of making games solely for other people."

I am sure that you will start to see Bethesda saying a bit more about Fallout 3 in the next 12 months. The Fallout 3 website has gone live. You can check it out here. Don't expect too much from the website just yet as there is just a pretty picture and a link to the forums. I would expect that news will be coming very soon and the entire Fallout community is chomping at the bit to hear anything from Bethesda.