IGN’s History of Fallout

IGN has put together an eight-page history of the Fallout franchise, chronicling everything from Interplay’s Wasteland to Bethesda’s Fallout 3. Some choice excerpts:

Together with Pavlish’s scripts — both binary and text — everything came together in 1987, and Wasteland arrived in 1988. Partly out of concern, partly as a marketing ploy, publisher EA stuck a completely unofficial “PG-13” sticker on the box.

Players took control of a party of Desert Rangers patrolling the Southwestern deserts of the 21st Century, years after a U.S./Soviet nuclear exchange. That and the menu-based encounters were nothing special, but everything else was. The wasteland was an early non-linear, persistent environment. Any changes made during any encounter – whether social or violent – remained intact instead of resetting the moment the Rangers moved on. Suddenly, players had a real effect on the world they gamed in.

…

Fallout didn’t lose money, but it didn’t come close to expectations… or to other titles in Interplay’s stable. On the other hand, it had fans. Fanatical fans. Put together – the numbers, a rabid following, armfuls of awards and accolades, and code-wise, most of the heavy lifting already done — everything factored towards a sequel. Urquhart’s subdivision was re-dubbed Black Isle Studios, after his Scottish home, and they went straight back into the crunch. Urquhart decided the new game would be double the first’s size, and fully populated with living, talking people. The deadline for getting Fallout 2 on store shelves was just fifteen months after the original’s release.

Fallout’s 500 day span had already been removed in a post-release patch; number two wouldn’t get any such limitations. Another vital fix was in the area of NPCs and their occasionally obstructive A.I. There were fourteen possible companions this time, everything from the robotic K-9 (another Doctor Who reference) to a horrifying, yet scholarly Deathclaw, plus super-mutants, ghouls, a shotgun-wedded wife, and Dogmeat, still inexplicably healthy after eighty years scavenging in the wastes. And now you could issue orders or easily swap gear with your constant companions, and they leveled up as you did. Otherwise, minus a few graphical upgrades, the game engine went unaltered. And there was still way too much to do.

…

Released in October 2008, Fallout 3 ended a ten-year wait for a true franchise sequel. It was ambitious on a scale matching its namesakes, scaled to seventh generation hardware, made by people who truly understood both RPGs and Fallout itself. While character animations and the requisite bugs took deserved criticism, it quickly became one of the best reviewed games of all time, and is on track to outsell all previous Fallouts — including the non-canon spin-offs — combined.

For an encore, Bethesda released the G.E.C.K., a free editor for the PC port. Next up: a trio of downloadable expansion packs exclusive to PC and the Xbox 360. Operation Anchorage will see players repelling Chinese invaders from the Alaskan frontier, while The Pitt returns Fallout to Middle America for a romp through the remains of Pittsburgh. Only Broken Steel, scheduled for March 2009, will directly continue Fallout 3’s story (and raise the level cap from 20 to 30) as the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave hash out their differences once and for all.

Interplay, meanwhile, continues to talk a good game. A press release claimed development began on the Fallout MMO in April 2008, one year after the Bethesda deal. The next test will be in a few short months, in April 2009, the deadline for Interplay to secure $30 million in project financing or forfeit their claim on the franchise. The launch deadline is April 4, 2011. Fans are certainly pulling for them, particularly since the announcement that Chris Taylor, the seminal lead designer on Fallout 1, is on board.