Summary
Fallout 2designerChris Avellone, who also worked onNew Vegasand several of its DLC, claimed in his review of the TV series that Fallout 2 and subsequent spin-offs did more harm to the series than Bethesda’s games.
“I did want to address some potential horse blinder aspects of ‘oh wow, the older Fallouts were so much better.’ I meanFallout 1 was. It was pretty damn good,“Avellone said. “However, Fallout 2 and what followed - the console game Brotherhood of Steel - weren’t as good. I’d argue they hurt the franchise more than people ‘blame’ Fallout 3, 4, and 76 for doing.
If Bethesdahadn’tbought Fallout, I seriously doubt there would have been another Fallout, let alone at the scale of F3, F4, spinoffs, T-shirts at Target, and the TV series.
I think there’s some kind of illusion out there that Fallout at Interplay was going amazingly well and keeping the franchise ‘on track’. It absolutely wasn’t, and it was definitely experiencing the same lore breaks and inconsistencies that fans bring up about more recent Fallouts.”
Fallout Designer Denies That Originals Were Anti-Capitalist
In his review, he also claims that the original games weren’t anti-capitalist and that this is a more modern theme introduced in the 3D era.
“[Capitalism] was never part of the original Fallout premise despite what you may think - capitalism equaling evil is a very modern shout topic, and it’s not surprising that Hollywood leans on that for a big reveal,” Avellone wrote, referencingthe Vault-Tec meeting in which they discuss plans to drop the bombs themselves.
It’s worth noting that Chris Avellone didn’t work on the original Fallout, and the second game was led by Matthew J. Norton and Feargus Urquhart.
While the more blatant anti-capitalist themes–such as the vaults being inhumane experiments–wouldn’t fully surface until the 3D era, there were threads in the first two games. Take Nuka Cola, which spun the impending nuclear holocaust into a cute marketable drink, or the retrofuturistic ’50s aesthetic poking fun at the height of American commercialism.
Fallout
Fallout is a franchise built around a series of RPGs set in a post-nuclear world, in which great vaults have been built to shelter parts of humankind. There are six main games, various spin-offs, tabletop games, and a TV series from Amazon Studios.
