Summary
Falloutcreator Tim Cain has opened up about his experiences with the development of the original Fallout 3, codename Van Buren, revealing that he even played a small part in its eventual cancelation.
Fallout 3isa pretty well-liked title, bringing the series into a new era underneath Bethesda, and eventually turning the franchise into the juggernaut that it is today. However, there is an alternate timeline in which the Fallout 3 that we know never existed, as most Fallout fans will be aware that the original developer - Black Isle Studios - had been working on its own Fallout 3 under the code name Van Buren before it was scrapped.
We know quite a bit about the project, thanks to the reveal of screenshots and a tech demo, and that Van Buren was eventually scrapped due to financial issues. It seems as though that wasn’t the whole story though, as Fallout creator Tim Cain recently explained in a new video on his personal YouTube channel that he actually played a small part in the project’s cancelation (thanks Kotaku).
Fallout Creator Tim Cain Played A Part In Van Buren’s Cancelation
In the video, Cain reveals that a VP at the game’s publisher - Interplay - invited him totry out a tech demofor Fallout Van Buren, as there were fears that the project would have to be canceled due to time constraints. Cain reluctantly accepted the invite, and after playing the tech demo for 2 hours and asking several developers at Black Isle Studios various questions, he came back to the VP and explained the game would be in a good enough state to ship in about 18 months.
Unfortunately for both Cain and Black Isle Studios, it was far too long for Interplay to keep the game in development due to financial issues. When asked whether it could have been completed any faster, Cain explained that"even if you did a death march crunch,“it wouldn’t be ready in less than 12, and that the game would have been buggy and the team completely destroyed as a result.
Cain was eventually told that “any answer over six months” would have resulted in the title’s cancelation, which technically means he was the one to finally pull the trigger. However, it sounds as though the project was doomed from the beginning, and Cain was simply telling Interplay what it already knew. Fallout was then obviously sold to ZeniMax and the rest is history, though it’s always fun to imagine what might have been if Interplay had just a bit more cash to hand.
