Tales of the Rampant Coyote

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Fallout Post-Mortem, and the Fallout that Never Was

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 9, 2012

At times like these, I really, really miss going to GDC. I can only imagine the awesomeness that was Tim Cain’s talk about the development of the original Fallout – and the really weird(er) direction it might have taken:

Kotaku: Fallout Could Have Been About Dinosaurs, Time-Travel, and Monkey Murder

“You started in the modern world,” Cain said. “You traveled back in time, you killed the monkey that would evolve into humans, you went through space travel, you went to the future, which was ruled by dinosaurs, you were exiled to a fantasy planet where magic took you back to the original timeline that you restored to full, and came back to the modern world to save your girlfriend.”

“It’s weird to hear me talk about it now,” Cain said, “but we really were going to go with this. And I think one of the other producers kinda slapped me and said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to get this storyline made, it’s not going to get through, you could work on it for years and no one would ever do it.’

Yeah, well, by the sounds of it I probably wouldn’t have been that excited about it. But our lovely industry is filled with even weirder concepts that did get made, and some of them became pretty decent hits – or at least cult classics.

UPDATE: Hat tip to RPGWatch for a link to the talk – which is a more complete post-mortem of the game. I am at work and can’t watch it yet, but I will soon! To watch it, click here.


Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read



  • Andy_Panthro said,

    Sort-of reminds me of parts of Chrono Trigger.

  • WorstUsernameEver said,

    Hey Jay, sorry for kinda plugging NMA, but if you’re interested in the ‘generic storyline’ they planned at first when they knew they had the GURPS license, and just some more Fallout post-mortem goodness, the original lead designer Scott Campbell has a very interesting article up there, here’s the link: http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60785

    Honestly, I’m kinda glad they didn’t really go with that kind of story.. I’m not sure how you could have maintained the level of freedom we had in Fallout with that kind of well-defined time/universes-spanning storyline.

  • WhineAboutGames said,

    Wow, what an amazing and roundabout way to take a wacky blender of idea and turn it into the lamest thing imaginable. (Can’t listen to whole talk at moment because of broken internet connection, but the idea of having ALL THAT in a plot and then turning it to “Um, yeah, save the princess?” at the end makes me want to punch somebody. 🙂 )

  • LateWhiteRabbit said,

    @WhineAboutGames

    I agree. The initial premise – “You travel back in time, accidentally kill the monkey that evolved into humans, and return to a future ruled by dinosaurs” – sounds freaking AWESOME! Then they continue with “and you’ll get to go to a magic world that can cast Deus Ex Machina spells and then you can rescue your girlfriend” and I get a gagging reflex in the back of my throat followed by extreme anger.

    Thank God that producer slapped him, but while Cain was rubbing his cheek the producer should have added, “You don’t mix science fiction and fantasy in the same damn story! Now pick either the time travel and dinosaurs or the magic fairy world and the girlfriend! And you’d better pick the time travel and dinosaurs or I’ll hit you again!”

    Though I can relate to Cain’s statement that he wishes he could go back 18 years and see why he thought the idea seemed so good at the time. I’ve been browsing old story journals and thought “this crap is awful” and “who thought this was a good idea” only to realize the handwriting was mine and I was the fool in question.

  • WorstUsernameEver said,

    Uh for some reason my previous comment didn’t go through. Anyway, the original lead designer had the draft and much more in the post-mortem he wrote for No Mutants Allowed (here: http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60785) and there was much more than the time travel and fantasy design in it. In fact, the whole premise is saving your girlfriend from a Lovecraftian cult! As for why they wrote a draft like that, it’s just that GURPS allows it so I expected they initially thought they’d go crazy with the setting like that. Probably a good thing that they didn’t, though it’s mostly because I just find that story to be a pastiche of cliches.. it was just a first draft after all.

  • WorstUsernameEver said,

    Sorry for the double-post by the way, for some reason my comments were getting marked as spam and that pesky Coyote that hosts the blog fixed it later.

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