“Oh Damn, I Said Too Long” – Fallout Co-Creator Tim Cain Reveals His Role in Canceling Van Buren, the Original Fallout 3

Original Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has revealed that he played a role in the events that led to the cancellation of Fallout Van Buren, the codename for the original version of Fallout 3 that was in development initially at Black Isle Studios, owned by Interplay. 2000s.

If you need a refresher, this happened in 2002/2003, a good few years before Bethesda bought the intellectual property and went on to create the Fallout 3 we ended up getting. Cain had actually left Interplay at the time the game was in development, having created a studio called Troika Games after working on the first two Fallout games.

Now, in a video on his YouTube channel (thanks, IGN), Cain has revealed that in mid-2003, an anonymous vice president at Interplay asked him to come play with Van Buren’s current prototype.

“I don’t think they can finish (the game),” Cain quotes the vice president as saying about Van Buren on that call, “so I’m just going to call it off. But if you look at it and give me an estimate, there’s a chance I won’t cancel it.” Admitting that a number of Troika colleagues advised him not to get involved, Cain says he ultimately decided to do so, believing that if he did, there would be at least a possibility that the Van Buren’s team doesn’t have to go through its game. being canceled.

Cain played the prototype for “about two hours” and asked the team a number of questions before being asked by the vice president to give a verdict on how long Van’s team would need Buren to complete the game and make it shippable.

“I said, ‘I’m convinced that in 18 months you could have a really good game,'” the developer recalls, “He said, ‘Huh, could this be done faster?’ And I was like, ‘Oh damn, I said too long.’ I said, “Well, even if you did a death march, I don’t think you could do it any faster than 12, and then you’d be shipping something unbalanced and buggy, and the team would be destroyed. I don’t recommend it.'”

Cain says the vice president thanked him for his input, then “basically explained (that) any response within six months would require him to rescind it, meaning the response I just gave led to the game being canceled. But he was going to do it anyway, he thought it couldn’t be done in six months, and I just confirmed it to him.

The veteran developer concludes by citing the story simply as an example of how difficult game development can be, especially when things ultimately come down to money. “(Interplay was) strapped for cash,” he adds, “(The vice president) couldn’t afford a development period of more than six months, and for me, that period was out of the question .”

In other recent Fallout-related news, the New Vegas DLC mod Fallout Nuevo Mexico has just been officially confirmed as “on hold”, following a period of radio silence.