I talk about the influence of Wasteland (1988) on Fallout (1997), both made at Interplay. Videos I reference: The Biggest Influences On Fallout • The Biggest Influences...
The gulf in technology between an 80's PC game and in a 90's PC game was vast compared to that between a 2010's PC game and a 2020's PC game. I don't think most people realize that.
Oh it has to be common sense at this point. Look at waste land and Fallout one. I think it's a five year difference? 1988-1994? Now look at say Remake and rebirth. 7 years a part. You can't even see the difference. We're reading a Null point where graphics really no longer matter. You can't sell a game on graphics anymore because jo smoe down the street can do it. Even indie games mabe by 10 people in their uncles garage is starting to rival something it took 50 or 90 people to make in the early 2000s.
@@jordansullivan1381 You can absolutely see a big difference between Remake and Rebirth. But compared to 1988 games and 1994 games, Remake and Rebirth are essentially the same. The biggest differences are subtle or semi-transparent - things like Rebirth's larger environments, more populated environments, more complex and detailed environments, faster texture loading and many other things. These things are invisible to players. For anyone who doubts this, consider: Are the environments in Remake smaller and less complex than the environments in Rebirth because the developers, when making Remake, had an artistic vision that only needed environments of a certain size? Did they just not need large and complex environments? No - we can tell by the framerate and texture loading that they're pushing the PS4 as hard as it will go. But that's something the player can't see directly.
@@DoctorFurioso And resolution doubled or tripled at the same time. And that jump was immediately obvious and immediately expanded the kinds of games that could be made. The benefits of going from 1K to 2K or 2K to 4K are good, but not similarly revolutionary.
My favorite era of gaming is the late 2000s and early 2010s when things are starting to look very realistic but not quite, think call of duty black ops 1 for example
Wasteland was my all time favorite game as a kid. When Fallout came out I was obsessed with it. I saw the “nods and similarities “ between the two but in no way have I ever though Fallout was ever derivative of Wasteland. Similar DNA but different game experiences.
"Similar DNA but different game experiences." I like that statement. It's hard to explain to some people that there was an influence, but not as much as they think. For those on the team that played and liked Wasteland, of course they were influenced by the elements they enjoyed. But the team had a lot of influences, including books, movies, and other games.
In the past month or so I got SO MUCH into the Fallout. When I saw Fallout's 1 vibe, characters, storytelling I knew I had to play it. Now I've played Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and watched the TV show. Love the franchise and defenitely staying with it for a longer time. Greetings from Poland.
@neety7 I put in over 100+ hrs in FO3 when it came out and only recently played and beat NV for the first time when the show came out. If you're playing on PC, google 'Tale of Two Wastelands' if you've never heard of it. It's a mod where it combines FO3 with NV. I'm playing it now and oohhhh boy it's fucking amazing. With the mods TTW has, FO3 feels like such a better game and I can't wait to finish it and start running around the Mojave.
I think there is something in the Polish soul that likes this kind of grim yet absurd and humorous world. Awesome to see that the fandom is growing. Pozdrawiam byq!
For decades, I thought the only reason Fallout existed was because you couldn't get the rights to make Wasteland 2. Now I know that I've been so wrong for so long. . .
There is a myth that Brian Fargo hated EA and didn't cancel Fallout because EA was developing Wasteland 2 and that EA was developing wasteland 2 because they did hate Brian Fargo. There is a second rumour that this is the reason why Fallout didn't get the GURPS license.
@@sushestvobezvolnoeWasteland 2 - the Electronic Arts version - had no input from Interplay. The producer (who had exactly two inputs into Wasteland while I was working on it) for EA (Dave Albert) decided he now knew how to design games (he didn’t). Thankfully, at the last minute, EA lost its nerve and any pretense that Fountain of Dreams was a Wasteland sequel was dropped. All of us breathed a sigh of relief, especially when it bombed (as I said, Dave Albert didn’t know how to design games - though one could see at least some technical similarities). Fargo never expressed any hatred of EA that I know of - I very much doubt he would want to burn any bridges with them.
@@sushestvobezvolnoe well according to Tim, the reason they lost the GURPS license is because Steve Jackson didn't like several key aspects of Fallout. They didn't want to budge, so they lost the GURPS license and changed some things around.
Interesting to hear that even 9 years after release, wasteland was incredibly hard to actually play. I think we often underestimate just how good we have it today; I can play a lot of games from 20 years ago without much issue as long as I have the right console.
Yeah, I remember being shocked discovering that I couldn't replay games that I'd bought four years earlier in the early 2000s. Now advancement is a lot slower, devs put some thought into backwards compatibility and fan-made emulators are everywhere you can play just about every game made on a modern PC. It's great.
You can even play Wasteland 1 today. I remember playing a little bit since it came with Wasteland 2 on Steam. I admit I didn't play that much, just up to Highpool.
I’ve finally found the water chip in fallout, all that’s left is confronting the master! The fallout experience is really special especially having never visited the first game but watching the show made me want to check it out
Fallout 1 is one of my favorite games of all time! It is so great to see new people wanting to try out the original game, and end up understanding its magic, after watching the show! Be sure to eventually do another playthrough as a low intelligence character though - it’s so funny!! 😂😂😂
The Master doesn't come directly after the chip. (Damn spoilers!) But glad you're playing it. I'mma be honest, when I first played it as a kid in the very early 2000s, I thought it looked pretty bad 😅 Even then! Of course, I've since come to appreciate its unique aesthetic, but it can definitely be a hurdle for newer players
@BuzzKirill3D The gfx & UX of Fallout 1 & 2 are total dogcrap. End of discussion. It's more of a Mountain that has to be climbed than a small hurdle in a race. The irony is Underrail thought it was a good idea to take all the horrible UX and 1990's UI from Fallout and use it in a game. Also ironic bc Underrail is nothing like Fallout except the bad outdated engine parts. Atom RPG is the fallout-like modern remake. Underrail has serious design flaws bc the designer is genuinely poor (unskilled or incompetent) in most design areas. It is still fun, but it is its own game not at all like fallout, and that UX is clownish in modern times.
@BuzzKirill3D oh yea I know about Van Buren, idk how it would have done or if it would have been canceled no matter what, but I wonder if Fallout would even be around anymore today.
@@beeg8615 Pretty much lol. Although it would be nice to see a new game with the classic style, even if it's a smaller project compared to FO1 and FO2. I need to check one of those total conversion mods sometime.
I really enjoyed Wasteland in the early 90s and beat the game. When I got to try Fallout, I did miss having a big party to explore the world but I saw that there was multiple solutions to a quest. I did like all the nods to Wasteland, and even the new lore. I even liked that there was robot death machines towards the end of Fallout. The most important aspect that was preserved in Fallout wasn’t the game mechanics but the bits of humor sprinkled through out the game. In the 90s reading descriptive text helped wasteland feel a bit more immersive, considering that in that era, most RPGs had very little descriptions. Fallout 1 and 2 were great games. But after Fallout 2, I did wish to see a modern party based game, and that was only realized in early 2010s with Wasteland 2.
Tim, I can’t begin to thank you enough for your creative vision and the games that you helped inspire and have made and also for these videos. I don’t work in the games industry but I do work corporate America and I’ve used lessons from your videos to help build bridges and connect with people I didn’t think would be possible. Thank you for being transparent and thank you for your words of wisdom!❤
Same. But we had a bootleg copy (parents wouldn't allow us to buy games) and no paragraph book. We somehow got all the way through until we had to escape Base Cochise, but without the book we didn't know that we had a time limit. We wandered around and explored, trying to draw out our enjoyment of the end game, and got so distracted by our excitement that we forgot to disk-swap...long story short, we overwrote our only master for disk 4 and locked ourselves out of being able to actually escape within the step limit 😭 It took 10 years before my brother was grown enough to get his hands on a copy that would run on an emulator...and by then, we had Fallout to play! We did go back and finish Wasteland individually, and I played the heck out of 2 and 3, but I think my brother just converted to Fallout and never looked back.
Hi Tim, I don’t know if you have or won’t answer this question since you are being paid by Obsidian for consultation on the Outer Worlds 2, but what is your opinion on Gamepass and subscriptions like Gamepass. Does being on Gamepass hurt sales? Does being on Gamepass make it easier to market the game and find a larger audience? Thanks for all the videos!
I remember talking to Fergus about Wasteland ages and ages ago. He had the same summary about fallout and wasteland. He never said he didn't or did like it. Thank you for sharing, Tim!
The frame limited thing also comes up with Fallout. Map trave is too fast unpatchedl and the reset time of Force Fields in the military base is based on CPU cycles which makes them turn back on the moment after you disable them.
I mean Brian Fargo frequently talked in the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter era about how he made Fallout because he could not make Wasteland 2 originally, which undoubtedly made people assume it was more of a real sequel than it was, but he also made it clear they made sure to steer clear of any direct copying to avoid any intellectual property issues with Electronic Arts. Obviously I am not explaining this to you Tim but others reading, haha
Honestly think it's healthy that the team had people who disliked Wasteland in addition to the people who loved it. Diversity of ideas can really help teamwork based creative projects.
I didn't finish Wasteland. Despite being pretty committed to it, the grind and the difficulty eventually wore me down. But definitely had fun at certain points. The fully text-based combat was more fun than I anticipated.
I love Wasteland 2 and 3. I hope we get a 4. A downside of inXile being bought by Microsoft is they halted work on VR stuff, which they were doing great things with, and it dashed my hopes for a Wasteland VR game. Too bad Sony didn't acquire them instead, if they had to be bought.
Very interesting and insightful video, as always. Thanks Tim! I have a question for you. Do you still play tabletop RPGs today, and how has your experience playing them changed over the years? Are they still as entertaining as they were in the 80s and 90s? Does age impact your experience in any notable way? Would love to hear you speak about this!
That speed thing. We have a very old game in Denmark called Kaptain Kaper i Kattegat. There was a section where you should sail your ship into harbor that got unplayable due to that issue. The creator tried updating again and again to new speeds, but in the end he gave up. Now there is a Java edition online that works. Fun stuff
Tim do you have any thoughts on Twilight2000? Did you ever play it? I’ll hold my opinion on the mechanics but back when I was a teen I was obsessed and engrossed in the setting and theme of it.
I think it's fine to not like things. It's fine to like things as well. As long as discussions are kept civil it's healthy to meet people with different opinions in general. In my opinion.
I played Wasteland on PC when it released, and I went through all the chips...8086/8088, 286-486, Pentiums (although it was Mechwarrior 2 that got me to upgrade to a Pentium)...I loved Wasteland, and I loved when you finished it, you could start the adventure over, keeping your levels and gear, and then have a romping good time just destroying shit as you rolled through the game. I remember wondering why there wasn't a sequel for a good part of the early 90s and was so excited by the "spiritual successor" coming out soon with Fallout. Ahh...sweet nostalgia.
This is how younger generation views Fallout 1 and 2. They have a difficult and clunky interface that are noticeable when I go back to them. Thus I have to thank Xcom: Enemy unknown for innovating isometric UI and Wasteland 3 for building up a post apocalyptic game based on it, as it is the game that scratches my fallout itch.
A spiritual successor doesn't necessarily have to be similar to it's predecessor, just kind of a jumping off point. For example, system shock and bioshock are very different, but bioshock is the spiritual successor to system shock
Wasteland 1 was pretty tough. I remember having ammo issues and hard to find vendors who would sell enough ammo. I was only like 13 or 14 at the time too, so I was kind of immature to finish a big game like that. Las Vegas was as far as I got in that game. Where as Fallout 1 I definitely finished that game many times.
Edit in: not sure why this is showing up twice, but if I delete one, I’m afraid I’ll delete the other. So, if you have gotten to this twice, sorry. From the Wasteland end of things: Interplay had a total of nine full time employees at the time. Ken St. Andre and Mike Stackpole were independent designers who did their work up front and then pretty much did nothing more. A few temps were brought in to do map coding (Bill “Weez” Dugan - Interplay’s unofficial pet, mascot and hanger-on - Stance Nixon, and I don’t remember how to correctly spell Nisshan Hossepian’s name, so sorry to him in advance), Todd Camasta animations, but by and large once we got to the beta phase, the only two people working on it were Alan Pavlish and myself. Not a lot of resources compared to Fallout. And Fallout is not Wasteland - Fallout has its own setting, story, and backstories. Whatever it learned from Wasteland, it took them and ran with them its own way. Two warring licenses, especially after so much of its own setting had been developed, would not have been good, especially since the one existing one pushed its control too far as it was. So, a few homages to Wasteland I’m happy with, some nods that it was influential on game design theory, but I don’t need Wasteland to usurp the creative genius of Fallout. Nine years down the line was a long time for what home computers could do. Scott Campbell, Scott Bennie, and Chris Taylor all expressed (to me, at least) how much they loved Wasteland, and that’s all you can do - affect the people of the time.
Hi Tim I did a quick look to see if you made a video on this topic but I really wanted to get your opinion on Fallout tactics, if you see it as a canon in the fallout universe and if you know any of the design and development on that particular game.
Hey Tim, you have mentioned in some interviews and conversations the game Ur-Quan Masters being an influence for Fallout, but if I'm remembering right it didn't make the cut for the video The Biggest Influences On Fallout. I don't think you've talked about UQM on your channel yet. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to talk more about the game generally and how it has impacted your career in game design.
Not gonna watch it after the 4th minute, to not get spoiled, as I bought Wasteland on GOG and will play it in the coming weeks! Can't wait And Fallout waits for a replay ❤ Yay
@Timothy Cain - I have always thought the influence was pretty strong because Brian Fargo said that Fallout was a "spiritual successor" to Wasteland in the Kickstarter videos for Wasteland 2.
I remember getting One Must Fall: 2097. That was a 1994 game. Not sure when I got it but it must have only been a few years later. My computer couldn't run it properly: too fast. Beat the game button-mashing but there was no enjoyment in it.
@Tim -Which do you see as a more accurate spiritual successor to Fallout 1&2: the Wasteland 2 & 3 or Fallout 3&4 (I'm not counting New Vegas or 76 since the first is not made by Beth and the second one is .... something, just not really related to the Fallout I know).
I always enjoyed the idea of Wasteland more than the game itself. Although, Wasteland 3 was really great, and it'd be amazing to see a Fallout game in the same engine/style. Ahh dreams!
no 2 is mediocre at its best spots 3 is watered down mainstream unbearable tropey garbage post-apocalyptic is my 2nd favorite genre after medieval fantasy
@@jres1995 that's not what I was doing at all, you are the one coming from ego, weak and fragile unable to emotionally process the truth so you need to delude yourself into a fantasy about me so you can feel better it's pathetic /shrug nothing about me being superior in there, you are the one who attaches your sense of self and identity to the games you like
Tim describing old games reminds me of the agony of config.sys and autoexec.bat tailoring it took to get some games to run. I forgot how frustrating that could be sometimes.
I find that Fallout was really monumental to a lot of discussions my friends and I would have about apocalypses back in our youth and how we'd compare playthroughs it was really an enjoyable time. Something that has never left me is how often friends would repeat the line "What the bloody, bloody, BLOODY hell are you doing here?" from Loxely in his accent because of how out of place it was in the game.
Hi Tim. Just curious if you or any of the team have seen the movie Radioactive Dreams (1985)? Over the years, there would be a post about the idea of a Fallout film and someone would bring up this movie as a spiritual companion to it. I knew the movie before I began playing NewVegas so I can see the elements and it scratched that itch. Thank you for all the in depth videos.
Thank you for your response. I figured as much; it's such an obscure film. 80s' B-movie post-apocalyptic films are my favorite so when these type of games pop up, I jump in. Thank you for infusing the game with that sensibility even if it were inadvertently. Each town felt like separate films in themselves.
I thought it was interesting how you mention some members of the team not liking Wasteland. That doesn't necessarily mean that Wasteland wasn't influential on them. I was thinking about this topic recently with regards to influences on my writing. We typically think of positive influences, but if you dislike something in another game and try to deliberately avoid those elements, then it is still having an influence on you. It would be interesting to hear about what they specifically disliked in Wasteland, and if that played into development on Fallout. I'm not necessarily saying they were deliberately avoiding using any specific elements, sometimes you just generally don't like something. I'm just pointing out how thinking about our creative influences sometimes biases us towards pointing out those things we wanted to replicate, rather than things we tried to avoid.
You’re right. That’s why I say the answer to whether Wasteland was influential is yes and no. I’m not certain what elements of Fallout were because someone on the team tried to emulate or avoid similar elements in Wasteland.
@@CainOnGames Language does get kind of imprecise when trying to discuss individual creativity in the context of a group project like a video game. 😄 Thanks for the response!
Can you touch more on the styles and architectural influences on all your games? I personally like Fallout's art deco and brutalist take with 50s flare over the more googie style the later games took.
yeah, Fallout 1, 2, and tactics have an aesthetic atmosphere feel to them that is totally lost in 3 and onward that to me makes them feel like mockeries or soulless pretenders that just didn't get it
Hey Tim, I have a question about music progression in Fallout. I am planning to start a table top campaign set in Fallout, and I got to wondering about the music I should play. I was planning on adding more music to the background, so I was wondering if Rock and Roll progress past Elvis.
Finished Wasteland on the Commodore 64. Great game and also completed Fallout 1 and 2 when they released. Everything Fallout after New Vegas has personally been disappointing but to each thier own.
Hi Tim. You, Chris Avellone, and Josh Sawyer are (rightly or wrongly) something like royalty for fans of Interplay, BIS, and Obsidian RPGs. I was listening to your talk at the 2012 GDC and I noticed you actually said Fallout development started at roughly the same time as Planescape Torment (!). This surprised me because I thought of Avellone as somewhat "inheriting" Fallout duty at BIS after you left, so I thought of him as being almost like your offspring, not a contemporary. Did you guys have any cool interactions in a game design or development context that would make a good story you can tell us? :-)
Not to diminish huge impact of Tim, F2 is generally loved more and regarded as overall better game then F1, thus Avelone is praised. New Vegas is probably best Fallout game - thus praise to Josh Sawyer.
@VK-sz4it perhaps more people played Fallout 2 than the original, for the same reasons that more people have played the Bethesda titles (more brand recognition and bigger market), but what evidence do you have that people that played both FO and FO2 like 2 better? I finished and loved 1 and couldn't finish 2 (although I played 1 when it came out and 2 much later from GOG, so the UX barrier may have had something to do with it). In general, sequels are not better than the original, they just sell better due to having more visibility.
@@VK-sz4it Chris Avellone had a relatively small hand in Fallout 2. He was going to have a bigger role in the canceled Fallout 3. His major work is basically the Fallout Bible and three of the New Vegas story DLCs. Mark O'Green, Feargus Urquhart, and Matthew J. Norton are the people you want to thank for Fallout 2.
This is great info, i played Fallout 1+2 on its release during the 90ies and i am just about to finish Fallout 3 aka Elderscrolls in the Wasteland - i did not even want to play it since its so different to the originals, i rahter played it with the mindset, its just another postapocalpytic game and it did ok on that. I know NV is more "in-line" in character, but i will first try some wasteland 1-3. Lets see how it feels to just play ranger squads. I am fine with that too, i am all about the tactical combat. I wish'd the old Fallout would just return in full glory along with tactical combat and insane weird and funny talking heads, though. But its like the old 80ies Star Wars triology, you catch lightning in the bottle only once in a while.
Hi Tim! I was wondering if you could go over why Fallout ended up losing the GURPS licence? I think you touched upon it in a few other videos, but I might have missed it!
I've always wanted to play through Wasteland; it sounds like fun - but, I've never been able to really get into it. I've tried a couple times, but hardly ever make any progress. Ah, well, at least I can replay Fallout and Fallout 2 again and again!
Hey Tim, on a somewhat related topic - what are your thoughts about spiritual successors, or more more generally games that share inspiration, mechanics, or setting and lore? Is there a clear line between a game following genre conventions and being a clone of another game? How distinct does a game need to be from its inspiration to avoid being considered a ripoff? Is Fallout a spiritual successor to Wasteland? Is Outer Worlds a spiritual successor to Fallout? If Activision released Arcanum 2 and you self-published Journey to the Center of Shmarcanum which game would be the more legitimate sequel?
Having played FO1 and 2, when i came across FO3 was a huge step back, the talking heads where more vivid and better rendered, in FO3 the interaction with other NPC´s looked like crap, haven´t played Wasteland yet. I feel bad for Interplay not being able to retain th FO franchise, especially for Tim and the original Team. I hope to see a remake of FO 1, 2 with some of the characteristics of the original games, being able to swich from First person to Isometric or being able to use a drone, or conecting with de AI in vaults to see the cameras and so being able to play isometric, failing conection would cause not being able to play isometric, ETC. Take care TIM.
Yeah FO3 is just Elderscsrolls in the Wasteland and feels in character nothing like the Fallout originals. The irony is it had tactical combat in an era, where every game studio tried to go real time and 3D. Now, we got BG3 with tactical combat and top down view. If Bethesda would have a brain left, they would understand, its best for them to return to the roots. instead of making every game they crank out look like Elder Scrolls with a different skin.
@@zeusapollo6504 yes, i always imagined to chose either to be a goul, super mutant or human, memory loss, ir you´re a super mutant you´ll wake up in a military base or a scientists laboratory, if you are a goul you´ll start in a irradiated vault, or city, and human you´ll be like some sort of experiment from vault tech ready for experimentation like organ extraction, etc, i mean being able to chose is what an RPG is for, Bethesda will never understand it.
Hi Tim, Thanks for the clarification. There is a widespread notion that Fallout was somehow a workaround to circumvent the licence for the Wasteland. So, do I understand correctly that there was no one in the Fallout 1 team who previously worked on the Wasteland? It would be also interesting to hear your opinion on Wasteland 2 and 3 someday, especially on their storytelling and tone. Thanks for sharing with us!
Fallout wasn't a workaround. The original license idea for Fallout was to make it a GURPS game. As far as the team goes he says in the video there were people who'd worked on Wasteland on the team.
Hey Tim Totally understand if this question doesn’t fit the purpose of this channel, but from my own curiosity... I was wondering if there were any interpretations of your games you'd seen from people that were almost embarrassingly wrong. I'm thinking on the level of like, if someone had said "Fallout is a game about how society would be better off living in secluded bunkers that never talk to each other."
Hey Tim, can you talk more in-depth about the newer wasteland games? I know you don't do reviews, but you could compare and contrast how fallout picked up several years later and evolved over time compared to how Wasteland did the same. You could do other games as well if you know if any with similar gaps between entries
Do you know if the New Vegas creators were aware of the part of the Wasteland manual which noted that Las Vegas survived the war intact, and there was just had an ominous explanation of "The house always wins."?
Hey tim, i looked into wasteland, may perhaps even play it, and i noticed that the scorpitrons in the game look eerily similar to the robo-scorpions in new vegas. Is that a coincidence, or did someone from the old crew get their chance to put something in?
I hear the original Fallout plan involved time travel, dinosaurs and what not. If that's the case, any chance the huge dinosaur footprint we find in Fallout 1 is a nod to that? Or other stuff like Jurassic Park, Godzilla..?
I think the simplest way to sum it up is: Fallout is definitely influenced by Wasteland but not entirely. And Fallout pulls from several other post apocalyptic media as well. Of course a game developed by the same company, even if it's a different license and IP, would have similarities.
