"[Fallout 4]'s more action-oriented, so that makes it different than what I would have done, but that being said, it looks great," Fargo said during a recent chat. "They've captured a lot of the essence of what made the Fallout universe, and they really pour a lot of effort into little things, whether it's the crafting, or the personality or how many names the robot can speak. I tip my hat to the craftsmanship they've brought to the franchise."
Fargo’s Wasteland 2 is more akin to the first two Fallout games than to its namesake, but Fallout under the auspices of Bethesda isn't what it once was either. The first two Fallouts were isometric RPGs with turn-based combat. Fallout 3, New Vegas, and soon Fallout 4 are powerfully immersive first-person experiences that are as much open-world shooters as anything else.
The differences in perspective and scale notwithstanding—and let's be fair, a multi-million-dollar Kickstarter doesn't even begin to approach the budget a big-time studio like Bethesda can bring to bear—the most meaningful difference between the modern-era Fallout and Wasteland lies in the storytelling. It's probably best typified by the decision to make Fallout 4's dog companion unkillable as a sop to delicate feelings. InXile, on the other hand, included a dog the 2004 edition of The Bard's Tale, "and we just made you love that dog," Fargo said. And then they killed it stone dead. Something similar happened to a vital NPC, as I was shocked to discover, at a critical juncture in Wasteland 2.
"With Wasteland, we kind of bent over backwards to ensure that everybody can be killed in that game. And you know what, it's a pain in the ass to design for that, because from beginning to end, there's all those NPCs and all those characters, and every single one of them can be killed," he continued. "And they're not fodder, they're people that have conversations and plot and reasons to be there. So when you account for being able to shoot and kill everything, it makes your design multiply."
It also potentially exposes game makers to backlash from over-excited parents and tut-tutting Fox News commentators if they take things too far. Fargo said game makers "ride this line" between immersion and caution, and reminded me that this isn't the first time Bethesda has opted for the latter: In the first two Fallouts, players who killed children were tagged with the "Childkiller" reputation, penalizing their NPC reactions and exposing them to bounty hunters. In Fallout 3 and beyond, Bethesda opted to simply make kids invulnerable.
I asked Fargo if he felt Bethesda's take on the setting had become more parodic than he'd envisioned. "Ours were quite grim in some ways, but we always had levity also. We always had that dark sense of humor, and I love a dark sense of humor, more than just about anything, so I don't know if I'd use the word 'parody'," he said. "These things take on a different tone depending on who's in charge of them. I think with any creative endeavor, you can take a franchise and put in a [different] director, and it's going to have a different beat to it."
