Gamebanshee's History of Fallout

[Roshambo]

Chromosome 25, now you know most of the gaming industry's pain with GameBanshee and their amateurish dumbing down of the industry. To those cretins, as long as people read their page, they feel validated for having put their inventions up as fact, nevermind that someone is bound to notice such errors but assuredly the more naive will mistake this garbage for credible information.

They'd certainly have a lot more appeal if they actually were a parody site, but unfortunately they think it has some relevance and accuracy because people read what they print and may mistakenly pay money for it. Even so much to contacting hosts of sites who say different and is tired of their frequent errors, incorrect "research", and some things they've just pulled from their ass. This was proven another time when they released a FOS article. Apparently they were wanting GameSpy-like service where a developer has to bitch and suddenly a topic or site is gone through ways that make it even more obvious that I'm tough but fair. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't really complain to our host without mentioning that we just might not like the lies and misinformation the morons were spreading through their poor journalistic integrity.

With this article and the errors within, pick one and go with it. Or pick a few. It really isn't hard to see which site they copied from and decided to fill in the gaps of the brick house with pure bullshit. With their actual knowledge of the industry, I'm afraid all they got was a pile of bullshit with a few bricks thrown in.

EDIT: For some reason, I believe I may have banned one or two of their editors from this forum in the past, for obvious reasons. I just wonder whom it was, probably the author of the many insipid FOS articles of theirs.

 

[Edge386]

Well thats it. Im not trusting anyone outside of these forum doors for any information that is claimed as valid, due to the recent points brought up and the fine information provided in this tiny little nook of a thread. I'm not being sarcastic either. I feel cheated out of the juicy information after comparing what was said at GameBanshee and this thread. Bravo Roshambo and Chromosome 25. You know your shit, that's for damn sure.

 

[Chromosome 25]

By the way - Brian "Pip Boy" Menze is still at Obsidian, so there is hope...

 

[Briosafreak]

At another time (or with another company) Fallout2 might have built on the potential created by Fallout. As it was, the game sold substantially fewer units than the original, one of the reasons why a "Fallout3" was never really on the IPLY development boards until much later in IPLY's death spiral, when IPLY had already lost D&D rights and their Bioware relationship, and quite frankly, had no other alternatives. (...)
The 2003 wimpering conclusion of Black Isle had really been in the making for years as the number of BI development personnel sunk after every round of lay-offs (at one time in 98-99 they had four full in-house teams working - StonekeepII, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, and secret project "X" (which varied by month from one idea to another - many of which had potential), to say nothing of the in-house dev personnel working on BG: Tales of the Sword Coast, Neverwinter Nights, and BGII).

The StonekeepII engine was a possibility for a Fallout3, test were made, but it didn`t work all that well, and not only Iplay wasn´t interested in Fallout3, as Fergus needed a secure hit to show he could bring some real profit to Iplay, FO3 was deemed by him as too risky. Still he motivated a few BIS members in setting up some demo levels, trying out technology, in order to keep the project in the agenda for the future. When many realised he was giving up on FO3 altogether and making IWD2 the priority (he first gave Sawyer only six months to finish IWD2...) they left, and things went ugly for sometime.

Feargus patched up rocky relations with Bioware on a personal level

BIS staff complained many times that they helped in good faith Bioware in their projects, but Bioware wasn`t helpful when they needed the help. Things went really sour when Bioware "forgot" to deliver to BIS some technology that was already payed. Fergus at chose to be a moderated voice in dealing with this problem, wich helped the patching up.

and when even he realized the lack of a future with IPLY, he walked out the door

We followed him being acompanied by the security to the door almost real time, on #fallout. We felt a bit sad at the time, but it was for the better. He can still be an ass sometimes.

Of course, the Fallout2 sequel idea continued to float around with varying interest in a number of different groups - most notably Troika, Obsidian, and even (dare we say) Bioware.

And Bethesda, and the germans, later a dutch independent group, and many more.

I`ll tell you a secret, the historical reason for NMA to act like we did last year was to keep the Fallout3 idea alive, while DAC and RPGCodex scared away the developers and publishers we didn`t liked . There are checks and balances in the Fallout community that aren´t that clear for the non-initiated, but that´s another story.

Some tech work was done, but core development never really took off beyond the early tech-demo stage. An RPG is all about depth of content, and the money starts burning when you start the in-depth content development, not the core technology (which might be licensed or used with other products).

I was surprised that BIS was able to put out a nice 3d engine, given their previous failed attempts in the world of 3D. The shadows weren´t working properly though, but still they were in the right track, although Jefferson had much more spectacular visuals (less populated world, more detail, more polygons).

The content was very streamlined given the way Sawyer operated, he cut feature after feature, asked for a smaller polygon count, cut areas, did his best for the game to be viable in the short time they had to do it.

But things were in place, it was really a matter of populating the areas, create the textures for the buildings and art and place the scripts. It was viable, and the design docs were thorough but perfectly "doable".

And quite good, very Falloutish, much more than many think, although the new visuals of the characters could be a small shock for a few that are used to the old 2D characters. The design was solid, the time at their disposal was workable, but it would take another company to make the game.

Saint first heard that Interplay would cancel the game in June 2003, i got an anonymous mail in July, only talked about it to Odin, but only when i saw BGDA2 wasn´t going to be out in 2003 i was sure that there was no escape possible for the game. Still we hang on with the team, at least we could do that until the end.

A few BIS and Iplay folks that i learned to like with time are away from the gaming world, and that is a shame, but many are doing things they like, and that is positive.

The fans still don´t have a Fallout3 game though, we lost a lot of time and hope in the last years. We didn`t loose our jobs, so we aren´t the ones that lost more in these years, but still our impatience and roughness in many situations can be traced to the no win context that we got used to live in.

Let`s see what the future brings.

 

[Chromosome 25]

Feargus patched up rocky relations with Bioware on a personal level

BIS staff complained many times that they helped in good faith Bioware in their projects, but Bioware wasn`t helpful when they needed the help. Things went really sour when Bioware "forgot" to deliver to BIS some technology that was already payed. Fergus at chose to be a moderated voice in dealing with this problem, wich helped the patching up.

Depending who you asked, there was always an injured party. Bioware also felt that they were getting shorted in the relationship, and on an IPLY corporate level they certainly were (at least according to lawsuits). At the end of the day, while both groups were involved on a lot of good product, Bioware developed the bigger games and were more consistent in following up on their successes. Now that Obsidian is working for Bioware, it will be interesting to see how the relationship goes, since the shoe is on the other foot

Additionally, we'll have to see how BIS veterans do in the industry (for those who did not end up at either Obsidian or Troika). We'll have to see how Josh does at Midway. In my opinion he still remains one of the best RPG designers out there. Chris Avalone is one of the other, though Chris' strengths lie more in story while Josh was clearly a game systems guy.

Final note - it is interesting how few of the BIS folks ended up at Fargo's new company, especially considering that Fargo was going to try to bring back interest in Bard's Tale and Wasteland. There can be nothing more telling as a senior manager than when your prior employees prefer not to work with you again.