Project Van Buren

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

Had to create an account to write this because I am absolutely shocked. Reading this was heartbreaking as a long time admirer of the Van Buren concept since it was leaked in 2005 and by extension this entire project. This was the third (and in my opinion the most promising) public project I've witnessed that came and went which could've finally given us the Fallout that die hard fans were long waiting for, and furthermore it's personally my most desired cancelled game of all time. I still remember following every piece of available media related to this project anticipating the next update with dedicated excitement since it seemed so encouraging that maybe someday we may have a chance for something that many considered was never meant to be. As a matter of fact, I can't even remember when I was so enthusiastic about an upcoming game when considering what Bethesda has done to the franchise.

Maybe this isn't my place to discuss this, but I have read enough from the related twitter and discord posts to carry my own opinions on the matter. Judging by what I gathered from the Molten Clouds team, it's clear their reaction to what happened is appropriately warranted and completely understandable. I more than wish that I could consider the situation excusable if civil diplomacy had been established rather than such an aggressive approach and unprofessional hostility that brought us to the circumstances we're in now.

After that, I can understand why you may not want to continue the project after going through this ordeal, I'll admit I see no justifiable way to condone for these irrational executive decisions in the immediate future. But your attempts to bring a long dead project people still yearn for today were still both extremely aspiring and promising. You may have justifiably earned the anger from a significant amount of people. However I, and I'm certain plenty of others, could forgive these actions if there was evidential proof of acknowledged amendment through revisions from these fraudulent choices and genuine authenticity in your subsequent work as atonement. Which I would consider the most mature and practical redeeming method to rectify this incident.

if you sincerely believe you have no other alternative for continuing and decide to permanently withdraw from this project:
I would ask you one thing from all of this. Which is that I will implore, perhaps go so far as to beg you to please attempt to speak with an experienced crew member with an earnest, competent reputation or an equally skilled willing participant to gather the two years of original work you produced so it would not go to waste. From there, they could pick up where you left off as project manager and they themselves can guide the project into a legitimate, honest, and reputable product. There are countless of eager Unity3D-savvy supporters that would love to participate and see the game to completion and would be equally disheartened to see this project simply die like the others. It won't matter how many years it'd have to take even with corners no longer being cut, for there'd finally be a semblance of a chance after 17 years of empty promises and failed proposals.

If anyone would be punished the most from this decision, it would be the entire loyal fan community that'd have to wait another decade just to watch another prospective attempt try and fall victim again to the "Van Buren Curse", even if you no longer have personal attachment, I plead that you share this dream with a new team so this project won't end up just like them, there is too much promising potential for this to just end right now.

Thank you for writing this. These thoughts of yours made me think about the whole situation once again and I had a chat with my best bud and associate lead of my team on what to do. Before we get to what we agreed on, let me explain one thing:

The following statement is not meant to be an excuse nor alibistic desire to avoid consequences of my actions. As I said several times, I am fully aware of what happened, I've already apologized for it and to be frank, I don't feel good about myself at all. In addition, I respect the fact that, especially modding community, hates me now. Let that be my punishment, I sure as bloody hell deserve all that.

Now, you may wonder, why I did it in a first place, when now, I am talking like a saint here? Well, let me say what I feel needs to be said, and take from it whatever you want, or don't take nothing and keep hating me, I don't care. I've been through much worse than this virtual non-sense arguing.

Why was I using MC assets? Well, first of all, from all those thousands of assets found in their bundle I was given by one of their team members, I actually used, like, dozen at most. Again, it's not an excuse, I should not even have them without MC leads knowing about it, let alone using them, yes, I agree, I'm a fool, hate me for that all you want. But the question remains - why? Well, here is an answer - I worked on a whole game alone, so I wanted to speed things up. There is nothing more to it. And yet again, it's not an excuse, it's a fact.
MC lead tried to "school" me when we were settling this down, how hard was his team working on those assets and whatnot, trying to imply that I only grabbed his assets with no work and then acted like a big game dev. With no disrespect meant, this guy may be a very good modder, but he sure isn't a skilled game developer, for anyone with at least a bit of experience in game dev would recognize that true amount of work even from bloody screenshots, especially in my case, since, as you may know, I worked on this all by myself.
I was given an option to have artisticly perfectly fitting assets from community production, so I took it. Out of my passion to this project, I underwent that risk. And no, I'm not making a hero of myself. I don't care to, really. I'm not doing this for money or publicity. If I was, you would recognize that.
Of course, my usage of those assets wouldn't have been that much of a crime at all. It could've been worked out, as MC lead agreed with me. Problem started when I was confronted about it, and this is where my stupidity, aggresion and generally "not-really-myself" all acted out. And now, I'll be completely honest - I was approached by some random twitter russian (no disrespect, I'm a Slav myself, I fluently speak Russian, I've spent time in Russia and I love Russians as all Slavs) kiddo (judgeing from the photo, I'm not disrespecting him but, honestly, guy with no whisker under his nose must be 10 years younger than me) accusing me of using his assets. I told myself - what the fuck would you know about that kid? I felt insulted (and, well, I sure didn't have a reason for that, but I did felt like that). So I started the shitstorm of lies how these are not his assets, thinking "no one can prove that". And just a side note, it's really hard to prove something like asset ownership, as what is the measure of it? Amount of time spend with it? Amount of skill put into it? Is the owner the one who started it or finished it? Who can judge that? Answer this for yourself. Because don't you think I just copy pasted their assets like that. I've spend hours modifying them, some less, others more, but time was spent nonetheless.

So yeah, this is what I did. I'm guilty as charged, I admit I was a fool and acted even worse, actually pretty much against my nature and temper. But it's done, now the consequences come and I'm not afraid of facing them.

I have stated an apology to MC lead few days ago. Of course, he wasn't welcoming me with warm hug but we both agreed that all this is, quote, done. Not friendly, not honourable, just done. We agreed to an "arrangement" under which I delete all MC assets from my harddrives (which I did) and MC literally won't give a shit about my project just as they didn't give before this affair.

The reason why I shut the whole thing down, even with nobody demanding it, is the hate and internet bullying some of my team mates were given. If it was just me, I wouldn't care, but I can't let people attacking my crew for things they didn't even know about (yes, I never told them those assets were from MC. I could be an alibist and say - they didn't ask, but I am not and I admit this was another dishonest thing from me). I don't want them to be facing public attacks of type "hey, you work with that thief". These people have their dreams and goals in game industry and with such community status, industry may not be welcoming to them.

As I said though, these posts of yours made me think. I don't wanna be portraited like your "Van Buren hero" and I don't need that kind of publicity. I'm not doing all this for that. It's a passion and desire for learning new things, making community happy is just a sideproduct, yet very welcome one. However, I feel like I, sort of, have responsibility for this project. From what I've read here, people had put their hope into it. Not many, but some really did. The way I see it now, with much cooler head and brighter mind, it would be irresponsible to just disappear like that and leave this common dream of ours behind, wouldn't it? This is not about me and my foolish actions, nor Molten Clouds assets anymore. It's about Van Buren itself. With no intentions to sound heroic, I've given 2 years of my life to it. I was gifted by meeting an incredible bunch of talented people to work with. I can't even begin to express how impressed I was when my core team members stood behind me in this mess and stated they are ready to continue the work.

After a chat with my associate lead, we agreed not to abandon Van Buren. We can't continue the work on it as it is now though. To eliminate and prevent issues with asset needs and potencial further compromising situations, we decided to downgrade the visual presentation to original tech demo quality (although with upscaled textures). I hope this will not dissappoint you.
You know, thing is that my sick obsession with nice-looking graphics forced me to find "shortcuts" when looking for assets, which brought us here, so to prevent that, I need to chain myself to good ole' 2003 graphics.

Thank you for changing my mind. And if you can, forgive my foolishness.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I don't mind that it will be 2003 era style graphics (of course if you don't make it to simplistic), a lot of people here have been playing Fallout of Nevada, Fallout Resurrection, and probably in the future Fallout Sonora so it is not as we expect current day cutting edge graphics that can compete with triple A titles.

What I should have asked a bit earlier and am asking now if there will also be any overhaul of the gameplay, in particular SPECIAL (sorry but it needs some changes) but also combat; incorporating perhaps the various positions/stances from Tactics.

What I hope most is that some kind of tool kit would come out of this (with instructions) that could be used for future Fallout mods.

 

[The_Proletarian]

Could you make a deal with that other project allowing you to share assets? That would be the best solution for the Fallout community (I still think they act greedy and protective). However I'm also totally fine with 2003 era retro graphics.

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

Could you make a deal with that other project allowing you to share assets? That would be the best solution for the Fallout community (I still think they act greedy and protective). However I'm also totally fine with 2003 era retro graphics.

As I said earlier, if I wasn't a fool and didn't act like a total idiot, we could've work things out. This opportunity is now flushed out though. They wouldn't want to speak with me, let alone arranging deals. Guess I can't blame them.

Anyway, I don't really need any of their assets. Problem is that I used many other assets I ripped from many other commercial games, because, well, they looked good. I told myself - I don't do this commercially, I'm not gaining anything from it, so no one should care much. But now, I'm worried people will be looking much closer to what assets I use and I would like to avoid another hating party on my head.

Take vegetation assets for example. If you look closer, you will notice they are ripped from GTA 5, even though they are heavily modified (I had to edit the meshes because the shader I use was distorting vertices, I also had to to edit textures and rewrite foliage shader to get rid of a bright tinting it had and so on... roughly two weeks of work for, well, two bush assets. Why this long? Because I had to learn things on the go).

Or take leather armor outfit. It's ripped from Mad Max game. Why? Because I'm fan and fanatic of Mad Max series and I HAD TO have proper one-sleeved shoulder-paded leather jacket in my game. Yes, I'm sick and need some help, I know that too! It took me about a week to re-rig the outfit to the skeleton I use and retexture some minor pieces that looked bad after I removed some attachments I didn't want to use. I've never worked with rigging before, so that's why it took so much time again.

I would very much like to continue with "better" graphics, but I fear usage of these assets may be compromising, especially now when modding community is preying on me.

Tech Demo, on the other hand, provides very decent portion of nice stylistic assets.

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

This is what I had in mind. All original assets with slight enhancements (upscaled textures, generated normal maps, and of course - better lighting and rendering than 2003's demo). Original Canyon map from Tech Demo (no changes performed):

I would experiment with more vegetation myself, BIS guys were probably saving polycount by using this little vegetation.

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

I don't mind that it will be 2003 era style graphics (of course if you don't make it to simplistic), a lot of people here have been playing Fallout of Nevada, Fallout Resurrection, and probably in the future Fallout Sonora so it is not as we expect current day cutting edge graphics that can compete with triple A titles.

What I should have asked a bit earlier and am asking now if there will also be any overhaul of the gameplay, in particular SPECIAL (sorry but it needs some changes) but also combat; incorporating perhaps the various positions/stances from Tactics.

What I hope most is that some kind of tool kit would come out of this (with instructions) that could be used for future Fallout mods.

I had a deep look into it few months ago and yes, game system needed some changes. Original SPECIAL system in Fallout and Fallout 2, being a GURPS derivate, is unbalanced (perfectly balanced game system does not exist, but this one is very unbalanced). Perception and Agility have much greater impact on derived stats and skills than the rest of primary attributes, while Charisma, and especially Luck are both extremely underpowered. Josh Sawyer attempted to rebalance it in Van Buren - that's why we have Persuasion and Deception skills for instance - to enhance Charisma abilities. But in my opinion, it's just not enough. While Charisma can't be linked to further derived stats (as there are no suitable ones), it sure can be implemented into gameplay in other form - more dialogue options, everywhere. Of course, from the practical point of view, every single new option formed in theory means literally doubling the number of lines. But tell you what - our writers are down for it! It's a real challenge but they want to do it.

In theory, I was thinking about Charisma based responds, similarily to Intelligence based options (Normal INT and Low INT, you could see those in original Van Buren dialogues found in tech demo). Low charisma characters would have shorter, briefer and colder lines (something like Max Rockatansky in Mad Max Fury Road, grunts and few-words sentences at best, although not sounding dumb).

About tool kit - I often think about it. I would like to do something like that, you know, some kind of framework that would make Unity a new Fallout engine for the community. In fact, it kinda looks like one already, it would require some more work later on though.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

snip

If I may make another suggestion, and I discussed this with someone else; combine the weapon skills. Call it "Marksman" for example.

During a chat about the SPECIAL system me and a friend discussed how often heavy weapon skills go underused as it is often very late in the game that the player starts to find or be able to purchase these.
At that point it is much better to choose the "Tag" perk and start upgrading the Energy weapons skill as it is often as effective as heavy weapons and does not have the strength threshold .

And though of course small weapons, heavy weapons, and energy weapons have different working principles we felt that the the general skill to use them would be the same.

My own suggestion to balance this skill from being to overpowered, or better in order to specialize is that there would be special Perks that would make the player's use and damage of some weapons more effective than others.
Say the player wants to specialize in using shotguns, he chooses the perk "Shotgun Wizard" but as a result he can not for example choose the perk for automated/assault weapons, or "Sniper Elite" to be good at sniper weapons.

Perhaps also using ingame skill thresholds like in New Vegas before the player can use weapons that use a higher Marksman skill.

Another balance skill I suggested but which may not be necessary would be "Maintenance". Even if you are great at shooting things but can't maintain your ranged weapon you are going to feel it in the effectiveness/output/ammo spend.


We also talked about perhaps splitting up the Repair and the Science skills as my friend remarked that it is weird that someone who is good in mechanical repair can also do electronics, or that someone who is good at biology is also a good physicist and computer scientist.

This could come into play with if the player wants to be a Scientific kind of character (great at crafting stuff, using technology and scientific knowledge to complete quests)

To balance out if the player is weaker in some areas NPCs could compliment those.


And last merging first aid and doctor into one skill, again perhaps with ingame skill threshold to make sure that someone who has learned the basics of first aid is not suddenly capable of performing heart surgery.

 

[Gizmojunk]

One of the aspects that I appreciated with the First Aid & Doctor skills, was that it gave the player a total of six attempts to heal themselves and/or their party, while limiting it to just three attempts to heal crippling injuries. This enforced triaging the recipients; to use First Aid only on those in need of conventional bandaging, while saving the Doctor skill for those with otherwise uncorrectable injuries that wouldn't heal over time.

As always —merging these two distinct skills destroys this aspect of using them, and eliminates the very different xp rewards, and time requirements of their use. Doctor was a career skill that required dedicated skill-point investment, for an exclusive in-game ability, while First Aid was a generalized basic bandaging skill that was accessible to all, and easily improved.

A PC could have a moderate to very high First Aid skill, and be the equivalent of a Nurse or a Gym teacher, but not versed in setting & surgical techniques; they would still have to seek medical attention from a doctor for more complicated injuries.
Even having a threshold where the First Aid skill would become the Doctor skill does not allow for this kind of independent [split tiered] use & development. Also the Doctor skill allowed for collegial dialog with other doctors; and this made sense mechanically.

 

[Negativity]

This is what I had in mind. All original assets with slight enhancements (upscaled textures, generated normal maps, and of course - better lighting and rendering than 2003's demo). Original Canyon map from Tech Demo (no changes performed):

Have you considered pocking around the nexus for some modders resources? I'm pretty sure some of them can be used in game projects.

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

...

I don't know how familiar are you with Van Buren game system, but "Marksman" skill you're suggesting is pretty much the "Firearms" skill in Van Buren, which combines what used to be small guns, big guns and energy weapons into one unified skill.

Repair and science division may sound as a good suggestion as well, although it isn't as easy to just add two new skills as it looks. Each skill has a formula based on primary attributes. Problem with original SPECIAL system was that its Perception and Agility were involved in too many skills or derived stats, making them overpowered. Our goal is, just as BIS designers' goal was, to balance the game system in Van Buren so that primary attributes have as even involvement in derived stats and skills as it's reasonably possible. Again, it can never be 100% even, and thus never 100% balanced, we can only tighten the gaps.

Adding two new skills would require to link them to primary attributes. Due to their Repair/Science nature, both of them would most probably use two of these three primary attributes: Perception, Intelligence, Agility. Perception and Agility already affect more stats than others, so implementing these skills would widen this gap even more, which is something we want to avoid.

Thing I am much more concerned about is explosives skill. In Van Buren tech demo, it's missing. However, its description can be found in demo files, which means it was planned for the game but probably got cut/merged.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I don't know how familiar are you with Van Buren game system, but "Marksman" skill you're suggesting is pretty much the "Firearms" skill in Van Buren, which combines what used to be small guns, big guns and energy weapons into one unified skill.

It has been a while but I remember that Sawyer wanted to combine all ranged weapons into one skill. I think he also wanted to encourage use of the unarmed and melee skill.

Adding two new skills would require to link them to primary attributes. Due to their Repair/Science nature, both of them would most probably use two of these three primary attributes: Perception, Intelligence, Agility. Perception and Agility already affect more stats than others, so implementing these skills would widen this gap even more, which is something we want to avoid.

I see. I don't have any suggestion at the moment on how to resolve that issue.

Thing I am much more concerned about is explosives skill. In Van Buren tech demo, it's missing. However, its description can be found in demo files, which means it was planned for the game but probably got cut/merged.

Bombs and such or also grenades? FNV combined those I think with heavy weapons but I doubt or think it would be very unsuitable that these are suddenly part of ranged. (missile launchers and grenade launcher would make sense, but not grenades that need to be thrown or explosives that need to be planted)
Grenades could be perhaps part of throwing but that leaves out planted explosives.

 

[WesTheBest]

I sent this to the Facebook Page for the Van Buren Project. So, I am going to post it here. This is my first post on this forum, my focus is helping. I have literally been playing Fallout games since I was a child, and my passion is to see this project progressed. If nothing else to get it closer to the potential it has, and to help future fan developers who will be working on this.
I KNOW NOTHING of the drama that went down with New Vegas assets, and I could care less. I am more concerned with the project and it's success.

I hope I can reach Hardboiled Wanderer from here as it seems this is the most recent activity from him. If you are reading this, THANKS MY DUDE! For being passionate and being willing to take risks!

Here is the original message:

Hello, this may be an inactive page. But I am a bit of a researcher and I am curious, what is the current status of the project? If you don't mind to give me the run down, I know you do not know me from Adam.
I have been reading through old dead forum posts, old website entries and just general mentions of the fan Van Buren remake. I find the story very interesting. I just have some general questions, aside from the status of this project.
Is the current amount of content you possess running in Jefferson Engine. Or is it a different engine? How much content is currently there?
Also, do you guys have any information about the cancelled Fallout Van Buren's story, plot, or any detail that may be interesting or something to vast majority of other's may not know? I know there were design documents that were released, but I am curious to what else you guys may have discovered. I know this is a lot. I am a current student trying to obtain my computer science degree. I am a junior, and I find these old abandoned creative endeavors very interesting, especially ones as old as this.. Considering you guys were the last active group I could find who were attempting to piece together this game that never was, I figured it would be best to reach out directly for answers.
I guess you can think of this as a interview. I want to bring this interview to Reddit and generate interest. Get people with skills in touch. Perhaps bring a breath of fresh air to this project. I in no way want to barge in on your project, I just want to generate some interest. If not that, I would like to get some information to perhaps bring to some people I know who are involved in the TES Renewal Project and some of those involved in the Fallout 4 Capital Wasteland Mod. Thanks for your time, I know this is a lot to ask at once. Ultimately I want to help, either by lending my expertise, time (which I have a lot of), resources, or just by spreading word or contacting other people with a lot of development info for assistance.

I also would like to add these questions: Where did you get started in the world of game design? What made you want to undertake this task? How did you begin this process? Are you remaking assets from the tech demo or has there been any original Van Buren content that has been salvageable?

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

What is the current amount of content you possess running in Jefferson Engine. Or is it a different engine? How much content is currently there?

The game you're looking at does not run on Jefferson Engine. Once, when I was a Van Buren researcher just like you, I used to dream of getting it one day, because as Josh Sawyer told me, Obsidian folks still have the code and tools for the engine.
However, I realized that even if there was a chance of getting it (and I'm sure there's not), it's 2003 tech which would most likely slow things down these days.
Being obsessed with Wasteland 2 at the time, I've stumbled upon Unity Engine. There used to be some sort of misconception among the community that Unity is badly optimized, bad looking and whatnot back when I started the works on Van Buren (IIRC, November 2017). Not only this wasn't true at all, but as I found out, Unity is a wonderful tool for developers, so I stayed with it.

Recently, I've been working on shaping visuals to look as close to Jefferson as possible.

How much content is currently there?

The answer really depends on what exactly you consider as a content. As for a gameplay content (story, quests etc), there is nothing implemented in-engine yet. I'm coding the gameplay mechanics as well as all the tools to be actually able to create the content.
What is implemented:
-movement
-entity interactions
-(very) basic combat (combat system it still being designed/tested on paper)
-most of the gameplay-necessary interface (terminal, action panel, inventory etc)
-scene loading and spawning
-saving system
-partially working dialogues (not linked to globals yet, even though methods operating them are ready)
-foundations of global variables system

All the assets comes from Van Buren tech demo (since that, you know, asset drama/affair).

Also, do you guys have any information about the cancelled Fallout Van Buren's story, plot, or any detail that may be interesting or something to vast majority of other's may not know?

Everything we have is based on what exists out there on the net. And it needs to be said that sometimes there's much more in old forum post or dev interviews then in design documents.

With no disrespect meant, I think that "vast majority" of the Fallout community (not NMA community) doesn't know much about Van Buren's story, judging from thousands of reddit posts and comments of type "New Vegas is Van Buren" and similar stuff. Most people (excluding folks here on NMA and few other forums) tend to have very shallow knowledge of the plot so I think if they saw it all summarized and compiled, they would be very surprised.

Other than that, we I've gathered some minor details from both Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone, mostly regarding the timeline, but it served more as a confirmation of what we had already figured out rather than discovering something completely new.

Where did you get started in the world of game design?

Actually right with this project. I have no actual background in video games, I've been trained as metrologist at steel foundry plant and aside of that, I have a Bachelor degree (currently running for an Engineer) in software engineering, but that's about it.
I've started to visualize design docs descriptions of the locations at first as I had a great passion for environment/level design (which doesn't mean I was/am good at it). Then I started to learn Unity and thanks to my programming background, it wasn't too hard for me to code some basic skeletons of several game systems. And after that, I've turned my interest towards game design itself, and actually found it very interesting so I studied more about game systems in general, mainly D&D. I really enjoyed running mechanics simulations on paper, that's the most enjoyable part of game design for me.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Damn, I started practicing Unity two years ago but I stopped at some point.

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

Alright so here's a change of plans yet again. Forget about 2003's graphics, that was a bad decision. I went through the files we had, removed anything possibly compromising, so now, everything's legit and ready to work with. I've also spent a decent lot of money on some new textures and other stuff. I guess the graphics now looks just as I've always wanted:

 

[ironmask]

What was wrong with the 2003 graphics idea?

 

[Hardboiled Wanderer]

What was wrong with the 2003 graphics idea?

Not the idea itself, 2003's graphics would have had a very nice bit of nostalgic touch.

I just ran through my files and realized I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours gathering these assets. Not only that, I've literally studied southwestern US landscape and shaped every asset to fit into it, since, well, I'm obsessed with environmental design. I figured it would've been a shame not to use any of them, let alone all those money that would have been wasted for good.
Hell, who said an isometric game can't have nice graphics?

 

[The_Proletarian]

So glad to hear that you decided to continue with this great project!

 

[mrmutt]

I just learned about this project and it literally had my jaw dropped! I was reading the NMA forum for years now, but never actually registered, Master Lurker for you there!


Here is a few dollars on this project and Fallout world in general;


Fallout 1 never cut it for me really. I saw it as relatively simplistic, altho the setting and atmosphere were there. They were definitely on to something, but it needed some more work in my view.


Then, Fallout 2 happened. The setting, the atmosphere, graphics, gameplay, etc. - everything was phenomenally designed and conceived. For example - the viewport is not set as narrow for no reason; it helps with immersion of the character and makes the world feel bigger. And the story was truly stellar. It was a game, and yet it felt eerily real with its retrofuturism. I know that it is hard to talk about realism in a game like this, but Fallout 2 was something like a narrative agent, a carrier of the story that the player moulded as the game passed on. The inclusion of children, altho a problematic move today, helped to make the whole thing more real. All in all, Fallout 2 set the standard, and is the sole reason why this forum and many more exist.


**


After the Falout 2 there came a stream of games that tried to recreate some of the story and atmosphere of the Fallout (2) world. Unfortunately, we all know how that turned out. Fallout Tactics had some good moments, but was a dumb game with "tactics" part becoming a joke very fast. Fallout "3" and subsequent Fallouts were OK to a certain point, but the narrative was painfully dumbed down, and the worlds actually were small. In F2 you really felt like going on a trip when you moved from town to town. And getting Power Armor became almost a joke, and on the later levels players where on a Godlike power levels. I won't mention almost magical perks, and rest of the stuff, as everything was obviously tuned for the game to be playable by widest possible audience. In the end, when playing the game, I started only running around with almost no armor, so it would be possible to enjoy the exploration of vast area a bit more believable (and the character killable). These new games had their moments, but all in all they were a wannabe copies of the original F2 world with "better" graphics and story as stupid as it gets.


Apart from the continuation of the original series, we have had quite a number of games that tried to recreate the atmosphere of F2 world. STALKER was quite good. A brilliant homage to Tarkovsky and his political critique masterpiece, however the story was really hard to identify with without being able to understand the mentality behind the game and feeling of actual desolation and vastness of Soviet Union. I met people from those parts who consider a distance of a thousand kilometers “close.” Metro series is similar, but it didn’t cut it for me. Air breathing filters that last for minutes?


Then we have Wasteland. - The original was certainly important for many, and resulted in creation of Fallout universe, but it was still a glorified western. Wasteland 2 produced quite some hype, but it was simply too dumb. Never actually wanted play that one again.


Rage and Borderlands are a joke.


**


Each time a new game was to go out, I was quite exhilarated about it, maybe more that I should have. But all of that was for nothing, unfortunately. No games after F2 managed to recreate such atmosphere and storytelling anew. I even wondered if I was growing too old? Maybe I remember the game wrong and give it credit that it didn’t deserve. So I tried playing F2 again, and no, it wasn’t me. Fallout 2 is just like a good book.


**


The newcomers are Krai Mira, which is a flop, unfortunately. Looked promising a bit. Started playing ATOM yesterday, and game is fine, but it quite far from being captivating. It is obviously a relatively poorly assembled copy of Fallout 2. I will proceed playing it a bit, but it is not that the game is pulling me in. I also don’t like the setting that much. Apart from that, and this is true for large majority of all games, how can you speak of realism if all protagonists everywhere are young, pretty, have all teeth, and there is no kids anywhere?


It is hard to create a great game, maybe even more to recreate it. Take a look at Carmageddon. Or Duke Nukem 3D (don’t know if you knew, but fan based recreation of DN3D in Unreal engine was killed off. The in-game screenshots looked phenomenal ).



**


Now, there are two games that did reproduce Fallout 2 feeling, or part of it:

First one is Alien Shooter and Alien Shooter 2 from Sigma Team. Although these are shooter games, they feel quite a lot like Fallout 2 in some aspects. Fantastic games.

Second one is Alien Isolation. A true masterpiece, and a real sequel to first Alien movie. I actually think the creators actually wanted to do something in those lines, and they succeeded magnificently. This game is one of the best games I have ever played. The brilliance the game was realised with was au pair to Fallout 2 world.


**


And now we come to Van Buren. I played the tech demo. Read the story many times, and it was fantastic. If it were to be finished, the game would be of stellar quality. (Instead we got crap that was F3).

I suppose I don’t have to lament about it, but it was like Waiting for Godot. I always wondered why didn’t anyone recreated that story.

And then the Hardboiled Wanderer came about!

What a phenomenal work! It all looks positively fantastic. New renders are phenomenal and I hope you will find the time and persistence to finish it all!!

 

[Matt Drax]

@mrmutt:
While waiting you may want to take a look at ELEX (PA, RPG, Worldbuilding), Kenshi (PA, Open World, Hardcore Survival), This War of Mine (War, Survival, Athmosphere) and Underrail (Classic Fallout-ish Isometric Retro-Styled RPG) if you don't know them already.
Also Encased wich is stil in development, and ofc all the nice mods for the classic Fallout's that the Community put out over the years.^^

And also here is from me hoping that @Hardboiled Wanderer has the Endurance and Strength to get this project finished, Van Buren needs to rise from it's Ashes!