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Yes Master</center>
The Master was not always a conglomerate blob creature. Originally, he was a human, exposed to the FEV in the Vats at the Mariposa Base, and transformed into a Super Mutant – but unlike the others, The Master became incredibly intelligent. He immediately realized the superiority of his new body, and believed that it was his destiny to save humanity – by turning them all into Super Mutants, of course! The Unity would make all humans fit for this harsh world! It would end all wars (since we would control everyone), all inequality (since everyone would be the same mutants), and end all suffering (since Super Mutants are too dumb to know they are suffering). He was just a misunderstood guy trying to save the world.
Oh yeah, the term “Super Mutant”? It was a temporary name given to the über tough Master-Created FEV Mutants. We just couldn't come up with anything better, and it kind of stuck. Since they were enhanced with something akin to Captain America's Super Soldier Serum – Super Mutants it was.
<center>My, what a big chopping block you have</center>
Fallout was a big game, even after many ideas were trimmed out of it. Some ideas were good, but just didn’t fit with the world. Others were just too scope intensive. Others were just too silly.
For example, the Desert Raiders were intended to have several warring factions – each with their own adventures and plot lines.
The Jackals were a tribe of cannibals, preferring to eat their captives instead of each other. They were intended to be the low-level crazies that you battle at the beginning of the game. You would get a good reputation if you decided to wipe-out their tribe. However, if you let them live, you would have a never-ending supply of crazy henchmen.
The Vipers were another tribe of blood-thirsty raiders. These guys liked to dress-up in bone armor and find victims to sacrifice to their snake god (merge the Aztecs with the snake worshipers from Conan, and you’re fairly close.) Vipers throw their captives in an arena with a giant pit-viper. Survivors are given the choice to become part of their clan, or sacrificed to their god. However, to be part of their clan, you must perform several tasks to show your worth – like hijack a caravan, raid a settlement, clear a RadScorpion nest, or retake a water-source from an enemy group. Of course, you’d have a variety of options on how you solve each mission. In the end, if you did well, you’d have the respect of the tribe (and they’d protect you from all the pesky desert varmints when you are in their territory.)
The Khans (the one tribe that did make it into the game), had its inception from a real-life biker gang, the Mongols. I was imagining the kind of tough, lawless, SOBs that could survive in the desolation of the wasteland; raiding and killing for their spoils. I could see these guys surviving. So, after a few generations, they became similar to the barbaric marauders they emulated.
<center>Watership Down – with guns!</center>
One planned location would have changed the entire feel of Fallout - Brian Freyermuth and I were kicking around the idea of adding sapient mutated animals into the game. Yup, that's right: talking raccoons and bunnies, with guns.
The idea was to create a quest featuring a new tribe of desert raiders. Tracking down the bandits, the player would follow a series of caves and eventually discover they form an underground warren for a large group of bipedal talking animals. The beasts had been uplifted, Secret of Nimh-style, by exposure to the FEV virus administered by medical robots in a lab. The otherwise isolationist critters turned to raiding when their underground farms became infested with Mole Rats. This would inevitably lead the player through the infested farms, into the mole rat burrows, and into the robot filled medical center beneath it all.
The player might even make a friend on this quest – a unique gun-slinging raccoon companion. Quests were being planned to open talks between the Warrens and the Hub, to make caravans trade with the varmints, and all the side quests that that could lead to.
While Brian was off and running, writing quests for our furry additions, the artists had a scope meeting about the number of characters in the game. We had more designed than they had time to actually build and animate. So, a compromise was needed: since the mutant animals were rare, required several sets of armor, and totally different of animations, they were chopped. Poor Brian, he put so much love into those varmints!
<center>The Irvine Utopia</center>
One more silly idea was the “Irvine Utopia”. Interplay was located in the lovely city of Irvine California. On the surface, the city was beautiful – tall glass buildings, palm trees, no crime, no poverty – like a 50’s ideal society come to life. However, a dark force lurked behind the façade of pleasantness: The Irvine Land Company. This corporation was active at every level of society in Irvine, enforcing its pristine perception with an iron fist. (Seriously, there were only three approved colors for any building in Irvine – tan, sand, and adobe. Interplay employees who drove less than nice cars would be harassed by the Irvine Police. If your building front looked dirty, you would get a fine from the city. Yeesh!)
So, of course, we wanted to poke fun at our Irvine Overlords – by putting them into our game!
Since Fallout took place in southern California, we wanted to place a city called “Utopia” right about where Irvine was located. Utopia was surrounded by massive steel walls and patrolled by killer robots. However, if you got inside, you found a population of humans living in a perfect pre-war city, well cared for by their robots and wanting for nothing. Of course, the humans were dumb-as-a-bag-of-stupid and could do nothing for themselves without their robot helpers – which, in actuality were their robot overlords, controlling every aspect of their life. The robots were run by a super computer in the middle of the city – manufactured by “The Irvine Land Corporation”.
Ah, satire!
The coolest part of the Utopia idea was that, outside of the walls, we were to build the ruins of Interplay. We’d have a little ruined building and hide skeletons of ourselves around the debris. It would have been magic.
<center>It’s Dead Jim</center>
Still another silly idea that met the chopping block was the “Dead Viper”. At the time of development, Brian Fargo had just purchased a candy-apple red Dodge Viper sports car. He would beam with pride when his V10 roared into the parking lot each morning. Almost immediately, the sports car began suffering break-down after mechanical failure – it ended up spending more time in the Interplay parking lot and repair shops than on the road.
Being pitiless bastards, we wanted to poke fun at it.
A player could discover a shiny new red Dodge Viper amongst the ruins of the Interplay building. The character could even interact with it, getting a dialog stating: “It’s a high-performance sports car. With just a few repairs, it could be drivable…” This would send the player to the ends of the Wastes looking for “sports car parts”, bringing them back to the car in hopes of repairing it and cruising through the radioactive desert in style. The evil part was, no matter how many parts you find, nothing would fix the car.
We even joked that in the end credits of the game, we’d show a Super Mutant walk up to the car and stare quizzically at it. He’d kick it, and it’d roar to life. We last see the mutant driving the Viper into the sunset… Priceless.
<center>That's All Folks!</center>
So there you have it. Hopefully all this rambling makes a few fans happy.
Let me end with this story: a few weeks ago, I was in Taiwan giving a lecture on Game Design principals. Afterwards, a young designer came to me and said that Fallout changed his life. Having played it as a young kid, it shaped his views on what computer games could be and encouraged him to get into the games industry himself.
He wanted me to thank the team for giving him that inspiration.
To him, and all of the Fallout fans I can only say, "No, thank you."
<center>
[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ] - [ Page 4 ] - [ Page 5 ] - [ Page 6 ] - [ Page 7 ] - [ Page 8 ]</center>
Yes Master</center>
The Master was not always a conglomerate blob creature. Originally, he was a human, exposed to the FEV in the Vats at the Mariposa Base, and transformed into a Super Mutant – but unlike the others, The Master became incredibly intelligent. He immediately realized the superiority of his new body, and believed that it was his destiny to save humanity – by turning them all into Super Mutants, of course! The Unity would make all humans fit for this harsh world! It would end all wars (since we would control everyone), all inequality (since everyone would be the same mutants), and end all suffering (since Super Mutants are too dumb to know they are suffering). He was just a misunderstood guy trying to save the world.
Oh yeah, the term “Super Mutant”? It was a temporary name given to the über tough Master-Created FEV Mutants. We just couldn't come up with anything better, and it kind of stuck. Since they were enhanced with something akin to Captain America's Super Soldier Serum – Super Mutants it was.
<center>My, what a big chopping block you have</center>
Fallout was a big game, even after many ideas were trimmed out of it. Some ideas were good, but just didn’t fit with the world. Others were just too scope intensive. Others were just too silly.
For example, the Desert Raiders were intended to have several warring factions – each with their own adventures and plot lines.
The Jackals were a tribe of cannibals, preferring to eat their captives instead of each other. They were intended to be the low-level crazies that you battle at the beginning of the game. You would get a good reputation if you decided to wipe-out their tribe. However, if you let them live, you would have a never-ending supply of crazy henchmen.
The Vipers were another tribe of blood-thirsty raiders. These guys liked to dress-up in bone armor and find victims to sacrifice to their snake god (merge the Aztecs with the snake worshipers from Conan, and you’re fairly close.) Vipers throw their captives in an arena with a giant pit-viper. Survivors are given the choice to become part of their clan, or sacrificed to their god. However, to be part of their clan, you must perform several tasks to show your worth – like hijack a caravan, raid a settlement, clear a RadScorpion nest, or retake a water-source from an enemy group. Of course, you’d have a variety of options on how you solve each mission. In the end, if you did well, you’d have the respect of the tribe (and they’d protect you from all the pesky desert varmints when you are in their territory.)
The Khans (the one tribe that did make it into the game), had its inception from a real-life biker gang, the Mongols. I was imagining the kind of tough, lawless, SOBs that could survive in the desolation of the wasteland; raiding and killing for their spoils. I could see these guys surviving. So, after a few generations, they became similar to the barbaric marauders they emulated.
<center>Watership Down – with guns!</center>
One planned location would have changed the entire feel of Fallout - Brian Freyermuth and I were kicking around the idea of adding sapient mutated animals into the game. Yup, that's right: talking raccoons and bunnies, with guns.The idea was to create a quest featuring a new tribe of desert raiders. Tracking down the bandits, the player would follow a series of caves and eventually discover they form an underground warren for a large group of bipedal talking animals. The beasts had been uplifted, Secret of Nimh-style, by exposure to the FEV virus administered by medical robots in a lab. The otherwise isolationist critters turned to raiding when their underground farms became infested with Mole Rats. This would inevitably lead the player through the infested farms, into the mole rat burrows, and into the robot filled medical center beneath it all.
The player might even make a friend on this quest – a unique gun-slinging raccoon companion. Quests were being planned to open talks between the Warrens and the Hub, to make caravans trade with the varmints, and all the side quests that that could lead to.
While Brian was off and running, writing quests for our furry additions, the artists had a scope meeting about the number of characters in the game. We had more designed than they had time to actually build and animate. So, a compromise was needed: since the mutant animals were rare, required several sets of armor, and totally different of animations, they were chopped. Poor Brian, he put so much love into those varmints!
<center>The Irvine Utopia</center>
One more silly idea was the “Irvine Utopia”. Interplay was located in the lovely city of Irvine California. On the surface, the city was beautiful – tall glass buildings, palm trees, no crime, no poverty – like a 50’s ideal society come to life. However, a dark force lurked behind the façade of pleasantness: The Irvine Land Company. This corporation was active at every level of society in Irvine, enforcing its pristine perception with an iron fist. (Seriously, there were only three approved colors for any building in Irvine – tan, sand, and adobe. Interplay employees who drove less than nice cars would be harassed by the Irvine Police. If your building front looked dirty, you would get a fine from the city. Yeesh!)
So, of course, we wanted to poke fun at our Irvine Overlords – by putting them into our game!
Since Fallout took place in southern California, we wanted to place a city called “Utopia” right about where Irvine was located. Utopia was surrounded by massive steel walls and patrolled by killer robots. However, if you got inside, you found a population of humans living in a perfect pre-war city, well cared for by their robots and wanting for nothing. Of course, the humans were dumb-as-a-bag-of-stupid and could do nothing for themselves without their robot helpers – which, in actuality were their robot overlords, controlling every aspect of their life. The robots were run by a super computer in the middle of the city – manufactured by “The Irvine Land Corporation”.
Ah, satire!
The coolest part of the Utopia idea was that, outside of the walls, we were to build the ruins of Interplay. We’d have a little ruined building and hide skeletons of ourselves around the debris. It would have been magic.
<center>It’s Dead Jim</center>
Still another silly idea that met the chopping block was the “Dead Viper”. At the time of development, Brian Fargo had just purchased a candy-apple red Dodge Viper sports car. He would beam with pride when his V10 roared into the parking lot each morning. Almost immediately, the sports car began suffering break-down after mechanical failure – it ended up spending more time in the Interplay parking lot and repair shops than on the road.Being pitiless bastards, we wanted to poke fun at it.
A player could discover a shiny new red Dodge Viper amongst the ruins of the Interplay building. The character could even interact with it, getting a dialog stating: “It’s a high-performance sports car. With just a few repairs, it could be drivable…” This would send the player to the ends of the Wastes looking for “sports car parts”, bringing them back to the car in hopes of repairing it and cruising through the radioactive desert in style. The evil part was, no matter how many parts you find, nothing would fix the car.
We even joked that in the end credits of the game, we’d show a Super Mutant walk up to the car and stare quizzically at it. He’d kick it, and it’d roar to life. We last see the mutant driving the Viper into the sunset… Priceless.
<center>That's All Folks!</center>
So there you have it. Hopefully all this rambling makes a few fans happy.
Let me end with this story: a few weeks ago, I was in Taiwan giving a lecture on Game Design principals. Afterwards, a young designer came to me and said that Fallout changed his life. Having played it as a young kid, it shaped his views on what computer games could be and encouraged him to get into the games industry himself.
He wanted me to thank the team for giving him that inspiration.
To him, and all of the Fallout fans I can only say, "No, thank you."
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[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ] - [ Page 4 ] - [ Page 5 ] - [ Page 6 ] - [ Page 7 ] - [ Page 8 ]</center>