» Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:20 pm 5. Tell us a little about your role in the making of Fallout 1/2/3(Van Buren)/Tactics/Brotherhood of Steel?
Funny story there. Originally Fallout was supposed to be Wasteland 2, and my mentor Scott Campbell was the lead on it. I was a huge, huge fan of the original Wasteland, so I talked my way into a meeting of the core team. (At that time it was just Tim, Scott, Jason, Leonard and me.) I then spent the meeting throwing out ideas, and yes, even correcting some of the people on the facts from Wasteland. (Like I said, huge fan).
From there I spent a good year and a half coming up with the original quests and characters for many of the locations, including the Necropolis, Shady Sands, the LA Boneyard, the Glow and one of my favorites, the Hub. I also wrote the first drafts for about 80% of the main "talking head" characters before they were sent off to the script doctor to edit. My favorite character, and the one that stayed closest to my original draft, was Harold. That old ghoul holds a place in my heart.
10. Were there things that you wished you had added to either of the Fallouts?
One of things that were cut from the original Fallout was the three Raider factions. Originally I came up with three tribes, the Vipers, the Jackals and the Khans. The Vipers were your crazy mystics that worshipped the cobra. Lots of human sacrifices and such. The Jackals were the scavengers of the group, always coming in after things had died and picking the carcass. The Khans were straight out of the Road Warrior, all metal armor and screaming battlecries. In the original design you could actually befriend each, but because each was warring with the other, if you befriended one who would alienate the others. All three tribes were collapsed down into one for budget reasons, but I still think fondly of them.
15. Where do you see computer RPGs going?
I think we’re going to see more and more RPGs having more choice in their games. A lot of RPGs are all about “go up, kill creature”, rinse and repeat. But what if you don’t want to kill it? What if you want to sneak around it? Or find some way to trap it and run past? Fallout was amazing because we had one stipulation from Tim. Every quest had to have three solutions: Fight, Sneak or Talk. Every one. And no RPG has done it since to that extent.
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