The Canceling of Fallout Van Buren...And Me
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- I talk about my involvement in the cancellation of Fallout Van Buren at Interplay in 2003.
Videos I reference
VAN BUREN: Inside the Cancelled Fallout 3: • VAN BUREN: Inside the ...
Why I Left Fallout 2: • Why I Left Fallout 2
Arcanum Development Timeline: • Arcanum Development Ti...
Why I Left Carbine's WildStar: • Why I Left Carbine's W...
Very interesting historical tidbit, Tim. Thanks for sharing! I don't think anyone involved in this story is to blame. You gave a realistic timeline, and the VP was correct in cancelling the game, since it would have been cancelled in 2004 anyways when Interplay was $1M+ underwater in taxes and wages. The real root of this problem were all the bad investments and gambles Interplay made over the years, things Brian Fargo admitted since were bad calls.
Yeah exactly. I guess if you really want to dig deep you could say whoever green lit the project was the "bad guy." Because there's no way they were ever going to have the capability to see the project through at that point.
don't let facts get in the way of a good story
Agreed, very interesting. I would have enjoyed learning about this in college, I was a business major. It would be a very interesting case study for a business class.
While 1M+ debt is technically correct, the documentary he links states it was a deficit of 50M two years in a row so 1M+ is quite the understatement hahaha
Its that efap guy
Fallout 3 wouldn't have been cancelled had you not created Fallout in the first place... checkmate
Touché!
@@CainOnGames How Dare You :D
got his ass with facts and logic here 😂
Obsidian later made New Vegas thanks to this. Were Timothy not part of the New Vegas team?
@@BirgerJarl-it5lz Tim didn’t work on New Vegas
So what I'm getting from this is that somewhere in Tim's notes is a GURPS homebrew system for racketball
😂
The curse of the RPG creator
@@NCRLouTenant Because there's always at least one player, who has to put the set dressing under a f*cking microscope.
Well, even though we never got Fallout Van Buren, we did get Fallout New Vegas, which incorporated many of the concepts and ideas of Van Buren, so it all worked out in the end!
Lots of people would love to get Van Buren, but if it was between VB and NV, it's New Vegas all the way.
@@singami465 Agreed.
Fallout Van Buren is in development. "Fallout: Yesterday"
I heard someone say that New Vegas was what fallout 4 would be if Van Buren was fallout 3
Okay, Harrier.
Maybe the real villain was the friends we made along the way.
That’s the thing about the trail it always comes from the ones you like
The real villain was the pet crayfish
the real villain truthfully is patrolling the Mojave and it almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
The real villain is capitalism, again
The real villain was corporate herd thinking
"He had 10 charisma"
in Fallout: high praise
in d20: mildly boring neighbor
In D&D he'd have +10 Charisma which goes back to being impressive again
@@SteamedToast +10 charisma in DnD is literally on par with a charm domain deity
@@TheMasterUnity Exactly!
Every time I see a video of Tim I learn as much about project management and how projects are run in a company as I learn about videogame development. These videos should be watched by all that are involved in project management they are highly informative and talk about a lot of the same challenges and hurdles that often come, as well as the thought process, decision making and how in the end it's all about time and money. Thank you very much for this!
Hi Tim, Briosafreak here, from the Van Buren days. In those days I talked to Leon Boyarsky about Van Buren but never with you, make a note so we can have a friendly chat later this year, might be interesting. By the way the VP you talked about was pressed against a wall by a developer I know when the game was canceled, and I still love the dev for it.
I understand the satisfaction from a situation like that, but as a complete outsider to the story I’m curious - do you feel the VP realistically had another option?
(No snark; genuine interest)
@nathanlonghair at that time no, the six months deadline that Tim speaks off was true, but all that setup for something that would never get made from the start was infuriating. The Black Hound community also felt that way.
@@Briosafreak Sounds like the bad decision was in thinking the company might right itself before it ran out of money and had to abort the projects it had started. Tough call, given the alternative was to shut things down much earlier.
@OscarFowler yeah it would be better to stop it earlier, still we don't have all the data, the issue of the Interplay ceo having to pay the million dollar failure of his wife's Beverly Hills store or where the money of his sponsorship of drag cars races came from are things that we'll never know. Van Buren was doomed from the start, and yet they tried to hide that from the devs for way too much time, to a point of no return, of not being possible to license it or transfer the work for a better company. The fans kept it alive, Obsidian found a way of using some stuff from the project so it wasn't a complete loss.
@@BriosafreakThanks for the insight! But yeah overall I can absolutely see why upper management wouldn’t be popular at that time. A mess for sure.
I'm reminded of that part from a Star Trek: TNG episode in season 2 where Data is doubting himself and his decision making, because he lost at a game to someone, and Picard tells him:
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Many other games have had similar things happen to them, and many more will. Its no one's fault other than the fact that there's not an infinite amount of time and money in the world in which to get things done.
Huh, kind of a cool story. Had no idea the death warrant for Van Buren was signed by Tim himself!
...seriously though, that's a big ask of you from mr VEEP and speaks volumes of his trust/belief in your knowledge and foresight.
Your willingness to approach things in a "there are no villains, or if there are, they're more abstract than you think" manner, very even keel retellings, and generally relaxed attitude really helps to cement the veracity of your recollections and stories. I imagine you could get a ton of views by making a rage-filled rant, or a teary-eyed tale of one lone developer standing against the machine, etc. but it wouldn't be true, or even an entertaining respin of the truth. Instead, you give us honest looks at the inner workings, ones that aren't generally finger pointing (and if they are, it's certainly not rage bait), and help everyone to better understand.
I guess, a lot of blah-blah-blah for me to say, thank you for giving us a look behind the curtains that isn't just one large emotional manipulation for clicks and views. It's pleasant, it's refreshing, and it's what has me looking forward to every new video. Well, that, and occasional background dog sightings.😉
I paused the video went "Ooooffff" out loud the moment I heard "Six months"
Yeah, six months hit hard. I thought he was going to say 12.
Sad to hear but also I'm glad he didn't force his employees to work like crazy trying to deliver a subpar product. He asked for a professional opinion and it confirmed exactly what he feared.
SIX MONTHS?
SIX MONTHS!!!
@@marko-gj1ujSTOP
Thats a tough spot but really if they need about 18 months amd only had 6 months of funds at that point its out of any individuals hands
Well it seems you and Christopher Lee has something in common.
He wanted to leave the Hammer Horror movies as well, but they kept him in by saying "If you leave we will have to fire all these nice people".
Christopher Lee was good friends with alot of them and didn´t have the heart to see them fired so he stayed.
Speaking of learning from games... One of the things that playing poker (Texas Hold-em, since it was the thing in the era 2000's) almost every week with my friends during college taught was that, simply, the true villain is circumstance. We played only semi-seriously and most of us were computer scientists, so we were fascinated by the systems involved, the randomness, and odds. Hence, after the official hand was settled, we'd sometimes run out cards, show hands, and break down the play by play from everyone's perspective. Oddly, it was very insightful in understanding why players were playing they way they were, and it taught often that the draw was against you from the start of the hand.
This story feels like an example of where "The real villain is circumstance". Simply, Veep asked you to take a look at his hand and the cards on the table. You looked at everything, suggested he bet 18 months to drive off all the other factors playing at the table. Veep only had 6 months of chips and was already feeling like he should fold. No one person was the villain, just the circumstances: Short of chips, maybe decent cards in hand, but bigger factors at play. Some times you got to fold them, hoping for a better hand next time.
Enjoyed reading this💪🏼 “you gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold em”.
You are absolutely not the villain on this story, nor is the VP, nor is the team, nor are we (the consumers). You were giving your honest opinion, and I feel like it's better that Van Buren was cancelled than to ship a buggy shitty game. I think you're a good guy, Tim.
I could listen Tim talking about anything
In another universe, he is a Morgan Freeman level narrator
He could read the thesaurus and I'd enjoy it.
Alternatively, Tim Cain is (partly) responsible for the series of events that brought us New Vegas and the Fallout TV show and Fallout being this massive culturally relevant series.
I would rather have Tim Cain running fall out I also think it’s weird and borderline cringe that Bethesda hasn’t hired him at least once
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 I don’t think he wants to. He’s said before he’s not that interested in sequels.
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144if Bethesda wasn’t running it we wouldn’t have any of the sequels we have today. It’d probably be dead with brotherhood of steel…
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 Why is it cringe that Bethesda didn't hire Tim Cain? How often does it happen that companies hire original developers of IPs they acquire? Especially when Tim was actually working on only one of the four Fallout games made prior to the IP purchase by Bethesda.
When Fallout 3 was being made, Tim was working in Troika and Carbine, so Bethesda had no way to hire him. And after Fallout 3 was made - and released to reviews and praise higher and better than even the original games - Bethesda got enough Fallout experience that they no longer needed his expertise.
And it's not like Bethesda doesn't honor him. For example he got invited as a VIP to the TV show premiere.
@@emilianozamora399 if bethesda wasn't running it... troika might have bought the IP, there were many bidders.
I don't leave a lot of comments here, but I wanted to say how much I think you succeeded in telling a "No Villains" story.
At the end of the day, most decisions like this one come down to circumstance more than any kind of true animosity. It's important that the people who were involved in these projects tell their experiences before that oral history is lost, and this is a valuable piece of the archeological dig that is Van Buren.
And as others have commented, there's no world in which we get something like New Vegas without Van Burn being canceled. In the long run, things worked out ok.
Something to consider regarding reusing the Fallout engine is that, as Tim said, it was very old. Most notably, it wouldn't have been considered retro-cool at the time. These days someone could do a Fallout 3 in the original engine and I'm sure it would be adored. In the early 2000's it would have been derided as hopelessly out of date with mainstream games. Especially coming from Interplay, which at the time was considered essentially dead.
Just to bolster that point, there's a team of fans working on essentially remaking Van Buren as a Fallout 2 mod, the project's called Fallout: Yesterday.
And to amplify the other half of the point, I don't think I really saw retro throwback games really take off until the 7th generation of consoles (Mega Man 9 being kind of my barometer) and being a "retro gamer" was still a bit niche. A commercial dev doing something basically "retro" in 2003... I really don't think that would have gone down well with most of the market and Interplay sounds like it needed a big hit to be worth all this time.
Tim, thank you for talking about Van Buren. There's a lot more information about it today, but people are still reluctant to talk about it. And the least is known about it compared to other Fallout games.
hell of a lot more is known about van buren than other cancelled titles.
What? Who's reluctant to talk about it? Did you maybe mean that people just don't have too much to talk about it?
I love Fallout videos from Tim in my morning commute!
Also lovely to listen to at work!
How do you watch videos during your commute?
@@ArilandoArilando Carpool, I don't drive.
@@ArilandoArilando I watch them while I drive
@@mike_c_47 based
Yeah no person to single out, but to have a team start making a demo when your budget is 6 months is just a waste of everyones time
The 2d engine had massive charm. Like, action turn based and its art style was like a gritty storybook. So cool.
it probably wouldn't have sold well if they had use that engine anyways
3d games became the standard for aaa games
wonder if Fallout Tactics engine would have worked better in terms of graphics quality at the time
@@paweldembowskieven the Tactics team wanted to move on from isometric 2.5D to 3D for Tactics 2, even if Tactics had the best isometric art quality for an Interplay FO game the trends were just shifting and sometimes mandatory as tech advanced, unlike today where old is appreciated for what it is and fills a niche
Arcanum got a lot of shit for having poor graphics. FO1/2 graphics in 2005 wouldve been an absolutely horrible sell. Ironically they aged a lot better than the "beautiful" 3d stuff of the era.
Van Buren had a isometric 3D engine. Too clean for my taste
If Fallout 76 was cancelled, people would be mad at Todd Howard and saying it would’ve been the best Fallout game ever. When you only see what could’ve been, you’re gonna make it into the best game that never was
I agree with Tim that you can't point to a single villain in this story, but the lead up to this can be put to Interplay's management to a certain degree. Interplay lost money throughout almost its entire history, in no small part because they greenlit a ton of projects that had no chance to turn a profit (talking stuff like Messiah, which is delightfully weird but anyone could tell wouldn't sell) and got to the console space way too late. Then in desperation, sold themselves to two of the most crooked, inept business leaders in the industry, the Caen brothers, who are still trying to keep the corpse of the company alive today. You can't even use that specifically as a reason for Van Buren's cancellation, but the state Interplay was in where they couldn't properly fund it can definitely be traced to some management legacy.
Without Messaiah, Tommy Tallarico wouldn't have been able to create ON IT'S OWN the beloved, oof sound from Roblox
@@jeremiebourdon4299 His mother's very proud.
If Interplay lost money throughout its existence, it would never have survived until the 21st century. The business was hit driven, though, and Interplay had its share of hits over the years. Hits could fund all sorts of things, but something out of those needed to be a hit to continue the process. Bunch of bad investments and poor business decisions, games that bombed, especially with the escalating cost of development, no big hits, and eventually the company can’t sustain that.
I'm a Fallout fan from Italy, I've a TH-cam channel dedicated only to Fallout. I hope that one day you might return to work on Fallout, even if just in a collaborative role regarding choices and storylines for future titles. You have written the history of an incredible saga, and for that, I always thank you!
Uncle Tim
I hope the rest of the week and weekend is good for you. It's comforting to hear your voice and I really appreciate your videos, because they feel like coming home and listening to the adults talk while I hide under the table. If you ever think about giving up, please know that your videos are helping me, not just with game development, but with life in general. Thank You
Tims your uncle?
@@jetrifle4209 Anyone who consistently dispenses kind words of wisdom in a friendly, comforting way is family to me
I've been in this position a lot of times - being the kingmaker, or in this context, the king-killer. I always feel gutted, but it is important to do sometimes to protect the team. It is interesting to hear about your roles in the Interplay efforts over the years. 100% sympathize with where you've been, and appreciate your willingness to share it all!
The true villain of this story is... Just poor decisions on behalf of interplay and the games market in general, so in a sense 'Luck' is the actual villain. (Descent into undermountain for example, over budget, under sold mess.)
You tried Tim, you could have potentially helped the project continue but the writing was already on the wall so you don't have any blame.This is just how some companies go sometimes.
Thanks for sharing.
As ive gotten older ive learned thet having to make tough and unliked decisions ≠ villain/bad person. Once youve had to be the “villain” in a situation you realize nothing is black and white. Every situation has alot of grey.
Really appreciate your videos, Tim. I really enjoy hearing a from a perspective that can survive living in the world. Love how unvarnished and detailed every video is!
The one player in this game that has a 10 Charisma is definitely Timothy Cain (swoon!)
Delighted to hear this story and now the reason why the original Fallout 1997 is such a beloved classic makes sense, because the people who made it are awesome. Thank you, Tim!
You saved the team a horrible death march and cancellation at the end
Sometimes it works out that way, sometimes things are just approaching the end, maybe a gamble would have saved them but that's literally just a gamble
They tried to make van buren and it didn't work out
It sucks
6 months is just not long enough.
Yeah there’s no great way out of a situation like that. If they don’t have the money, can’t find the funding… well that’s kinda it. Things take time and time is money.
I would have 100% chosen the same as you Tim, for the same reasons.
But I can’t help idly wondering what had happened to fallout and a lot of other games, if Interplay had been better off financially, and survived in a healthy way. Same with Troika; man that one hurt me back then - and I’m just a fan, not even involved.
Fascinating! The Veep actually sounds like a cool person. He suspected he had to kill it, but he still hoped it could be saved if you could give honest assesment that fit the budget and time. Shame it wasn't further along, I would have liked to play it. But at least we got New Vegas. I wonder, will you tell us about the Fallout IP auction? I remember reading Troika actually put up a bid as well.
I don't think anyone really comes off as a villain on this story, even on a surface level reading of it. I haven't seen the documentary but my understanding has been for years, from having watched interviews of people that worked on it,. that Fallout Van Buren was cancelled because it would take more time to finish than Interplay had left as a company.
That's actually really sweet. Veep trusted in Tims experience and Tim was happy to help. That has to be a good relationship Veep and Tim had. So cool
They can get stuffed if they want a game in 6 months, not worth your reputation, your health, your relationship with your team. Interplay like many other companies not in game development or publishing companies, ran out of money because of poor management and cumulative bad decisions made years ago.
They weren't asking for a _whole game_ in 6 months. Tim specifically said there was a playable build with levels in various stages of completion; they'd already been working on it for a while. They wanted the _rest_ of the game finished in 6 months. Still an unreasonable amount of time, but very different from a _whole_ game, and if they literally didn't have enough money to fund it, you can't exactly get mad at them.
Instead you can get mad at whatever choices led to that situation existing to begin with.
@@TristenSarelvun the choices was shifting to console games, with PC titles. They saw opportunity to earn more money on consoles, but they didn't understand what made those titles successful on PC. It looks like Interplay management wasn't really in a games, but rather in making money.
Awesome Historical Tidbit, thank you Uncle Tim for your tales.
By the way if it's ok to ask, if Troika managed to buy the Fallout IP instead of Bethesda, would you have been able to actually develop a Third installment or some such considering you were also very busy with VTMB at the Time ?
Great insight, it really puts into perspective that Fallout Van Buren wasn't exactly shut down, but just _couldn't_ exist.
Tim. You're a inspiration in other ways than just a game dev. I appreciate your work and your videos homie.
And your impact your games had on me. Thanks
People really need to accept that making games is a business and is subject to all the pitfalls thereof.
Hi Tim, Ian here.
It's inexcusable for any decision maker to attach any consequence of their decision to anyone elses inaction, the only answer to that sort of nonsense is "I can only advise, you have to decide". I can appreciate Veep was in a bind, but as the decision maker he was responsible for his decision. It was his place to get the information to make the decision, but to push those consequences onto you was unethical. There are always other people than you who can step forward or offer alternative solutions, when management presents an ultimatum like that it tends to be because they are looking for a way out of decisions (not necessarily their own) that have led to this point. If someone offers A or B, look for C, D or E they may have been missed in the panic.
There's no villain. Van Buren was poorly scoped for the remaining lifetime and budget of Interplay. From what I've read over the years I'm fairly certain commissioning Van Buren was the mistake.
The villain here is Capitalism, if there's a "villain" at all.
Welp, it's official. Tim single handedly wrote Fallout: New Vegas in 3-days. We know it was you all along.
hehe. A positive rumors for a change.
Oh shit this is a big one
It honestly just sounds like as you described, it sounded like Veep had his mind made up about the issue and regardless of your answer it wouldn't change his mind. Interplay was in such a bad way like you said that it just didn't have the strength to carry the project to completion.
At the very least it's nice we were able to see some of Van Buren's ideas expanded on in New Vegas. Not to mention the various projects trying to realize as complete a version of the game as we can get with all of the notes left behind from its development.
I think the veep had made an assessment, had drawn a conclusion and was hoping that he was wrong. So he brought in someone he trusted to please tell him that he was wrong but it turned out the other way.
Interplay was going down no matter if Van Buren came out or not. I was more afraid of some desperate Interplay executives turning Van Buren into something like Fallout Brotherhood of Steel.
Having Titus Interactive buy Interplay was the worst thing ever but I really don't know who could have bought them and actually save the company.
Honestly, no one is a villain here, at the end of the day Interplay didn’t have the money to do the project in the required amount of time and Veep just needed confirmation he was doing the right call and Tim was just giving his opinion on how long he thought it would take, sucks it got cancelled but at the end of the day, it would’ve been cancelled when Interplay went under
Hey Tim, I just wanted to let you know that what you talk about on your channel has inspired me to go and try make and lead a comic book project. I know that most of the topics that you do in videos are mainly for video games and the companies you created/worked for in the gaming industry, but a lot of it applies to other creative industries too like what it's like leading a team and worldbuilding.
Probably a weird video to comment this on since you're talking about the downfall of van buren (loved fallout by the way, it's one of my most favorite game series I've played since childhood), but I know that you read through comments sometimes and hope you see this.
Great things can come from sad outcomes! Love your videos.
Tim, what are your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stats?
Hey Tim, so I do have a question I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer this, perhaps in a video or if you already have. But do you know the details around the Auction sale of the Fallout IP rights? There has been quite a bit of fighting over the years and accusations at "It was this company's fault, it was this person's fault", but from what I understand the auction was private. And there was accusations of people bidding on Fallout trying to deliberately "Swoop in and steal the rights from the original creators, from Troika, Sierra, they knew the original creators were trying to get Fallout back and snatched it like thieves just as they were about to get it back!" and I wanted to know from someone actually involved, if you knew any details about all that. Was it really a private auction or public, for example. Did they know who else was bidding, like Brian Fargo or Troika? Some of the older fans claim that if Troika got Fallout instead of Bethesda, we would've had "One last real Fallout RPG and would've died with dignity with Troika instead of being despoiled into a looter-shooter! Or even thrived and saved Troika!" and I question some of the validity of this imagined scenario, or the claims that Bethesda knowingly outbid the original devs maliciously.
God I can remember TRAWLING the internet for ANY information about this at the time. Back when the internet was sort of mythical and lightly trodden path you'd find random notes on if you looked really hard, and occasionally meet another "quester" on your travels.
I will always be eternally curious just how much asset existed in December 2003.
If everything that ever was made leaked, would the OG fans have enough material (using all the scripts and documents they have) to finish the game with 98% accuracy? Maybe….maybe
(Also the bad guy of the story is Fallout Brotherhood of Steel. That game is evil I tells ya! Evil!)
The OG are the one that doom the licensed 🤣
Tim is the evil villain now 🦇🧛♂️
th-cam.com/users/shortsKOgy8dXN60o
Damn vampires! @@CainOnGames
Another epic tale from the OG Game Master Himself. Fascinating as always. I apologize for the fan "girling", I cannot help it.
I came across a video discussing your statement that Fallout was never intended to be an anti-capitalist statement, it was always about human nature and the inevitability of war because try as we might, human nature always prevails. That's a very tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. Reality is a harsh mistress. She rides us had and it's important to make of it what you can and realize that.
Fallout was and is a respite for many of us. I find that a certain type of person gravitates to the earlier versions. I tend to find the very hardcore fans are generally history buffs and science nerds. Or just nerds such as myself who found a new way of experiencing a story. I could never put a book down as a kid and now it's games because they're stories and you can take part. It's why they are precious to so many and there are people who just don't get it and that's okay. It's a bit difficult to explain to Gen Z because they didn't grow up in our era where we were bullied and we knew human nature up close and personal. Games were a way to escape that bullying.
It was one of the first games I played that had karma and every decision, just like life mattered. However, you had freedom to do what you wanted and you could test your own limits. The sky was the limit. It has a stark brutal beauty to it. It is so very 80's. That was a different time and I like to go back because it reminds me of it. I think what I'm trying to say is it appealed to me because it was harsh. That ending. Oh man.
I have to ask whatever happened to Project Eternity? You and Avellone.... *chef's kiss*
Sounds like you were just being honest. It also sounds like some people are too hung up on the past and what might could have been. What happened happened, live in the now and be concerned about that.
Eh, I can understand the crunch there, if anything the "bad guy" is somewhere in accounting, and potentially at the bank. Financial management is a key part of any successful company, and at some point you have to find ways of securing more capital to make things work. I don't know the exact state of their financials, but if they're that far into the red, then something has broken down outside of the people making the games.
There's something deeply human about there not being a villian, sometimes it's the outside forces that force actions upon us. Systems of our Role Playing Game are outside our control.
not gonna lie til this day I thought Fallout Van Buren was like, a fan-o-sphere character like Glup Shitto from star wars
I kind of wish we got the full game, there's a mod sort of and New Vegas uses a lot from that lore.
Thank you for sharing Tim, you're a good dude.
There's a villain in this story to be sure, but that villain is time and its relation to money, no individual person
The real evil was me. I used my friend's disc to play Fallout 2!!
Heck, even the copy of Tactics I bought was from another Studio/Pub! I helped cause Interplay's demise :O
I still like what you did with the engine even if it's 9 years older. I know some people wouldn't bother or the engine isn't in today's standard. There's something that the old Fallout's charm that stays with me, I love modding it, I love replaying it a bunch of times than the modern Fallout of today, but still, I wouldn't have played the older Fallout games if it weren't for the modern ones
What mods did you make?
@@BuzzKirill3D I don't create mods, but what I meant is, I love putting mods in it. Especially the restoration mod
Van Buren (the demo that floated around) was feeling very unfinished, and kind of early in production. A Fallout with the 2D engine would have been even more outdated at that time. Games like For comparison: games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 came out in 2004.
I’m just glad we got to see the results of that development in the product of fallout new vegas, even if it’s just a spiritual successor
Thank you, I appreciate the insight on the tension of that kind of situation. Honestly though the "bad things happen to others if you don't" hurts me to even visualize being in.
There's no villain in the story. It is terribly sad that we didn't get Van Buren, but I am glad that a lot of that team got to work on New Vegas, which I consider the "true" Fallout 3 in many ways as it has so many connections to FO1 / FO2.
Van Buren will have been a failure,a massive failure.
Now now, there's still a villain here. It's called capitalism.
@@LexYeen Ah yes,We should have nationalise Interplay so they can pump more relic/broken game in the market.
its sounds like you didn’t kill van buren, you saved a team from 6 months of crunch and sacrifice that would have ended in being locked out of a shuttered office without a paycheck to make up for it. Don’t let anyone rake you over the coals for that.
It's not your fault.
If they only had 6 months, you saved them from being 6 more months in debt.
Thank you Tim for giving this story to us. I think it is important to the story of why Van Buren was never released.
I think anyone with any semblance of a rational mind can see that the circumstances around Van Buren were just unfortunate. Like you said there isn't any villain. I think your racquetball segway is perfect, because people make mistakes and we learn from them. I think we get to emotional and mob like when anybody makes one. Are there malicious people out there, o ya, but do people just do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment? Also yes. Great video as always Tim.
You gotta appreciate that Tim is sharing his side of a hidden story as 'the villain.' In history, rarely do you have accounts directly from the main source. And it's especially rare when a person decides to reveal something formerly hidden because that could've been hidden forever. (Not to make it so dramatic tho lol)
Tim I have to say, your Fallout stories are my form of coffee that I need in the morning.
Great story, this is a great tale of the past of Fallout. You did what you had to do Tim, I'm glad to see you stay true to who you are.
The villain in this story is the same as the villain in every Brennan Lee Mulligan story: capitalism :)
Thanks for not telling any lies back then. We got so many bad games thanks to rushed releases ... for whatever reasons they had been released. It's simply no good to release a buggy, totally incomplete mess.
I love classic Fallout's writing (1, 2, NV), but I have a thermonuclear hot take here; I believe that Van Buren's would have been a mediocre Fallout game. Compared to what the concepts evolved into in New Vegas, VB's story and lore just seemed too... weird. Especially at the end with the super space laser/nuke satellite thing, it sounds like something out of the Frontier (which may just be where those guys got the idea).
this has always been my feel on it
This isn't a big deal or whatever but feel the need to say it anyway.
"Classic fallout writing" as if 1, 2 and NV are alike. 1 and 2 are worlds apart writing, tone and style wise and NV is just as far removed.
They're all totally different and just as different from each other as Fallout 3 is from 1, or 2 is from 4.
I'm just saying, the whole "classic fallout" thing is borderline a fan myth at this point. None of those games are anything like each other beyond the superficial.
I do agree van buren would've had its issues though. (Tbf on it, so do FO2 and NV).
The early 00s were such an intensely awkward period for video games, I think you're right
My dude what are you on, a Legion narrator bear bull BEAR BULL BEAR does the same thing with ICBM silos and threatens to nuke entirety of NCR, not to mention the similar space station in Bethesdas FO3 and not to mention the mothership zeta ordeal
Hard disagree, I personally was engrossed in the story and various worldbuilding details when reading and rereading VB's design documents. The mystery of character's origins and attack on Tibbets prison, early survival and scavenging in the ruins of great city of Denver, scientists trapped in the Boulder dome, ghoul town with dark experiments, finding the spaceport and repairing the spaceship to chase after the villain, and final confrontation on the ultimate orbital weapon station of the Old World, having to decide the fate of the New World below... Could have been the greatest game in the series if fates were kinder.
Interesting story, the villain is probably just the money lul, I think not having to rely on corporate obligations while having smaller teams/being able to spend less is why indie studios are shaping the industry right now
This was really interesting flavor to the already tragic story of Van Buren, poor Tim blaming himself though! I'm so glad some of those Van Buren lore ideas got taken and used in New Vegas and of course many other fan mods and projects.
I heard another version of this story somewhere that paints you in a much more negative light. Veep invited you to the studio and told you that the Interplay building's water purifier chip had broken down, and that they only had six months of water stockpiled in the break room's water cooler before they'd have to cancel development. Veep sent you out to find a new chip, but you blew those 6 months dicking around in the northeastern wilderness and 'resting until fully healed' every time you got a scratch even though you had a massive horde of stimpacks you refused to use because you 'might need them later'. I hope finding the alien blaster was worth it, you noob.
I hope Tim reads it.
I don't know Tim, it sounds like the villain was money all along.
10:23 I wonder has anybody considered using Fallout tactics engine for Van Buren. It was still 2D engine but it looked really good and had most relevant functions for fallout game already implemented. Passably ownership of that engine was the issue and Interplay did not want to pay license for it.
What you did gave us New Vegas, so it's not all bad.
Genuinely can’t look at this situation and say there’s a villain. Circumstances were already dire. This was an effort made to try and save the project which you saw would take longer than they had to save it. That’s not villainy, that’s the facts. No one is at fault other than maybe management for letting interplay get so far in the red to where they had to make unrealistic expectations on shipping out the game but so it goes. Not your fault. You weren’t working on it or managing it.
1:49 "...for money!". Big Prototstar vibes.
The villain is perpetual growth, investor share value and the commodification of art.
Without the commodification of art video games would never have become the industry they are today and companies like Troika and Interplay wouldn't have existed in the first place.
Imagine if we still had a system of patronage. Only really wealthy families would be able to sponsor developers to make large game projects and, without commodification, there would be scant incentive for them to share the results with the public.
So Capitalism.
Might as well blame it on the consumer's ever-growing demand for bigger games and better graphics. Nobody's footing a multi-million dollar budget without getting a return that will make it worth the risk of losing that money.
Hi Tim! Thank you so much for the kind words and the added context. I've been a regular viewer for a while so this was nice surprise. Also for sure agree that I don't think the original Fallout engine would've held up as well at the time. While there's nostalgia for it now, all of Interplay's competition (Bioware especially) had moved to 3D and it seems they were desperately trying to keep up.
I wish life had as many clear villains and heros as Im told to believe, it would make morals so easy but unfortunally its a lot of grey in grey
I think it was necessary to mention that at the same time as (real) Fallout 3, a Fallout online was developed, for which they found 100 million
The villain is scarcity!
Sounds like the real villain was John Capitalism.
Except without John Capitalism there wouldn't have been any Fallout in the first place. Or PCs to play it on. In a world in which scarcity exists, we have to make choices and accept tradeoffs.
If anyone strikes blame at you it’s just because they are small minded and still need to age up a little. No one understands business and sacrifice anymore. I absolutely love your channel because you have always given such balanced look at everything you talk about and you have a 10 charisma too tim and it’s almost as if you don’t even see it
bro why is the URL bar dropping slurs on you
What I would do for you to get your hands on another fallout game
Speaking of code for Fallout 1 and 2, given the recent statement from Bethesda regarding not remaking these games, would you be interested in recompiling F1 and 2 for modern systems if asked by Bethesda, like you did with Temple?
Not me being a fool thinking that you were speaking of thecno king amrin van buren 😅😂
Sorry to hear you’ve been cancelled, Tim. Enjoyed it while it lasted.
What?
As a software developer (not a game developer) I can confirm that sometimes there are no villains. Development can get messy, things out of control of everyone involved can happen... sometimes the goal is simply too far away for any reasonable commercial project to reach that. Simply put, real world factors will always prevail. Money and time. It always comes down to money and time...