{"id":91425,"date":"2019-04-04T20:41:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T20:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/340192"},"modified":"2019-04-04T20:41:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T20:41:00","slug":"how-fallout-almost-didnt-ship-with-its-key-special-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/04\/04\/how-fallout-almost-didnt-ship-with-its-key-special-system\/","title":{"rendered":"How Fallout almost didn’t ship with its key SPECIAL system"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe were all working together to go in the same direction. There was very little clash of egos or desire to pull the game in a different direction. That is rare in development.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Interplay’s Brian Fargo disussing the development of <\/em>Fallout. <\/em><\/p>\n

There’s no mistaking the brutality of 1997’s Fallout<\/em>. The game was unforgiving, painting a bleak picture of life post-nuclear war. There was a lingering sense of uneasiness, knowing that one wrong move could result in death– and there were plenty of ways to die.<\/p>\n

Devs interested in learning more about its origins should check out an interview PC Gamer published last year<\/a> (only now making its online debut) in which a few developers across the various Fallout<\/em> games discussed the early days of development, and how the game evolved into what it is today. <\/p>\n

Fallout<\/em> was developed by Interplay back in 1997. Brian Fargo, executive producer on the game and founder of the company, described how Wasteland<\/em> (a science fiction role-playing-game developed by interplay in 1988) served as initial inspiration.  <\/p>\n

\u201cI had been a post-apocalyptic fiction fan since I was a kid,\u201d Fargo explained. “Wasteland<\/em> was my first attempt at bringing something to the genre. Shortly after finishing the game, Interplay became a publisher and we no longer created games for other people.”<\/p>\n

“I tried to get EA to license me the rights back, but I was unable to succeed despite trying for many years. I finally decided we\u2019d do our own post-apocalyptic game and call it Fallout<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Fargo got some developers together to sit and analyze what made Wasteland <\/em>tick. \u201cIt was a matter of getting a small team to start bringing the project to life,” he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe created a sensibilities document that spoke to points such as moral ambiguity, tactical combat, a skills based system and the attributes system. After we nailed down what was important, development went off and began working on ideas that hit the touch points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim Cain, who is credited as being the creator of Fallout<\/em>, created the engine used to build the game and went through several design ideas– one of which was a GURPS (Steve Jackson Games’ “Generic Universal Role-Playing System”) ruleset that was implemented but later abandoned.<\/p>\n

 \u201cFallout<\/em> was originally a GURPS game,\u201d said Chris Taylor, lead designer on Fallout<\/em>.<\/p>\n

GURPS was a tabletop system made to be used across all forms of role-playing, but Interplay’s attempt to license it didn’t work out, and Fargo needed a replacement ruleset. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote my own RPG system on the back of three-by-five cards, in notebooks and on scraps of grid paper. My game was called MediEvil. It was not good. So [my friend and I] played D&D<\/em> instead,” Taylor said. <\/p>\n

“But I kept those notes and would work on the game every now and then for a decade\u2014when it came time to replace GURPS, I had something to work with.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team took the system and made it work. We took it and adapted it; it had the statistics and skills we needed, but Perks were created specifically for Fallout <\/em>to replace the GURPS advantage\/disadvantage traits.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more dev insight and historical perspective on the Fallout <\/em>franchise, be sure to read the entire piece over at PC Gamer<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe were all working together to go in the same direction. There was very little clash of egos or desire to pull the game in a different direction. That is rare in development.” – Interplay’s Brian Fargo disussing the development of Fallout.  There’s no mistaking the brutality of 1997’s Fallout. The game was unforgiving, painting a bleak […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}