Summary
If you haven’t played the classicFalloutgames (stop reading this, buy them, andfix that), they’re turn-based cRPGs, notThe Elder Scrollswith guns as they would become under Bethesda. But back in the ’90s, when vault dwellers suckerpunching super mutants were just thoughts bouncing around Tim Cain’s head, things nearly went in a completely different direction.
In a new video posted tohis personal YouTube channel(viaPC Gamer),Cain revealedthat he was pushed to make Fallout more likeDiablo, given the unprecedented excitement bubbling around the soon-to-be pioneer of ARPGs. “Interplay marketing approached me in 1996, a year before we came out, and they wanted Fallout to be made real-time,” he explained. “The way I finally got it to stop was just by pointing out how much money I would need, and time”.
A fan asked onthe No Mutants Allowed forumin 2003 if there were any real-time mods, only to be laughed at by nearly every comment.
It’s hard to imagine classic Fallout any other way, and Cain has similar reservations. Replying to a comment asking about how he would have made the original Fallout work as an ARPG, he stressed, “I would not have made Fallout real-time. Not back in ‘97, not today in 2025.” That being said, he had a few notes on just how much work it would take to fit Fallout into a completely new genre.
How Tim Cain Would Make An ARPG Fallout Game
There are several aspects of the original Fallout which would not work with real-time combat and would need to undergo drastic overhauls to work in an ARPG. So, in this hypothetical Diablo-like Fallout, there would be no action points. Instead, Agility would alter your attack speed and ability cooldowns.
We’ve seen firsthand how VATS might work. Bethesda tweaked it so that it would slow down time, essentially functioning as an homage to the series’ turn-based roots as you select parts of an enemy to attack, with percentages laying out your chances of hitting. For an ARPG, Cain had a very similar idea: a bullet time mode where you could target individual limbs.
Healing items would work over time, not instantaneously.
More broadly, nearly every single perk in the game would need a radical overhaul to work in real-time combat, especially those that affect action points. As Cain put it to Interplay marketing, it would’ve been an expensive and time-consuming endeavour just to chase a new trend midway through development.
However, the idea was revisited for the cancelled Fallout 3, codename Van Buren, which would have allowed you to pick between Fallout Tactics-style real-time combat or a more traditional turn-based system, akin to the first two games. And as we know, when Bethesda took over, it scrapped turn-based altogether, but it didn’t chase Diablo. Instead, it pulled from its own expertise with Oblivion and Morrowind.
