Fallout Wiki
Game overviews
Contents
Featured article
Initially it appeared that the Vaults were designed to save the population of the US; however, there were not nearly enough Vaults for this purpose. The true, sinister reason is that these 'shelters' were in fact a series of sociological experiments conducted by the Enclave. Each Vault was set up with different conditions, and then observed to see how the dwellers within coped with the pressure of isolation. It was initially intended that while the player was reading the Vault 8 records in Fallout 2, he could discover a classified file (opened with a successful Science skill roll) which explained that Vault 8 was a "control Vault," designed to hold 1000 people and to open on time. This file was intended to foreshadow the discovery of the true and sinister purpose of the Vaults.
Did you know...
that the T-51b power armor was the pinnacle of personal protection technology at the time of the Great War?
that Frank Horrigan was based off Clint Eastwood's character in In the Line of Fire?
that a nuke can be found in the Enclave Oil Rig and under the Cathedral?
that Vault City's medical center is the best one available in the Wasteland outside the Enclave or the Brotherhood of Steel?
that the medical computer in Vault 8 can tell you about a secret for after you finish Fallout 2?
that New California Republic's capital city (population: 3000+) is the largest urban settlement built from the ground up after the war?
Helping out
- If you are new to wikis, you may want to check out the help pages and policies and guidelines.
- If you want to help but you are not sure where to start, try improving the various stub articles by expanding them. Another helpful activity would be to check the list of wanted pages for frequently linked-to articles that do not exist yet.
- If you want to experiment with editing a wiki, please do it in a sandbox, not in articles.
Welcome
The "Gamepedia platform" has been designed by Curse's Wiki Platform Team to assist in the management of Curse's wiki network. It allows unified login across the entire Curse network through the netbar at the top of each page. All users are then logged in through the central user database. It also incorporates the Curse footer. These two items help to standardize the look and feel of our wikis with our other properties.
Aside from these front-end items, the Gamepedia platform allows the wiki team easy access to implement MediaWiki extensions as requested by our communities, as well as other basic configuration settings. It also allows our Wiki Platform Team to upgrade MediaWiki software on all the wikis at one time, rather than having to do each one separately. This is a major time saving step. Prior to the development of this platform, it would take up a significant amount of time to upgrade all of our wikis. This kind of mass management is the driving idea behind it's development.
You may have noted that Joel Burgess (lead level designer) and Nathan Purkeypile (world artist) have held a presentation at this year's Game Developer Conference, entitled Skyrim's Modular Level Design. Recently, Joel Burgess has posted a complete transcript of the presentation together with the slides he used throughout. Although focused mostly on Skyrim, it provides insight into Bethesda Game Studios' level design philosophy, including how Fallout 3 changed the way the studio approaches it.
To minimize needless repetition, we abolished the use of warehouse cells as they existed in Oblivion. Beginning with Fallout 3, we staffed up a group of level designers and got tool support to make sure we were able to build spaces more quickly, and with the most granular art available, reducing the amount of repetition as much as we possibly could.
You can also fight art fatigue at a more fundamental level. It’s common at the start of a project to strongly associate a particular setting with specific types of inhabitants or gameplay. You may want to only see soldiers in military bases, and zombies in crypts, for example. Resist this. Think of your kits as the architectural identity of the space, and allow other elements to establish the specific identity of any given space in which it’s used. The more you’re able to divorce these things, the more you’ll be able to mix elements up and keep the settings fresh.
”
Following recent rumors regarding Fallout 4 production Craig Pearson from PC Gamer has written some thoughts on how Bethesda Softworks could improve the atmosphere of the next installment of Fallout series.
In Bethesda’s hands, the Wasteland is fun. By the middle of a run through you’re clobbering Deathclaws with concrete capped rebars and sipping irradiated water without a care in the world. Possibly with a pinkie out. The point being is that the notion of survival becomes obsolete in a world dripped in caps to find, traders to sell to, and junk to collect. New Vegas has hardcore mode, forcing you to think about food, water, and rest, as well as altering the way meds and stimpaks work, but it’s still a world that can easily and comfortably be lived in. It needn’t be the main difficulty level, but the option to make the world a harsh place to live, to make the players think about every move, not just their weapon and perk choices, would give the ashy flavour of survival.
(...)
Bethesda’s Design, Obsidian’s Characters.
There I was, wandering beneath a line-up of broken satellite dishes, looking for things to do when I spied a door. What could be behind it? A gang of gangers? A terrified NPC? A few steps towards it, a glance around to make sure there was nothing sneaking up. I popped the door. Behind it was a wall with “Fuck You” written on it. Bethesda’s worlds tend to be packed with detail, big and small. They’re places to live in and enjoy, and just brilliant places to explore. Their characters, however, are a lot less engaging. Obsidian’s take on New Vegas was packed with morally dubious Wastelanders with dark stories. Acquiring Boone as a follower, for example, meant leading a person out into a field for the deranged sniper to shoot. That’s dark enough, but as a player you could happily lead an innocent into Boone’s sights. Somewhere in the middle of Fallout 3 and New Vegas is the sweet spot they should be aiming for: dark, compelling characters in a curated world.
(...)
A use for everything.
Speaking of that, Fallout New Vegas allowed you to mod your guns a little, augmenting them with scopes and such. That’s a good start. This is a world where invention is a necessary part of survival, and where scavenging should be part of a crafting system that allows you build everything and anything, and to mod things on top of that. I’d even lobby for individual components to be brought in from the Steam Workshop. Oh yeah...
(...)
Use The Steam Workshop.
This is kind of a lock: the Skyrim Workshop is the third busiest of the modder’s distribution platforms. But what I would urge is for Bethesda to make the tools available on launch day. It will help with content, and if none of the above in the list makes it, it’ll give the modders a jump on fiddling with and fixing everything on the list above.
Thanks, NMA.
Aggrogamer posted an interview with Chris Avellone, mostly about the old days in Black Isle studios and old games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment and Van Buren.
Aggrogamer: After Interplay was acquired by Titus, Fargo leaving and Black Isle was shuttered due to financial troubles, what inspired you and your team to start a new studio rather than joining an existing already successful studio like BioWare? Also how did your team respond to this, did it take some convincing? Did any disagree and go to competitors?
Chris Avellone: "Independence" is the best answer. We were still local, we knew the kinds of games we wanted to do, and we wanted a chance to prove it. I doubt we all could have gotten jobs at BioWare (if any of us could've), and we'd always imagined Black Isle as a separate entity in any event — Feargus worked very hard to shield us from all the troubles taking place there in the last few years with Titus, although he was powerless to prevent what happened with Baldur's Gate 3 and he departed several months before Van Buren (Fallout 3) got canceled as well.
We didn't ask anyone to join us, they simply volunteered — and a lot of them volunteered. Speaking for myself, the moment Feargus walked into my office and said he had resigned, my response was "when do I quit?" That was true for a lot of people — Feargus, much like Fargo, had earned a lot of respect over the years, and the current company climate wasn't such that people were willing to remain without being able to work for those same bosses.
(...)
I loved working at Black Isle, I loved the Infinity Engine games (even with the increasing pressure to do them faster and faster), and I had put a lot of years into crafting an experience for Fallout 3. Still, after what happened with Baldur's Gate 3, it no longer seemed reasonable to expect that that project would be allowed to be carried to completion, and sure enough, it wasn't.
(...)
AG: As far as Fallout 3 (Van Buren) goes is there any chance the files will ever see the light of day like KOTOR2 or HL2 on Dreamcast; or even a legit release from Bethesda down the line someday?
(...)
CA: I don't believe those files will ever see the light of day, but I don't know. And it's not up to me anyway. Fallout belongs to Bethesda, I doubt they'd dig through those archives or if they even have all the files in order to share them with the public, and I doubt they'd even want to (I don't see what benefit it would be for them). I do know that a lot of Van Buren docs have ended up on the internet and from what I've seen; they're accurate from what I remember.
I do not believe that we'd ever see the Van Buren game made, which is fine. After all, a lot of the Van Buren stuff ended up mutating and finding a home in New Vegas in any event, so it did gain new life, even if it wasn't exactly the same as it was portrayed in Van Buren (things that showed up include: Hoover Dam, the brain-damaged Nightkin, which originated in one of our pen and paper campaigns at Interplay, Caesar's Legion, the Big Empty in Old World Blues). Also, there's nothing to say that some of the concepts (rival party, Prisoner's Dilemma) couldn't end up in some other game down the line. KOTOR 2 was different because the legacy info was still in the actual game and could be unearthed (we didn't strip those out, and while it wasn't the feeling of everyone at the studio, I'm glad we didn't strip them out).
(...)
AG: You and your team got to revisit Fallout again with New Vegas and it's add-ons, was this a something you and your team had to think about or was it just an instant yes?
Would you guys do another Fallout and do you think BethSoft would ever do an alternating dev cycle a-la Activision with Treyarch and IW doing CoD?
CA: Aside from getting the contract squared away, I believe everyone on at the studio was a "yes" on this. Fallout's one of the best RPG franchises to work on, and it was one we didn't think we'd get a chance to return to, and then… New Vegas came along.
We'd love to work on another Fallout, although that would depend on Bethesda. We certainly enjoyed working with them on New Vegas and we still have a lot of cool ideas and adventures we'd love to do for the Fallout universe.
”
As No Mutants Allowed reports, Bethesda Softworks has opened a merchandise shop, offering, at this point, fourteen items related to Fallout.
