Fallout revisited

Saw this story about Fallout development. With Shivering Isles, Oblivion's expansion pack wrapping up soon, the team is ramping into production on Fallout. It's fun to see more press about it in publications -- the OXM with Shivering Isles on the cover has a sidebar about Fallout. It's one thing to pull the build off the network and experience our day to day work; there is something about seeing official press coverage that brings a new reality to our work. Personally, I think the worse thing a team can do while working on a game is believe its own press. Still you can't beat the feel good factor that comes with seeing people get excited about your work.

Fallout has always been a personal favorite. It was not a commercial success, only hard core gamers played it, and its one of those games that is highly coveted by game developers. Efforts to expand the game to a more mainstream audience, like the Xbox Brotherhood of Steel game, failed miserably. Much like the philosophy behind Superman Returns (which I watched last night on my Xbox HD-DVD), I prefer to pretend Fallout stopped after the 2nd game:)

I've played the first one several times through, played Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics (never finished Tactics). I started to play Brotherhood of Steel (the one for xbox) but was very disappointed.

If you happen to get the urge to play Fallout, here's one way of enjoying the best parts. Roll a character with a really high Luck, and forgo other stats. Then go to your options and crank all difficulty to easy -- essentially, reduce the time in combat. This will allow you to see some of the cool hidden encounters (high Luck) and experience all the atmosphere, characters and quests.