WEBVTT - TechStuff Enters the Wasteland 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.800 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.759 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:18.640 with iHeart radio and how stuff Works and a love 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.560 of all things tech, and people who know me know 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.800 I am a big fan of computer and video games, 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.360 though I don't get to play them very often. I'm 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:32.440 very busy. But my favorite genre of video game is 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:37.640 probably open world sandbox RPGs. They don't have to be fantasy, 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:39.559 they don't have to be science fiction. I just I 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:44.720 like that kind of exploration mode RPG kind of style. 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:47.280 And my love of these games dates back to when 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:49.960 I was a kid and I would play old paper 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.200 and pencil role playing games with friends, you know, actual 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:55.640 staying around the table, you got dice and all that 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:57.760 kind of stuff. I was also a big fan of 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.320 various computer role playing games, but keep in mind those 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.600 games in the early computer days definitely leaned much harder 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:09.960 on game mechanics rather than on actual role playing because 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:14.280 the limitations of the medium. You didn't typically have super 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:16.680 deep role playing mechanics in there. You just had a 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:21.440 lot of statistical mechanics to uh to negotiate stuff like combat, 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.160 for example, But I still love those games anyway. One 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:30.679 of my favorite series and these open world RPG genres 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:35.120 is uh the Fallout franchise, which is currently the property 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.679 of the video game developer Bethesda Softworks, but that was 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:43.119 not always the case. Now, first, I want to give 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.320 a quick word about the subject matter of this game series. 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.840 The game series is a game series for mature audiences 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:53.440 according to the E s r B because of the 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.000 subject matter. There's a lot of violence in the games. 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:59.120 The Fallout series of games take place in a post 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:04.480 apocalyptic setting, so it's Earth, but it's not really our Earth. 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:07.560 It's an Earth that has a similar history to our own, 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:11.200 leading up to just after World War Two, and then 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.679 at that point after World War two sometime between then 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:19.360 in present day, the Fallout universe's history goes in a 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:23.160 different direction than our real world history does. Within the 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:27.880 Fallout Universe, the United States becomes increasingly embroiled in a 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:33.280 conflict with countries that have communist governments, largely China, and 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.560 then technology continues to become more sophisticated in the Fallout Universe, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:42.359 but it maintains a sort of nineteen fifties era esthetic. 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:46.040 Some people call it ray Gun Gothic, so you get 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.760 the sort of retro futurism thing going on, where everything 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.120 looks like the way people in the nineteen fifties imagine 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.160 the future would look like. One of the key elements 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.200 of Fallout is that there was a company within the 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.639 mythology of the game world called Vault Tech that started 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:06.640 building out nuclear bunkers across the United States UH in 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:11.079 the years before the nuclear war. Some of those bunkers 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.280 were purely intended as survival bunkers for a relatively small 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.880 number of citizens, but other vaults appeared to be standard 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.440 bomb shelters, so externally you just think, oh, this is 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.800 just a normal shelter, but in actuality, they were masking 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:30.080 a range of different experimental facilities meant to run tests 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.600 on unknowing human subjects. Those tests could involve anything from 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.280 using chemicals to try and manipulate people's emotions, or to 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.120 find out what happens if you put no established hierarchy 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.400 in place before you seal the vault shut. So, in 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.280 other words, it's all this dark science fiction, unethical type 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:52.480 dystopian kind of stuff now in the world of Fallout. 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.760 On October twenty three, two thousand seventy seven, the global 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.600 nuclear powers engaged in a nuclear war, and one's really 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:04.080 sure who fired first or but it was a full 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:11.080 retaliation and entire sections of the globe were UH irreversibly 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:16.640 changed or apparently irreversibly changed. People in the vaults survived 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.000 the initial blast for the most part. Some of the 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:22.640 experimental vaults would devolve into chaos before any of the 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.000 games would begin UH, and some people on the surface 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.000 of the world would manage to survive, though not necessarily unscathed. 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.000 There are mutated people called ghouls who can live to 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:36.000 be incredibly old, but they also tend to lose their 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.599 humanity as they get older. And then there are also 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.320 super mutants. Those are the result of various experiments with 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.960 a substance called the forced evolution virus. But you get 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.960 the idea, and the games try to balance a lighthearted 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:53.280 and sometimes absurd tone in some of the games with 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:55.960 some of the more serious dark themes that you find 0:04:55.960 --> 0:05:01.480 and post apocalyptic fiction. Sometimes it works, some times it doesn't. Anyway, 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.160 that's the quick lowdown on the mythology of the game world. 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:08.400 Now let's talk about the history of the actual development 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.440 of the games, so the original Fallout game did not 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.080 come out of Bethesda Softworks. There was another company called 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:22.719 Interplay Productions, later known as Interplay Entertainment. It was founded 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.520 by Brian Fargo and j Patel, Rebecca Hineman, and Troy 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:32.560 Worl in nineteen eighty three. The studio produced some illustrated 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:37.400 text based adventures. Early on, in they released the first 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.039 game in the Bard's Tale series of computer RPGs. That 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.520 series also happens to be one that I'm really fond of, 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.880 though I would say that the gameplay of those earlier 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.160 games is much more limited than what you would find 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.719 in current generation games. I don't know that someone brand 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.200 new to the genre of computer role playing games would 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.400 find those old games compelling, although you can't find remastered 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:03.360 versions of them out there. Interplay began development on Fallout 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:07.800 back in nineteen four. A guy named Timothy Caine was 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.200 the lead on development. In fact, at first he was 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:15.480 the whole team for Fallout. Now. This was after the 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:19.479 days when video game development was handled by very very 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.560 small groups, like sometimes just one or two people. This 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:28.599 was past that point, uh so this was particularly small 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.800 for even for now. According to Kane, the whole game 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:36.440 development came about because he wanted to design his own 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.320 game engine. I did an episode recently on tech Stuff 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.799 about what game engines are, and he wanted to build 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:45.080 one of his own. And at that time, Interplay had 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.279 been using game engines that other companies had developed, and 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.920 so he said, give me a chance to make my own, 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.080 and I'll make a game around the game engine that 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.720 I create. So when he first got started, there was 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.800 no actual game planned. They would have to make stuff 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.960 to demonstrate the game engine, but they had no idea 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.120 of what the game would be, what its purpose would be, 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.720 what its theme would be. So Kine was just creating 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.600 this asset, this game engine. One of the early ideas 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.040 for the game would have involved the player controlling a 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:22.280 character who would travel through time, encountering science fiction and 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.119 magical elements in the past and and alternate futures, before 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:29.680 eventually returning to present day to rescue his girlfriend. But 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.880 that game was never meant to be, so they abandoned 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.320 that idea. Probably would have been interesting, but I doubt 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:41.400 that we would have found the franchise uh like Fallout anyway. 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.000 From there, they thought about doing a game in which 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.880 aliens had taken over the planet except for one city, 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:50.840 and that city would be the player's home base, and 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.840 the player would venture out to fight aliens using that 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:57.600 city as their base of operations. Now that eventually would 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.920 morph into the idea of Fallout, except instead of a city, 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.840 it was a vault that was your base of operations, 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:09.480 and instead of aliens, it was mutants, schools, and survivors 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.720 out in the waste land. The team tried to negotiate 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:16.000 with Electronic Arts to get the license for an older 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.680 post apocalyptic video game called Wasteland that e A had 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.480 published in order to make an official sequel to it, 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:25.360 but they weren't able to do it at that point, 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:30.600 so they started making Fallout instead. Although they really tried 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:32.800 to make it a sequel to Wasteland for a long time. 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.720 Fallout was unusual and that it was not a licensed game, 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:42.559 and it eventually was just its own new intellectual property, 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.640 and it all started as sort of a personal project. 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.160 Kane says that other people Interplay would stop by and 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.000 help him out early on, but this was all stuff 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.959 that had to happen outside of normal business hours because 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.960 everyone else, said the company was already assigned to other projects, 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:03.360 so For the first six months of developing Fallout, Timothy 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.760 Kane was the only person officially working on the game. 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.439 He had other people stopping in and helping him out occasionally, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.720 but never in an official capacity. After six months, he 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.640 finally got two other people on his project. One of 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:19.960 them was an artist, one of them was a script or. 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.960 Both of them had the name Jason, so they became 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.160 known as Timothy and the Jason's for a while. Kane 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:30.760 also cited that several other examples of media h were 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:35.600 very influential for both the mechanics of Fallout and the 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:39.880 content the theme of the game. So one of the 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.480 big ones that he took a lot of inspiration from 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.199 was x coom that's a turn based small group tactics 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:50.720 and strategy game. Thematically, the electronic arts video game waste 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.280 Land was a huge influence, obviously because for a while 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.120 they were hoping to make a sequel, so it's kind 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:00.079 of a spiritual sequel to waste Land, but not and 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.280 actual thematic or or I guess thematically it's a sequel 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:07.960 but not not by actual content. Other influences would include 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.760 a role playing game called the Generic Universal role Playing System, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.360 also known as Girps. Girps is a game out of 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.120 Steve Jackson Games. It's a paper and pencil style role 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:22.199 playing game, and the reason why it's called generic universal 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:26.200 role playing system is that, at least in theory, you 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.720 can apply those rules for all sorts of different settings. 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.880 You could do Girps and have a fantasy role playing game, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.440 or a Western or horror based or science fiction. The 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.800 idea is that the basic rules can handle all the mechanics, 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.960 and then the details are up to whoever's running the 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.040 game and the players. Interplay was working on getting a 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.280 license for Girups and actually had one for a while, 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.120 and that would become the center of a really big 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:57.679 legal problem later on. I'll get to that in a bit. 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.600 The development process was arduous, and part of the issue 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:07.199 was that tech was changing rapidly. In the mid nineties, 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.800 games were starting to move from sprite based games to 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.960 polygonal based games, so while Fallout would stick with sprites, 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.880 one thing the game included were some talking head segments. 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:24.680 Characters that were voiced, often by recognizable actors, and had 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.760 fully animated heads that were delivering this this dialogue or 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.360 monologue to you. So you have this animation there. In 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.840 order to make that work, there was an incredibly involved process. 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.679 There was an artist assigned who would sculpt physical models 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:46.080 out of clay and build out a full three dimensional 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.400 model of the head of the character, and then use 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:53.920 a tool to scan the face of that clay model 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.080 to create a computer model. Then they would have to 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:01.280 do textures, and then ifter they got all the textures 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.439 put in place, they also have to do animation. This 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.760 process would take a really long time just to make 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.000 the head before you even got to the part where 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.840 you were lips sinking. The animation would take eight weeks 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.440 per head. So it's a very long and involved process. 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.040 One funny story that Timothy Kane tells about the development 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.080 is that he was told to make sure the game 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:27.200 would be certified for Windows. The team had made Fallout 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:32.280 to run on multiple platforms, including Windows and Windows in T, 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:38.160 but Microsoft denied the certification initially because it required the 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:43.280 program to run on Windows but to quote fail gracefully 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.240 end quote on Windows in t Kane tried to convince 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.080 Microsoft that the game working on in timant that it 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.640 was failing as gracefully as it gets, but that explanation 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:58.960 didn't fly, and so one of his other programmers actually 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:04.199 built into the code that Fallout would fail if it 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.160 detected it was running on a Windows in team machine, 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.280 so it failed on purpose. That was how they were 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:15.600 able to get the Windows nine certification. Interplay nearly canceled 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.040 the game twice. The first time was within its first 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.800 year of development, after the game had been you know 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.920 several months along. Interplay had acquired the rights to create 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.600 games set in the D and D Forgotten Realms universe, 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.760 and company executives were worried that Fallout was going to 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.200 drain resources that could be used elsewhere. Timothy Kane was 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.480 able to convince leadership, especially Brian Fargo, to allow his 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.440 team to keep working on the Fallout game. The second 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:48.679 time it was nearly canceled was due to a dispute 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.840 with Steve Jackson Games and the Groups role playing system 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.240 I talked about earlier. So Fallout was at one point 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:59.040 intended to be a game based on the GIRPS system, 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.000 but well into the element of the game, the team 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.200 got pushed back from Steve Jackson Games. They objected to 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:09.280 several things and fall Out. One was the level of violence, 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:12.960 because the game was incredibly violent. Another was the art style. 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.640 The folks over at Steve Jackson Games didn't really like it, 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.480 but it was the game was so far along in 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.600 the development process even though they were still years from launch, 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:24.960 they couldn't really make any changes. If they did, it 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.040 would have delayed the game even more, and interplay just 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:31.440 wasn't in a place financially where they could, you know, 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.720 continuously put off the release of a game. Kane was 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:40.520 told by Fargo that if his team could rewrite and 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.080 code in a new combat system that was not based 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:46.840 off the Groups system, if the mechanics of the game 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.600 could be completely unique and not dependent upon that RPG 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:55.800 within two weeks, then they would not cancel Fallout. That's 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.080 a huge amount of work to do in just two weeks, 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.080 but somehow they managed to do it and fall outstayed alive. 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.760 The original name for this game was Vault, but Brian 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.320 Fargo played it and then said we should come up 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:10.840 with a better game name and said, why don't we 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.600 call it Fallout, And Timothy Kane said, no, that's perfect. 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:15.760 It's a great name. Let's go with it. By the 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.440 time the game shipped, the number of people who had 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.560 worked on it was around thirty and there was never 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:26.800 an official budget that Timothy Kane ever encountered, but he 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.160 said it was somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars. 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.440 That's when Fallout would publish. It was called Fallout, a 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:40.160 post nuclear role playing game. It featured a camera angle 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:44.920 that's technically called trimetric projection. That's essentially a way to 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.920 represent a three dimensional object in two dimensional space, and 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:54.720 it's a slightly overhead angled view similar to isometric, but 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.480 technically it's trimetric. The game introduced a lot of stuff 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.320 that has become in trends to fall Out lore, including 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:06.400 the character traits that your character possesses, which is called special. 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:13.880 That's an acronym that stands for strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.440 and luck. This was the replacement of that Girp's system 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.240 they had been using, So your character has ranks in 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.600 each of those that determines his or her abilities and 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.080 chance of success for certain types of actions. I've got 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.440 more to say about the Fallout games, but before I 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.000 get into it, let's take a quick break to thank 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:44.400 our sponsor. So in that first Fallout game, the player 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.280 controls a character known as the Vault dweller obviously, is 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.240 someone who has lived all their life in a vault. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.360 They've been in the protective confines of the bunker since 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.120 they were born. The year in Fallout one is twenty 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.560 one six d one. And remember the nuclear war in 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:07.040 the Fallout world happened in twenty seven, so it's almost 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:11.240 been a century since the nuclear war, so several generations 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:16.080 have been born and have died in the vault since 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:20.119 that time. Your vault that you live in needs a 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.800 new water purification chip because obviously the water in the 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.800 area has radiation. It's toxic, so it needs this purifier 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.200 and so that is why you are sent out of 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:33.920 the vault. You're told to go out find a water 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:37.240 purification chip and bring it back or else everyone's going 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:41.439 to die. So the action and Fallout one was turn based, 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.760 which meant that all combat would take place in rounds 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.840 rather than in real time. The game would keep track 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.760 of how much time has passed in game, and initially 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:55.480 players had just one hundred in game days to retrieve 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:59.119 the water purification chip before everyone back at the vault 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.280 would die, though there were ways to extend that deadline 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.480 a bit if you encountered certain water caravans and hired 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.040 them to bring water to your home. Now, this was 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.040 just the first part of the game. Getting the water 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.720 purification chip and coming back to your vault did not 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.760 end the game, but it wasn't necessary step in order 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:21.320 to progress through the story, and Timothy Kane would later 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.720 say that he wished they had left out the time 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:29.560 dependent component because he said it didn't work the way 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.840 we had intended. They wanted to create a way of 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:36.359 of building a sense of urgency to make the player 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:38.679 feel like they need to get certain things done and 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.000 not just wander around. But then Timothy Kane said that 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:44.280 he came around to feel that this was a bad 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.800 choice because it would discourage players from just exploring and 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.240 experiencing the game. So and later versions this got patched out, 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.119 but in the original one, that first major part of 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.680 your mission you had to complete within a certain time 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:03.080 or the game was over. The game introduced ghouls, super mutants, 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:07.240 introduced a faction called the Brotherhood of Steel. They're known 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.119 for wearing these big exoskeleton armor suits and they tend 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:15.360 to hoard technology, and the purpose for that is that 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:19.959 they want to protect humanity from another catastrophe like nuclear war. Essentially, 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:25.080 they're saying mankind is irresponsible and they cannot handle the 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:29.840 power of these massive weapons, so we're gonna take them 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:33.200 so that no one else can. It's a little hypocritical, 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.359 but that's part of the element of the story that 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:37.760 plays out in the Fallout universe. It's meant to be 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.760 that way. In fact, one of the important things that 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.400 Timothy Caine and his group wanted to do was create 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:47.840 a game that did not have a strict morality to it. 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:52.040 The various factions have their good points and they're bad points, 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:53.800 apart from some of the ones that are just kind 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:59.680 of almost mindless destruction machines, but almost everyone has their 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.720 they're good aspects and their bad aspects, and even the 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.880 player can choose to behave in a way that's ethical 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.520 or unethical. The Timothy Kane did not want to put 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.440 restrictions on what players could do. He did want there 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.320 to be consequences to your actions. So if you choose 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:20.040 to do terrible, terrible things, let's say in the context 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:22.400 of a town, then the people of that town are 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:25.000 going to recognize that you're terrible, terrible person and they 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.240 will treat you as such. But you can still choose 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:31.560 to do it that way, you're not prevented from behaving 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.720 any particular way. So these are all basic elements of 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.639 Fallout that would become core components of the mythology and 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:43.919 the world building that would move forward and would be 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:47.800 carried forward in future titles, and it became the foundation 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:51.320 for all future games. It also creates some gameplay elements 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.280 that would last from iteration to iteration. So one of 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.600 those was the perk system. So again in fall Out, 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.800 you have your basic abilities, those special abilities, but then 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.560 you also have skills, like you might have lock picking 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:07.440 or energy weapons as a skill, so you can build 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.560 up your skills that you're better at those things than 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.920 other things. But the parks system was added super late 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.960 in the game to give a little more umph to 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:21.639 the leveling in within it. So the perks might involve 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:26.560 kind of interesting features, like a mutation that gives you benefits, 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.359 or that you do more damage during night hours than 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:31.000 you do in day hours, or you might be able 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:33.720 to find more resources when you scavenge that kind of stuff. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.000 According to Kane, it was actually really easy to insert 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.320 this into the game, which is good because it was 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:43.080 introduced very late in the game's development, and it was 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.239 effectively invented by a guy named Chris Taylor in just 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:48.920 a day. The benefit was that the parks really gave 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:53.720 players more opportunities to customize their character and to customize 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:57.080 their play style. It also set a precedent for the 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:01.360 way these games end. In Fallout, you typically have your 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:03.879 main quest and a bunch of side quests that you 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:07.920 can elect to pursue or ignore, and as you make choices, 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.800 the game takes note of the choices you have made. 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:13.439 At the conclusion of the game, when you have completed 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.240 the main storyline, you get a slide show like presentation 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.399 that tells you how things unfold in the world because 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.600 of the decisions you made, both the good ones and 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.080 the bad ones, and this would become a hallmark of 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.120 the series, even as other elements of Fallout would change dramatically. 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:34.880 One other thing that became a hallmark was the presence 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:39.119 of Ron Perlman as one of the voice actors in 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:42.919 many of the Fallout games. He acts as the narrator 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:47.560 for the game. He opens the games with the emblematic phrase, 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:53.000 the iconic phrase war war never changes. He hasn't narrated 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:55.720 every single game, but most of them, and he has 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:58.320 been a voice actor in almost every single game as well. 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:01.920 The first game sold well and was praised by critics, 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:04.560 and it led to the decision to develop a sequel. 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.520 No big surprise there. Interplay, which by now was called 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:13.440 Interplay Entertainment, created a division within the company, so as 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:17.439 a studio within Interplay Entertainment, and it was called Black 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:21.879 Isle Studios. That internal department would take on responsibility a 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:25.000 developing Fallout two. Several of the people who worked on 0:23:25.040 --> 0:23:29.560 that had also worked on Fallout, but technically speaking, Black 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.880 Asle Studios came into being towards the end of Fallouts development, 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:37.480 and fall Out one was not officially part of Black 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.560 Asle Studios work, although some of the people who would 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.680 be in Black Asle Studios did work on Fallout one. 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:47.760 Fallout two takes place years after the first game, and 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:51.520 the player controls the descendant of the character from Fallout one, 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:55.560 and the goal and Fallout two, which features similar mechanics 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:58.399 and graphics from the first game, is to recover a 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:02.679 machine called the Get G E c K, and the 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:06.439 Get is supposed to be able to restore irradiated environments 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.240 to their pre apocalypse status. It would become a big 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:12.879 part of Fallout three as well. The game was a 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:16.840 bit more absurd in tone than Fallout one and made 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:21.520 some fans a little uneasy that the the humor got 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:25.159 a little more zany in the second game. That's a 0:24:25.160 --> 0:24:29.040 trend that's continued as well. The Focused team was able 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:31.920 to publish Fallout two just a year after the release 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:35.080 of the first Fallout, although again a lot of the work, 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:37.760 the game engine and a lot of the assets had 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:40.720 already been developed, so that was a big part of it. 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:44.080