Fallout creator Tim Cain has for the first time revealed his role in the cancelation of Interplay’s Van Buren , the codename for what was intended to be the original Fallout 3. Van Buren was in development at Interplay-owned Black Isle Studios in the early 2000s, but was canceled amid significant financial problems at the company. Cain, who worked on the first two, much-loved Fallout games in the mid-to late 90s before leaving Interplay to start a new studio called Troika Games, has now revealed the role he played in the cancelation of Van Buren as part of his ongoing YouTube series focused on video game development .
Cain revealed that in the middle of 2003, an unnamed Interplay vice president asked him to play the Van Buren prototype, saying: “I don’t think they can get it done, so I’m just going to cancel it. But if you look over it and give me an estimate there’s a chance I wouldn’t cancel it.” Cain said he played the prototype for two hours and asked the development team a number of questions before delivering his verdict to the vice president.
“I said, ‘I’m convinced in 18 months you could have a really good game shipped.’ And he said, ‘huh, could it be done any faster?’ And I was like, 'oh, shoot, I’ve said too long.' I said, ‘well, even if you did a death march crunch I don’t think you could do it faster than 12, and then you’d be shipping something that was unbalanced and buggy, and the team would be destroyed.
So I don’t recommend.
