Hey, Tim. I was the lead writer of the Fallout 2 "Restoration Project" that people keep mentioning. The name is a bit of a misnomer as we didn't actually "restore" cut content (aside from the notable exception of Kaga) but instead we created the "cut" locations from scratch, based on what little we had to go off of in Chris Avellone's Fallout Bible (the only location that had a design doc availalbe for us to reference was the EPA). I'm sure our version of the Abbey falls quite short of your expectations and I so wish we had had access to your insights back when we made the RP. I adore these daily videos you've been putting out. Thank you for everything!

Ian's full auto with the player in the line of fire actually gave him a special quirk he's remembered for.

Thank you for letting us push companions, I remember getting stuck inside a room that was too small to "pull" Ian towards me and had to load an earlier save to escape. That change alone made Fallout 2 so much more enjoyable!

Getting ripped to shreds by Ian's burst fire is a rite of passage for any Fallout 1 player. I absolutely get that as a developer that's not ideal, but at this point it's also part of the first game's charm. I'd say the clunky inventory management is far more egregious and impactful to the player.

To be honest, Tim. It's pretty funny when Ian does it too haha

When you described the abbey of lost knowledge, me and my wife both immediately thought of the followers of the apocalypse from new Vegas

I would like just to thank for creating Fallout, Mr Cain.

I think one of my favorite parts of this channel is all the inadvertent book recs! It’s great to hear about the media that inspired some of my favorite games (Fallout, Outer Worlds, etc) and get to explore it myself!

Damn Brian Eno is a real fan

I regret it took me 25 years to play Fallout 1 for the first time. Thank you, Tim.

It's amazing what you're doing. I love getting this kind of insight into the process of game development, especially older games like the original Fallouts where a lot of details can be quite nebulous. Hopefully these sorts of things will become more transparent in the future, as seen with the recent Quake II remaster showing off all sorts of previously unseen development notes, sketches and assets.

I legitimately loved it when my companion mowed me down, it made the world feel real and like I needed to legitimately duck for cover if I was in a bad position. My only complaint would be when I managed to run out of the shooting path, and they would move to get a "better" shot and put me back in the line of fire.

Tim, your videos have officially become an essential part of my day. Thank you for this channel.

GASP!!! I wasn’t expecting half of this video to be about Canticle. Thanks so much for making these videos Tim. I would love to see a longer video about how you might tweak Fallout in retrospect. As someone who grew up on Fallout 3 and loved it, your Fallout is now my favorite. I’m pretty sure you introduced Canticle for Leibowitz to me too.

re: friendly fire crit failures, that stuff is actually hilarious and you shouldn't regret it

Thanks for all the information of the fallout/Arcanum games. It a shame that we never got a proper fallout 3 because some guy was chasing a dollar.

Ian going full auto at you is one of the things I remember about Fallout, not having played it since the 90's. I've always liked games where two teams of NPCs fight each other and you can pick a side. I prefer working around the CPU allies instead of micromanaging them. The Fallout companions would follow and try to help you, but they had a mind of their own. It's interesting that it came about by necessity.

Please never stop making these

Hey Tim, ever thought about what changes/updates you'd like to see in a Fallout Remake? Would you want a fully explorable map or base building added to the game? Are there areas you'd like to see completely reworked or just fleshed-out?

I really like the idea of having the Abbey join the Brotherhood, they basically became their scribes

I'd make the Abby nomadic. If they find out someone's about to attack them, they move to a different base they have further away. If you're friends with them, they'd tell you where all the spots are.

Hi Tim, knowing you read all the comments i just wanted to say as a game developer i really appreciate your videos. Ive seen all of them and they really help a lot (others on my team also feel the same). You're a man with many years experience under your belt and pretty much anything you say is gold dust to us younger developers. Keep it up, cheers!

Thank you for the great video! It's good to know that you at least got to implement the companion AI you wanted in Arcanum. Pity about the abbey though; it sounds like a great context for storytelling and questing. I would love to watch a similar video for Arcanum.. Thanks again 😊

I always thought the Brotherhood was the Abbey From Canticle, only gamified for Fallout.

Love your video series, thank you so much!

God I hope that somehow you get to work on another Fallout game. And that it was really Brian Eno that asked that question.

Actually I thought it was pretty funny when IAN would do as much damage to me as the bad guys. It kinda became a MEME. 😄

The Abbey could have had defensive tech that would hide their location from the Brotherhood, or prevent them from getting in.. They would have been a neat addition.

Thanks to the Fallout 2 Restoration mod, I got to enjoy the Abbey, and it was truly incredible. You helped give birth to my favorite game franchise, thank you Tim

So much cooler than some top fallout facts videos! Youre the man i love what you did for the game really set the tone in the largestway

I'm sure you've been told a hundred times but the Restoration mod for Fallout 2 has a version of the Abbey in the game. Obviously, as far as I know, no game design document for it survived, so it was largely based on Killap's interpretation, but I honestly quite enjoyed that location, outside of the terribly out of place music score chosen for it.

Ian shooting me in the butt has been a hallmark of one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and absolutely still worth coming back for. I do wish i'd had more story/conversation with the companions. like on the level of planescape:torment, or BG3. But given the time and resources you had, I'm glad we got what we did. I still like to imagine that the vault dweller and the chosen one retired to a chill ranch in the NCR, playing card games and telling stories with Goris or Katja for decades to come.

It sounds like the Abbey of Lost Knowledge sounds pretty similar to the Followers of the Apocalypse.

Loving the Trim there Tim

Thanks Tim, this is absolutely fascinating stuff.

Thank for all of your work on thr gqmes, all your advise love ya man

Thanks for making videos, I'm really enjoying them! I have a question: What thing(s) do gamers THINK they want in a game, but are either not so fun or would change the game in some weird way? I dont know if this question really makes sense, but I always see people requesting features in games that dont really make sense. What are your thoughts?

I am watching Many A True Nerds Fallout playthrough. It looks so fun. I gotta try it out. I got it off GOG, gonna relive the 90s.

Hey Tim! I love your videos. I'm glad to have slotted these into my daily routine. I know you weren't there when fallout 2 released, but I remember they had issues with saves when they released a patch. Every new patch we had to start over playing. I believe they promised at one of the patches they wouldn't have to do that again, but it broke the saves again. Do you have any insight to what caused these issues?

Well Tim, the Abbey is in Restoration Project, it's depiction there is done pretty good overall. Doesn't have that many quests as you say, but it's still good and interesting location.

You talk about cuts and timelines, can you make a video about the relationship between a publisher and developers? How much control each has about timelines and budget? How much pushback can a developer do if they know/feel the budget or time is not enough? Who decides on adding cash shops and things like that? Thank you

In the fallout 2 restoration patch the abbey is one of the most interesting places just due to the concept it's a shame that it was intended to have conflict with the brotherhood of steel which have little to no appearances in the game

I wish it would be possible to apply the FO2 innovations to FO1, and add the "wait here" function to both.

Damn im curious how combat worked before companions because i feel like a big part of Fallout and Fo2 was companions taking enemy attention away from the PC. Ty for the vid Tim!!

Canticle for Leibowitz was a classic. Most post-apocalyptic stories from that era were written as warnings against militarism so they took the bleak hopelessness to eleven. There will come Soft Rains by Bradbury being the classic example of that style. Stories where the war had been bad but people where picking themselves up and trying to rebuild were pretty rare. Final Blackout by L Ron Hubbard and Star Man's Son (also called Daybreak 2250 in some editions) by Andre Norton are probably the closest. You might make a case for Foundation I suppose but those always struck me as more of a "post-the economy got bad for a while" rather than post-apocalyptic stories.

Deathclaw snoring at the background.

it is funny that Fallout 2 was in a sense "rushed" because to me it felt perfect and it was actually Fallout 1 where I critically missed certain features such as companions leveling up, letting companions wait somewhere, option to ask NPCs to step aside and simply more content and locations in general.

Hey Tim, not sure if you've gone over this yet, but what are your thoughts/approach to RPG sequels in terms of what endings and decisions are considered "canon"? Feels like a tricky thing to handle without alienating the player.

Tim, I'm a big fan of Fallout (the original). I'm really interested to hear the story of hiring Ron Perlman to do the intro narration! It must have been unheard of to hire a big name actor to work on a game project at the time.

LOVE the sound of the snoring dog 🥺🥰

Hey tim, could you give us (if you haven't already, of course) an insight on how ideas are implemented in a project, how do the steps that come from the original idea, expanding, and implementing usually go. And if you can, could you talk a bit about your own methods or storytelling? -Robert

Regarding the Abbey/BoS balance solution, I think this would work: since the Followers are non-violent but have access to hi-tech knowledge, why not make them rely on EMP grenades, stun-weapons and, say stationary telsa spires. EMP grenades disrupt Power armor (since it's a complex electronic device with a power source), slowing the wearer down to, say 5 action points and thus making heavy weapons (which require 6 points) unusable, so they would have to rely on sidearms, melee and their non-mechanized comrades - lesser trained and lightly armed initiates. Downside is, EMP grenades have small range so a Follower would have to basically "sacrifice his life for the greater good" in order to get close enough to disable the hulking BoS knight. + they can rely on traps, which again enforces their defensive, more intelligence-oriented nature. This would nerf the most valuable BoS assed - the heavy armored and equipped knights, and in a lore-friendly way, balance the two parties and provide an explanation why the BoS hasn't rolled them into the ground yet : it's just not that easy as it seems and a dumber supermutant with a minigun would, in fact, pose a smaller threat to a knight than a cunning Follower. We can even take that further - what if some Followers can disable a power armor suit if they get to point-blank range. Like in WW2 when a lone tank could be swarmed and taken out by infantry with explosives. This would also widen the use of EMP grenades and finally give the tesla-armor it's purpose (otherwise it's basically a glorified MK2 metal armor). Also it would make sense that an EMP would also disable an energy weapon, say, deplete it's power source making it necessary to reload.

I actually liked that companions could pop you one. It made the battles more strategic

Love these videos

The Fallout Restoration Project resurrected your Abbey partially. It's present, but as far as I can tell it either doesn't work completely correctly or I'm not smart/patient enough to figure it out

My personal idea was it's all fev, because it's made to modify specific genes and it's more or less hit and miss for other creatures than humans. Ghouls is radiation messing with the fev effects. And for some reason what I got from the talking Deathclaws quest in Fo2 is that they were pre fev genetic engineering project to create a controllable living killing machine.

Hey, Tim! I was wondering what you think about the new Baldur's Gate game (if you've played it). What do you like about it? What do you think can be improved upon? And thanks for making great videos!

A way to create a balance between a mlitaristic faction and a pacifistic faction is to create a dependency of knowledge like in Asimovs Foundation. As a player you can then work to keep this dependency intact or find a way for the Brotherhood to gain their own source of knowledge. Probably by firebombing or securing a hidden library so that the "good" guys have to do the symbolically bad thing and vice versa.

I was so heartbroken when I had to give up and lwt dogmeat die to move on, its fantastic to know that a fix for that was in mind but never implemented!

Good thing that your games have a cult of followers who fanatically improve the games to this day. Both improved companion interaction in F1 and the Abbey in F2 were implemented in mods. And so much more.

Another great video, thanks for the insight.

For Fallout 1, there is a great community mod pack (called "Fallout Fixt") which includes allowing to control your companions (instead of using the AI). Loved it.

Hi Timothy, I love your video and would have the following question: in light of Baldur's Gate 3 immense success, don't you think a game like BG3 but in a Fallout-like universe would be a good idea? I actually felt a lot of Fallout 1/2 vibes while playing BG3. While Bethesda newest Fallout game in 3D FPS world are great, I always missed this OG game style of Fallout 1/2. It appears to me that BG3 has revived a game genre and I would love so much a game like that in the fallout universe again. I would love to hear your thoughts about that.

I really liked the Abbey in the FO2 restoration mod. The idea of them having a conflict with the Brotherhood is super interesting. I definitely think the Brotherhood in general could have had more presence in 2. They’re kind of just gone but then they’re back in the later games like nothing happened. Were there ever plans to have a Brotherhood centric location like Lost Hills in FO1?

An easy way to keep the brotherhood from attacking the pacifist tech collectors would be to have a dead man's switch idea. Basically you say we keep all of our tech in a vault wired up with enough explosives to create a new Grand canyon, and unless you kill all of us within one second it only takes one of us to hit the button we have hidden on our persons that would destroy all of it. Whether or not this would actually be true is something you could explore in the game but just the threat of losing that much tech would be enough to ward off the brotherhood.

Fallout video! Yeah Arcanums system for companions would have been nice in Fallout. As for Ian i like it that he fights like other NPCs. If you stand in the libe of fire you may get hit. That is on the player. Playing Arcanum now. Who did the thieves underground quests in Tarant? They are very well designed and a lot of fun.

The abbey of lost knowledge being cut seems very in the spirit of the name

I love arcanum so much! I still replay it.

Hey Tim, do you have any crunchy anecdotes about the localization process of Fallout? Might be a bit of a niche topic, I'm mostly asking since I'm translating video games, and that's a field not many people talk about/put interest into I believe

Honestly, I think the possibility that your companions can hurt you added some depth to the combat. It would probably been better in that regard if you could control your companions tbh. But to me, strategising for the companion AI so I could keep everyone alive during Mariposa added a lot to the experience for me. Because otherwise you can just go in and click on everything until they die and maybe heal yourself and there's not much going on with the combat. Making sure that I'm in between mutants and companions so they don't get torn to shreds by a minigun or burnt to a crisp with a flamer. Making sure that I was the target of the enemies instead of my companions so they wouldn't just instantly die and I would have to reload. Planning so that my companions would be far away and unable to join in with the fighting until I've had a chance to kill a fair few of the enemies and aggro'd all of them towards me. Trying to surround weaker enemies so companions didn't hurt me and vice versa. Stuff like that.

Timothy, when it came to the writing of certain factions, did you find yourself with a ‘favorite’?

Nowadays you can play Fallout 1 in 2's engine so fortunately most of your regrets there are fixed. About the abbey it sounds very cool. Maybe if you write it out more modders could implement it? The modding community on isometric fallout is still very alive. EDIT: The Fallout Restoration mod has an Abbey section, but it seems pretty barebone.

Apologies if I've asked this question before about companions. Games you've worked often omit deeper relationships and romance with companions and the player character (by design I assume). What is the thought process behind how you think companions should interact and feel about the player character as a person and how do you feel about games like Mass Effect, Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3 that put a lot of depth into the relationship between the player character and their companions?

Hey Tim! I have a question. You mentioned in your video about tropes that one problem with letting people romance whoever they wanted was problematic to you because it created a situation where you would end up with whoever you wanted. I totally agree with that. I am currently playing Baldurs Gate 3 and I'm struck with how bored I get by the fact that everyone wants to get with me regardless of my background. It is very progressive but also removes a lot of the "flavor" from the game. There's also the option to re-roll your characters into whatever class you want and you can change your stats accordingly (albeit for a cost). My question to you is: Do you think this is good or bad design? I feel that it creates the same situation as the dating. Anyone can be whatever, whenever. Barbarian lady with a heart of gold is now a rogue etc. Would you have liked to have this option in the classic Fallout games? Was this something you discussed? On one hand it can be nice to get back those 30-40 points you put into melee weapons early on once you get energy weapons when you but also I feel like stats and how you administer when its permanent is a huge strategic meta game. Should people be able to correct their builds or should they learn "the hard way", or is there other options for this? Thanks for great content like always!

I'd love to see a similar video about any regrets you have about Arcanum. I bought Arcanum on release, and played it a lot, (I restarted a lot) but I never really got past meeting Gilbert Bates. I'm playing through it now, and definitely enjoying it, but it doesn't feel like it really got the polish it deserves. I also feel like, compared to Fallout, there are more situations where it feels like the only way forward is combat, and that it is very easy to not spec for combat.

Hi Tim, this video has a high pitched whine in the background of the recording that I specifically hear in my right ear with headphones, just thought you should know

You've mentioned you GURPS games a few times. As someone who has recently gotten into the TTRPG hobby I'd love to hear you opine on your favorite campaigns or game design tricks for pen and paper sometime

Hi Mr Cain, I wanted to ask have you ever considered making a mod for fallout or even your other games to fix the issues in the games like the companion ai you mentioned here. Personally I’d love to see a mod from you for fallout flushing out these mechanics.

You're a legend.

I vaguely remember using Tandi as a companion but quickly giving up on the idea.

sounds like a dog is snoring in the background

Being able to trade with your companion (for free) rather than having to by and sell was my favorite FO2 innovation.

I'm playing Fallout 2 right now and it would have been cool to see the Abbey.

Tim clearly isn't a gun guy. Fallout included the iconic 10mm submachinegun, which resembles an H&K MP5. The only Fallout game in which an Uzi appears is Fallout: Tactics.

Just how influential was Gamma World on the design, world, and "feel" of Fallout? Ever since I learned about the FEV Raccoons it got me thinking about it.

i respect Brian Eno even more now!

I like many things in the Fallout 2 Restoration Project but I always felt they got the Abbey wrong and there had to be a clash with the Brotherhood that would let the player see the Brotherhood's darker side.

I'm playing through Fallout for the first time and I can say without a doubt that Ian is the most dangerous thing in the wastes

instead we got the neutered brotherhood of steel in fallout 2. oh well, at least there was Tactics.

Wait here would have been a fantastic adder.

Can you talk about Companion Design and expend on what worked in Arcanum? Include Outer Worlds too which has great companions. I’d love to know your thoughts on companions in New Vegas and even in WoW (and if Wildstar had them?)

In Fallout 1 I had to replay the whole millatary base since the companion decided to stand in the doorway.

Canticle for Leibowitz had a huge impact on me when I read it years ago. It's a shame that it's kinda obscure.

Hi Tim. Would you rather like to see a remaster of Fallout and Fallout 2 or a new entry in the series like for example Fallout 5?

would it have been possible for The Abbey to have been a branch of the Followers of the Apocalypse? The idea of revereing knowledge and remaining entirely pacifistic works as a good cross over between them, even if the Followers are more focused on educating others and acting more as missionaries

Hi I have a question Tim was the Lovecraft influence their from the beginning or is it something that was more of a Bethesda thing?

Please record a video about Arcanum regrets as well.

I will say that luckily, I see a lot of the issues Fallout 1 suffered, and some you mentioned in this video got much better whenever the sequel, Fallout 2 came out. So, if you were to make another fallout game be it 3d or not, where would you have it take place? And what are some of your ideas for another fallout game?

Have you ever made mods to your own (or not your own) games? Like adding feature you really wanted but couldn't on normal process or for some other reason?

I have just realized you get a lot happier, at least your face, when talking about other topics, I'm for one wouldn't matter if you only talk about happy things... maybe it's the heat? Maybe the new light?