I liked the detail that the shelter warning has happened so many times and was so onerous that most people didn't show up. It also makes the vault seem like it would be huge and hauntingly empty, echoing the general state of the world outside

This is a tangent but I really loved how after all the trouble you have in Fallout 1 to get the damn water chip, when you go to vault city in Fallout 2 they have storages with massive piles of water chips due to a mis allocation of supplies.

When you mentioned that you didn’t want the vault to be a HQ so players didn’t have a safe place to return to, I immediately thought of Fallout 3’s intro when the Lone Wanderer was essentially kicked out of their home.

three or four generations to justify junktown existing - makes sense to me. meanwhile in bethesda's fallout 4, set over 200 years after the war, "settlements" consist of two ppl in a half destroyed building lmao

7:35 -- "Sometimes I play games, especially RPGs, where my character should know who these factions are, should know who these people are -- I mean, didn't they grow up in this city? But, they're treated like all this has to be explained to you, because it *does*, because the player doesn't know." Remembering just how long RPGs have wrestled with that problem makes me feel grateful for Tyranny's practical solution of dialogue window hypertext boxes showing the in-universe term's relevant codex entry. Tim, if you've got any thoughts about that particular solution, whether about the how it got made and implemented in the dev process or how you feel about it from a design perspective, I'd be fascinated.

thanks tim! got a good laugh from the cryogenic suspension idea coming up this early in fallout's development

i like the detail about the vault dwellers drawing straws

Ignoring the sirens bit hits different when you know you're most definitely not going to make it if you're ignoring them.

When you were mentioning you're two alternatives, then said the player awakes from cryogenic freezing, I actuall started to laugh! All those years later and Tod Howard and crew used that very plot line. I think Fallout was the first game I ever played that had a time limit. It turned out to be a very generous time limit (150 days wasn't it?) that allowed you to pursue the main story, explore the world and complete all of the side quests. But we (my partner Helga and I were playing it together) constantly felt the pressure of "we have to get this done". We also expected to return home, the hero being cheered and welcome only to get thrown back out again! I discovered GURPS in the early 1990's and fell in love with the system. I loved the tech levels (stone age to very far flung future) and that gaming system still has one of my all time favourite starship weapons, the Nova Gun. One of the fellows who used to work for Steve Jackson, Steffan O'Sullivan, later released another RPG system he had developed called FUDGE (Freeform Universal Do-it-yourself Game Engine). It was the spiritual successor to GURPS (in my opinion) and had one thing similar to Fallout. In Fallout, the first letter of the attributes spell SPECIAL. In FUDGE, attribute scores were adjectives, ranging from Terrible to Legendary. Instead of saying "you need to roll a 20 to hit" the GM would say "you need a great roll to hit". It made the game more descriptive. Keep posting Tim. I love hearing the process that creative people go through to come up with the things they create!

Wasn't A Boy and His Dog largely influential? I always thought the ideas of the glowing ones and vault societies came from that book/film.

I can feel the passion just from hearing these stories, its very inspiring. Especially the bit where you talked about temple and how you doubted yourself afterwards. It shows that were all human. Capable of not just self judgment, but also self improvement.

Great idea with this unknown world outside. First, because no need to feed the player with a lot of information before he start to play. And second, it really fits well with exploration of the unknown, which I love in games.

Speaking of Junktown, I’d be interested in hearing clarification on why the outcome of the Killian vs Gizmo quest was changed, because I’ve heard different explanations from you and Jess Heinig, though I’m more inclined to believe your explanation that the original outcome as written would come out of nowhere to players because there wasn’t any foreshadowing, and I presume it would have been too late in development at that point to adjust the whole quest so you changed the endings and called it a day, but that’s just my guess.

It's always fascinating to see the basis for where a story came from.

Thank you again Tim, specifically for the archival value of videos like these.

I'm curious about the creative origin of the Fallout 1 intro movie, with the Inkspot's "Maybe." The juxtaposition of a pleasant old tune with an unpleasant setting or events. It's a common trope now, but I think Fallout was one of the innovators. But the earliest version of the trope I've noted so far is "singing in the rain" in Clockwork Orange, and I was curious if that influenced you.

Great stuff Tim! Fallout's development fascinates me. Here's something I don't think has been brought up yet - was Fallout's California setting always taken for granted? Do you think that stemmed more from influence from Canticle for Liebowitz etc etc, or because that's where you guys were from, or just because it seemed the most appropriate setting for the theme?

It's very nice that you are documenting these documents. A lot of this premise is very similar to the final version, as mentioned.

100% love it, i thought the t.v series has brought out a whole lot of like minded people chasing the true creators lore on what they made. this is awesome thanks mate update: cheers everyone for the likes, darn ps4 ver of fo 76 is lagy like always tho geez beth cant keep using servers as the issue

I never get tired of these videos. Even on topics Im not super interested in, the way you talk is just engaging

Good morning Tim 🙂

This was such a gift to hear thank you for sharing!

Awesome video man! I am born in the late 80s, and Fallout is probably one of the games that shaped my childhood the most. It was pure magic, pure joy of discovering and exploring a world, that we all probably hope will never come to pass. Thank you!

These videos have been treasure troves thank you for making them Tim

The alternate intro as a sole survivor of a mutant attack reminds me of Harold’s story at the end of the day.

This was so cool to hear. Thanks as ever for sharing, Tim!

Loved how you explained this, what a treat. Thank you.

This is totally fascinating. What a great find to uncover the original document!! Thank you Archiver Tim, first for hoarding and now for sharing.

Thank you for sharing this story! Fallout series have always been my favorite games (I played the Fallout 1 PC demo disk forever before the game was released for resale!). The game story and combat system just makes me want to play the game over and over again!

Very cool to hear! It's amazing what it turned into after the basics were being ironed out. Really struck gold.

Mr. Kain, I simply want to share my joy with you; since viewing several of your uploads in a binge of appreciation. You have been adamant to credit each person in the making of this incredible universe of Fallout. I'm listening to this while reading the Fallout 3 credits, with Tim Kain listed within the Special Thanks. It's pleasant for me to know that the series I adore has such positive energy involved, giving it more validation for my graditude to support it.

It is so fun seeing you fan boy about your own story. I get excited like this when I find something I wrote and thought was lost to my "meticulous filing" .

What was the Inspiration for fallouts pre-war architecture? the faces on buildings look strange but cool. love the videos.

Thank you for this series. You don't know what it means to me, and how it has helped me over the years.

Thank you for sharing your hard work. I found your video very enjoyable.

I take a lot of pictures as documentation and I can usually refer back to the dates on the files to piece events together. Occasionally, if I'm going to write a post on a message board or a script for something, I'll write a rough draft first. I keep a log at work with my hours and I used to write down what I did for the day, but got away from that because of space considerations (where I keep my date book is limited.) But I think it's amazing the level of documentation you do in everything you've read so far.

This is why journaling is important kids!😭you never know what you’ll forget

Great video Tim. Now I'd love to hear a video about what some of the original ending ideas may have been!

Your enthusiasm is so cool :D

My daily game design blog. Good morning!

I got goosebumps when you read the notes, I can imagine the scenario it in my head

Cryogenic suspension had me cracking up

Yo Mr. Cain your content is very based, thank you so much!

Can you say anything about Fallout Tactics? That game was great in its own way too! It's like the Icewind Dale of Fallout games

Such a good intro story :) love it !!

I absolutely love that intro. The best part is that your mission is much more nebulous. You’re much more welcome to just explore randomly. It’d be FANTASTIC to have a Fallout game where you had equal impetus to explore in any direction

Fascinating. I can see your reasoning behind not making the Vault a safe home base, but I also think that you have very much succeeded in not making it so. I am pretty sure that for several early playthroughs - or attempts - of Fallout I did not even know that you can go back because you didn't give the player the option right away and it is frankly quite easy to get carried away with the story and all the other locations once you discover those. This being said, I personally love the feeling of having a safe home base in big, dangerous, oppressing and dangerous settings. Gives you a bit of a breather, but I guess that you were right in case of Fallout because it would have been a bit too safe with the whole Vault depending on your success and all. A regular city or a hub of operations can feel far less safe with various factions and bandits and thieves guilds and corruption and what not - I am thinking Gothic1-2, Arcanum, TES series etc. Fallout 2 in turn had Arroyo, which - in my opinion - gave a completely different vibe. I mean it had became quite clear very soon, that those are just simple folk that could not help nor protect you much in the 'real world'. And so there was never a reason to come back before getting the G.E.C.K. And also, interestingly enough, in every single Fallout game that I've played the Botherhood bunker would become this safe base for me. Except for Fallout 2. Even the only operating Vault in F2 did not feel safe at all, but I won't spoil it at an off chance that somebody reading this did not play the game yet. But then again it has basically been a series trope for at least the next two Bethesda installations...

You called it MyStory but we call it "his story"! Awesome - that year (1994) I'd just left school, my Amiga was about to be replaced by a PC and I was about to dive into all these great games. Fallout and Planescape are two of my all-time favourites to this very day. Mostly Fallout.. mostly.

"... I love this"... can you think how I got lost on your narration, imagining all that and then snapping out that like "day dreaming"... that was good.

I was fully expecting the original story to be completely different. Nice to hear that it was pretty darn close :)

well that detail of them having a huge underground water reserve explains the water chip, as I was always thinking how on earth could they have enough water to recycle for damn near 200 years with it just recycling their waste, eventually it would just build up and become unusuable

It helps that I’m a huge fan of the Fallout series but I could listen to Tim tell a story about paint drying, only channel I have notifications on for

Great way to start the morning

Damn, I love seeing the creatie process behind RPG settings done by clever people :)

In Fallout i returned to the vault as soon as i left. They let you back in for more supplies: there is a double barrel shotgun in the armory. What a game. I love these development stories. I spent a lot of time in the late 90’s roaming this wasteland.

Great stuff

That's insane: currently I'm running post-apoc TTRPG campaign inspired by The Wasteland and Fallout series. And the PCs are from vault, and in introduction I mentioned the very day of check-in (when the bombs fell) when people were gathered near the vault for emergency training! Now you say that there were some ideas about false alarms back in the day, for me it's a fun little coincidence and I like it)

thanks for sharing :)

And the cryogenic suspension idea would have worked years later, just as it did in Outer Worlds, had the player character not been given a prewar profession, a spouse, a child and a voice. Roleplay went off the rails right there, at the very beginning of the game. Oh, Bethesda. What are we going to do with you? :) What does everyone think of games and mods that just plop the player into the game world somewhere with no explanation? (I tend to like that very much. We can always decide who our characters are and what they're doing there later.) What's going on in the game world itself generally has nothing to do with player characters until and unless players decide to engage with its factions excepting, of course, when the character is prewritten. Then, we often feel a lot like Michael Corleone. "Just when I thought I was out, they keep pulling me back in." Must there be a reason to find ourselves where we are in the game world or why we don't know anything about it? Can't we just also make that up ourselves as we go along, learning about the game world organically? (Actually, we do that, regardless, via environmental storytelling and our characters change organically over time as we interact with both it and its overarching story.) We need know only that our characters were part of the game world in some capacity, doesn't matter how, before the game proper begins and we already know that. Do I need to note from "Noah" (who?) telling me that my character must have crossed "the Duke" (who?) in some way when I find myself with nothing in the wilds of 7DTD? Nope. I also gather something bad happened in 2034 from the calendars and newspaper clippings plastered everywhere. It's not hard to pretend my character already knew that. The intro of most RPGs also takes care of giving the player a vague idea of what the world is like and what's going on it. So, why do developers feel they have to fit us into it somehow in advance? I've always found it a little strange that RPGs in general essentially require you to pick your character from a list before you start. Then again, they're actually combat playstyles for the most part and the points allocation, sometimes gear, that correspond to those combat playstyles, not characters. I'm further not sure what to think of playstyles being called "archetypes". They're not archetypes, but generally reflect those playstyles supported by the game. *Character* is something else entirely and can be built along the way.

Crazy that the cryo sleep idea started way back then!

11:20 That's roughly the start of Fallout 1.5 (Resurrection) a mod for Fallout 2

Hi Tim, sorry if you have already, but i would love to hear your perspective on the voice cast of Fallout, specifically through the lens of what made you want/how you were able to secure big name non-voice actors in the 90’s, i always hate myself for following Decker’s questline but i can’t resist Keith David’s voice acting, every talking head adds so much to their respective location/faction.

I would do anything to watch him do a play through of fallout new Vegas live or uploaded

I’m definitely glad you guys came up with the SPECIAL name because GURPS sounds so goofy Also the fact that Tim accidentally wrote the opening to Fallout 4 twenty years before it released is crazy to me

Wait. They built a shelter for 1000 people, but they didn't include enough food to feed 100 for a decade? How long were they planning to keep people underground? Or did they just have like nigh constant parties?

2:45 great freeze frame(s)

Good morning, Mr. Cain. Always a pleasure. Have you considered doing a second series of talks, some surface level technical stuff?

Tim. Tim never changes. From when Tim first started crafting fantastic video games. To decades later when Tim is still making wonderful relevant and entertaining games. The video game industry has grown and expanded every year. But Tim never changes.

Interesting that your intro didn't have the (In my opinion utterly iconic) television zoom out intro with it's dark satire. Speaking of which, was that always going to be an element of Fallout's DNA or was that thought of later. Love the video!

GURPS is one of my favorite TTRPGs. The combat mechanics felt more realistic than DND did and the character creation had a more integrative approach that used the mechanics to reinforce the roleplay.

I had to watch this video. This is amazing,Tim. Is it possible if I may send you a draft of my own fanmade Fallout:New Orleans story?

Interesting that you've seen time limit as a disadvantage. I actually had a conversation just recently on how original Fallout had a time limit which added to the sense of urgency that Bethesda's Fallout games lack. It's especially obvious in Fallout 4 where the setup is that your son has been kidnapped and is in grave danger so you need to hurry to save him... and then you spend months building up 20 settlements and doing all sorts of side quests instead. Fallout's time limit felt initally long enough to feel like you can explore the wasteland a little bit to arm and equip yourself but always kept reminding you not to get too distracted.

Hey Tim! Just wanted you to know this video compelled me to buy the Fallout Classic Bundle on steam (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics). I picked up the series with Fallout 3 and it's about time I correct the historical wrong of not playing the predecessors. What made you guys include the classic 1950s music? It's such an iconic part of the series, and it introduced me (37 y/o) to so many great older songs that I absolutely love and would have never heard in a million years otherwise.

That’s the smoking gun: you made Fallout as we all know it. ❤️

You sir, are Legendary! You made one the most influential pieces of media in my life! Its so cool the beta content you explained! Is it true you guys chose i dont want to set the world on fire for the intro? What happened that maybe by the ink spots was put in instead? Because in my mind, it was perfect, the end result. An extra question, "would you have included a radio mechanic in game if given the chance?

The disadvantage of a secure home base never was an issue in Fallout 1 but the i agree with the idea that it could have been. Clarity in seeing that possible disadvantage. The timelimit and also the fact that the vault had very little to offer you in your quest made it a non issue gameplay. Now the water chip time limit was rather good. Because there was time to do it but the mutants taking over settlements hidden time limit i never liked. Because a) it was hidden and b) it gave a new time limit after the first (and the first with water worked to explain why you had to go out etc). Anyways it isnt a big issue and the timelimit of the mutants is kinda long now that we have played so many times

So now we know what Fallout 5's gonna be like I guess? It's awesome how the same ideas reappear decades later.

Great story Tim! What is your opinion about the Silo series running at AppleTV?

One area I can give credit to CDPR with Cyberpunk 2077 is when lines are spoken about factions or places ur character should know they often remark back something along the lines of "I know jackie I told you that remember." showing you did know about the world but the player still gets the information.

Yes I did like that thank you!

Tim, where can I get a globe like the one you have on the shelf behind you?? I can't find a good one on Amazon 😭 It's so cool

1:48 the Scrubs naming-scheme xD

I always found weird that NPCs in game kept so many notes for you to find, but it makes sense since the designer keeps even more notes 😁

Hey Tim. I was talking with a friend at the Seattle "Interim Computer festival" (retro computing event) last weekend and I mentioned your issues getting Fallout certified for Windows 95 due to it being "too compatible" with Windows NT They work as a software engineer at Microsoft and were quite puzzled by what you were told. I'd love to hear the story direct rather than 3rd hand from old gaming news sites (if you think it would make a good video!)

Hey Tim, something I've noticed in Fallout is that the Vault Security Officer guarding the armoury in Fallout changes gender to be the opposite of whatever the player has chosen. As far as I can tell this is the only NPC in the game that happens to, and was wondering if this was an intentional design decision as if to explain that there was always a Male and Female vault dweller in the world at the same time, but it was just that that your player just happened to be the one selected?

I did like hearing it Tim. I know that you DM rpgs before, and I would like to know what advices you could give us into that subjet.

Fallout new vegas and especially lonesome road are plagued by the fact that you don't know enough about what your character should know.

the first fallout game is really something special

that scratch at 11:50 😱

Tim mentioned declining radiation levels, well consider this...if the nuclear war involved all plutonium based nuclear missiles, the radiation levels would never decline, at least not until the sun expanded and made the earth uninhabitable.

Hi Tim, what are you opinions on where the fallout series has gone since you left interplay in regards to the world and lore? What are some areas you like? What are some areas you don't think fit into the world you originally envisioned with the orginal team? What are some things Bethesda did with the series that you wouldn't have thought of but thought "wow that's a great idea I wish we thought of that"? If you already answered this question in a comment before would someone be able to point me in that direction?

I do like that in Fallout the player character are not special, you are not The Chosen One with special powers and abilities that no-one else has.

11:00 Foreshadowing fallout 4. I wonder, will you make your archive available to the fanbase one day?

speaking on time limits. i started playing outer worlds with the supernova diff. not knowing what this game is. i really didnt like that i just couldnt sleep on 1 of a thousands beds in the world or store items in the ship until i decide which faction to strip their regulator off of. in this diff i HAD to sleep or ill die, but i also wanted to do all the sidequests that i thought will disappear or be failed when i choose a side. eventually i got that items wont be refreshed if i store it in a random fridge and came around the need to sleep with buying all the coffee and tea i saw. hm when i now think about it its kinda cool roleplaying thing but its just unrealistic to live without sleep using coffee and tea for it. the point is, the regulator stuff was a big worry and was a time limit for me, could have just allowed to sleep in the hotel or smth. cause i searched through the whole EDGEtown for the tavern and it just hadnt any option to sleep in it. its just straight up dumb not to have an option to sleep there if a bed exists.

I vaguely remember hearing a story about a game that interplay almost made some time before fallout I believe. it was something about going back in time and killing one of the first humans or something then there's the most rediculous plot to fix it after or something. Can you do a video on that if you remember it? or if someone knows the original video I'm thinking of could you link it, I've been looking for this story for a couple months :/

We'll need to carbon date your notes to be absolutely sure :)

This sounds like the 1950s Radio show episode from X-Minus-1 about (The Ship). The ship is launched into space to escape nuclear war on Earth. And it's sectioned off into class levels. On the lower levels live the Mutants, and on the top levels live the scientists and Administrators. After thousands of years, the Ship returns to Earth and the Administrators try to convince the occupants there is nothing outside the ship. But the Mutants revolt.

I'm so glad I finally got to hear from the man himself how he came up with the beginning of the original Fallout. Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 start virtually the same way and it's always bothered me. It's almost as if Bethesda thinks this is the only way a Fallout game should ever begin - a clueless survivor finally exits the vault into a big future world of the unknown. When you explain how your beginning works I can see the beauty of it - neither the character nor the player know what's outside the vault. It works perfectly in this case. But now everybody knows what's outside the vault so using the same exact premise to the story just seems boring. And for some reason they keep doing it the same way again and again.

When are gonna see a fallout series movie...?

When will you play fallout 1 and record it?