Fallout dev explains why a remaster of the classic post-apocalyptic RPG would be extremely difficult to pull off

Tim Cain, one of the creators of the Fallout series, has been sharing memories from his long career and thoughts on modern games on his YouTube channel for a while now.

In the latest material, he explained how difficult it would be to develop a remaster of the first installment of the Fallout series for modern platforms.

1. The problems would concern, among others, technical issues. The Interplay company forced Cain to destroy the copies of the source code he possessed. But here's some good news - one of the former employees of the publisher miraculously managed to save these materials and is willing to share them. However, even with this source code, developing a remaster would be difficult. As Tim Cain explains, the game was written in the Watcom compiler, which is full of bugs, very old, and has long been unsupported.
2. Legal issues would bring a different set of problems. The devs of the remaster would need to sign new licensing agreements with the owners of the rights to many classic songs featured in the game, including, of course, Maybe by Inkspots.
3. Cain also admits that Fallout had a lot of technical issues that would need to be fixed. Here, though, would be a problem with what to change. For example, AI could be improved, but with too many changes, the gaming experience would differ greatly from what the original offered. Should the possibility of completing the story without obtaining the water chip be removed? And if so, it would require recording new dialogue lines, and the problem here is that the actor who played the crypt overseer is already dead. Released last month, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered kept some of the original's flaws, which actually added to the game's charm. A similar approach would be crucial when refreshing Fallout.
4. A separate issue would be the interface, which would especially need to change on consoles. It would also be necessary to thoroughly redesign the graphics.

All of this makes remastering the first Fallout a difficult job. This doesn't mean that someone won't undertake it in the future. However, considering all these problems, it is quite possible that in such a situation, the devs will decide that a full remake, rather than a remaster, would be a better idea.

Fallout

September 30, 1997

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• Overview

• remake / remaster
• RPG games
• Fallout (franchise)
• Tim Cain