A Fallout veteran recently said in an interview that the most cult feature of the license almost disappeared during the development of the third game.
Originally born at Black Isle Studios and Interplay, the license Fallout After the second episode, it had a complicated journey, to the point of falling into Bethesda’s hands by means that were unconventional to say the least. This, however, made it possible to relaunch it, but with a radically different formula from the first games. From a C-RPG in isometric view, we moved with the third episode to an FPS/TPS view and a Morrowind/Oblivion-style exploration, as Bethesda knew how to do. But going from a fantasy universe to a post-apocalyptic one with firearms proved to be much more complicated than expected, which almost cost the existence of an otherwise iconic feature.
A flagship Fallout feature that almost escaped Bethesda’s sights
In an interview with Edge MagazineIstvan Pely, senior artist who worked for a long time at Bethesda, notably on Fallout 3shared some behind the scenes of this resurrection of the famous post-apocalyptic license, and the difficulties that this represented for a studio specializing until then in fantasy. Particularly when it comes to making gun combat fun. “ RPG requires, we had to determine how the abilities of your character would influence your shooting accuracy”explained Istvan Pely. “Your skills are poor, so when you shoot you miss your targets, but is it satisfactory? Or is it just frustrating? ».
Pour compensate for their lack of knowledge and experience to make this part of the gameplay convincing, they then thought of the iconic SVAVor “Vault-Tec Assisted Aiming System”, which allows you to stop time to aim at a part of your target’s body, taking inspiration from the turn-based combat of the first Fallout. But his implementation was apparently so complex that it almost never saw the light of daywhich would have definitely changed a lot of things for the franchise and Bethesda.
« We wondered for a long time if it was really fun, if it was worth it, and if anyone would use it. A big problem concerned the positioning of the camera, we had to write a complete algorithm to prevent it from getting stuck behind an object during slow motion. It took so long to develop the system that we barely managed to get it up and running in time for Fallout 3’s release. “, confided Istvan Pely. We can bet that the effort was worth it, as the SVAV is today an integral part of the DNA of the license as we know it, and which we will very probably find in Fallout 5…when it comes out.
Source : Edge Magazine
