Keeping Faith in Fallout: What happens when our favourite games change hands

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Bethesda and play Fallout 3. I’ll shortly be posting extracts from an interview I did with lead designer Emil Pagliarulo, and you can read my hands-on impressions of the game in an upcoming issue of the Official Xbox Magazine. But for now I want to discuss what happens when one major developer inherits a classic series from another major developer.

I’ve been thinking about change recently, and how gamers tend to be somewhat frightened by it. We want to be dazzled by new technology and we say we want innovation and originality, but it seems what gets us most excited is something familiar given a new lick of paint. So, on the one hand, Fallout 3 should be exactly what gamers want – an old idea updated with cool new graphics; on the other hand, it’s kinda scary. How do we know Bethesda isn’t going to ruin an old favourite?

When we talk about a company making a sequel we know it’s not really the exact same people involved. Staff turnover at the completion of one project often means a sequel is never entirely designed by the same personnel responsible for the original. Increasingly, as in the case of Call of Duty being split between Infinity Ward and Treyarch, a publisher will have two separate teams working on alternate iterations of the same franchise. However, in the case of Fallout 3, we’re looking at a wholly new team tasked with building the third in a series and managing a legacy they played no role in forging.

What’s notable with Fallout 3 is the length of time between Black Isle signing off on Fallout 2 and Bethesda applying its own seal to the series. Ten years is a long time in gaming. It’s enough time for entire genres to rise and fall in popularity; for new technology to change our perception of what makes for a modern game; for development studios to have created a history of their own, with all the expectation and baggage that entails; for new platforms to arrive and shift the commercial landscape; and for older games to be deified on the altar of nostalgia.

Bethesda has to combat all these factors. They have to bring a new Fallout into a world where multi-platform development is vital; where RPGs flounder without production values as high as the next big budget FPS; where many of the play mechanics of the original games now seem anachronistic; and where Bethesda has charted out their own successful course of what a role-playing game can be.

Other games and developers have survived such battles though, and perhaps more often than you think. Ion Storm took over development duties from Looking Glass for the third Thief game, although there was certainly some cross-pollination between the companies. Still, Thief: Deadly Shadows turned out to be quite a different experience to what the Looking Glass folks had envisaged. It kept some of the open world structure of the original design, but reined it back and applied a more discrete mission progression. Ion Storm were faced with the additional challenge of developing for a console as well as PC which no doubt had an impact, especially from a technology point of view. But ultimately, Deadly Shadows was a genuine Thief game, just served with superior lighting and some minor tweaks to the mechanics.

In a similar vein, Obsidian assumed responsibility from Bioware for both Neverwinter Nights and Knight of the Old Republic. Those guys had worked closely together at Interplay’s Black Isle RPG division and the development of both series continued fairly seamlessly. Fundamentally, the sequels really aren’t that different and, for the most part, merely benefit from newer technology.

Then there’s Tomb Raider, where Crystal Dynamics has done a terrific job rescuing the series from the disaster that was Angel of Darkness, while of course Eidos remained on publishing duties throughout the developer switch. You could see that Core Design was desperately trying to refresh the formula with AoD, whereas Crystal has given us a bona fide reinvention of a stagnant series. The difference is that Crystal went back to basics and built upon the strengths of the early Tomb Raiders, while Core lost its focus and took Lara in too many directions that were completely ill-suited.

Silent Hill is perhaps an even more interesting example. A Japanese developed game that draws heavily from American film and literature is now being developed by an American studio. The Collective is currently working on the fifth Silent Hill game, Homecoming, with Team Silent veteran Akira Yamaoka again overseeing production. It’s perhaps too early to judge the success of this move – after all, the game has yet to be released – but it does appear that Homecoming will adhere closely to the Silent Hill formula in terms of play mechanics. Whether The Collective – best known for its work on Marc Ecko’s Getting Up and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – can compose the hauntingly ambiguous atmosphere to match Team Silent’s best work remains to be seen.

Closer to the mark, Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia revivals almost replicate what Bethesda is doing with Fallout, and not just because of the similar time difference between original and sequel. You can see a clear evolution from 2D to 3D in which many of the defining tenets – the fluid animation, the balance of platforming and combat, the distinct aesthetic – have survived intact. Although in this case it may help that Jordan Mechner, the Prince’s original creator, apparently consults on the projects.

For me, based on what I’ve seen of Fallout 3, the nearest comparison is with Retro Studios taking on Metroid. Although Retro certainly didn’t have the pedigree of Bethesda when they took on the project, they opted for overhauling the existing template to the same degree. Metroid Prime was just about as perfect a re-imagining of the series as you could have hoped for, regardless of your personal position on the 2D vs 3D debate. The move to first-person afforded a new perspective on a familiar world that resulted in a freshness and originality that another side-scrolling iteration would not have achieved.

So there are plenty of similar stories for Bethesda to look at and learn from, even if none mirror their specific circumstances precisely. History shows us there’s no reason why Fallout 3 can’t be a great game; equally, there’s no reason why it can’t be a great Fallout game. Everything I’ve seen so far points towards Bethesda accomplishing both those objectives. More often than not, change is nothing to be afraid of. After all, wasn’t the original Fallout merely a modern update of Interplay’s own Wasteland? And that seemed to work out quite well.

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Tags: Fallout 3, OXM

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