Fallout Creator Would Bring Fallout Back To Its Dark Roots If He Made A Sequel

In his most recent YouTube video, Fallout creator Tim Cain answered a viewer’s question about which aspects of Fallout “need to be expanded upon” Cain’s answer was an interesting one, as he focused on the morality of the original game and how he would have loved to explore that and adjacent themes further in a sequel (nice spot, GamesRadar+).

“I love grey morality,” Cain explains. “I also like tough black and white decisions… [where] there’s nothing grey about the decision, there’s an obvious right choice, there’s an obvious good choice, but the evil choice is way more rewarding.”

These could be decisions where a player can choose to save an NPC or get a unique weapon that becomes unobtainable if the NPC is saved. These sorts of choices are often compromised in modern games, where, instead of something being unobtainable, the moral choice just makes it more difficult to accomplish.

The Dark Depths of Mankind

Cain goes on to talk about the famous trolley problem, and how there isn’t a moral choice, but if you put a similar choice into a game, players will almost certainly debate what the ‘correct’ choice is: “They’re going to talk about the right solution, and there is no right solution, there’s just a variety of solutions.”

It’s this kind of moral decision-making that Cain would love to base a future Fallout around: “I would love to dive into Fallout’s main power theme, power corrupts; people have always done bad things; war never changes. That was always Fallout’s main theme. I would love to explore that in detail in a sequel. And really make some of the players who are coming to have fun in this wasteland of cool weapons and weird monsters – give them something to think about while they’re playing this game. It’s what we always intended, it’s why Fallout was so dark and had some of the quests it had.”

The mutant tree named Harold from Fallout 3.

Cain’s point about challenging players who are there for the post-apocalyptic neofuturist aesthetic of Fallout on some moral issues is a salient one, given that Fallout has been gradually shifting towards a more light-hearted and comedic tone since its inception, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s often well executed by Bethesda (and Amazon in the recent television adaptation).

Cain is unlikely to make another Fallout because he wouldn’t want to return to the series without significant creative control. The legendary developer is no longer a full-time employee of Obsidian, but he did work on The Outer Worlds 2 on a part-time basis and maintains a strong connection to the studio.

fallout-game-series-bethesda-console-franchise

First Episode Air Date

April 10, 2024

Cast

Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moises Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Walton Goggins

Where to watch

Amazon Prime Video


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