I’ve always thought that the most rewarding role-playing games are the ones that account for a range of playstyles – everything from your standard claymore stuff to a pebble-only run, if the mood strikes – and Fallout creator Tim Cain agrees. Accommodating diverse player builds is part of what makes the original Fallout game so divinely satisfying.
But trying to predict behavior from a class as wild as the deviant gamer is a difficult task, Cain suggests in a recent YouTube video discussing the topic.
“When we were developing Fallout, there was someone who was playing through it, just shooting every NPC they encountered before they could even talk,” Cain says in the video. “I kind of knew there were people who were going to do this, but it turns out, he broke the game. He broke it with Gizmo in Junktown. He walked into that room, and just shot Gizmo right in the head before he could say a word.
“It literally broke the main story progression,” Cain continues. “Then I had the designers comb through the entire game looking for things like that.”
Their avenging Gizmo was worth it in the end. By having his developers diligently double-check Fallout, Cain could be assured that it ultimately “was not possible to break the main storyline with violence, dialogue, or stealth because I wanted every character build to be able to make it through to the end.”
Including his build for his own character, Potato.
“I played the first low-Int, full playthrough in Fallout,” Cain says. “The character’s name was Potato, and I finished the game with Potato and proved that a one Intelligence character could finish that game. It was hard, because he didn’t get very many skill points – skill points in Fallout depended on your Intelligence.” It’s an inspiring story for me to share with my Elden Ring character Bingie, who might be more intelligent if I hadn’t named her Bingie.
“Action RPGs kind of outsell classic RPGs”: Fallout OG Tim Cain says AAA RPGs default to violence because it sells, so support non-violent options when you get ’em.
