Fallout 3's false starts

Golbolco

Golbolco

Still Mildly Glowing
Reading an interview cited on Van Buren's wikipedia page, and I find this nugget of information:

WW: With the cancellation of Jefferson, the crpg team at BIS immediately switched to work on Van Buren (Fallout 3). Fallout 3 had started development on at least two prior occasions according to various sources. Was Van Buren a continuation of any of the past attempts or something entirely new?

DF: A little of both, I believe. Having not been involved in the first two false starts, I cannot really say for certain.
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The interview doesn't contain much more info about those first two false starts. Does anyone know anything about a pre-Van Buren Fallout 3? This is absolutely fascinating to me.
 
No clue but that is something I would be interested to find out. All I know is one day I saw Tactics in Best Buy, the next I am at the library browsing NMA when I find out that Van Buren was canceled while I had no internet.
 
That's a curious question. Maybe ask Chris Avellone? AFAIK Van Buren had two iterations, the first earlier one made by Chris Avellone, and the later Josh Sawyer one. Chris may know about the false starts.

From reading material at the time, I'm fairly sure that since the late 90s, Interplay/Black Isle really wanted to go away from 2D tile-based engines and towards a 3D engine. Possibly they took an attempt as soon as FO2 finished, but out found that the tech wasn't there yet?
 
I asked Chris with the official NMA account but didn't get any response. Maybe you can try with your personal account. He usually answer fan questions.
 
Chris Avellone now has a page on medium.com where he answers fan questions. I don't know how you direct a question, maybe through twitter, but try to pose the question to him someway.
 
Proletären said:
Chris Avellone now has a page on medium.com where he answers fan questions. I don't know how you direct a question, maybe through twitter, but try to pose the question to him someway.
Click to expand...
In order to ask a question you need to make a medium.com account and add a comment on his “page” or whatever they call it. I just created an account so I’ll go ahead and ask him this question and let everyone know what he says. So far he hasn’t responded to any questions from what I can tell.
 
Got a response from Chris Avellone. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to know either.

“Can you link to the interview? To my knowledge, there was Van Buren Part 1 (which I'd worked on mostly solo for years and formed the basis for the PNP campaign to test out the system and level designs), then Van Buren Part 2 that fired up when Baldur's Gate 3 got canceled (which was similar to Part 1 but changed based on staff input). Part 2 I departed after a month or two because I resigned the company when Obsidian poached me. While I really wanted to work on Fallout, I no longer believed Van Buren would ever happen based on the decisions coming down from Executive Row (and unfortunately, that turned out to be the case)”
 
Good to finally see an answer! Van Buren part 1 must have been one of the false starts at least?
 
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