Amid the increasing popularity of the Fallout franchise, some fans have called on Bethesda to remake the much-loved first two games in the series — but according to Bethesda Game Studios chief Todd Howard that’s not on the cards.
In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Howard said that some of the charm of Fallout 1 and 2 has to do with the fact they remain firmly rooted in the old-school PC role-playing game era of the mid-to-late 90s, so he’s happy to leave them where there while ensuring they run well.
“The main priority for us is to make sure they’re available and you can still play them,” Howard said. “So on the PC obviously they’re there for people to go and get and play, and making sure that they run okay. As far as beyond that, we’ve talked about it, but our priorities in terms of, hey let’s go do dev work and make certain things work, they haven’t been in those areas. So again, priority is, hey can people load it up and play it?
“We want it to load up and run well. The rest of it, I could argue some of the charm of games from that era and the original Fallouts is a little bit of that age. I would never want to paste over some of that with, well we changed how this works so it’s more modern. So as long as you can download it, as long as it loads up and runs, I’d like people to experience it the way it was.”
Led by Interplay producer Tim Cain, the original Fallout games enjoyed critical and commercial success on PC before the company collapsed. Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda later picked up the rights to the franchise and went on to release Fallout 3 in 2008, bringing the post-apocalyptic series into first-person and full 3D.
Despite their age and archaic design, Fallout 1 and 2 remain much-loved by fans of the series, and are often held up as two of the greatest role-playing games ever released. Indeed the recent franchise boost fueled by Amazon Prime’s breakout Fallout TV show affected the original games as well as the modern titles with increased player numbers across Steam.
Right now, if you ask me, the best way to play it is on a PC, mouse and keyboard, the way it was. And so, the calls to modernize Fallout 1 and 2 are louder than ever, but clearly Howard has more pressing matters to attend to, including ongoing updates for Fallout 76 and, eventually, Fallout 5, which is set to come out after The Elder Scrolls 6.
Howard even ruled out bringing Fallout 1 and 2 to console. “Anything is possible, but that’s going to be a longer dev throw,” he replied when asked if such a port were even possible. “And you have to ask yourself, is that where we want to put our time right now? Or is it best played the way it was on a PC? Right now, if you ask me, the best way to play it is on a PC, mouse and keyboard, the way it was.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
