Van Buren developer statements

An archive of developer statements with the purpose of referencing in Van Buren articles only. Format directions for references can be found here.

J.E. Sawyer: Van Buren demo, 2007 May 1
<!--Mechanics https://web.archive.org/web/20211114111152/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/at-something-awful-new-vb-screenshot.157134/page-2 --- New Canaan https://web.archive.org/web/20211114111449/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/at-something-awful-new-vb-screenshot.157134/page-3 --- May I ask how the Mormons where handeled? My family is Mormon, must say I was looking forward to the "The Mormons never recovered" ending. Can you comment on the plot or no?

I was handling the Mormon area, New Canaan, which was built in a ruined section of Ogden, Utah. I tried to represent them in a respectful manner. Their community was fairly successful as long as it was left alone. When outsiders started to filter in, their rules about the use of alcohol and other substances rubbed non-Mormons the wrong way. The community was also split on how to handle supermutants and ghouls who wanted to convert and be part of the community. Many of the Mormons in NC were big racists and didn't want anything to do with the mutants. The Living Prophet went against their wishes and allowed them in, causing a lot of dissention. It was a fun area to write, but it wasn't necessarily part of the critical path. ---

Why use a real world religion in the first place? Because it allowed us to show how members of a real world faith responded to the destruction of the world around them. Their presentation wasn't about showing that they were right or wrong, but how they thought about their traditional codes of behavior in the most trying of circumstances.

Also, considering their extremely large historical presence in Utah, it seemed like a cop-out to just ignore them.

I rather liked the idea of Fallout's cults like the Children of the Cathedral and the Followers of the Apocalypse much better than the use of real world religions. I dunno, it's just something that seems like it should be taboo. Even if you try to stay tactful by adding one, you're still going to piss off a few people of that particular faith.

Don't care. Making decisions based on the nonsensical cries of a vocal minority is never a good idea. I have no disrespect for Christianity or Mormonism, specifically. I discussed my plot and character ideas with both a very serious Mormon in Black Isle and a former Mormon in Black Isle and they seemed okay with what I was doing. I respected those guys and their knowledge. If a thousand hyperreactive Mormons who wouldn't have bought an M game in the first place get bent out of shape for reasons that I can't fathom, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. --- Religion https://web.archive.org/web/20211114111241/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/at-something-awful-new-vb-screenshot.157134/page-5 I have to say that I don't see why it's inherently better to call something that's clearly Los Angeles "Adytum". I suppose you could say that it's in Lolifornia and that the United States of Flamerica was fighting a war against the Mommunists, but again, if it's that transparent, what's the benefit? A gun is a machine, mass-produced. With a specific name, people associate a lot of quantifiable things with it. Cities, governments, and religions are made up of people and change over time. Los Angeles in 1930 isn't like Los Angeles today and it's doubtful it would be like the Los Angeles of the 2070s. Still, using Los Angeles can allow a certain level of familiarity to play with.

For a long time, I've believed that one of the major themes of Fallout was the conflict between post-war (WWII) era naive optimism and the realities of survival in the wasteland. You see this most clearly in the portrayal of the residents of Vault 13 juxtaposed against the communities of the Fallout world. I think the idea of a Mormon community in the wasteland plays into that and gives the player a decent cultural starting point for empathizing with the residents. They aren't followers of a completely fictional cult, they're members of a traditional historical denomination that has been transformed through their extraordinary circumstances.

Many people living in the United States today understand the fundamental concepts of Christianity, and a subset of that group understand the fundamental concepts of Mormonism. Having that background helps the player empathize, in my opinion. It's easier for most people to empathize with familiar things, even transformed. The basic elements have a lot of cultural currency, and thematic ideas pop into a player's head just through the initial presentation.

Do they follow the Ten Commandments? If not, what did they break, and how do they justify it?

Are they polygamists, as the Mormons used to be (and in some cases, still are)? If so, how do they justify that?

Do they still follow a Living Prophet? What happens when two people claim to be the Living Prophet? Are the visions of the Living Prophet genuine, or some hallucination caused by an unknown source?

How do they decide when to let people into their community? Do they accept all believers? Do they reject mutants (echoing the racist past of the Church of Latter-Day Saints) or accept them (reflecting the new stance of the CoLDS)? How do different members feel about this?

How do the people feel about accepting and rejecting people of other beliefs in a time when human resources are so scarce? The bible tells believers to reject and not associate with non-believers. How much do the Mormons enforce this? Are they ever tempted to go against what is written, purely as a matter of survival?

That is why I liked the idea of using a real-world religion (Mormons, specifically, since they fit into the area). I understand where you're coming from, but I think a line can be drawn between good real-world stuff and potentially problematic real-world stuff. I think we all want people to have some frame of reference to the altered world in which they play. It needs to be familiar enough to draw the player in, but foreign enough to make the player think. --- tutorial https://web.archive.org/web/20211114112705/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/iply-meeting-today.155989/page-2 I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said about this stuff, but I did change the prison from being a tutorial level. I loathe forced tutorials at the beginning of games, especially if the designers are trying to create an atmosphere of tension or alarm. Nothing breaks "being there" like fumbling around and trying to figure out controls or, worse, having the game stop and hold your hand as you try to deal with an imminent threat.

Instead, our demo levels were intended to become the tutorial levels. You could access them at any time from the front menu and play through them with pre-made characters. The narration in the demo was supposed to be the persona of an announcer who is narrating a pre-war survival flim called "Getting to Your Vault!"

I know some people hate those tutorials even more than the "integrated" tutorials. However, given general reactions to the Temple of Trials in F2, I thought I should go in the other direction. --- prison/trains https://web.archive.org/web/20211114112838/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/iply-meeting-today.155989/ I do not believe that Chris expected our engine to be capable of rendering a gargantuan prison being pulled by three massive trains across a desert landscape. There were prisons. There were trains. The trains were not prison cells. The movement of the prison was not really an element of the computer game's story. The movement of the trains was. Both the trains and the prison stayed in the story between the pen and paper game and the computer game and both were used for close to their "original" purposes. --- chris/design elements https://web.archive.org/web/20211114112838/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/iply-meeting-today.155989/ No, I didn't. While Chris was still at Black Isle, I helped take the one zillion potential elements of his Van Buren story and turn them into one story with a central plot. I had absolutely no intention of or desire to be "re-envisioning" his ideas for the story. There were a few characters and an organization that I took a fair amount of ownership in -- and those things I did re-envision. However, neither were plot-central and neither were things that were established in a "historical body" of knowledge about the game world. After Chris left, very little in the story changed.

Keep in mind that I never really wanted to work on the VB story very much. It wasn't because I disliked working on story elements, but because I was so drained from working on Jefferson. I wanted to focus on technical elements: game system, interfaces, data structures, and editors. I was happy with what I had designed before I left. --- leaving black isle https://web.archive.org/web/20211114113015/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/the-game.153896/page-6 A lot of people asked me why I left Black Isle. This is a small indication. The things you see in those screenshots might not please everyone, but they seem to please a lot of people... even die-hard Fallout fans. I was pretty confident this would be the reaction.

In the past year, it has been made very clear to me that the amount of passion you devote towards something -- whether it is a person or a creation -- has very little bearing on whether or not that devotion will bear rewarding fruit. Because ultimately, some of the people who have control over your fate just don't give a damn.

Take out all of the questions of right and wrong. Remove concerns about who should be assigned blame, and how much. It is very hard to devote yourself to someone or something when you have good reason to believe that the object of your devotion is going to be taken away or is otherwise unattainable. It's happened enough to me recently that I lost faith. I couldn't devote any more of myself to something that I believed was doomed.

Someone told me that they never knew anyone who resigned from their job and regretted it. I regretted it the minute I walked out the door. Maybe the game would have sucked. Our design ideas might have been crappy and the weapon balance might have been horrible and the story could have come across as lame... but it really was the game that so many of us had wanted to make for so long.

I'm too sad to be angry. So many of my friends losing their jobs, and so much passion wasted. Some people never recover from disappointment like that. I don't care about whose fault it is anymore, or if it's anyone's fault. It may be a small, stupid, trivial, worthless tragedy, but it is mine to weigh and measure. --- vehicles https://web.archive.org/web/20211114113356/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-vehicles.157465/page-2 All of those vehicles ran on SECs or MFCs, both of which are/were a limited commodity. Considering the power generated by one SEC or MFC in a few of the Fallout weapons, it's conceivable that a vehicle powered by either source could go many a' mile on one charge.

Oh, and here are the other vehicle renders:

The Boudicca-78/S was a reliable modern motorcycle used by the British Royal Armored Corps, Arabia Division. The U.S. National Guard used several such motorcycles during the time of quarantine right before the war. The bike's 78hp engine runs off of small energy cells and has a small amount of storage space on the back of the sidecar.

This ramshackle welded steel frame holds a 133hp small energy cell engine. Its makeshift seats and "holding bars" allow it to carry a total of six passengers. It was manufactured sometime after the war and was apparently abandoned in the desert after a tribal attack. It has no room for baggage.

Detroit Motor Cars Ibex Police Interceptor - "It's got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made after the Anchorage Reclamation so it'll run good on small energy cells." --- semi trailer https://web.archive.org/web/20211114113937/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-news-in-pczone.157448/page-3 It changed after I left Black Isle. In my write-up, the semi carried practically infinite gear and all vehicles. It was later changed to a mobile science lab. --- Mormons x2 https://web.archive.org/web/20211114111241/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/at-something-awful-new-vb-screenshot.157134/page-5 Please forgive me if I have difficulty believing you have a sincere problem with Mormons being upset about the game that traditionally features melting children and hard drug use. Since when do you give a rat's ass about upsetting anyone? More to the point, since when do you care whom a game publisher pisses off?

Now, assuming you were sincere, I still have to wonder why you would consider any such outcry to be even remotely rational and worth caring about.

Historical Facts: For many years, polygamy was not only allowed, but encouraged by Joseph Smith and the CoLDS. A while ago, the Living Prophet declared that he received a vision telling him that it was no longer necessary. They officially stopped doing it, but there are still examples of people who claim to be Mormons who practice polygamy or, more accurately, polygyny.

Historical Facts: For many years, the CoLDS had offical, racist policies against African-Americans. They were not allowed to join the priesthood of the faith, among other things. This officially changed in the late 70s, though many African-Americans still feel they are subject to racism by members of the CoLDS.

These are pretty well-established. If someone has a problem with the statement of these facts, they fall into the same category as members of the Flat Earth Society, and should be launched into the sun for the crime of blockheaded obstinance.

I will repeat what I stated before: I don't care about nonsensical ravings. I discussed the ideas for New Canaan with both an active and a former Mormon who worked at Black Isle. Both of these men were individuals whom I considered to be intelligent, thoughtful, and generally reasonable. They did not have a problem with how I was presenting this particular Mormon community. I respect their opinions more than the opinions of random yahoos who feel the need to get offended about the declaration and discussion of widely accepted factual matters.

Or maybe that could be another group of people in the game. I don't know why you insist on pretending like Van Buren was Fallout 3: Mormon Time. I already stated in this thread that New Canaan wasn't even critical path. --- bos cult I do consider the BoS to be at least a little cultish. They seem to have a specific goal: the preservation and protection of technology. I wouldn't go so far as to say they worship technology, but... their focus on technology combined with their traditions and quasi-knighty hierarchy make them seem cultish to me.

Mormon x3 To be honest, I think part of the solution to this problem is to not explicitly ask such questions, as the narrator, but to present situations that cause the audience to ask questions -- many of which may not have been "intended" by the author. A healthy exploration of a theme provokes questions without hammering the audience over the head with the author's ideas/beliefs on the subject.

The legitimacy of Christianity or Mormonism was never a question explicitly (or even implicitly) asked or answered in the VB design. Here is a sample of a situation from VB: the leader of New Canaan is a man named Jeremiah Rigdon. Jeremiah is the Living Prophet of the faith. He claims to receive visions after having fits. He seems to believe this. Many members of the community believe this, but not all do. Some people think that Jeremiah is intentionally fraudulent or that God is not the source of his visions.

Another member of the community is a supermutant Mormon named "Revelation" John. John also sees and hears things that others do not see or hear. He does not believe that his visions are divinely inspired, but a few others in the community do. Some PCs have the ability to recognize that John is suffering from schizophrenia resulting from his time as a Night Kin scout. The implied question is: if John's visions are the result of a medical conditions, couldn't Jeremiah's be natural as well? No definitive answer is given.

Yet another member of the community is a faux-Mormon named Pablo. Pablo claims to be a Mormon, but is just going through the motions so he can live in New Canaan. He is part of a drug-smuggling operation that defies Jeremiah's explicit ban of such substances in the community. While New Canaan is dying, some PCs can figure out a way that they can survive on a long term basis. However, Pablo would have to be the leader of said solution. If he is exposed as a drug smuggler, Jeremiah would almost certainly throw him out of the community -- even if doing so made it difficult for the community to survive. Implied question: is being so strict on religious taboos worth risking destruction? Again, there is no author-defined answer.

Jeremiah has told the members of the community that God once again wants the Mormons to practice polygyny. So many of the men have died off that God sees that practice as vital to their survival. Not all members think this is a good idea, and many outsiders are disgusted by it. This is never "validated" as "true" in the game. It is simply declared by Jeremiah. It's up to the player to decide whether Jeremiah was really inspired, whether he made it up, or whether he simply dreamed it. Another implied question: if Jeremiah did make it all up, is what he's suggesting wrong or bad?

Marshal is a glowing ghoul who converted to Mormonism. He is dying and going mad, and the priest who ministers to him, Jude, is also dying as he cares for him. Many of the Mormons, who hate ghouls to begin with, want Marshal to be cast out. Jeremiah believes it is immoral to risk the lives of outsiders if Marshal goes mad or -- worse yet -- dies somewhere where his body could harm countless travelers. Marshal is isolated, but Jude volunteers to care for him and perform private ceremonies every day. If the PC talks to Marshal, the ghoul begs him or her to help him escape; he does not want the community to suffer because of his presence, and would rather try to wander far out into the desert than watch Jude slowly weaken and die. It is up to the player to decide the proper course of action by questioning the validity and importance of all viewpoints.

I believe these things are controversial in that people could argue many different ways on them. However, I do not believe they are antagonistic, disrespectful, or insulting. --- motorcycle https://web.archive.org/web/20211114115405/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-resources-exported.190412/page-7 I do not know what motorcycle the Boudicca is based on, but it's probably not German. BMW R71s and /2s are right-hand shaft drive and have standard pegs, not floorboards. They're also opposed boxer twins. The Boudicca has a left-hand belt transmission and floor boards and presumably a traditional horizontal v-twin engine. Given the construction of the frame, floor boards, fenders, and belt drive, I'd guess it was based on a mid-40s Harley. --- husges https://web.archive.org/web/20211114115508/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-text-available.176934/page-2 If it helps, I think all of our game dialogues were just compiled Small scripts with the .dmx extension instead of .amx. Fun fact: every time a dialogue compiled, the tool would play a five second clip from DMX's seminal work, "Up in Here".

Hacking our .b3d format might be a bit more difficult, but I hope you eventually figure it out, if only to see the 15mm ARTEMIS, which was truly hilarious.

EDIT: Also, I think those Jericho/Mesa Verde dialogues were written by Jeff Husges. --- uaf https://web.archive.org/web/20160328204533/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-armor.176539/ UAF stands for Unamerican Activities Force. Basically they were federal (usually) undercover agents that worked to ferret out commie sympathizers in the American population.

It was one of the "stealth armors" in VB. Light armor, but gave a small stealth bonus. The step up from it was Hei Gui/"Black Ghost" armor. --- Armstrong https://web.archive.org/web/20211114115855/https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/van-buren-video.176789/page-5 Also, around 20 seconds or so, you might notice Cpl. Armstrong in the upper left corner standing with his minigun floating text. He's saying something similar to, "Move citizen, you're standing in my line of fire!"

Of course, this is the most important element of the entire demo: companions that don't shoot you in the back with an automatic weapon. -->

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