Van Buren

Van Buren is the codename Black Isle Studios assigned to their cancelled iteration of Fallout 3. It was being developed by Black Isle Studios until its cancellation on December 8, 2003 and would have been published by Interplay Entertainment.

Setting
Van Buren would have taken place in the American Southwest, where the westernmost sites on the game map served as the easternmost borders of New California Republic. It would have been set in the year 2253 and planned to have three playable races, including humans, ghouls and super mutants.

Development
Black Isle Studios planned to include a dual-combat system in the game that allowed for the player to choose between real-time (Bethesda Softworks' Fallout games and Micro Forté and 14° East's Fallout Tactics) or turn-based combat (Fallout and Fallout 2) but real-time was only included due to Interplay's demands.

The game would have used the Jefferson Engine, similar to Baldur's Gate 3. The game's emphasis was turn-based play, and cooperative multiplayer was planned for inclusion. The game would have used a modified version of SPECIAL. Additions included merging combat skills and dividing Speech into Deception and Persuasion. On December 8, 2003, the game was canceled. Several screenshots and one video of the Tech Demo were released on April 30, 2007, followed by the Tech Demo itself on May 2, 2007.

The Prisoner
The game would have begun with the player character in a prison cell. Because of this, the player was given a choice. The prisoner could be an innocent that was imprisoned because of some misunderstanding, or they could choose to be a criminal and take bonus traits that would bolster some of their skills.

The player would awaken in a prison cell, but not the one they remembered falling asleep in. Suddenly, the floor rocks violently from an explosion, and the player is knocked unconscious. When they awaken, they find their cell door open and a hole in the wall leading outside. Leaving the prison, the character is under attack by some unknown assailant. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, the player flees into the night to explore this new world.

Endings
Eventually, the player would discover the true reason behind the prison and the attack on it. It turns out that, through extensive research, the mad scientist called Presper, disgusted with what the world turned into after the War, discovered the history of New Plague, the virus that FEV was initially created to cure, and its genocidal potency, and also discovered a viable means to cleanse the world. Using ODYSSEUS, the quarantine prison, and a ballistic satellite known as B.O.M.B.-001, the way to human planetary domination and order became clear. He needed to get to B.O.M.B.-001 and use the nuclear weapons to clean the filth and wretch that currently have occupied the surface.

Presper and his followers released the New Plague virus in the remote areas near Boulder and Denver. It was close enough to the quarantine prison to spur ODYSSEUS into action, but not near enough to cause huge populations to start a general panic. Once enough people were infected and ODYSSEUS "arrested" enough people to just about fill up the prison, Presper’s men would stage an attack on the prison which would allow everyone to escape. This event would start a countdown of sorts for missile launch on B.O.M.B.-001. ODYSSEUS would assess the viral spread, try to gather up the escaped prisoners, and, once 90% of the prisoners had been retrieved, launch nuclear missiles to “clean & prevent” any further infection. By the time this happened, Presper had planned to be on, and in full control of, B.O.M.B.-001 and reprogramming targeting solutions to clean the areas he wanted. Humans of his choosing would wait out the second nuclear holocaust in the Boulder Dome, until the day came where he declared the Earth safe for pureblood humans once more.

Behind the scenes

 * Before the 2010 release of Fallout: New Vegas, Chris Avellone mentioned that aspects from Van Buren would appear in the game. Avellone wrote design documents for the majority of Van Buren locations.
 * The canceled Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 would have incorporated story elements from Van Buren, such as Caesar's Legion in the form of the Caesar Raiders, the Jackals and the Nursery.
 * In the demo, the male PC's character portrait is Eric Wu.
 * Feargus Urquhart stated that Black Isle began work on Van Buren, the studio already worked on a version of "Fallout 3" that ultimately led to the creation of Icewind Dale.
 * Sean Reynolds mentioned the team's intention to create a sequel to the game.

Videos
A video demonstrating the Tech Demo created by Black Isle in 2003. 500px