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FO76 publicteam xpd.pngFor an overview of the topic, see Fallout Series.

Fallout Tactics or Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is a tactical computer role-playing game that was originally developed by Micro Forté and 14° East and published by Interplay Entertainment. Released on March 15, 2001, it is the third installment, following Fallout 2.

Background

The story revolves around a group known as the Brotherhood of Steel, established in the post-War United States, spreading from the former state of California eastward. The isolationist, technology-focused group found itself at odds with its ideals once the need to recruit outsiders became a reality.

The Brotherhood forces found they had much to offer native populations in the Midwest who had never seen advanced equipment. They developed a working relationship with the locals, offering protection and medicine for food and labor. The Brotherhood drafts recruits from this population. The player character is a recruit to the Brotherhood called the Warrior, tasked to lead a squad of soldiers made up of their peers against several threats in the surrounding area starting in the year 2197.

Setting

Chronological Game Start Year
Fallout 76 Fallout Fallout Tactics Fallout 2 Fallout 3 Fallout: New Vegas Fallout 4
Appalachia California Midwest California Capital Wasteland Mojave Wasteland The Commonwealth
2102 - 2104
2161
2197
2241
2277
2281
2287

Categories

Gameplay

Fallout Tactics is the first non-standard CRPG and the first to feature a multiplayer mode in the series. The gameplay is similar to real-time strategy games, focusing on squad-based combat and introducing a continuous turn-based play style.

The game centers around Brotherhood bunkers and missions that serve as a central point for the Brotherhood. Players can obtain the services of quartermasters, mechanics, personnel yeomen, and medics. Characters from completed missions occasionally visit the bunkers.

After receiving a mission briefing from the general in charge of the bunker, the player's squad can then move to the area where the mission will take place. Among these locations are towns, factories, military encampments, or vaults. There, the player is given a map of the area marked with objectives and notes.

Combat

Combat in Fallout Tactics features three modes of combat: Continuous Turn-Based (CTB), Individual Turn-Based (ITB), and Squad Turn-Based (STB). In CTB, everyone can act at the same time, and action points are regenerated at a rate based on the Agility stat. ITB is the system used in the original games. STB is a variation of that wherein each turn is given to a squad. Other changes include the ability to change stance, modifiers for height, and setting sentry modes, which let characters shoot automatically in CTB upon encountering an enemy.

Multiplayer

>> 
Main article: Multiplayer

Fallout Tactics has a multiplayer option of creating a squad and or person based on a value of how many points you can put into your person or squad. The game can be played on Gamespy Arcade. It can also be played online via Steam with its multiplayer option, using Steam's very own servers.

Recruits

Although the main character in the single-player campaign has to be human, recruits from the Brotherhood and characters in multiplayer matches can be of any of the six races featured in the game. Non-player characters have different natures and demeanors assigned to them, determining their behavior in any given situation. Each race also possesses unique taunts.

Character creation

Fallout Tactics uses the SPECIAL character system. The game difficulty setting does not affect how much experience characters will receive. When creating a character, there is a Tough Guy setting which awards 30% more experience at the cost of being unable to save while on a mission. This is increased to a 100% increase in experience points with Patch 1.27. The game may still be saved inside Brotherhood bunkers.

Skills

Fallout Tactics largely uses the same skills as Fallout and Fallout 2. The only exception is the removal of Speech and the addition of Pilot.

Traits and perks

Fallout Tactics features the same traits as the original Fallout with a few race-specific additions. The arsenal of available perks is expanded.

Endings

After defeating or pacifying the threats to the region, the squad is given the choice to either destroy the endgame boss the Calculator, sacrifice a character to merge with it or allow General Barnaky to merge with it, if the general is still alive.

Development

Chimera Project

Chimera

Following the release of Enemy Infestation in 1998, Australian developer Micro Forté's Canberra studio began development on an isometric tactical game called Chimera Project or Chimera. Chimera ran on their new Phoenix engine, using a 2D tile based system that supported resolutions up to 1280x960, 32-bit graphics and had C++ architecture.[Dev 1][Dev 2] In May of 1999, Micro Forté CEO John De Margheriti pitched Chimera Project to Interplay.[Dev 3] Interplay's Vice President of Business Development, Phil Adam, was impressed by the quality of the demo, but was not interested in greenlighting the project.[Dev 3] Brian Christian—head of Interplay's strategy game division, 14 Degrees' East—proposed the idea of a strategy game set in the Fallout Series.[Dev 3][Dev 4] The new game would continue with the themes explored in earlier Fallout games, but with an emphasis on tactical-style combat as opposed to role-playing game elements.

Pre-Production

Tactics' Development Team

Development of the project began in October of 1999. Gameplay was inspired by games like Jagged Alliance, X-Com and Final Fantasy Tactics.[Dev 5][Dev 6] After a rough design document was put together by Lead Designer Ed Orman, key members of Micro Forté visited Interplay's office in Irvine, California to discuss the initial design specifications.[Dev 7] During these meetings Interplay CEO Brian Fargo stipulated a multiplayer game mode.[Dev 8] A release date of Christmas 2000 was set and a series of milestones were created, the first of which being a fully playable multiplayer demo for E3 2000.[Dev 9] According to Chris Taylor, the game's combat was intended to be strictly turn-based during pre-production.[Dev 10] The game was initially planned to have 20 single player missions and 10 multiplayer levels, along with 18 optional side missions.[Dev 11] After these meetings Micro Forté took these notes developed them in detail, with Chris Taylor Interplay Producers supervising their work.[Dev 12]

Development

Tactics' Level Editor

Shortly after these meetings, developers at Micro Forté began work on a demo as a proof of concept.[Dev 13] Coding the NPC enemy AI took a significant amount of time to complete, so the multiplayer mode was running before the single player mode.[Dev 13] Micro Forté was responsible for the majority of the design, including all programming and art.[Dev 14] Interplay handled the voiceover and audio recordings, marketing, distribution, quality assurance, sales and localization for the game.[Dev 15] Micro Forté also had its own in-house QA team, which allowed the team to fix bugs faster because of the time difference between Micro Forté in Australia and Interplay in Los Angeles.[Dev 16] Early in development, the development team realized the importance of having in-house development tools and produced a level editor by January of 2000, with a sprite editor and tile editor following suit.[Dev 17] Because these editing programs were made early, it allowed the artists to start producing content almost right away.[Dev 17] Early game art estimates were based on Interplay providing asset data from the first two Fallout games..[Dev 18] When development started however, Interplay informed the team that they were unable to retrieve the data from their tape backups, forcing Micro Forté to hire six new artists and to recreate all of the in-game assets from scratch.[Dev 18] The artists made assets using 3D Studio Max, Photoshop Deep Paint and other programs.[Dev 19]

Death Sense Perk Image

Lead Designer Ed Orman drew all of the Vault Boy images for the game.[Dev 20] Interplay employee Dan Levin wrote much of the game's dialogue so that it would have an American speech pattern and translated the dialogue written by Micro Forté's designers from Australian to American English.[Dev 12][Dev 21][Dev 22] Lead Concept Artist Tariq Raheem designed the majority of the 2D art, including watercolors for cinematics, all the character profile images and promo art.[Dev 23] Inon Zur was responsible for composing the game's ambient soundtrack. Inspired by different styles of primitive folk music, he recorded organic sounds using voices and instruments played in unconventional ways, opposed to using synthesizers or electronic instruments.[Dev 24] He stated that in many ways, Fallout Tactics was the "birthplace of the modern Fallout sound", with all of his subsequent scores for the series being partially influenced by Fallout Tactics.[Dev 25]

Early UI Layout

The first months of development were spent expanding the development team and and getting a clearer idea of what the game was intended to be.[Dev 26] The original Lead Programmer left the project, forcing Micro Forté to convince 14 Degrees East and Interplay that the project should not be canceled.[Dev 26] During a meeting with Interplay, Micro Forté's CEO John De Margheriti realized how violent Fallout was. His dislike of violence almost caused the entire project to fall apart and led to children NPCs being removed from the game.[Dev 27] A Speech skill was implemented, but would later be removed and Tactics would feature a more simplistic dialogue system than Fallout and Fallout 2. [Dev 28] Similar to Fallout 2, a weapon modification system was planned, but this was also not implemented.[Dev 29] There was meant to be mission based reactivity where the player's decisions would affect later missions, but this was also dropped.[Dev 30] Fan requests would lead to a folder where players could place MP3's that would randomly be played in-game.[Dev 31]

Campaign Editor

Originally, the game was planned to have 20 Single-Player levels and after completing a mission. you'd immediately move onto the next level.[Dev 32] Criticism from fans would lead to the more linear level structure being replaced by missions that were linked together on a world map.[Dev 32] Random encounters, special encounters and bunkers where you could re-equip your squad were also added.[Dev 32] The last tool to be developed was the Campaign Editor, which allowed the team to link missions together and set the frequency of random encounters.[Dev 33] The addition of more required missions and random encounters resulted in the 18 optional side missions being removed.[Dev 34]

E3 2000

The game was announced the day before E3 2000 on May 10th. The first demo of Fallout Tactics was shown at E3 2000 between May 11th-13th, winning an award for best Real-Time Strategy game.[Ext 3] Turn based combat had not been completed by E3 2000 and instead, a real time combat mode was faked in a demo.[Dev 10]This would be one of the main reasons the games focus shifted from being a turn based RPG to a real time combat game.[Dev 10] After the demo was made, the developers had a realization that the game wasn't fun to play, resulting in a series of intense meetings and a complete redesign of the combat system.[Dev 35][Dev 36] The two most important milestones afterwards were shipping a Single-Player and Multiplayer demo.[Dev 37] The team used the Single-Player demo as an opportunity to use a focus group to test the combat system, which had encouraging results.[Dev 37] The Multiplayer demo gave the team a chance to test Gamespy support and fix synchronization issues.[Dev 37]

Later UI Layout

By October 2000, it became clear to the team that the game was not going to be completed by its original release schedule in the 4th quarter. As a response, Interplay extended the deadline to February 2001.[Dev 38] After the artists finished creating tiles for the game, they helped with creating levels as they already had experience with tools for placing them.[Dev 39] Afterwards, the reassessed the project and established attainable milestones.[Dev 40] During the last 3 months of development, Producer Tony Oakden banned Counter-Strike at Micro Forté.[Dev 41]

Tactics going gold

Fallout Tactics would miss its initial release date by 4 months, finally going gold on March 8th, 2001. After the game went gold and before it was released, many team members at Micro Forté were laid off.[Dev 42] Chris Taylor noted that the game's testing period before shipping was insufficient,[Dev 43] that the game had high expectations due to being a Fallout title, and that it could have been better if more time and money had been invested during development.[Dev 44]

Music

The game soundtrack for Fallout Tactics was composed by Inon Zur, which contains only Fallout style background music and is the only Fallout game that has no ambient music from the 1940s and 1950s.

Marketing

Promotional items were given away before the release of Fallout Tactics or were available by pre-ordering the game. A small camouflage bag was given as a part of the pre-order bonus to those who pre-ordered Fallout Tactics at the Interplay online store. A t-shirt with the Fallout Tactics logo on it was given as a prize in promotional contests and as a pre-order bonus. It was included in the pre-order bundle on Amazon.com.[Ext 4]

Fallout: Warfare

An additional fourth CD was given out as a standard pre-order bonus. The CD included a tabletop battle game based on Fallout Tactics was added to the game's bonus disk. It uses a simplified version of the SPECIAL character system and was written by Chris Taylor. It was available in the 2006 UK White Label DVD Release of the Fallout Collection.

Games

Additional marketing in the form of games was created for Fallout Tactics.

Reception

Fallout Tactics received a Metacritic metascore of 82/100.[Ext 5]

Behind the scenes

  • Emil Pagliarulo stated that lore and elements of Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics have been included in subsequent works.[Dev 45]
  • Inon Zur stated that in many ways, Fallout Tactics was the "birthplace of the modern Fallout sound", with all of his subsequent scores for the series being partially influenced by Fallout Tactics.[Dev 25]
  • According to Chris Taylor, the game's combat was intended to be strictly turn-based during pre-production.[Dev 46] He also noted that the game testing before shipping was insufficient,[Dev 47] that the game had high expectations due to being a Fallout title, and that it could have been better if more time and money had been invested during development.[Dev 48]
  • In a July 1, 2007 Fallout 3 Preview, Todd Howard was quoted as stating: "As far as the existence of Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel, we pretty much ignore their existence in the same way that I ignore Aliens 3 and 4."[Dev 49] In the August 1, 2007 Welcome Back to Fallout Developer Diary, Todd noted that the Fallout 3 Previews presented info in "different forms and in conflicting ways," stating that they "circle around the small-footprint sensational elements" and that the "information never gets out 100% correctly, and you will certainly never be quoted correctly."[Dev 50]

Series connections

Events, characters and locations from Fallout Tactics have been referenced in subsequent Fallout titles and publications:

Gallery

Pre-release

Release

Bethesda website

Video

Official Fallout Tactics trailer

References

  1. Lone Wanderer: "Care to share anything about the Super Mutants?"
    Scribe Jameson: "The Brotherhood has been battling Super Mutants for decades. First out West, then in Chicago. Now here. But this group of Super Mutants is different, somehow. Physically, yes, but mentally as well. If we knew where they came from, we'd know why."
    (Scribe Jameson/Dialogue)
  2. Lone Wanderer: "Then where's the rest of the Brotherhood?"
    Scribe Rothchild: "The West Coast, unless something has changed. There's been no contact with them for the last several years. There's also a small detachment in Chicago, but they're off the radar. Gone rogue. Long story."
    (Scribe Rothchild/Dialogue)
  3. Defcon the Second: "And Plutonius said to Atom, "He who collides with another particle will, in turn, split the air asunder with shimmering power until his enemies are vanquished!!!"
    (MIS 11 Speech.txt)
  4. Fallout 3 loading screens: "The Church of the Children of Atom believe the war of 2077 was actually a great holy event perpetuated by their god, Atom."
  5. Sole Survivor: "Did the Brotherhood ever build other airships?"
    Lancer Captain Kells: "Historical records about their current status are in dispute, but we're fairly certain that they were destroyed."
    (Lancer Captain Kells/Dialogue)
  6. Brotherhood Soldier 1: "I still can't believe I was posted to the Prydwen. I mean, look at her... she's one of a kind."
    Brotherhood Soldier 2: "Actually, the Brotherhood of Steel had a whole fleet of these things at one time. They weren't as advanced as the Prydwen, mind you... but seeing them fill the sky must have been an impressive sight."
    Brotherhood Soldier 1: "Are you kidding me? What happened to them?"
    Brotherhood Soldier 2: "Not sure, really. Most of them were destroyed fighting Super Mutants or scuttled for parts. I think one of them crash landed somewhere in the Midwest. I heard that the wreckage is still there."
    Brotherhood Soldier 1: "Wow... I had no idea."
    (Brotherhood Soldier (Fallout 4)/Dialogue)
  7. Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Scenario 9: Midwest Encounter
    "The Midwest Brotherhood prepares a last assault against the Calculator! Join forces with Super Mutants, Survivors, and even the wild creatures of the Wasteland to defend your land!"
  8. Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game p. 8: Junction City
    "Junction City is one of very few cities known to exist in the desolate Midwest, existing in the ruins of what was once Kansas City. It is constantly under attack from Raider gangs and has its own army of enforcers to protect it. Junction City is self-sufficient and does not need to beg for help from bigger factions like the Brotherhood of Steel."
  9. Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game p. 9: "The Brotherhood of Steel is the most widely spread faction in the Wasteland. It has chapters on the west and east coasts, and even in the Midwest. The original founding chapter grew out of the remains of the United States military and many of the military’s structures, organization, and tactics seeped into the Brotherhood. [...] Other splinter groups of the Brotherhood exist across the Wasteland, such as the Midwest Brotherhood"
  10. Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Corebook p. 275: "Unlike many other unarmored Brotherhood of Steel airships, the Prydwen is a modified craft with the ability to withstand significant external firepower. Despite its armor plating causing it to weigh forty thousand tons, the ship does not contain any armaments and is instead a Vertibird and troop carrier, intended as a support craft for Brotherhood of Steel forces in the area."
Publications
  1. Fallout 3 Official Game Guide Game of the Year Edition p.71: Elder Lyons
    "Lyons, 75, was already highly decorated when he set out from the order's West Coast headquarters, leading a party of soldiers on a mission to reestablish contact with the "Eastern Brotherhood." He discovered this abandoned Pentagon military complex. The presence of Super Mutants sent a chill up the collective spine of the Brotherhood; these weren't the children of the dreaded Master, nor were they the remnants of the band that fled east and were ultimately destroyed (or assimilated into the Brotherhood of Steel) in the Chicago area. No, this was a new breed of Super Mutant, one with a local origin. But where did they come from? What did they want? How were they reproducing? Elder Lyons was ordered to discover the source of this new Super Mutant infestation and wipe it from the face of the earth. Recent weeks have seen him galvanize his "Pride" to thwart the remnants of the Enclave forces, and to provide drinking water to all."
Developer Statements
  1. Chris Taylor: "It's a brand new engine. Supports high resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960) and up to 32-bit graphics. 3D hardware cards improve performance. All the art has been re-rendered. The core "game" engine, the one that determines how you shoot, the effects of your characters and so on, is fundamentality the same, but everything else is new."
    (Fallout Tactics developer statements/Interviews/Chris Taylor/Strategy Games Online Interview (April 2000))
  2. Tony Oakden: "There are no code components from the Fallout Engine in our game. We have developed our own engine from scratch called Phoenix. Black Isle where kind enough to give us access to the Fallout Source and where extremely helpful in getting us started. We used quite a lot of the tables from the original Fallout source code and we got some of the algorithms for the combat by studying the code, but the Phoenix engine, game and renderer were created by Micro Forte for the sole purpose of Tactics. The game is entirely written in C++ whereas the originals where in C for another thing."
    ("Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel Interview" on IGN.com (Archived))
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Tony Oakden: "In May 1999, John De Margheriti, our CEO, visited Interplay Productions with a pitch for an isometric scrolling shooter called Chimera. Phil Adams at Interplay was impressed with the quality of the demo, but was not interested in the game itself. However Brian Christian, who was the head of Interplay's 14 Degrees East studio, saw enough potential in the demo and in particularly the Phoenix engine to propose the idea of doing a tactical combat game set in Black Isle's postapocalyptic Fallout world. The new game would continue with the themes explored in earlier Fallout games but with an emphasis on tactical-style combat rather than RPG gameplay."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  4. Chris Taylor: "It was an internal idea of Brian Christian, our division director (ie, the BOSS), to do a Fallout strategy game. Micro-Forte came up with the Fallout BOS concept."
    Chris Taylor/Freelancer Interview (May 2000)
  5. Chris Taylor: "Personally, I like RPGs the most. I'm really into Everquest right now. I also like strategy games like Warcraft II. I'm playing Unreal Tournament right now. Hmmm. I guess I play a lot of different games. Jagged Alliance and X-com are two of my favorite games, and they are an inspiration for us on Fallout Tactics."
    (Interview on Freelancer.ag.ru (Archived))
  6. Chris Taylor: "We looked at a bunch of different games, Final Fantasy Tactics, X-Com, JA and liked what they did. The Fallout universe screams for a game like that. Also, the Brotherhood of Steel makes for a perfect setting and basis for the storyline."
    (Fallout Tactics developer statements/Interviews/Group/Gamers Pulse Interview (2000))
  7. Tony Oakden: "After a rough design document was put together by Ed Orman, our designer, a design meeting was set up and key members from Micro Forte visited the Interplay offices for five days to thrash out the initial design specification."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  8. Tony Oakden: "Brian Fargo, Interplay's chairman and CEO, stipulated early on in the design process that one of the major components of the game would be the inclusion of a multiplayer game. "
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  9. Tony Oakden: " A ship date was fixed so that the game would be on the shelves for Christmas 2000, and a series of milestones created. The first major demo called for us to show a fully playable multiplayer game at E3 2000, and this became our initial focus."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chris Taylor: "Something else that I remembered: when we (IP and MF) sat down for that original week of pre-production design, the game was strictly turn-based. We had discussed how we wanted to implement TB/RT or some sort of hybrid, and the decision was made to do TB combat only (RT until combat, just like FO1/2).
    The TB combat wasn't ready in time for the 2000 E3, so we showed a quickie RT combat (as is common for those demos, much was faked under the hood). That particular demo was one of the main reasons RT combat went in."

    (RPG Codex forum - archived)
  11. Fallout Tactics features on Interplay.com (Archived), 20 core missions in 6 stages. Up to 18 side missions for extra experience and plot exposition, but not essential to the completion of the game.
  12. 12.0 12.1 Chris Taylor: "We spent a week or so at the beginning of the project co-designing the game, setting the story, deciding how to implement SPECIAL in a squad based game. Then MF took the notes and developed them in detail, with myself and the producers at Interplay looking over their shoulder and offering comments. One of the IP designers did a majority of the dialogue, to get an american style speech pattern down. So, it was a cooperative venture, with MF providing most of the work."
    (Chris Taylor on RPGCodex forum (Archived))
  13. 13.0 13.1 Chris Taylor: "Shortly after the initial discussions, Micro-Forté started on a demo, to prove the concept and to get something playable up and running as soon as possible. Since coding a good AI takes a while, the multiplayer game (which we had decided would be as equally as important as the single-player game) was up and running before the single player mode."
    (Fallout Tactis Designer Diary - Part I)
  14. Chris Taylor: "Micro-Forté is responsible for everything else: programming, art, the vast majority of the design. They even have their own QA guys working on it"
    (Fallout Tactis Designer Diary - Part III)
  15. Chris Taylor: "And the Interplay Audio Department is hard at work on the game. Interplay also handles QA, sales, marketing, distribution and all the other typical publisher tasks. We'll also be handling localizing the text to other languages, by using outside contractors in addition to our own in-house staff, but Micro-Forté will actually implement the localized changes for the European editions."
    (Fallout Tactis Designer Diary - Part III)
  16. Tony Oakden: "I was initially skeptical about the benefits of having a formal in-house QA process, but by the time the project was completed I was converted. The programmers were able to release versions to our QA first, and they in turn would identify key issues and request fixes before Interplay got hold of the versions. Because our QA was in the same office, there was a very healthy dialogue between QA and the programmers and mission scripters. Toward the end of the project, the in-house QA really saved the project. The time difference between Micro Forte in Australia and Interplay in L.A. meant that the turnaround between Interplay's QA reporting bugs and receiving new versions was too long. Because our team was checking the bugs in-house and talking to the team directly, we saved literally days of QA time. We were lucky to have an experienced QA manager in the form of Jason Sampson with us for nearly the entire project, and he established most of the procedures which we would later rely on to get the product out."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  17. 17.0 17.1 Tony Oakden: "Right at the start, we recognized the importance of developing decent in-house tools and invested a substantial amount of time very early in the project to producing them. By January 2000 we had a level editor in place, and the artists could start placing tiles. This became the cornerstone of our level-production process. Over a period of a few months we produced a suite of tools, including a level editor, tile editor, and sprite editor, that we continued to develop right up until the end of the project. Because we did this early, the artists were able to start producing content for use in the game right from the start."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  18. 18.0 18.1 Tony Oakden: "Our original art estimates were based on Interlay providing the model data for most of the in-game graphics, such as all the characters and creatures that had been created in the original Fallout 1 and 2. Once the project was started, Interplay informed us that it was not possible to retrieve the art from the tape backups they had. This meant that our original art schedule was blown away and we needed many more artists. We negotiated for more time and cash, but only received more money and no additional time. Fortunately, through our relationship with the Academy, we were able to hire six more artists quickly who were able to come right up to speed. Thanks to our illustrator Tariq, we were able to re-create from scratch all the creatures from the original series and the overall Fallout look."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  19. Parrish Rodgers: "The Artists use 3D Studio Max, Photoshop Deep Paint and a whole host of other stuff."
    (Fallout Tactics Chat Log on fallout2.net (Archived))
  20. Ed Orman: "If there's one thing that most people remember about Fallout, it's the Pipboy character. he's always so darned cheery. I get to do a bunch of new Pipboys for the game, and my favorite so far has to be the one for the special damage effect of "immobile." here's the little chap, arms and legs missing, blood spurting comically from the stumps, and he still wears that happy, devil-may-care grin. Bless him."
    (IGNPC Interview (February 2001)
  21. Dan Levin: "Hmm... well... I was part of the concept meetings a long time ago (a one week meeting *shudder*). Originally, I was assigned to write all dialogue for the game but soon I found myself writing (or rewriting) the story, dialogue, movie/cut scenes and organizing scripted events."
    (Dan Levin/Vault13.net Interview (March 2001))
  22. Chris Taylor: "Dan Levin's main job is translating Australian to American English."
    (Fallout Tactis Designer Diary - Part III)
  23. Tariq Raheem: "I designed 142 characters for the game in which the 60 or 70 something were used. My best design was the B.O.S. armour i think. I did the watercolours for the cut scenes, designed some of the environments. Designed and painted all the character profiles for the g.u.i. ,all the promo art. So i did about 80% of the 2D art, yes...:D""
    (Fallout Tactics developer statements; Tariq Raheem: Concept art, 2005 August 8)
  24. Inon Zur: "Adam Levenson at Interplay really trusted me to come up with something different for Fallout Tactics. This was truly a departure from anything I, or anyone else for that matter, had previously done. I created organic sounds using real people with voices and instruments played in unconventional ways as opposed to synthesizers and electronic instruments. We had people shouting, crying, laughing and whispering along with percussionists beating and drumming - whatever we needed to do to create something organic and tribal in a dark and chaotic environment. My inspiration here came from different styles of primitive folk music."
    (IGN Vault Interview (July 2001))
  25. 25.0 25.1 Inon Zur: "I scored Fallout: Tactics in 1999, which was my first introduction to the world of Fallout. I remember this experience was a major highlight in my career at the time. This was before Bethesda invited me to score Fallout 3. I was given the opportunity to create a really original sound on Fallout: Tactics. In many ways, it was the birthplace of the modern Fallout sound, featuring sampled tools and everyday items, employing non-musical instruments as instruments, as well as human voices inside this palette. I cannot imagine any of the new Fallout scores that have not in some way been influenced by my score for Fallout: Tactics."
    (Level and Gain Interview (October 2019))
  26. 26.0 26.1 Tony Oakden: "It was a rocky ride. The first few months were spent bringing the team together and getting a clear idea of what the game was going to be. Because the lead programmer from the original design left, we had to work extra hard with 14 Degrees East to convince them that the project was still viable. They, in turn, had internal problems convincing the powers that be that this was going to be a successful game and that we would deliver it on time."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  27. Ed Orman: "But here's another one. A few months into the development process, myself, the lead programmer Karl and our producer at the time went with John DeMargheriti (head of Micro Forte) to visit Interplay and discuss the project. Only once we got there did John realize how violent Fallout was and John didn't like violence. So the night before we meet Interplay, it's suddenly starting to sound like the whole thing will fall through. Keep in mind that contracts have been signed, staffing plans submitted and recruitment begun. Anyway, the meeting went ahead, and somehow the project kept going (although it was because of this meeting that children were removed from the game)."
    (GameBanshee Interview (August 2006))
  28. Dan Levin: "We removed some elements that could of stayed. The speech skill had a lot of potential. Combine that with dialogue trees and I'll be running around the office "high fiving" everyone."
    (Vault13.net Interview (March 2001))
  29. Karl Burdack: " Silencing weapons might be available, we will be putting some work into weapon modifications soon."
    (Fallout Tactics Chat Log on fallout2.net (Archived))
  30. Fallout Tactics features on Interplay.com (Archived), Interwoven consequences - completing one mission will affect other missions in that stage.
  31. Karl Burdack: "The game plays music from .mp3 files. Also due to popular request, we will make it so you can choose a folder to play them randomly from."
    (Fallout Tactics Chat Log on fallout2.net (Archived))
  32. 32.0 32.1 32.2 Tony Oakden: "The unrealistic time limit problem was further exacerbated by the size of the game we created. Originally, 20 single-player levels and 10 multiplayer levels seemed a reasonable size for the final game. However, when we started to get flak from the Fallout fans about the game not being true to the original, we decided to link the missions together with a world map rather than a linear mission structure. This in turn led to the inclusion of random encounters and unique encounters to add extra interest while traveling between the core missions. We produced special levels for bunkers where you could reequip and change your squad. This works very well in the game but increased our workload substantially. We also hopelessly overestimated how big our maps needed to be. We ended up with some truly huge playing areas and the associated problem of having to populate them with interesting encounters. Rather than reduce the size of the maps or lose maps altogether, we decided to press on and fill them with interesting objectives. We estimate that to complete all the core and secondary objectives and see all of the multiple endings takes about 40 hours of playtime -- even for someone who knows the missions well."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  33. Tony Oakden: "Campaign Editor -- World Map. The last tool to be developed was the campaign editor. This allowed us to link all the missions together by placing them into the world map. The tool allowed us to set up the frequency of random encounters."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  34. Chris Taylor: "At one point, we were going to include some optional missions. The game was going to be structured so as to allow for optional and required missions, just to make the mission's tree branches seem a little more full. We changed that and instead added more required missions. We changed it because we felt that we were including a lot of content that the players would never encounter. We felt that we wouldn't be able to devote ourselves to designing each mission effectively. Also, we had already implemented random encounters, which really made the special missions obsolete anyway. Some of the random encounters are a little goofy, however, and there is some secret stuff to some of them."
    ("Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel Preview" on GameSpot.com)
  35. Ed Orman: "Finally, for one that was all my fault, when we put together the first demo there was this realization that it just wasn't any fun. It was one of those points in a project where all the pieces have been built, but it's not gelling at all. We had a series of very intense meetings (in particular, I remember essentially redesigning the tactical combat with Karl), and got back on track"
    (GameBanshee Interview (August 2006))
  36. Tony Oakden: "The game's design goals were another, more serious problem. When I joined the project I had the distinct impression that the game was going to be a turn-based RPG. As the game progressed, it became clear that this was not the case, and we started to move farther into the world of tactical combat and ultimately to real-time gameplay. The situation finally became intolerable in August 2000, when we attempted to produce our first single-player demo. The game absolutely stunk! It was obvious to all who played the game that this just was not working and at this point Brian Christian phoned my CEO and told him that the game did not play."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 Tony Oakden: "Our most important milestones became the single-player demo which shipped just before Christmas 2000 and the multiplayer demo which shipped at the end of January 2001. Both these demos could have been very disruptive with regards to completing the final game, but we used them instead to get game critical stuff finished. The single-player demo was the first time we used a focus group to test the whole combat system, and the results were very encouraging. The multiplayer demo gave us the chance to test the Game Spy support and get all the synchronization issues nailed down. Both demos were very successful in raising the public awareness of the game."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  38. Tony Oakden: "We tried to stick to the original schedule, but it became obvious that we could not possibly deliver in October. Interplay agreed to extended our deadline to February 2001. Micro Forte had made considerable financial investment in the game itself, on top of what was negotiated with Interplay. At this point, we had already invested in extra artists to try to meet the original deadline, so not only was our burn rate higher than we had planned, but it went on for longer. At the beginning of the project, the QA team and many of the 3D artists recruited for the project had been advised that there was no guarantee of ongoing employment after the game shipped. We tried to keep everyone employed, but ultimately we were left with a situation where we had no choice but to let half the art team and the QA team go upon completion of the game. We finally delivered the game in the first quarter of 2001, but even with the extra four months, it was a close thing. The game did come together incredibly fast in the last few weeks, but it was very tense for everyone concerned."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  39. Tony Oakden: "An unexpected benefit of this was that towards the end of the project, when the artists had finished creating the tiles for the game, they were also experienced in using the tools for placing them into the levels. At that point we needed to generate a substantial amount of content very quickly and achieved this relatively easily because we had good tools and a large team of people, all of whom could help with creating levels. The situation was further improved because it was easy to cut and paste within maps and between maps. We could have put more effort into our entity-editing tools, but on the whole I was very pleased with the tools we created compared to tools I've seen and used at other companies."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  40. Tony Oakden: "After this we reassessed the project and remapped our milestones. Once we had established attainable milestones, we were able to refocus. Our most important milestones became the single-player demo which shipped just before Christmas 2000 and the multiplayer demo which shipped at the end of January 2001. Both these demos could have been very disruptive with regards to completing the final game, but we used them instead to get game critical stuff finished. The single-player demo was the first time we used a focus group to test the whole combat system, and the results were very encouraging. The multiplayer demo gave us the chance to test the Game Spy support and get all the synchronization issues nailed down. Both demos were very successful in raising the public awareness of the game."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  41. Tony Oakden: "I did ban Counter-Strike in the last three months of the project, but by that point we all knew what had to be done to get finished."
    (Postmortem: Micro Forte's Fallout Tactics)
  42. Ed Orman: "The most obvious one that springs to mind is the day half the development team was retrenched, right after we went gold. The whole thing was handled very poorly and it just sucked to see the people who had worked so hard be let go."
    (GameBanshee Interview (August 2006))
  43. Chris Taylor: "Keep in mind that the amount of testing on Fallout Tactics was tragically short. IIRC, Interplay received the first full beta/fully playable to the end on a Saturday. The following Wednesday, after one - maybe two - revs, it was sent off for mastering. That's an amazingly short amount of time (most projects have at least a month between fully playable and gold mastering, RPGs usually have longer). Myself and a few others asked for more time to do more testing and we were denied. There was a strong desire to get the game out as fast as possible by someone at Interplay. I don't think it helped that I had walked out of a marketing meeting a month or so earlier, so my opinion towards the end wasn't well received.
    Additional testing time would have allowed: more bug fixes, better balancing (especially in Turn-Based, since the limited amount of testing time, most of QA was testing in real-time) and more tweaks to the game system. It would not have allowed for any major changes to the story, characters, plot and game system.
    In hindsight, we should have not implemented both TB and RT. It did end up costing us a substantial amount of QA time and resources. Or, we should have kept RT only for multiplayer. That would have given us a little more time for balancing the single-player campaign.
    MicroForte wasn't responsible for nearly as many problems on FOT as Interplay was. And I would be surprised at the amount of problems Interplay's QA department was able to find, except I know how hard they worked and the problems they were working against. They did as good as job as anyone could have done under the circumstances.
    Of all things, I'm still bummed we never got a song in for the intro movie. I had wanted "Jesus Just Left Chicago" by ZZ Top."

    (RPG Codex forum - Archived)
  44. Chris Taylor: "If Interplay had allowed more time (and money), MicroForte would have been in a position to deliver a better game. That's fairly typical of the publisher/developer relationship. It just hurts more in this particular case, because there was a higher expectation of quality due to the Fallout name. The project wasn't completely on schedule in reality, but that was due to a couple of changes in direction during development and wasn't due to any major problems with the developer. Interplay should have taken a step back, slipped the game 3-4 months and released a higher quality game. That doesn't mean I take any less responsibility for my duties on FOT and my failure to keep the FO lore as close to canon as possible."
    (RPG Codex forum - Archived)
  45. Bethesda Gamescom 2020 stream on Twitch (reference starts at 1:06:06)
  46. Chris Taylor: "Something else that I remembered: when we (IP and MF) sat down for that original week of pre-production design, the game was strictly turn-based. We had discussed how we wanted to implement TB/RT or some sort of hybrid, and the decision was made to do TB combat only (RT until combat, just like FO1/2).
    The TB combat wasn't ready in time for the 2000 E3, so we showed a quickie RT combat (as is common for those demos, much was faked under the hood). That particular demo was one of the main reasons RT combat went in."

    (RPG Codex forum - Archived)
  47. Chris Taylor: "Keep in mind that the amount of testing on Fallout Tactics was tragically short. IIRC, Interplay received the first full beta/fully playable to the end on a Saturday. The following Wednesday, after one - maybe two - revs, it was sent off for mastering. That's an amazingly short amount of time (most projects have at least a month between fully playable and gold mastering, RPGs usually have longer). Myself and a few others asked for more time to do more testing and we were denied. There was a strong desire to get the game out as fast as possible by someone at Interplay. I don't think it helped that I had walked out of a marketing meeting a month or so earlier, so my opinion towards the end wasn't well received.
    Additional testing time would have allowed: more bug fixes, better balancing (especially in Turn-Based, since the limited amount of testing time, most of QA was testing in real-time) and more tweaks to the game system. It would not have allowed for any major changes to the story, characters, plot and game system.
    In hindsight, we should have not implemented both TB and RT. It did end up costing us a substantial amount of QA time and resources. Or, we should have kept RT only for multiplayer. That would have given us a little more time for balancing the single-player campaign.
    MicroForte wasn't responsible for nearly as many problems on FOT as Interplay was. And I would be surprised at the amount of problems Interplay's QA department was able to find, except I know how hard they worked and the problems they were working against. They did as good as job as anyone could have done under the circumstances.
    Of all things, I'm still bummed we never got a song in for the intro movie. I had wanted "Jesus Just Left Chicago" by ZZ Top."

    (RPG Codex forum - Archived)
  48. Chris Taylor: "If Interplay had allowed more time (and money), MicroForte would have been in a position to deliver a better game. That's fairly typical of the publisher/developer relationship. It just hurts more in this particular case, because there was a higher expectation of quality due to the Fallout name. The project wasn't completely on schedule in reality, but that was due to a couple of changes in direction during development and wasn't due to any major problems with the developer. Interplay should have taken a step back, slipped the game 3-4 months and released a higher quality game. That doesn't mean I take any less responsibility for my duties on FOT and my failure to keep the FO lore as close to canon as possible."
    (RPG Codex forum - Archived)
  49. Shacknews - Fallout 3 Preview (Archived)
  50. Todd Howard: "I'm going to assume that if you're reading this, you've probably read between 1 and 50 previews of Fallout 3 already (they're linked on this site). There's already too much info out there, in different forms and in conflicting ways, for me to cover or correct it all here. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that the information never gets out 100% correctly, and you will certainly never be quoted correctly. For the record, I never compared the violence in Fallout to Jackass, I compared it to Kill Bill…big difference. I also never said "fantasy is riding a horse and killing things," but oh well. Ultimately the game speaks for itself (certainly better than I do). The other thing to keep in mind is that preview comments often circle around the small-footprint sensational elements (Fat Man, toilet drinking, bobbleheads, etc), while sometimes missing the key points of the hour-long demo we give, which are: player choice, consequence, sacrifice, and survival."
    (Todd Howard/Welcome Back to Fallout Diary (August 2007))
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