Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo says that the original Fallout game started out as something else entirely, with the team originally planning on a sequel to a game called Wasteland. It's an interesting detail, as the Fallout series has now largely eclipsed anything it was inspired by, including Wasteland.
Wasteland has gone quiet over the last few years, but the series nonetheless saw something of a revival in the early 2020s. The original Wasteland RPG was released in 1988 by Interplay, and has a similar theme to Fallout, as it's set in post-nuclear apocalypse in America. The original title got a remaster in 2020, and the most recent sequel, Wasteland 3, released the same year.
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Brian Fargo Talks Wasteland Becoming Fallout
Now, in a chat with MrMattyPlays, Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo has said that Fallout's development originally started with the intention of making it Wasteland 2. While discussing Fallout, Fargo said that the series has far transcended anything he ever dreamt of, and explained that many people don't know, but that Fallout started out as a sequel to Wasteland. He claims that "we were actually working on it for a while" but that after a few months in development, the team had to "pivot," and the game became Fallout, instead.
Obviously, there are more than a few similarities between the two games, but Fargo pointed to Deathclaws in particular. He states that Deathclaws started out as Shadowclaws, and says that the team did everything it could to avoid being sued by Electronic Arts, which was the original publisher of Wasteland. Looking at the two in comparison now, while they're both reptilian in nature, Deathclaws are significantly more mutated, largely stand on two legs while Shadowclaws were on all four, and they've become a major enemy found in Fallout titles. Interestingly, early concept art for the Deathclaws indicates that they once had a more werewolf-like appearance, which might have been one direction the team considered going in to separate the two IPs further.
Tim Cain previously stated that Fallout was a spiritual successor to Wasteland. According to him, the team had already gone off in a unique direction when news arrived that they wouldn't be able to get the license for Wasteland, so it didn't have a huge impact on the title. Ultimately, Tim Cain worked on Fallout and Fallout 2, while Brian Fargo would cross paths with Wasteland again, with Wasteland 2 and 3 releasing via inXile Entertainment, which he also founded.
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