Career RPG designer and project lead on the original Fallout game, Tim Cain, has released a near-17 minute video on his YouTube channel to talk about the Hollywood premiere of the Fallout TV show. Cain had a lot of praise for the new series, but also expressed frustration with how fans project onto and treat many of the people who have worked on Fallout.
Cain was invited by Bethesda’s Todd Howard to the premiere event at the Chinese Theater in LA, and seemed to enjoy the big budget celebration of the Fallout series. As for the show itself, Cain had nothing but praise for the premiere, which consisted of the season’s first two episodes. “I was literally at the edge of my seat,” he said.
Cain appreciated the performances and storytelling, but singled out how the show nailed the Fallout “vibe” as its biggest achievement. “I was just looking at all the props,” he said of one scene. “I realized after a few minutes went by that I had not followed the dialogue at all, because I was so engrossed by it visually.”
On a more sour note, Cain took time to address the way fans of the series can behave poorly online, particularly regarding any perceived rivalry between Fallout entries developed by Bethesda (3, 4, and 76), and those from Interplay, Black Isle, and Obsidian (1, 2, and New Vegas). Cain spoke positively of Todd Howard, and said that “Some of the stuff you [series fans] say online is so off.” See also: the debate about whether the show somehow overrode or ignored the events of those non-Bethesda games, which has since been denied by a senior developer at the studio.
At the premiere Cain also caught up with Brian Fargo, founder of original Fallout publisher Interplay and currently the head of RPG studio inXile. In the past, Cain criticized Fargo when explaining why he left development on Fallout 2 to found his own studio, but Cain made it clear that their relationship is amicable, and that the development of Fallout 2 was a complicated situation from over 20 years ago: “People remember things differently, things happen differently, things affected people differently.”
Unfortunately, Fargo seems to have experienced abuse online from fans reacting poorly to Cain’s story, reactions which the developer strongly disavowed. “If we can get along, you guys can get along,” Cain insisted.
“You guys can be really destructive,” Cain said, “Which is odd, because you do it to people who are trying to make things.”