If there’s one thing thatFalloutfans have wanted, aside from a sequel toFallout: New Vegas, it’s a remake ofFallout 1and2. For the last several years, players have begged Bethesda to do something with these two classic CRPGs, but the company hasn’t responded to any of their demands. AlthoughFallout 1and2are quite old, they played an instrumental role in the foundation of the modern role-playing genre. The firstFalloutgame, also known asFallout: A Post Nuclear Role-Playing Game, was released in 1997 on MS-DOS and Windows PCs, and its sequel,Fallout 2, came out only a year later for Windows.
TheFalloutfranchise has been available on consoles since the mid-2000s, but surprisingly, the first twoFalloutgames are still only playable on PC. Although they’re very important to the series' overall lore,Fallout 1and2have yet to be ported to any consoles,at least not in any official context. Many have suspected that Bethesda’s unwillingness to re-release the originalFalloutgames stems from its inability to access the source codes of these titles, a theory that was recently substantiated by some statements fromFalloutcreator Tim Cain. It appears, however, that there may be more to this story than it initially seems.
Since Fallout 1 and 2’s Source Code Still Exists, Remakes of These Games Could Happen
Contrary to Initial Claims, the Source Code for the First Two Fallout Games Hasn’t Been Lost
Back in April, Tim Cain revealed in a video on his YouTube channel that, after leaving Interplay Productions (the developer of the originalFalloutgames), he was ordered by the company to destroy everyFallout-related item he possessed, including the copies of source code he had for the series' first two installments. Because of this unusual policy, Cain stated that he no longer had access to any of the development materialfor the first twoFalloutgames. According to him, Interplay itself also lost access toFallout1and2’s source codes later on as well, perhaps as a result of these practices.
In spite of what Tim Cain said, though, it turns out that the source code for the first twoFalloutgames hasn’t actually been lost. Rebecca Heinemen, one of the founders of Interplay Productions, recently revealed in an interview with Video Gamer that she still had access toFallout 1and2’s source codesand would be willing to release them publicly if Bethesda allowed it. Since Bethesda and its parent company, Microsoft, are the current owners of theFalloutIP, Interplay has to get in contact with them before doing anything with these two games.
If It Changes Its Mind, Bethesda Could Make One-to-One Remakes of Fallout 1 and 2 Someday
If Bethesda does get access to the source codes for the first twoFalloutentries, the company could potentially make one-to-one remakes of them. Unless it decides to build everything in the games from the ground up, Bethesda can makeanOblivion Remastered-style re-releaseof the originalFalloutgames using their source codes. It could, in other words, take the base games and put an Unreal Engine 5 layer on top of them while still preserving their 2D perspective and aesthetic. As long as these hypothetical remakes have modern graphics and improved gameplay, many enthusiasts of theFalloutfranchise would probably be satisfied.
There’s only one obstacle that may prevent aFallout 1and2remake from happening, though: Bethesda’s lack of interest in the matter. Last year, Bethesda Game Studios executive Todd Howard said that he personally wasn’t interested inremaking the first two entries in theFalloutseries, because he felt that modernizing the games would cause them to lose their retro charm. Instead, the main priority for Bethesda, he stated, was to ensure that these two games remained playable on modern devices. A remake ofFallout 1and2may not happen anytime soon, given Howard’s statements, but the recovery of the games' source codes at least makes this a little more possible.
