{"id":1210725,"date":"2026-02-21T07:11:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/H7VfErB5VtFo7LqsUrytd9"},"modified":"2026-02-21T07:11:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:11:51","slug":"tim-cain-talks-about-the-challenges-facing-a-fallout-remaster-how-much-are-we-now-changing-the-original-fallout-is-this-a-quality-of-life-thing-or-are-you-making-a-new-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/tim-cain-talks-about-the-challenges-facing-a-fallout-remaster-how-much-are-we-now-changing-the-original-fallout-is-this-a-quality-of-life-thing-or-are-you-making-a-new-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Cain talks about the challenges facing a Fallout remaster: ‘How much are we now changing the original Fallout? Is this a quality of life thing or are you making a new game?’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Have you ever thought to yourself, wow, the original Fallout would be the perfect candidate for a remaster?<\/em> Well, first, you are 100% correct. And second, OG Fallout<\/a> lead Tim Cain says the process of doing so\u2014if and when someone decides they’re going to do it\u2014is a whole lot more complicated than you might think<\/p>\n

Cain, as you may be aware, has made something of a habit of sharing deep-dive retrospectives on his past work, and his videos are generally informative, insightful, and entertaining. For his latest talk, you can add “disappointing” to that list, because while Cain isn’t dead-set against the idea of a Fallout remaster, he does have a rather long list of obstacles that such an endeavor would face.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, legal issues are a big potential roadblock: Bethesda, which now owns the Fallout property, would have to green-light the whole thing, and music would presumably have to be re-licensed as well\u2014a Fallout remaster without the Inkspots just would not fly, after all.<\/p>\n

Even with a thumbs-up from all involved\u2014and as we’ve learned from from NOLF<\/a> over the past 25 years, that’s no sure thing\u2014Fallout’s age is another problem: The game’s audio and video libraries are proprietary, and it was compiled using the old Watcom compiler, which is itself aged, buggy, and very limited in capability. (Ironically, Cain said he found his original Watcom CD, but doesn’t currently have an optical drive in his PC.) It’s also not compatible with newer versions of DirectX, and while I’m not a programmer I would guess that would also prove something of a headache.<\/p>\n

But lawyer headaches and technical hurdles can be overcome\u2014what’s really interesting is what Cain described as the “subjective” approach to remastering the Fallout experience. Some bugs are obviously problems (and Fallout has its share) but others contribute to the feel <\/em>of Fallout: Cain said he could easily make companion AI “way better,” for instance, but “better is subjective here. This would remove some of the jank, some of the fun<\/em> jank, that people like. You know, Ian won’t shoot his Uzi in burst mode at you. Accidentally<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

From there Cain ticks off a list of other things that could be changed, maybe should <\/em>be changed, but maybe not, too: The ability to finish Fallout without ever finding the water chip that’s at the center of the game, for instance, or a bug in the code that prevents critical successes in chess games against ZAX the supercomputer. Both of those are technically bugs, but they’re also at this point well-established parts of the Fallout mythos. Should they be corrected in a remaster?<\/p>\n

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