A former lead artist at Bethesdas has revealed that development of Fallout 3 was heavily constrained by the technology available at the time, noting that it didn’t turn out exactly how the team had planned.
Speaking with The Examined Game host Steven Lake on YouTube, Nate Purkeypile stated that he’s looking forward to the recently-announced Fallout 3 remaster, which is in the works alongside a modern revamp of Fallout: New Vegas.
“I’m personally looking forward to [the Fallout 3 remaster], because we were, like, super tech-constrained making Fallout 3,” he said, adding, “you could only place so many lights,” while textures were small and developers were “constantly worrying about the memory budgets, or how much stuff you’re putting on-screen…So it’s not like it’s exactly how we intended.”
I think a lot of these remakes have been done, frankly, better lately, too. Like the Resident Evil ones and stuff, those were fantastic. Whereas, for a while, I think a lot of those updates were like, ‘Oh, we made the textures a little bit bigger, and, like, threw a sharpen filter in Photoshop,’ and it doesn’t really look that much better, or actually as good as other games coming out.
Earlier this year, Purkeypile stated that The Elder Scrolls VI was announced by Bethesda so early due to the fact The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had already been out for a number of years. It’s now been over eight year since the game was revealed at E3 2018, but Bethesda recently stated that the game is its ‘primary development focus.’
Fallout 3 was originally released in 2008 for PS3, PC, and Xbox 360. There’s no date for the remaster yet, but the game does celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2028, so that would seem like a good time to launch it.
[Source – Nate Purkeypile Interview via GamesRadar]