Larian StudiosCEO Swen Vinckerevealed in an interviewthat one of the series he’d wanted to work on before securing theBaldur’s Gatelicence wasFallout. It’s easy to see why – the first Fallout lies quite close to Baldur’s Gate’s early CRPG roots. Understandably, fans are going practically feral at the idea of Larian making a Fallout game.
Like many fans, the idea of a Larian-developed Fallout game is like catnip to me. I don’t care much for the gameplay of modern Fallout games, but the atmosphere and world-building are exceptionally strong. I think it says a lot that the Fallout adaptation was so good, specificallybecause it leaned on setting instead of gameplay, which obviously couldn’t be translated very much to a non-interactive medium apart from a terminal hacking sequence that mirrored that of the modern games.
Fellow features editor Andrew King wrote aboutwhat a Larian-made Fallout game could look like, and I agree fully with his points. The thing is that, despite fans now hankering for it, the game will probably never exist, and as much as I’d like to live in a world where we got a Fallout game instead of a Baldur’s Gate one, I’m glad we’ll never see what it looks like.
Larian Deserves To Move On From IP
When Vincke announced that Larianwould not be working on Baldur’s Gate 4or further expansions and would instead be moving on to other things,I was thrilled. While, obviously, I’d love to see Larian cooking up yet another Baldur’s Gate, that’s not out of any particular love for the series – it’s really just because Larian made a really great game. Whatever Larian makes, I’ll be there, as will the millions of people who played and lovedBaldur’s Gate 3.
But it’s also true that working within the boundaries of existing IP can be really difficult and limiting. Having to follow a canon and rules set by an outside party inevitably curtails throughlines that Larian may have wanted to explore, and while I believe limitations can expand creativity, it’s always better when those limitations are self-imposed.
Andrew said in his piece that Larian no longerneedsto work within IP, and he’s completely right. Larian has had such success with Baldur’s Gate 3 thatit’s a gamer household name, and it’s using that newfound fame to do what it actually wants to do: its own IP. Larian shouldn’t limit itself to worlds built by others when it now has the latitude to do whatever it wants, and the money to fund it.
So, yes, of course I’d like to see what Fallout would look like in Larian’s hands. But Larian deserves better. It deserves to not follow a third party’s rules, or for it to start being typecast as a reviver of different series’ CRPG roots.
It’s also hard for me to imagineBethesdaletting Larian take the series out of its hands, however briefly, with a sequel already in the works and Larian’s style being so wildly different (and, in my humble opinion, so much better that it’d make Bethesda look bad) from modern Fallout’s. See what happened toObsidianafter it showed upFallout 3withNew Vegas. Larian will probably never make a Fallout game, but we should be grateful for that. The studio is passionate about working on its own original stuff, and that passion is the most important thing.
Fallout 4
WHERE TO PLAY
In a region known as The Commonwealth, the sole survivor of Vault 111 must search for their missing child. Fallout 4 adds more to the series, including base building and an enhanced armor system, as well as an open world to traverse as you please.
