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The constant trend-chasing of publishers is a tale as old as time. While the industry is now hyped up on the popularity of extraction shooters, Fallout creator Tim Cain has revealed that the original game’s publisher really wanted the Black Isle Entertainment to chase the popularity of Diablo’s real-time action.
In the latest episode of Cain’s YouTube series, the Fallout creator revealed that Interplay pressured the team into converting the original Fallout into a real-time game. While we received the brilliant turn-based action RPG in 1997, the publisher wanted their own version of Diablo’s success from the year prior.
Tim Cain never wanted turn-based Fallout
In the video, Cain explained that he “would not have made Fallout real-time; not back in ’97, not today in 2025.” However, Interplay was adamant that the success of Diablo meant that the game should abandon its turn-based approach to exploration and combat.
As we discussed in our interview with Diablo creator David Brevik, Blizzard’s action-RPG was also originally turn-based before changing to its real-time approach. For Cain, he had one simple solution to combat the will of publishers: rebuilding the game for real-time combat would’ve been very expensive.
“Interplay marketing approached me in 1996, a year before we came out,” the iconic game developer said. “They wanted Fallout to be made real-time because of Diablo. The way I finally got it to stop was just by pointing out how much money I would need, and time, and they finally stopped.”
Obviously, modern Fallout is now a real-time game, but the classic entries in the series are a completely different beast. I love new Fallout, even Fallout 4, and the series obviously works well in real-time, but the satisfaction of the original game’s slow, methodical combat is something Bethesda’s take on the series has never quite mastered for me.
Nevertheless, the series is still incredibly popular with new updates coming for Fallout 76, a second season of the brilliant Amazon TV show on the way and an alleged Unreal Engine 5 remaster of Fallout 3 on the way.
Hopefully, one day, we’ll see a spin-off or a return to the turn-based take on the series. I mean, come on, let’s at least get a remake of Fallout 2 by InXile Entertainment, Microsoft. You own them! A boy can dream.
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