As great as it is to see the 3D Fallout games enjoying another moment in the sun following the popularity of Prime Video’s excellent TV adaptation, the games I most want to direct new fans toward are the classic original Fallout and Fallout 2. Aside from being where it all began, those are the stories that hold many of the answers people coming off of the show are looking for: the origins of Shady Sands, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, what happens when a vault’s water chip fails, and much more. Their stories, scenarios, and memorable moments have stuck with those of us who played them for decades, and bringing those same experiences to an entirely new audience that’s ravenous for Fallout content seems like a slam dunk.
However, in 2024 that recommendation comes with more caveats than it ought to: While both are readily available on Steam (and included in PC Game Pass) and run on modern PCs, when you fire it up you’re presented with an array of tiny buttons, no tutorial, and 2D sprite graphics designed for 800x600 CRT monitors that, despite being loaded with post-nuclear character, make you squint to see what’s going on. It’s enough of a barrier to re-entry to make even a (very) old fan like myself balk a bit at diving in for another playthrough – and a reminder that if there’s one series that has been criminally overlooked in the era of remasters, it’s old-school Fallout.
Bringing a game like Fallout up to date in a way that would please both diehard fans and newcomers would certainly take years of work, and I don’t mean to suggest it would be easy by any stretch of the imagination. The original is just 562MB installed off of Steam; Fallout 2 is just 2MB larger. (I remember having to keep the disc in the drive to play because my brother’s PC only had a 1GB hard drive in 1998.) You can technically crank the resolution up to full 4K, but who’re we kidding? Character sprites are just 60 pixels tall, so you’re getting a bare minimum of detail – packed with retro-futuristic flavor as it may be – any way you slice it. The grainy cinematics are barely better, and only the most important conversations are voice acted. Also, there’s no controller support, so there are legions of modern-day Fallout fans who play on consoles who have no access to these fantastic games at all.
A full remaster wouldn’t even be as simple as porting over models and textures from Fallout 4, since any art director worth their salt will tell you things need to be designed differently when they’re intended to be viewed from an isometric perspective. (It’d be interesting to see those old games brought in line with the art style of Bethesda’s Fallout games, though personally I’d love an update that honors the more cartoonishly broad-shouldered, bulkily armored character design.) Beyond graphics, there are a number of features that would be expected in a modern game, such as character customization beyond picking between dark-haired white male and dark-haired white female for your Vault Dweller, that would need to be added. The UI could certainly use some updating as well, and the first Fallout is from a time when in-game tutorials weren’t a thing, so popping up with some instructions on how to use its systems would be a positive step. I’m sure some people would love an option to prevent companions from being permanently killed when a stray SMG burst shreds them into a fine mist, but for me that’s part of the charm.
I’m sure a modern remaster would have to do away with a few things that haven’t aged super well – I would not expect the Childkiller trait to carry over, for instance. Back when Fallout 3 was announced I asked Todd Howard how that game would handle kids; visibly wincing, he replied that you can’t do child murder at that level of fidelity. Much as I enjoyed how the original gave you such broad freedom that you could make a decision – or mistake – so monstrous the entire wasteland would hate you forever, I’m inclined to agree.
That said, the underlying gameplay holds up very well, and the popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3 and XCOM-style turn-based tactical games makes me confident that modern gamers wouldn’t have a problem getting the hang of how Fallout’s combat works – it’s far, far less complex than managing a wizard’s spells. Sure, you have to go into your inventory to load a pistol with your choice of ammo types and open a menu to target an enemy’s groin, for instance, and if your luck stat is low you’ll be prone to weapon misfires and hitting the wrong target. But it’s plenty rewarding even so, and there’s no shame in save scumming (quicksave/quickload would be another great addition).
So there’s a long to-do list, but it can be done. We’ve seen proof with 2021’s Diablo 2: Resurrected, where Vicarious Visions (now known as Blizzard Albany and, coincidentally, under the same corporate ownership as Bethesda) painstakingly remastered a beloved game from 2000 with vastly improved 3D graphics and a handful of important quality of life enhancements. In theory, Fallout could get the same treatment: According to Tim Cain, producer on the original Fallout, the original source code still exists for both games and should be in the possession of Bethesda, so they could be updated rather than remade.
And they really should be, because the reality is that it’s going to be a long, long time before Bethesda’s already announced development schedule allows it to revisit the post-apocalypse for another full-scale RPG. Heck, even in the best-case scenario where another Xbox studio like Obsidian or InExile were to kick off a new Fallout tomorrow while Bethesda goes back to Tamriel for The Elder Scrolls VI, we’d still be very, very lucky to see it before the 30th anniversary of the original Fallout, which came out in 1997. To put that in perspective: there will likely be a longer gap between 2018’s Fallout 76 and a hypothetical Fallout 5 than there was between Fallout 2 (1998) and Fallout 3 (2008) – a 10-year stretch during which the series was largely considered dead. Remastering the originals would fill that gap nicely in as little as a couple of years, if Diablo 2 Resurrected’s three-year development is any indication, and give Fallout fans a Stimpack injection of the good stuff to tide us over.
Dan Stapleton is IGN's Director of Reviews and one of our many old-school Fallout fans. Follow him on Bluesky.
