No Mutants Allowed has dished up
another Fallout Developer Profile, this time featuring Ed Orman, who worked as lead designer on Fallout Tactics. An excerpt to follow:
Q: When planning the story how do you go through the process of integrating themes and story with the constraints on software?
A: The core of the Tactics story line was the Brotherhood of Steel. What I loved about them was that they were a group that could go either way - this tiny army that has clawed their technological base back out of the ruins piece by piece. At first they do this just to survive, but then they realize that all the tech in the world isn't going to help them if they don't have the numbers. So do they recruit or conquer to fill their ranks?
The missions in Tactics are essentially based on the Brotherhood encountering other factions, and seeing how they react to each one - are they saviors or slavers? It's a solid theme; I just wish we'd executed it better.
(!!!Spoiler Warning!!! Incidentally, the story of Tactics went through a lot of revisions. For example, my original concept for the main villain, the Calculator, was for it to be a completely unfeeling automated system, not even a computer so much as an engine designed to tick over and perform certain tasks after doomsday. Totally implacable, and therefore the fault of everything bad that happens is still in the hands of the humans. !!!End Spolier!!!
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