The History of Fallout

No Mutants Allowed has posted a short history of how and why Black Isle Studios' original Fallout came to be.
During the earlier stages of development, details about the setting had shifted constantly; remnants of a medieval version of the game could even be found in the '˜Goodies' folder of the original Fallout release. Eventually a retro-futuristic setting was chosen upon because "the artists just thought that 50's tech looked cool.) The artists set out to make a future science that looked like what the Golden Era of science fiction thought that future science would look like.) Leonard Boyarsky, as lead artist/art director, played a large role in this vision, being the one to originally come up with the idea, as well as for the idea for Vault Boy 'cards' in the character screen.