You might think reimagining Washington DC as a nuclear hellscape for Fallout 3 would have been grim, but it made the lead designer want to set the next game in his hometown: 'It's just kind of fun to blow things up'

Vault Boy demonstrates how to duck and cover

(Image credit: GOG.com)

Far from the deserts of the Mojave and SoCal, Fallout 3 takes place in the shadow of a striking image: the United States Capitol building, partially blown to chunks in an abandoned, irradiated mire.

The team working on the game at Bethesda was based in Rockville, a short jaunt from Washington, so they got a rare artistic opportunity: taking pictures of the local tourist traps to then imagine them battered by a nuclear apocalypse.

Pely recalled a Washington-specific ad campaign run around the time which featured images of the destroyed city, saying "We were showing art of destroyed DC, in DC. I. Now I look back, and I'm like, 'Wow, they actually allowed that? Like that didn't raise any flags anywhere. I don't know if you could do that today." Fallout 3's lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, recalled that "they had newscasters interviewing people. It's like, 'Oh, it's horrible! Oh, my God! I don't know what's going on!'

Fallout 3 Real Life Locations Comparison - YouTube

Watch On

The fidelity of Fallout 3's apocalypse might have unsettled commuters unfamiliar with the games, but Pely said making it happen was a treat for the team's artists: "It's cool to work in an area that you're deeply familiar with, because then you can include things that you people may not be familiar with, unless they live here. Like the DC metro and all the underground tunnels: You don't know they look like that, but those were pretty true to the actual ones in DC."

Pagliarulo concurred, saying that reimagining DC as a post-nuke nightmare was "super fun," even if the team's research raised some eyebrows.

"I think at one point, one of our artists went to take photos downtown, security stopped him and was like, 'What are you taking photos for?' No, turns out they don't want you snooping around the buildings in DC for obvious reasons."

Pely noted of Pagliarulo, "I remember when it came time to do Fallout 4, Emil's like, 'Can we do it in Boston? Can we do it in my hometown?' I don't know, maybe he got a kick out of that, blowing up his hometown." Pagliarulo, for his part, credited the decision to Pely and Todd Howard⁠—it's a classic Rashomon-type deal.

In the end, the main concession the team had to make was in shrinking the city down, trimming fat so the game was actually playable (and feasible to develop).

Pely explained: "It was almost a caricature of DC, where there's a compression of space and the distances. We take a lot of liberties to make a game, we found that you don't really have to be 100% authentic, one-to-one, everywhere. We would not have ever shipped a game if we tried to get it all."

You can hear more from a variety of Fallout developers in the upcoming issue of PC Gamer's print magazine. It's a chance to support the written word and learn all sorts of tidbits about some of the greatest RPGs ever fashioned—like a mushroom cloud in the distance I'm trying to gauge the lethality of, it gets a big thumbs up from me.

TOPICS

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.