The Chance of a Fallout 1 and 2 Remake Just Increased…

If there's one thing that Fallout fans have wanted, aside from a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas, it's a remake of Fallout 1 and 2. For the last several years, players have begged Bethesda to do something with these two classic CRPGs, but the company hasn't responded to any of their demands. Although Fallout 1 and 2 are quite old, they played an instrumental role in the foundation of the modern role-playing genre. The first Fallout game, also known as Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role-Playing Game, was released in 1997 on MS-DOS and Windows PCs, and its sequel, Fallout 2, came out only a year later for Windows.

The Fallout franchise has been available on consoles since the mid-2000s, but surprisingly, the first two Fallout games are still only playable on PC. Although they're very important to the series' overall lore, Fallout 1 and 2 have yet to be ported to any consoles, at least not in any official context. Many have suspected that Bethesda's unwillingness to re-release the original Fallout games stems from its inability to access the source codes of these titles, a theory that was recently substantiated by some statements from Fallout creator Tim Cain. It appears, however, that there may be more to this story than it initially seems.

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By Catherine Armecin Martin

Since Fallout 1 and 2's Source Code Still Exists, Remakes of These Games Could Happen

Contrary to Initial Claims, the Source Code for the First Two Fallout Games Hasn't Been Lost

Back in April, Tim Cain revealed in a video on his YouTube channel that, after leaving Interplay Productions (the developer of the original Fallout games), he was ordered by the company to destroy every Fallout-related item he possessed, including the copies of source code he had for the series' first two installments. Because of this unusual policy, Cain stated that he no longer had access to any of the development material for the first two Fallout games. According to him, Interplay itself also lost access to Fallout 1 and 2's source codes later on as well, perhaps as a result of these practices.

In spite of what Tim Cain said, though, it turns out that the source code for the first two Fallout games hasn't actually been lost. Rebecca Heinemen, one of the founders of Interplay Productions, recently revealed in an interview with Video Gamer that she still had access to Fallout 1 and 2's source codes and would be willing to release them publicly if Bethesda allowed it. Since Bethesda and its parent company, Microsoft, are the current owners of the Fallout IP, Interplay has to get in contact with them before doing anything with these two games.

If It Changes Its Mind, Bethesda Could Make One-to-One Remakes of Fallout 1 and 2 Someday

If Bethesda does get access to the source codes for the first two Fallout entries, the company could potentially make one-to-one remakes of them. Unless it decides to build everything in the games from the ground up, Bethesda can make an Oblivion Remastered-style re-release of the original Fallout games using their source codes. It could, in other words, take the base games and put an Unreal Engine 5 layer on top of them while still preserving their 2D perspective and aesthetic. As long as these hypothetical remakes have modern graphics and improved gameplay, many enthusiasts of the Fallout franchise would probably be satisfied.

There's only one obstacle that may prevent a Fallout 1 and 2 remake from happening, though: Bethesda's lack of interest in the matter. Last year, Bethesda Game Studios executive Todd Howard said that he personally wasn't interested in remaking the first two entries in the Fallout series, because he felt that modernizing the games would cause them to lose their retro charm. Instead, the main priority for Bethesda, he stated, was to make sure that these two games remained playable on modern devices. A remake of Fallout 1 and 2 may not happen anytime soon, given Howard's statements, but the recovery of the games' source codes at least makes this a little more possible.