Fallout's original developers were almost the ones to convert the franchise to 3D.
Remember when Fallout 3 was announced and some series fans thought that Bethesda was going to run the franchise into the ground? While that feared fate never quite came to pass, there's no denying that Bethesda took the Fallout property and really made it their own via the game's third canonical installment.
While many agree that the studio did an admirable job with the franchise's transition into next-gen, longtime Fallout fans may be interested - if slightly heartbroken - to learn that Fallout's original developers actually started and stopped working on two distinct versions of Fallout 3.
In an interview with IGN, Obsidian CEO Fergus Urquhart revealed that while he worked on two different versions of Fallout 3 while a member of Black Isle Studios. The first, known by its codename, Van Buren, is the same version of the game that has been floating around the internet for a couple of years now. This version of the game was most notable for its advanced AI that was designed to operate independently from the actions of the player.
According to Urquhart, however, there was another version of Fallout 3 that most people don't know about. He refers to this version as the "second Fallout 3" and claims that work on it began sometime after their first attempt at a sequel fell apart. Unlike that first version, this build was intended to be a 3D take on the Falloutuniverse. Using technology called NDL, the team began the daunting task of converting the previously isometric series into a 3D title.
Unfortunately, publisher Interplay's financial trouble forced the Fallout 3development team to abandon the project. All was not lost, however, as the team working on that sequel took some of the concepts they had been developing and applied them to the Icewind Dale series. As for that NDL technology, it actually ended up becoming the technological foundation for Bethesda's Fallout 3.
