What is Fallout: Van Buren?

Fallout: Van Buren was the codename for the cancelled third installment in the Fallout series, developed by Black Isle Studios in the early 2000s. Development began after the release of Fallout 2, during a period when Interplay Entertainment was experiencing significant financial and organizational difficulties.Van Buren was envisioned as a return to the isometric, role-playing–focused design of the original Fallout titles, built on a new proprietary engine. The game was set in the American Southwest, primarily the Four Corners region, and followed the story of a lone prisoner from Tibbets Prison, a pre-war automated maximum-security prison and quarantine facility. The protagonist would become entangled in a conflict involving Doctor Victor Presper, who sought to unleash the New Plague, a pre-war bioweapon, and potentially trigger a second apocalypse through the use of an orbital weapons platform. Development of Van Buren progressed through extensive design documentation, concept art, and early prototypes, but the project was ultimately cancelled in 2003 due to Interplay’s worsening financial situation and the closure of Black Isle Studios. As a result, Van Buren was never completed beyond a pre-alpha state. However, its design documents survived and have since become influential within the Fallout community, with many of its concepts later reinterpreted or adapted in Fallout: New Vegas.

What is Fallout: The New West?

Fallout: The New West is a fan-made total conversion mod for Fallout: New Vegas. In many ways, it tells the same broad story envisioned by Fallout: Van Buren, but restructured and expanded to form a cohesive, playable experience. The project’s primary narrative goal is to take the disparate plot threads and unfinished concepts found in the original design documents, including for example, the NCR–Brotherhood conflict, the Great Tribal War between Caesar’s Legion and the Daughters of Hecate, the fight for the soul of the Mormon State and much more, and weave them into a satisfying, unified narrative that adheres to the main plot as described in the design documents. Players assume the role of a new protagonist,released from captivity in 2253, known as “the Prisoner,” and the story is set in an alternate continuity that predates and reinterprets the events of Fallout: New Vegas. Unfortunately due to many Van Buren concepts being folded into FNV, we cannot set the project in the same timeline. Our secondary goal is to incorporate many of the modern gameplay conveniences introduced through Fallout: New Vegas and its more than fifteen years of modding, while preserving the distinctive mechanics and design quirks of classic Fallout found in the original design documents. Much of Fallout’s original charm is an acquired taste, and one that we believe remains worth acquiring.