Video game remasters and video game remakes are all over the place. Just last month, Xbox released Halo: Campaign Evolved, an Unreal Engine 5-powered remake of the 2001 original. For Xbox, two more Unreal Engine 5 remasters are around the corner, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and original artist Nate Purkeypile is excited for their release.
With the slew of remasters and remakes we’ve seen recently, many have claimed that the new shiny visuals go against the original intent of the games they’re redoing. However, original Fallout 3 artist Nate Purkeypile explains that the muddy, rough visuals of Fallout 3’s 2008 release were definitely not what they intended at the time.
“I’m personally looking forward to it because we were super tech-constrained making Fallout 3,” Purkeypile recalled in an interview with YouTuber Steven Lake. Purkeypile remembered the days of “constantly worrying about the memory budgets or how much stuff you’re putting on-screen” as they were attempting to create a lifelike wasteland in Washington DC.
As fans will know, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, the latter made by Obsidian, are often quite transparent in their limitations. Large areas are often blocked off with walls when they were originally envisioned to be more freeform, and many areas are lit with basic static lights. The latter, Purkeypile recalls, was a major issue as “you could only place so many lights” in a single location before the game crawled to a stop.
The Fallout 3 artist explains that the intended look of Fallout 3 was likely closer to what the remaster will achieve, similarly to how Oblivion was revived last year. “I get why people are more upset over movie remakes and stuff,” he said. “But, in the case of games and particularly the art side of it, it’s 100% not what we intended. And it was very, very constrained.”
Purkeypile also adds that “a lot of these remakes have been done, frankly, better lately”, adding that many older remakes made weird changes or twisted art directions in the wrong way. I mean, look at Silent Hill 2 Remake—while it may change things from the original, it’s infinitesimally more faithful and respectful than its abysmal HD remaster on PS3 and Xbox 360. The same is true of the aforementioned Halo game.
Fallout 3 Remastered will be an interesting release. Other developers, such as systems designer Bruce Nesmith, hope that the game will feature meaningful gameplay changes that Bethesda wanted to make. Purkeypile, on the other hand, hopes that the game will look like the team originally envisioned it to look in its original, detail-rich concept art.
The hope then, overall, is that Fallout 3 will not be dogmatically faithful to its original counterpart, but instead faithful to the ideas Bethesda couldn’t realise. Now, that’s the sign of a good remaster or remake.
