Bethesda Game Studios’ current run of Fallout games may actually be closer to the original intent for the series than originally thought. While the real-time gameplay of the current games is far different from the original plan, Interplay Productions’ action-point based CRPG was originally envisioned as a fully 3D first-person game.

Speaking to GamesRadar ahead of the release of The Outer Worlds 2, original Fallout co-creator Leonard Boyarsky revealed that the original isometric game was dreamt up as a full 3D game with advanced animation tech to bring the post-apocalypse to life.

Boyarsky explained that the team looked to games like 1996’s Tomb Raider showed just how viable 3D visuals were, and the team envisioned a first-person style for the CRPG. Unfortunately, the technology available at the time simply wasn’t good enough to bring the breadth of the world together with 3D visuals.

“When we first made Fallout, there was a discussion between me and Tim [Cain] about whether we’re going to be first person,” Boyarsky said, “because 3D was just coming out at that time, but that’s like the days of Tomb Raider, the original Tomb Raider. “

“As the art director, I’m like, ‘No, because I want a certain amount of detail and fidelity from the art. So, we can’t do 3D at this point,’” Boyarsky recalls. “But man, we would have loved to – you know, we had to write in the little box in the corner about you, for the first time as a Vault Dweller, ever seeing the sun.”

Of course, Fallout did end up using some 3D animation throughout the experience with first-person dialogue sequences for key characters. However, for the most part, the game plays entirely from above, which Boyarsky claims pushes players to “bit into it, and kind of like, meet you halfway”.

Bethesda’s jump to a full 3D FPS game with Fallout 3 is closer to the original intent for the series than any fan realised, but there is still a grime to the original three games that has not been recreated in the modern series. As someone who grew up with the original two games—and later played Tactics—Fallout 1 and 2 have an inescapably dirty look.

In fact, that look is being revived in first-person by a talented fan in the form of Fallout: Bakersfield, a DOOM FPS mod with RPG elements that looks exactly like the original games’ art style. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it encapsulates that early Fallout work spectacularly well in a way that Bethsda’s series—with all their more mainstream appeal—likely never will.