Fallout 3 offers a large, open world full of exciting places. To reach them, you walk through the open world on foot. Above ground. However, the developers initially had a plan for the underground.
Fallout 3 is set on the East Coast of the USA, specifically in the capital Washington D.C. and its surroundings. The open world invites exploration, and you’ll stumble upon various, sometimes quirky places.
The developers at Bethesda also chose Washington D.C. because parts of the team lived and worked there (via pcgamer.com). This way, numerous details made their way into the game.
Among these are the somewhat iconic subway stations of the city. You can also explore them in Fallout 3, as well as parts of the underground tunnels.
However, these sections are just a small part of what the developers had originally planned for the subway. A vast network that is completely interconnected was planned.
The Dumb Realism
What did the plan look like? As Game Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo revealed in a conversation with Game Informer, the developers wanted to make the subway in Fallout 3 significantly more extensive.
All stations were to be interconnected, just as they would be in reality. These tunnels could then be explored by players — like a second map, just underground.
However, Pagliarulo explains why this plan was ultimately not realized:
Then we realized that it would simply be too sprawling and too large. We had to cut sections out, and that’s a lesson we’ve learned over the years: Being realistic isn’t always fun. Because realism can be enjoyable depending on the type of game you’re developing, but traversing miles of underground subway stations is very realistic but not particularly entertaining.
Especially if there are no quests or exciting places to be found underground, a complete subway system would have little appeal. And public transport is anyway no longer operational in the post-apocalypse – there isn’t even an opportunity to spend the collected caps.
So are there no subway tunnels? Yes, some have remained in the game. They primarily serve as a link between areas. But even though the ones available are full of enemies, traversing them is not fun for some players.
The YouTube channel “I am Kavindu” even does a dedicated video on these sections and describes the subway as “a confusing maze full of raiders, ghouls, and super mutants that turns every trip into a 30-minute nightmare.”
The subway would have been, in Bethesda’s words, “the biggest prank in video game history.” A complete tunnel system, as was once planned, would probably not have pleased users. How do you feel about it? Would you have preferred the underground of the world above ground? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments. It is definitely more dangerous above, also thanks to monsters like this: A creature from Fallout is the perversion of a mythical being, taking out even super mutants
