Bethesda said that they had planned to build a digital replica of the White House in Fallout 3, but because they ran out of development time, the team decided to put a crater in place of the iconic building.

The third game in the series is likely to be many gamers’ first encounter with the post-apocalyptic franchise, as the previous two were PC-exclusive and had a rather cult-like status. As players step out into Bethesda’s 2008 RPG world, they’ll be greeted by the desolate wasteland of Washington, D.C., including some famous landmarks.

The Fallout games recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, with the first instalment released in 1997. Many fans will no doubt recall their encounters with the land ravaged by nuclear war, the radiation-ravaged inhabitants that populated it, and the first discovery of the horrors that took place in specific vaults. Given that the third game is set in Washington, there are some remarkable real-world buildings, albeit crumbling after the devastation, but a crater replaces the White House.

A recent video features some of the Bethesda team, including director Todd Howard, and reveals that the studio fully intended to incorporate government buildings into Fallout 3. During development, the team got to work on reimagining what the buildings – such as the Jefferson Memorial, which serves as the anchor of the main story, and the Capitol – would look like if a nuclear blast destroyed them. But it turns out the developer ran out of time. Since the White House couldn’t be built, the team decided to make a big hole in the ground instead, adding that it was probably one of the first buildings that would have been attacked anyway.

In addition to famous landmarks, Fallout 3 also has its own fictional locations, many of which have become quite iconic over the years. One such example is the town of Megaton, a settlement centred around an unexploded nuclear bomb. There’s also Rivet City, a place built inside a dilapidated aircraft carrier, and a series of other vaults in Washington DC.

As part of a series of videos celebrating the 25th anniversary, Bethesda also talked about all the green in Fallout 3. Howard and the others discussed what shade of green they would like, intending to have a filter throughout the game that would give it that distinctive hue that some fans don’t like. Fortunately, some mods can fix this.