…but once again, there’s that particular “but,” which Tim Cain elaborated on in a video, and his concerns are indeed valid…

Cain doesn’t oppose the idea of a Fallout remaster, but he has a rather long list of obstacles that such a project would face. Legal issues are one major potential hurdle. Bethesda would need to green-light the whole thing, and presumably, the music would also need to be relicensed. Even if all parties agreed (and as we’ve learned from No One Lives Forever over the past 25 years, that’s not guaranteed), the age of Fallout presents another problem. The game’s audio and video libraries are proprietary, and the game was compiled using the old Watcom compiler, which is itself outdated, buggy, and very limited in capability. Cain has the original Watcom CD, but his PC lacks an optical drive. Additionally, it’s not compatible with newer versions of DirectX…

But legal problems and technical hurdles can be overcome. According to Cain, remastering the Fallout experience from a subjective approach could yield interesting results. Some bugs are obviously problems, but others contribute to the Fallout feel. For example, Cain says he could easily make the companions’ AI much better, but what’s better is subjective. Some bugs would disappear, but some entertaining quirks that people love would too. For instance, Ian wouldn’t accidentally unload a clip from his Uzi into you…

Cain listed some things that could be changed but perhaps shouldn’t be. For example, you can finish Fallout without ever finding the water chip at the center of the game, or there’s a bug in the code that prevents critical successes in chess games against the ZAX supercomputer. Both are technically bugs, but at this point, they’re well-established parts of the Fallout mythos. Should they be fixed in a remaster? The user interface is also worth mentioning.

“People really hated that long tape-style inventory and the fact that when you added an item, it went to the bottom, so you had to scroll all the way down. A simple fix would be to have the most recently added items at the top of the list. What if there was a full ‘sort’ option—sort by weight, value, or recently added items? What if we made it a grid instead of a strip? That would be much simpler. But how much are we now changing the original Fallout? Is this a quality-of-life thing, or are you making a new game?”

“I’m not even sure I want to do this, and as you watch this video, you’ll understand why. I’d love to dive in and work on some of these technical issues. The point is, working on such a remaster should be enjoyable. Discussions about these things should be fun. I don’t want to argue about them, but I do want to discuss them in detail. I love doing this. Whoever has to remake this game will understand that some of these debates will turn into arguments, and some of these subjective decisions have no right answer, and people will argue about what to do,” Cain said.

There’s something to what he says because fans would discover certain things in no time…

Source: PC Gamer