Original Fallout Designer Expresses Slight Concern with Fallout 3, Fallout MMO

Though the Fallout franchise is now mostly out of original designer Tim Cain's hands, that doesn't mean he's going to ignore what's going on with the post-apocalyptic role-playing franchise he helped spawn while at Black Isle Studios.

"The biggest problem...is that the original games were designed to make you feel like you were one of the last people left on Earth," he observed to Edge Online. "With Fallout 3 and the online version, I'm curious about how they'll handle making the game not feel too crowded--making it feel like there's not much life left out there after the war."

"I do like what I've seen about Fallout 3," Cain said of the Bethesda-developed sequel, which hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 28. "It's their IP now and they've gone in a certain direction and it's very intriguing."

"It's not necessarily the direction I would've gone," he added, expressing curiosity as to how game's stats system fared in the transition from turn-based to real-time game mechanics. "I can tell you I have my Fallout 3 pre-ordered...I'm looking forward to Fallout 3 as a consumer, not a developer. I just want to play it and enjoy it."

While not part of the core development team, Cain has at least talked with Bethesda about Fallout 3 and Interplay regarding the Fallout MMO. As for his next project, Cain, now the design director at Carbine Studios, is believed to be working on the company's unannounced MMO project.