Fallout Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Fallout Wiki
FO1 E3 96 Village

Reconstructed E3 village, with known screenshots superimposed on the public demo map.

FO1 E3 96 Cave

Reconstructed E3 caves, with known screenshots superimposed on actual Radscorpion cave map.

The Fallout E3 interactive demo was shown on May 18, 1996, as part of Fallout's promotional campaign that included handouts and other marketing material.[1]

Many contemporary publications did not report on Fallout, preferring other, more visually appealing games, and it is difficult to even locate Fallout on Interplay's E3 listings from 1996.[2]

Background[]

In contrast with the publicly-available demo version, it used an early variant of the Junktown map populated with simple characters created specifically for the demo (and using already created assets, as is the case with the Elder). Unnamed in the demo itself, the village stood in for Shady Sands, according to the script list.[3]

At this point, Fallout was already known under this name, but retained the GURPS mechanics. The demo was also used to record the early 1997 preview for the game. The idea of using Junktown to demonstrate the basic gameplay of the game was reused for the aforementioned Fallout demo, as Scrapheap.

Gameplay[]

The player, called Leona in the character inventory screen, would have entered the unnamed village and be able to interact with several characters, before ultimately heading off to the radscorpion caves to fight off the carapaced menace. The demo showed the core functionality of the game, including the GURPS character and combat system, dialogue, bartering, character reactions, and questing.

Although many assets were already finished and ready for use, the writing was still unfinished and several items had placeholder names. The Desert Eagle .44 was named Magnum and the AK-112 assault rifle was named the Colt rifle. All images come from the original GURPS website, seen here.

Characters[]

Behind the scenes[]

The elder uses Morpheus' talking head and can be seen in pre-release Fallout materials and certain merchandise or packaging.

Gallery[]

All images come from the original GURPS website, here and here

References[]

  1. Fallout Bible 1
  2. E3 exposition listing (French), also includes a list of gaming publications that reported on E3.
  3. Scripts.lst: "elder.int  ; The Elder from Shady Sands # local_vars=10
    barter.int  ; The Barterman from Shady Sands # local_vars=10
    bguard.int  ; Only a bodyguard from Shady Sands for the Barterman # local_vars=5
    cow.int  ; It's just a cow."
  4. MASTER.DAT
  5. Fallout homepage
  6. ELDER.MSG
  7. BARTER.MSG
  8. BGUARD.MSG
  9. SAMMY.MSG
  10. SAMMY2.MSG
Advertisement