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First reported by DSO Gaming, the United West Team modding group has released its first demo for Revelation Blues, an attempt to tell the story of Black Isle Studios’ canceled Fallout 3 project, code named Van Buren, as a mod for Fallout: New Vegas. Van Buren has a deep connection to New Vegas’ story, and even before 2010, was a bit of a “what might have been” source of fascination for a certain brand of RPG sicko.
The demo centers on a particularly interesting area that was slated for Van Buren, “Burham Springs,” a largely abandoned town located on top of a perpetually burning coal seam that resembles the real-life Centralia Mine Fire. The town’s formative disaster was caused by NCR soldiers attempting to smoke out fleeing powder gangers after an assault on the Hoover Dam, and the resulting mutants were deemed “gehennas” and “molechs” by residents of New Canaan.
Already, you can see how Obsidian, itself founded by Black Isle veterans, formed New Vegas with ideas from Van Buren. With Burham, we’ve got a mature NCR blundering into imperial atrocities, powder gangers, the Hoover Dam, and New Canaan. Van Buren was also to feature Caesar’s Legion, Joshua Graham, and the Big MT as part of its story. That intrinsic connection makes New Vegas a fun, fitting host for a reimagining of what Van Buren might have been.
Revelation Blues also isn’t the only game in town for Van Buren revivals: Developer Adam Lacko has been working for years on Project Van Buren. Rather than a reimagining, PVB looks to reconstruct Van Buren with its original mechanics, perspective, and art style using Black Isle’s development documentation and a leaked build of the game.
Lacko’s shared an update on the project as recently as this January on X, but I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Lacko was brought on as lead developer for New Blood’s Fallout-inspired, retro-futurist CRPG. The bad news is that this is understandably his primary focus over PVB, and the project is likely still a ways away from completion.
Before coming back for air to the Fallout 3 we actually got, there’s one more layer to the canceled Fallout 3 iceberg: Troika Games’ pitch that was reworked into a standalone RPG when Bethesda secured the rights, and ultimately canceled when the company went under. Troika was founded by Fallout 1 devs Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson, and the studio produced three of the most inventive, unique, and replayable CRPGs ever.
I don’t necessarily mourn Troika’s Fallout 3 as much as I do the incredible-sounding sci-fi setting it pivoted into with the project, one that combined magic with retro-futurism on an alien world very different from Earth. The primary evidence of it that remains is a short demo video on YouTube, and a video by Tim Cain on the subject.
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Kurt Indovina
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