LogInLead Game Designer at Micro Forté Ed Orman shared that they were not told about Interplay's financial problems, but the issues added tension to the development process.
14° East
In a recent interview, Lead Designer of Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel Ed Orman shared that the development studio didn't know about the struggles that the game publisher they collaborated with was experiencing.
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, the first spin-off in the Fallout series, was developed from 1999 to 2001 by Micro Forté. At the time, its publisher, Interplay, was facing financial struggles and was on the brink of bankruptcy, so it had to seek third-party funding.
However, the developers collaborating with the company seemed unaware of its issues. Ed Orman said that he had no idea what was going on inside Interplay: "I do remember thinking that it was weird that we didn’t get to speak to more people that had worked on the original Fallouts. But I think they were busy working on something else." He continued: "It was nearer the end where it became more apparent that there were a whole bunch of other pressures going on from the Interplay side."
14° East
The reason why the developers didn't know about Interplay's issues might be that while developing Fallout Tactiscs, Micro Forté mostly interacted with Interplay's subsidiary, 14 Degrees East. Orman shared that might have insulated the devs from what was going on in the company. Also, despite the fact that the developers were not told about Interplay's financial problems, the issues still indirectly influenced them and added to the tension during development: "So that was the real pressure. That was the crunch time. That was the sleepless nights and the stupid overworking that the game industry tolerated at that time, and I tolerated that at the time."
Fallout Tactics was generally well-received, but some players criticized the game for elements differing from the first two titles, and even Todd Howard harshly took on the game.
Read the interview with Ed Orman here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.