Abstract
Problem: What does Fallout's creator most regret about the development of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2?
Approach: Tim Cain answers a viewer question, splitting his answer into separate regrets for each game, drawing on his development notes and memory of the production timeline.
Findings: For Fallout 1, the biggest regret is companion AI — companions were added too late and inherited enemy NPC code, leading to infamous friendly fire issues. For Fallout 2, it's the cut "Abbey of Lost Knowledge" location, a pacifist order preserving pre-war knowledge that would have served as a philosophical counterpoint to the Brotherhood of Steel.
Key insight: Both regrets stem from the same root cause: insufficient development time. The companion problems were later solved in Arcanum, while the Abbey concept — directly inspired by A Canticle for Leibowitz — never found a home in any shipped game.
Source
Fallout 1: Companion AI
Tim's biggest regret for Fallout 1 is the companion system. Companions were added so late in development that there was almost no time to write proper AI for them.
How Companions Actually Worked
Companions were initially handled via script — they followed the player and shared the player's hostility flags (anything hostile to the player, they'd attack). When Tim had to add companion-specific code, he had almost no time, so they ended up using the enemy NPC AI code he'd already written.
This created the infamous problems: behaviors that were fun or acceptable when enemies did them became infuriating when companions did them. The classic example is Ian with an Uzi — a super mutant spraying through its own allies to hit you was entertaining, but Ian doing the same thing to you on full auto was decidedly less so. Combined with critical failure mechanics (weapon explosions, friendly fire crits), companions could be genuinely dangerous to the player.
What Tim Wanted But Couldn't Build
Beyond combat AI, Tim had a list of companion features he never had time to implement:
- "Ask to step aside" — When a companion blocked a doorway or container, you could ask them to take one step in an open direction. This was literally the first piece of code Tim wrote when starting Fallout 2, and he made it so level designers could flag certain NPCs to refuse (e.g., a guard deliberately blocking a door).
- Equipment paper doll — Giving companions gear and having them equip it via a proper inventory UI like the player's, instead of the clunky system that shipped.
- Companion leveling — Each companion would have a level-up scheme, gaining power as the player progressed to stay useful throughout the game.
- "Wait here" command — Telling a companion to stay put while you handled something dangerous. Tim specifically notes this would have helped Dogmeat survive the Military Base and its flickering force field doorways.
The Arcanum Connection
Tim points to Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Obscura as the realization of what he wanted companions to be. Nearly all of the missing Fallout companion features — leveling schemes, wait commands, better equipment management — were implemented in Arcanum.
Fallout 2: The Abbey of Lost Knowledge
For Fallout 2, Tim's regret is entirely different: a cut location called The Abbey of Lost Knowledge.
Inspiration
The Abbey was directly inspired by Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel that was broadly influential on Fallout's world but which Tim wanted to honor with a specific, direct homage.
The Concept
The Abbey represented an alternative philosophy for preserving Old World knowledge, distinct from the Brotherhood of Steel:
- Knowledge over artifacts — The Abbey cared about blueprints, engineering manuals, and textbooks rather than the artifacts themselves. They wanted to preserve the understanding of how things were made, not just hoard the items. The Brotherhood, by contrast, was more interested in collecting artifacts.
- Pacifism — The Abbey was completely pacifistic, which raised an interesting design question Tim wanted to explore: how would such a place survive in the wasteland?
- Open access — Unlike the secretive Brotherhood, the Abbey would let the player freely use their resources — a library for looking things up, possibly a crafting system, and a research hub that other quests could point to ("go to the Abbey to find out where this military base is" or "learn how this item works").
Planned Questlines
- Retrieval quests — The Abbey would send the player to find rare blueprints, manuals, and technical documents.
- Brotherhood conflict — Eventually the Brotherhood of Steel would learn about the Abbey, creating a major conflict. Tim envisioned multiple resolutions: wiping out the Brotherhood presence, negotiating a truce, or potentially merging the Abbey into the Brotherhood as a "knowledge vault" — though the Brotherhood would want to make it secret and proprietary.
Why It Was Cut
Fallout 2 was scoped bigger than Fallout 1 but had less than a year of development time. Even by February (before Tim left the project), they knew the fall deadline was tight. The Abbey was cut very early in development — Tim believes even before his departure.
Thematic Significance
Tim sees the Abbey as a missed opportunity to reflect and critique the Brotherhood of Steel by showing that there are different ways of preserving the past beyond "find it and keep it for yourself." The Brotherhood could have been a very different organization if the Abbey existed as a philosophical mirror.
Common Thread
Both regrets share the same root cause: time pressure. Fallout 1's companion system suffered from late additions with no runway for polish. Fallout 2's Abbey was cut because an ambitious scope met an aggressive schedule. In both cases, the ideas were sound — one eventually shipped in another game (Arcanum), while the other remains a "what if" in Tim Cain's notes.