Fallout: The Original Intro Story

1. The Discovery

Tim Cain explains that two separate conversations prompted him to dig through his archives. Scott Campbell (in an earlier video) recalled that Cain came up with the Vault idea after their brainstorming sessions — and even said he'd "dreamed about it." Jason Taylor separately mentioned that he came up with the water chip concept, but that it was well after the Vault already existed.

This gave Cain a timeline: the Vault idea had to come after the fall 1994 brainstorms but before Jason Taylor's water chip idea in early 1995. After searching through archived files and paper notes, he found a document called "My Story," dated January 2, 1995.

2. What Existed Before the Document

By the end of the fall 1994 brainstorming sessions, the team had decided:

• The game would be post-apocalyptic
• Junktown existed as a concept (referenced in a December 1994 production meeting note)
• Mutants and ghouls existed
• Very little else — particularly, they had no idea who the player was or how the game would start

Over Christmas break, Cain chewed on the problem and wrote his intro.

3. The Original Intro Text

The document describes "GERPS Survivors: The Vault" — a subterranean fallout shelter, a deep cavern expanded and modified to house a thousand people for years after a nuclear holocaust. Key elements:

• A small town of homes, businesses, and government offices located hundreds of feet inside a granite mountain
• Geothermal power, a great cistern with recycled water, an atmospheric scrubbing plant, and crates of irradiated food packets
• A ponderous steel airlock door set into a reinforced concrete frame

3.1. The Day of the Event

Less than 100 people made it inside. Nobody heeded the emergency broadcasts — sirens and loudspeakers had always been false alarms before. So most people stayed home. And most people died.

The hundred who made it sat in the entrance cavern, waiting for the "all clear" that never came. The door closed automatically. For hours, a great rhythmic pounding was heard. Radios and televisions produced only static. Radiation monitors kept rising.

3.2. Life in the Vault

Gradually, people realized they were staying. They moved into housing areas designed by now-dead architects. They ate the food, drank the water, breathed the scrubbed air. Slowly, they adjusted.

Over the years, radiation levels dropped. Several volunteers went outside — each had learned survival skills, each left armed. None ever returned.

3.3. The Player's Departure

Now, 80+ years after the event, food supplies are dangerously low. Rationing has begun. Someone needs to go outside to find food, find people, find out what happened. Straws are drawn. You draw the short one.

4. Cain's Self-Critique: Advantages

Cain documented four advantages of his own story:

4.1. Player and Character Share Ignorance

Both the player and the character know nothing about the outside world. Cain specifically notes his dislike of amnesia as a narrative device — here, ignorance is justified. The character genuinely grew up underground. No need to awkwardly explain factions and geography to someone who should already know them.

4.2. Explains Why You're Alone

Nobody wanted to go outside — everyone who left before never came back. That's why they drew straws. You weren't selected for being the best or brightest (which conveniently supports dumb dialogue characters later). You were random. You got the worst gun — the good ones went out with previous volunteers. You're alone, ill-equipped, and following in the footsteps of people who all died.

4.3. Justifies the Existing World

Eighty years provides three or four generations — more than enough time for settlements like Junktown to have formed organically. The timeline was designed to fit locations they'd already begun designing.

4.4. Gives the Player Purpose

Cain calls this a "McGuffin" but notes this one actually mattered — you had to find food (later the water chip) or people would die. It provided direction and importance without making the player "special." You're directed and important while being entirely ordinary.

5. Cain's Self-Critique: Disadvantages

5.1. Inherent Time Limit

The food shortage creates a built-in timer. Even in January 1995, Cain already disliked time limits — a tension that would persist throughout Fallout's development.

5.2. The Vault as Safety Net

Cain worried that having the Vault as a home base undermined the feeling of being scared and alone. The player could always retreat to safety, rest, heal, and ask NPCs questions. This both reduced tension and created a writing burden — the narrative designers would have to support dialogue for all those Vault inhabitants.

6. The Alternatives He Considered

Cain wasn't fully committed. He wrote two alternatives:

1. Cryogenic suspension — the player wakes up from cryo (an idea that wouldn't surface in the series until Fallout 4, twenty years later)
2. Last survivor — the player lives in a ramshackle shelter with a few others. Mutants attack and kill everyone except you. This explained being alone, having no safe haven, and introduced the big baddies immediately

7. What the Team Made of It

Cain emphasizes that this document was a seed, not a finished design. The team took it and made it "a whole lot better":

• Jason Taylor replaced the food shortage with the water chip, creating a more specific and compelling quest hook
• The concept expanded from "The Vault" (singular) to multiple Vaults
• Dialogue and world-building were refined collaboratively

Cain reflects that after his experience on Temple of Elemental Evil, he thought he should "never write again" — but looking back at this document, he likes what he wrote. The document also notably references GERPS (Generic Engine for Role-Playing Systems), confirming the team was still committed to the GURPS license at that point.

8. References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieqw-dwsXIA