The Story

The story of Van Buren, as told by John Deiley in an interview, given probably in August 2004:

The game would begin with the player in a prison cell. Because of this the player was given a choice. He could be an innocent that was imprisoned because of some misunderstanding, or he could choose to be a criminal and take bonus traits that would bolster some of his skills.

The player would awaken in a prison cell, but not the one he remembered falling asleep in. Suddenly the floor rocks violently from an explosion and the player is knocked unconscious. When he awakens he finds his cell door open and a hole in the wall leading outside. Leaving the prison, he is under attack by some unknown assailant. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, the player flees into the night to explore his new world.

Unfortunately, his new found freedom may be short lived. The player is relentlessly pursued by robots who want to return him to the prison. As he explores the world and tries to outwit his pursuers, he begins to uncover an underlying plot. Why was he in a different prison than the one he fell asleep in? Why can't he remember being transferred? What was the attack on the prison about in the first place?

The game offered a myriad of new places to discover and explore. It spanned a good portion of Utah, Colorado, and the surrounding areas. The player could repair railways and locomotives for fast travel to distant locales with train stations. Or, he could find and repair several vehicles that allowed access to areas outside the railways. Or… the player could hoof it.

There were old friends and new enemies in the game. The Brotherhood of Steel was back but fading from glory. The player could rebuild them or destroy them. There was a group of fanatics who worshiped a mad goddess and her life/death religion. Mad the goddess may be, but the genetic knowledge she turned into a religion was helping the wasteland. The player could take her down and free the people from her tyranny (and possibly weaken them in the long run) or let her religion prosper (and build a heartier stock of people that could better survive the rigors of the wasteland). These were just two of many factions in the game.

There were recognizable places to visit like Denver, Boulder, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, and many others. There were new places to discover like the Twin Mothers, the Nursery, New Canaan, and many more.

In size the game was somewhere between Fallout 1 and 2. We decided to go for quality of content over size of the overall game. There is so much more I could say about the game, but I'll save that for another time.

However, just before your own plan is complete, the prison is attacked by the mysterious NCR-looking guys. This is not an "Unknown force rushes in to miraculously save the PC" situation. You already had things in hand; it's just that these dudes happened to interfere with you. Furthermore, these dudes don't specifically care about you. Not until Act 2, at least, when you've begun to fuck things up in the wasteland.

Once the attack has occurred, the PC's free to leave or stay. Unlike in BG2 or Lionheart, no powerful force chasing you for nefarious purposes. The prison's mainframe will eventually self-repair and start sending out retrieval bots to go grab any prisoners who wandered off, but it's not a life-or-death situation. Most PCs will deal with the prison supercomputer just to get it off their backs. Of course, in doing so, they'll find out more about what's going on.

The prison was also intended to be a town-like area the PC could build up. After all, it's a pretty safe place in the wasteland, and many of the prisoners don't want to go anywhere else. There's food and water and big thick walls all around. We were thinking the PC could use his skills to bring in supplies and make improvements and basically turn the prison into its own town.