https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/06/why-interplays-original-fallout-3-was-canceled-20-years-ago/
OG Fallout producer says "Project Van Buren" ran out of time and money.
TL;DR - They ran out of money when they needed 18 months more time to finish the game.
I thought it would be something beyond that, but no, just financial woes.
Ars Technica normally has better articles than that, so it's rare that a tldr is better. This is one of those times though.
"Would that engine have been acceptable five years later [after Fallout 2]?"
I would have been totally fine with it if that meant we had a decent Fallout 3
Fallout 1/2 are excellent games even by objective modern standards.
While the UI is a bit archaic by modern standards, it gets the job done. Late 90s UI/UX was noticeable better than what RPG games offered in the early and mid 90s.
Some elements of the gameplay are also subpar in hindsight. I find I have to cheese a lot of the early game combat encounters and get in pretty tedious kiting sessions (and even save scumming).
I bought Fallout 3 on release, but I bounced off it after a few hours of play. I've been meaning to replay it, but just haven't gotten to it. New Vegas (technical glitches and limitations aside) is a whole different story though.
Hear hear. Bethesda's Fallout 3 and above are nice Bethesda games, but the art style never quite captured the whimsical grittiness of Fallout2.
Fallout 3 kinda overdid the grays and greens in its art style. It works for a post-apocalyptic wasteland of course, but everything starts to look same-y after a while. Especially in DC itself with its nightmarish metro system full of identical gray metal infrastructure.
Once you get to Megaton and start talking to the girl that gives you all the starter quests it's apparent the game isn't anywhere close to Fallout 1 & 2.
It's fun. But... Yeah.
I actually liked the downtown metro maze though. It's pretty unique. I feel like it was the proto vast underground dwemer ruins areas of Skyrim.
I just finished replaying Fallout 1 and I liked it. Sure the UI is clunky (especially the inventory management), but the story is pretty good. Of course it could be the rose-tinted glasses, but I tried to play other games from my childhood - Dune 2, Civilization 1, Alpha Centauri and I couldn't, those games are too dated for my liking.
For anyone interested in Van Buren there's a huge rabbit hole you can go down. The demo is available, there's several fan projects made to recreate elements of it (more than the one the article mentions), and Retcon Raider has some pretty good videos covering the design documents.
There's also other non canon and cancelled Fallout projects like Fallout Extreme and Fallout Tactics 2. They are neat for fan project world building.