The lead character in one of Fallout 3's least loved entries claims that over-enthusiasm was the cause of its hated hairy Deathclaws. 'At time, I knew it was sacrilege.'

The pre-Bethesda Fallouts are a strange space. They're still regarded by die-hards like the Only True Fallouts, but they're largely unplayed outside of gamers of a particular vintage. It's me, not the game. Fallout Tactics is a Brotherhood of Steel RPG, developed by Micro Forte and released in 2001. Critics liked it, but because of its departure from the original games, many fans have dismissed it.

Sounds familiar? Jeremy Peel sat down recently with Fallout Tactics lead designer Ed Orman to discuss the game's creation and how heated the discussion became about this version the Wasteland. Orman recalls some of the most common complaints they heard from fans. "This isn’t a Fallout" was one of them. This is not Fallout 3 You messed up the lore in these places. You put in hairy deathclaws, you don't use charisma properly and all those things."

This may have contributed to Bethesda's decision not to include Fallout Tactics in the official canon (because "it sucked") I mean, hairy Deathclaws? Micro Forte's reaction to this may have been because Tactics wasn't a mainline game, but they went all-in with the lore. It was the days before lore books, and the best you could hope for was a few pages from the original team.

Orman says that there was some [lore] document, but a lot of reverse-engineering. "That's why we got a few things wrong or went off the beaten track a bit at times, because there was so many. I agree with your assessment: we didn't have to do what we did, but I liked the setting and wanted to write a large story.

"We could have done individual missions." We could have done much less than what we did. But I wanted to tie everything together. Fallout 1 and 2, both had a story that went from beginning to end, as well as many different side stories. I love to explore those things too. "That's what I was going to make."

This doesn't answer the question as to how we ended up with hairy, deathclaws. Orman recalls that "Chris Taylor was our main source for lore, and other things like that. And then whatever else they could find for me," "But there was so much in [Tactics] I'm not shocked we, you know made hairy deathclaws. We're going to make a hairy Deathclaw because it looks like the sprite has it. I think that there are plenty of reasons to do variations on deathclaws. "But at the time, it was sacrilege."

A Fallout Tactics 2 was planned, but it didn't sell enough to justify its continuation. It's still one of the strangest byroads of a universe that will only get bigger. And regardless of what Bethesda claims about its canonicity, it seems to have influenced subsequent games.

Orman is philosophical in his view of the place of Tactics in the Fallout universe. "There are little bits and pieces from Tactics that you can see now as canon, just by the back door. That's enough for me. "I don't want anything more."