Bethesda updated their official Fallout 3 website today with some concept art, a streaming music track and a countdown timer (currently at 34 days) for a teaser trailer on June 5. A follow-up post on the forum says new concept art will be posted as it is made available.
In related Fallout news, fan site No Mutants Allowed posted Black Isle Studio’s Van Buren tech demo from 2003. Van Buren was Black Isle’s codename for their Fallout 3 project. Follow-up comments from former Van Buren lead designer, J.E. Sawyer, says the demo is extremely buggy and has many unimplemented features. Combat is very basic, it is only in real-time (the game was originally going to offer both real-time and turned based gameplay), aiming weapons don’t work, and ammunition has not been implemented. The demo only features the last two areas in the tutorial.
Development on Black Isle and Van Buren/Fallout 3 ceased on December 8, 2003. In 2004, Bethesda licensed the Fallout rights for their own version of Fallout 3. Subsequently, just this past month, Bethesda acquired the Fallout rights from Interplay, former owner of Black Isle, for $5.75 million.
