Fallout 3 Trailer Next Month, ex-Fallout 3 Demo Now!

In what may very well be their last posting on Van Buren, No Mutants Allowed have finally dropped the bomb we've all been waiting for since 2003, more or less answering our question: "What if... Fallout 3 would have been made by Black Isle?". For those who haven't been following the "post-apocalyptic" evolution of the Fallout series, Van Buren used to be the project codename used by Black Isle Studios for their own little Fallout 3 game. A game that was cancelled along with BIS' closure in 2003, only to be later revived by Bethesda as a completely different project - much to the community's general disbelief in their ability to re-capture the Fallout feeling.

But getting back to the bomb, this week NMA released the Van Buren tech demo, which is certainly as close as we'll ever get to playing Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3. The package is a hefty 241 MB in size and it offers multiple paths to victory, along with multiple bugs of course, like back in the series' early days. NMA also has a guide for the demo, if you feel like playing (with) it a little more.

While waiting for the download to finish (and if you don't mind ruining the surprise), there's also a gameplay trailer of Black Isle's Van Buren on YouTube, appropriately accompanied by the "Dream a Little Dream of Me" song...

And speaking of dreams and trailers, Bethesda has a teaser of their own coming up on the (real) Fallout 3 website, in just 32 days. Let the countdown begin!

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)