Fallout Designer Says Pagans Were Banned

thegamer.com:

Before the Fallout 3 as we know it was released, original developer Black Isle Studios was working on its own sequel, codenamed Van Buren. Like the first two games, it was an isometric RPG, but it was cancelled after Interplay sold the IP to Bethesda.

A lot of ideas in Van Buren would appear in future games, like Caesar's Legion and Hoover Dam.

I sat down with Fallout 2 and Van Buren designer John Deiley last week, and he revealed a strange rule he ran up against when putting together a location called the Nursery - no Pagans.

To make a long story short, The Nursery was an alternative way of surviving the nuclear apocalypse to the vaults. It was a perfectly selected spot in America that could avoid radiation to thrive and sustain much of the pre-war environment, sort of like Noah's Ark.

The Nursery was founded by former Poseidon Energy scientist Derek Greenway.

"I did some research and chose Black Star Canyon in Arizona as its location because somebody took the time to research data and figure out wind patterns, weather patterns, and everything," Deiley says. "[They said,] 'Hey, if you put everything here, it won't get irradiated and die.'"

Deiley's plan was to have this last bastion of pre-war America be inhabited by Pagans and Wiccans, but Obsidian Entertainment co-founder and Van Buren co-lead designer Chris Avellone allegedly said no.

"He said, 'You are not to bring Paganism or Wiccanism or anything into the game,'" Deiley recounts. "I said, 'Well, Chris, what do you think happened to these people when the bombs went off? Did every one of them just vanish from the face of the Earth? When you consider the whole purpose of the Nursery, wouldn't they make the perfect tenants and tenders?' [He said,] 'I've made my decision' and just turned around and walked off."

If Van Buren were to have been released, we would have found carnivorous plant life instead of the Pagans that Deiley wanted. Our quest would have been to restore power and wipe out the