Fallout's co-creator may be retired—but he's still advising on The Outer Worlds 2, and how it can avoid the 'huge chasms' of RPG design
Tim Cain's had a storied career—he's mostly known as the co-creator of the Fallout series, which has grown so big it's getting its own dang TV show—but he's also worked on Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Wildstar, Pillars of Eternity, and The Outer Worlds.
After 30 years of experience he's mostly retired, though he's been spending a lot of time imparting wisdom on his YouTube channel. However—as confirmed by a recent Rock Paper Shotgun interview, Cain is still occupying a consultation role on The Outer Worlds 2.
Cain explains his retirement as a desire for freedom: «There are games I want to make … I’ve been promised too many times, 'You’ll have final say, we’ll take care of you, this will all be great,' and that didn’t happen. I’m unwilling to believe it for the eighth time.»
That's not entirely shocking, considering what he's revealed about the development of Wildstar on his channel—while he maintained that Carbine was «one of the best companies» he'd ever worked at, he also told a story of company in-fighting that culminated in a dramatic meeting where he talked «for four hours» about an art director who had been fighting tooth-and-nail with him. «He didn't do anything different. So I gave up.»
Returning to the interview, Cain says that The Outer Worlds 2 is walking in his footsteps: «There’s stuff they're trying to do in the sequel (that of course I can’t talk about) that I get pulled in on because it’s similar to stuff I've done in the past.»
He's filling an advisory and cautionary role, warning Obsidian about the potential stumbles in making an RPG: «Sometimes it’s just me saying, 'I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but here are the pitfalls. Here are some of the huge, huge chasms that lie in your way, that
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