Fallout's most iconic gameplay system was almost cut from Bethesda's games — "We only just got that working by the time we shipped"

The Fallout games are massive RPGs strung together with a variety of different systems and mechanics, but the one that's unique to the franchise — and arguably its most iconic gameplay feature — is the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS.

VATS carried over from the original isometric Fallout games, and is a special function of your Pip-Boy. When used, it slows time bullet time-style (it works in real time in Fallout 76) and allows you to lock onto an foe's individual body parts, with a chance-to-hit percentage on each calculated by your character's stats and skills.

While you don't need to use VATS in combat, many love to because of how satisfying it is — and because critically wounding different limbs can disable certain enemy attacks or hamper their movement speed, it's a very deadly and effective mechanic with the right build.

Thus, it's become a staple of the franchise, and has been in every one of its games. But while it's hard to imagine a Fallout title that doesn't let you pop a raider's head off or cripple a deathclaw leg with VATS, it turns out the mechanic almost didn't make it into Bethesda's first game after acquiring the series, Fallout 3.

Per an interview with Edge (thanks, GamesRadar), Fallout 3 art lead Istvan Pely notes that for a time, Bethesda wasn't sure if anyone was going to like how it adapted VATS to a three-dimensional space. "There was a long period where it was like, 'is this even fun? Is this worth doing at all? Is anyone even going to use this?'"

A big issue for the studio was how VATS' camera positioning worked, and "to make sure it didn't get stuck behind an object," it coded a completely new logic algorithm. This system took "so much time" to refine and finish that "we only just got that working by the time we shipped," Pely said.

Fallout 4 - I screamed the whole time - YouTube

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With how big of a role VATS plays in Fallout's moment-to-moment gameplay, it's rather shocking to hear that the mechanic just barely got over the finish line before Fallout 3's launch.

Again, it's hard to imagine the games without it, and I'd argue Fallout 3 would have been worse with its absence; its gunplay feels quite dated, but VATS did a lot to make it tolerable.

This also begs the question: if Fallout 3 didn't get VATS, would we have seen it come to Obsidian Entertainment's 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas, or Bethesda's next entry Fallout 4? It's impossible to say, but it sure is interesting to think about. I do think Fallout 3 would have been criticized for feeling too clunky without VATS, perhaps driving developers to make sure the system was present in future releases (and improve gameplay feel, as they did with Fallout 4 and 76).

One thing's for certain: without VATS, we wouldn't have one of the best videos on the internet in which a Fallout 4 player uses it to target a Fat Man-wielding baddie, watches in horror as a nuke slowly whistles towards them while their character awkwardly reloads with the system's shaky action cam, and then subsequently lucks out as the projectile misses by a whisker.

Note that all the Fallout games are playable on Xbox systems and Windows PC with Xbox Game Pass (though the old-school '90s titles are PC-only).

Do you use VATS a lot when you play Fallout games, do you aim manually instead, or do you use a combination of both approaches? Let me know what your playstyle is like in the comments.

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