It was initially intended to use Steve Jackson Games' system GURPS, but Interplay eventually developed their own system called 'SPECIAL' for the game. Fallout was conceptualized as a game where the player could do whatever they wanted. The game was treated as low-budget by Interplay and was outsourced to the role-playing game division of Interplay, though it would cost $3 million.
Tim Cain is the creator of Fallout, working on it as early as 1994. The protagonist of Fallout is an inhabitant of a Vault, part of a network of long-term nuclear shelters, who is forced to venture out into the wastes to find a replacement part to fix their Vault's failing water supply system and save their fellow Vault dwellers. The game has a post-apocalyptic and chiefly retro-futuristic setting, taking place in the mid-22nd century decades after a global nuclear war. Fallout is a 1997 role-playing game developed and published by Interplay Productions.