YMMV / Fallout: Van Buren

• Broken Base: One of the biggest between old-school fans and post–Fallout 3 fans.
  • Old-School fans have used Van Buren as evidence of Bethesda's dubious treatment of the franchise due to their games (Fallout 3 and 4) not being as deep and engaging as the leaked documentation shows.
  • Post–Fallout 3 fans claim that at best Van Buren would had been a Cult Classic, eventually forgotten by the masses or could have led to fan outrage over the tiniest things or possible streamlining/changes of the mechanics, with them also claiming that old-school fans have put a never-released game on a pedestal without even playing it themselves just because the game looked good on paper.
• Funny Moments: The lowest level of Hoover Dam (which was sealed and supposed to be overrun by incredibly dangerous mutants and toxins) was nicknamed "Satan's asshole" in the design documents.
• Nightmare Fuel: There was supposed to be this Ghost Town called Burning Springs, a pre-war mining town that the NCR resettled to exploit the leftover coal. Unfortunately a Powder Ganger riot broke out and set fire to the coal under the town, turning the town into Mordor. That's not all! Some of the people in the town didn't die, they turned into mutants called Gehennas, shambling humanoids covered in tar and oil and constantly on fire, who can spew toxic smoke. And then there were the Molechs who were even more dangerous and barely humanoid.
• Vindicated by History: The game was cancelled in favour of a spin-off based on a proven formula, after the lackluster performance of CRPG's at that time, that disregarded most of everything that came before in favour of a noughties view of awesome. After poring over its extensive leaked dev documentation, the game has been lauded with nearly universal acclaim from the old-school fans of the original two games.
  • Not only that, but most of it is considered semi-canon and included on the Fallout Wiki.
  • Certain elements of the game would be recycled in Fallout: New Vegas, like Hoover Dam (with the Chinese Stealth suit) being controlled by the NCR, Alice McLafferty, Arcade Gannon, Joshua Graham, Caesar's Legion, the Big MT, Powder Gangs, New Canaan and an ending where an entity named Ulysses is involved in nuking the world and the player character can find a way to abort the launch or retarget the nukes.
  • Other elements of the game like the Chinese Stealth Suit and orbital kill satellites with an ending where you have to choose which location they target were reused in Fallout 3. Fallout 76 meanwhile ended up featuring a crashed space station (Valiant-1), possibly inspired by B.O.M.B-02 which was supposed to have crashed in the Grand Canyon and would need to be visited as part of the main quest.

---