Bethesda has said that Fallout 3 was meant to have a digital facsimile of the White House, but running out of development time, the team decided to put in a crater where the iconic building should have stood. The third game in the series is likely to be many player's first encounter with the post-apocalyptic franchise, as the previous two were PC exclusives with a more cult-like status. Once players step out into the world of Bethesda's 2008 RPG, they are greeted by the desolate wasteland of Washington, D.C., including some famous landmarks.

The Fallout games have been celebrating 25 years recently, with the first installment releasing in 1997, and many fans have no doubt been reminiscing about their encounters with the land that's been ravished by nuclear war, the irradiated denizens that inhabit it, and the first time they discovered the horrors of what went on in some of the vaults. Given that the third game is set in Washington, it has some notable real-world buildings, admittedly crumbling after the devastation, but there's just a crater where the White House should be.

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A recent video features some of the team from Bethesda, including Director Todd Howard, and it's revealed that the studio was fully intending to insert the government building into Fallout 3. During development, the team got to work on reimagining what structures — like the Jefferson Memorial, which serves as the main story's hook, and the Capitol — would look like when ruined by a nuclear blast. However, it turns out the developer ran out of time. Unable to create the White House, the team decided to turn it into a large hole in the ground instead, adding that it's probably one of the first buildings that would have been attacked anyway.

As well as famous landmarks, Fallout 3 has its own set of fictional locations, many of which have become quite iconic over the years. One such example is the city of Megaton, a settlement that centers around an unexploded atomic bomb. There's also Rivet City, a place that's built inside a dilapidated aircraft carrier, as well as the series of additional vaults that inhabit Washington.

As part of this series of 25th anniversary celebration videos, Bethesda has also spoken about all that green in Fallout 3. Howard and the others were engaged in debates about the shade of green they wanted to go for, with the intention of having a filter over the whole game, which gives it that distinctive tinge that some fans are not too fond of. Luckily, there are mods that can sort that out.

Fallout 3 is available now on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

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