Scott Bennie, a designer who helped to write and design Fallout along with Chris Avellone (who later wrote Planescape: Torment and is now the creative director at Obsidian) and Fallout 2 hero Chris Taylor, felt that Fallout's bleak setting struck a particular chord with audiences of the time. "After years of generic fantasy RPGs, Fallout was a shock to the system, both for the designers (who got to cut loose after working on fantasy projects like Stonekeep and Descent to Undermountain) and for the audience... There weren't that many post-apocalypse games out at the time we did Fallout," says Bennie. "Wasteland was excellent, but it was severely hamstrung by the limitations of the textual display. Origins' Bad Blood was designed to be an action game. The less said about EA's Fountain of Dreams, the better. As a result of the genre's scarcity - and the appropriateness of graphic violence, harsh language, and a gritty theme - it was easy for Fallout to stand out. Being christened the 'spiritual successor' to Wasteland, one of the most beloved RPGs up to that time, made it even easier to get noticed."​