Bethesda made Fallout 3's VATS system to avoid competing with Call of Duty and Battlefield, taking influence from KOTOR and Burnout: "Imagine the car parts are, like, eyeballs and guts!"

Fallout 3.

Gun-based combat was one of several challenges presented by Fallout 3 for Bethesda. At the time, the studio hadn't developed anything involving bullets for years, leaving a blank slate for how it'd tackle shooting. This led us to VATS, and several influences went into that system.

In a retrospective for Game Informer, Emil Pagliarulo, a quest designer on Fallout 3, says they were conscious of the competition in first-person shooters. "There are melee weapons in Fallout, but most of the combat in Oblivion is melee," he recalls.