With good timing, the modders behind the Van Buren remake in Fallout: New Vegas have launched a new teaser trailer.
UnitedWestTeam launched the teaser, which units up Fallout: The New West, the fan-made complete conversion mod for Fallout: New Vegas impressed by Fallout: Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3 that was in improvement at Black Isle Studios in the early 2000s earlier than the franchise moved over to Bethesda.
Why is that this well-timed? As a result of Van Buren would have been set in post-apocalyptic Colorado, which is precisely the place Amazon’s Fallout TV sequence is headed for Season 3.
Fallout: The New West goals to adapt the core narrative threads of Van Buren and switch them into a totally playable story constructed in the New Vegas engine. Anticipate fashionable gameplay techniques, expanded roleplaying alternatives, and “the mechanical depth and tone that outlined traditional Fallout,” the modders stated.
Right here’s the official blurb:
Fallout: The New West is a fan-made complete conversion mod for Fallout: New Vegas. In some ways, it tells the similar broad story envisioned by Fallout: Van Buren, however restructured and expanded to kind a cohesive, playable expertise. The undertaking’s major narrative purpose is to take the disparate plot threads and unfinished ideas discovered in the unique design paperwork, together with for instance, the NCR–Brotherhood battle, the Nice Tribal Battle between Caesar’s Legion and the Daughters of Hecate, the struggle for the soul of the Mormon State and way more, and weave them into a satisfying, unified narrative that adheres to the fundamental plot as described in the design paperwork.
Gamers assume the position of a new protagonist, launched from captivity in 2253, referred to as “the Prisoner,” and the story is about in an alternate continuity that predates and reinterprets the occasions of Fallout: New Vegas. Sadly as a result of many Van Buren ideas being folded into FNV, we can’t set the undertaking in the similar timeline. Our secondary purpose is to include a lot of the fashionable gameplay conveniences launched by Fallout: New Vegas and its greater than 15 years of modding, whereas preserving the distinctive mechanics and design quirks of traditional Fallout discovered in the unique design paperwork. A lot of Fallout’s unique allure is an acquired style, and one which we imagine stays value buying.
It sounds thrilling, and given the success of Fallout: London, which had Bethesda’s blessing, it might even have a likelihood of survival. Certainly, a new demo is seemingly due out quickly (an preliminary demo, which launched beneath the identify Fallout Revelation Blues, got here out final 12 months). This alternate begin demo beneath the new identify of Fallout: The New West might be adopted up with the entirety of Act 1 of the recreation as a vertical slice, the modders stated.
If Fallout: The New West does make it to launch, it’s going to see Van Buren realized — albeit in fan-made kind — 20 years after it fell by the wayside. In 2024, Fallout creator Tim Cain revealed new info on the way it ended up canceled amid important monetary issues at Interaction.
Cain, who labored on the first two, much-loved Fallout video games in the mid-to late 90s earlier than leaving Interaction to begin a new studio known as Troika Video games, revealed that in the center of 2003, an unnamed Interaction vp requested him to play the Van Buren prototype, saying: “I don’t assume they’ll get it achieved, so I’m simply going to cancel it. However when you look over it and provides me an estimate there’s a likelihood I wouldn’t cancel it.”
Cain stated he performed the prototype for 2 hours and requested the improvement group a variety of questions earlier than delivering his verdict to the vp. “I stated, ‘I’m satisfied in 18 months you may have a actually good recreation shipped.’ And he stated, ‘huh, may or not it’s achieved any quicker?’ And I used to be like, ‘oh, shoot, I’ve stated too lengthy.’ I stated, ‘nicely, even when you did a demise march crunch I don’t assume you may do it quicker than 12, and then you definately’d be delivery one thing that was unbalanced and buggy, and the group can be destroyed. So I don’t suggest that.’
“And he stated, ‘OK, thanks.’ As we walked out he mainly defined any reply over six months was going to end result in him having to cancel it, which means the reply I simply gave obtained the recreation canceled. However he was going to cancel it anyway. He thought it couldn’t be achieved in six months, and I simply confirmed that to him.”
In line with Cain, the cancellation of Van Buren was, finally, about cash; Interaction’s dire monetary scenario meant it merely didn’t have sufficient money to fund greater than six months of additional improvement. Interaction went on to shut Black Isle Studios and reduce its total employees. The corporate launched the console spinoff Fallout: Brotherhood of Metal in 2004 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, nevertheless it was not sufficient. That very same 12 months, Interaction introduced a licensing cope with The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda for future Fallout video games, and in 2007, Interaction bought the Fallout IP to Bethesda outright. The remainder is historical past.
And when you’re questioning about the Fallout TV present’s journey to Colorado, take a look at what co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet and even Todd Howard himself have needed to say about it.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.