F4NV has been in production since at least 2017 - and while they’ve been posting work-in-progress tidbits for some time now, this week the collected mod-makers behind F4NV released a major “showcase” trailer for the ambitious mod, just in time for the Obsidian spin-off’s tenth anniversary. Good grief, has it been that long already?
Sure enough, it does very much look like Fallout: New Vegas rendered in the more up-to-date stylings of Bethesda’s Fallout 4. And while it may seem petty, the sheer jank of New Vegas’s foundations were a barrier to me getting invested in what I’m told is an extremely good wasteland RPG, actually. Granted, Fallout 4’s technical base has its own share of problems, leading the mod team towards some spine-breaking problems with combining the two games. Fallout 4 does undoubtedly have better rootin’, tootin’ and shootin’ than the Fallout 3 era games, mind. That’s something the trailer is keenly aware of, flaunting a whole lot more exploding heads and first-person blasting than it does any sort of ethical dialogue dilemma. Of course, the folks who are excited for a mod like F4NV are probably the sort of folks who could recite their favourite New Vegas questlines from memory. That’s if you even consider New Vegas a classic, mind. Scrolling all the way back in the RPS archives reveals this absolute scorcher of a Fallout: New Vegas review from Quintin Smith. Brutal, Quinns. Absolutely brutal. It’s all moot now, anyway. For better or worse, Fallout 76 has defined what Bethesda consider a modern Fallout game looks like, while Obsidian are off doing their own thing with The Outer Wilds, Grounded and the recently-announced Avowed. Funnily enough, they’re now both doing so under the umbrella of tech monolith Microsoft. Fallout 4: New Vegas still seems a good ways away from completion. But if you want to keep track of progress, the team are posting regular screenshots and clips over on their Facebook and Twitter feeds. Disclosure: Turns out one of my old Uni pals (Thomas “Otellino” Mitchell) is a contributing level designer on this thing? Small world, huh.
