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Fallout: New Vegasis Obsidian Entertainment’s standout 2010 entry into Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic role playing universe. Like it’s high-fantasy counterpartSkyrim,New Vegas’ success can be largely attributed to its sprawling questlnes, vibrant NPCs, and an impeccably high standard of writing. Rich philosophical themes weave throughout the narrative, and player choice has an obvious and meaningful impact on the plot. WhenFallout 76was released, it received plenty of criticism around its dialogue and plot, as didFallout 4before it. To some degree, this criticism was only intensified by the incredibly high standard set byNew Vegas’ writing.
AlthoughFallout:New Vegasstands out in terms of writing and plot, its FPS mechanics haven’t entirely aged well.New Vegasis a game stuck between warring FPS RPG sensibilities, and feels slightly antiquated as a result when played today. Of course, the game’s writing more than makes up for these pitfalls, but many fans are committed to creating the bestNew Vegasexperience possible.
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Like otherFalloutgames, the mod scene forNew Vegasis as diverse as it is massive. Some mods switch up NPCs, repopulate the wasteland, and even replace the core mechanical systems of the game. Some might argue that these intensely modded versions of the game barely resemble the original title. However, the majority of thebestFallout: New Vegasmodsstill pay homage to the original classic.
Fallout Nuevo Mexico
An incredibly ambitious recent mod for the game is Nuevo Mexico. There are several mods for Bethesda games that create entirely new worlds, and these can include massive, DLC-size mods like theFallout 4modFallout London.Nuevo Mexico sets a brand new post-apocalyptic adventure in New Mexico, complete with a brand new plotline, NPCs, several side quests, and more weapons for players to enjoy.
According to the original modder, a trip to the state inspired this unofficial expansion. As such, a lot of the city of Alberquerque is included in the mod, derived straight from the trip.FalloutNuevo Mexicoalso features the aliens-centric Roswell in it, hinted at when a character in the trailer wakes up in the middle of a flashing, futuristic room. Of course, this would work with the originalNew Vegasgame. One of the best quests inFallout: New Vegasis the “Come Fly With Me” story, which involves helping a gang of misfit ghouls into a space rocket (or not, if the player decides), so a focus on aliens would make perfect sense for this expansion mod.
New Vegas Anti-Crash
It wouldn’t be a Bethesda game without a litany of anti-crash mods, andNew Vegasis no different. This fan creation stablizes huge swathes of the game, which was notorious on PC for its frequent system failures. Thankfully, modders were quick to rush to Bethesda’s aid, creating a mod that sorted out a collection of coding clashes that would normally prove troublesome in the base game. It is only one of manyFallout: New Vegasanti-crash mods, but with 4.3 million downloads and over a hundred thousand upvotes, it is easily the most popular.
Although Bethesda games are notorious for crashes, mods like this one prove how committed players are to enjoying the incredible stories these games have. This mod also works with most of thebestFallout: New Vegasgraphics mods(and several others too), and is often included in popular modpacks. So, if players are looking to get involved in complete game revamps or brand new weapon mods,New VegasAnti-Crash is an essential mod to add to the experience. It arguably changes the game more than any other mod out there, as it allows forNew Vegasto be played largely without crashing.
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Project Nevada’s Fallout New Vegas Overhaul Mod
Project Nevada is perhaps the most radical gameplay revamp mod in existence, not just forFallout: New Vegas. The Project Nevada team correctly identified the central issue that a lot of modern players have with the older game, and that was how it played. WhileNew Vegas' NPCsmight have razor sharp wits, and its story beats punch with surprising agility, the game’s FPS mechanics are anything but. Unfortunately, baseNew Vegasfeels incredibly outdated to play.
Many of the quality of life components seen in thebest modern FPS gamesare just not present in the 2010 title. It even feels much more sluggish than its fantasy cousinSkyrim,which only released a year afterwards. One of the biggest changes that Project Nevada offers is to these FPS mechanics.
After installing Nevada, players can enable a much more fast paced, reactive style of FPS play, making it more similar togames likeFallout 4.This fixes the game’s glacially slow movement speed, adds some neat animations to guns, and just generally improves the moment-to-moment play dramatically. Interestingly, Project Nevada “offers” a whole variety of changes — and the word “offer” is important here, as it is also totally modular. Players can add or opt out of a whole litany of different modifications, picking and choosing exactly how they want their game to be.
JSawyer Ultimate Edition
There have been plenty ofvideo game director’s cutsrecently. However, not many of them come in the form of mods. Joshua Sawyer was the lead designer and director ofFallout: New Vegas, and his imprint can be seen all through the game. In spite of this, the director was not completely satisfied with the game on release. While his issues were not as game-breaking as some of the weirdest Bethesda bugs, he still wanted to address them post-launch.
As such, he released the JSawyer Ultimate Edition forFallout: New Vegasshortly after release. It should be noted that Sawyer did not feel slighted at all by the state of the released game, he just would have preferred a slightly adjusted difficulty level. While thedifficulty debate in gamingmight usually be hard-fought, Sawyer only wanted to give players an option to experience the game as it was during the design phase.
Although the JSawyer mod does make the game considerably harder, it does so in a very respectful way, even restoring some brilliantFallout: New Vegascut content. It’s fascinating to see a director get exact, fine-tuned control over the final state of a game, and that is reason enough for the JSawyer Ultimate Edition to be worthy of a download.
Fallout New Vegasis available on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
