The fan-made Fallout: New California mod will launch on October 23rd (the same day the nuclear bombs of the Great War dropped in-universe), as announced via ModDB.
This total conversion mod for Fallout: New Vegas, previously known as Project Brazil, will be an unofficial prequel to Obsidian’s 2010 game. Fallout: New California has been in development for five years and the remaining time will be used to polish remaining bugs and to add some side quests.
Related Fallout: New California, Prequel Mod for Fallout: New Vegas, Has Entered Beta
We’ll be having BETA sign-ups in July if anyone would like to come test the mod — the Main quest is now feature complete in the core narratives, and we have a cap over the parts that aren’t accessible — yet.
That said, the mod is now art locked! We have our BSA files set, the story works, bugs are minimal…
…so why October and not now?
Because something is missing — and all the testing guys noticed — is side quests. Again, not the end of the world, but you hit this story with huge replete branches 16,000 lines of dialogue deep and you expect some little moments with characters off to the side of the big arcs, and there just aren’t that many of note. Again, because there was no one to code it! I’d also like to take time to revise some plot holes and gaps in the open possibilities that appeared in testing, and more streamlined opportunities for branches that aren’t so hidden in past decisions that you’re locked into a tunnel til the next major turn.
So we will code that ourselves the hard way, and provide a lot more support in optimizing the engine side of things. Our art is just running up against the limits of what this old engine can do. We need source code. Or, we need to do tedious work to work around limitations on both low-end systems and high-end ones that can handle all the pretty stuff at 60fps.
We also did not get called back on the pitch for that Battlestar Galactica game, which sucks. I would have loved to work on that game — hell, I want to play it! And our pitch video and design doc was immaculate (a Shadow Star lite, till we can afford that game one day.) That was probably my last chance to work on the BSG property and that hit kinda hard seeing someone else get to do it. Having near miss opportunities to work on Battlestar has been one of those major career regrets that things never worked out, so that took the wind out of our sails little.
If one day we’re not under NDA and can show you what you guys missed out on, what we missed out on… damn. You’ll be mad that didn’t get made.
