Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas 2017 Soft Touch Modification Guide

Martyn Zachary 46 Comments

To celebrate Fallout‘s 20th anniversary, I figured it would be fun to completely start from scratch and tool the Bethesda Fallout game series for new, fresh playthroughs. Since I have now spent an evening’s worth of catching up on, and customizing, each of the Fallouts, I figured I might as well put my lists out here. In fact, I have actually written an article on Planescape: Torment (hilariously obsolete today, with the new Enhanced Edition out) before, and it’s a ton of fun to share this type of info!

I’m personally a fan of a “soft touch” style of modding, so the purpose here was to create a list of

  1. recently updated,
  2. light, and
  3. simple

modifications that work to make Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas more playable. Modding Bethesda games is pretty fun, as there are so, so many options. If you get too trigger happy, however, it can also be quite frustrating – much like the games themselves!

If you do want to follow this tutorial, either as your setup, or as a basis for adding on more modifications, for the purpose of playing and/or purchasing Fallout: New Vegas, I recommend the Steam Ultimate Edition version. Unlike Fallout 3, New Vegas works quite fine on Steam.

This tutorial operates under the assumption that you are on Windows, have all the DLC, and are running Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition version 1.4.0.525. (more…)

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The New Vegas Fallout

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Major video game launches are a huge deal these days, and sprawling, feature-rich open-world titles like Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas come very close to being MMO-like in their courting with danger. As soon as the early reviews begun pouring in, New Vegas indeed turned out to be just as bug-riddled as Fallout 2 originally was back in 1998:

At least the player above got in-game, though – while personally installing Fallout 3, I was met with a faulty DVD, an “Error: -5006 : 0x8000ffff” notice and finally the magnificent extent of Bethesda’s Windows 7 support. A veritable brick wall, in other words… in any case, New Vegas senior designer Chris Avellone, who also worked as designer on the aforementioned Fallout 2 (a connection that we detailed in an earlier post, From New Reno to New Vegas), quite unsurprisingly explains away the bugs with the length and scope of the game:

I think when you create a game as large as Fallout 3 or New Vegas you are going to run into issues that even a testing team of 300 won’t spot, so we’re just trying to address those as quickly as possible and so is Bethesda. … It’s kind of like the bugs of the real world – the sheer expanse of what you’re dealing with causes problems. 1)http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=271206

In other words, having never completed Fallout 3, it becomes much easier for me simply to stand back and enjoy the show of fireworks until this latter-day Frankenstein’s monster gets stitched together and squeezed into yet another “Game of the Year” box. I don’t mean at all to imply that I find enjoyment in Obsidian and Bethesda’s misfortunes; instead, what’s exciting to me are the dynamics and mechanics of a major botched launch… after all, instances such as these are rare glimpses into closed-door game design and corporate decision-making at its most tangible, glimpses that only really become available if something goes truly awry. (more…)

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From New Reno to New Vegas

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Notice: Don’t forget to check out our latest update to this post, “The New Vegas Fallout“!

Thanks to Bethesda’s ingenious assessment of the gaming market in first pushing out the Oblivion-style Fallout 3 to an established player base (fans of the original are known to be a bit on the grumpy and sour side, for good reason too, and therefore harder to market to), it’s not at all difficult to get a strong double act vibe from the very latest screenshots of Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas.

Taking on some geographical and narrative cues from the unreleased Van Buren project, the game seems tailor-made for the fans of the original RPGs, these rather eccentric shots (do check out those psychedelic super mutant shades on the left) also suggest that the game looks to be playing the stooge to Fallout 3’s straighter man.

The comedy act parallel doesn’t end there: Chris Avellone, lead designer of New Vegas, is also responsible for the New Reno area of Fallout 2, a sprawling, teeming mob haven that players could complete at their own pace – and become prizefighting champions and porn stars while doing so. At the time of release, however, the area drew some criticism from fans of the original, mostly for being overly colourful and idiosyncratic. An Edge interview with Avellone acknowledges this fact:

…Avellone’s contributions to Fallout 2 – most notably the entire, Mafia-controlled city of New Reno, with its bountiful side-quests and other distractions – were warmly welcomed, even if some Fallout zealots considered them tonally out-of-step. 1)http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/chris-avellone-dark-knight

(more…)

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