Rock, Paper, Shotgun

On paper, Fallout: Project Brazil sounds like the stuff irradiated, scorpion-coated dreams are made of. It’s a ridiculously ambitious, fan-made prequel mod for New Vegas spanning a new vault, an entire new wasteland the size of Fallout 3′s, and multiple story-driven, highly choice-oriented episodes. The team that assembled it, meanwhile, comes from various corners of the professional entertainment world, which is – in part – the reason it took so long to finally see the sepia toned light of day. But now it’s here, in the gnarled, glowing ghoulflesh. I am kind of maybe excited a little a lot. But what’s actually in this installment? Wellllll…

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When you speak with someone in Las Vegas, the topic of conversation naturally shifts to Vegas-themed things. In the case of Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, that meant Star Wars, of course. Oh, and I guess Fallout: New Vegas. During a DICE chat that lasted innumerable moons, months, seasons, and centuries, Urquhart and I briefly touched on his studio’s return to its old techno-magically irradiated Black Isle haunt. “Oh, we’d love to do Fallout: New Vegas 2,” he enthused. “It would be awesome.” But how would that work? And is Bethesda on board with the idea? Here’s what Urquhart had to say.

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I am sad. I am sad because Fallout: New Vegas’ Project Brazil mod isn’t available yet, which means I can only ogle its incredibly impressive-looking peaks and valleys from afar. So here’s the skinny: it doesn’t actually take place in Brazil. Instead, the story begins in California years before New Vegas’ courier ever began his promising career by being shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. Your new main character’s goal? To reach Los Angeles. But the entire new wasteland of San Bernardino is rife with factional conflicts, and oh goodness also there is this: “The vision of Fallout 2 will be honoured by Project Brazil. Project Brazil is a quieter, more harsh and severe world than Fallout 3 or New Vegas. It feels like a real place spotted with rare moments of absurdity and fear, split between multiple rising civilizations all trying to fight for what they want or need in a world recovering from the Great War.” Yes. Yesssssss.

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Fallout: New Vegas was a glitch-ridden, unwieldy beast of a game, but it’s a testament to the wonderful (and very Black-Isle) world Obsidian crafted that – in spite of rampant instability and a fiddly engine – it still stands as one of my absolute favorite games. And in spite of the couple-hundred-some-odd hours I’ve put into it, I want more. Semi-recently, I had quite a joyous time with the harder-core-than-thou JSawyer mod, but now I’m getting ready to dig into an official-unofficial project that positively dwarfs it. In short, a modder by the name of “Moburma” went sifting through New Vegas’ code and excavated scrapped bits and bobs of all shapes and sizes. The end result? A restoration project that borders on insane.

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Let there much be rejoicing. Go on, rejoice. Well, at least smile. No? Well, how about a smiley instead? You won’t have to use your face at all. You only have to press two buttons. Come on, let’s do it together. On three. One, two, three : And again. One, two, three )

There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? The reason for this rejoicing is that Wasteland 2 just hit its latest crowdsourcing bonus target, $2.1 million – and as well as meaning it’s now accrued some 231% of its original target, it confirms that Obsidian’s Chris Avellone is coming onboard to co-develop Brian Fargo’s post-apocalyptic RPG.

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It’s the Duke Nukem Forever of gaming-based legal scuffles, and apparently it’s over at last. We don’t yet know the details – i.e. who’s won, who’s paying who what and most of all who, if anyone, will be releasing a Fallout MMO – but we do know that, after an awful lot of back and forth and he said no he said but he started it but yeah but no a settlement has finally been reached in the long-running Bethesda and Interplay battle.
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Here’s the story so far. Interplay are developing a Fallout MMO title and Bethesda are attempting to block further development through application of The Law. When their previous injunction failed, Bethesda took things all the way to the United States District Court of Appeals, claiming that the previous court had “misapplied the law”. If it was indeed a misapplication, the very same slip up has occurred once more. Stop misapplying Law, courts, you’re getting it all over the drapes.

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Good, in fact excellent, tidings for those who find themselves able to enjoy Fallouts both old and new, and for anyone who lived through the 90s heyday of PC RPGs. Tim Cain, the main brain behind the original Fallout and later co-founder of the much-missed Troika, has fetched up at Obsidian. Until this July, he was at Carbine, working since 2005 on what turned out to be Wildstar, but today we discover that he’s now Senior Programmer at the Fallout: New Vegas/ KOTOR 2 devs. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE.
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