The Fallout 3 remake mod Capital Wasteland is cancelled
Wasted
We've previously covered the exciting-looking Capital Wasteland mod for Fallout 4. Planned as a full remake of Fallout 3 in the later game's engine, one prerequisite for such a project would be to port over the voice audio files from the original game, a legally grey move that could potentially earn the project a cease-and-desist or other legal threat.
Wanting to preempt such issues, the Capital Wasteland team got in contact with Bethesda, seeking official blessing for such a move. Unfortunately, the studio weren't willing or able to offer such support. With little option beyond assembling a massive voice cast of their own, they're officially calling it quits on the project after a full year in development, although there may yet still be some hope for it.
Personally, I'd hope that the Capital Wasteland team release what they already had completed, minus legally questionable voicework, and allow the community to finish porting over the Fallout 3 environments to be later populated with new quests and content. Unfortunately, not even that looks likely to happen, as some team members involved have decided to withdraw their work from the project outright.
So, until further notice the Capital Wasteland project is officially on hiatus, with the possibility (as mentioned on Twitter here) of it returning as something other than a direct Fallout 3 remake. Interestingly, Fallout 4: New Vegas, a similar mod aimed at recreating a better game on newer tech, is still in development, although has been officially delayed in order to round up the talent necessary to record their own replacement dialogue.
If nothing else, they'll at least be able to come up with some alternate barks for the wandering NPCs. If I hear another grunt wish for a nuclear winter, I'm nuking the entire wasteland again. It's sad to see a mod project like this shut down, but the pragmatist in me says that it's better to end it like this than for a team of dozens to grind away at it only to be hit by a legal threat in the final stages of development. We wish both the Capital Wasteland and Fallout 4: New Vegas teams best of luck in their endeavors.
If you feel like sighing sadly over screenshots of what could have been, you can gaze wistfully at the Capital Wasteland site here.