While Fallout 5 is still several years out, fans of the Fallout franchise will have plenty of official and fan-made Fallout content to enjoy in the meantime. With Fallout: London recently released, plenty of upcoming updates for Fallout 76 still on the way, and a surprise reveal trailer from Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, the future of the Fallout franchise has never looked so bright.
Fallout: Nuevo Mexico is a fan-made mod for Fallout: New Vegas that will be coming exclusively to PC, with no plans for a console release announced yet. The project is still a work in progress, and allegedly, Fallout: Nuevo Mexico has undergone several changes since the last time it was shown off in earlier reveals. However, an up-to-date reveal trailer was recently released, giving fans a new taste of what to expect from Fallout: Nuevo Mexico.
Fallout: Nuevo Mexico Is Built on Fallout: New Vegas’s Foundation
In an interview with The Best War Games and the team behind Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, using Fallout: New Vegas as the foundation for the mod was a deliberate decision, as opposed to creating the mod using Fallout 4’s foundation, like the recent Fallout: London fan-mod. In the words of Zapshock, the project lead of Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, “We had to make a lot of new assets, but I think one of the main things New Vegas gave us was scripting capabilities.” Zapshock elaborates that after experimentation with Fallout 4’s Creation Kit tools, the team felt that Fallout: New Vegas was a better fit for the mod’s non-linear RPG elements, despite the challenge of having to create new assets to bring Fallout: Nuevo Mexico’s unfamiliar setting to life.
Considering that Fallout: New Vegas is often named the fan-favorite among the modern Bethesda games, this DLC-sized mod could be the closest that fans will ever get to a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas. However, it also means that some of the latest advancements from the franchise won’t be part of Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, such as Fallout 4’s CAMP and Workshop base-building features.
Despite abandoning the newer foundations, Fallout: Nuevo Mexico still has a few tricks up its sleeve that the latest Fallout games haven’t yet explored. Most notably, Fallout: Nuevo Mexico will let players choose between one of two playable characters, one of which is a ghoul. Past trailers for Fallout: Nuevo Mexico have also shown off combat featuring dual-wield weapons, and both of these examples from Fallout: Nuevo Mexico have been highly-requested features for the official Fallout games to experiment with.
Fallout 76 will also introduce an official playable ghoul character sometime in 2025.
Fallout: Nuevo Mexico Is Faithful to the Franchise’s Lore Despite Not Being Canon
The original teaser from the Fallout: Nuevo Mexico YouTube channel states that the game will be set in 2166 on the official Fallout games’ timeline. This places it just after the events of the original Fallout game.
While Mexico has never been an explicit setting for the Fallout franchise games, it’s sparsely mentioned throughout the franchise’s overarching lore, even in the canceled Fallout: Van Buren game that’s currently being revived by fans under the new name of Fallout: Revelation Blues. As a fan-made mod, Fallout: Nuevo Mexico won’t ever be considered canon, but its plot and setting are still said to be faithful to the franchise’s lore.
Fallout: Nuevo Mexico is said to have undergone several changes since its last gameplay reveal, but the recent trailer has shed some light on what to expect from this upcoming fan-made mod. There’s still no release date yet for Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, but as its development continues, fans will get to see more concrete details and an announcement of a release date in the near future.
Fallout: New Vegas
- Released
- October 19, 2010
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Developer(s)
- Obsidian Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
- Engine
- Gamebryo
- Franchise
- Fallout
