Fallout fans will soon have a new way to experience the original game in the series. A group of modders is remaking the 1997 role-playing game within Fallout: New Vegas.
The original Fallout was set in Southern California. The player lives in Vault 13, an underground shelter put in serious danger when its water purification chip, a vital piece of equipment, fails. They're sent out into the wasteland to find a replacement.
Fallout 1 had 2D characters and backgrounds along with an isometric camera. Translating that game into New Vegas, a first-person RPG with fully 3D graphics, already makes it a very different experience. Plus, New Vegas has real-time combat with players occasionally able to freeze the action to queue up attacks. That's a big change from Fallout 1's turn-based combat.
While the New Vegas remake will end up being significantly different than the original, the modders are finding ways to bring back the classic flavor. For example, they're going to bring back the grid-based map, with players fast traveling from one key location to the next rather than simply exploring the open world as they do in New Vegas:
We made a complete new travel system. Which allows the player to discover the map of Fallout 1, also includes random encounters and the ability to flee (if your character is a coward ;) ). The game will be node based as the original. So you travel from one small worldspace to another. It is not a continues world. We have plans to add one larger worldspace which allows a bit more exploration (as easer egg so to say) but this one will be started at the end of development.
The modders have remaking Vault 13 and Vault 15 thus far. They've also finished a significant chunk of Shady Sands and Junktown. You can see some of their progress in these videos:
When the Fallout remake is done, it will be free to play for anyone who owns the PC version of New Vegas. Unlike many mods for the game, it won't require you to install any of the game's DLC packs.
I wonder whether we'll see someone try to remake the first or second Fallout in Fallout 4 in the future to make use of its updated graphics engine. However, we could be waiting awhile for that. The official modding tools for F4 won't be out until early 2016.
