Fallout: New Vegas 2 has been rumored ever since the first game released, but events this past year have caused a whirlwind of extra speculation among Fallout fans. There's been industry insiders claiming a sequel is in the works, Bethesda’s acquisition by Microsoft, claims that a surprising new studio has been tapped to develop the game, and more.
There’s never actually been confirmation, however, that Fallout: New Vegas 2 is in development at all. Some fans have been hoping to get their fix playing other RPGs with similar themes. The problem is that none of those games are truly able to capture what made New Vegas special. Here are some of the alternatives, and why fans are unlikely to be satisfied until a New Vegas sequel is released.
The Outer Worlds
If there was ever game more poised to spiritually succeed the Fallout franchise, it was The Outer Worlds. Just like Fallout, The Outer Worlds is a first-person RPG set in the future of a timeline that diverged from real-world history in the 20th century. In The Outer Worlds’ case, President McKinley was never assassinated at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. This allowed him to finish his term and prevented Theodore Roosevelt becoming president and pushing through anti-trust laws, leading to the hyper-capitalist space-bound society seen in The Outer Worlds.
Just as the post-apocalyptic Fallout world maintains the ‘50s aesthetic from the rough time the timeline diverged, The Outer Worlds’ advertising and architecture resembles concepts from the Pan-American Exposition. The similarities between the series are no surprise. Not only was The Outer Worlds created by Obsidian, but it was directed by the creators of the Fallout series, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky.
In theory, The Outer Worlds should have been the perfect Fallout substitute, especially for players who preferred Obsidian’s New Vegas to Bethesda’s Fallout 4. Like the World’s Fair exhibitions that inspired its aesthetic, however, The Outer Worlds is packed full of interesting concepts that never quite got off the ground.
Instead of a crafting system, The Outer Worlds only allows the player to make a few weapon modifications. Enemies, weapons, and armor lack variety, encounters outside of towns are almost always unavoidably hostile, and the towns themselves are surprisingly small. Not only that, but without Bethesda’s engine to work in, the world lacks interactivity.
As small as it may sound, The Outer Worlds doesn’t allow the player to zoom out and see their character, sit in chairs, or do many of the other little things that make the up-close and personal perspective of a first-person RPG more immersive. Not all Fallout fans will be looking for a first-person RPG at all, however.
The Wasteland Series
The Outer Worlds might have hoped to be a spiritual successor, but the Wasteland series is Fallout’s own spiritual predecessor. Not only were the original Fallout RPGs based on the first Wasteland, but Wasteland 2 and 3 were successfully crowd-funded, reviving the series over the past decade. These CRPGs take place in a world with many similarities to Fallout’s. In the world of Wasteland, a nuclear war took place in 1998. The games take place decades later as a fractured America attempts to rebuild.
The Wasteland games have a lot going for them, and the successful funding and positive reception of Wasteland 2 helped revive the CRPG genre in the last decade. However, Fallout fans who are hoping to placate their desire for New Vegas 2 with Wasteland are likely to be disappointed.
The world of Wasteland is a lot more dour than the first-person Fallout games. New Vegas in particular managed to have so many elements that felt stylized and colorful without feeling silly, especially in the case of Caesar’s Legion, a faction that could seem ridiculous but instead ends up genuinely disturbing.
Fallout had also moved a long way from its routes by the time New Vegas came around. New Vegas was built on the back of Fallout 3. While many Fallout fans have criticized Bethesda’s storytelling, Bethesda’s first-person format did make Fallout: New Vegas more accessible and, at times, more immersive than the CRPGs. Regardless of the player’s personal taste, the Wasteland series is better suited to fans of Fallout 1 and 2 than fans looking to find a way to find a way to replace Fallout: New Vegas.
Why Fans Need New Vegas 2
There are a few reasons that only a New Vegas sequel will ever be able to recapture the magic of the original game. Fallout: New Vegas gave Obsidian the opportunity to tell a great RPG story using the engine already developed for Fallout 3. Character creation, animation, huge amounts of art assets, the dialogue system and many other RPG must-haves were already in place. This let Obsidian focus on the story, creating far more quests and dialogue options than the studio would have been able to if making the game from scratch. Even with the game's development cut short, this ability to focus on the world and story over mechanics did wonders for New Vegas.
The only true Fallout: New Vegas successor will be a game where a third-party studio with a reputation for great storytelling got the opportunity to create a Fallout title with access to Bethesda’s resources. That studio could be inXile Entertainment, the developer behind the Wasteland revival. It could be Obsidian again, though the strained relationship between Bethesda and Obsidian as a result of New Vegas makes that seem unlikely.
If a studio does get to develop New Vegas 2 – in whatever form it ends up taking – it is unlikely that studio would be able to create a game to rival New Vegas without building off the last Fallout game. Whether or not Bethesda will ever allow a third-party developer to take on the Fallout franchise again, remains to be seen, but with BGS working on both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, the chances of another outsourced Fallout could be better than ever.
Fallout: New Vegas 2Â has not been officially announced.