With The Elder Scrolls 6 years away, Fallout 5 seems like it may be the better part of a decade out. For those clamoring for new post-apocalyptic content, however, there are options to explore the wasteland including Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, a DLC-sized mod project for Fallout: New Vegas.

The modding communities that form around Bethesda games are uniquely ambitious in scope, with some mods like Enderal even becoming their own games. It can take years for small, dedicated, and usually uncompensated hobbyist teams to create such massive projects. Still, even by these standards, Fallout: Nuevo Mexico’s use of the 14-year-old Fallout: New Vegas as a canvas is surprising. Game ZXC checked in with Fallout: Nuevo Mexico’s development team after speaking with them last year, with project lead Zapshock and writer Montana discussing what has changed over the last year and what’s to come in 2024. The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Fallout New Vegas Mods That Make It Feel Like A Brand New Game featured image
Related
Fallout: New Vegas – 34 Mods That Make It Feel Like A Brand New Game

While performance mods are fantastic, some of the most exciting mods are those that overhaul Fallout: New Vegas entirely and make it feel new.

What Nuevo Mexico Looks Like in 2024

Q: Can you both introduce yourselves?

Zapshock: Yeah, I'm Zapshock, project lead.

Montana: I’m Zap’s cousin. My name is Montana. I write some of the stories and quests and stuff like that.

Q: What does Nuevo Mexico have in store for 2024?

Zapshock: We have a lot of plans. We're going to reveal a trailer for Mexico, which is a space with a lot of hubs. We use a set of hubs, and Mexico is our biggest area. That's going to be really exciting to finally show that off after years of working on it and gathering assets, because you know, New Vegas doesn't have that many assets to work with. That's been the biggest, the toughest thing. Just gathering those assets to make you feel like you’re in Mexico.

Montana: We’re trying to show a new country. I think a new change of country is also going to be very good for the community. It's different. It's going to have a different vibe, different everything.

Zapshock: And we have another gameplay trailer that's going to come up. It's part of the main quest. It's like the biggest city, but it's going to show off what we like about the story. That one’s special. I feel like we haven't really kind of hit that point with people about what we're trying to do. That's kind of what we want to do with that gameplay trailer. It's part two of our gameplay series and yeah, no, this year, we hope to really excite people more with what we're doing.

Q: How has the project evolved over the last year?

Zapshock: It's definitely had a lot of major changes, story changes, and locations have been revamped to look a lot more like what they're supposed to look like in real life. Not everything is accurate; of course, it's a video game. The geography, distance, all that stuff, we can't take forever to do that. We’ve changed some stuff, so our Game ZXC interview last year might not be up to date. It’s had a lot of changes, and it's evolved into something that we're proud of. We're proud of it, for sure.

Q: What elements of broader Fallout lore does the team pull from?

Zapshock: I can't really go that deep into that because it contains some of the spoilers, but it really, really does connect. We wanted to have our own twist on it, and I mean, I hope people receive that well.

Montana: You're going to be very surprised because it's going to connect so well to Fallout. They're going to be surprised. I didn't expect it. We found something really good for it. Once they play, they're going to be amazed by it. I have a good feeling about that.

Zapshock: But other than that, we pull some stuff from Van Buren, like a reservation location that we have as one of our starting points. If you play as the Dreamer, the Ghoul playthrough, we pull from what makes sense. We also have a lot of our own specialties worked in, especially since where we take place, we don't have that much to pull from.

I mean, for New Mexico, you had Caesar's Legion, but that was later on—after where we are in the timeline. We had to do a lot of our own things in these areas and try to work around some of them.

Q: Did you just say Ghoul playthrough?

Zapshock: Yeah, we added that because we really got inspired. Well, my cousin here, he's a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins.

Montana: You know how you could choose to play as different races in Dragon Age: Origins and stuff like that? And each of them has a different intro? I thought about that, and I mean, nobody has really done the Ghoul player. We thought it would be really cool to do it with its own origin story, and if you plan to go Ghoul in this game, it is going to be way different than if you play as a human because you're going to be treated, well, worse. There’s going to be a lot of discrimination against Ghouls, but you're going to have some benefits too. In some places, you're going to have unique dialogue because some of the Ghouls like you and stuff like that. We just want to make it different. We don't want to just do the same thing as playing the human. Obviously, you can play as a human, but I think a new change of playstyle would make the game a true RPG.

Fallout: Nuevo Mexico Setting

Q: Why did you choose Mexico and the American Southwest for Nuevo Mexico’s setting?

Zapshock: There's the Four Corners Commonwealth; it's Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico being the biggest, or the main, center in that area. That’s the biggest one. It's not really like you're not diving too deep into places, going into cities and the surrounding area, kind of like the Navajo Nation type of areas. That's the exploration of New Mexico. When you're out in the wasteland, it's just we have hubs. We figured why not add these places like Monument Valley?

Montana: Also, there's the nuclear bomb. You know, the first nuclear method they tested in New Mexico. We found that very interesting, but nobody really has explored it in Fallout, as well as the uranium.

Zapshock: There's a lot of uranium in those Four Corners areas of Southwest. We really, really thought about it and really, really wanted to make sure that there's something there that we can utilize and connect the dots with the main story, side stories, and some of the side factions too.

Montana: A part of New Mexico is it features a lot of biomes. There are a lot of biomes! People think it's just a desert, but it's very biodiverse. That's another plus for us, I think.

Q: Fallout is based a lot on American identity. What was the experience of incorporating Mexico into the franchise like?

Zapshock: That's our biggest region. That's the one we've been working on for four years. Yeah, it's been there for some time. We've gathered enough assets. Now we've gotten to that point where it just feels good. It feels authentic enough. It's a lot of new assets and everything.

We looked to Van Buren lore and the Fallout Bible. It’s not canon, but a lot of people see it as canon. I'm not the biggest Fallout lore nerd myself, but we tried to find what we could that has been said about Mexico. It mentions that the US invaded Mexico and didn't annex it like it did Canada, but it did want the oil there. They had some sort of presence there, and we wanted to connect that in the area that we have. We looked at that and how we could incorporate some English–there's a lot of Spanish, but there's also a lot of English–because we didn’t want you to go there and not understand what some people are saying. I’m not going to make it difficult for you.

We are also taking the retro-futurism of Mexico. If you look at 1950s Mexico, especially the area we’ll be taking place in, you can look back. We went back and looked at videos because it has that touch of Mexico. However, a lot of the products from America are over there as well, so the US has its influence felt.

Montana: Mexico, especially in northern Mexico, is very Americanized. I'm from there. It's by Arizona and Texas, and that makes it a good bit more American. It is the same culture in some ways because we adapt to some of the cultures.

Zapshock: You see a lot of products from America, even today. Mexican products are promoted with these cartoons and stuff, so we took that and tried to make it as Fallout as we could. Our producer worked at Insomniac Games and she's worked alongside Brian Fargo on Wasteland 3, so she's had experience with art design.

Montana: And she's of Mexican descent too.

I feel like we need a new tone that creates a new culture in the Fallout world. It's always about the USA. Now other Fallout modders are doing England, and there are other mods. I think Mexico was really close to the USA, so I feel like it was going to fit the tone.

Q: What can you share about the factions and story?

Zapshock: I suppose I can share a lot of the Southwest, New Mexico, Four Corners Commonwealth area. We obviously have the Reservation. This is one of the spots that when you play as a Ghoul–the Dreamer playthrough is what we call it. If you choose to play as a Dreamer of the Ghouls, you start off on a reservation, which is a faction of Ghouls. It's the Reservation Ghouls, that's what they're known for, and their main goal is to find uranium. Nobody knows why outside the group, but they're looking for uranium and this causes a conflict between another faction called Diné Warriors or the Navajo police. We really take inspiration from the Navajo and the tribal police in those areas of the Monument Valley area of Arizona and Utah.

Montana: We also got a cartel faction that we can’t explore much here because it involves Mexico and spoilers so yeah, no, sorry. We have a cartel here. You guys are going to see it in the next trailer. They're going to play a very important role, especially since they have a very strong leader I feel.

Zapshock: Yeah, Mexico. Definitely. Since it's our biggest area, that's kind of where I guess the most factions would be.

Montana: Yeah, we can't get into details currently. There's going to be spoilers for you. But once the trailer drops, you're going to see some of the factions you're going to meet. Yeah, definitely.

Making Mods in New Vegas versus Fallout 4

Q: Why did you choose to work in New Vegas and not Fallout 4?

Zapshock: That's a question we get a lot. It's really great for creativity. The biggest disadvantage that we have, when we are making this mod for New Vegas, is that we don't have a lot of assets to work with. We had to make a lot of new assets, but I think one of the main things New Vegas gave us was scripting capabilities. The New Vegas Script Extender has got other extensions, like JIP LN, Lutana, and all these different sorts of Script Extender downloadable content that people can get, and that all expands the code so we can work with more and do more scripting magic.

Besides that, the biggest thing is the dialogue trees. I wasn't the biggest fan of Fallout 4’s dialogue trees. I tried using the creation kit and I think it's really good if you want to make a linear type of story, but I tried it and yeah, no. We felt like we weren't going to be able to do what we could with the Ghoul origin and all that RPG stuff that we have in this project.

And you know, maybe one day we will jump into Fallout 4 because it's a great engine for formatting for modders. Starfield is going to be pretty cool, I think, for modders. We definitely will consider jumping into that one because of the similarities to the New Vegas engine.

Q: You mentioned the difficulty of getting assets. What were some other challenges you've had so far?

Montana: Zap’s been doing most of this by himself. It's been difficult for him. I think he's been doing mostly everything you know, and it's one person really. I’m just here for the ride, and it takes time. Sometimes, you know, he comes home from work and he's tired. He does that. When I have my free time, I come and help him, but I think that's been the most difficult part. Obviously, sometimes you've got bugs, sometimes glitches, we have to fix some dialogue, and things like that.

Zapshock: I mean, we have the help of community members, and they do their best to help us. Mr. Convict, for example, a huge credit to him for the outfits. I can't imagine his outfits not being there. But I'm the only GECK user, the only creation kit user. Like my cousin says, the biggest challenge is trying to do all this and managing the team and all the direction, the story, the main story. Just trying to keep that balance of all that.

Q: On the flip side, what is an accomplishment you've made so far that you are proudest of?

Zapshock: I'm very proud of everything. I mean, I'm very proud of just the fact that people have just given us so much support, especially for a really old game like New Vegas. That's great, there are no words to describe it. I would say that our biggest accomplishment is just having that support and having that amount of people even take a look at our project and be excited, like, “You're doing something that I want to check out with this old game.”

Montana: And at the end of the day, you know, we're doing this mod for ourselves. I mean, we appreciate that people like loving this, but it's mostly for us too, as a hobby, and we're doing it because we like doing it. It's fun. We like creating stuff.

The Broader Fallout Franchise

Q: Why do you think Bethesda games have such a passionate modding community?

Montana: I think it's because, I mean, I like Bethesda games, but I sometimes feel they’re lacking creativity. I wasn't personally a fan of some of their newer games. I've been a big fan of them since Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, but then I followed through to today's and I haven't really enjoyed much of their story. I feel like they need more depth. We get a lot of inspiration from games like Gothic, we get a lot of inspiration from the Witcher, mostly games like that. We like those types of immersive games. We want more immersion and more story-driven games, so I guess that's what our main goal is for this mod. I feel that's what makes modders passionate about creating something even more spectacular, that immersion and storytelling.

Q: You mentioned Fallout London, which releases this spring, earlier. Have you guys been following that project? What do you think of it?

Montana: It looks really good. I was amazed. It looks really nice. We support every mod and modder. Everybody who creates something has my respect because I know they're doing it for themselves, they love it, it's a hobby, it's a passion. It takes passion to do something that takes a while and a lot of people. Some people critique you because of this or that, but it's a hobby, you know? You're doing it for yourself.

Zapshock: I don't know if you saw the C3 (Community Creations Con) panel event that they had? C3 supports Make-a-Wish International. A lot of modders came together, they showed off stuff, and I think that's great. I really, I really liked that. A lot of times for modders, everybody has pride in what they do, and we all want to make something special. And I feel like that gets in the way sometimes of people working together. So that event was great. We close the door on pride and focus on what we do–making something special for the community.

Montana: I mean, modding is free. Some people put in the time to do it, and some people don't finish it. The people that finish? My respect for them. We're just trying to make it different. We know when we're trying to make it good. If people like it, they like it. If they don't like it, that's for them to decide. It's for ourselves, we're doing it for ourselves. That's the main goal. And we're doing it because we like it. It's our hobby, and it's fun.

Q: Speaking of Fallout things coming out this year, do you have hopes or expectations about the Fallout TV series coming out?

Montana: Well, for me, it looks good. I don't really watch a lot of films anymore. I'm not into TV shows anymore or anything like that, but I will check it out. Definitely. We're huge Fallout fans.

Zapshock: I don't really watch modern entertainment, like TV shows. I watch a lot of old movies: Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, and Alfred Hitchcock. I watch a lot of old stuff, you know? That's where a lot of inspiration comes from, from all those old movies. But looking at the TV show, I mean it's hard for me to say because I just don't watch a lot of modern stuff. I think it looks good from what I've seen from the trailer. It looks eye-catching. I'll definitely check it out.

Q: All right, is there anything else you would like to share?

Montana: I’d like to say that this one is going to be controversial, and a lot of people are going to get offended, I'm gonna just tell the truth, they're going to get offended, but it's not because we're gonna aim to be offensive. We're just trying to make it reality. We're going to show the true post-apocalyptic world. I think a lot of people might not like it, but you know, that's what we're about. We like keeping it real.

Zapshock: We've taken a lot of stuff from personal experiences. We're not trying to be edgy, but we really want to hit the notes that are true to life. I think sometimes people don’t know what others have experienced. I'm glad they have never been through this stuff before, but there are certain things that we've seen personally. That's just what it is, it's the harsh reality and that's kind of what we want to hit. Man, this is going to be very dark. I'm telling you it's going to be very dark, definitely intended for a mature audience.

Montana: We’re also going to try and make this one emotional. I feel like a lot of people are going to feel like this is going to be a very emotional mod. The story is going to hit them, I think. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's just going to be a brutal mod.

[END]