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Fallout: New Vegas is Obsidian Entertainment’s standout 2010 entry into Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic role playing universe. Like it’s high-fantasy counterpart Skyrim, New Vegas’ success can be largely attributed to its sprawling questlnes, vibrant NPCs, and an impeccably high standard of writing. Rich philosophical themes weave throughout the narrative, and player choice has an obvious and meaningful impact on the plot. When Fallout 76 was released, it received plenty of criticism around its dialogue and plot, as did Fallout 4 before it. To some degree, this criticism was only intensified by the incredibly high standard set by New Vegas’ writing.
Although Fallout: New Vegas stands out in terms of writing and plot, its FPS mechanics haven't entirely aged well. New Vegas is a game stuck between warring FPS RPG sensibilities, and feels slightly antiquated as a result when played today. Of course, the game's writing more than makes up for these pitfalls, but many fans are committed to creating the best New Vegas experience possible.
Like other Fallout games, the mod scene for New Vegas is as diverse as it is massive. Some mods switch up NPCs, repopulate the wasteland, and even replace the core mechanical systems of the game. Some might argue that these intensely modded versions of the game barely resemble the original title. However, the majority of the best Fallout: New Vegas mods still pay homage to the original classic.
Fallout Nuevo Mexico
An incredibly ambitious recent mod for the game is Nuevo Mexico. There are several mods for Bethesda games that create entirely new worlds, and these can include massive, DLC-size mods like the Fallout 4 mod Fallout London. Nuevo Mexico sets a brand new post-apocalyptic adventure in New Mexico, complete with a brand new plotline, NPCs, several side quests, and more weapons for players to enjoy.
According to the original modder, a trip to the state inspired this unofficial expansion. As such, a lot of the city of Alberquerque is included in the mod, derived straight from the trip. Fallout Nuevo Mexico also features the aliens-centric Roswell in it, hinted at when a character in the trailer wakes up in the middle of a flashing, futuristic room. Of course, this would work with the original New Vegas game. One of the best quests in Fallout: New Vegas is the "Come Fly With Me" story, which involves helping a gang of misfit ghouls into a space rocket (or not, if the player decides), so a focus on aliens would make perfect sense for this expansion mod.
New Vegas Anti-Crash
It wouldn't be a Bethesda game without a litany of anti-crash mods, and New Vegas is no different. This fan creation stablizes huge swathes of the game, which was notorious on PC for its frequent system failures. Thankfully, modders were quick to rush to Bethesda's aid, creating a mod that sorted out a collection of coding clashes that would normally prove troublesome in the base game. It is only one of many Fallout: New Vegas anti-crash mods, but with 4.3 million downloads and over a hundred thousand upvotes, it is easily the most popular.
Although Bethesda games are notorious for crashes, mods like this one prove how committed players are to enjoying the incredible stories these games have. This mod also works with most of the best Fallout: New Vegas graphics mods (and several others too), and is often included in popular modpacks. So, if players are looking to get involved in complete game revamps or brand new weapon mods, New Vegas Anti-Crash is an essential mod to add to the experience. It arguably changes the game more than any other mod out there, as it allows for New Vegas to be played largely without crashing.
Project Nevada's Fallout New Vegas Overhaul Mod
Project Nevada is perhaps the most radical gameplay revamp mod in existence, not just for Fallout: New Vegas. The Project Nevada team correctly identified the central issue that a lot of modern players have with the older game, and that was how it played. While New Vegas' NPCs might have razor sharp wits, and its story beats punch with surprising agility, the game's FPS mechanics are anything but. Unfortunately, base New Vegas feels incredibly outdated to play.
Many of the quality of life components seen in the best modern FPS games are just not present in the 2010 title. It even feels much more sluggish than its fantasy cousin Skyrim, which only released a year afterwards. One of the biggest changes that Project Nevada offers is to these FPS mechanics.
After installing Nevada, players can enable a much more fast paced, reactive style of FPS play, making it more similar to games like Fallout 4. This fixes the game's glacially slow movement speed, adds some neat animations to guns, and just generally improves the moment-to-moment play dramatically. Interestingly, Project Nevada "offers" a whole variety of changes — and the word "offer" is important here, as it is also totally modular. Players can add or opt out of a whole litany of different modifications, picking and choosing exactly how they want their game to be.
JSawyer Ultimate Edition
There have been plenty of video game director's cuts recently. However, not many of them come in the form of mods. Joshua Sawyer was the lead designer and director of Fallout: New Vegas, and his imprint can be seen all through the game. In spite of this, the director was not completely satisfied with the game on release. While his issues were not as game-breaking as some of the weirdest Bethesda bugs, he still wanted to address them post-launch.
As such, he released the JSawyer Ultimate Edition for Fallout: New Vegas shortly after release. It should be noted that Sawyer did not feel slighted at all by the state of the released game, he just would have preferred a slightly adjusted difficulty level. While the difficulty debate in gaming might usually be hard-fought, Sawyer only wanted to give players an option to experience the game as it was during the design phase.
Although the JSawyer mod does make the game considerably harder, it does so in a very respectful way, even restoring some brilliant Fallout: New Vegas cut content. It's fascinating to see a director get exact, fine-tuned control over the final state of a game, and that is reason enough for the JSawyer Ultimate Edition to be worthy of a download.
Fallout New Vegas is available on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.