Development of DLC mods for Fallout: New Vegas Fallout New Mexico No longer on hold, a member of the team told iGamesNews that the project is currently in “good shape” as work on the modules has resumed.
Fallout: New Mexico has been in the works since 2021, and promises a Fallout adventure set in and around New Mexico five years after the events of Interplay’s original Fallout game, with plenty of classic Fallout mechanics and atmosphere mixed in. The mod was put on hold earlier this year, having existed “in the shadows” as early as April, with its social media and YouTube presence largely set to private. Its creators now say the project is back on track, but have not promised a release date.
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On July 10, Nuevo Mexico public relations director JK-Serling posted a brief update on the mod’s Discord server saying that the “project is no longer on hold,” followed by an image of a box with the Vault-Tec logo washed up on a beach on August 8 (captioned “Disc Full of Secrets”), after which we contacted them for more information.
“Zapshock has resumed development on New Mexico and the project is progressing well,” the modder said. “Even before it was put on hold, the project was progressing well.” They also confirmed that the box image on the beach was for promotional purposes, saying that “the intention was to let people know in a subtle, impactful way that we are actually working on something,” but added that “it’s not intended to be hype.”
“We do have new stuff coming, but we can only ask for your patience and let the developers take their time,” the modder continued. “We don’t want to keep saying ‘new stuff coming’ without having anything to show yet, and we’ve realized that we humans have limits, we need sleep, and burnout is real.
“I think we somewhat overestimated how long this would take, especially given [project lead] Zapshock was the only company that really worked on worldspace, scripting, and making things in a 2008 engine look at least halfway decent. It taught us to be less showy and more patient with hype about anything related to a project’s release date or even trailers. If people leave our Discord or unsubscribe from our YouTube, that’s fine! We deserve to lose people’s trust. We hope people won’t get too attached because we can’t guarantee a release and we can only do the best we can with the little support and team we have. We believe the project will be released and we don’t blame them at all if they want to wait until it’s released before supporting us.”
JK-Serling went on to explain that having to commission and purchase fresh assets not in the original game “is what’s stopping us from revealing anything.
“We wanted to have really iconic landmarks and new buildings and props,” they said. “This was important, and I don’t think a lot of people would find the same FO3/New Vegas assets [very] Attractive, but now they are too recognizable.
“We promised to show something this year and reveal something we haven’t shown in years. Big reveals are the core appeal of why we make this work, but we only get one chance to show something, and we want it to be what we all want in our hearts.”
They concluded: “I’ve seen everything the team has done and I think this delay is worth it. It may seem like we have nothing to show, but I can only say [as] Only help people who write or come up with ideas, [is] You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the work the team has done from an environmental perspective in the New Vegas engine. The costumes, the narrative, the new assets, and the world space – it’s understandable why it’s taken us so long to show it off, and why it wasn’t an easy task considering the number of people involved in this effort.”
iGamesNews also reached out to some of the voice actors who were planning to work with the mod team (or who had already started working with them before the project was paused). One of the voice actors, Ally Katz, told us that after the pause was confirmed on the Discord server, they reached out to Zapshock and gave the modders their blessing, and received a response in early July saying that the mod team wanted them to record more lines at some point.
Another user named Strigoi stated that they had been waiting for a response from the team regarding some voice lines before the project was paused, and that they had not been contacted or contacted by the mod team since the project was paused.
“Most of the time it was just waiting to hear about it, waiting to find out after it happened,” they say of post-production, “but I didn’t feel any pressure, I figured they’d be pulling on my sleeves when it came time to record. I knew enough about the development process to know that this would usually be closer to completion.”
So, that’s where this ambitious Fallout modding project stands right now, and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here, especially for those who were impressed by New Mexico before the hiatus. For now, patiently waiting for the modders to keep working on it until they’re ready to show off more of what they’ve built seems like the right thing to do.
