Fallout: New California is the best Fallout game you'll play this year

[BrennoARTS]

A huge Fallout: New Vegas mod seven years in the making.

This ambitious Fallout: New Vegas total conversion was, remarkably, seven years in the making. Developed by Rick Hukkanen and Brandan Lee, with the help of dozens of volunteers, the mod is set 20 years after the events of Fallout 2, making it much closer story-wise to the original Interplay series than the Bethesda/Obsidian games. It features new locations, 48 quests, full voice acting, and 13 endings. And best of all, it’s totally free. You can download New California from ModDB, and for most people, installing it is as simple as unzipping the contents into your game directory. 

Like any good Fallout game, it begins with a narrator lamenting that, yes, war never changes. Over newsreel footage of nuclear bomb tests a man gives a rousing speech, like some jingoistic military commander addressing his troops. But then we see that, in fact, he’s a ‘vault-ball’ coach getting his team ready for a big game. In the mod you play as a resident of Vault 18, which we learn is located high in California’s San Bernardino mountain range, and you just happen to be the Vault 18 Patriots’ star player. You’re a jock, basically, which is different from most vault dweller origin stories. 

One of the first choices you make is in the middle of a vault-ball match. A player charges at you, and how you deal with him dictates whether your character will be a soldier or scientist. This changes some things in the story ahead and offers two contrasting play styles, providing some replay value. It’s a brilliantly organic way of shaping your character, although you do get to set SPECIAL stats with the familiar Vigor Tester. There are a lot of alternate paths related to stats and speech checks in New California, so it’s worth thinking carefully about how you want to play it.