Mod:Fallout: The Frontier/Fallout: The Frontier



Fallout: The Frontier is a free fan-made modification for the 2010 action role-playing video game Fallout: New Vegas initially developed by Maybenexttime and JoshBadWriter, later led by Tgspy, along with many members of the Fallout Modding Community and Frontier development team.

The first version of the mod was released in January 2021. This is called the "legacy" version because an updated version based on player feedback is in the works.

Setting and story


As the Courier, you start a new adventure centered around a conflict, an ongoing war, between the NCR Exiles and the Northern Legion in the snow blasted remains of Portland, Oregon. The NCR Exiles is led by Elias Blackthorne and the Legion is led by Marcus Valerius. Additionally, a group of Mormons known as the Crusaders led by a woman named Tasha Weaver have been caught in the conflict.

Another "group" of people are known as Scavengers ("Scavs") which essentially refers to everyone who has not taken a side with these three factions. Scavs include both hostile raider enemies, as well as the generally friendly populace.

The mod also currently contains violent content (i.e. gore) in order to show the story's dark themes.

Gameplay


To begin the mod, a character will approach the Mojave Desert after waiting a couple days. After some discussion, the Courier will go on a truck to the Frontier. The mod also checks to see if the Courier has been involved with the base game's DLCs (Dead Money, Lonesome Road, etc) which will unlock some new dialogue options.

The mod features a map around the size of the base Mojave Desert map. It also features hundreds of interior locations.

Features



 * Climbable ladders
 * Vehicles
 * In order to humanize the NPCs, they animate using a lot more body language, such as crying, gesturing (waving goodbye), etc
 * Multiple companions who can follow the Courier at the same time
 * New items, weapons, armors and enemies, including giant spiders

Development
The mod has been in development since around 2015 or 2016. It has had over 30 developers. It released on Nexus Mods on January 15, 2021. An easy-to-install Steam version was also planned, but it has been currently been put on hold.

It has been stated that there was infighting and steamrolling among the developers before the launch, resulting in controversy, with accusations of uncompromising attitudes that had hurt the creative vision of the mod.

Reception
The mod received generally mixed to negative reception at launch. On the negative side, many players found that some of the game's attempts at humor (particularly the adult jokes and sexual humor) felt awkward, saying the tone struggled with being able to balance its lighthearted and serious moments. Players were unsure what to make of some lines; for example, America complained briefly about how her feet were smelly after wandering around the wasteland; players were unsure if this was simply an innocuous line meant to be humorous and nothing more, or a dogwhistle to appeal for foot fetishists; one of the developers claimed it was the former, and joked that only foot fetishists would seriously interpret it as such. One of the major issues players had was the game's NCR questline, which drew criticism due to many players feeling it was linear, overly fantastical (e.g. a trip into outer space), poorly written and too much like Call of Duty and Dead Space.

Despite the negative reception, the mod has received some defenders who have genuinely enjoyed playing the mod, and feel if the player can tolerate some questionable writing here and there, occasional crashes and bugginess, and recognize that The Frontier is a free fan project at the end of the day, then there is still enjoyment to be had. They praise the environment of Portland, with some preferring Portland over the Mojave Desert. Defenders also encourage others to not just listen to vocal critics, but to give the mod a chance, download it and try it for themselves, while also keeping an eye on the future rework project. They also feel some of the criticism has been overblown, especially by those who act like every single quest and character in the game is poorly written.

Rework project
As a result of some of the negative reception and controversy, some of the developers have left the project; some by choice and others by general community consensus. Some of the mod's contributors and voice actors requested their submissions to be removed, which is why there are some characters in the game who have no voices.

The remaining developers are currently trying to rework the mod and help turnaround its reception so that it can meet the standards of the Fallout community. In May 2021, the Frontier team addressed criticisms and announced their intention to rework the mod "from the ground up". A statement was released from the team in which they apologized and mentioned that some of the content in the initial release mod was unacceptable, and they released a patch to remove such content.

With this announcement, they also began recruiting new writers, artists and developers for the project. Project lead Tgspy stated in a blogpost "we hope that this new story will do better justice to the characters, and to the Frontier as a whole". Some things confirmed that will be changed:
 * You are no longer automatically enlisted into the NCR before arriving in the Frontier. Instead you go to the Frontier as a "nobody" with no set affiliation to the factions there.
 * A common complaint was that the "legendary" Courier had a lot of worship by other characters, to the degree that dialogue seemed to ego-stroke the player. The "Courier worship" by others will be toned down, as well as some of Elias' decisions.
 * There will be more realistic interactions between the factions. The player will see the NCR fighting a war outside the main quest.
 * Legion and Crusaders will see some level of adjustment to prevent lore conflicts or quality concerns.

In 2022, the team announced that because some developers were in Ukraine's conflict zone, this would halt some progress on the mod.

Trivia

 * The Frontier features dozens of ghouls, much more than New Vegas.
 * Ray Chase, the voice actor of Noctis Caelum of Final Fantasy XV, voices Tiberius Rancor (warning: major story spoilers on this character article). However, the character is going to be dropped in the rework (due to the character's voice lines being unsalvagable in the new story) and Ray Chase has not been confirmed to return. According to the team, it was Ray Chase who asked to be a voice actor in the project first instead of the other way around, due to him being a Fallout fan.
 * The following locations have a basis in reality:
 * Arlington Heights
 * Goose Hollow
 * Hillside
 * Hosford-Abernathy street
 * Irvington
 * Kings Heights
 * Lincoln Park Elementary School
 * Lloyd Center
 * Oregon convention centre
 * Pearl district
 * Providence park
 * Slab Town
 * Sunnyside street
 * Burnside and Marquam Bridges