6 New Mechanics We Need in the Fallout 3 and New Vegas Remasters, And 1 Would Be Entirely New to the Series
For Fallout fans, some of the best news of the year came back in July when Bethesda announced remasters of both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas alongside an official confirmation of Fallout 5‘s development. While a brand new mainline Fallout title is exciting, the success of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has many fans more excited for the remasters of their all-time favorite Fallout titles, hoping that they can soon get their hands on these timeless RPG games with some of the less timeless parts reworked and updated for modern systems.
Though the stories, settings, and player agency in Fallout 3 and New Vegas are considered some of the greatest in RPG gaming history, it’s hard to argue that these titles were very memorable when it comes only to gameplay. While many would be happy with simple graphical remasters of these beloved titles, the switch to a newer, modern engine means Bethesda has the unique opportunity to go back and update them with vastly improved gameplay systems that the original Creation Engine simply could not handle. This includes some more recent mechanics that many players now feel are necessary to the Fallout experience as a whole.
6. Improved Shooting
The first entry on this list is probably also the least controversial. While Fallout 4 wasn’t the most beloved entry in the series as far as storytelling goes, the game still maintains significantly higher player numbers than both Fallout 3 & New Vegas. The primary reason for this is due to the more modern game engine, which improves upon a lot of problems in the older games including movement, inventory management and looting, and most importantly, shooting.
It doesn’t matter how big of a fan of Fallout 3 & New Vegas you are, chances are likely that you’re not a very big fan of the game’s shooting mechanics, which feel downright awful from a modern perspective. Inaccurate iron sights in New Vegas or simply no iron sights at all in Fallout 3, half-second input delays, no partial reload animations (meaning bullets in the mag are ignored for a full reload every time), and randomized bullet spread made combat clunky and awkward at best and an archaic nightmare at worst.
The only support needed for the argument that players want to see Fallout 3 & New Vegas in a more modern engine with better overall mechanics, including shooting, is the fact that the most popular mod projects for Fallout 4 are projects to remake the games in Fallout 4‘s engine. While some fans may argue for an authentic experience in the remakes, choosing not to modernize many aspects of Fallout 3 & New Vegas‘ FPS and TPS mechanics would feel like a missed opportunity on Bethesda’s part.
5. Settlement Building
Though some players don’t care about the mechanic or outright found it tedious and repetitive, the majority of Fallout fans cite settlement building as the best new addition to the series introduced in Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. This mechanic, which allows players to convert the junk they collect in the wasteland into their own personal homes to populate and defend against attacks, remains so popular that to this day there are content creators dedicated solely to settlement building. Many players online discuss the feature as one of their most anticipated possible additions to the upcoming remasters.
While some skeptics may argue that Fallout 3 & New Vegas have no room for settlement building, with it being a mechanic tied directly to the story of the Lone Survivor and Minutemen questlines, there is some precedent for the mechanic already in the two games. Fallout 3 & New Vegas both already feature player housing mechanics, which contain archaic versions of Fallout 4‘s decoration system. Adding the settlement building mechanics to the remasters could allow players to decorate these homes as they see fit, much like the “Home Base” player house in Fallout 4.
On top of that, it isn’t a stretch to imagine the Lone Wanderer or Courier 6 taking some time to set up shacks and shanty towns across their perspective wastelands. One could imagine an added quest line where the Crimson Caravan company pays you to restore sites across New Vegas, or as part of Project Purity in DC. This would be a good way for the games to make use of many of their smaller locations, many of which just become vacant and forgotten about after a brief encounter.
4. Better Junk & Crafting
One of the greatest things Fallout 4‘s settlement building did for the game was give the hundreds of junk items scattered across the wasteland a purpose. In Fallout 3 & New Vegas, the various soda bottles, wonder glue contains and electronic scrap you find are very rarely used, and more often than not are simply useless. Sure, you might get a few caps for some of it, but the vast majority of these items are literally designed to be dead weight.
Fallout 4 changed this by assigning every piece of junk in the wasteland a material value, such as metal, plastic, copper, and then using these materials in both settlement building and crafting. Suddenly, the junk items that were once considered dead weight became some of the most sought-after loot in the game, because they became a currency that could be directly exchanged for player expression, something far more valuable than any weapon or armor drop the game could give you.
Even without settlement building, Fallout 3 & New Vegas need to learn from Fallout 4‘s junk and crafting mechanics and add some real value to the garbage you find scattered throughout the wasteland. After all, this mechanic was the one that best represented the fantasy of Fallout’s setting byaking use of what you can build a new, sometimes better world in the wasteland out of the remains of what came before.
3. Weapon and Armor Mods
Directly tied to the junk and crafting systems highlighted above, Fallout 3 & New Vegas could be significantly improved by taking the weapon and armor modification mechanics from Fallout 4, which allowed players to modularly build their weapons to their preferred playstyle and modify their armor with extra armor, lead lining, deeper pockets, and more.
Again, this mechanic is one of the most thematically appropriate for the Fallout setting, and fulfills a fantasy a lot of players want from an apocalyptic video game. The idea of taking apart junk left over from the world before and turning it into some scrappy improvements for your gun is just downright exciting, and playing around with your self-modified weapons is super satisfying. It is hard to argue with how popular this system is among the fanbase, as it even found its way into the Fallout 2d20 tabletop roleplaying game.
New Vegas already has an approximation of this mechanic, with weapon modifications available to be purchased and installed to your weapons. It just needs to go a step further, allowing for the full modularity that Fallout 4‘s system offers.
2. Improved Power Armor
Though this might be controversial with some old-school Fallout fans, the majority of players agree that Fallout 4‘s take on power armor, which has since become the new canon, is the best change made to the series. Where power armor was once just a series of metal plates sort of strapped to the player’s chest, limited by the game’s tech to essentially just be another outfit worn by the player, Fallout 4 turned power armor into a walking tank, powered by fusion batteries and strapped to a exosuit frame that players had to manually enter and exit.
Players love the size, feel, and modularity of the new and improved power armor, which feels like a walking tank for the player to customize and maintain rather than just another armor set collected by allying with the Brotherhood. The ability to manually repair, replace, and customize each individual piece on your frame was both a fun fantasy and a great way to personalize every suit of armor.
While many would agree that Fallout 4‘s power armor is better than it was in the rest of the series, there are still aspects of the system from the older games that could be implemented to improve it. Perhaps including the power armor training perks from Fallout 3 & New Vegas could be used to gatekeep effective use of the armor, or the usage of the armor entirely. This could be also be used to remove the armor’s massive fusion core drain, an element that players found to be annoying and immersion-breaking in Fallout 4.
Playing such an important role in the central conflict in Fallout 3, power armor is something the remakes really need to get right, and choosing not to include the newer system would be a major disappointment for many players. While it plays a lesser role in New Vegas, it would still be interesting to see how the newer power armor is portrayed through the use of the NCR’s salvaged power armor, or even in the Legion, who are seen wearing bits and pieces here and there. Brand new power armored enemies and NPCs could be introduced to the game, to reflect changes to the lore and the greater scale that New Vegas was originally intended to have, before time and budget constraints limited the final product.
1. Drivable Vehicles
Fallout 3 had a subway system. Fallout 4 had vertibird travel. Now, the future of Fallout should be in cars and motorcycles for the player to discover, restore, and customize.
Mechanically, the process of building your modular Fallout vehicle wouldn’t be too different from power armor or robot crafting in Fallout 4. Players would gain access to a custom vehicle workbench, discover frames in the wasteland, and apply the best parts they can find or craft to create their ultimate vehicle. Fast travel would be a thing of the past as most players would likely choose to navigate the wasteland in style.
The idea of having your own car in the wasteland isn’t unprecedented. In Fallout 2, players are able to find and drive their own car known as the Highwayman. While we don’t see vehicles in any of the Bethesda Fallout titles, which would make it a series first, they exist in the lore. According to Fallout 2 developer Chris Avellone in the Fallout Lore Bible, there is said to be about one vehicle for every 200 people in the wasteland, with the NCR operating at least one motorized division. Super Mutants and Raiders in the Boston wasteland refer to a “motorcycle guy,” implying knowledge of the vehicles, and we can even see some concept art from New Vegas showing custom-made Legion vehicles.
While we don’t currently have vehicles in any of the Bethesda games due to engine constraints, all of that could change in the remasters. Bethesda’s Creation Engine 2 has shown the ability to handle vehicular travel in Starfield, which has a number of land vehicles that players can use. If Bethesda chooses to use their proprietary game engines for the remasters, it would more than likely be the Creation Engine 2, which would make vehicles very much possible. If instead they choose to use the Unreal Engine 5, which was used for Oblivion Remastered, the addition of vehicles remains very much a possibility. Either way, they are a lore-friendly addition to the game that is no longer held back by the constraints of the game’s engine.
Drivable Cars is one of the more popular Fallout: New Vegas mods, so we already know that at least one Wasteland’s roads can handle a bit of extra rubber. While drivable vehicles are the least likely of the features on this list to be added to the remasters, we can at least be sure that players would eventually mod them into the games, and we might see their addition in Fallout 5.