Mod Spotlight – Fallout Who Vegas

Mod Spotlight – Fallout Who Vegas

“The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can’t just read the guidebook, you’ve got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers- or is that just me?”

I’m in a bit of a tricky predicament.

After I was momentarily distracted during a short hop, several key components of the Tardis control column now lie in tiny little pieces. As a result, the little blue box I call a home is currently not going anywhere, and the control console is currently sat in darkness, for want of a better word, sulking.

I could run an automatic repair cycle, but apparently a little shy about exposing its innards with people around, the Tardis is insisting I step outside while it puts itself back together again. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have too much issue with grabbing some fresh air, but right now there’s a dozen raiders stood just outside the door waving some spiky looking objects.

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Time And Relative Dimensions In the Sierra Nevada

Fallout: Who Vegas brings the world of Doctor Who crashing into the post-apocalyptic future, past and present of Fallout: New Vegas. It’s the result of over two years collaborative work by Chris ‘Demeggy’ Lupton and Joseph “Spyduck” Trammell, and in the next week or so it’s due to release its first wave of content. Happily, after several months of begging, Chris finally let me take a sneaky peak at what’s in store.

The TARDIS is the home of the Doctor, a thousand-year-old humanoid alien whose innate curiousity has a tendency to get him into more than a little bit of trouble. But of course, you knew that already. The first wave of Fallout: Who Vegas adds the legendary blue box to the wasteland, and more importantly it hands you the keys to its controls. Capable of impressive feats of teleportation, the box can move you to a massive number of locations in the fallout wastes, meaning adventure is always just outside your door.

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alternative schemes are available for the more discerning time-traveller

Flying the Tardis is not just a question of tapping in your destination and hitting go. Flying requires a good memory for procedures and some concentration, needing constant adjustment to the controls as you go. Mess up or hit the wrong button and you might just find yourself staring at a lump of broken machinery, and that’s just how I ended up in this mess.

Interestingly, you also can’t just jump into the pilot’s seat and expect to master the controls straight away. FWV introduces skill trees for its equipment, meaning you’ll need to spend a while getting to grips with the ship’s lower functions before some of the more advanced features unlock. Although a grind for an experience was not what I was expecting, it’s an interesting way of dividing up the features of the mod.

As well as the two instantly recognizable control rooms of the Eccleston, Tennant and Smith era Doctors, the mod adds further useful interior rooms including a workshop and infirmary for patching yourself up. Connecting these rooms are a labyrinth of corridors so complex I had to end up leaving myself a trail of breadcrumbs to follow back to the control room.

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Right, now don’t forget, we’re parked over by the tumbleweed.

In addition to your new home, the mod adds the Doctor’s useful and ever-present sonic screwdriver, capable of springing locks, hacking devices and at higher levels even summoning the Tardis to your location. Whilst its capabilities do somewhat unbalance lockpicking and hacking, key locked doors still bar your passage, preventing you from accidentally ruining certain quests.

I never finished Fallout: New Vegas. As a result, there’s still a great deal of the wasteland I have left to explore. With the keys to the Tardis in hand, I now have an interesting new way to find myself in some unusual new locations, and with the first wave almost complete, the duo are already beginning work on bringing some of the Doctor’s most feared adversaries into the wasteland. Promising daleks, cybermen, silurians and more, if the quality of their later releases matches what they’ve achieved so far, I cannot wait.

A release date for Fallout: Who Vegas has not yet been confirmed, but is expected in the near future. For further information, you can follow the progress of the mod over at the main website.

 

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