Bring Back The Time Limit Mechanic in Fallout New Vegas 2
Fans of classic Fallout may remember one of the game’s most distinctive features: the time limit. The inclusion of this mechanic makes perfect narrative sense; in Fallout, you were chosen by the overseer to look for a replacement water chip for your community of underground vault dwellers. As it goes, the chip that made up an integral part of the vault’s water purification system had been broken, which means that the vault’s supply of water is rapidly dwindling. Not only do you have to find a chip from a nearby vault, you have to retrieve it fast. There is no time to waste. Thrusted out into the radioactive wasteland with the barest of essentials, you’re told that you only have 150 days to locate a replacement chip before the water supply runs out.
Yet this feature was so unpopular that it was quickly removed in subsequent patches. In an interview with Kotaku, Tim Caine, the lead programmer and producer of Fallout, explained the rationale behind the time limit back then. “He [lead designer Chris Taylor] felt that a large open world like Fallout needed something to force the player to focus their attention on the storyline. We developed Fallout with the time limit, including adding cutscenes showing the water running out at the Vault,” explained Caine.
Related: Fallout 4 Mod Adds A Bunch Of New Vegas Clothes And ArmourIn the original version, players can theoretically add another 100 days to this limit by paying for water supplies from merchants. However, this extension comes with an expensive caveat. It reduces the period of time before a secondary but more catastrophic event takes place: the invasion of your vault by a hostile race of super mutants. In short, you’ll need to finish the entire game—from finding the water
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