Why is it so difficult to play Fallout games on PC right now?
polygon.comLike so many other people, after I finished the Fallout series on Amazon Prime, I wanted to jump into a Fallout game again. I lived in the Boston area — where Fallout 4 is set — in 2015, when that game was released, so I clocked in almost 70 hours there, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to boot up my favorite game in the series: Fallout: New Vegas. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.
My copy of the game is on Steam, and while the console versions have fared better over the years, long-term support on PC has been abysmal. I knew going in that I was going to have to install a ton of mods just to get it to work, but I had never installed mods before. However, it became abundantly clear that I had to dig into modding when I booted up an old save file. My character’s model had almost completely vanished from the scene, and I was being hounded by enemies I couldn’t fight against.
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My final count for installed Fallout: New Vegas mods was 102. That’s not actually a lot for this game, but as somebody who doesn’t install mods unless they’re absolutely necessary, this was a whole endeavor. Bethesda games always have large modding communities, but because New Vegas has been tough to play on PC for years, the number of mods you can install is staggering. While there are way fewer hurdles for console players, it’s still extremely disappointing that Fallout games have suffered from a lack of support over the years.
Thankfully, there is a great beginner’s guide called Viva New Vegas that walks you through all the steps for getting New Vegas up and running. It’s called a “modular vanilla-plus” guide, which means you’ll be playing a version of the game that’s close enough to the original but with big improvements to visuals, frame rate, and the general quality-of-life experience. You don’t have to install all the mods, either (although it’s helpful to do so, since a lot of them need other ones to run). Despite the guide being easy to use, though, it still takes
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