Meet The Fans Remaking Fallout 2
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Ever since
the release of the Fallout TV series, fans have
flocked to the games to revisit cherished memories or to experience what inspired Amazon’s hit show for the first time. But if you want to uncover what the West Coast has to offer, your options are fairly limited.
There are
the original ‘90s games from Interplay, which are isometric, turn-based RPGs, or
Obsidian’s incredibly buggy New Vegas. It’s hardly an ideal starting point for newcomers who will inevitably have less tolerance than diehard fans. Thankfully, the community is remaking the classics for modern audiences.
Damion Daponte, a freelance video editor who runs a media company specialising in comics, films, and games, is leading a team of over 100 modders on Project Arroyo, a fan-made Fallout 2 remake.
Project Arroyo Will Be Open-World
Project Arroyo is built in the
Fallout 4 engine, transforming the top-down classic into the modern FPS-RPG hybrid style we’ve become accustomed to since
Fallout 3, but that’s not the only drastic change. The original games featured small locations you’d travel between on a map, interspersed with random encounters, rather than a true open world. This fan-made remake will fill in the blanks, letting us explore the West Coast like never before.
“We wanted it to feel more seamless and less intrusive,” Daponte tells me. “[In the originals,] you just hit a wall and then you teleport. While it would certainly be easier for us to do that, because we wouldn’t have to make any new locations, it wouldn’t give you the same scope.”
We are making new areas with our map to make sure you’re not walking through empty desert. There are a lot of unique locations, one of them is a haunted house with a slasher-like character.
In Fallout 2, we venture to a small part of San Francisco—Chinatown. But as Project Arroyo is expanding the world to include everything between each zone, that means going beyond the classic’s more narrow borders.
“It’ll be a condensed down San Francisco—that’s what all the Fallout games do. Boston [the setting of Fallout 4] isn’t the size of Boston,” Daponte says. “We’re getting all the iconic locations, and I can’t wait to showcase those.”
So, while Project Arroyo is faithful, it’s not a 1:1 remake, instead reimagining what Fallout 2 would look like if it were made today. That means, for the first time in the series, we’re going to explore a more complete San Francisco.
Will The Highwayman Be In Project Arroyo?
Fallout 2 is the only game in the series where you can get a car, The Highwayman, but it’s not a drivable vehicle. Instead, you use it to speed up fast travel on the map. It will work similarly in Project Arroyo, so don’t expect to cruise across California in a pre-war automobile.
Fans have tried to add cars to the 3D Fallout games for years, but they’re often a glitchy mess.
“Our plans are to keep it as a fast travel system for our survival mode players, because you can fast travel normally anyway,” Daponte says. “If we can find someone who’s skilled enough, or if we find a way to make it less buggy somehow—magically—then we would potentially like to add in the Highwayman. Imagine driving around, refueling it, that’d be cool.”
How Project Arroyo Is Reworking Random Encounters
As you travel across Fallout 2’s map, you trigger random encounters which take place in even smaller plots of land than the usual zones. These are usually super mutants, Enclave patrols, or geckos to fight, giving you a chance to farm XP.
With an open world styled on the 3D era, there’ll be less need for such methods to level up. But there are scripted ‘random’ encounters in Fallout 2 that play a large role in the story, such as one in which you watch Frank Horrigan gun down farmers.
“You wouldn’t want to make it so the player can just waltz in and shoot Frank Horrigan,” Daponte tells me. “All we’re gonna do is—like in the Fallout 4 scenarios where you look at a situation but can’t move—you come across it and it’ll be happening as you stand still. He’ll walk off and teleport out of existence and that’ll be the scene.”
Bringing Frank Horrigan To Modern Audiences
Frank Horrigan is one of the most iconic Fallout villains. Immediately after the show blew up, fan cams of this super mutant in power armour—a member of the secret service, protecting the president of a post-apocalyptic America—flooded TikTok. But he’s barely in the game, having only two major cutscenes before you fight him in the finale.
Daponte tells me that Project Arroyo doesn’t plan to expand his story despite his popularity, instead choosing to stay faithful to the original. “It just adds feature creep. The more stuff you add, the more time added onto your project, so if we want more Frank Horrigan, we need more voice acting, animations, scripting,” he says. “Frank Horrigan is a quality versus quantity type thing. He’s so striking and cool, almost like Darth Vader.”
That being said, translating a boss fight with a behemoth like Horrigan—which takes place in an almost empty room—from turn-based to 3D has its own challenges. So, it won’t be completely accurate.
“Frank Horrigan is going to be a tank, he can’t be like two shots and you kill him,” Daponte says. “I want to add a lot more versatility to him and make him have different stages. A good boss battle to look at for inspiration—we’re not gonna copy it—would be
Adam Smasher in
Cyberpunk 2077. That’s one we’re looking at to make him more interesting.
“It won’t be an open room because, in 3D, you would die in like five seconds. So we’re going to have to balance him and give him those stages. And making him wear power armour is interesting because we’re experimenting with destruction like in Fallout 4 where if you shoot the power armour, bits blow off.”
Every Character Will Be Voiced In Project Arroyo
In the original, only some characters had voice acting. They’d be represented by talking heads moulded out of clay. Otherwise, dialogue was told through text boxes, a lot like
Morrowind, or other RPGs of the era like Planescape: Torment and Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura. But to bring Fallout 2 into the modern day, Project Arroyo is looking to change that.
“We’re going to have a lot of voice acting done,” Daponte tells me. “Luckily, there are a lot of people who wanna be voice actors, so that helps. But we have to redo all the voices because of copyright reasons; even the talking heads. But honestly, with the amount of people flooding in who want to be voice actors, I don’t think it’ll be too much of an issue.”
Project Arroyo can’t use the old games’ music because of copyright too, so they’re composing all-new tracks instead,
Giving Talking Deathclaws Power Armour In Project Arroyo
One of the more outlandish aspects of Fallout 2 is found in Vault 13, where
intelligent, talking deathclaws are hiding from the Enclave who had created them using the FEV virus. They’re already regarded as ‘too silly’ by some (including Obsidian Entertainment co-founder Chris Avellone), but in a 3D setting with voice acting, it’ll be an even harder balance to strike.
“Unless we did it like
Skyrim’s dragons and they all sound like a reptilian sort of tone, a lizardy type of sound, to make it more Deathclaw-esque,” Daponte says, speculating as we talk about that inevitable bridge the team will have to cross. “It would depend on the voice actor. But I think it’ll be a little silly either way, but that’s the fun thing about Fallout 2.”
I recently spoke to their creator John Deiley who revealed that he had planned for talking deathclaws to
repurpose power armour to fit their physique, but this idea never made it to the game. Project Arroyo might finally bring that vision to life after nearly three decades.
“Since we’re adding new locations, we might as well,” Daponte says. “We’d have to go back and forth with the lore and make sure it fits, but I think it would be cool, so I don’t see why not. It’d be terrifying, to be honest.”
Project Arroyo Is Bringing Back The Classic Pip-Boy
Fallout 2’s pip-boy is drastically different to the Bethesda designs. It’s a grungier, almost ‘90s style wrist watch with a metal grate housing two filament bulbs. Even Vault Boy looks different—emblazoned on the side, he has ginger hair and wears a yellow and orange outfit, a far cry from the blue-and-yellow jumpsuit worn by the far more recognisable blonde Vault Boy. But to stay faithful, Project Arroyo is remaking that old design.
“We’re making our own Pip-Boy,” Daponte says. “Fallout 4 has a mod that’s a handheld Pip-Boy which is pretty much the Fallout 2 one - it looks exactly like it. I used that one so much in my modded playthroughs and I know it has a lot of bugs, so we can’t use that one.
“[Ours is wrist mounted because having it handheld] would be a nightmare. Although Fallout London is doing this, there are so many animations that it has to do - like you have to load up stuff and open the vaults. Fallout 2 says it’s wrist-mounted [anyway], even though it doesn’t look like it in-game. So we’re making ours wrist-mounted, and it looks pretty dead on.”
The NCR Are Getting A Fallout: New Vegas Coat Of Paint In Project Arroyo
Fallout: New Vegas took us back to the West Coast in the 3D era, which meant we got a clearer look at the New California Republic. The average trooper had a striking new set of armour, giving the entire faction more of a concrete identity, and the rangers become icons of their own right, plastered on the cover art and appearing as immediately as the intro when we’re shot in the head.
With Project Arroyo likewise returning to the West Coast in the 3D engine, that means approaching the NCR with the benefit of hindsight.
“We’re gonna be pulling from New Vegas a
lot for inspiration,” Daponte says. “We share assets with New Vegas, like their Mantis, because it’s the same thing. Why make a new asset and waste time doing an entire creature when you can just use that? So, we will be sharing a bit for our outfits and stuff - we’ll probably be making custom ones, but we will definitely take inspiration from New Vegas.”
Fallout 4’s Power Armour Returns In Project Arroyo
In the original Fallout games, power armour works much as it does in 3 and New Vegas—you equip it like any other gear. But Project Arroyo is built on the Fallout 4 engine in which power armour is an exosuit you get in and out of on top of your gear.
“We’ll be using Fallout 4’s idea,” Daponte says. “I like it - I think it makes more sense. It’s supposed to feel like power armour, you know? If you look at how it looks in Fallout 2 specifically, it’s more bulky on the sprites. So, you picture it being more bulky.”
Project Arroyo Plans To Launch On Steam
Fallout London is launching on GOG because it’s too big for the Nexus Mods website, but Project Arroyo has slightly different plans.
“I’m leaning towards doing what Endernal: Forgotten Stories did,” Daponte says, referencing a similarly scoped Skyrim mod. “Putting it on Steam. It’s just a platform that everyone has, it’s easier to access, easier to update, easier to install - it’s more efficient. We would have to figure out all the specificities, making it so you have Fallout 2 and Fallout 4 and all of its DLC to make sure there’s no legal issues. But we’re still looking into it.”
So, we have a Fallout 2 remake to look forward to that will reimagine the classic in the vein of the 3D games, complete with a New Vegas-style NCR and a more fleshed out San Francisco. It’s an incredibly ambitious project, but with over 100 dedicated fans behind the wheel, it’s shaping up to be a promising return to the West Coast. And one that we might even get to download directly onto our Steam Decks. Win win, eh?
