Fallout: New Vegas is well over a decade old, but people are still making mods — and one of them is getting released via Steam. The Fallout: The Frontier Steam release will make it easier than ever to grab this upcoming batch of free, fan-made content.
Check out the Fallout: The Frontier Steam release trailer for an amusing in-game take on the announcement:
If you haven't heard of Fallout: The Frontier, it's an in-development mod for Fallout: New Vegas. It's not going to be a tiny addition of content, either; the devs notes that there are already 500,000 records in the core mod plugin. As a point of comparison, they say that the core game has 572,000 records. The developers consider it "an unofficial super DLC."
Now, this upcoming fan-made mod set in Portland, Oregon is going to be getting its own Steam release, making it easier than ever to add a few dozen (or few hundred) hours of gameplay into Fallout: New Vegas. (As if we needed an excuse!)
How Would the Fallout: The Frontier Steam Release Work?
Something wasn't entirely clear to me about this announcement: how would a Steam release for Fallout: The Frontier work?
A few years back, there was a huge debacle with paid mods on Steam. That program was eventually axed, but it seems that built-in mod support got a bit of a buff at some point in the last few years. For example, @Liyran on Twitter pointed out that the Skyrim mod Enderal: Forgotten Stories has its own dedicated Steam page, believe it or not.
Presumably, the Fallout: The Frontier Steam release is going to work much in the same way — a dedicated Steam page that lets you install the mod with the push of a button. I reached out to one of the developers over Discord and got confirmation that this is exactly what they're aiming for. The developer added that this release won't cost you anything; naturally, you will need to own Fallout: New Vegas and all four of its major DLCs to play this upcoming mod.
The mod's developers say that it's still very much a work in progress and there's still no firm release date just yet. In the meantime, you can find out more about Fallout: The Frontier at its official website. If you don't yet own the game on Steam, you can grab the Ultimate Edition on Steam or the Humble Store for $19.99 or your regional equivalent.
Quick Take
I've done a bit of modding in Fallout: New Vegas, and I can say with some confidence that it's just not that easy for the layperson thanks to all of the third-party plugin dependencies. Hopefully, this Steam debut will make it super easy for players of the original game to dip their toe into the wider world of modding.
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What do you think of the Fallout: The Frontier Steam release? Are you looking forward to this mod? Let us know in the comments below!
