Fallout: Nuevo Mexico devs confirm the big New Vegas mod is "no longer on hold" and "in a good state", but there's still no word about a release date

The development of DLC-sized Fallout New Vegas mod Fallout Nuevo Mexico is no longer on hold, with a member of the team telling VG247 that the project is currently “in a good state” as work on the mod has resumed.

Fallout: Nuevo Mexico has been in the works since 2021, and promises a Fallout adventure set in and around the state of New Mexico just five years after the events of Interplay’s original Fallout game, with plenty of classic Fallout mechanics and vibes weaved in. The mod was put on hiatus earlier this year, having ‘gone dark’ back in April, with its social media and YouTube presences being largely set to private. Its creators now say the project is back on the road, but aren’t promising when it’ll come out.

After Nuevo Mexico's head of public relations J.K-Serling posted a brief update to the mod’s Discord server on July 10, stating “project is no longer on hold”, and followed that up with an image of a box with a Vault-Tec logo washed up on a beach (captioned “a saucerful of secrets”) on August 8, we reached out them for more information.

“Zapshock is back to working on Nuevo Mexico, and the project is in a good state,” the modder stated. “Even before being put on hold, it was in a good state.” They also confirmed that the image of the box on the beach is intended to be a teaser, saying that it’s “meant to let people know in a subtle, impactful way that we do have something in the works”, but adding that “it's not really to hype anything up, though”.

“We do have something coming, but we can only ask people to be patient, let the devs cook,” the modder continued. “We don't want to keep saying 'something is coming' and not have anything to show yet, we have picked up on the fact that we are human beings that have a limit, we need our sleep and burnout is a real thing.

“I think we overestimated in some ways how long all this would take, especially considering [project lead] Zapshock has been the only one truly working on the worldspace, scripting, getting things to look at least decent in an engine from 2008. It's taught us to try to be less showy and more patient with hyping up anything related to the project's release date or even trailers. If people left our Discord or unsubbed from our YouTube, good! We deserve to lose that faith from people. We prefer people not to be too attached, because we can't guarantee the project will release, we can only try our best with the little support and team we have. We have faith that the project will release, and if people wish to wait til it does and then support us, we don't blame them at all.”

J.K-Serling went on to explain that having to commission and buy fresh assets that aren’t in the vanilla game is “what has kept us from revealing anything.

“We want to have real iconic landmarks and new buildings and props,” they said. “That matters, I don't think many people would find the same FO3/New Vegas assets [very] appealing, they are just too recognisable at this point.

“We promised to show something off this year and reveal stuff we haven't shown in years. Big reveals that have been the core draw for us to make this, but we only get one chance to show something off, and we want it to be what we all have in mind.”

They concluded: “I have seen what the team has done, and I think the hold-up will be worth it. It may seem like we don't have anything to showcase, but all I can say [as] someone who only helps write or come up with ideas, [is] that you will be pleasantly surprised by what the team has done from an environmental standpoint in the New Vegas engine. The clothes, the narrative, the new assets and worldspace - it'll make sense why we took this long to show it off, and why it's not an easy task given the number of people working on this.”

VG247 also reached out to some voice actors who were pencilled in to work with the mod’s team (or had already begun doing so prior to the project going on hiatus). One, going by the handle Ally Katz, told us that they’d reached out to Zapshock to wish the modder well after the stoppage was confirmed in the Discord server, and had received a response in early July, which included an indication that mod’s team were hoping to have them record some more voice lines at some juncture.

Another, going by Strigoi, said that prior to the project going on hold, they’d been waiting to hear from the team about some voice lines, and that they hadn’t reached out themselves or been reached out to by the mod’s team since the project was paused.

“It's mostly been a bunch of waiting on word and finding out about things after they already happened,” they said of the latter period, “I'm not pressed about it, though, I figured they'd tug my sleeve when the time came for recording. I know enough about the dev process to know that usually comes closer to completion.”

So, that's where this ambitious Fallout modding project is at right now, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here, especially for those who were impressed by what they saw of Nuevo Mexico prior to the hiatus. For now, being patient and letting the modders crack on until they're ready to show off more of what they've been building seems like the thing to do.