Just when you think the PC gaming modding community couldn't get any more wonderfully weird, someone goes and announces a Fallout: New Vegas 'remaster' in the Sims 2. That's right, a game which came out six years before Obsidian's beloved RPG, and is designed to do entirely different things than take a golf club to deathclaws and beat down on cosplaying Romans.
I struggle to see how anyone could justify such tomfoolery, but New Vegas modder and superfan FalloutPropMaster nonetheless gave it a go. In a reddit thread announcing the mod (via The Gamer), naturally called The Sims 2: New Vegas, FalloutPropMaster explains that he's become "impatient waiting for a remastered version of Fallout: New Vegas," specifically one that "allows us to revisit some cut content that existed during the in-house Beta" of the game.
Which is fair enough. But why not recreate those cut bits in Fallout: New Vegas using existing modding tools, rather than a game which has no combat mechanics or, indeed, comprehensible language? FalloutPropMaster states that he saw some examples of a couple of New Vegas casinos remade in the Sims 2 using its build tools, and it "inspired" him to remake all of Fallout New Vegas in Maxis' game "to the best of my abilities."
PropMaster mentions that he has "modded Fallout 3 and New Vegas in the past", but "never the Sims". Which in my opinion only raises further questions, but let's not derail this story any further. He does state that he's using various third-party tools such as FOMM, Blender, Nifscope and "others", to bring objects and elements from New Vegas into The Sims.
The project has received several progress updates since its initial announcement a week ago, including a planning layout of the New Vegas strip, ongoing construction of Goodsprings, and a test of some custom New Vegas UI (featuring bonus Mortimer Goth cameo). This same image also shows the mod utilises the same stat bars and behaviours from Maxis' life sim, suggesting the mod leans more toward being a New Vegas colony sim than a nuts 'n' bolts remake of Obsidian's RPG.
Part of me feels like this is all utter nonsense, and that referring to this as a remaster in any way is simply incorrect. Yet another, more chaotic part of me, the one I keep locked in a little box in the dark recesses of my heart, suggests that we've been looking at remakes the wrong way the whole time. I mean, why settle for the exact same game with fancier graphics? That's boring. It's far more interesting to rebuild a game using a completely different systemic basis. Only recently, we saw Bloodborne reimagined as a kart racer, and while that technically wasn't a mod, it was nonetheless rad as heck. So screw it, let's have Half-Life in Flight Simulator, Command and Conquer in Street Fighter, and yes, New Vegas in The Sims 2.
