page_title: Fallout: New Vegas
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Fallout: New Vegas / Development
caption_attribution_description: Welcome to Fabulous NEW VEGAS
context_page_description: Fallout: New Vegas is a post-apocalyptic action role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was announced in April 2009 and released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on October 19, 2010. A spin-off of the Fallout series, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic open world environment that encompasses a region consisting of Arizona, California, and Nevada. It is set in a world that deviated onto an alternate timeline thanks to Atomic Age technology, which eventually led to a global nuclear apocalypse in the year 2077 in an event referred to as "The Great War", caused by a major conflict between the U.S. and China over natural resources. The main story of New Vegas takes place in the year 2281, four years after the events of Fallout 3 and 204 years after the bombs fell. It is not a direct sequel, but does mark the return of several elements found in Fallout 2.
  Players take control of a character known as the Courier. While transporting a package across the Mojave Desert to the city of New Vegas, what used to be Las Vegas, the Courier is ambushed, robbed of the package, shot, and left for dead.
context_section_description: In 2004, Bethesda Softworks purchased the license to develop and publish Fallout 3, as well as an option to create two sequels, from Interplay Entertainment. Three years later they bought the Fallout intellectual property. Bethesda abandoned the original gameplay style of previous Fallout titles; instead of an isometric game with action point/turn-based combat, Bethesda's Fallout 3 was a fully 3D game with real-time combat as well as the action point-based V.A.T.S. system.
  Fallout 3 was a critical and commercial success upon its release in 2008, and Bethesda commissioned a sequel. With their own developers busy working on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Bethesda reached out to Obsidian Entertainment, a company founded by several former members of Interplay's original Fallout developers Black Isle Studios, to develop the game. Bethesda and Obsidian decided to create a game that would continue the "West Coast" story rather than the plot of Fallout 3. Bethesda rejected Obsidian's idea to set the game between the events of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, but they did approve of setting the game in Las Vegas.
  Fallout: New Vegas was announced in April 2009. Obsidian's development team included former Interplay/Black Isle employees Josh Sawyer as director and Chris Avellone as a writer and director of the game's downloadable content. The plot of New Vegas takes heavy inspiration from the original Fallout 3 that Black Isle developed, commonly known by its codename "Van Buren", which Sawyer also directed prior to its cancellation. The most notable example is the inclusion of Caesar's Legion, a faction originally created for Van Buren. Obsidian included other factions from previous Fallout games and avoided writing any faction as entirely good or evil, but instead as potential rivals depending on what path the player decided to pursue.
  The game had a somewhat short development cycle of 18 months. New Vegas is similar to Fallout 3, in that both games use the Gamebryo engine, yet it improved on the previous installment's source code, with some graphics rendering improvements and new art assets, while reworking the engine to accommodate the extra lights and effects of the Las Vegas Strip. Obsidian were unfamiliar with the Gamebryo engine and had to request the help of an Oblivion modder named Jorge Salgado. Obsidian refined the real-time shooting mechanics and added iron-sights aiming to make playing without V.A.T.S. a more viable option than it was in Fallout 3. One PC version of the game relies on Steamworks for online functions, such as achievements and cloud save storage, as well as digital rights management (DRM). A version without DRM was made available by GoG.com on June 1, 2017.
  Producer Jason Bergman announced the involvement of several actors, including Ron Perlman as the game's narrator and Wayne Newton as radio DJ "Mr. New Vegas". He confirmed that the game would include voice acting from Matthew Perry, Zachary Levi, Kris Kristofferson, Danny Trejo, Michael Dorn and Felicia Day. The team brought on casting director and voice producer Timothy Cubbison to oversee the actor selection and voice production. The game established the new record for the most lines of dialogue in a single-player action role-playing game. New Vegas contains around 65,000 lines of dialogue, beating its predecessor and previous record holder Fallout 3 which contained 40,000 lines of dialogue.
  Fallout 3 composer Inon Zur composed the score. It features three major in-game radio stations, spanning several genres of music in the radio waves: country, bluegrass, popular music from the 1940s and 1950s, jazz and classical. Each station has a set track list which repeats randomly. Music from the first two Fallout games, composed by Mark Morgan, is used in the game as well.
  On February 4, 2010, Obsidian Entertainment released the Fallout: New Vegas teaser trailer. A second trailer was shown on GameTrailers from E3 on June 11, 2010.
caption: "Welcome to New Vegas" promotion at PAX 2010
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