Dev Diary 167: 2025 and beyond

Hello mutants!

I am happy to report that all coding for Mesa Verde has been completed. I will now focus on adding as many extras as possible for you to enjoy in a few weeks when the December release goes live.

For this dev diary entry, I want to discuss our plans for 2025 and beyond.

First, I am excited to publicly reveal that we have received the original “lost” design document #13 for Fort Abandon. This means you will actually see and experience the location exactly as Black Isle Studios envisioned it. So what does that mean for the current Fort Abandon? It means its world map location and name will change to Fort Damnation. This will happen once the original Fort Abandon is added to the game. We’ve already completed the Fort’s unique exterior, as you can see from the attached screenshots. And before you ask, we are not allowed to publicly distribute the original design document, but we promise to implement everything from it into the game.

Next, I can reveal that we’ve made great progress on Jericho, New Canaan, Twin Mothers, the Nursery, Circle Junction, and Tibbets, as well as new main story elements. In terms of priorities, we will try to finish smaller areas first, which means Twin Mothers and Jericho will be the first ones tackled in 2025.

While we hope to release more than these two locations next year, I can’t promise a third or fourth one. The bitter truth is that we currently have only one programmer—me—which creates a significant bottleneck. We’ve been searching for additional programmers for over a year without success.

Fallout 2 had 7 programmers, and such a team was able to code a large game in a year. For us, it realistically means it will take years to reach version 1.00 unless our programming team grows.

Things would be different if we were developing the game in a modern engine that supports visual coding, but that’s not the case here. There’s only one way to write code for Fallout 2 engine.

That being said, we’re running a marathon, not a 100-meter sprint. Our dev team has grown to 14 people over the past six months, we’re on the radar of every major gaming portal, and everyone is super duper excited because progress is being made daily as we move closer to the finish line.

We believe that once this game is complete, it will be a legendary Fallout game, up there with the series’ best. It will have many faces, meaning different things to different people—a true sandbox RPG. For us, it’s not just a dream project but a dream game that we can’t wait to play ourselves. Always hold onto Interplay’s old motto: “By Gamers. For Gamers.”

See you on release day in a few weeks!

Take care,

– PJ Hexer & Co