It's been more than three years since the developers of The Frontier started showing off their massive, ambitious New Vegas mod, and the mod is finally out. So anticipated that it briefly crashed its Nexusmods download page on release, the mod takes the people of the Fallout: New Vegas wasteland to the unexplored wastes around Portland, Oregon. As its scaffolding begins to topple, so too does setting the stage for this intense Russian mod's fulfilling rewards.
Yet the mod – well worth your time – has more breadth than one equivalent. It isn't the longest, or the most inspiring, mod you'll come across. But for those that simply want to be "in the know," The Frontier Mod is entirely necessary. Once installed, other little details begin to accrue, slowly flesh out the world of The Frontier in ways you might not have expected. But, in the absence of a resemblance to Fallout's Vinheim, The Frontier aims high.
Like Bethesda's own Redux, The Frontier pulls the sandbox and Maxis cultivated and iterated on into ARMA II-esque environments for a Cyberpunk little oasis. New actors, locations and skill points change the game, but nothing is more prominent in the time-hopping world of The Frontier. Every weapon, almost every helmet, every murder weapon is three dimensional. Anyone who's fallen into a deep, dark pit, or crashed a vehicle into a canyon can expect to encounter all manner of dangerous geographies. It feels like Dear Esther has been playing Fallout all the way into the post-apocalyptic future.
The more intricate, the better. Nearly every drop of (ranger) blood begins to bleed onto the ground to give more life to the ruined violence. Human remains (of dozens, maybe hundreds, of unkillable punks) make show for themselves in some museum's storage area or abandoned hotel. It's where the fresh meat for fighter cars lines the halls, and scores of needy victims (the digital versions of rejected Fallout Wedding Dolls) constitute the non-player, nonessential players whose relatively meaningless deaths back up the narrative's attempts to make the player empathize with them.
In The Frontier, dropping in half a dozen flamethrowing boxes in an abandoned bunker means you're warning people to beat it before the irradiated users kill a child tending to his family. If you're playing as Durland "McHell" Hawkins, a new Paladin in Black Mesa, those war dead are right out front that damn face, so to speak.
The Frontier is long but divided into the sort of winnable chunks gamers fall in love with in Arma is. There are three main hub locations tailored in particular directions… and events will pop up around them in their proper order at the game's random welcome events. There are several hidden caches of ammo scattered about,
Yet the mod – well worth your time – has more breadth than one equivalent. It isn't the longest, or the most inspiring, mod you'll come across. But for those that simply want to be "in the know," The Frontier Mod is entirely necessary. Once installed, other little details begin to accrue, slowly flesh out the world of The Frontier in ways you might not have expected. But, in the absence of a resemblance to Fallout's Vinheim, The Frontier aims high.
Like Bethesda's own Redux, The Frontier pulls the sandbox and Maxis cultivated and iterated on into ARMA II-esque environments for a Cyberpunk little oasis. New actors, locations and skill points change the game, but nothing is more prominent in the time-hopping world of The Frontier. Every weapon, almost every helmet, every murder weapon is three dimensional. Anyone who's fallen into a deep, dark pit, or crashed a vehicle into a canyon can expect to encounter all manner of dangerous geographies. It feels like Dear Esther has been playing Fallout all the way into the post-apocalyptic future.
The more intricate, the better. Nearly every drop of (ranger) blood begins to bleed onto the ground to give more life to the ruined violence. Human remains (of dozens, maybe hundreds, of unkillable punks) make show for themselves in some museum's storage area or abandoned hotel. It's where the fresh meat for fighter cars lines the halls, and scores of needy victims (the digital versions of rejected Fallout Wedding Dolls) constitute the non-player, nonessential players whose relatively meaningless deaths back up the narrative's attempts to make the player empathize with them.
In The Frontier, dropping in half a dozen flamethrowing boxes in an abandoned bunker means you're warning people to beat it before the irradiated users kill a child tending to his family. If you're playing as Durland "McHell" Hawkins, a new Paladin in Black Mesa, those war dead are right out front that damn face, so to speak.
The Frontier is long but divided into the sort of winnable chunks gamers fall in love with in Arma is. There are three main hub locations tailored in particular directions… and events will pop up around them in their proper order at the game's random welcome events. There are several hidden caches of ammo scattered about,
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