manager of choice at this point. To
finish out the steady base that the
rest of our beautification mods will
rest on, you’ll want to grab a few
more essentials. The JIP LN NVSE
Plugin is another utility that adds
even more functions to the main
NVSE. NVTF, the New Vegas Tick
Fix, is one of the latest mods for
increasing the game’s stability. Lastly,
The Mod Configuration Menu isn’t an
absolute necessity, but it adds a menu
that allows you to change the settings
of certain mods while you’re playing
as you would any other game setting.
Not every mod here utilises it, but it’s
a nice time-saver while you’re
tinkering, especially with your UI.
USABLE INTERFACE
On that note, let’s get to another
important factor in any true remaster:
an improved UI. Fallout: New Vegas,
like Fallout 3 before it, has an
interface that would look more at
home on an ancient CRT TV. As a
modern PC player with way more
screen space to make use of than the
ones Fallout’s menus were designed
for, you can get a much handier
interface with just a handful of mods.
Start off with the User Interface
Organizer, a plugin that helps all
other interface mods play nicely
together. Vanilla HUD Remastered
cleans up and sharpens the elements
of your heads up display for higher
resolutions. It’s a small change, even
when I compared screenshots side by
side, but contributes to an overall
sharper look for our unofficial
remaster. oHUD is a collection of
several other mods under one name
that, thanks to the Mod Configuration
Menu above, you can use to move
HUD elements around on the screen
or remove entirely.
My own must-have is Just Loot
Menu – not to be confused with
plain Loot Menu which is also nice
but is my second favourite of the
two. It’s a mod that adds a Fallout
4 -style menu for looting containers
that allows you to take items
without loading a separate menu.
Compared with Loot Menu, Just
Loot Menu has more configurable
options in the Mod Configuration
Menu and comes out of the tin with
a smaller font and better spacing.
Last up on the UI list is MTUI, a
mod that improves and resizes the
PipBoy menus, shop menus and
dialogue. It does add a new texture in
the background of dialogue selection
that may or may not be to your taste.
The mod’s page gives a quick
explanation on how to revert back to
the original black background for
dialogue if it’s not your style.
BEAUTIFICATION
That brings us to the biggest matters
of taste: beautifying New Vegas with
bigger, newer textures and lighting.
Once again, it’s easiest to start with a
foundational layer and build from
there. When we’re talking textures,
that means roads, walls, concrete, and
other environment pieces. Ten years
on, New Vegas’ default textures are a
little muddy and a new texture pack
can add grittier grit, holier holes and
more. Two big texture overhauls havebecome staples for Fallout: New Vegas
modding. NMC’s Texture Pack and
Ojo Bueno. Both are great, so a choice
between the two comes down to
preference and how much storage
space you’re willing to throw at it.
NMC’s largest set of textures
comes as a set of three downloads
totalling just over 3GB of new files
for those new 2048x2048 textures.
OJB, on the other hand, is a single
mod file with textures the creator
says go up to (but not always)
4096x4096 for the ‘Ultra’ version.
That will set you back about 1.5GB.
Both NMC and OJB have versions
with smaller textures and therefore
smaller file sizes. NMC is the more
comprehensive option with more
textures replaced, but OJB has a
distinct flair. If you’re feeling frisky,
you can install both, determining
which should be dominant in
situations where both have
retextured an object by swapping
their load order in your mods list.For retexturing other objects,
you’ll want to grab MG’s Neat Clutter
Retextures which handles smaller
objects that NMC and OJB pass over.
The Wasteland Flora Overhaul gives a
very nice spit-shine to all the
wasteland’s plant life. The Weapon
Retexture project may not update
every weapon in the game, but it does
hit popular staples. It requires the
Weapon Mesh Improvements mod as
a prerequisite. For lighting and
effects, the Interior Lighting Project
can spruce up indoor areas.
Most important to Fallout, though,
are the people. It’s time to slap a lot
more pores on these poor desert
dwellers because we all know that
more pores means more pixels,
right? At present, Fallout Character
Overhaul 3.0 is the vanilla-friendly
overhaul for NPCs that requires the
least amount of fuss. On the other
end you have New Vegas Redesigned,
which is another very thoughtful
reimagining of NPCs that’s faithful to
the original game, but requires an
older version of Character Overhaul
to be installed first along with other
updates of its own, making it a bit
more of a chore to try out.
There’s also the new Brave New
World mod, a huge mod that recasts
the voices of 140 NPCs, led by the
same creator as NV Redesign. It’s not
exactly New Vegas Redesigned 4, but
does also update the faces of every
NPC who’s scored a new voice. For
now, I opted to install the voices only
version of Brave New World while
sticking with the visuals from
Character Overhaul 3.0.
As a last shout, two mods that do
add more content to the Wasteland
without being obtrusive are
Populated Casinos and the NV
Interiors Project. The former adds
more humans milling about in the
gambling rooms of the strip, a breath
of fresh air that made more of a
difference to me than I’d have
expected it to. The latter adds
interior areas to formerly inaccessible
buildings all over the map that
occasionally hide more secrets than
just some extra Wonderglue to stuff
in your pockets. New Vegas Interiors
may cross the line between remaster
and remake just a bit, but the
lore-friendly additions are worth the
weight, in my opinion.
Fallout: New Vegas is getting on in
years, but it’s not yet immune to a
good refresh via mods. After all was
said and done, I ended up with a
mods list of about 20 choices, which
is many fewer than I feared going in.
Let’s just hope we have another
Fallout game to play before Fallout 4
hits the ten-year mark, shall we?MAJOR MODS, ANALYSED
MOD SPOTLIGHT
TEXTURE EQUITY
More pixels for non-human people
TEN YEARS ON, A
NEW TEXTURE
PACK CAN ADD
GRITTIER GRIT, HOLIER
HOLES AND MOREGHOULS HIRES
RETEXTURE
Default ghouls
look terrible.
They’re supposed
to. Make them look
even worse, in a
good way, with a
high resolution
retexture.IMPROVED
ROBOTS
TEXTURES
New Vegas’ robots
deserve a texture
tune-up and this
texture mod
makes sure you
can see every
scratch and dent.IMPROVED
SUPER
MUTANTS
TEXTURES
Super mutants
don’t need to be as
washed up or
washed out as
their original
textures.