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Over a decade after its release, the Fallout: New Vegas modding community never ceases to amaze.
While mod traffic for Fallout: New Vegas is not nearly as high as Fallout 4, the badge of a Bethesda-baked engine tends to naturally lend itself to modders. Over the past few years, New Vegas has seen some huge undertakings like Brave New World or the upcoming Nuevo Mexico.
It has also been an era of rapid technological progress, thanks to a handful of community-favorite tech-wiz mod authors. For The Frontier, Xilandro Axeuora made a feature-complete driving system in the aging New Vegas engine from the ground up, far outshining the equivalent attempts in Fallout 4. This trend continues with TommInfinite's 'Building Bridges', currently the only multiplayer mod for Fallout NV.
Why a Souls-like message system fits right into the world of Fallout: New Vegas
Other than summoning signs and soapstones, marks left on the ground by other players are an integral part of the Souls-like experience. Bloodstains depicting other players' deaths are received, sometimes with unearned schadenfreude, as cautionary tales. Etchings jolted down on other players are passed on as messages from their world to those of others.
These messages can sometimes be helpful tips guiding the player to the nearby illusory wall. More frequently, though, they are light-hearted pranks as part of the chosen one's rite of passage or community inside jokes to lighten the mood.
These light-hearted romps are a welcome wellspring of life in these games. A refrain of hopelessness marks dark Souls' convoluted world. What is hollowing, but the material reflection of giving up on oneself?
In this connection, 'Don't give up, skeleton!' has become a prevalent running gag since Dark Souls 2. The (un)healthy dosage of static skeletons lying around in eccentric poses throughout the world space of Drangelic and Lothric does not help, either.
Fallout: New Vegas is similar in many ways. Its outset is the oppressive pall of a rough post-apocalyptic world teeming with bandit cults and warmongering factions. In classic Fallout fashion, the despair is ironed out with a tinge of dark humor and a psychedelic dash of easter eggs (through the 'Wild Wasteland' perk).
Add a playful community with years of in-jokes into the mix, and we have the perfect climate to deploy Souls-like etchings in Mojave.
Like in all Souls-borne games, including the latest Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas players can also put down messages that will be visible on other players' single-player sessions. The current functions of the mod include the ability to write, rate (upvote), or report messages scrawled by others.
How to get 'Building Bridges' up and running
To be a part of the 'Building Bridges' message network, a player must:
- Install the mod and its prerequisites on their Fallout: New Vegas archive
- Get their 'Building Bridges' API key
'Building Bridges' uses TommFinite's own framework, SUP NVSE, to prop up its additional HUD elements. A player's registration in the 'Building Bridges' environment is also done through the same API key distribution system that powers vortex.
