Fallout - Mutants Rising

Inevitable - THEME

Introduction

Mutants Rising is an upcoming total conversion mod for Fallout 2. The mod has a long history of successes and failures, and is quite well-known in the F2 modding scene. I joined the project as an artist in 2011, and slowly took more roles within the team, eventually becoming our main writer alongside Jinx. The project is lead by a very talented polish fellow, 'ardent'. We don't have a set release date for Mutants Rising, as we all have jobs of our own and we do this on our spare time; for this reason progress can be slow. To anyone wondering when it's going to be released I'll have to repeat the old mantra: "It's done when it's done."

How I got involved
I used to watch as a kid as my older brothers played Fallout and Fallout 2 - roaming the merciless wasteland, grasping a rusted-up laser rifle and blasting away radiated abominations of the cursed land. I must have been barely in my teens when I tried the games myself - little did I know this decisions would follow me for the rest of my life in the form of a lifelong love for the subject matter. Something in these games clicked hard for me. I can't rightly say whether it's the art style, the heavy RPG elements or the gritty realism that to me the game series exhibits; possibly all of these things combined.

Having replayed the novelty out of both of the original games, I took a look at what sort of stuff the rather lively modding community had spawned. As I understood it, anyone who's somewhat versed in Fallout modding had heard of the 'Mutants Rising' total conversion project. The project had allegedly been in development hell for 12 years or so. I tried their demo from years back and honestly it was a messy pile of steaming shit. I got bored with it in ten minutes, and summarily deleted the mod content.

Some mods were excellent, however. I remember being fond of a few, like Collyweb by Sokil which had that special Fallout touch - dark humour and dire destitution aplenty. Another mod I was very impressed by was called 'ardent's mod'; in fact I thought it was one of the best mods I had ever played, even if it was incomplete.

Then I heard ardent had joined the Mutants Rising project, and that the project was looking for help in the graphics department; these guys were having difficulties producing ending screen art pieces, and despite my distaste for their earlier mod, I offered a hand. At first that was pretty much all I did in the project but we had some folks quit and a need for dialogue writers arose; I decided to give it an earnest attempt, and found myself enjoying writing immensely.

When I got full access to the forums I must have spent two weeks just absorbing all of that raw data like some sort of mutant sponge. I saw the potential - MR could become something amazing. However, when I joined the mod had just gone through a major revision, with a lot of the older content having been discarded, so there was much to do. As I've delved deep into the earlier content, I feel the revision was definitely a needed one - the content created by earlier teams was simply not up to standard, and would have been a disappointment; just another amateur mod. With the revision, we're seriously nearing Fallout 2-levels of awesomeness, even if it takes us a few years more.

Little by little I got more involved with all aspects of the project: game design, training of new recruits, compiling lists, upkeep; I even dabbled in scripting, though dialogue writing was always my forte and something I wanted to continually improve my skills in (at the moment, I've written 2,35 Mb of text for this project, so that's more than your average novel) Now I'm hopelessly immersed in the project, and already years ago I promised myself never to give up on this mod no matter what - thankfully we've got a small but determined, likeminded team of loyalists keeping the flame up, and though it's nothing short of a herculean task, we're nearing completion each day.

Setting

Mutants Rising takes place some twenty years after the defeat of the Enclave at the end of Fallout 2. It has been hundreds of years since the Great War ended, and the post-apocalyptic Nevada is being repopulated; civilization once again spreads slowly into the wasteland.

Out of the blue, a mysterious army of super mutants emerges and begins to assault the settlements of the region. Is it the second coming of the Unity? Has the Master returned and began stoking the fires of revolution? The progeny of Cassidy must seek an answer to this enigma, all the while racing against time to save what's left of the world, devastated by conflict after conflict.

After all... war never changes.

Themes
Fallout has always been about exploring the darker sides of humanity; xenophobia, broken ideals, squalor, tribalism and our seemingly innate need for conflict. Throughout a millenia of civilization our minds have changed little, only the weapons we employ in our murderous rage to dispose of eachother have become more potent.

There's a recurring theme in Mutants Rising - the glimmer of hope which makes cultures rise, and eventually fall having to submit in the face of annihilation in the hands of a more violent culture, or that spark of progress turning into corruption and stagnation. There's this spirit of pioneering, of a world beginning to begin again, only to eventually have their hopes crushed.

In Mutants Rising, Nevada is a lawless place. Raiders, mutants and monsters have forced settlements and cities to be fortified - they resemble more feudal citystates of old than modern day townships. Sometimes even gaining access to these places is a trying task on its own. As an outsider you have to build a relationship with the locals before they accept you.

You find many settlements destitute, abandoned; the forsaken people driven away by the merciless nature of the wastes. Like in the previous installations, the shadow of a foregone world looms over the new world - relics of past ages lay hidden under the earth. In a world such as this, only the most ruthless survive, as in the end our worst enemy is ourselves.

Mutants Rising is also a personal story, as it ties somewhat closely to the plot of the earlier Fallout games. There's a struggle and a mystery you must overcome. You are not just anybody - you have a history. There are nods and references to earlier installations, and we do acknowledge the existence of Fallout: New Vegas, though the events of Mutants Rising happen chronologically before the events of that game.

I'll write more stuff about the mod later on...

Can YOU help?

The MR-team released a revised demo some years ago. This was when I had joined the team, but when I was only working on the art-department, so I had little to do with the official demo. The demo is rather nice! You can download it here, though you do need to have Fallout 2 installed.

Even though we're at feature freeze we're always looking for talented individuals to help out with various tasks. Right now we're looking for scripters familiar with the Fallout 2 scripting conventions, as we only have two scripters working on the project right now (myself not included; I'm a novice at best). We always appreciate more dialogue writers too. The conventions for writing are not terribly difficult to grasp, so if you're interested, head out to the forums and give us a line!