Monthly Modder: Fallout: Miami

One of the great appeals of the Fallout universe is exploring new regions affected by the alternate history of Fallout’s historical timeline and retro-futurist aesthetic.

As exciting as that prospect is for players starting a new Fallout game, it’s even more enticing to the vibrant modding community, where teams have formed to envision Fallout extended to new locales. The inspiration that happens at the intersection of a region’s real history, culture, and aesthetic with Fallout’s dark satirical storytelling, creates some very exciting results, as the Fallout: Miami Dev Team (Bethesda.net, Nexus) can attest.

They have been hard at work for a few years already on their project that envisions the Sole Survivor venturing to “party in the city where the heat is on.” They recently released “Miami Misadventures – Episode 1” (Xbox,Nexus) to introduce some of the content and world details they’ve created so far. The “Wild Goose Chase” begins with a radio broadcast that will lead players on a unique quest to a new weapon, clothing, faction paints and location. K.Constantine, writer and voice actor, gave us further insight into their inspiration and what’s coming next from the team.

What is it about Miami as a location that inspired you all want to use it as the backdrop for your Fallout mod?

The idea for the project came about during the latter portion of the 2010's. During that time, the synthwave/neon/miami aesthetic was quite popular. This was the major motivation for the project founder, Mika999, when he started.

That's far from the only reason Miami makes a great setting for Fallout. It's a recognizable city with a lot of culture and history of its own that also ties into the history of the country due to its geographical position and relevance.

And it's not just the history and culture that make it interesting to explore as a Fallout setting, it's also the mood and aesthetic of a glitzy vacation wonderland with more going on beneath the surface in the way of geo-politics given its proximity to Cuba. There's mystery that can tie into the long tradition of crime fiction or even stuff like the Bermuda Triangle. Miami has a lot of potential as a setting for Fallout, and that's what attracted a lot of us to the project - we hope we can do it justice within the limited scope of a fan passion project.

You've taken an episodic approach to releasing the mods that will introduce the Fallout: Miami story. What was behind that storytelling decision and approach?

Miami Misadventures is an episodic series of standalone content releases. It has no connection to the Fallout: Miami mod beyond including assets from it and making minor reference to it. We're using it as a platform to share content like weapons and armor with the community. The main Fallout: Miami mod will be released when it's done since we believe it is best experienced as a whole package.

What's in store for future episodes? Anything you can tease in terms of items/weapons, locations, creatures and/or NPCs?

Miami Misadventures is something we take time away from developing the main mod to produce. As such, there is no set release schedule for individual episodes, but we obviously have a good idea of what we want to include in the future. If all goes well, players will be happy to meet Fontaine, the voice on the radio from the first episode in a future release. He'll be bringing some new toys along when he makes his way to the Commonwealth eventually.

Other modders and mod teams are bringing Fallout to new locations not yet explored in any Fallout games to date, and fans also love to speculate about where future Fallout games could be set. What is it about the Fallout universe that makes it fun to imagine in different locales?

That's a great question. There are probably a variety of reasons, a lot of which the answer to your first question alludes to. A big one would be Fallout's unique darkly satirical perspective. It's fun to imagine places with their unique real-world history, culture and pop-culture legacies and how these would be changed by Fallout's alternate history and more than 200 years of post-nuclear annihilation. There's something comforting about being able to take franchise elements we know and combine them with something new from unexplored locations or topics.

Many people are involved with the Fallout: Miami project. What have you learned from the collaborative process as opposed to work you make on your own?

There's a certain give and take to collaborative work - it's more of a process. That's doubly true when the creative vision for something isn't set in stone yet. The back-and-forth, the brainstorming, the creative conflict, the compromises, and the excitement of creating something together have all been elements that helped shape the project. With a shifting roster of developers and a goal large enough to take years to complete, you really feel the need for good management, organization, communication pipelines and a strong core vision with creative oversight. It hasn't always been easy, there's been a lot of learning as we go along, but we're very happy with the team we've built. Setting aside egos and working toward a common goal with multiple perspectives has allowed many of us to produce some of our best work yet as part of Fallout: Miami.