It was just a hair over two weeks ago that we reported on the Capital Wasteland project, a recreation of Fallout 3 in Fallout 4. A pre-alpha gameplay video demonstrating the old game in the new engine looked good, and progress seemed to be coming along well, even though there was much still to be done. After a recent discussion with Bethesda, however, the team making the mod has decided to shut it all down.
"Recently we have communicated with Bethesda regarding our planned method to implement the voice acting and other audio from Fallout 3 Into the Capital Wasteland. During this Conversation it became clear our planned approach would raise some serious red flags that we had unfortunately not foreseen. This contact resulted in us changing our methods to attempt to continue working," project lead NafNaf_95 wrote in an announcement on the Road to Liberty Discord.
"After some thought it appears there is no fully Legal way for us to continue developing the Fallout 3 in Fallout 4 Portion of The Capital Wasteland. Projects like these have always existed in a Gray area of the law but we as a team value our connections with many members of the amazing dev team that is Bethesda Game studios."
The mod makers gave thought to replacing all the voice acting in the game but ultimately decided against taking that path, saying that the game "loses its charm and personality" without the original actors. NafNaf_95 added that creating a new, original story in Capital Wasteland isn't possible because some team members have asked that their work be removed from the project.
Something may yet come out of all this—"We're not gonna throw out everything," the team said in a separate tweet—but right now, "we're taking a break." They also asked that fans not take out their unhappiness on either Bethesda, or on contributors who asked that their work be removed: "They are well within their rights to do what they did and anyone who doesn't see that needs to check themselves," NafNaf_95 wrote.
Interestingly, the Capital Wasteland's "sister project," Fallout 4: New Vegas, was confronted with the same issue but has elected to press ahead with all-new voice acting. The F4NV team said in a Facebook post that it too had initially rejected the idea of recording new voices, which it decided would be 'far too much work, for far too little reward," especially since it could just use the existing voice acting. But given the legal hangup, the F4NV team elected to keep going and replace the audio.
The change won't impact the release schedule for Fallout 4: New Vegas, but it will have an effect on how it's released: The voice acting team will be working independently and on its own schedule, so some voice acting elements may be missing from future F4NV releases until it's complete.
