Fallout: New Vegas does not contain horses, but it feels like it should. The now 14-year-old game’s whole vibe is exceedingly Wild West, and yet there’s nary a four-legged steed to be seen. The reason for this is simple: In Fallout canon, horses are largely extinct. But that hasn’t stopped one modder, Xїlandro Axeuora, from trying to add them. Slowing him down, however, are his own expectations, born of other games that came out long after New Vegas made its mark.
Axeuora, who lives in Ukraine, is working alongside two other modders to complete his vision, which is informed foremost by Red Dead Redemption 2, a game with horses so detailed that their testicles shrink and expand based on the in-game temperature.
"In my head I constantly compare what Rockstar developers created – animations aside, of course; I don't have a horse and a mocap studio – and what I'm making,” Axeuora, who says this mod has cost him his “sanity,” told Aftermath. “So I keep rewriting code over and over again, looking for that 'OK, this feels close enough' moment."
This took... a lot. But mostly my sanity 🫠🚬 pic.twitter.com/SDmpe7800Y
— Xїlandro Axeuora 🇺🇦 (@Xilandro) August 22, 2024
What he has right now already looks remarkably smooth, like it time traveled back from a more recent game to save Fallout: New Vegas from its grim, horseless future. But Axeuora still isn’t satisfied.
“As for replicating, [I’m doing] whatever I can,” he said. “But most importantly (and most difficult): the overall feel of natural horse movement [from Red Dead Redemption 2] without sacrificing responsiveness of controls. Not ‘realistic,’ just natural. It's a living, breathing creature. It can't move and turn like an arcadey tank.”
Some have suggested that Axeuora and his collaborators are simply porting over the horses from Bethesda stablemate The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Axeuora urges those people to go watch a video of that game’s herky-jerky excuses for equines to see how they stack up.
Axeuora has been working on the project for “a couple months,” but he’s been trying to wrap his brain around player movement in New Vegas – specifically via cars – since early this year. It’s been a fraught process, one ridden with burnout.
"Horses were so similar [to other player movement mods] underneath that I ended up doing rather similar work, with the same issues popping up as well. And it quickly nuked the last remains of my motivation," he said. "Some days I just blast nonstop, and then [I] procrastinate for a week or something."
But Axeuora is gonna get this horse over the finish line, come hell or high water.
“I've been modding Fallout: New Vegas since 2012,” he said. “This isn't my first rodeo (pun totally intended). No breaks until horses are done, though. If I drop them now, I'm not coming back to them ever again.”
He’s not quite sure when they’ll be done. Could be one month, could be the end of the year. As with a real horse, there are many moving parts involved: Axeuora’s mental state, his pending “aha!” moment where horse movement is concerned, and the availability of other modders.
He joked grimly about one more possible impediment.
"I also might very well get killed at any moment by a Russian missile strike,” Axeuora said, “which will make releasing horses a bit difficult.”
Which kind of puts everything in perspective. That in mind, Axeuora and his horse mod absolutely will not be cowed by a vocal segment of Fallout fans who’ve chosen to question the project: lore purists.
"We mod Fallout games because we love them, and that includes canon,” he said. “Practically speaking, there's nothing that stops us from giving every NPC in New Vegas a vegetation-based STD, with fungus growing out of their lower parts, or making hordes of giant man-eating battle brahmin swarm Mojave Wasteland. ... Anything we make, no matter how big or small, how lore-breaking or strictly dogmatic, is just that: [a] modification. Optional user-created content. It won't suddenly become part of the canon, and mods' existence can be ignored altogether. We can only speculate why some people are so overly concerned about what mods do. But they really shouldn't be."
