Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are officially in the works. Announced alongside pre-production confirmation of Fallout 5 and a new year of DLC for Starfield, Bethesda is giving the two existing RPGs the Oblivion Remastered treatment.
There’s currently no release date for either Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas remasters, but there is hope that the first of the two will launch sometime in early 2027. This would hopefully allow the remaster to tie in nicely with the release of Fallout Season 3, the next season of the ongoing TV show.
In a past conversation with us at FRVR, we asked original Fallout 3 designer Bruce Nesmith about their hopes for a Fallout 3 remaster. Around the time of the release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, Nesmith explained that they would like to see the gunplay of the older RPGs brought up to snuff.
“In Fallout 4, there was a lot of work done on the gun combat,” Nesmith explained. While Fallout 4 was built on a more advanced game engine than its predecessors, the designer hopes that some of the gunplay improvements could be somehow ported back into the prior games as they admit Fallout 3’s gunplay in particular is “not good”.
“It didn’t hold up to shooters at the time,” Nesmith told us, adding that “a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4.” Nesmith admitted that some minor improvements were made by Obsidian Entertainment for Fallout: New Vegas, but seeing some of the clear improvements made in Fallout 4 would please the designer.
“I anticipate seeing a lot of that work [we did with Fallout 4] go into it [Fallout 3 Remastered,” Nesmith said. However, as they have left Bethesda, they made sure to press that they have no idea whether or not these gameplay changes are actually ocurring.
Fallout 3 Remastered is currently in development at Bethesda Game Studios and Virtuos Studios, and judging by past works some gameplay changes could be made. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered made some rather surprising changes to the game, including major combat revamps, so a return to Fallout 3 could bring with it some surprising gunplay tweaks.
With that said, it may not be entirely possible to make the gunplay of Fallout 3 Remastered feel completely like the more advanced gunplay of Fallout 4, or even the more recent Starfield. However, adding in features such as proper aim-down-sights and better animations would do wonders to the game’s poor feedback.
