Armes de Fallout: New Vegas

There are no AR-15s, Colt Commandos, Browning Hi-Powers, BFRs, M1 Garands, Winchester 1886s, 1887s, or 1892s in Fallout: New Vegas -- just Service Rifles, Assault Carbines, 9mm Pistols, Hunting Revolvers, This Machine, Brush Guns, Lever-Action Shotguns, and Cowboy Repeaters.

• What are iconic Fallout weapons that should return?

In my mind, the 10mm pistol and SMG had to return, as did the minigun, sawed-off shotgun, flamer, and a few other choice weapon.

• What are players’ role-playing expectations within this setting and what weapons will help the expression of those roles?

We can’t account for every type of character a player might imagine, but we knew a lot of people would want to be a) Mad Max b) post-apocalyptic cowboy/cowgirl c) wacky bazinga science person d) agro military operator e) sneakthief stealth murderer.

Supporting those concepts throughout the game necessitated an array of thematically appropriate equipment options that was available from the beginning and allowed for power growth through the end game. That’s why you can use revolvers and lever action rifles from the first two hours (.357 Revolver and Cowboy Repeater) through the Battle of Hoover Dam (Hunting Revolver and Brush Gun).

• What weapons share common ammunition types to avoid resource/loot problems?

There are only a few weapons that use an ammo type that isn’t used elsewhere. Western-style weapons make some of that easy since a lot of revolvers and lever-action rifles used the same rimmed ammo types. Ammo types like .22 and .308, were also easy to use in multiple weapons.

• What are weapons with distinctive/iconic looks that can stand out from each other?

Service and battle rifles are based on distinctive historical weapons, the slim 9mm pistol is easy to distinguish from the bulky 10mm, and even the lever-actions are relatively easy to distinguish from the bolt-action and sniper rifles.

• What are weapons that can be modified in distinctively different ways from each other to allow for orthogonal growth within a subtype of weapons (e.g. lever-action rifles).

If all weapons of a certain type can be modified in the same way, upgrading those weapons becomes less interesting, especially since we expect players to stick with thematically consistent weapons (not always, of course, but…). This is why the cowboy repeater and brush gun feature top eject: it prohibits the use top-mounted scopes, allowing the trail carbine to be modified in a way that the other two lever-actions cannot. The unique cowboy repeater does have a scope, but it’s a side-mounted scope, like the one used by Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

• What are different ammo subtypes that can be used that offer distinctly different properties from each other to allow for another axis of differentiation.

I also felt like Fallout 1 (especially) had great gun progression. I really liked how even though the Desert Eagle .44 did more damage than the 10mm pistol, it had a lower ammo cap. Also, because the .44 Magnum ammo is relatively rare (IIRC) when you get the first DE from Garl, it promotes more deliberate, considered use of the weapon and suggests keeping the 10mm pistol around as backup. That sort of overlapping/orthogonal progression is great and I tried to achieve it in F:NV. I always tried to make the “upgrade” of a weapon have one thing that was obviously inferior to / different from the previous version. With the .357 Magnum Revolver and .44 Magnum Revolver, the .357 is slightly more accurate and can never suffer a malfunction/jam.

F3 did some things with ammo types that I understand and appreciate from a game design perspective but I felt contrasted too much from real-world weapon/ammo design. The fact that a handgun and a rifle shared an ammo type is nice for gameplay, but .32 is an odd caliber to use for a number of reasons. One of the things that bothered me most was the use of a similar ammo type in a revolver (typically using rimmed cartridges) and a bolt-action rifle (typically using rimless cartridges and headspacing at the front of the cartridge). Because I liked a more (American) western aesthetic for F:NV, I decided to use rimmed “cowboy cartridges” for revolvers and lever-action rifles. This was extremely common back in the day and can still be done with modern revolvers and lever-actions in the same caliber. The hunting rifle (.32 in F3) went to .308, which we reserved for high-powered rifles and didn’t use in handguns.

In general, when we used real-world weapons and ammo types, I tried to go with ones ordinary people (well, Americans, anyway) were familiar with: .22 LR 9mm, 10mm, .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, 5.56mm, .308, .50 MG. The ones that were made up (12.7mm) or less familiar (.45-70 Gov’t) were generally reserved for later weapons.

The real-world weapons were also sort of a “greatest hits” list: the 9mm based on the Browning Hi-Power, the .357 based on the Colt SAA, etc. - classic designs for people familiar with them that looked great for players who weren’t familiar with them. At times we had to adjust the design for animation/gameplay purposes, e.g. the Automatic Rifle in Dead Money is recognizable as some kind of BAR knockoff, but it differs in some significant ways.

EDIT: Re-reading my response, it sounds rude. Apologies. I'm not sure if this is a genuine or disingenuous question, partially because the majority of questions are anonymous.

The majority of firearms in use in the Fallout setting are likely Pre-War in manufacture. Things that would make conventional firearms stop working: rust (seizing), dry rot (anything wood or rubber), alkaline corrosion/buildup (anything with batteries).

Deciding what weapons would get unique variants was a little more difficult. The first consideration was to make sure the uniques weren’t all bunched up in one type of weapon, so there should be unique weapons more or less equally spread across different categories.

After that, it was more arbitrary and based on feeling/inspiration than anything practical. I always figured people would want to see the return of the .223 pistol, a unique 9mm pistol and sniper rifle seemed obvious, and when we made Honest Hearts, not including a unique .45 would have been a high crime.

Over time, there were also gaps I saw that became opportunities for new uniques. The Survivalist’s Rifle was created to fill a gap between the sniper rifle and the service rifle and to get more use out of the 12.7mm round.