Fallout: The Frontier

Fallout: The Frontier is a 2021 mod for the 2010 role-playing video game Fallout: New Vegas. It takes the protagonist, the Courier, to the ruins of Portland, Oregon and the surrounding area. The mod garnered a significant amount of controversy and was widely viewed as a disappointment because it was anticipated for seven years.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The mod's gameplay is rather linear when compared to the base game of Fallout: New Vegas.
 * 2) * Many players have compared the New California Republic storyline to that of a Call of Duty campaign rather than a branch of Fallout: New Vegas quests.
 * 3) * The cutscenes often have really slow zoom-outs.
 * 4) The mod is overally poorly written.
 * 5) * Generally, a lot of the dialogue is cringeworthy to the point where some people have compared it to an average Reddit Discussion.
 * 6) * A race of lizard-like mutants (see WIS #4) often talk with hissing noises in words with the letter "s" in them. For instance: "applesssss". However, some words, which do not have "s" in them, often have hissing noises anyway. An example is "sslot" and "ssdon't", when the former meant "lot" and the latter meant "don't". This will often come across as annoying.
 * 7) * The Courier infamously asks "Why would I want to join a racist, fascist paramilitary organization that is objectively evil?" in regard to the Enclave.
 * 8) * When the player encounters a character named Tiberius Rancor, they can ask why he "looks like a James Bond villain".
 * 9) * The NCR constantly refers to you as "The Courier" and practically idolizes you, regardless of how far into the game you are.
 * 10) * In one scene of the mod where the player is captured by the Legion, one dialogue choice is "[If you're not comfortable with excessive gore, select this option.]" Yes, a trigger warning in a Fallout game, even though the player has very well already seen enemies violently die at that point.
 * 11) * One part of the mod, set in a space station while having been captured by an Enclave scientist is almost entirely plagiarized from Wolfenstein: The New Order, where General Deathshead captures protagonist William Blazkowicz.
 * 12) The story presents itself poorly.
 * 13) * If the player is siding with the Legion in the base game (which is at war with the New California Republic), they still have to play through a decent amount of the NCR campaign before they can play the Legion campaign.
 * 14) * If the player decides to do the Legion campaign, a character named Legate Valerius will talk to the Courier about the contributions the made to the Legion: destroying the NCR's monorail, preventing a Legion prisoner from being interrogated (see WIS #5), and assassinating President Kimball. He will say this even if the Courier hasn't done any of those things yet.
 * 15) Many themes in the games are outright fetishistic.
 * 16) * One of the companions: a young woman named "America", serves as a surrogate for the developers' fetishes.
 * 17) ** She can be mindbroken into becoming the Courier's slave, and will address him/her as "master".
 * 18) ** She comments on how bad her feet smell at one point. However, the dialogue is very off-putting, and implies a foot fetish on the developers' part.
 * 19) ** If the Courier is a male, she will comment on how she never wants to taste a hot dog again, implying that she had just recently fellated the Courier.
 * 20) ** She carries a note saying "Happy 18th!", which is probably just so that players don't mistake her for a minor after all the implicit sexual themes.
 * 21) ** On top of all that, some of the files in the mod refer to her as a minor.
 * 22) * A race of reptilian, lizard-like mutants living in the sewers known as the Trochili reek of scalie fetish.
 * 23) ** They have imprisoned humans known as "breeders".
 * 24) ** Once the player completes a quest given to them by the Trochili, they can have sex with their matriarch.
 * 25) * The player can have sex with a Deathclaw, a species of large, genetically engineered chameleons present in every Fallout game. The developers stated that this was supposed to be a "Wild Wasteland" encounter, but this is still present even if the player doesn't have Wild Wasteland activated.
 * 26) * Some discussion about how an NCR trooper loves her dog "too much".
 * 27) * A character named Mae Caufield, who is explicitly an adolescent, talks about illustrating pornography and how she has desire to do drugs and have sex once she turns 18.
 * 28) Some bugs are present in the game, that might require the player to reload saves or even start over.
 * 29) * The player might not be able to enter vehicles due to a bug.
 * 30) * Legate Valerius may repeat the "You prevented Silus from being interrogated" line on a loop due to a bug.
 * 31) * When the player has to fight Legionaries to demonstrate their strength to Valerius, the Legionaries will often be able to punch the player from great distances.
 * 32) * During cutscenes, non-player characters can often get stuck.
 * 33) The mod has a strong lack of coherence with the established Fallout universe.
 * 34) * The NCR is way more technologically advanced than they should be.
 * 35) ** The NCR has a large, flying aircraft carrier not unlike that of the Helicarrier from Marvel Comics. If that were the case, then they realistically would have no trouble defeating the Legion over in the Mojave Wasteland.
 * 36) ** The NCR also has a surplus of Vertibirds, which are well-established to be scarce in the Fallout universe. This too would also make the Legion absolutely no match for the NCR realistically.
 * 37) * The Enclave is present despite having been defeated in the West during Fallout 2 and in the East during Fallout 3, and implied to be dissolved by the events of New Vegas.
 * 38) * A part of the NCR campaign is set in a large space station, with technology way more advanced than the lore of Fallout establishes pre-war space technology to be.
 * 39) * The Legion has lots of discrepancies.
 * 40) ** Women are shown to serve as Legionaries despite the Legion having strict gender roles: men being Legionaries and women being cooks and childbearers.
 * 41) ** A character is stated to have "signed up" to be a Legionary. In the lore of New Vegas, Legionaries were actually forced into the Legion as slaves.
 * 42) ** The Legion is present in Oregon, which is a great distance from their main territory in Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Utah.
 * 43) The developers have done controversial things.
 * 44) * One developer was found to have drawn "animated pedophilic content" and as a result, was removed from the development team. Due to the fact that said developer was only involved in making graphics for the mod, players asserted that the developers were using him as a scapegoat so he could take the blame for all the controversy.
 * 45) * Developers banned people from their Discord server for seemingly no reason, often using false accusations of bigotry as reasons.
 * 46) * The developers' views on the Enclave, a faction in the Fallout series, garnered controversy.
 * 47) ** One developer called the Enclave a "fascist power fantasy" and evil, yet they let you join the Legion (which is more or less fascist) and let you enslave a woman (which is very well a power fantasy).
 * 48) ** The same developer also compared the Enclave to supporters of Donald Trump.
 * 49) ** One developer said that they wished people who liked the Enclave would die.
 * 50) * A developer bothered one critic of the mod on Twitter just for sharply criticizing the Trochili (lizard people) in the game.
 * 51) The models for the previously-mentioned Trochili originated from the Unity Asset Store.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The vehicles are very, very well done. The Gamebryo engine has its limits and the vehicles are quite frankly astonishing.
 * 2) Some of the voice acting is pretty good.
 * 3) The large world clearly had a lot of effort put into it.
 * 4) Some of the new weapons are quite useful.
 * 5) Apart from America, the new companions are pretty decent. For instance, a robot with a customizable name and a mutant spider.
 * 6) Some of the bad qualities such as the glitch with Legate Valerius repeatedly saying "You prevented Silus from being interrogated" are unintentionally funny.