Fallout: Sonora is a total conversion Game Mod for Fallout 2 released in March 2020. It was developed by Nevada Band Studio, a small team of Russian modders, who were also behind the Fallout Nevada mod.
The year is 2167, and the isolated farming community simply known as "the Villa" is an okay place to live. Well, it was until very recently at any rate. It was then the bad men armed with guns came and forcibly abducted every able-bodied person in the town, which included your mom and dad. In the aftermath, the Villa has been effectively reduced to a population of few stragglers, which includes you, a young farmer who managed to hide during the raid, and Grandma Adonsia, one of the village elders. Adonsia, not really being in the shape for travelling herself, sends you out with a straightforward mission: find the missing villagers, and rescue them from whatever predicament they're in. As you travel the Sonora region in search of your missing kinsmen, however, you discover that something much larger than just the fate of your village is at stake. A power struggle between several mighty factions is brewing, and you are about to play a large part in it...
Sonora is quite impressive in its scale for a fan-made game, delivering an entirely new story set in the Fallout universe, but with a distinctly Mexican theme to it, as it takes place in the area around the titular Sonoran Desert
, and not only takes place in the southwestern part of the former United States, the classic setting for many other Fallout games, but also includes parts of Northern Mexico. The new locations are well realized with both a new soundtrack and plenty of new models and graphical assets for environments, NPCs, and items that fits right in with the late 90's graphical style of the old-school isometric Fallout games. The game is also quite non-linear; even some of the seemingly more simple quests usually have several valid solutions, some of which aren't immediately obvious.
Sonora is so far only available in the modders' native Russian, but an English translation patch is currently in the works. Nevada Band are also still working on expanding the world of Sonora and has planned to release several small "DLC" expansions, the first of which is titled Dayglow, which adds the post-apocalyptic ruins of San Diego and several related quests to the game, was released in August 2023.
Tropes:
- Cannibal Clan:
- The Jackal raider tribe are infamous for their tendency towards cannibalism. They even decorate their hideout with the remains of their eaten enemies.
- You also run into some ghouls occupying an old motel, who likes to abduct and eat travellers who venture too close to their residence.
- Cool Bike: You can acquire one during the game, which work as this game's response to the Highwayman car from Fallout 2, greatly enhancing your travel speed. Along the way, you can buy and find upgrades to make it even cooler.
- Cyborg: The "Tinman" faction wears this as their main hat, using technology even augmenting their own bodies with technology to better adapt to the life in the Wasteland.
- Dedication: The opening dedicates the game to "Tim Cain and Co", the original Black Isle Studios team and creators of Fallout.
- Human Sacrifice: The town of Santa Anna practises this, choosing a citizen every few months to be fed to a mutated Deathclaw named "El Diablo" who lives in the basement under their church, in exchange for the creature leaving the town alone.
- Interquel: The game's story is set between the original Fallout and Fallout 2, though much, much closer to 1 (Sonora begins in 2167, while Fallout 1 began in 2161 and canonically took place over the course of about a third of a year), and has a separate story in a separate region, with some light connections to 1 and some ending foreshadowing of New Vegas. It was a very deliberate choice by the developers, who wanted players to be able to fit Sonora within the official Fallout canon without it causing too many Continuity Snarls. Sonora is set in an unexplored corner of the Fallout universe, that is far enough away from the setting of the first Fallout that that game's plot events mainly affects things indirectly while it makes sense Sonora's locations wouldn't necessarily come up, and while get to visit a couple of locations described in Fallout: New Vegas, Sonora's events took place so far back in the past compared to those games that it can easily be justified that no one really talks about them.
- Merging the Branches: Of sorts. Since some of the factions and places you interact with during the game appear or are mentioned in canon Fallout games, their Multiple Endings paths are carefully written in such a way that they could all plausibly lead to how things turned out in canon.
- Mirroring Factions: The Desert Rangers and Brotherhood of Steel of Sonora have a surprising number of parallels — both are militarily-organised but not strictly military factions that partly base themselves on a mythologized take on an historic group who use the protection they provide as leverage to gain influence and resources, both are led by a General, both are technically only branches of a more widespread organisation but in practice act on their own guidance, and both are headquartered in an at least partly functional pre-War constructnote .
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
- The leader of the Jackals goes by the name "Mad Bitch".
- Then there is the mutated Deathclaw living in the basement under the church in Santa Anna, which is called "El Diablo" by the locals.
- Original Flavour: Sonora has the straight forward ambition of being true to the graphical style, story, gameplay and especially quest design of the old-school Fallout games, and the developers' dedication to achieve this goal shows throughout the entire game. The game takes several elements and cues from both Fallout 1 and 2, and even some bits from New Vegas, but also slightly remixes them in a way that the story still feels fresh and original.
- The Puppet Cuts His Strings: The Brotherhood of Steel ending has this happen eventually. The ending has Arizona dominated by various proxies (and occasionally proxies of proxies) of the Brotherhood as a result of the player's actions, but some time prior to 2246 the various proxies broke free (and promptly fell to infighting).
- Puppet State: The ultimate plan of the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel is to unite (well, semi-unite if you want to get technical) the Sonora region by overthrowing the various governments and rulers of the small communities and install replacements in their stead who are politically aligned towards them, thus creating a loose confederation of sorts of various proxy-states under varying levels of their control. The Brotherhood ending sees this plan eventually come to fruition (although how well it actually ends up working in practice depends to some degree on player choices). Regardless though, as the Brotherhood ending notices the lifespan of this loose state is limited and eventually ends up failing apart at some point before 2246.
- Ranger: One of the mightier factions encountered in the game is the Desert Rangers. As the game takes place 110 years before they signed the Ranger Unification Treaty with the New California Republic, they are still an independent faction, and true to their name, they are famous for being though and hardy and are trying to bring the law to the lawless wasteland.
- Take a Third Option: One of the game's semi-hidden endings allows the player to put both the local Brotherhood of Steel and the Desert Rangers out of commission, allowing them to reach the ending of the game without aligning with any of the major powers.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: The Church of the Holy Fire from Phoenix used to be a pretty pacifist and humanitarian religious group, with its members being mostly dedicated to the collection and preservation of pre-war books. Recently, however, their new leader Aaron, the self-proclaimed "Master of Phoenix", have turned their culture increasingly militarized and expansionist. This has brought the church in into increasing conflict with Phoenix's neighboring communities, somewhat to the concern of some of the older, more conservative monks. It turns out that Aaron is an agent of (though not from) the Brotherhood of Steel, who was backed and guided by his "advisor" (Brotherhood handler) to push Phoenix more towards the Brotherhood politically in a somewhat subtle manner.
- "Wanted!" Poster: Piss off certain fractions enough, and one with the Player Character's face on it starts appearing in most cities.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Insofar as the Brotherhood counts as villains here, the dossier on Aaron notes that it would be best to do away with him in a few years, so while it doesn't happen during the game that's clearly mostly because he still has too much usefulness left at the moment.
