It's been a long nine years since Fallout: New Vegas released on October 19, 2010. We've seen a few titles in the series since, but the hype behind New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment's next game, The Outer Worlds, seems to indicate that some fans haven't gotten the experience they've been looking for since New Vegas.

It makes sense then, that New Vegas mods are still being worked on today. One such mod, an unofficial prequel that's been in development for seven years, just had one of its final beta versions go live. Formerly known as Project Brazil, Fallout: New California is now in beta 221.

221 is the first update New California has seen in seven months (since beta 200 dropped in October 2018). Its changelog is pretty massive, so if you'd like to see each fix, you can check that out here. Overall, it makes a ton of slight adjustments and bug fixes to increase performance and stability.

On a grander scale, 221 fixes a huge issue people had with trying to get the mod installed in the first place by incorporating its own installer. For some, a manual 4GB patch was too intensive--for others, a 6.6GB file crashed mod managers. According to modder Thaiauxn, 221 is "the most balanced and stable version so far."

221 also bridges the gap between the end of New California and the beginning of New Vegas, allowing you to seamlessly pick up the latter with the character you made in the former. You can find some of the companions you made and equipment you had scattered throughout the Mojave.

Lastly, 221 seeks to pivot New California to that illustrious 1.0 full release. There's no scheduled time for when that'll happen, but Thaiauxn hopes to have everything wrapped up by late 2019. If some disaster strikes, he plans to include all dialogue and voices in whatever's ready, release that as 1.0, and ideally apply the finishing touches at a later date. If all goes as planned, the New California team will be free to spend 2020 working on a new indie release, Project Morningstar.