You've probably heard about today's big Rocket League update incorporating mutators that enable the game to be played in all sorts of weird and different ways. But you may not have known that it includes a sweet little piece of free Fallout 4 swag too.
The unlockable Vault Boy antenna is undeniably swanky, and yes, it's legit: Developer Psyonix offered Bethesda "a huge thanks" for allowing it to be added. Several other game-related antennae are included with the update as well, for Drive Club, Oddworld, and Unreal Tournament.
But the best of the bunch—and I say this as an entirely unbiased third-party observer, naturally—is the official PC Gamer antenna flag that's also included in the update. There are other "community flags" to choose from—Reddit, Something Awful, Day[9]TV among others—but really, between Fallout 4 and us, what more could you possibly want?
So, to recap: Rocket League mutators are out today, Fallout 4 will be here tomorrow, and you can read our Fallout 4 review right now—right here.
Fallout 4 preloads on Steam have been available since Friday last week, and with the game just a day away, this is a friendly reminder that now would also be a good time for Nvidia owners to upgrade their drivers.
Nvidia released a new Game Ready Driver today—version 358.91, if that sort of thing interests you—which promises an "optimal experience" for Fallout 4, as well as Star Wars Battlefront and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. The new driver makes a number of small tweaks and fixes, updates SLI and 3D Vision profiles for a handful of other games, and probably does a few other things that you don't really care about.
What you care about is Fallout 4, and if you're going to play it on an Nvidia GPU, you'll want to snag this driver. It's available through the GeForce Experience app (if you have it running, you may have already received notification that this driver is available) or directly from the Nvidia website.
"I'm sorry sir, I don't know anyone named Gaben. Sir, please put the blaster down."
The Fallout 4 wasteland is an empty place. You'll run into folks now and then, but most of them only care about what they can take. Food. Caps. Your life. If you live long enough, you'll learn to put up a wall, to block out human contact. It'll help keep you alive, but you'll always be lonely—even when you're not alone. And you'll realize that you only have one true friend in this burned, god-forsaken place: The machine who ushered you out of the old world, and into the new. It's the only thing you can count on. And there's a good chance it can't even say your damn name.
That's not true for everyone, of course. One of the game's nice little touches is the ability of Codsworth, the pre- and post-nuclear Mister Handy companion, to actually speak the player's name. Just enter your name and, as long as it's in the system, your friendship with the Codster will be taken to a whole new level. But as GamesRadar's video below demonstrates, the list has some surprisingly obvious omissions.
Some of the names on the List of Unspeakables make sense. Balothy, for instance, or Keanu. You will also not be able to make your robot call you "President." But a whole lot of others really should be there, like Barbara, Beth, Carl, Chuck, Lisa, Louise, and Simon, to name but a few. All the common variations of Sean are also off the list. On the other hand, if you want your robot to call you Assface, that's just fine. And yes, as previously confirmed, Fuckface is on the list as well. But no Andy, apparently. (Only my mother calls me Andrew.)
Fallout 4 comes out tomorrow, but our review is out right now—read it here.
What is it? A post-apocalyptic sandbox RPG. Expect to pay 40/$60 Release 10 November Developer Bethesda Game Studios Publisher Bethesda Multiplayer None Link Official site
Let me tell you about my Vault dweller. She's a master of stealth in flame red power armour. Protected by her hulking exoskeleton, she stomps quietly through buildings—efficiently dispatching her enemies with a sword or silenced pistol. Sometimes, the dozen or so raiders she's hunting will realise that something's amiss. They'll search the area, making threats about what they'll do should they find the lumbering behemoth crouched unseen in the corner. Occasionally she'll watch as they fail to notice how there's a mass of metal armour with a hot rod paint job right in front of their faces. Then she'll murder them with a single bullet to the head.
For me, this has been Fallout 4. It's a highly customisable RPG in a world that's packed full of things to do. Its systems are intricate, and invite you to tailor them to your liking. When you do, it can be wonderfully satisfying, but also—in the sense that you can be a huge stealth machine carrying an antique, irradiated sword—a little bit dumb. Fallout 4 wilfully trades immersion for an enjoyable, freeform sandbox of possibilities. Whether you'll enjoy it or not, I think, depends on your reaction to the description above. Does it sound like an infuriating, dissonant mess, or the cool, emergent intersection of player-driven decisions. I'm in the latter camp.
If you've played a Bethesda RPG before, this will be nothing new. As Fallout 3 was to Oblivion, so Fallout 4 is to Skyrim—the post-apocalypse of a futuristic world trapped in a '50s aesthetic, now available in Bethesda's Creation Engine and boasting some interesting new features. But for all the improvements, the moment to moment experience is broadly the same. Journeying to one of the many undiscovered locations in your vicinity, you'll kill enemies, pick locks, hack terminals, collect loot and experience a standalone vignette that weaves into the larger story of Boston after the bombs.
Fallout 4 is set in a condensed version of Massachusetts, known as the Commonwealth. Its map incorporates much of the state's east coast, from Salem to Boston itself—squished down like a Euro Truck Simulator 2 version of the end of the world. It opens on the day of Fallout's apocalypse—giving you the brief chance to experience life in the pastel-painted sanctuary of Sanctuary before it gets reduced down to rubble. This taste of the pre-apocalypse isn't all that revelatory. Unsurprisingly, the world was nicer when there weren't mutated dogs trying to eat your face off. But the opening speaks to the fact that Bethesda has tried to make a more memorable main campaign.
In fact, this is the best main story Bethesda has created. That's not a high bar to clear, but, for once, embarking on a main quest doesn't feel like a distraction. Your character leaves the Vault over 200 years after the apocalypse, in search of her (or his) kidnapped son. It's a simple, primal motivation, but one that's effective in leading you on a journey to the Commonwealth's main conflict: the appearance and distrust of human-like synths, and their connection to the mysterious Institute. The story succeeds because it ties in more closely to the side-plots that Bethesda has always been better at creating. The factions and companions you meet along the way are crucial to the overall plot. I had a lot of fun playing the factions off against each other, leading them inexorably to a dramatic finale.
Then, it ends. As world shifting as the events you enact potentially are, they're dampened by the abruptness of the conclusion. I should have expected this, of course—I played Skyrim—and perhaps it speaks to how much I was enjoying those final missions that their resolution left me feeling flat.
As always, then, the campaign is just the throughline for the many, many sidequests, miscellaneous events and unprompted acts of exploration you'll complete along the way. Bethesda's Fallout games are primarily about the atmosphere of the world at large, and Fallout 4 is no different. It's brutal and harrowing, but only up to a point. There's a lightheartedness that chips away at the tone, softening the death and decay. Fallout 4, like its predecessors, isn't a survival game—even though, initially at least, resources can be hard to come by.
Graphically, Fallout 4 looks like an improved version of Skyrim. Which is to say that it looks like an improved version of Fallout 3. That's mostly down to the tech powering it—even some of the NPC animations will be recognisable to anyone who's spent enough time in Tamriel. The faces are better, but still not perfect. The voice acting is much better, but still not perfect. Initially, I experienced the mild disappointment of familiarity. Four years after Skyrim, I was hoping for a more pronounced improvement. Now I wonder if I couldn't see the forest for the low resolution tree textures. The age and limitations of Bethesda's engine are well apparent, but the Commonwealth is enticing. On the macro level, Fallout 4's scale and detail creates a world that feels cohesive and full of perverse charm.
Boston is a great setting. It's denser than the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3, and more colourful. There's a lot of grey and brown, sure, but also reds, blues and deadly, glowing greens. The locations, and the people who inhabit them, imbue the world with character. Diamond City, one of the main locales, is a town built in Boston's Fen stadium. As a collection of shacks and huts, it feels similar to Megaton—but more interesting, and more appropriate to the setting. Like New Vegas before it, Fallout 4 isn't about a post-apocalypse, but rather a post-apocalypse in a specific, recognisable place.
Elsewhere, there's the Glowing Sea—a murky, barren expanse that still manages to be one of the most atmospheric places I've been to this year. A huge part of Fallout 4's appeal is the sense of discovery and mystery. Each location feels crafted, and that gives a powerful reason to investigate. Maybe you'll find a text logs that detail a conflict between rival gang leaders, or just a note explaining how to access a hidden stash of loot. The world feels lived in and dangerous, and it's fun to pick apart its history.
That said, I do wish it was a bit stranger—or even more playful. I'm in dangerous territory here, because there are so many sidequests that I haven't found or finished. For all I know, there's plenty of weird and unexpected encounters to discover. But I'm yet to find anything outside of the main quest that's as odd as Fallout 3's Vault full of Gary clones, or as dramatic as the decision to let a group of ghouls murder an apartment block full of rich jerks. I love the idea of the Vaults as weird social experiments, but of the three I've visited—my own character's included—none have delivered a compelling hook. One had a great idea behind it, but the delivery was underwhelming.
In general, there seems less scope to be a pantomime villain. I think part of the reason for this is that my character feels like a more fully formed person. It helps that she's fully voiced—every decision picked from the conversation wheel resulting in a sentence or two of spoken dialogue. There's still plenty of scope for imprinting your own whims onto the Vault dweller's personality, but it happens in a more strictly defined way. My character just didn't seem like she'd nuke a town full of people for a handful of caps. She's nice like that.
Performance & Settings
Reviewed on Intel Core i5-3570K, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Graphics options Texture quality, shadow quality, shadow distance, decal quality, lighting quality, godrays quality, depth of field, ambient occlusion, screen space reflections, wetness, rain occlusion, motion blur, lens flare and anisotropic filtering. Anti-aliasing FXAA or TAA Remappable controls Yes Fallout 4 ran solidly—the Creation Engine's age and PC focus ensuring a wide range of customisable options ensuring solid stability. It was mostly bug free, and I only encountered a couple of mysterious crashes-to-desktop in over 50 hours of play. Running on a beefy graphics card, it performed admirably on ultra—only occasionally dropping below 60fps while exploring outdoors. I mostly put this down to the fact that I was streaming the Starcraft 2 WCS final on a second screen at the time. There are, however, plenty of loading screens to endure—particularly as you fast travel around the world.
Having a voiced protagonist gave me a greater sense of attachment to the world, and particularly to the companions. This is the first Bethesda RPG where I've consistently had an NPC along for the ride. For once, they're much more than a mule to carry excess weapons. My second favourite companion, Nick Valentine, is an old school private eye—complete with trenchcoat and fedora. He inserts himself into conversations, and will stop and chat to other NPCs that he's previously helped. It's nice to get a sense, however small, that the world doesn't just exist for the Vault dweller to be in it.
My favourite companion is the dog, because it doesn't judge me when I steal all the telephones from a house. I have a lot of telephones in my pockets, as well as microscopes, alarm clocks and dinner trays. It's why I took to wearing power armour—so I could carry all the crap that I was collecting on my travels. If you love obsessively liberating a place of all its items, then good news: everything in Fallout 4 is useful. That's because of the new settlement system.
Settlements are Fallout 4's major new feature—like Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC, but massively expanded. Gain ownership of a settlement and you can construct new items, from water pumps and gun turrets, to prefabricated structures. Each has a resource cost associated with it. A wall panel simply requires wood and steel, but something like a defensive turret is more complex—the more deadly ones needing aluminium, circuitry, gears, fiber optics, and a generator for power. Open the crafting workshop in a settlement, and a green outline will show the area you're allowed to build in. Within this space, you can also scrap items for resources. That's fine for turning trees, cars and loose tires into wood, steel or rubber, but rarer resources must be found or purchased out in the world.
And so you collect junk. Every item in the game is made out of resources. Dump them into a settlement's workshop, and they can be turned into something useful. A typewriter becomes a useful source of gears, screws and springs—handy for building machinery that can defend your settlement from raiders.
It's gratifying to watch an area turn from a run-down ghost town into a functioning settlement. Nevertheless, the workshop interface is a bit fiddly to use. Buildings are organised into categories, and it's a pain having to switch back and forth trying to remember if the radio beacon that attracts new settlers was in Power > Miscellaneous or Resources > Miscellaneous . Worse still, your workshop's resource pool isn't global, but tied to each specific settlement. You might have enough oil to worry a flock of seagulls, but you can't build a generator in Tenpines Bluff if you left it all in Sanctuary Hills. At one point, I had to fast-travel between multiple different settlements just to remember where I'd left the pocket watch that contained the gear I needed to build a water pump. You can build supply lines that share resources between two connected workshops, but it's a clumsy system, and impractical unless you've already put in the work to grow a settlement's population.
You'll get a fair few settlements if you do missions for the Minutemen faction—a local militia group that's working to make the Commonwealth safe for decent, hard-working folk. It can become a bit overwhelming. Each settlement needs a number of resources: food, water and beds. The more you have in a settlement, the more defensive structures you'll need to protect it. Occasionally, you'll get alerts to defend these places. A few of my settlements were wiped out, either because I was too busy having fun adventures against super mutants or just didn't see the mission prompt that alerted me to their danger.
Guns have a crafting system, too—letting you create mods that alter their scopes, barrels, grips and attachments in a variety of ways. This, to me, felt like a much better use for my growing collection of minutia. Guns are the best thing about Fallout 4. Unlike its predecessors, it's an accomplished and enjoyable shooter. While my preference was for silenced weapons, the scarcity of ammo—at least for the first couple of dozen hours—forced me to experiment. I didn't mind. Getting into firefights is a joy, to the point that, by the end, I'd all but entirely abandoned the VATS system.
Early weapons picked off of raiders are relatively weak, but, as you journey through the Commonwealth you're guaranteed to find a collection of favourites. Early on, you get access to a laser musket—a powerful rifle that needs to be cranked between each shot. Using it feels tense and frantic, requiring you to dive into cover to hammer the R key, before popping out and taking your shot. With mods, you can imbue a musket with up to six charges. It's a deadly thing, if you've got the space to fully load it.
The best guns and armour are scavenged off of legendary enemies, identifiable by the star next to their name. When downed, they'll drop a legendary item with a special benefit. I've got a Tommy gun that fires exploding bullets, a dual-barrel shotgun that never needs reloading, a chest piece that turns me invisible when crouched and not moving, and, of course, an irradiated sword. I can't bear to part with any of these. I'd sooner throw away my precious telephones.
One effect of Fallout 4's immediate familiarity is that I'm more conscious than ever of the flaws of the engine. I haven't experienced many bugs, but there are lots of quirks. AI NPCs, for examples, like to run off at inopportune moments in response to some faraway threat that they've decided to deal with. In one instance, a pair did this during a forced scripted sequence—leaving me stranded and unable to move. With so many systems working to create interesting, emergent experiences, sometimes things break down.
As a whole, though, it's a loving production. It's filled with care and attention to detail—like the expanded set of radio stations, or the way flash radiation storms bathe the world in a sickly, ominous green hue. It's a pleasure to pick through the world, to discover new sights, and to pick through the perks and customisation option to conceive the perfect character build, however bizarre. In short, many of Fallout 4's problems, like every Bethesda RPG before it, are a consequence of what makes them unforgettable. That might not be the neatest conclusion, but it explains why, 50 hours in, I'm still having fun. It also explains why, now that I've finished this review, I'm going to play it for many hours more.
I don't know about you, but I think I'm coming down with something. Cough, cough, yes I'm definitely coming down with something, and I suspect I'll finally succumb at around 12am Tuesday morning. Completely coincidentally, Tuesday is when Fallout 4 releases. Anticipating an infectious sickness bug, Bethesda's Pete Hines has helpfully released a signed sick note that you can present to your boss/teacher/authority figure.
You've already preloaded Fallout 4, right? If, like me, you'd rather wait for the reviews, you'll be pleased to hear that they're going live today at 8:00 EST / 13:00 GMT.
"Fallout 4 will be preloadable," we said a couple of weeks ago, and what do you know, it is. While you can't play Fallout 4 yet, unless a shop sells you a copy early, or you're a time traveller of very modest ambition, you can now download it your hard drive, saving you valuable hours of agonising waiting on November 10.
You'll need 23.8 GB of space, which is probably not a lot these days, considering my copy of The Witcher 3 recently downloaded a 17 GB patch like it was nothing. But it's a hell of a lot bigger than previous Bethesda games. Also, you'll need to have pre-ordered the game, obviously. Fulfil both conditions and you're golden.
I'm tempted to put a mild spoiler warning on this one, as it reveals some of the central themes of Fallout 4, which you might prefer to discover for yourself as you wander the wasteland. It's hard to glean too many specifics, though, and if you're itching to see a Deathclaw minigunned in the face from several angles in slow motion, then the launch trailer does the business. Likewise, if you haven't seen anything that grabbed you about the game before now, this might ignite an interest.
It also has a lovely dog.
Fallout 4 is out next Tuesday, and there's been plenty of chatter around the last big RPG release in a year of great RPGs. The companion app is now live. There's an unofficial character planner if you want to theorycraft your starting toon. Bethesda also talked about the various improvements that have been made to Fallout 4's engine in the interim.
Anyone with an Android or iOS device can now download the official Fallout 4 companion app. This means you don't have to bring up your Pip-Boy in-game to check your stats or switch radio stations: you can do it on your phone or tablet. And anyone who bought the lavish Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition will be able to slot their phone into a replica of the wrist-mounted gizmo for maximum post-apocalyptic immersion.
The app also allows you to play holotape games—basically Fallout-flavoured versions of classic arcade games—and check your stats, inventory, and so on, even if you aren't in the game. So if you're at work and you feel the urge to check what perks you have, you can slip into the toilets and do so. Maybe take your plastic Pip-Boy off first, though. Your boss might smell a mole-rat.
You can't do much with the app at the moment (the game isn't out yet, of course), but the retro-futuristic visuals are pretty cool-looking, and there are two holotape games available to play: Red Menace and Atomic Command, which are inspired by retro classics Donkey Kong and Missile Command respectively.
If you're looking for the best Fallout 4 mods, you've got plenty to choose from: modders have made thousands of excellent fixes, tweaks, and enhancements to Bethesda's 2015 post-apocalyptic RPG over the years. And on the following pages, we've collected the best Fallout 4 mods on a great big list so you can find what the perfect mod to suit your needs.
On the next several pages we've listed the best Fallout 4 mods for settlement-building and crafting, visual improvements, gameplay enhancements, weapons and gear, new adventures and locations, and finally, the tools and utilities you need to get these mods working. For more, check out our list of Fallout 4 console commands. Mods added in the most recent update of this list have been marked with a ⭐.
This mod by kinggath gives you a completely new way to create settlements by introducing a SimCity like system: zone your settlements for residential, commercial, industrial, and farmland, and your settlers will build their own homes and stores and farm their own crops. Your settlement will grow on its own as NPCs make changes and improvements to their buildings without you having to micromanage them or place every last stick of furniture yourself. Here's a write-up on this imaginative and wonderful mod.
If you build a cool settlement, why not share it? This mod allows you to package up any settlement as a blueprint and transfer it to a different save game or even upload it and share it with other players. You can even choose to pack up livestock, tamed creatures, power connections, and even Sim Settlements plots.
It's a Vertibird you can live in. It's doesn't technically fly—its movement is more akin to fast-travel—but you can plant craftable landing zones around the world and move your Vertibird to them. The living quarters are small, and the 'bird needs to be fed a supply of coolant, but it's a sweet-looking home with a customized crafting bench and mounted turrets to keep the neighbors away.
Adding much more flexibility and freedom to your settlements, Place Everywhere lets you move previously static objects like workshop benches and put them wherever you like. You can also build anywhere on your settlement—in trees, in the water, and even inside other objects. Red collision warnings are a thing of the past. Requires the Fallout Script Extender, which you'll find on the final page of this list.
Tired of carrying all the junk you find in the world all the way back to your settlements? This mod gets your settlers to lend a hand. Craft salvage beacons at your chemistry station, and when you're out exploring and your pockets get full, just fill a container with your junk, drop a beacon on it, and your settlers will come and collect everything for you. They'll then place it in your workbench, saving you the trip.
With so much focus on building things in Fallout 4, it's surprising Bethesda didn't think of this themselves. This mod will let you craft your own settlers in your workshop. Synthetic settlers. Switch off your radio beacon, because now you can populate your various outposts with (hopefully) friendly Synths. DIY just jumped to the next level.
Running power lines around your Fallout 4 settlements just got a lot easier with this useful mod created by Daedragon. Since you're building with crummy, rusty metal walls full of holes, or wooden ones that would be a snap to make holes in, why can't you run power lines right through them? This mod adds conduits you can snap into place on the back of standard ones to allow power lines to pass through your walls. Works with your roof, too.
Need to get away from your crowds of dead-eyed settlers for a little quiet time? Basement Living adds 10 standalone basements and bunkers to give you your very own cozy retreat. You can attach a basement to any settlement you wish, and each comes with a fusebox that provides 100 power, and a workbench so you can decorate it however you like.
You don't have to stick to the settlements Fallout 4 gives you. Now you can make your own pretty much wherever you like. This mod adds campsites which can be placed in the area of your choosing, and if you're happy with the location you can turn it into a fully-functioning settlement. You can build as many as 10 new settlements, and dismantle them as well.
It's nice that factions give you living quarters when you join them, but their offerings are typically not somewhere you'd really want to spend much time. These mods turn those faction dumps into more beautiful and spacious living quarters with workbenches, a gym, lovely decorations and plenty of extra storage space. It's available for Vault 81, Prydwen, the Railroad, the Castle, and The Institute.
If you've got the Contraptions Workshop DLC for Fallout 4, you'll definitely want this mod which vastly improves your settlements' factories. It adds a number of commonsense features, like conveyor belts that will take junk directly from your workshop's inventory and deposit completed items back into it. It also gives you new machines like looms for creating Vault outfits and faction gear, a power armor forge, a distillery for manufacturing cola and booze, and forges for melee and fist weapons. There's even an auto-butcher, for breaking down creatures (and people) into meat, bone, and leather.
The settlers who answer to your radio beacon are typically a bit... well, dull. Most of them are dressed roughly alike, and they can be hard to tell apart without personally dressing them up differently. This mod adds over 150 new settlers so the vacant-eyed corn-growers who arrive on your turf will have a bit more personality. Another mod, Don't Call Me Settler, will give them unique names as well.
In case you want to tweak or change your character's looks after you leave your home at the beginning of Fallout 4, you can do so at a plastic surgeon. This mod gives you the option of doing it from any of your settlements as well, by adding a mirror to your workshop. Simply place the mirror on any wall you want, and using it will bring up the menu that allows you to change your appearance.
Decorating your settlement can be irksome, and even after carefully placing loot items on shelves or tables they can and probably will be knocked over later by some clumsy settler or companion (or you). This mod not only makes placement of items easier (loot items are now movable just like static objects when using the workshop menu), but lets you lock them in place so they can't be toppled. Perfect.
The size of your Fallout 4 settlements is pretty severely restricted: they can only get so big and use so many objects. That stinks if you're building a big 'ol base and suddenly have to stop. The Higher Settlement Budget mod fixes this, though keep in mind adding more object may lessen performance or even crash your game.
Homemaker gives you more options for your settlements. It includes two new plantable crops, more walls and fences, 30 new types of lights, and new containers like ammo boxes and lockers. You can even use meat bags, if you like storing your extra supplies in bags of meat. Some do.
It's not quite SkyUI for Skyrim, but it's miles better than the UI vanilla Fallout 4 provides. Fully customizable, packed with additional on-screen information, and much more useful and readable than the standard UI, this mod is a must for anyone and everyone playing Fallout 4.
Diamond City is, let's face it, a bit disappointing. It simply doesn't feel like the bustling hub of survivors it should. This mod adds lots of additional details like trees and grass, lighting along alleys, new pathways, and more to both provide a lived-in feel and the sense that the city is growing.
Even as days and weeks pass, the world of Fallout 4 is unchanging. The Seasons Project beautifully alters that, letting you choose the time of year you'd like to play in. It provides colorful leaves for autumn, snow on the ground in winter, blooming plants in spring, and bright greens in the summer. Unfortunately the seasons don't cycle automatically, but you can manually change seasons from the mod manager.
If you're a fan of Borderlands-style cel-shading, you can apply it to Fallout 4 for a pretty visual overhaul. Reddit user 'Reddit_is_wrong' started out using a SweetFX preset for Fallout 4 and adjusted the .ini file to give it those thick edges and comic page look. Here's the thread that gives you the .ini file and a list of other mods being used to bring that style to life in your own game.
If every day feels a bit same-y, here are 75 new weather variations, plus over a hundred new cloud textures. You'll notice the difference with enhanced sunrays, prettier sunsets, and new sound effects when it rains. Who says the end of the world can't be lovely?
This mod provides a convincing dynamic depth of field that changes depending on what you're looking at. There's a documentary-length video above you can watch above to see how it works, and in an extremely clever touch you can edit the mod settings while in-game by inserting a holotape in your Pip-Boy and fiddling with the settings.
Your favorite android detective gets an HD makeover, and doesn't he deserve it? He's just so cool. You can use this mod to give Nick Valentine upgraded teeth, eyes, facial textures, and it also comes with an option to upgrade his exposed synthetic hand.
More intense rain, dust storms, sheet lightning, heavy fog, radioactive rain, new sounds both outdoors and indoors, and storms that last longer... this mod will enhance your game with more extreme weather. It even comes with a custom installer that lets you easily choose the options you want.
Let's face it: Fallout 4's Pip-Boy map kinda sucks. This mod makes the map actually useful, with clearly visible roads, train tracks, topography, distinct waterlines, better placement of map markers, optional numbered gridlines, and even the option to number regions. It also has three brightness settings to fine-tune your map-gazing.
Predefined shadow rendering in Fallout 4 can cause performance loss, even on high-end machines, especially in areas with a high number of objects. Modder extraordinaire Alexander Blade whipped up this plugin to allow players to dynamically control shadow draw distance based on their desired FPS.
Stars have been upgraded from 1K to 4K resolution, making them brighter, crisper, and even giving them a bit of a glimmer when you're moving around the wasteland. You can choose from a few different versions of the mod, one which adds a few bigger and brighter stars, making the sky a little more interesting in the evenings. The same modder has also re-textured the moon.
While the look of Fallout 4 is certainly more colorful and less greenish than Fallout 3 was, it's still a bit washed out. This ReShade/SweetFX preset brings more color an vibrancy to the surface. You can check out some before and after pictures here, which demonstrate that the changes aren't especially drastic but still make the colors pop quite a bit more.
On the other hand, maybe you don't think the post-apocalypse should be quite so vibrant and colorful. Stalker Lighting bleeds away the colors, making the world look more harsh, more unforgiving, more bleak. It is the end of the world, after all. Now it'll actually look like it.
Close up, many of the textures in Fallout 4 aren't exactly breathtaking, which you've probably noticed if, like me, you carefully creep through the game instead of racing across it at top speed. A modder is working hard on increasing the detail of the landscape textures to make your jaunt through the wilderness a little lovelier.
If you want your Fallout 4 nights to feel more like real nights, you'll want this mod. Giving you a choice of seven different nighttime settings, it'll make your evenings either a bit darker or utterly pitch black. Interiors will also be darker at night if they're not well-illuminated by lights. Tread carefully.
This mod makes shell casings from firefights visible from greater distances (500 meters) and stay where they fall for longer (an hour). It's not a big change, but it adds a little realism to the game. After a big fight, the ground would be littered with shell casings, and now it will be. It might go nicely with this mod that makes bullet impact decals longer-lasting and visible at greater distances.
Speaking of rain, someone has retextured Betheda's somewhat wimpy and barely visible raindrops. Now the droplets are thicker and chunkier, making you feel much more like you're in a post-apocalyptic downpour. The ripples caused when the raindrops hit water have also been retextured. You can watch a comparison video here.
On the next page, some mods to enhance your gameplay.
This mod intends to become a massive, comprehensive collection of bug fixes for Bethesda's RPG. Currently there are fixes for object placements, audio bugs, item issues, meshes and textures, quests and NPCs, perks and stats, and much more. It will continue to grow as more items are added. Here's the complete changelog.
If you like to swap camera views a lot while playing Fallout 4, especially when aiming, this should appeal to you. It automatically switches from third-person to first-person perspective when looking down iron-sighs, just like Metal Gear Solid. No more tapping a key or scrolling the mouse wheel, and when you top aiming it'll switch back automatically, too.
Among its many drawbacks, the post-apocalypse is just so darn messy. Why not pitch in and pick up the place a little? Commonwealth Cleanup lets you pick up and recycle over 130,000 static items like trash, cars, tire piles, vending machines, air conditioners, and all the rest of the garbage that's lying around and, until now, was immovable. Whatever you salvage can be used as crafting scrap.
It's fun to use the intimidation perk to pacify enemies, but other than making them raise their hands and stop shooting, there wasn't much else to do with them. This mod gives you a few more choices, like robbing them, putting them in handcuffs, or making them flee.
Adding a real cover system to Fallout 4, this mod will let you stick to cover, lean out to shoot, and snap back into safety. It can be customized, allowing you to enter cover automatically by sprinting into it, or by using a hotkey to activate it. You can even vault over low objects you are taking cover behind. Pretty cool.
Seems a bit silly that you can't have Dogmeat at your side at all times, such as when you're with another companion, doesn't it? This mod fixes that oversight, allowing your faithful pooch to accompany you even if you're adventuring with another follower.
I'm not sure why Bethesda thought we'd enjoy watching slowly-appearing text crawl across the hundreds of different terminals in Fallout 4. Sure, you can click to speed things up, or you can solve the problem permanently with this mod that allows you to customize how fast you'd like terminal text to appear, increasing the speed from 2x up to 100x. I'd go with 100x, personally.
Followers standing to close? Shove 'em. Mutated cow in your way? Shove it. Enemies, too? Yes, shove them! Maybe someone is blocking a doorway, maybe they're just being annoying, or maybe, like me, you're just a cruel and sadistic person. Whatever the reason, this mod lets you give people a shove and watch 'em fly. It's as if Skyrim's Fus-Ro-Dah has been imported into Fallout 4. It's fun. A lot of fun.
This isn't as gross as it sounds: it's actually quite useful. When you find a food or beverage item in Fallout 4, you need to pick it up before you can consume it. That makes sense, but it's also a pain since picking it up instantly adds it to your inventory, which means opening your Pipboy and scrolling through the list to find the item that, logically, should still be in your hand. With this mod, you can choose to consume something right off the table, shelf, or floor, skipping the need to find it in your pack.
Fancy some new companions that do more than just mindlessly follow you around? Not only can you tame beasts, but you can also decorate them with paint or dress them in armor. Activate a tracking chip so you'll always be able to find them, manage their happiness by feeding them treats, and even teach them tricks.
Every sole survivor has found themselves with their pockets stuffed to the limit, crippled by the decision of what to loot and what to leave behind. Here to help you choose what to carry and what to ignore is this tweak to the Pip-Boy UI screen, which displays the monetary value versus how much an item weighs. Loot smarter, not harder!
If you miss the dialogue option style from earlier Fallout games, and aren't a fan of the vague new one, help is here. This mod fully shows your options in conversations instead of just hinting at them. No more wondering how you're going to respond sarcastically, now you'll know for sure.
Radstorms are pretty neat but not serious enough to make you change your plans. If you've envisioned a more hostile world, however, now you can make them something to genuinely fear. You can up the amount of damage you take from radstorms, all the way up to 100 rads, as well as increase their frequency.
Tired of selling a bunch of stuff to a vendor, then realizing they don't have enough caps to pay for it, then having to spend extra time searching their store to buy stuff you don't even need just to break even? This mod means vendors have a more reasonable amount of cap-cash to pay you for the huge piles of garbage you're always dumping on them.
Ragstags (mutated deer) are dumb. They're always marked as enemies even through they're almost never interested in attacking you. Your companions see them tagged as enemies and go crazy trying to kill them while you're simply trying to cross the wasteland and fight things that will fight back. This mod fixes the problem by tagging ragstags as friends, meaning your follower will leave them alone.
Annoyed that your character, with his weapon drawn, will point it in front of him at all times when in first-person view? Me neither, but now that I think about it, it would make your arms really tired. This little immersion mod lowers your gun when you're not actively in combat but still have it in your hand.
Fallout 4 can be a bit spooky from time to time, and often startling when ghouls come lunging toward you, but it's not a horror game. You can make it one now, though, using a mod called Pilgrim—Dread the Commonwealth. Dread is definitely the right word: just watch the trailer above and see Fallout 4 turned into what looks like a mix of the Stalker games and The Road. Pilgrim combines a horror-based ENB with an overhaul of Fallout 4's weather system, citing as inspiration the 2015 film The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers.
If you're looking for a real survival experience in Fallout 4, this mod turns Bethesda's RPG into a freeform survival game set just after the bombs have dropped. There are no quests: your goal is simply to survive in an extremely deadly environment. Most NPCs have been removed, there are new and deadlier enemies to battle, and the surface world is extremely radioactive so you can't venture outside without protective gear. It's a harsh and deadly way to play for those interested in a real challenge.
Tired of Fallout 4's holotape minigames? Here's something a bit more entertaining. It's a mod called Revolted, and it gives you a custom retro 1990s-style corridor shooter that you can play inside Fallout 4. The mod, created by Cohagen, has a pulse-pounding chiptune soundtrack, wonderfully stilted and over-serious voice acting, and some 2D digitized sprites sprinkled into the 3D levels for some added nostalgia. You'll find it in the Concord Speakeasy, playable on a computer terminal located on the second floor.
There are lots of boarded-up buildings in Fallout 4—a little too many, considering the world is full of raiders who would certainly have forced their way inside by now. This modder's goal is to add custom interiors to all of these buildings (eventually), as was done to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Not only does it give you need places to loot and explore, it makes the world a bit more realistic.
This mod connects most of Fallout 4's subway stations with tunnels, giving you a new way to crisscross the dangerous world: by scurrying beneath it. The tunnels aren't abandoned but are home to ghouls, raiders, and other enemies. They will have to be dealt with before you can travel safely, but once you clear them out they won't repopulate and you can enjoy safe passage. You'll also find some beds down in the tunnels—useful if you're a survival mode enthusiast.
Played through Fallout 4 a few times and looking for a new roleplaying experience? Alternate Start lets you skip the standard introduction and begin playing as someone other than a Vault dweller. You can begin your game as a newcomer to Goodneighbor, a raider or merc for hire, a member of the Church of Atom, or a passenger aboard a sinking ship. It's a fresh start and a new way to play.
There's never quite enough ways to blow someone the hell up in Fallout 4, so here's a nice addition to the list. C4, plasma charges, and IEDs that can be dropped and detonated remotely. If you want to be really cool about it, plant one of 'em in someone's clothing, stroll away, and the trigger the bomb.
Okay, obviously this is a bit of a dig at Bethesda's DLC library Creation Club, which produces items and gear people can spend real money on. But it's also pretty clever. This mod adds a golf club that, when swung, creates random (and free) items out of thin air. Once the novelty wears off, the club can also be used as a customizable melee weapon.
Got a few too many fusion cores lying around? You can now use them to craft ammo for this new weapon, which is really a new set of weapons. The Fusion Gun first comes into your possession as a pistol, but once you've got it you can craft it into any type of weapon you want, from a sniper rifle to shotgun to assault rifle. The trailer above shows its many looks and uses.
If you don't like the opaque sniper scopes, or the quick fade to black that occurs when using them, this mod solves that issue. Now when holding up a weapon with a scope you can see through it. You have the option to add new scopes, or simply replace the existing ones. You can even customize the reticles of your scopes in-game.
Modder DOOM has been making sweet guns for Fallout 4 for a while, and now you can find all ten of them in one place. There are assault rifles, a Desert Eagle, a MAC-11 machine pistol, and even a replication of Deckard's PKD Detective Special from Blade Runner.
We all love using explosives in Fallout 4. We'd love them more if the ones that were supposed to hurl shrapnel around actually did. Thanks to this mod, now shrapnel-based explosive weapons really work as they're supposed to. Instead of just an explosion, your frag grenades and frag mines, MIRV grenades, bottlecap mines, and baseball grenades will send a cloud of projectiles through the air, shredding the hell out of anyone within range. Duck and cover.
If you're not a huge fan of the Pip-Boy's flashlight function, which provides a somewhat uninspiring general glow to your surroundings, now you can use the same shoulder-mounted lamp the Marines use in the film Aliens. I think you'll agree: it's way cooler with volumetric lighting and dynamic shadows. What's more, it can both be purchased from vendors or crafted at a chemistry table. You can also craft different colored lights for it at an armor workbench.
The hell with road leathers, why can't I strap pieces of armor on over my nice natty suit? In addition to being able to wear any outfit under your armor, you can also wear hats and helmets with gasmasks, you can add ballistic weaves to hats, and even craft new outfits altogether. This mod was created with FO4Edit.
This well-animated crossbow makes a great addition to your burgeoning arsenal, and it's not just a simple, static weapon. You can add attachments to it using your workbench, and craft a number of different types of bolts for it. The crossbow is silent, perfect for stealth kills, and its great damage is offset by its slow reload time so it won't unbalance the game.
If you want to take wasteland warfare to a whole new level, this mod will let you build the weapon of your fever dreams. It allows you to put any weapon attachment on any weapon, so you can electrify a triple-barreled minigun, splice a Fat Man onto an alien laser pistol, or build just about any Frankenstein-esque weapon you can imagine. The video above by Tyrannicon shows you just a few of the possibilities.
You can build a lot at your workstations, everything from weapon mods to medical items to grenades. Why not ammo? This mod lets you craft every single type of ammo in the game at your chemistry stations: shotgun shells, flares, mini nukes, flamer fuel, fusion cells... you name it, you can craft it (unless you're naming made-up ammo that doesn't exist, like moon-piercing tomato bullets). You'll still need higher level Gun Nut, Science, and Demolition perks to be able to craft the really powerful stuff.
On our final page, we'll look at some useful tools and utilities.
The NMM is compatible with Fallout 4, and as the years pass and the mods stack up, it'll be pretty much indispensable. What's more, it works with a bunch of other games like Bethesda's RPG, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls 1 and 2, and World of Tanks. It makes downloading and managing mods from the Nexus a breeze.
As the modding scene for Fallout 4 grows, more and more will use the Fallout 4 Script Extender. It's a utility that allows mods to work without actually modifying the game's executable files, so even if something goes wrong with a mod it won't cause any permanent damage.
With the arrival of official modding tools came Bethesda's own repository for Fallout 4 mods. You'll need an account (it's free) and once you have one you'll be able to browse and download mods even while you're in the game.
