Fancy an early look at Fallout 76? Modder SK550 uploaded a cheeky facsimile of Bethesda’s upcoming multiplayer survival game for Fallout 4 that recreates the worst of the preview rumors. It enables random nuke attacks, most campaign characters get deleted, and you’ll get randomly spawning NPCs that act like the jerkiest of human players with “l33t-420” style names to go with them! Experience multiplayer Hell in all its glitchy glory! Fallout 4-76 is available now!
Bethesda announced paid mods for Skyrim: Special Edition and Fallout 4 via the upcoming Creation Club. This is something Bethesda has been creeping towards since their ill-fated experiment with Steam and the original version of Skyrim in 2015. This time, we’ll see if they get it right. It’s the Bethesda.net mod workshop but with curated community-made DLC you buy with credits. There’s no word yet on the exchange rate between real dollars and the Creation Club funny money, but you can assume it will be controversial no matter the cost.
The rest of Bethesda’s E3 2017 briefing was a parade of sequels and oddities. Doom VFR moves the demon ripping and tearing to virtual reality. How will Doom’s dance of death work in VR? It doesn’t. Movement seems to be changed to teleporting around. Fallout 4 VR offers the full open-world experience but with virtual fumbling and hand-waving. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a standalone serving of stealthy assassinating. Evil Within 2 showed off more inexplicable horror and things shuffling in the dark. Finally, BJ Blazkowicz returns in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
Player made mods for Fallout 4 are awesome. That’s something most people can agree on. The ability to change things like graphical effects, or add new assets, or just shut Preston Garvey up is possible through the extensive modding community. While PC players have been enjoying mods on Bethesda roleplaying games for years, Fallout 4 is the first one that’s offered mods on a console. Mods through the Bethesda.net portal have been available on the Xbox One since May 31st, and the developer had said they were working on mods for the PlayStation 4. Since that time, we’ve been given repeated assurances that Fallout 4 mods on PlayStation 4 were coming. That dream ends today. Bethesda has announced that mods for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition will not be available on the PlayStation 4.
Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available.
What happened? There are no specifics as to where the breakdown occurred, but as early as July, Bethesda’s Pete Hines expressed frustration on Twitter when asked about the delay. In a more recent interview with Metro UK, Hines declined to blame Sony, but did say that mods for Fallout 4 on PlayStation 4 was “undergoing an evaluation process” outside of his control.
Like the famous E ticket attractions from Disneyland of yore, Bethesda hopes Nuka-World will be as popular. The final official DLC package for Fallout 4 features a post-apocalyptic theme park complete with new enemies, weapons, settlement bits, and quests. Presumably, all flavors of everyone’s favorite refreshing soda pop will be available for a modest sum throughout the park.
Nuka-World will be open for visitors on August 30th.
From the journal of Nick Valentine, synth private eye:
I was hanging out with all the loose companions at the Red Rocket Truck Stop like I always do, when my buddy the Sole Survivor hit me up for some business. Seems my secretary put the word out to track down a missing girl and the Sole Survivor needed a partner to help with the search. All of us poor neglected companions shuffled uneasily as the Sole Survivor decided who to take. Eeny meeny miny moe. The job came down to me or the dog, but I have better dialog. Sorry, Dogmeat.
After the jump, Nick Valentine is on the case in Far Harbor.Continue reading →
The Far Harbor expansion for Fallout 4 is a big bowl of post-apocalyptic clam chowder. While Fallout 4 had plenty of shout-outs to Lovecraft, Far Harbor wears its inspiration proudly. Being set on an island off the coast of New England, it’s full of horrors like sullen fishermen, dangerous mist, icthyian monsters, and violent cultists. It may be the best Lovercraft game to date. There’s new loot to collect and new locations to stumble through, but the best stuff may be hidden underwater around the island where most players will never go. Get some underwater breathing in your perks and go find some sunken treasure.
The trailer for Fallout 4’s next DLC features a bunch of cool stuff, but everything that matters is at the 1:10 mark. Mirelurks are scary, super mutants can be formidable, and deathclaws are intimidating, but kitties are where it’s at. Just like in real life, a cat in Fallout 4 can sleep through a firefight, scamper between melee combatants, and generally just not care about the lumbering half-ton of powered armor nearby. The guy in the video doesn’t know how close he came to dying when the cat jumped out.
The Wasteland Workshop DLC for Fallout 4 will launch on April 12th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It is part of the season pass, and will be available separately.
The clash of metal against metal. Buzzsaws versus pistons. Treads crushing wheels. Claws against pincers. The Automatron DLC for Fallout 4 will launch on March 22nd for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It adds robot companions that you can craft and modify from junk you find in the wasteland. That’s right. More crafting for Fallout 4. Don’t you wish you kept all those Giddyup Buttercup parts now?
Are you one of the brave folks that purchased the Season Pass for Fallout 4? Good news! You’ll finally find out what you get for that money. Bethesda has released some vague information about the DLC that will be bundled into the Season Pass. Automatron, coming in March, will add customizable robot companions and evil robots into the wasteland, including the Robobrain from previous Fallout games. The Wasteland Workshop, coming in April, will give players the ability to catch post-apocalyptic fauna in traps and fight them in arenas, as well as adding more workshop designs. Far Harbor, releasing sometime in May, appears to be the most substantial of the DLC packages coming, offering a whole new area to explore in coastal Maine.
Here’s where things get sketchy. Bethesda feels that the Season Pass is such a good deal, and their coming content is so beefy, that maybe they undervalued it. Starting on March 1st, the price of the Season Pass will increase to $49.99 from its current price of $29.99. It should be noted that Techland executed a similar bump with The Following in December 2015. The Dying Light Season Pass increased by $10, once the developer decided The Following was worth $19.99 by itself. This is the chance for early adopters of the bundle to laugh at the procrastinators. At least until the next deep sale discount.
A lot of the Fallout 4 conversation is about how it compares to The Witcher 3. What an odd comparison. The Witcher 3 is high fantasy with a predetermined protagonist in a very specific story that focuses on character development and good writing. Fallout 4 is pretty much the opposite of all that.
The more appropriate comparison is to Xenoblade Chronicles X. They have a lot in common, including a blank slot where you plug in your own hero. They both have an open world, mechs, sidekicks, character customization, an unruly world for you to settle, carefully calculated landscapes, quest list gameplay, stranger-in-a-strange-land storylines that you can pursue at your leisure, crafting, stylized combat.
There’s a secret harpoon gun in Fallout 4. The weapon is baked in the files of the game and is not enabled, but modder xxdeathknight72xx found it and has brought it out for PC players to use. Using the mod replaces the Railway Rifle that shoots railroad spikes, but it allows you to fire harpoons at enemies – at least until the ammo runs out. It’s unclear why Bethesda discontinued work on the gun, or if the developers plan on officially adding it to the game at a later date. Is it for underwater combat gameplay that was never quite realized?
This is only one of many mods that have already appeared for Fallout 4 despite the official editing tools not being released yet. Some of the most popular mods are a revamped dialogue interface that shows the full responses the player will give, ammunition crafting, and a tool that lets you mess around with some hidden settings.
The post-apocalyptic wasteland of Fallout 4 can be an unforgiving place. If you’re just popping out of a pre-war Vault, the radioactive territory can be quite a detriment to living. Here are some simple tips for making your way in the Boston area immediately after hitting the great outdoors.
