Fallout 4 needs no introduction, as it is one of the most famous first-person shooters in the world. But even a world-famous product can't please everybody. Just a week before the official release on November 10, 2015, the game has already received some controversial critique after the recent leak of gameplay screenshots and videos. Believe it or not, fans were not happy to see such a low quality of graphics.
However, Fallout 3 and New Vegas have always been criticized for having poor graphics. And, looking at the sales numbers of these games and the level of anticipation for Fallout 4, it looks like the upcoming installment will have no problem digesting a new helping of criticism. Even the developers themselves aren't bothering with all the negative comments. Maybe because they know that community will throw all efforts at modifying the game to its fullest, as was the case with the previous Fallout games from Bethesda.
This should get really interesting as soon as developers permit the use of mods, also available for PS4 and Xbox One. So, let’s speculate a little bit and try to see which kinds of mods are necessary for a complete Fallout 4 experience - with examples, of course.
Fixing bugs
Bethesda is well-known for releasing games with tons of bugs. But there is a way for the community to deal with this. Nearly every owner of Fallout 3 downloaded the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - the most popular patch of them all, and Mission Mojave - a similar type of patch for New Vegas. Both patches fixed hundreds of bugs in both games.
Fallout 4 will most likely have issues of its own. That’s not a fact yet, but expect tons of complaints in the upcoming months from PC users. This is where the modding community will enter the scene.
Environment enhancement
Fallout 3 and New Vegas were some bleak-looking games. While most purists absolutely loved the greenish and yellowish color palette (what else would you expect from the post-apocalyptic world, they say), other less enthusiastic gamers wanted to see a more colorful world. An excellent mod titled Fellout was released for people preferring a different kind of Fallout.
The previously limited palette was one of the reasons why Bethesda gave the world of Fallout 4 a lot of bright colors. But, don’t you see a contradiction here? This time, the situation will be no different for purists, who will probably have to wait for another environment enhancement mod to turn the bright world of Fallout 4 back into the colorless desert of despair.
Texture upgrading
Fans of the series had to wait for years before the NMC's Texture Pack saw the light of the day. This mod took the quality of textures in Fallout 3 and New Vegas to a whole other level. Even today the game looks astonishing with this texture upgrading mod.
Fallout 4 looks decent, of course, but the recent screenshots don’t prove to be spectacular by any means. People have noticed loads and loads of little details lacking in the game texture department. Apparently, Bethesda wanted to release the game as quickly as possible and just let modders bother with the textures.
Animation and physics
Fallout Reanimated, released on Nexus Mods a couple of years ago, dramatically improves the way the characters move, hold guns, and shoot. The creator of this mod is a professional animator. Unfortunately, he couldn’t finish his project, but even the work that he had done is much superior to the original animations of Fallout 3.
Although the gameplay videos for Fallout 4 show an improved game physics and animations, fans still consider it to be lacking the necessary flexibility of character movements, which can be found in so many other current games. So, this is another department for modders to consider for the future development.
Better AI
Mart's Mutant Mod for Fallout 3 adds many new enemies, including well-known enemies from the first games in the series and an overall improved AI. With the help of this mod, monsters can now fight each other, while Raiders can equip better armor and weapons, and loot dead NPCs, which makes them much more dangerous in combat.
This is probably the only feature that Bethesda got right this time. The AI in the new game behaves much better in comparison to Fallout 3, where enemies were simply jumping out of their hideouts. But a lot of fans are still hoping for an AI mod that will influence both enemies and a companion in some unusual ways. Let’s wait and see what the community will come up with.
Hardcore mode
Fallout 3 has Wanderers Edition, a mod compensating for the absence of a hardcore mode in the game. This mod brings a lot of changes to the gameplay and increases its complexity. Thus, in Wanderers Edition you need to eat and drink, but the amount of supplies and ammunition scattered around the world is extremely limited, which significantly complicates the gameplay. This mod also extends the content of the game at the expense of the new armor, medicines, and various weapons, including guns from the first games of the series.
Taking into account that these days, even games with hard modes aren’t actually that hard, it looks like Fallout 4 will definitely need a hardcore mode designed by the mod community.
Weather effects
The Nevada Skies modification for Fallout: New Vegas adds some significant changes to weather effects in the Mojave Desert, such as rainfalls, thunderstorms, sand storms, and even radioactive blizzards. Also, Nevada Skies introduces a more complex system of cloud movement, which adds realism to the game.
Fallout 4 probably already has some great built-in weather effects, but we always want to see what the community comes up with. It could be anything: winter, floods, other unusual environmental phenomena like polar shining, etc.
New exciting story campaigns
If you’ve never heard of Project Brazil, it's the most ambitious story mod for New Vegas, consisting of 16 huge main quests and even more side quests. Now’s a great time to check it out before the release of Fallout 4. The mod has been in development for more than two years: the first episode was released back in 2013, and the full version was released this October.
Bethesda admitted that Fallout 4 has hundreds of hours of playable content, but more story mods are inevitable nonetheless.
More hardcore modes
Fallout 4 will have six different modes of difficulty, but none of them can compare to the hardcore modes developed by modders for Fallout 3 and New Vegas. More than that, Josh Sawyer, a former lead designer, created his own mod of difficulty for New Vegas. It was so hard that people couldn't reach level 50 with it, maximum that fans achieved was level 35. So, we will probably see the releases of some more hardcore modes for Fallout 4, too.
One huge world
Tale of Two Wastelands is a mod that connects the worlds of Fallout 3 and New Vegas into one. With this mod players can easily travel between the two wastelands with all their equipment, skills and perks. In fact, Tale of Two Wastelands makes Fallout into a single grand super-RPG.
Maybe we ask for too much, but wouldn’t it be great if now all three games were united into one massive world. Probably this is going to be either too difficult or even completely impossible, but there is a sense of something like that happening in the future.
Let us know of your own ideas and expectations regarding Fallout 4 mods in the comments section below.
Published: Nov 3, 2015 03:20 am