Fallout Is Back In the Forefront
What a year for Fallout! In a not-so-surprising and pleasant turn of events, the Fallout show on Prime has been met with acclaim from fans of the franchise, those unfamiliar, and critics alike. The show has a 93% from critics and 88% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and the raving reviews are still rolling in. In fact -there is so much love for the show that Prime has confirmed a second season will be in the works for everyone to look forward to.
Player Numbers are Soaring
Not only is this paying off well for the show, but there has been a boost in players across the entire franchise. The show's success, accompanied by a free promotional Prime offering of Fallout 76, Fallout:3 Game of the Year Edition, and Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition (the latter two offered on Amazon’s cloud streaming service, Luna) have boosted Fallout numbers, one of which even reaching past its record high of concurrent players. According to Steamdb, Fallout 1 player count has risen 500%, Fallout 3 rose to 400%, and both Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 have risen 200%. Fallout 76 has now reached an all-time concurrent player count of 39k, the first rise in numbers since its lukewarm reception after its launch in 2020. It’s no mystery that Fallout has earned its place as a beloved icon in the gaming world, and these numbers prove that gamers are still ready and willing to give it their time.
Fallout 4 Update
On April 25th, there will be a new update to Fallout 4 for both consoles and PC. The update will be bringing the game to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 with native applications. Players will have the chance to select either Quality mode or Performance mode where they will experience up to 60 FPS. While there has been some speculation as to when and how often this 60 FPS is reached, it’s not a bad number for the infamously system-taxing Bethesda game. Players on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will also receive a free update with stability improvements as well as login and quest fixes. For PC players, the update will feature widescreen and ultra-widescreen support, as well as fixes to the Creation Kit and a variety of quest updates. If you own the game on Steam, Microsoft Store, or GOG, you will receive stability mods and bug fixes. For Japanese and Chinese language players on PC, Bethesda.net login issues have been resolved, fixing access to mods. The game will also be released on the Epic Games Store and will be Steam Deck verified (ready those charging cords, everyone!!)
According to the official Bethesda announcement, players can also look forward to additional content! Also included in this update is content called “The Enclave Remnants” which will bring the Pre-War cabal, The Enclave, into the Fallout 4 storyline. In this new, “Echoes of the Past” quest, you’ll be tasked to stop The Enclave from “spreading their dangerous ideology and gaining a foothold in the Commonwealth.” New, unconventional objects have been transformed into deadly weapons, such as a baseball launcher, a nail gun, and a piggy bank. A Halloween party, thrown by the New England Technocrat Society, has brought 38 new Halloween items to decorate your spooky settlement with witches, cauldrons, ghouls, and more!
Creation Club items will also join the new workshop items and the Enclave Colonel uniform with this update. Those new items are:
- Enclave Weapon Skins
- Enclave Armor Skins
- Tesla Cannon
- Hellfire Power Armor
- X-02 Power Armor
- Heavy Incinerator
Fallout: London
These new additions and bug fixes might be a much-needed breath of fresh air for Fallout 4, but not everyone is cheering for this unexpected update. The highly anticipated mod Fallout: London experienced quite a roadblock with the update. It’s well-known that the Fallout teams and Bethesda have encouraged and supported the launch of mods in the past, but the team of Fallout: London was unfortunately in the dark about this mod-breaking update right before its release. This has caused the mod to be delayed indefinitely while the team figures out how to accommodate the new update.
Team FOLON had announced a launch date of April 23rd, just two days after this Fallout 4 update and on St. George’s Day, an important cultural day for those in London as well as the day the mod will start you in when it’s first played. Project lead Dean Carter released a statement on the delay in a YouTube announcement update:
"We've just been tweaking and testing non-stop to get things as stable as we can for you all in time for that release, but with the new update dropping just 48 hours later, the past four years of our work stand to just simply break."
Unfortunately, it looks like the team has never had a direct line to the Bethesda team, which might explain why they were in the dark about this new update: "Bethesda has never reached out to us during our entire tenure," Carter said. "We've never had an in-depth conversation with them. Ever."
There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. Carter states that this update will help them get the most out of the engine and the team is still excited to see the Fallout team launching updates for an older engine. ‘On the technical side, being able to play Fallout: London with the new potential engine improvements and performance upgrades is fantastic. It’s going to mean that we can push the engine even harder than we’ve already pushed it. So, we are going to get these great quality-of-life improvements all in the mod.” Widescreen, which was not previously working with the mod, will now have a chance to shine once the team can update the mod after compatibility issues with the new Fallout 4 script extender have been launched by Team FOLON. It’s sad news for the release schedule, but hopefully, Team FOLON can turn this unexpected news into a positive after all.
Whew, that’s a lot of updates surrounding the resurgence of interest in Fallout! The show has once again propelled the games into the forefront of gaming news, even without releasing a new game. It’s wonderful to see a beloved franchise see so much success, and we can only hope its success can continue blazing the trail for game-related media to reach the mainstream. Gamers have long known that games tell incredible stories, and it’s heartwarming to see those stories entertain the masses outside of the smaller niche they were once confined to.
