Fallout 4 is gonna have mods on Xbox One and (hopefully) PS4. But consoles aren’t like PC’s wild, wild wasteland. There are rules.
First, the good news: Bethesda wants there to be as little red tape as possible. Want to render your Fallout 4 save a smoking pile of irradiated scrap (that’s jealously guarded by creepy fucking trains)? Go for it.
“Just like Skyrim, there are mods that can break your game pretty wildly, and so we have some safety things on the console for that, but at the same time, we are going to let people break their game,” game director Todd Howard explained to IGN.
Console mods won’t be subjected to much of an approval process, either. At least, not if Howard and co can help it. The hope is that transferring them from PC will be a snap.
“We don’t want to [be heavy handed about approval],” he said. “We’ll see how we have to go through that. The plan is that it goes through Bethesda.net, but… outside of things that we would normally take down—we take down things on Steam Workshop if it’s got things that are illegal, or things like that—we’ll do the same thing.”
Now the question on every wannabe wasteland-defacer’s mind: what’s off-limits? Did you guess “everything except nudity and licensed material”? Then you’re supremely wrong and might live in an alternate reality (how do you grow such formidable mustaches, asking for a friend).
“Either your nudity or porn, that kind of stuff, or you’re taking assets from Halo,” Howard said to IGN. “Though, Microsoft might allow that. We’d have to get approval. But like, generally, if someone is using assets from another game, we have to say, ‘No, you can’t do that.’”
Which is kind of a bummer given how many hilarious and/or terrifying Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Skyrim mods have come out of worlds colliding in ways that are oh-so-wrong yet oh-so-right, but it’s not the end of the world. Who knows? Maybe the restriction will bring more creativity out of modders who aren’t usually into making original material.
As for nudity, I’ve never personally used any sex/romance/nudity mods in Fallout or Skyrim, but I know that large communities have formed around them. They’re not all winners, but it’s one of the more fascinating sides of the modding community, if only because these games were super not made to support this stuff. It’s kind of a shame to see Bethesda slamming that vault door shut and locking it up tight. Oh well, somehow I imagine the PC modding community will more than make up for it.
There’s still one big question, though: how much say will Microsoft and Sony want in the process? Once upon a time both console-makers were known for extremely strict certification processes for almost all content, downloadable or not. They’ve slackened their chains in recent times, but you never know—especially with something as untested and prone to chaos as player-created mods.
For now, though, Bethesda’s stance seems promising, if not ideal. Now then, anybody want to start planning out a play-as-dogmeat mod? And also a mod where all human characters are replaced by dogs, and your adventure companion is a loyal, completely naked dude from a vault where everyone was brainwashed to think they’re dogs?
