We’re excited about Fallout 4, not just because it’s going to be a vast new RPG from the talent that made Skyrim, but because it marks the launch of a new platform for modders. Bethesda games inspire amazing work from mod enthusiasts. Without their passion and skill, we’d never be able to drive Richard Cobbett to the brink of insanity with the Skyrim Week of Madness. We’d never have enjoyed weekends, even weeks, tweaking our copies of Skyrim until they looked and sounded incredible. With mod support for Fallout 4 confirmed, we can look forward to it all over again. Here are some mods we’d be especially keen to see.
Mart’s Mutants Mk II
One of Fallout 3’s best mods added a huge variety of extra monsters, and new (often huge) versions of familiar monsters. Who can forget cuddly additions like the Enclave Deathclaw Alpha, the Monstrous Dog and the horrible Wanamingo (pictured), which Mart brought back from Fallout 1. FO4 is sure to add new monsters, but there can always be more, and Mart’s largest creatures created impromptu boss fights in parts of the wasteland that used to be safe, keeping the world fresh long after the main quest line was exhausted.
Expanded building features
Fallout 4’s new fortress construction feature looks like it’s a fully featured, major part of the game, even though it’s entirely optional. I want to see it become as big as possible, with more building pieces, additional construction plots, and advanced ways to use Fallout 4’s existing wire-and-terminal network features, which let you set up clusters of turrets and traps to repel enemies. I wouldn’t go as far as to ask for a Minecraft-level degree of customisation but—oh sod it, that’s exactly what I want. Make me a god, modders.
More companions
We already know that Dogmeat is an immortal part of Fallout 4, and there will surely be more companions to ally with in the Bostonian wasteland. Prior mods in both Fallout 3 and Skyrim have greatly improved the AI of you colleagues, and given you more control over their actions. Some Fallout 3 mods even let you hire multiple companions and order them around like a personal death squad, which worked brilliantly as an endgame. We’d head out at dawn to hunt the biggest, baddest game Mart’s Mutants could throw at us. Those were the days. Maybe modders can bring them back again.
Multiplayer
This is a tough one. There have been co-op mods for other Bethesda RPGs, but they’ve never really worked. The engine just really hasn’t wanted to do it, and sessions would suffer from rubber banding and frequently break. The dream lives on, though. Sure, a big part of Fallout is being a lone wanderer, but mods are brilliant because they let a game serve multiple fantasies, including a fantasy in which two wastelanders take it in turns to try and ride on a deathclaw’s shoulders. Make it happen.
More radio stations
Fallout’s radio stations have a lovely collection of crackly old tunes. They’re great for contrasting charming old-world cheer with the broken world in front of you, however, it’d be nice to click to a different playlist of thematically relevant tracks. Something slightly more modern, perhaps. It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), Death From Above, Road to Nowhere. A publisher would have to license all that, but if modders found a way to let players drag and drop music into a Pip Boy playlist, then who knows what we might choose to create.
Dogs mods
Okay, Fallout 4. You’ve got a dog. An alsatian, at that! Normally we’d be satisfied with that number of dogs, but, thanks to mods, we don’t have to settle. Let us choose from dogs of many different shapes and sizes. Let us recruit hundreds of these different dogs at once. Let us command this writhing mass of Dogmeat to stack together into one massive dog that can crush whole towns with its dog paw made of dogs. Also, we should be able to ride this twisted omnidog, and have every character in the game refer to us as, ‘Our Excellency, Lord of All Dogs.’ Mods can do that, right?
Gary’s mod
Alternate start mods are a grand Elder Scrolls tradition—giving players an excuse to cast off the heavy responsibility of ‘Dragonborn,’ or ‘random guy that Patrick Stewart freed from prison and now, all of a sudden, is in charge of closing all the Oblivion gates? How the hell is that a way to run a country?’ Fallout would, of course, benefit from something similar: a reason to cast off the responsibilities of protagonist and just explore the world. To give it a Fallout twist, we could take the role of one of Vault 108’s Garys. It’d make the voice acting easier. You’d just need to say ‘Gary’ a lot.
All of the graphics
Beautifying a wasteland seems like a pointless exercise, but modders are going to do it anyway. Fallout 4 is already looking great, thanks largely to its lighting and choice of colour palette. It doesn’t matter. There are hundreds of transformative mods for Skyrim, and there are likely to be hundreds more for Fallout 4. Expect dramatic lighting, higher resolution textures and a series of face, hair and body overhauls that will all be a little too preoccupied with specifically tweaking the game’s female characters and companions. Give it a few months, and Skyrim will be looking as good as this. Only with more rubble.
For more on Fallout 4, here’s everything we know so far, and a breakdown of the debut trailer. What mods would you like to see?
