Fallout: London will nuke the next-gen update, in true Fallout fashion

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Fallout London, as you may be aware, has been an ongoing mod development project since 2019, and it aims to bring the London setting into the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Looking at most of the UK, you’d realize half of it is already there. Regardless, just weeks before the set release date of April 23rd, Bethesda, announced a surprise next-gen update of Fallout 4 to release on April 25th, which delayed the mod indefinitely.
The issue is that whenever a game’s core files are changed, mods that work with those core files need to be updated, breaking the mods that rely on them, since Fallout: London presumably needs a lot of base game files to work correctly, it seemed like the project was dead in the water, or at least, strapped with a heavy delay. But the developers over at Team Folon now have other ideas.
Fallout 4 next-gen update deemed “not stable enough”
A development update was shared on the Fallout: London Discord server by project lead Dean Carter, (says Ars Technica) The message read: “At the 11th hour we’ve discovered that the next-gen [version of Fallout 4], even after updates, isn’t stable enough and thus we are now going out on the old version – thus the need for a downgrader.”
This followed a message posted on X by Team Folon from the 6th of July assuring people that the game was in the QA stages on GOG, the platform that will host the DLC-sized mod. And sure enough, you can find the game listed on the site via community wishlists.
It seems as though the team over at Team Folon has decided to include a down-patch of the game within the mod, and it doesn’t look like you have to down-patch your game manually either. Even though that usually just involves using an older .exe file. It seems like this is the best route to pursue, as work to update the mod was further disrupted when Bethesda released another update to Fallout 4 on May 13th, presumably to fix half of what they broke.
It’s not like the next-gen updater was at all revolutionary, it didn’t even give the nearly 10-year-old game a new coat of paint as many expected. All it did was include some settings tweaks, break some saved files, and add some mod content that we could have added ourselves. Not that we’re trying to say any of this isn’t difficult to do, and it’s nice that Bethesda is trying to keep the game updated for us, but I won’t miss the update, personally.

It also broke my save, as it did with many other players, and half of the additions didn’t work, so what was the point of it all?
Bethesda could have been more considerate
In my eyes, I liked Bethesda, there are a few heartfelt stories online of fans who sadly passed away making it into the game as characters, and people trying to pay for games with bottlecaps and Bethesda honoring it. It’s stories like this that really make me think Bethesda cares about the community, so that’s why I’m so baffled that it’s all played out this way.
Now, I don’t and never expected Bethesda to put their agenda on hold for the sake of a mod, but I’d have liked to have seen Bethesda reach out in plenty of time to at least give the team developing Fallout: London a heads up. It’s not like Fallout: London is a low-key project, I doubt nobody in Bethesda has heard of it before.
When will Fallout: London release?
Originally Fallout: London was set to release on April 23rd on Nexus mods, the popular mod hosting site. However, both of those points have now changed, because the files are too large to host on Nexus, and Bethesda dropped a mini-nuke on their Team Fallon’s plans to release the game, as we just discussed.
Thankfully, GOG stepped up and provided a “light at the end of the tunnel” said Carter, even going as far as helping with the QA process, helping make sure the mod and the downgrader work well on all devices. A GOG spokesperson told TheGamer.
The release of Fallout: London could technically hit us any day now, with no telling how long the mod will take barreling through the QA process. I for one can’t wait to get a hold of the mod and jump into post-apocalyptic London, and discover what horrors the post-war UK capital holds. One thing is for certain though, it’s that war, war never changes.