Bethesda has announced that it’s releasing a 10th anniversary version of Fallout 4 on November 10, similar to what it did for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition bundles the base game with Automatron, Far Harbor, Nuka-World and the Workshop expansions. The original open world game was released in 2015 and takes place in the year 2287, 210 years after the Great War. Like the other games in the franchise, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic world with the aesthetics of 1940s and 1950s USA.
This particular entry in the franchise revolves around the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 who was frozen in a cryogenic pod and woke up 210 years since the nuclear attack. The protagonist’s constant companion in the game is a dog named Dogmeat, but they have six other possible companions: their old robot butler Codsworth, Deacon the railroad agent, the mayor of the Goodneighbor settlement named John Hancock, an artificial synth or humanoid robot named Nick Valentine, Piper Wright the reporter, and Preston Garvey, who’s a member of the paramilitary force Minutemen.
In addition to the base game and the expansions, the anniversary release comes with 150 pieces of content from the Creation Club, an in-game marketplace where developers can sell weapons, skins and other DLCs. The free content includes different Dogmeat breeds, like a Husky and a Dalmatian. The anniversary edition even contains an in-game Creations menu that players can use to browse downloadable content. Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition will be available digitally on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.
As one of the best Fallout games, Fallout 4 has been around since 2015 and players have been wanting Bethesda to follow up 4 with something, anything really. Fast forward to 2023 and Team FOLON has been cooking up a game-sized mod for Fallout fans to enjoy. Here’s 10 reasons why you should care about Fallout: London.
It’s Basically a Full-Sized Game
Image Source: Team FOLON
When it comes to the word ‘Mod’ for Bethesda games, most think of the kind of mod that changes a couple things, or at most, a particular chunk of the game like combat, RPG mechanics, or graphics. Where Fallout: London differs is in its scope. By all metrics (that we will get to), this mod is comparable to what the game industry would imagine a Fallout 5 would have from a size, scope, and feature standpoint.
This is especially impressive once you learn that the team behind Fallout London are comprised of anything between hobbyist modders to industry professionals.
Surprise, It Features London
Image Source: Team FOLON
In a complete departure for anything Fallout related, fans finally have a game that takes place across the pond in all its British glory. To give you an idea of the places you’ll explore in Fallout: London, here are a list of the game’s various locations and zones:
Islington
Camden
Hackney
Greenwich
Lewisham
Bromley
City of London
Wandsworth
Westminster
Eastminster
Lambeth
Tower Hamlets
Southwark
Croydon
Newham
As you can see, the places you can explore encompass a lot of the real-world areas of London, just condensed. Even so, you’ll soon learn just how big all of these areas make Fallout: London the game-sized mod that it is.
No Voiced Protagonist
Image Source: Team FOLON
One of Fallout 4’s biggest complaints was the fact that the main protagonist was voiced. It was not only a departure from previous RPGs in the series but was also not very well received. Giving the main character a voice makes it harder for players to insert themselves into the dialogue with NPCs. Thankfully, Fallout: London smartly chose to keep the main character silent.
This leaves more room for more voice work to be written and voiced for more NPCs as we shall soon see.
90,000 recorded dialogue lines is an impressively large amount of voice work for a new game. So, for a mod to have this is nothing short of a labor of love for the craft of making something new and ambitious. I was always impressed with mods that had a single custom-voiced character companion that would join you on your journey. Fallout: London has more than five fully voiced companions with their own quests and general dialogue.
Considering that Fallout: London is a mod and not an officially funded project by Bethesda, it remains to be seen if this mod’s voice work will maintain that universal quality across the board.
Entirely New Factions
Image Source: Team FOLON
Considering that Fallout: London takes place quite far and removed from the United States, it doesn’t come as a shock to learn that this mod features entirely new Factions. There are 7 factions in all and each one seems distinct, which should make the mod’s 25 faction quests that much more interesting.
Gentry: The old elite who want to restore the UK, but only rule London weakly and unfairly.
Tommies: The loyal militia who guard London for the Gentry, but may have the power to change things.
5th Column: The radical followers of Eve Varney who want to burn down London and rebuild it in her image.
Camelot: The secret rebels who fight for a democratic republic and a seat at the Round Table for all.
Isle of Dogs Syndicate: The wealthy criminals who control Millwall and trade with scavengers but hate the Gentry’s taxes.
Vagabonds: The vengeful gangsters who want to destroy the Isle of Dogs Syndicate and their leader Gaunt.
Angel: The mysterious agents who may have a hidden agenda and a connection to the pre-war government.
Over 190 New Quests
Image Source: Team FOLON
One aspect of this mod’s ridiculous ambition is the sheer amount of quests Fallout: London will offer players. Let’s break down the big number of quests into the kind of quests they are. There are:
53 Main Quests
35 Side Quests
25 Faction Quests
64 Micellanious Quests
and 16 Gang Quests
To put that into perspective, Fallout 4 had around 144 quests with around 12 main quests, 50 faction, 20 side quests, and many more miscellaneous quests. It is refreshing to see Fallout: London put so much effort and time into crafting dozens of main story quests. We’ll have to see how the mod’s main story compares to what Bethesda made.
The Size of Fallout: London’s Map is Bigger Than Fallout 4’s
Image Source: Team FOLON
In Fallout: London’s release video the developers make it known that Fallout: London features over 3,300 cells. Now, cells are used to divide the game world in chunks that the engine can manage while loading and unloading as needed. So, with that in mind, Fallout: London has several hundred more cells than Fallout 4’s base game. Fallout: London also gives you 7 new locations to utilize Fallout 4’s settlement system!
The developers went on to explain that the total size and scope of Fallout: London rivals that of Fallout 4 and Far Harbour combined. Which, for a mod, is just incredible.
Fallout: London Features Thousands of New Assets
Image Source: Team FOLON
If you thought that Fallout: London would reuse a bunch of assets from Fallout 4 then you may be mistaken. The developers of Fallout: London have seemingly poured an incredible amount of manpower into making custom assets for this enormous mod. That includes but isn’t limited to:
112 new weapons
514 clothes
29 races
64 types of foliage
425 different kinds of architecture
203 consumables
2056 static assets big or small
Whether or not these assets are completely unique or are simply modifications of original Fallout 4 assets, you have to admit the sheer number alone is impressive. But if you are still skeptical, then all you need to do is watch the Official Release Announcement trailer.
A Brand-New OST
Image Source: Team FOLON
The mod team at Team Folon has come together to craft an honest-to-God soundtrack of over 70 tracks. The music of Fallout: London seems to be a varied and skillful blend of musical genres and styles, that are inspired by the rich and diverse culture of Britain. The OST captures the mood and atmosphere of post-apocalyptic London.
The soundtrack’s music ranges from the ambient mystery and allure of the diverse factions and environment to the bombastic and thrilling sounds of a U.K-centric kind of combat. Even better is the over 40 new radio songs based on the period and location alongside 3 new radio stations.
Fallout London Releases April 23rd, 2024
Image Source: Team FOLON
In the release video, Team Folon announced that the mod is currently feature complete and functional but that they needed one more quarter for their team to polish and bug fix what’s already there. This launch nicely coincides with the Fallout TV show as that releases on April 12th. I know I will certainly be one of the people who gets invested in the Fallout show and follows that experience up with a brand-new game-sized mod.
Ultimately, a mod of this size represents a huge amount of work, passion, and talent that could result in one of the biggest and greatest mods ever made. While most were hoping for an Oblivion or Fallout 3 remaster, it’s wild that most will have Fallout: London to look forward to instead. We only have until April to find out if it can live up to the hype Team Folon has built for everyone.
About the author
Ali Taha
Whether its new releases, or a new Destiny 2 season, Ali will flex his gaming and freelancer skills to cover them extensively. He started off writing features for Game Rant but found a better home here on Twinfinite. While Ali waits for the next Monster Hunter title, he enjoys publishing his progression fantasy novels as an indie author.
Making games is hard. Not just on a technical level, but imagine getting a handful of unique personalities into a room, working towards a common goal. Even when everyone is moving in tandem, and something truly remarkable is made, there’s bound to be a few flumps. Let’s take a look at games that are—or were—super glitchy but still a lot of fun to play!
10. Dead Island
Image Source: Techland
Welcome to Dead Island, where zombies can be hulking beasts or tiny creatures of destruction no bigger than a foot. Do you like whacky physics and random collisions? Well, you’ll certainly get your fill here. Witness zombies get toppled like bowling pins by a mere gas canister or sent flying from one well-placed swing. And let’s not forget a fan favorite: limbs that contort and separate on their own!
Okay, we’re done poking fun at the game. Honestly, Dead Island’s myriad of ways to kill zombies is highly concentrated dumb fun, only heightened by the ridiculous bugs you encounter. That fun is then multiplied when you bring in a few buddies!
9. Pokemon Red & Blue
Image Source: Game Freak
There was a time in gaming history when games had to be stable and as bug-free as possible. Developers couldn’t rely on a magical day-one patch. That’s not to say Pokemon Red and Blue were an unstable mess—it certainly wasn’t—but a few bugs squeaked by.
One of the most famous examples was MISSINGNO, a glitch “Pokemon” you could battle and capture. It was really easy to find, too, and if you caught it, well, you could duplicate items in your inventory. So, hello hundreds of Rare Candies or countless Master Balls! It’s a glitch you can still find in the digital versions of Pokemon Red and Blue!
Another great example is leveling your Pokemon past 100. All you had to do was feed it Rare Candies up until it reached level 255. Or how about catching Mew? Through a combination of Fly, a trainer battle, and choosing specific locations, you can get a low-level Mew to appear!
8. Cyberpunk 2077 (On Launch)
Image Source: CD Project RED
What Cyberpunk 2077 is compared to what it was is night and day. It was an incredible mess on launch day, and many weeks after that, it was pretty astonishing to witness. The story was appealing and featured several noteworthy characters like Goro Takemura (my personal favorite), Judy, and Jackie Wells, to name a few.
The gameplay was also solid, though the skill tree had left a lot to desire. If you were lucky, like me, and only experienced graphical glitches and bugs most of the time, Cyberpunk 2077 was still a fun ride from start to finish. Well, assuming you made it to the end. You couldn’t round a corner without seeing a random T-pose, questionable pathing, NPCs who defied the laws of physics, and vehicles with minds of their own.
7. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
Image Source: Obsidian Entertainment
Despite its numerous bugs, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 is still a great game. Unfortunately, it was rushed, which meant some quests could break, crashes often occurred, and some events and cutscenes failed to trigger. Not to mention, there was a level-up glitch that made you god-like. Finishing the game meant enduring a hellish gauntlet and a lot of saves, but I’d be lying If I said it wasn’t worth it.
Thankfully, it isn’t 2004 anymore, and the community surrounding it has grown. Modders stepped in and made TSLRCM, an unofficial patch that fixes a bunch of bugs and even restores some content that was left out. Of course, if you want a more pure playthrough, there’s also an unofficial TSLRCM Tweak Pack that leaves cut content out. Either way, KOTOR 2 won’t be such a headache to play on modern machines!
6. Bethesda Game Studios
Image Source: Bethesda
If we’re going to discuss glitchy games that are still fun to play, Bethesda gets its own entry. It’s a running gag at this point that stretches back over two decades, from Morrowind to Starfield. Anyone who enjoys Bethesda’s catalog expects it, too. You might get launched into the stratosphere, take damage from walking over a wheel of cheese, or witness NPCs take a nasty right hook to the head while you’re talking.
Luckily, the bugs and glitches are mostly harmless. You can usually work through most of them by saving a lot. It’s tedious, sure, but losing a few minutes of progress is better than an hour, which I’m positive all of us have felt at one point or another. Autosave has saved my playthroughs more times than I care to count, too.
5. Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Image Source: Capcom
If there are any fighting games on the planet that are more broken than Marvel vs. Capcom 2, I’d love to see it. Not some sole developer working on a passion project, but from developers as well-established as Capcom. It’s incredible the community embraced it like they did because underneath all those travesties is still a top-notch fighting game.
For example, there are player-activated game freezes (Ruby Heart, Gambit), infinite juggles (Cable’s Air Hyper Viper Beam), and the ability to spam unblockable attacks (Sentinel). That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, players exploited them so frequently that it was fair game, even in tournaments. Only a few lines were drawn in the sand, like freezing the game and infinite dead body loops, though the latter is allowed to a finite degree.
4. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Image Source: Bethesda
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind deserves its own entry, just because many of its bugs and glitches are incredibly beneficial. They can be exploited to such a degree that, with a few simple tricks, you can make yourself an all-powerful god, even stronger than Vivec. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way; it’s what makes Morrowind unique compared to later entries.
Take Alchemy, for example. The strength of your potions is partly determined by your Intelligence. So, you brew an Intelligence potion, chug it, and then brew another even stronger version. After a while, your Intelligence (and other stats) are in the thousands. It’s handy for enchanting gear with ridiculous effects, too.
Then there’s spellcrafting. By adding a secondary target effect, in addition to the buff you want, you’ve created a permanent buff. This trick often gets referred to as the “Soultrap Effect Glitch,” but it’s not Soultrap that’s causing the bug; it’s the Target effect.
3. Mass Effect 3
Image Source: BioWare
To be honest, Mass Effect 3 merely continues the tradition of bugs that started long ago in the franchise’s history. It being the last in a trilogy and having the bugs and glitches it had was icing on the cake. No hate from me, though; I still love them just as much as everyone else.
The kinds of bugs you’ll find in Mass Effect 3 are actually incredibly entertaining. You’ve got NPCs breakdancing after being hit by biotics, allies T-posing, and getting stuck in the air after performing a biotic charge. It’s mostly harmless unless you’re the poor soul who can’t deal damage after migrating your ME2 save file over to ME3.
2. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
Image Source: Stellar Stone
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is the kind of game—and I use that term loosely—that’s so laughably bad, it’s entertaining. The type of bad that makes movies like The Room a treat to watch. Playing it just makes you ask so many questions, like, Who thought this was okay? How did this get released? Is this some elaborate joke? You won’t get answers to those questions, by the way. Big Rigs remains an enigma throughout.
First off, the opponent you race doesn’t actually move unless you download the only patch ever released, in which case they’ll move but stop just before passing the finish line. That means you can never lose. Lastly, your truck can accelerate at ludicrous speeds… in reverse. Then there are buildings you can pass right through and terrain that clips in and out of existence. If you can get your hands on a copy of Big Rigs, it’s worth experiencing at least once.
1. Goat Simulator
Image Source: Coffee Stain Studios
It’s not every day you see game developers intentionally keep bugs in their game and be entirely open about it, but that’s precisely what Coffee Stain Studios did with Goat Simulator. Why? Well, honestly, because it makes the game a heck of a lot more fun. It was already entertaining, but the glitches just make the experience that much more better. Promise!
Coffee Stain Studios follows one simple rule: if a bug or glitch doesn’t break the game or cause instability, it’s kept in. So, welcome all manner of whacky physics, bring on the stretched-out limbs, the clipping, and bizarre NPC behavior. You’ll be giggling like a madman the entire time!
No doubt there are dozens more examples of fun, glitchy games, but these stuck out to us the most. Several were even high-profile games, like Mass Effect 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Bethesda’s lineup. Let us know some of your favorites; we all can use a good laugh! It wouldn’t hurt to check out our other lists, like the best game sequels of the past 10 years.
About the author
Brady Klinger-Meyers
Brady is a Freelance Writer at Twinfinite. Though he’s been at the site for only a year, Brady has been covering video games, and the industry itself, for the past three years. He focuses on new releases, Diablo 4, Roblox, and every RPG he can get his hands on. When Brady isn’t focused on gaming, he’s toiling away on another short story.
Once a distant star on the horizon, Starfield arrived on Xbox and PC on September 6, with a five-day early access period for those who shelled out for the deluxe edition. It’s now been in the hands of gamers worldwide for a little over a month, with folks pouring over its vast world and searching every nook and cranny for loot, side quests, and more.
This Stylish Noir-Punk Side-Scroller Is Like Celeste With Guns
As expected, a game as massive as Starfield has a ton of stuff going on (there’s 1,000 planets, remember) so a month later, folks are still discovering all sorts of unique quirks, charms, and more than its fair share of weak points to point out, celebrate, and critique.
Whether or not Starfield will be as memorable as Skyrim or Fallout remains to be seen, but within its first month, here are some of the highlights.
Starfield earns praise, with some caveats
Following its announcement in 2018, the hype for Starfield was real. Promising a scale way beyond what Bethesda delivered with Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield would mark the first original franchise for the studio since the ‘90s and take the Bethesda RPG format to a place it’s never really been before: space.
Since the highly anticipated game launched, the reactions have been largely positive, but there are some fair criticisms of its structure and the meat of more than a few of its premiere questlines. In Kotaku’s review of Starfield, I praised its scale, scope, and capacity for gorgeous vistas, but criticized a pervasive shallowness in the game’s settings, narratives, and woefully repetitive environments.
Player reviews via Steam certainly have their knives out for this Bethesda entry though, often describing the game as “disappointingly average” and “wide as an ocean – shallow as a puddle.”
Starfield’s scale and scope finally in player hands
It was understood early on that Starfield would be enormous. Bethesda touted the impressiveness of the game’s scale and talked at length about how the survival mechanics wouldn’t bog down the fun of Starfield’s core experience. as they do in other space games like No Man’s Sky
Starfield’s reception amongst those not in the industry and casual players has also been mixed. While many of us have found a calm, contemplative beauty in the game’s endless planet simulation, others have tested just how traversable Starfield’s galaxy really is, and discovered that fast travel is technically not mandatory; you can fly across a solar system if you’ve got literal hours of real-world time on your hands to burn. And you can speed up space travel with a mod if you’re so inclined.
The scale of each individual planetary zone you can land on, however, has brought up criticism from players concerning the jarring lack of vehicles. Bethesda explained that while it did consider vehicles, it instead wanted to prioritize the on-foot exploration experience. Besides, if you did have a space rover, you’d be in for a bumpy ride with all of the dead animals everywhere.
And don’t forget, Starfield has some neat watering holes if you’re looking for a break from all the space-faring adventures and just want to sit in a weird space bar with a weird space bartender.
Wacky physics, fun mods, and other shenanigans
Starfield’s engine has a wildly impressive physics simulation. Granted, Bethesda games have always had pretty cool physics, but Starfield’s seems to be a bit more realistic and lively. This has allowed players to engage in some credit theft, but also has inspired some pseudo Rube Goldberg shenanigans. You can also just pack your ship full of junk and potatoes.
Like almost every Bethesda game before it, modders have taken to improving the rougher edges of Starfield’s experience. We’re still collecting a list of must-install mods for the PC version, but at a minimum you should consider installing StarUI as it profoundly improves the experience of a game that’s already encouraging bad habits for the digital hoarders among us.
In more interesting news, one Starfield modder has taken to putting their DLSS (Nvidia’s AI-powered super-sampling tech that was excluded from Starfield’s launch due to an exclusive deal with AMD) mod behind a paywall. Now, the debate over paid mods is worth having and is not within the scope of this piece, but when you slap DRM and threaten to sneak malware onto pirated copies of a mod…that’s kinda, well shitty.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, Starfield has its share of bugs. I’ve seen a number of quest-breaking errors in my time with the game, while others are finding entire cities transported along with their ships. If my own nearly 200-hour playthrough of the game is anything to go by, save often, don’t rely on auto- and quick-saves. Starfield likes to break more often than it should.
Starfield is just getting started: DLC and more
Even after spending nearly 200 hours in Starfield, I’m still coming across new things. My opinion of it holds strong, but it’s nice to see such a large game continue to offer new experiences the more you play it.
As Video Games Chroniclepointed out, director Todd Howard stated in a recent interview that experience with previous games like Skyrim and Fallout has taught the studio to design with long-term investment in mind:
“This is a game that’s intentionally made to be played for a long time. One of the things we’ve learned from our previous games, like Skyrim, like Fallout, is that people want to play them for a very long time. […] How do we build it such that it is allowing that in a way that feels natural, and if people have played the game and finished the main quest, you can see that.”
How the future of Starfield evolves beyond just repeat playthroughs remains to be seen. It’s hard to imagine the game will see the same kind of update support that No Man’s Sky has, but Howard has repeatedly stressed that this is a game that was designed to be played for a long time.
Hype and anticipation met reality when Starfield shipped universally on September 6. It’s more than capable of delivering a fun, can’t-put-it-down experience, though it has more than its fair share of problems and weaker points. The first month has seen a number of differing opinions flourish over Starfield and Bethesda-style games in general. But with promised new features, story expansions, and a growing mod community, Starfield’s story is far from over.
Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender
This video by a user called Art from the Machine shows “a Skyrim mod which allows for conversations with NPCs via ChatGPT, xVASynth (text-to-speech), and Whisper (speech-to-text). This update introduces Skyrim scripting, which allows for lip syncing of voices and NPC awareness of in-game events.”
That’s the aim, anyway. Here’s what all that looks and sounds like in practice:
It’s a horror show, I know. Particular highlights are the way the video has to be sped up to mask the amount of time it takes the game to respond to questions, the terrible synthesised voice acting and the bland, generic standard of all the “writing”. Oh, and the fact the people running Skyrim’s stores—in a world without watches—will now tell you their opening hours like they were getting a phone call in a mall. Sorry, sir, we close at five pum.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
I spent ages writing earlier drafts of this blog where I took this opportunity to launch into a tirade against the idea that machine learning can or should replace human artists, but you know what? This is a Skyrim mod. If this is what a lot of people still playing this game want—and clearly it is, even though what they actually want is to play a tabletop RPG with friends—then have at it. If you’re happy with word soup dialogue written by a machine that was trained on stuff that was already pretty generic in the first place, no amount of me saying “we need to value human art as the only true human experience” will convince you that if this is the future of video games that you want, you’re going to get everything you deserve.
