Largely unplayable
Bethesda’s first major expansion for Fallout 4, Far Harbor, is having some real frame rate problems on the PS4. Almost the entire outdoor landmass of the new content plays below 20 FPS, like one big pre-patch Corvega factory.
The culprit seems to be the radioactive fog unique to the expansion. A key aesthetic feature and plot element of Far Harbor is the thick, oppressive, and ultimately lethal fog that has spread over almost the entirety of the island. It’s a cool idea and looks moody as hell in screenshots, but it has absolutely tanked the performance on PS4 and makes the experience an incredible slog to play through. I learned this firsthand myself last night while trying to put some hours into the expansion. It’s very difficult to effectively fight off insane fishermen and swamp monsters in the middle of a hazy slideshow.
Similar performance issues seem to be popping up for PC players of different specs, so be careful if your system was struggling to run the base game. More interestingly though, it seems the expansion is running smoothly on Xbox One. Several Xbox players chimed in on this reddit thread about the issue to report that they haven’t experienced any notable hiccups. Hopefully this means the performance on the PS4 is the fault of some bug that can be fixed and brought in line with the other console version.
