Bethesda has released its next-gen patch for Fallout 4, bringing improvements to the game on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Unfortunately, the PC version of the update is proving rather underwhelming, since it’s not only broken players’ mods but has introduced very few bug fixes.
The patch dropped on April 25 and, to be fair, it was widely expected to break some mods PC players had downloaded since Fallout 4‘s 2015 launch. It’s why the team behind the fan-made Fallout: London project opted to delay its release till after the patch. However, no one knew exactly which mods would be affected, and the answer is a lot since it includes the Fallout 4 Script Extender, a modding resource that many other mods rely on to work (as spotted by IGN).
The good news is one of the Script Extender’s developers, ianpatt, has said they’re working on an update to get it working again. The bad news is they have no idea how long it’ll take, explaining in a Nexus Mods post, “I am working on an update and cannot currently offer a timeline for its availability, nor whether there will be any critical technical issues that would block an update. If not obvious already, this one is going to take much longer than normal.” Right below that post, another Nexus Mods user called Destructionares has shared a walkthrough on how to downgrade to the older version of Fallout 4, which should get all your mods working again.
What’s also disappointing is how few bugs the update has addressed. Bethesda has patched Fallout 4 several times since launch yet some issues have continued to plague the game for years. The newest patch has fixed some of them, such as one that prevented save data from loading during the prologue. The full list as shown on Steam, however, only counts 16 bug fixes (alongside unspecified stability improvements), which isn’t that many in the grand scheme of things.
This doesn’t mean the update’s been going smoothly for console players either. According to Digital Foundry’s Thomas Morgan, the Xbox Series X|S version’s Quality mode, which sacrifices framerate for higher quality graphics, simply doesn’t work. Performance mode, which prioritizes a smoother framerate, works completely fine, but disabling it doesn’t change anything, keeping the game at 60fps. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus subscribers who got Fallout 4 through the Extra tier’s game catalog have learned the hard way that they haven’t received the update at all. Fortunately, Bethesda has said its team is working on resolving this, so PS Plus Extra users will get the update at some point.
It’s a shame the next-gen update’s release has come with its own set of issues since the Fallout series has otherwise been doing really well for itself. The Amazon show has proved successful enough to generate renewed interest in the Fallout games, with some like Fallout 76 hitting new concurrent player peaks on Steam.
