Fallout comes for London

 Mind the ghoul-infested, irradiated, gap.

It's not uncommon to hear about a collection of wizkid creatives coming together with their modding talents to embark on a truly ambitious-beyond-reasoning project for their favourite Bethesda title. In fact you'll hear of a fair few of them every year if you've the ear to listen. What is considerably more rare, however, is for one of these propositions to reach a state where we can see that thing in action through an extended gameplay demo neatly showing off the beginning portions of the thing. That is truly a landmark in development which elevates these ideas from 'huh, that's a cool idea if you can pull it off' to 'Okay, you've actually made something, now I'm starting to get hyped!'. And my recent... experiences with the famous New Vegas Mod 'Fallout: The Frontier' hasn't entirely killed my hype for huge multi-layered total conversion mods just yet! (Give it one more huge disaster before I starting turning pessimist.)

'Fallout London' is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; a reimaging of the Fallout universe on a land which the main games have never dared to touch before, my home-land of England. The Fallout universe has tied itself so intrinsically with Americana up until now, what with it's ties to 50's American music, 50's American idealisation of the future and embellishments of 50's political tensions. It would almost seem wrong, at this point, for Bethesda or Obsidian to turn around and make a Fallout game across the sea, but that's not going to stop fans who aren't shackled by narrow series thematic links and can get away with bringing the communities wildest dreams to startling reality. Of course it takes more than dreams to bring the vague idea of a Fallout set in London to reality, and I'm glad to say that from what I've seen so far; this teams seem to know what they're doing.

First off, this is a total conversion mod in the sense that it borrows the launcher, raw gameplay systems and a bunch of assets from Fallout 4 proper, but apart from those core bones this appears to be a whole separate game all of it's own. That means a new playthrough with a new intro leading into a new story spanning a new world. One might even go so far as to call this the New Vegas to Bethesda's Fallout 4, if such a comparison didn't simultaneously raise near impossible to match expectations. Although saying that, I did notice how in the intro to this mod-game (pulled off in the 'presentational slides' format of Bethesda's earlier Fallout games) the writing team borrowed snippets of dialogue directly from New Vegas's script, ("A great army gathers strength", "Training drums beat") I see you, FOLON team. Although don't take that as a condemnation, everything I've seen so far is smeared with such a layer of professionalism that this honestly doesn't resemble the work of amateurs in the slightest. To the point that I'm actually a little suspicious. (Are these veteran game developers who just wanted to make their own Fallout game?)

Now when I approach any product, mod or not, the very first aspect I observe and lay judgement upon is the quality of the writing, which is my area of preference afterall. As we've but an 18 minute snippet to feed on so far it really is hard to make an assessment on how the overall script is going to shape up, but right now I think it's good. Neat and professional as a baseline with some character flavour that hasn't quite crossed the pale into cheesy just yet with the regional variation, cheesiness which we from England observe so often whenever someone sets their story over here. (Just take a look at Watch_Dogs Legion to see what I mean, a more condescendingly sing-song attempt at 'Britishness' I could not imagine.) What we've seen so far is totally functional elevated by a, so-far, pitch-perfect voice cast. A great opening narrator, appropriately accented incidental characters and a couple of mysterious scientists who...  were voiced by Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy? As in the 6th and 7th Doctor, respectively? Well that's... I mean... Am I still allowed to judge this mod at this point?

The next big thing I look towards with mods like these is the level of production value around the ancillary things such as the interface. And to my utmost goosebumps, they put in the work there too! I'm talking a new intro screen that seems to borrow a font from the official Tube font (Actually, that font seems to be everywhere) and a loading wheel that is literally the London Underground Roundel. They even went the distance to change up the example animations during the S.P.E.C.I.A.L section of character creation, putting faceless mannequins in the place of Pip-Boy; a step I didn't even know was possible, let alone expected them to take! And it makes thematic sense! The Pip-Boy mascot was born from the RobCo company's partnership with Vault-Tec, both American companies who were heavily tied with that nation's government, it makes sense they wouldn't have a foothold in Europe. And indeed, Fallout London features it's own non-RobCo derivative of the Pip-Boy that is clearly reverse engineered from that tech in order to be similarly functional and iconographically distinct. 

Not actually being as familiar with Fallout 4 as I am with 3 and New Vegas (I've only completed it about three times; I know) I actually can't place the amount of assets that have been reused compared to how many are brand new in this beginning section, but I can attest that they are bought together in such a way as to appear brand new. The beginning area in fact invoked comparisons to the excellent British dystopia movie Brazil when I saw it, so kudos to the team if that was what they were going for. And the drab gray, disappearing high-rises, brutalist art deco and huge viewing screens is about as clear a 1984 homage as one could hope for. All speaking to a notably distinct but no less authoritarian old world in Britain's heart; one that sounds oh-so tantalising to dig the secrets out of. (I just hope the whole 'Arthurian Knights' faction are a little more nuanced than that raw concept sounds. I already lived through the genericness of The Frontiers 'Crusaders', I don't think I can take another wasted opportunity like that.)

Of course, though the team are still hard at work making the world of London, they couldn't resist giving players a little teaser at least at the skyline of new London, and we got to experience it in a way that most Englanders are expressly familiar with: A train ride through London Bridge. To those who aren't from here I'll say this much, they nailed the feeling of riding just at the tips of the rooftops and though the classic shape of London does sort of get lost in this stylised retro take of the individual buildings, overall the view feels right for this new alternate world. I would even go so far as to say they nailed the sound of the old wheels on the track, but my Brother informs me that the sound they used is actually the noise the Victoria Line would make, and I have absolutely no idea what the difference is but trust me when I say he is the expert. So 9/10 there, FOLON Team, you can't win 'em all. (Guest editorial from my Brother: it should sound like a Northern Line 1995 train or a Jubilee Line 1996 train.)

FOLON Team have quite the sizable challenge ahead of them, especially when you consider that due to the nature of this being a standalone mod taking place across the Pacific from Boston, they can't rely on the main game to fill up the blanks. What they're proposing will have to feel complete from beginning to end in order to satisfy the audience, with whatever level of main quest content, side quests, exploration zones, difficulty balancing and overall world building that demands. I can't wait to see more of what they're working on, not least of all the weaponry of London given the fact that this snippet managed to show none of that. (Unless you count that Walking Cane we saw on a skeleton, but that tool is already in base Fallout. I wanna see if we're gonna get anything special for London.) This team are stepping into territories that Bethesda have never dared tread and if they do as good a job as they're trying to convince us that they can, I would suggest that Bethesda take to recognising their efforts in some fashion. We're living in an age where the barrier between creators and fan are becoming blurrier by the passing year, and with one of Skyrim's mods winning a Bafta and being remade into a full game, Bethesda have to start realising that these huge passion project mods have something in them worth more than just the customary Twitter shout-out. I'm serious, if it's good enough why not just make it canon?