Fallout London

 

With the age of the Fallout TV show it was believed that we would be waiting many years until the renewed fandom of the Fallout world would be rewarded with fresh content in this most fertile of a playing world and- well, we were all very wrong. As it would just so happen the inbetween game was just around the corner. You know, 'the In-between' game, just like Fallout New Vegas bridged the gap for us all those years ago now we have Fallout London, the fan-made mod, and it- yeah, it really does feel like the official leap between games that Bethesda has refused to provide us with. Developed over the course of four to five years, Team FOLON has slapped together what might just be the most acutely fitting mod into the existing Fallout world ever created and I genuinely wonder what impact this is going to have on the lore community at the very least. (Never before have I wondered if a mod was good enough to be considered canon!)

Fallout London has come out with the help of GOG on the pre-next gen version of Fallout 4 proving the Bethesda truly have put out the single most inferior edition of their seminal game which can't even access the best mod of the game's life span with headache inducing role backs. (Seriously, they need to mix that stutter bug they made, what are they doing?) Now, if you are wondering just how easy is it to jump into this thing and give it a shot- I'm sad to say that Steam versions of the game have a couple of hoops to jump through- annoying hoops at that. Otherwise I really would recommend downloading all of the suggested mods presented on the Steam page that vast swathes of the community seem to be ignoring- they're mostly all plug-n-play and if the grumbled early impressions are to be believed one in particular will save you from dozens of needless crashes. (I've had 1 crash in my 8 and a half hours of playing. It really has been a stark contrast to the early experiences of the under-prepared)

Actually sitting down to play the game I'd say that the biggest initial shock to me has been how different this game feels from the base Fallout 4. Surviving in London is the absolute other end of the spectrum to Boston. In that base game, as has been much discussed, you are introduced to a minigun and the over-abundance of power armour within the first hour of play. In London I was yet to find my first gun until about the second hour- and I'm only just getting comfortable enough with the amount of Ammo I have to enter fights shooting first. Scavenging for supplies feels essential, fights feel like tooth and nail scraps against the desperate and hungry, power feels like a commodity scrounged up and spent in bursts of precious ammunition. I feel bare.

And yet I don't feel totally starved of the tools to have fun- which is a very careful balance to maintain for a lot of the games that veer close to the, shall we say, 'survival horror end of resource proliferation. Trading bullets in a gunfight feels desperate, but rewarding- in a way that kind of loses it's lustre all to quickly with the base Fallout 4. It's a very particular approach to design and I somewhat respect it- particularly given the greater emphasis on exploring the ruins of post-war London and not just shooting through it. Team FOLON spared no expense with brand new assets, fresh world spaces, easter eggs and references and general paraphernalia literally all across of London- again, this is the kind of effort a paid team of developers would throw in. This team were real serious about making this here demo reel of their talents.

What intrigues me most of all right now is the amount of genuine British references that persist throughout the game. I always imagined that this would a case of American's staring at another country through the lenses of 'exotic weird other place'. Some of these 'escapades' can easily fall into deeply out-of-touch tourist dives into somewhere unrecognisable to the locals. How many times have we seen modern day Egypt represented solely by the 'solitary figure' of the ancient ruin Pyramids as though an entire modern city doesn't surround them these days. The very idea of that 'Fallout London' concept felt borne from distinctly vapid tourism, but I'm glad to say I was wrong.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the amount of genuine and authentic references to actual England has convinced me that a significant portion of this team must hail from ol' blighty. It's the only explanation! Seeing the famous graffiti references to 'Killroy was here' is so delightfully British that most of us just recognise the weird little guy without even knowing where he comes from. I honestly don't, but I'd know him anywhere. Then there's our national supermarket chain Tesco, which becomes 'Fesco' in this universe with all the expected signage twisted on it's head. They even went so far as to replace Deathclaws with horrific monsters called 'Wombles', named after a supremely old school children's show from back in our day. It's pitch perfect.

All of that is of course on top of the more obvious references. The Red Postboxes that turn into killer death-bots when you approach, curiously redesigned red busses and even a certain blue telephone boxes in back alleys. And to tie it all together- the voice actors they picked for the game seem to be genuinely British- which puts them one over Ubisoft who somehow struggled to pull that off when making Watch_Dogs: Legion. Their performances are generally pretty decent as well, with decent snappy writing that I somewhat consider more true-to-the-nature of Fallout than the strangely horny TV show. It seems professional. Which is the highest plaudit I can muster.

There have been some that have gone so far as to call this the best Fallout since New Vegas, and that is where I agonise. I think I would have to go through the entire game before I can put this up against Fallout 4 as a whole and declare a victor, but the fact that I've even giving that consideration the time of day should speak wonders as to how quality Fallout London is. When everything is working and the crashing is toned down, Fallout London delivers an authenticity rarely found within the modding scene to such a high level of quality that I'm just wondering how long it is before Bethesda start trying to box this up and ship it to consoles. 

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?

Fallout London

 Ol' Blighted Blighty

When we come to the delicate hierarchy of video game mod projects, there is perhaps no tier more celebrated, more revered; and yet more hopelessly feared- than the total conversion mod. But if we had to then pick a close second, I think we could then say that the 'expansion' mod is pretty up there. Tasked with meeting, and in many cases surpassing, that which the main Bethesda team were capable of with their own DLC ambitions; the expansion mod always wears big shoes with lofty heights in mind the whole way. How will you model the lands, voice the characters, fit it into the game, match the tone whilst differentiating it enough to justify your project, throw in new assets; do all the things that Bethesda can do with a wage, but for free? In many ways it is a fools errand, and yet it is one that many seek to challenge themselves as indicated by the stupid amount of said projects we see for Mod-supported games all the time. This today is one such mod which does something I've always hoped Bethesda themselves would get around to one day, it takes Fallout International.

And by 'International', I of course mean they take it to my home of London England, always a recipe for something special bordering on wonderment and disaster, when shown to a local. Are we going to be looking at English accents to the quality of Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs Legion (I.e. I can't believe you paid someone to give an accent this bad) or... anything better than that? But that's just one part, because the key is trying to nail the 2077 retro-futurist future which is indicative of Fallout whilst being acutely cognizant of the fact that all of the reference material from Fallout games over the years you have to draw on is based on Americana; and this ain't America. However, I do acknowledge that Fallout's personal take on the world stage is one more dominated by American values than perhaps makes sense, so I wouldn't be surprised to recognise most of the visuals from past games. And yet even with these self-allocated allowances and grants, I have to say that the Fallout London team did pleasantly surprise me.

Unmistakably using the tool kit used to bring post apocalyptic Boston to life means that this vision of London does share some striking similarities to that place. Such to the point that the hustle and bustle of central London looks a bit too much like the Massachusetts city, but all the little extra accoutrements the team threw in might have tipped my perception a bit closer to giving into the illusion. Most iconic of which- the red double decker busses we love so much over here, still retaining the pill-shaped design indicative of Fallout modern transport. But on the topic of transport, they even managed to include moving subway trains in the trailer at the very least. (I can't imagine they could make that into an actual working subway system what with the creation Engine to work with.) There were also some fun-looking Royal guards looking over a faceless building that bared a vague resemblance to Buckingham palace, and my favourite; a collection of tin-hat Brodie Helmet wearing soldiers having a cup of tea like this is Independence Day.

So yeah, the accent is still woeful, but aside from that the team have done an admirable job emulating the image of what someone might expect when visiting future London; and that's all they really needed to do to get this project rolling. Sell me on the illusion of London and I'll buy whatever cliché-ridden mock clone of The Big Smoke that you can come up with. Because at the end of the day you just need to get the imagination going, and that's exactly how I feel looking at this trailer. I want to know what WWI Armor has been dug out by some weirdo enthusiast, I want to know who's going around pretending to be the mythical Knights of Camelot, I want to see the rule the society of England had to play before the end of the world, and I'm willing to play this mod to see what the team have cooked up explaining that. Even if this, and Watch_Dogs Legion, seems to think that all British people either speak like Football hooligans or Fops. I'm not saying that I don't personally fit into one of those stereotypes, but there are people in this country that don't, I swear. 

Speaking of the team, lets delve into the Avengers squad overseeing this little project and the oodles of experience they bring to the table which is; 'amateur to professional'. Yeah, that's about the extent of the information they're willing to share on their team, which is fine but I prefer to at least know a little bit about the etymology of the people working on this thing. As it just so happens all I know is that the lead of the project studied computer science and history and that's about it, not sure why no one else is willing to brag about their credits in anything more than vague terms. There's no problem with that approach per se, I just don't put much stock in 'professional experience' as a tagline without citation, if it wouldn't fly on a CV, why should it fly anywhere else?

I've seen a few similar huge Bethesda projects that fizzle out into nothing, but I will say that in direct contrast to those, Fallout London seems to have an impressive number of unique assets already made for it. Sure there's a lot of tastefully done NifSkope about the place, but Big Ben seems to be entirely custom (as it should be) the buses are just incredible in design and execution, and some of the semi-detached housing looks right at home in fake London. Oh, and my home town of Croydon is apparently in the mod, and they denigrated it into a hotspot for fracking and gas pits so that it looks like something out of the ash heap from Fallout 76. (Which, if anything, is an improvement over current Croydon) I do slightly bristle at the invention of an 'Eastminster; though. I know it's explained, and they try their damndest to justify it- but Eastminster? Really? I know we aren't the most creative people on the planet but damn- that takes the cake.

Although the project is likely years away from anything resembling a complete release, those involved have been rather diligent in providing details of everything they've been up to. just check out their Youtube page and you can watch a few update videos, a lot of snippets of content such as songs which I presume will populate the airwaves, and on the official website there's even a few releases of guns and outfits that will be used in the full project. It's quite the vehicle of moving parts then, and it's clear to see how those involved are dedicating the height of their passion and talents where possible. And of course, for any project like this, it's by no means at team capacity, thus those with the relevant skillset are encouraged to lend what they can where they can to this new-age art exhibition in the making. (There is certainly something to be said about the community nature of large mod projects like this and their place in the art community; I wonder if any one in those fields has ever bothered having that conversation?)

Once more I'm always happy to see my homeland turned into a virtual shooting gallery by game developers, and the reinterpretations and personalisations atop the reality I'm familiar with is fine in it's own special way. At the end of the day my only real worry is what can be done to make this feel like an actual breathing world space instead of... well, how 90% of the rest of Fallout 4 feels. (Like a pretty place to shoot people and nothing else.) I don't know if Fallout 4's setbacks were due to actual limitations of that iteration of the creation engine, or just a misplaced ethos the company was holding at the time, but I hope whatever the case that Fallout London is able to overcome them. Just making the many factions they're developing interactable in some way other than being bullet sponges will be a huge step towards the better in my eyes. So Now we've finally got Fallout in London and I can put those longing dreams to rest, next step is Fallout China I guess...