The development team behind the Fallout London total conversion mod for Fallout 4 announced a new release window as part of their latest video report on progress.
Fallout London was originally targeting a Q3 2023 launch, but the modding team decided to delay it due to the launch of Bethesda Game Studios’s new science fiction IP, Starfield. However, the goal was still to release the mod before the end of 2023.
As the year draws to a close, the developers have announced another delay to April 2024. The main reason is that several members of the scripting team were impacted by ‘current global issues’ (likely a reference to the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine), which required them to shift their focus away from Fallout London. As such, the team reorganized to accommodate, but this has come at the cost of testing, and they won’t ship the mod before proper polishing.
Our commitment to delivering as polished an experience as possible will lead us to miss our intended release window, but the sheer amount of progress we’ve made this year is immense.
Our ethos has always been to release when the game is truly ready. Our community stresses avoiding a boogy release like some of our predecessors, and we are committed to a game we can all be proud of for everyone’s enjoyment. Now we’ve set a specific release date: the release date for Fallout London will be St George’s Day, the 23rd of April 2024. In the coming months, we’ll focus on refining rigorous testing and balancing to meet the high standards you expect. All of the team are done with their main tasks now and fully support this effort and we’ve set a reasonable deadline to ensure careful completion aligning with your expectations.
During the development video, the modders outlined some impressive facts about Fallout London:
- Over 200 volunteers have contributed in some capacity throughout the course of more than three years of development;
- 15 boroughs of London are available to explore: Bromley, Camden, City of London, Croydon, Eastminster, Greenwich, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Westminster;
- 7 unique settlements are available to build using Fallout 4’s feature;
- The total playable area in Fallout London is equivalent to the base game’s Commonwealth and the Far Harbor DLC combined, making it one of the largest Fallout 4 mods to date;
- 121 weapons, 514 clothes items, 29 races, 64 foliage, 425 architecture, and 203 consumable assets were created from scratch alongside the relative animations;
- 74 new tracks for the soundtrack, 47 for the radio, with 3 different radio stations available;
- 53 main quests set in and around the city of London, 35 side quests, 25 faction quests, 64 miscellaneous quests, and 16 branching gang quests;
- 7 companions (including a British dog), 5 of which are fully voiced with detailed relationship levels and their own companion quests;
- Over 90K recorded voice lines, 1.5x the number of lines in Fallout New Vegas or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and only slightly less than Fallout 4 (with the difference that Bethesda’s game had a voiced protagonist and Fallout London does not);
- Revamped crafting system for ammo;
- Overhauled perk and dialogue system with skill and perk checks during dialogues;
- New player animations such as ladder climbing and swimming;
- Fast travel options such as trains, taxis, and boats;
- Dynamic weather;
- New smoking mechanics;
- Playable guitars;
- Cow milking (yes).
Needless to say, Fallout London seems to be a unique opportunity to check out what the apocalypse would be like in the United Kingdom. It also lands in a month that will be rich with excitement for franchise fans, given the upcoming debut of the TV series on Amazon Prime Video.
Meanwhile, Bethesda will continue to update and add to Fallout 76 in 2024, as outlined here.
