Three hours into Fallout: London, I wander through a rundown supermarket scrounging for canned goods and medicine to help me on my journey north. Things are going swimmingly.
Between checking shelves for food and medical supplies, I cut down the occasional oversized fly for some minor XP before noticing a small opening along the wall in the distance. I walk over, hoping to find a computer terminal or a freezer with even more rations to take with me. As I round the corner into the opening, what greets me instead is the absolutely enormous thorax of a creature I’ve never seen in my cumulative 300 hours of playing Fallout games. I backpedal as it turns towards me and behold just how badly I screwed up. This is The Bloatmother. It’s five times my size and doesn’t look happy about what I’ve been doing to her babies.
I clumsily swap my switchblade for the 9mm pistol I found a few blocks away. I use the V.A.T.S. to line up three of the 17 shots I have and fire. The first two ricochet off its hardened body. The third finds flesh, but barely makes a dent in the beast’s health bar. The Bloatmother fires a volley from its pinchers, but before it can hit me I hit the pause button and walk away from my Steam Deck.
“Nope.”
Tense moments like these are the early highlights of Fallout: London, the ambitious unofficial Fallout 4 expansion from Team FOLON. These superb moments of terror are punctuated by the mystery that pervades this post-apocalyptic city. Players are a long way from the familiar wastelands of America, and Fallout: London reminds them of that often.
I haven’t had such a raw, guttural reaction to Fallout’s brand of body horror since I first crossed paths with Centaurs in 2008.
The Fallout franchise has been around for 27 years. In that time, its enemies, factions, and fiction have become iconic in gaming (and now television). While the grit and grime of the Fallout universe remain effective, there is comfort in walking around an America ravished by nuclear fallout all these years later. There’s nostalgia in shooting Rad Scorpions in the Mojave Wasteland to the tune of the oldies. Three-Dog’s charming interstitials recounting the horrors of post-apocalypse Washington D.C. make me feel at home.
Those luxuries don’t exist in Fallout: London. Setting the game in the European metropolis has wiped the slate clean, allowing Team FOLON to reintroduce and reimagine the franchise, and subvert players' expectations.
There are brand-new creatures in the wild with new attack patterns, animations, and gross mannerisms. Returning enemies look slightly different and are tougher than ever. And the setting is refreshing, with London extending a new coat of paint to its factions and people.
Bethesda’s games have always looked at how pre-apocalypse culture gets re-interpreted by those hundreds of years in the future following humanity’s downfall, and Fallout: London is no different. Camelot, a gang inspired by 20th-century soldiers and The Knights of the Round Table, adds a dash of righteous camp not seen since New Vegas’ charming gang of Elvis impersonators. The Gentry are the descendants of the English aristocracy, an interesting, slightly more civilized twist on the antagonistic patriarchy of Cesar’s Legion. Seeing how a nuclear apocalypse and time have warped English culture is fascinating, a credit to Team FOLON’s world-building.
The marriage of Fallout 4’s more modern gameplay and New Vegas’ exemplary role-playing mechanics is a match made in heaven.
My favorite of the new groups is the Thamesfolk. While I won’t spoil their reveal here, I’ll say their visage inspired a need to learn everything I can about the origins of these people and exactly how radiation changed them so irrevocably. I haven’t had such a raw, guttural reaction to Fallout’s brand of body horror since I first crossed paths with Centaurs in 2008.
What brings Fallout: London’s mystery full circle is its difficulty. Enemies are not messing around and can slaughter players in an instant. Radiation is an ever-present threat players must be mindful of, making meds like Rad-X and Radaway invaluable. These elements add a sense of risk-reward to discovering factions, locations, and creatures.
In other words, Fallout: London is a must-play. The marriage of Fallout 4’s more modern gameplay and New Vegas’ exemplary role-playing mechanics is a match made in heaven, one that occasionally surpasses Bethesda’s 2015 game. However, unraveling the many mysteries tucked away in this new setting is easily the star of Team FOLON’s effort. You truly never know what lurks around the corner in post-apocalyptic London. And it's a refreshing notion I didn’t know the series needed.
