After over two months of delays and poorly timed patches, Fallout: London, the fan-made expansion for Bethesda’s 2015 classic, is finally nearing release.
Team FOLON, the group of creators who built this brand new, England-centric take on the Fallout universe, recently announced on Discord that the hotly anticipated expansion had been submitted to GOG.com for quality assurance testing. They are now awaiting the green light to release the final build to the public soon.
“While it may seem like not a lot is going on, we can assure you that the heads of the department have been working non-stop behind the scenes during this time to make the release build as good as it can be,” the note says. “The end is in sight.”
It’s been a very long time coming. Fallout: London began development in 2019, with the team and project steadily growing over the years. The expansion isn’t your typical fan-made mod. It will feature the brand-new, post-apocalyptic version of London, built from the ground up with dozens of new quests, characters, factions, weapons, music, and original voice acting. Fallout: London will also axe the voiced protagonist featured in Fallout 4 in favor of a silent one, allowing for the more traditional, RPG experience many fans missed in the base game.
Team FOLON has said that Fallout: London’s world map is about the size of Fallout 4’s Commonwealth and “Far Harbour” DLC combined. The size and ambition of this project was too big to be hosted by popular modding sites like Nexus Mods, which is why Team FOLON struck a deal with CD Projekt Red’s digital storefront GOG for its launch.
Fallout fans should have been playing this expansion much earlier in the year. For months, Fallout: London was set to release on April 23, which coincidentally happened to be soon after the premiere of the popular Amazon Prime TV show. But just weeks before what seemed to be the perfect launch date, Bethesda announced they were releasing a next-gen patch for Fallout 4 before the end of April.
While Team FOLON could have released the mod on April 23 as intended, the imminent release of Bethesda’s next-gen patch just days later would break the mod for thousands who would unknowingly update their game. Rather than risk their mod being wrecked like so many others, the team made the crushing decision to delay Fallout: London indefinitely.
“You’d think they’d at least have a conversation to just be like ‘Look, you guys are clearly notable, let’s make sure we don’t ruin this for the fans,’” Fallout: London project lead Dean Carter told the BBC at the time.
Without a proper Fallout game ready for release alongside the TV show, Bethesda hindering the big, community-driven update in Fallout: London was a boneheaded move. Gaming metrics showed that people were hungry for Fallout games after watching the show, and Team FOLON essentially made the game that Bethesda should have for free.
Instead, the next-gen update did more harm than good to Fallout 4 upon its release, breaking legacy, fan-favorite mods like Sim Settlements, as well as graphics and quests in the base game. The fact that the patch also delayed the most exciting Fallout project in development poised to stir even more interest in the franchise was an unnecessary blow to the creators Bethesda says it cherishes.
Whenever it finally releases, Fallout: London is likely to be the most interesting Fallout game of the year. To boot it up, players will need a copy of Fallout 4 and all of its DLC. The mod is only playable on PC.
