Fallout 4 is coming and it’s going to ruin your life. In a good way.
But Bethesda has no mercy. It will never stop. Ever. In a blog post on the official site, Bethesda outlined its strategy for Fallout 4 after launch. It involved DLC, mods, and free stuff.
Free Stuff
Horse armour aside, Bethesda has always been pretty good at adding new (free) features to its games after launch. The team is planning to bring additional features to the game ala The Witcher 3 after launch.
We’ll be doing regular free updates to the game, and like Skyrim, these will come with not just fixes, but new features. For Skyrim we added things like mounted combat, legendary mode, kill cams, visual enhancements and more. We’ll work with all of you to figure out what new things you’d love to see added to Fallout 4, whether they are small tweaks or new features.
Mods
People are still playing Skyrim for a reason. That reason is mods. In terms of single player experiences, Bethesda games have a super long tail and it looks as though Bethesda is really trying to actively help the modding community this time round.
Like all our previous games, we’ve made sure to keep Fallout 4 open and moddable at every step in development. Early next year we’ll release for free the new Creation Kit for the PC. This is the same tool we use in the studio. You’ll be able to create your own mods and share them with others. We’re especially excited these same mods will then be coming to Xbox One, and then PlayStation 4.
DLC
DLC is going to be a big part of Fallout 4, obviously. Here’s what I like: Bethesda is flat out admitting that it has no idea what that DLC is going to look like or what it’s going to be. I like that kind of honesty.
To reward our most loyal fans, this time we’ll be offering a Season Pass that will get you all of the Fallout 4 DLC we ever do for just $30. Since we’re still hard at work on the game, we don’t know what the actual DLC will be yet, but it will start coming early next year. Based on what we did for Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, we know that it will be worth at least $40, and if we do more, you’ll get it all with the Season Pass.
So yeah, nothing you wouldn’t expect. Fallout 4 is going to be a huge game and we’ll most likely be playing it for years. I’m excited about the potential for mods on Xbox One and PS4, but I’m also curious to see how it will all work. I expect/hope that this game will break down a few barriers. It might end up being the game that pushes mods into the mainstream.
Comments
33 responses to “Surprise! Bethesda Has Big Plans For Fallout 4 After Launch”
Make sure that each DLC has new music and I’ll be happy. Nothing gets old quite as fast as Three Dog or Mr New Vegas playing the same dozen songs endlessly.
Well one thing gets old faster, that bloody insurance ad with that redheaded woman that seems to be on 3 times every ad break, I can’t wait till her family have to claim the damned insurance…
that might be hard due to licensing i think, but i know old world blues for new vegas got a new radio station with a couple of new instrumental songs. Mind you i really hope we get some more cranky franky as i still love hearing aint that a kick in the head and blue moon everytime they come on
GTA V has 162 songs. I think there’s a happy medium between the 30 or so for Fallout NV and that.
This^ or allow us to add custom music like phantom pain does.
Fallout 3 has a music mod, i can’t remember how many tracks they added but im pretty sure it was over 50 and it sticks with a similar style.
I was lead to understand that the 20 track limit was more or less hardcoded, none of the music replacement mods I’ve seen had more than 20
Still, houldn’t be ahrd to have plenty of mods with new radio stations, each with 20 songs. There would have to be a V Rock station though.
Shame on you Mark! You didnt tell us to not preorder it!
Quick, to the nearest store!!
The ironic thing is that the way the AUD is sliding, the early pre-orders of FO4 [and, in turn, the season pass] look like they may be the smarter options :p haha
So Mark, you like that they’re asking you for more money, for a game that hasn’t even been released yet, and yet they won’t tell you what that money get’s you? Worse, they admit that they don’t even know what that DLC will be! Might just be a boot in the balls. Hurrah, at least they were honest, right?!?!
The pessimism is real with this one!
Hey I’m not the biggest fan of the whole DLC trend in gaming this decade either, but at least Bethesda have a very tight DLC track record (horse armour aside).
At least one month out from release they are still working on the game and have no idea yet what is coming for DLC. Would you rather they be an EA or Ubisoft, and have the DLC already developed and loaded on the disc on release day??
I think it’s just bollocks to ask for money and then to just shrug and tell people ‘Dunno what it’s for though’, no matter who the company is or whatever their track record. Not being pessimistic, just realistic. There’s cautious optimism, but Mark’s article, a big thumbs-up for literally nothing, just encourages the bad DLC/preordering practices
They are giving you the option to purchase the Season Pass, they aren’t forcing you to buy it. It isn’t a requirement of the game that you own the Season Pass. Wait until the first piece or two are announced, then purchase it. While you are waiting, get off your soapbox.
I love people like you who climb on their soapbox to tell others to get off theirs. I can see you practically spitting your coffee all over your keyboard, your face going redder and redder because someone has dared to insult your beloved Bethesda. “Buh, buh, but they aren’t forcing you to buy it, gaaaah!!” Yes, thank you, I am well aware of this fact, I did not think this article was informing me of new laws that would instantly take this money from my salary. Doesn’t stop me from expressing my opinion though, does it?
You have a vivid imagination. Maybe instead of trying to develop mental images of me you put that effort into something useful.
Most DLC is unknown when Season Passes are first announced. By going on past DLC from Fallout games, the Fallout 4 DLC will be new areas to explore and new storylines
Would it help, if instead of calling it DLC, we call it the fallout 4 expansion. Bethesda does make some great (optional) expansions.
They’re not asking for money yet, they’re just saying it’s a product that will be available in the future. It’s hard to see how mentioning this in an article is anything to get worked up about.
Good point, but Bethesda saying it doesn’t know what the DLC will be yet is a half-truth at best and a filthy lie at worst. The first DLC is due early 2016, so they must at a minimum have decided what it is, and have almost certainly got it to a reasonable stage of development if it is anything more than horse armor. The other thing is that Bethesda knows roughly what kind and how much DLC there will be, due to being able to price it at $30. That price would be insane if the DLC ended up being either multiple 10-20 hour expansions, or a bunch of skins and weapons. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that Bethesda have a very very good idea of the makeup of the DLC stream, even if it isn’t set in stone. My biggest problem is that they are using optimism bias (people’s hope that the $30 will get them multiple 10-20 hour expansions) in order to sucker people into purchasing the season pass early. It would be more honest to wait until they had the DLC stream locked in, and tell people at the very least how many ‘expansion’ DLC there would be amongst all the inevitable dross. I’m thinking of examples like Telltale season passes, Borderlands 2 or The Witcher 3 as being more honest with their approaches to the consumer.
EDIT: Driveclub was also a fantastic example of being up-front with what DLC would arrive. It didn’t give all the detail, but you knew how many cars and events would be forthcoming over what period of time.
You and Tomathy both make valid points.
I guess on one side, they aren’t as bad as other developers/publishers, but at the same time, two wrongs don’t make a right.
I wouldn’t say Bethesda necessarily has much idea of the content of the DLC in the season pass, just the size. They have a lot of experience with it from their past games, it’s not really a stretch to think that they know they’ll be doing four content DLCs of about the same size as Old World Blues, but they have no idea what they’ll be about yet.
Hey, at least a boot in the balls DLC would be unique… I’d love to be able to take on a deathclaw in melee and have the finisher be a kick in the bollocks…
Most games release season passes with SUPER SECRET stuff for the future. They pretend there’s a plan and it’s just plain untrue. Bethesda are saying they’re going to release new content. It’s going to be similar to what they did for their last two games. However, they are openly admitting that they can’t say “X hours new gameplay. X new missions”. Given their track record for the size and quality of their post-release content, you pretty much know whether it’s going to be value for money or not.
That’s refreshingly open in an industry that likes to obfuscate as much as possible.
Costs $30, “Worth at least $40”.
For the first time ever I might get a season pass. I’m pretty confident they’ll deliver the goods.
‘Hey couch, remember that battering I gave you with Witcher 3? …’
So season pass isn’t just for a years worth of DLC, but for all DLC? I do like that sound of that 🙂
Yeah, but you can guarantee that when they say that, they have a very definite idea in their minds of the timeline and type of DLC that will be produced. At some point the DLC will stop because it will not be profitable for them to continue working on new stuff. Best case scenario for us is that it will work a bit like Square Enix’s ludicrous ‘Augment your pre-order’ where the more season passes that are sold, the more extra bits of DLC are put in the pipeline. It would be foolish to assume that Bethesda would continue to make DLC if it were going to make a loss on it.
Or, they’ll call the expansion’s and say that the season pass only covered DLC 😛
Fallout is probably one of the only few games where I don’t mind paid DLC as it adds so much more. It is a shame most games DLC that you pay almost the same price as the base game for usually disappoint (Batman), they really give DLC a bad name.
I saw on Facebook when Bethesda posted about the season pass, people were up in arms about it because “DLC is a rip off” or “The games not even out and they have DLC”. The usual response now to DLC announcements.
My favourite is the few small minded fools whose first response is “Well, I won’t be buying the game now”. Same thing I saw when Sam Smith was announced to do the Bond theme song “Well, I won’t be seeing that movie now”
Why is it not November 10 yet 🙁
Or the same price as the full game if you’re living in Australia and talking about the newest Destiny addon…
yeh DLC just doesn’t work in australia like it does america… All because of the massive mark up on the games. Take away the markup and you’ll have us happily playing along with content you deliberately held back due to reasons.
hows about dlc which make the main story less intrusive and adds in karma again.
I want to be a villain not some goody two shoes father looking for his brat.