One of the biggest releases of 2015 is getting one of the features that many PC players have wanted from the beginning.
Publisher Bethesda is updating its open-world survival role-playing game Fallout 4 today with a new beta that introduces support for community-created mods. The update works with the new Fallout 4 Creation Kit, which enables fans and players to build content for the game. This simplifies the process of empowering regular people to add new characters, weapons, quests, and much more to an already enormous game. And as people build content for the PC game, they can also upload it to Bethesda to get it sent out to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Fallout 4 as well. This is the first time that a major big-budget release is getting support for modding on consoles, and it is something that could greatly increase long-term engagement for consoles in the $99.6 billion gaming industry.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1934970,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']“For console players, mods will be coming to Xbox One in May and PlayStation 4 in June,” reads a press release from Bethesda. “We have a lot to do yet, but we hope it changes console gaming the way it has changed PC.”
As part of getting mods working with the consoles, Bethesda has actually beefed up the process of installing these add-ons. In the past, gamers have had to seek out these creations online from third-party websites, and installing them required digging into program files deep on a hard drive. But this new system is built into Fallout 4, which means players can discover new mods and install them from within the game. That’s crucial for something like the Xbox One, but it’s also a huge step forward for PC as well.
To show off mod support, Bethesda has a new announcement video that includes a version of the walking mech-style armor from Fallout 4 that looks like a horse. This is a reference back to the early days of the Bethesda game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which sold a horse armor skin as downloadable content. That item kicked off a huge debate about microtransactions in video games, and many people argued it is something they’d expect to see as a mod.
To get mod support right now, you’ll have to move your version of Fallout 4 for PC into the beta path. Here’s how to do that:
- Open Steam.
- Open your Library.
- Right click on Fallout 4 in your Library.
- Choose Settings.
- Choose Betas.
- From the drop-down menu, choose “beta.”
- Click “OK.”
- The game should now update.
If you did this process correctly, you should see “Fallout 4 [Beta]” in your Library.