I finally finished Fallout London the other day.
When you're done reading this post, check this one out for closing thoughts and a mod I highly recommend when playing. I should also note that most Fallout 4 mods work with London, so if you have your own playlist already they should work right out of the box unless an item or NPC is added specifically to the Boston gameworld(scripted leveled lists will work fine with London).
I'm going to head back to London soon, maybe today. As I said a few months ago, I had to put my playthru on hold due to not having enough time and simply playing too many games. I ended up going with Dead Rising achievements instead, games I played to death years ago...yeah, not looking good for this game's review.
I did not have high expectations for London, at least not once leaks started flying about anyways. The mod promised much, and it simply wasn't up to snuff with what I and many others were expecting. Sadly, this seems to be the case, however this doesn't mean the mod is garbage. Not at all, in fact it is arguably better than any other 3D Fallout major overhaul mod, definitely better than something like Frontier and has much more content and better writing than New California. That said , the major problem is that underneath it all, it is still Fallout 4, so if you hate that game, you're not going to have a fun time. There is actual role playing mechanics here, several gameplay changes have been made to make the game resemble a Fallout game of old more, but at the end of the day it is still Fallout 4. Another problem I have is that just like New California, it is simply incomplete. The 1.0 release I was playing was super buggy as well, many items were not placed in the world at all and many quests simply didn't trigger when they should have, essentially making them unused content. It is clear that the development of this mod was chaotic and the devs needed more time to polish things up. I don't blame them for needing more time, I blame PR for giving out a release date that wasn't realistic. I already wrote about my gripe with the factions in the post above, so the only major problem I have left is a technical one: It is a pain in the ass to mod Fallout London due to it pushing GECK to it's limits. You have to go out of your way to load up a lobotomized Fallout 4 ESM with London since loading up a normal one will simply crash the GECK due to there being too many entities to load. This also disables you from loading up Fallout London in the GECK with any official DLC or any larger mod that adds a ton of entries, meaning that the best you can do is tinker with little things or add weapons/entities to the world map(useful for some Fallout 4 mods that don't depend on scripts, making it so you can still find that weapon in London when placed manually). You can do more with F4Edit, such as add DLCs and larger mods as dependencies to London ESM and therefore allowing you to add their content into the London worldspace, but that requires a bit of knowledge on how Fallout 4 modding works and that defies the whole point of the GECK: That anybody can use it. This means that the already dead London modding base is not going to get any livelier, and that trying to tinker with the game is going to be a pain in the ass.
Now that I got negatives out of the way, let's talk about the good parts of this mod. With all I said about it, you should definitely play it. Getting started is a bit more complicated than it should be, for one you need an up-to-date copy of Fallout 4 which then has to be downgraded due to the most recent patch breaking, well, everything. Second, you have to back up your copy of Fallout 4 somewhere else, be it on another drive on your computer or a portable hard drive, as once London is installed your copy of Fallout 4 is essentially changed forever, you will not be able to go back to vanilla Fallout 4 again since most of the entities within it have been modified, on top of new entities being added. This means that even if you go back to Boston(something possible with a mod btw), various pre war food items will still be their british equivalents, along with many other assets. Sounds fun, but also extremely buggy. Better to keep a backup copy of your Fallout 4 just in case...or you can pirate the mod and everything is already set up and ready to go. I don't judge. Fitgirl has a repack that works out of the box, and I'm sure there is more. As I said, most of the mods from Fallout 4, big and small, should also work here, along with a few unique mods exclusive to London, so similarly to F4 you can tailor your experience just how you want it.
Once you get the game running, you will notice that traits are back. There is quite a few new ones and a few returning ones, most of them change how you play the game so they definitely do their job. Just like with Traits in the earlier games, you can also choose not to take any, of course. The basic gameplay loop is exactly the same as Fallout 4, with some variations, but you should know what you're getting by this point. Melee combat plays a large part in the early game, in fact the game doesn't even have a guaranteed weapon spawn until you find a walking cane at the end of the tutorial. I suggest getting
this mod, which will add a boxcutter(an otherwise useless weapon by the time you get it) to the first scientist in the game. I myself have also added a really
shitty gun to the very start, but I'm not sure if there is a conversion mod available. Either way, there is a guaranteed gun spawn, or at least one I've seen every time I've watched someone play the game, in the Novice locked London Bridge door right before end of the tutorial. It is usually a 9mm Pistol, so you should definitely not leave it behind. Combat is very similar to Fallout 4, with most weapons reskinned, some taken away. Much like in the older games, there is way less Big Guns and Energy Weapons, pipe guns are now much more useful and less ugly to look at. There is too many redundant melee weapons when only a few are ever useful, so I recommend downloading your favorite Fallout 4 mod and using those. Unarmed players are still shafted and will only have a few options to chose from, again I recommend downloading the few Unarmed weapon mods that Fallout 4 has if you plan on playing with this build.
I talk about combat first, because the game makes a really interesting choice at the start: Your player gets crippled, and only by doing one of two sets of quests does he get better. You will be WEAK at the start, and without proper weapons, making this easily the hardest early game since Fallout 2 and it's forced melee centric gameplay. I've had my ass kicked countless times by a few foxes that appear on the way to Bromley, a fodder enemy I had no trouble with for the rest of the game once my spine got fixed up. London definitely does balancing better than Fallout 4, but don't worry, before long you will become an invincible god king like in every Fallout game. This would be a good time to mention that I don't recommend Survival mode with London, there is simply too many bugs and crashing going about to make it a viable playstyle. There is also much less settlements, making then a little bit more than a footnote in this mod(altho there is quite a few modded settlements on Nexus and Sim Settlements 2 should also work in theory). I recommend playing the game on your other difficulty of choice. Either way, you will be pleasantly surprised to know that early game is actually difficulty and will have you scavenging for every little bit that helps, often times running away or sneaking past enemies since you have no way of realistically taking them out. If you download my mod that gatekeeps useful aid items like cooked food or stimpacks behind perks, you will get an even more unforgiving experience. Your builds definitely matter, at least at the start, which is why I recommend
this mod for a much more classic experience: You will get 40 SPECIAL points at the start just like you do in every game before Fallout 4, but you will NOT be able to change your SPECIAL distribution or add points once you settle on your build, forcing you to stick with it for the rest of the game or restart. Much better than starting out with a low SPECIAL character and adding attribute points like candy, always hated that system.
Story, as I've written already, isn't that interesting. There is some cool setpieces, sure, but the actual story is just boring drab. I won't spoil it right now, but if you played Fallout Nevada, it's a shittier take on that. The ending revelation(that you get to earlier if you side with Angel) is pretty cool, but not worth sitting thru an entire game for. Characters and factions are also flat and one-note, Vagabonds are easily the most memorable characters and they don't play a large role in the story. I recommend playing thru the game at least once with a faction of your choice, two more times to see every single main story path if you like the game. Sadly, it doesn't look like there is an independent/kill everyone route in this game, altho there is a
mod that lets you kill any NPC in the game. Just go to the nearest Chem Station and make the "Essential NPC Killer" tape and play it anytime you want something dead, play it again to turn off the effect once you're done. This is a highly recommended mod for Fallout 4 as well btw, since it does add several glaring omissions from the main game such as letting you save Shaun or the ending slides you get in every other game. Obviously, this won't be of much use in London, aside from the tape, altho you will be pleased to hear that intro and ending slides are actually back this time around by default.
Main quest aside, some side quests can be pretty cool, but most of them are generic Fallout 4 quests with a British spin on things. In other words: KILL, LOOT, RETURN. Most of the interesting quests are relegated to factions or the main plot. Special award goes to the "Gay Treeman" quest(you will know it when you see it), which turns a great plotline into a soap opera between two gay treemen wanting to be reunited after 200 years. I highly recommend you use that tape to kill the essential gay treeman and his followers when you see them, you're not missing out on anything since his quest is shit. He DOES give you a few otherwise unobtainable items, such as a crazy strong axe if you kill him, and they are a much better option than his proper quest reward(a new useless settlement, joy!).
As far as the setting goes, I think the FOLON team outdid themselves. Not only does the mod properly capture the feeling of Fallout well, they did it arguably better than Bethesda has post Fallout 3. You can easily believe this is what Fallout Europe looked like, and the mod perfectly captures the spirit of England as much as newer games do with the 50's era aesthetic or how New Vegas can be considered a wild west/cowboy game at times. The new lore is fantastic, the worldbuilding is phenomenal, and I consider everything here canon for all intents and purposes. The music department is phenomenal is as well, with many tracks being a permanent part of my MP3 playlist now. If you go back a few pages, I posted several tracks from one of the composers themselves that almost got lost to time, several months ago. "Excalibur" and "Brutalist" are among my favorites, and it's a shame they didn't make it, originally every faction would have a unique set of battle themes that would play if you fought them. In the final game, every single encounter except the final battle has it's own generic battle tracks, much like in other 3D Fallout titles, the above would play for Camelot and Isle of Dogs Syndicate respectively. Much like Fallout 4, each major faction and locale has iconic tracks that perfectly fit them: Vagabonds have a noble theme with undertones of desperation, Isle of Dogs Syndicate are brutal and authoritarian, much like their faction, Pistols have a sobering theme of poverty when you are out and about in Camden but it turns into a never ending rave once you go inside their main headquarters in "Cyberfox" that shows the duality of the Pistol's identity and the reality of their neighbourhood, one they are well aware of. Angel has some of my favorite motifs in the game, both mysterious and foreboding, 5th Column is full of tension and has you watching your back in case it is about to get stabbed by your own "allies" the entire time, and Camelot uses a lot of primitive instruments to sell the "knights of yore" fantasy. You can definitely tell the difference between the poorer slums of London and one rich district, Westminster. The game handled the reveal even better than New Vegas did with it's titular city, as Freeside is only a small portion of the game map. In London, vast majority of the game is composed of "Freeside" and only towards the second half of the game do you see where the other half of London live. Before you ask, yes you do get to meet Tenpenny here, if you were looking forward to that. Yes, it does explain why he decided to move to USA, altho it's pretty stupid. The mod also features many, many originals songs on top of the ambient or combat ones, if you like playing with your radio on you are definitely in for a treat. Additionally, you can collect vinyl discs and play any of the individual songs, if you like them, on any of the many gramophone players out and about.
Before I move on, I want to applaud the new "Protect and Survive" aesthetic of London's pipboy menus. This replaces the iconic Vault Boy and Vault Tec motifs of the American entries, and despite the replacements being simple stick figures, there is a ton of soul and creativity on display here, right down to having cute little sound effects to go along with the animations. Magazines are similarly lifted straight from Fallout 4, albeit with a British skin to go along with them. It is a little bit confusing that the Energy Weapons magazine is...a car repair manual, altho considering that the only common Energy Weapon is a makeshift zap gun made out of what appear to be car parts, maybe it's supposed to be thematic? A neat little touch which I am sure is a coincidence, but the Plasma Pistol looks just like the one from Nevada, giving that little unnamed piece a little bit of extra presence.
The open world is fine, a good mix of pretty locations to explore and side locations to loot, with many themes and gimmicks from Fallout 4 present(for example, the "Glowing Sea" area filled with radiation and high level monsters). Unfortunately, the map feels empty and unfinished a lot of the time, much like New California map, altho to London's credit it is much, much bigger than that of The Pass in New California. The first go about, you will have a good time, but once you explore the locations or do the quests associated with them, expect to do a lot of fast traveling since there is nothing else to do other than to loot them again in 3 days when enemies and items have respawned. One interesting gimmick here is that water might as well be lava: It kills in seconds and there is no AquaBoy perk. This is actually explained in-lore, those unfortunate enough to have taken the dip in the water turned into Thamesfolk, whom you meet very early on. There is also sea monsters swimming about, so it's not recommended to swim there even if you were immune to the water. This creates a neat little gimmick when exploring, forcing you to take certain routes and avoiding even shallow puddles you come across. The city of London itself is gated by a river that you need an NPC to help guide you thru with his boat, one which becomes a fast travel taxi that takes you between several different points along the river for a price afterwords. City ruins are similar to Boston Downtown, altho they are much better designed and optimized. As far as I am aware, there are real life tourist destinations in London, so what you see in the game is likely what you will see if you actually travel to London. I approve, I always liked this real world parallel and virtual tourism angle that started with Fallout 3. There is a Glowing Sea area, as I already mentioned, there is a couple of small islands mostly relegated to Vagabonds questline, there is many bridges which connect the two parts of London, there is a pretty yet very poorly optimized countryside with runs like ass on my PC(pretty empty too), there is a swamp area which has you playing hopscotch with Rad-X in the southwest part of the map and there is an area filled with fire, lava and brimstone all the way to the south, a labyrinth of walkways and bridges suspended over lava that lead to an actual hedgemaze hidden somewhere within it, where an insane Protectron laughs as you get lost and trigger it's traps. There is also several larger districts separated by their own worldmaps, ala New Vegas or Freeside. Westminster is the rich district that is extremely large and has quite a few quests of it's own, Camden/Hackney are slums that each house their own minor faction, and Inslington is a Tunnel Cough covered hellhole that you cannot even fully explore without a working gas mask, given to you as part of a main questline. I assume that "Tunnel Cough" is a reference to New Plague, it works the same way for all intents and purposes. Very neat little callback to an often overlooked part of the lore, there is a lot more references like that scattered about as well. Enemies are largely the exact same thing as you see in Fallout 4, just reskinned: Raiders are Hooligans, there is several gangs of Raiders aside from generic Hooligans much like you have Gunners or Forged and the like in Fallout 4, Deathclaws are Wombles, Yao Guai are Radgers ect. There is very few unique entities, altho some of them are a callbacks to earlier games, such as Floaters or Bighorners. Lots of assets from the upcoming Capital Wasteland/F4NV project and even a few from Project Arroyo, you will be very pleased if you liked the aesthetic of the older games. Even ghouls have a cute little nickname, "Commuters" alluding to many of them still lurking in the metro tunnels like their Capital Wasteland and Commonwealth counterparts. You can definitely get lost in this world and feel like you're part of the Fallout universe, if you missed that with the likes of Fallout 76 or shitty mods that don't account for worldbuilding and roleplaying at all, you should definitely give London a try.
Closing thoughts: I don't like the companions. They are annoying and not very interesting, the only one I've grown attached to is Mad Jack. There is two faction exclusive companions that you can only get if you side with them, however Angel doesn't get squat. Not sure what that's all about, but it's annoying if you chose to side with them. There is no Power Armor in this game, the system is fully functional but there is no suits of armor anywhere. I recommend getting
this mod to add the three canon suits of Power Armor(X0-1 is made post war by The Enclave and I don't care how much Bethesda want to push it's a pre war suit, it isn't happening). They are found underneath US Embassy, which has an entire cut dungeon that is accessible by clipping down the elevators. it is also the only place with a Power Armor workbench by default, which makes this a very important location for PA players. I recommend
this mod to add an appropriate, exclusive suit of "Power" Armor to the game, mimicking how each new entry has to have a new suit added for the boxart, I recommend
this lovely lore-friendly mod to ensure that your Power Armor never runs out of juice(keeping it patched up and customized is a pain in the ass enough), and I recommend
this mod to add Power Armor workbenches as a craftable option within any settlement, finally giving them a proper purpose in the game. Trust me, it's a pain in the ass to keep running back to the Embassy, especially since this area does reset and the high leveled robots WILL continue to respawn and level scale with you. Don't forget that if you chose to give your companions Power Armor, the pieces WILL take damage and eventually break off. I recommend one of the many companion overhauls, most of which let you disable PA health for companions, as well as make them killable and many other useful options. Do note that this mod was never properly playtested with Power Armor, it must have been cut very early on. Many weapons don't have proper animations for Power Armor and either force you to play in third person or not use these weapons at all. Many new animations don't work when inside Power Armor and might require you to exit it first, there is also minor bugs here or there not present in Fallout 4 when using Power Armor and I don't know why they are there. Your companions don't seem to mind, tho, so feel free to give it to them as you please, especially if you plan on making them mortal. Not required, but I like running
this mod to spice up my loot table, as well as
this one to give dungeons a meaning and lower the amount of grinding you have to do. I am sure you have your own unique preference, so remember that most Fallout 4 mods work here. Of course, I have my own made mods I definitely recommend, up in the quoted post at the beginning.
Overall, I highly recommend Fallout London if you haven't played it already. It is very rough around the edges, obviously not finished, but it is still a proper Fallout experience you should try at least once. It is much better than what Bethesda has been giving us lately, and frankly, might be the only proper Fallout to satisfy us until another big project like Miami or Nuevo Mexico finish up...assuming they don't flop like Frontier did. I can assure you that a Frontier this is not, something between New California and Nevada in case of quality. It won't blow your world away and it is definitely not on par with New Vegas/older entries, but it is an improvement over base Fallout 4 and the first proper RPG the franchise has seen in a while. Getting it running is well worth the effort, and if you can't be bothered to do it yourself I remind you that you can easily sail the seven seas and find that someone has already done it for you. The mod isn't going to be liked by everybody, and that's okay. Just keep it in mind when you're getting bored with yet another New Vegas run, Ol' Blighty isn't going anywhere.
Final Score: 7.8/10, Too much water
