In context: Folon Team is a group of Fallout 4 modders who have been working on a "Fallout: London" project for several years. The small independent studio has struggled to keep its schedule but finally has a release date for next year. The latest developer update reveals that it should be worth the wait.
The long-awaited Fallout: London is finally in the home stretch. Again. Developer Falon Team just dropped a progress update with new details, including a release date of April 23, 2024. The previous launch was scheduled for an unspecified time in 2023, but the studio said it needs these next few months for final testing and polishing.
Some of you may have been following Falon Team's progress on Fallout: London. However, a brief description might be in order for those whose radar it may have slipped by.
Fallout: London started in 2019 with a handful of fans dedicated to tackling the gargantuan task of building a London mod for Fallout 4. Over the years, the team has grown, as did the project's scope, with the group shooting for a "DLC-sized mod" with at least all you could expect from other Fallout 4 DLCs coming straight from Bethesda, like Far Harbor or Nuka World.
Judging by the most recent developer update, we can probably move Fallout: London from the DLC-sized category to a full-on standalone game-sized mod. On release, the project will have nearly 200 missions. These quests include 53 in the primary campaign, 35 side missions, 25 faction jobs, 64 miscellaneous quests, 16 gang-related missions, and five companion quests. Not including DLC, Fallout 4 has 191 missions. London has 198.
Unlike most other ambitious questing mods that reveal the narrative through notes (A Cannibal in Concord is a good example), Fallout: London missions are fully voiced. Folon Team notes that its magnum opus has over 90,000 lines of recorded dialog. For comparison, that's 50 percent more dialog than New Vegas or Skyrim and just a smidgeon short of Fallout 4's script (110,000 lines). The one difference is that Fallout: London reverts to the silent protagonist style we saw in Fallout 3, but that was at the community's request. A voiced main character might have pushed the amount of recorded dialog close to or above Fallout 4.
Quests are not the only thing that puts Fallout: London on par with a full AAA release. Folon Team built the London map from the ground up with 15 boroughs, including Camden, Greenwich, Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, and the iconic Westminster, to name a few. All in all, Fallout: London's map is about as big as the Commonwealth in vanilla FO4.
Other little details, like British-themed billboards, graffiti, and posters, lend to the atmosphere of post-apocalyptic England. Ruined red phone booths and double-decker buses pepper the cracked and half-destroyed streets. One of the seven companions in the game is a classic British Bulldog named Churchill.
The project looks superb, and the studio's goal of releasing a flawless game is commendable, considering Bethesda's tendency to release buggy games with the seemingly lackadaisical attitude of, "Oh, the modding community will fix it." If you are a Fallout Fan, or even if you aren't, Fallout: London looks like a great addition to the series. Check out the progress report video (masthead) and gameplay trailer (above), and judge for yourself.
Best of all, we shouldn't have to worry about this project getting C&Ded at the last minute by Bethesda or Microsoft since it's a mod that requires owning Fallout 4 and all of its DLC. While Bethesda has stopped short of publically praising the expansion, it has had no qualms about poaching several lead developers from Folon Team to work on in-house projects. That's when you know a fan-made game is good.