Last month, Bethesda released a “next-gen” update for Fallout 4 across all platforms intended to improve the aging RPG. Instead, it broke tons of popular mods and made the game buggier for some players, too. To fix that, Bethesda has released another update. The reaction from fans has mostly been negative, with people asking Bethesda to stop updating Fallout 4. Please.
On April 25, Bethesda published an update for Fallout 4, its nearly decade-old post-apocalyptic open-world RPG. The patch had been teased years earlier but didn’t land until shortly after the launch of the Fallout show on Amazon. The “next-gen” update was intended to fix some old issues, improve performance, and, overall, make it a better game in 2024. Instead, it broke popular mods, caused a fan-developed expansion to be delayed, added new glitches, and was seen by many as unneeded. And Bethesda’s attempt to fix its blunder with another new update is going over about as well as a nuclear bomb blast.
On May 13, following a recent announcement, Bethesda pushed out a new update for Fallout 4—“Next-Gen Update 2"—intended to fix up the last patch. The patch notes were shared on the day of the update and revealed it to be mainly focused on fixing performance on consoles and adding new settings options for those players. Players online report fewer crashes on PS5, and the annoying red texture bug seems to have been fixed. That’s about all the good news.
Across social media, Reddit, and Steam forums, players have complained that bugs and problems introduced with the new update still remain.
This includes a bug that makes VATS less reliable, a sound de-sync issue on PC that is annoying players, some quests still being broken for some players, a lack of a true ultra widescreen option on PC, and more. Other players have complained about poor performance in some areas that were running fine before, new crashes when trying to do certain actions, and a lack of an FOV slider on consoles.
Fallout 4 mods are broken...again
PC players are also annoyed that this new update has broken mods again. Specifically, it appears Fallout 4 Script Extender (F4SE) is no longer compatible. This mod was the backbone for many popular small and big mods, including the recently delayed Fallout: London fan-created expansion.
While F4SE will be fixed, again, many players are fed up with Bethesda’s Fallout 4 patches and just want the company to leave the game alone. Across the internet, you can find PC players begging the Starfield publisher to just stop updating the game on Steam and let modders fix these problems instead. Their reasoning is that Bethesda seems unable or unwilling to fix certain things or to add much-requested features, and that modders do a better job at improving the game at this point.
In fact, a lot of players have pointed out that before the next-gen update, Fallout 4 on PC—with the right mods—was a much better-playing and more modern-looking game compared to the current official version. But who knows, maybe a future update from Bethesda will fix all of Fallout 4...for real this time.
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