Announced on October 24, 2022, in celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, “the next-gen update” of Fallout 4 finally arrived yesterday on PC and current generation consoles, to the delight of that large group of admirers who, intrigued by the merits of the Amazon series (if you missed it, catch up on our review of Fallout) , they had heard the call of Bethesda’s nuclear post-apocalypse.
In this regard, it is easy to assume that the publication of the content – initially scheduled for 2023 – has only become a priority relatively recently, but it is still worth remembering that the update has formally been in the works for at least a year and a half. A useful piece of data to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of a proposal that is both appreciable, especially by virtue of the package being free, but also rather sparse and plagued by more or less dated problems.
A few too many headaches
Although it is not in any way a remastering, it was in fact desirable that the update would correct long-standing problems such as the incompatibility between the “Weapon debris” (which simulates the disruptive effects of bullets on different surfaces) and RTX cards, or at least that the PS5 edition didn’t have the same audio problems as its old-gen counterpart at launchi.e. a lower quality of the voices (in Italian) compared to the standards of the other versions.
We go so far as to say that, at least for the moment, the update on PC is actually counterproductive, also because the only significant addition, i.e. compatibility with ultrawide resolutions, is accompanied by a rather crude revision of the interface, simply enlarged – and deformed – to adapt to the measurements of the panels.
The downside is obviously a widespread incompatibility with the Fallout 4 mods currently available, and consequently with the saves created using them. Although there are already solutions online to at least overcome this last problem, we would like to point out that the correct functioning of the game is not a given even in the case of saves.”vanilla“. Since on PC, as expected, there are no significant technical improvements or refinements, in short it is not necessarily worth the upgrade.
Fallout 4 for PS5 and Xbox Series
The situation obviously changes when we bring up the console versions of Fallout 4, but even in this case we invite you to keep your expectations at bay. Let’s start by saying that the 60 fps, finally also available on consoles using the Performance mode, amplify the pleasantness of the experience, and even more we appreciated the possibility of exploiting the VRR (on compatible panels) to maximize the fluidity of the Quality preset,
otherwise bound to the 30 fps threshold. Although the frame rate proves to be rather solid in all the cases just listed, it is necessary to make a couple of clarifications. At the time of writing this article, Graphics mode settings don’t work properly on Xbox Series, which uses the Performance preset regardless of whether its option is enabled. At the same time, it must be added that the qualitative difference between the two modes is not really significant, at least on PlayStation 5: with a little attention you can notice some differences in terms of LOD (level of detail), ambient occlusion and quality of the effects volumetric (god rays first and foremost), but overall these are minor variations. Leaving aside the frame rate, the most significant divergence between the two presets concerns the management of the resolution, dynamic up to 2160p in Performance and generally anchored to the 4K threshold by opting for the Quality mode, which is also the one automatically active when the title.
If you have the console connected to a 2K monitor, this will be the maximum resolution of the game, obviously at 60 fps. Beyond the subtle gap – in terms of graphic performance – between the available modes, we would like to underline how the distance from the old-gen versions is anything but marked: in practice we are always talking about minutiae that most players he won’t notice.
Steam Deck and the Creation Engine
It goes without saying that, given the nature of the operation, this is a consideration of relative importance, in the context of an offer that clearly shows large margins for improvement and, in all honesty, it also denotes a certain laziness.
Just to give another example, with the update under discussion Fallout 4 was added to the list of verified games on Steam Deck, but unfortunately Valve handheld users simultaneously lost the ability to change the game settings (the launcher of the title has been removed), with not at all positive consequences both on performance and on the stability of the experience. Both on console and PC we then encountered old and new bugs, including non-functioning weapons, missing textures and errors in damage calculation. Fortunately, the problem that prevented us from updating Fallout 4 for PlayStation Plus has already been resolved today, and we hope that Bethesda will work to carry out further refinements in the coming days. Despite the limitations of the Creation Engine, and in particular the version used for Fallout 4, it is in fact clear that the team did not dedicate the right amount of care to the long-awaited update, and the additional content included in the package does little to alter this limping balance. Let’s understand: the extra missions and new equipment are more than welcome additions, but there is no doubt that we would have appreciated them more in the context of a perfect update.
