Generally, when I make a rant listing the best mods for a game, I follow 3 main guidelines for what does and doesn’t get mentioned: A, it’s a mod that enhances the storytelling, lore, or overall core aesthetic experience of the game, (enhancing the post-apocalyptic exploration and ambient storytelling of Fallout, restoring planned content that didn’t have a chance to get implemented due to deadlines in a game like Knights of the Old Republic 2, correcting a glitch that prevented a quest from starting in a game like Planescape: Torment, etc); B, it’s very good (duh), and C, it’s authentic to the body and soul of the game. This last prerequisite is why I don’t mention many quest-based and campaign mods, because generally, there’s something about them that tends to make them stand out from the game proper. Sometimes it’s a contradiction to the actual canon of the game or series, sometimes there are elements in them that conflict with the setting or aesthetic of the source material, and sometimes the style and/or quality of writing for the mod is noticeably distant from that of the actual game. You can see this when looking at my list of Fallout 3’s best mods--though I give great praise to user content that captures the game’s post apocalyptic aesthetic by adding more elements of exploration, or restores some of the intended radio material and adds appropriate Fallout-based content to it, I don’t recommend a single story-based mod in that rant, in spite of there being dozens and dozens of such fan adventures available for the game. The simple fact is, as a general rule, such mods come across, at most, as fanfiction, rather than as true aspects of the game’s experience.
But there is the occasional exception.*
Fourville, a Fallout 4 mod created by one Seddo4494, is an exception of such quality that I can’t just quietly edit my original Fallout 4 mod rant to include it, as I have for a couple other mods that were released after that rant had been published. No, this one needs the full due of its own rant. Because Fourville is awesome. This mod, created by a single person, is a better, more genuine, and more substantial slice of the Fallout experience than anything the hundreds of employees of Bethesda have labored upon during the last 4 years.** It’s honestly more like a new, real DLC for Fallout 4 than it is just a mod.
First of all, Fourville is written really well. The dialogue is smooth, natural, and at the same level as the “real” game, as is the text of the holotapes, notes, and logs to be found. Which is very unusual, to be frank; user-created adventures can be decent, but there’s almost always a disconnect between the writing of a fan and the writing of the game proper. In most cases, the former is noticeably worse overall--and that’s not a mark of shame, or anything like that. A labor by 1 person for no certain reward beyond a love of the game is a different animal from the product of a team of professionals paid to do their job competently. And even if a mod’s writing is around the same level of quality as Fallout 4 as a whole, it still usually stands out for just aesthetic reasons. We all have our own narrative voice, after all, and the manner in which a mod’s author communicates, from phrases to choice in vocabulary to sentence structure, will typically differ enough from the writers of Fallout 4 that it does feel different.
But the narrative voice in Fourville manages to be so close in both quality and style to that of Fallout 4’s that it felt indistinguishable to me. Even the way dialogue and monologue is put together, such as the tone and pauses in some of the holotapes, feels authentic to the game.
And while still on the subject of the writing, the overall story and characters of Fourville are solid, too. The plot of this mod is simple, but enjoyable. Between its sequence of main and side quests, it flows naturally, and the story and settings are composed cleverly enough that even as you’re immersed in the mod’s surface-level adventures, there are bits and pieces here and there, such as certain dualities in the cast and the state of Mr. Quinn’s room, that subtly maintain a feeling of unease in you, as something is clearly out of place, and keeps you guessing about what may or may not be going on at a deeper level. It’s quite elegantly done, really, and the ultimate twist at the end of the mod is layered, interesting, and creative enough that even if you’ve guessed part of it, there’ll still be aspects of it that will pleasingly interest you and give you retrospective appreciation for the mod’s course.
Beyond the main quest, the rest of the adventure’s components are crafted well, too. While plenty of its quests are pretty basic bread-and-butter bits of “fetch this,” “kill these guys,” “go back and forth between these people” scenarios, there’s also a lot of mini-stories in Fourville that are dynamic and engaging, and work well with the characters and Fallout setting to keep your interest--I found the sidequests involving the Wattz factory and the doctor’s brother fun and even a little suspenseful at times. The mod has a purpose to communicate, and food for thought, and I really like that. As a matter of course, there are also some relatively difficult moral choices to be made in Fourville, too, as any good Fallout venture should have, and while I do tend to care perhaps a little too much about my actions in video games, I enjoy the fact that a couple of the choices I had to make in Fourville are ones that my conscience is still grappling a little with. In fact, I actually restarted the mod and played it a second time just because earlier into it, I backed a character who I came to believe is mistaken. If I care enough about the potential consequences of a decision that I go back and redo the whole adventure as a result, that’s a point in favor of that mod’s writing quality.
The characters are also pretty decent. Most are stock, meat-and-potatoes personalities that get the job done and nothing more, I suppose, but that’s true of a Fallout game as a whole, so it’s hard to see that as a flaw, and there are some individuals whose personalities, character history, and/or depth stand out for their high quality, such as old Mr. McNally, Roscoe, and Betty. Additionally, some of the after-the-fact characters whose stories are told through holotapes are really great--the story of the Armstrong family is quite compelling, the FEV scientist is a skillfully-created detestable asshole, and to be frank, I think the series of records left by a student and his teacher is among the best holotape stories that the entire Fallout series has to offer! And I should point out that some of my favorite moments of Fallout, period, have been journals left behind by characters in Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4.
So in terms of writing quality, Fourville is top-notch from front to back. But I think it’s also important to recognize that it’s exactly as well-constructed on the material level, too. Fourville adds a decent handful of locations to the game, all involved in its quests, and they’re constructed very well--more than functional, they’re interesting to navigate, providing new playgrounds within the Fallout setting to explore and appreciate. Plenty of locations are straightforward and basic, but settings like the vertically-dominated apartment building, the dynamic flooded Wattz factory, and the cave of Mr. Abominable have more singular personality to better draw you into your ventures through them. The locations of Fourville are competently coded and organized, with few mesh conflicts, and with clutter items and containers arranged in quantity and placement that feels rewarding to careful exploration, but true to the standard that Fallout normally sets.
Another technical detail where Fourville shines: the voice acting. I have to emphatically applaud the actors who voiced Fourville’s large cast. It’s rare for a quest mod to actually have voice work for its characters, and on the occasions that you do find a fan adventure that has spoken lines, they’re pretty much always...well, it’s clear that the lines are being read by amateurs at the craft. And I don’t fault them that, because it’s a lot of work to add voiced dialogue, and the fans making these mods (and what talents they can reasonably gather for their projects) aren’t trained, paid professionals in quality recording booths. Still, there’s no denying that the quality or lack of spoken dialogue in quest mods is 1 of the biggest ways in which immersion is broken.
But Fourville’s voice acting? Clean, exact, varied, competent, and well-directed. The voice actors are on-point, they know how to use emphasis, emotion, and accent to build their characters, and they’re coming through loud and clear. If anything gives away Fourville’s status as a mod rather than a legitimate part of Fallout 4, it sure as hell ain’t the vocal work. I’m seriously impressed on this point.
And related to that, I also have to give special kudos to Fourville for its use of Nora/Nate’s dialogue, too. Another typical issue with quest mods is that Nora/Nate’s lines are silent, since obviously Courtenay Taylor and Brian T. Delaney are gonna be difficult to get hold of to record new lines for a fan project. Fourville gets around this, however, by having the Sole Survivor’s responses to dialogue and quest choices always use lines recorded for the main game, so as a result, Nora/Nate still seems to be an active part of Fourville’s events and community as she/he interacts vocally with others. Now, in fairness, this isn’t the only mod out there that’s done this, but Fourville has certainly incorporated Nora/Nate’s lines into its exchanges more naturally and intuitively than anything I’ve seen prior.
One more point of technical prowess in Fourville’s favor: this is not a small adventure. The size of this mod, with its quests, locations, characters, and alterations to existing locales, is that of an outright Fallout DLC--perhaps not as big as, say, Far Harbor or Point Lookout, but easily an adventure of greater size than Lonesome Roads or Operation: Anchorage. And definitely bigger than the majority of DLCs that Fallout 4 ended up with. To maintain the level of professional quality that Fourville has for a creation of such scope is very impressive.
Fourville’s also considerate with how it’s been set up. There’s a little content within it that will connect with the Far Harbor and Vault 88 DLCs, but you can still play this mod even if you haven’t purchased those add-ons. The quest related to Far Harbor is a very small and quick side mission which won’t even come up if Far Harbor isn’t installed, and the quest involving Vault 88 (in which you go on a pilgrimage of sorts to the Vaults of the Commonwealth) has been designed so that you can complete it with only the vanilla game’s available Vaults.
Beyond the strength of the writing and the careful architecture of its components, Fourville is, perhaps most importantly, a genuine Fallout experience on every major and minor level. The adoration its creator has for the series as a whole is proudly evident. Its main story is tied inseparably to the series’s major points of lore and approach to storytelling. It also incorporates elements and references to each of the previous major Fallout titles in a pleasant fanservice capacity, but not so strongly as to seem heavy-handed. It even references Fallout 76 with a joke at 1 point about holotapes being all the rage down in West Virginia--light enough to stay classy by not expressly criticizing Fallout 76 (although you know I’d have no problem with going all-in on the Bethesda-hate), but still scathing in its light touch through the effective implication that there’s no substance to the game to make use of beyond a quick wisecrack.
Beyond the tangible, Fourville shows a love for Fallout in its narrative methods and the little details. Fourville’s locations have solid ambient storytelling with their skeleton and object placement, which has been a detail of style for the Fallout series from its earliest days that works into its charm, morbidity, humor, and postmortem storytelling. Likewise, the number of and attention paid to the holotapes is a big plus. The creator of Fourville also clearly understands how big of a part exploration and hunting for objects of interest is to a post apocalyptic setting, because Fourville adds a new set of Bobbleheads to be found through its course that each confer little bonuses like (but not the same as) the original Bobbleheads in the game, giving you incentive to search every nook and cranny of each place you visit--and at least 1 of them is hidden quite cleverly, in a spot difficult to return to (I’ll give you a hint: sewer system), so they’re rewarding to find beyond just the, well, reward. The names of quests are often good references to bits of American culture, which is another fun little Fallout signature.
Fourville also takes great pride in connecting itself to Fallout 4, standing as a representation of the game it’s attached to in ways both great and small, some of which really brought a smile to my face, as someone who sincerely loved Fallout 4. While Fourville primarily uses its own locations for the majority of its quests, it nonetheless makes sure to incorporate many of the original locales of the Commonwealth into its course, and even some of Fallout 4’s own characters, which is a nice touch, because that cements one’s feelings of Fourville as a part of Fallout 4, not just a separate entity artificially grafted onto it.*** As you’d expect, synths and the conflict of the Institute are involved to a degree (although not in a major way--which is good for Fourville, as it’s allowed to focus on its own story and ideas).
As much as the bigger stuff, though, it’s also through the tiny details that Fourville connects itself to Fallout 4. Though Fourville doesn’t incorporate much of the settlement building system into its content, it does involve it a little in 1 quest, and it provides a separate Bobbhead stand for the Vault 4 Bobbleheads it adds, so you can display them just as you can for the main game’s set. Another quest actually incorporates the tokens you get for turning in Overdue Books, which is a gameplay quirk that Fallout 4 made surprisingly little use of, considering the trouble it must have been to set up, so it’s neat that Fourville remembered it, almost like fixing a slight oversight of the main game. As mentioned before, some of the game’s DLCs come into play, just enough to again build the feeling of Fourville’s being a part of Fallout 4’s whole, without (as mentioned above) closing the door on any player who hasn’t bought them. And Fourville even gives an opportunity during 1 quest to use some Silver Shroud lines! Who doesn’t love Silver Shroud content?
Finally, Fourville even extends the life of Fallout 4 beyond its own boundaries. 1 of its features is to add a big storage building in Boston, in which are dozens of locked safes filled with the property of the residents of the area’s Vaults. You can’t lockpick these safes, but passwords for these safes will, on rare occasions, be found on the corpses of feral ghoul enemies you’ve defeated. The contents of each safe are often interesting and fun, rewarding the player with item collections that tell you a little about their original owner, and even some rare or unique items, such as a variant of Maxim’s coat or 1 of the Fourville Bobbleheads. It’s fun to bring a password to this storage building and see what prize you’ve found, and since the drop rate of said passwords is way too low for you to get even half of them during the course of your Fourville experience, the mod has now given you a fun extra to look forward to when you play through other mods or revisit Fallout 4’s locations with feral ghouls in them. It’s a way more effective playing incentive than the usual find-and-return quest items like Viable Blood Samples and Technical Documents, because whereas those are just turned in for some caps that haven’t been relevant to you for the last 200 hours of your gameplay, the mystery of what you’re getting keeps you invested in turning the passwords in.**** Not to mention, playing an ethical character in Fallout 4 inevitably means cutting off the ability to turn in certain bounty items (the 2 types I listed a moment ago certainly do me no good), while the Vault resident passwords are something to look forward to finding regardless of past decisions, since they can always be turned in.
Now, of course, nothing is perfect, and Fourville does have a few problems. For starters, the NPCs that Fourville adds all seem to be at Level 1, instead of scaling at all to the player, or even being as capable as most NPCs in the regular game, which...I dunno, it’s not important, I guess, but it’s weird when so many of the individuals you may have to dispose of in the course of the mod’s events just fall apart immediately.
More significantly, there are a few spots in which Fourville can experience a bug or 2, and I can say from experience that at least 1 of them can make progressing a certain sidequest impossible without console commands. That’s always an irritation, no doubt about it. Still, I have to go easy on Fourville here, because for a mod as big and possessing as many moving parts as this, the fact that it works just fine 95% of the time is pretty impressive. I mean, it’s not like Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas are technically perfect, either; even post-launch patches left all of them in a buggier state than Fourville’s in. Although far less immediately apparent, you could even say the same for Fallout 2; Killap’s Fallout 2 Restoration Project fixed over 1,000 bugs left in the game’s final version. So Fourville's slight technical imperfection really isn't that big a deal, in my opinion.
I also think that the companion that Fourville adds, Logan, falls a little flat. He’s fine enough, as a personality, and the mod puts in the effort to give him a character arc and quest, like the rest of the game’s companions get, and good on Seddo4494 for that. And I greatly respect the work that went into giving Logan a ton of lines that react to the environment, immediate circumstances, and even the game’s story events--from what I understand, Logan will have things to say about many of the main game’s quests and sidequests, which must have required a tremendous amount of work to make happen. As much as I respect that, though, as a character, Logan just doesn’t feel all that interesting to me...I didn’t get invested in his story even as much as I did for some of the regular characters of Fourville, and one’s instinct is to expect more from a party member than an NPC. He’s not bad by any means, but I’d wander the wastelands with most of the vanilla party members of Fallout 4 before I did Logan.
Lastly, the Fourville quest involving the video game doesn’t really sit well with me. I don’t dislike it, exactly, but part of its course is to make a light critique on the current state of the gaming industry. A critique I wholeheartedly agree with, make no mistake! But at the same time, the simple, barely-born state of video games in the Fallout universe doesn’t really accommodate the commentary that Fourville’s making about them. It feels like the kind of lore conflict you see with most other quest mods, where the user’s pulling the Fallout setting a little too far to make it do what they want. And this would normally be a bit of a dealbreaker for me; in most cases, breaking immersion even once like this is what keeps me from actively promoting a mod on this blog. However, considering how great everything else about Fourville is...well, I can let 1 thing like this go, I reckon. Even a petty, nitpicky hardass like me can be reasonable when the payoff overall is so superb.
Fourville by Seddo4494 is a truly excellent mod, a work of high quality in both writing and construction. And it’s a terrific, immersive Fallout experience that appeals to the deepest of fan love for the series. Already a valuable commodity under normal circumstances, the chance to enjoy a rich, authentic Fallout experience is especially priceless in current times, when those who hold the franchise’s license have completely lost their fucking minds (or at least their understanding of basic ethics). I’m adding it to my list of the best Fallout 4 mods, but I really wanted to take the time to give it a full rant of its own, because it’s more than worthy of such. If you love Fallout, check out Fourville!
* Shocking excellence aside, the Calfree Trilogy perfectly captures the Shadowrun experience that Harebrained Schemes created with their campaigns, and uses the series’s own official lore as the foundation to its stories. If anything, the Calfree Trilogy stays even more faithfully adherent to Shadowrun canon than the official games themselves do.
Meanwhile, the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod may not be perfect (although it IS very, very good), but it certainly represents a far more intelligent, consistent representation of the heart and soul of Mass Effect than the toxic, idiotic ending with which Bioware sullied Mass Effect 3. Rather than a deviation from authentic core of the series, MEHEM is the only recourse for anyone who cares to end the Mass Effect trilogy in a fashion true to itself.
** Not that this says a whole lot. The act of consuming an entire can of seasoned breadcrumbs while listening to a bardcore remix of Pokemon music in the bathtub is a more authentic Fallout experience than Fallout 76. In fact, I’d wager that the only thing that could possibly be less Fallout than the current state of Fallout 76 is whatever alteration or addition Bethesda happens to next make to it.
*** In fact, in that regard, I’d actually say Fourville feels more authentically intertwined with Fallout 4 than some of the game’s actual downloadable content. Automatron, Vault 88, and Nuka-World could’ve been added to any Fallout game, really.
**** If this were an EA game (not that Bethesda is any better than them, these days), I’m sure there’d be a joke here about this being what actual surprise mechanics look like.
BRAVISSIMO!!!!
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