Bethesda announced Fallout 4’s next-gen update in 2022, and it’s finally here after a long delay. However, PC players might have been better off without it. The massive update adds very little to the PC version and causes more problems than it solves.
Fallout 4 next-gen update has problems on PC
PC Gamer summarized the main problems that players are having with Fallout 4’s next-gen update. For starters, the update itself is a whopping 14.4 gigabytes, and while that’s not unprecedented, it’s still a hefty chunk of data. Worse, it causes issues for players loading modded saves and isn’t compatible with non-Creation Club mods. This includes breaking the Fallout 4 Script Extender, which many other mods rely on. That likely won’t be back online until the Script Extender is, and it’s hard to say when that will be.
Something similar happened with the Skyrim Anniversary update. However, that update at least introduces some graphical improvements, which is not the case for Fallout 4 on PC. Meanwhile, the new Ultrawide settings result in a weirdly stretched user interface, while the game’s version of the Creation engine still doesn’t support framerates above 60fps.
That’s not to say Fallout 4’s next-gen update is useless. It fixes several bugs, including some that mainly affect new playthroughs. This includes a bug with the Vault 111 door, issues with the early game Out of Time quest, and saves not loading correctly in the prologue. It solves some problems with the Creation Kit, among other things. Still, the update has some pretty significant problems on PC.
Players who want to keep using their current mods can get around it by turning off Steam updates and opening Fallout 4 through the script-extender. However, there’s no official support for rolling the game back to the previous version.
