Fallout 4 - What's Up With DLC?

Extra content for Fallout 4 has been promised for "early 2016".  But VG 24/7 wonders exactly what that means.

Regular free updates, story DLC and mods have all been promised for “early” 2016. But what does that mean, what can we expect, and when?

Fallout 4’s November 10 release date seems a long way off whether you’ve completed the main quest line or are still putting the hours in exploring the Boston commonwealth. It’s a game that demands your commitment by tens of hours at a time, but time in Fallout 4 is also kind of irrelevant. Unlike Fallout 3 there’s no level cap or end once the main quest is completed. It’s a true open world, where pottering around adding bookshelves to your settlement can be as all-consuming as hunting down rampaging Death Claws or mapping out the Glowing Sea.

But as much as Fallout 4 offers, we want more. We’re expecting a whole chunk of content from Bethesda Game Studios this year, so let’s take a look in detail about what we know and what we can expect to keep Fallout 4 alive throughout 2016.

The official line from director Todd Howard and the Bethesda Game Studios gang is that DLC for the game is split into three types. The team has promised “regular updates”, single-player DLC and the release of the Creation Kit for modding.

The regular updates are what we should be expecting first although there’s only been one so far. “We’ll be doing regular free updates to the game, and like Skyrim, these will come with not just fixes, but new features,” promised Howard.

Apart from a few button remaps for PC, December’s release was purely about improved performance – a welcome move considering the state the game was in when it first dropped. It hasn’t fixed a lot of issues, but it was acknowledgement that the game needed a bandage or two.

“This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster. Expect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones,” said Howard in November.

That’s encouraging talk, but so far we’ve seen nothing of extra features, no matter how small. Bethesda has also promised to create content based on player feedback, although whether that’s from directly speaking to us or via combing player stats is yet to be seen. Some evidence of interaction with the players from Bethesda right now would be very encouraging.

More information.