Fallout 4's big next-gen patch isn't going over well, especially on PC: "I had very low expectations but this is MUCH less than I expected"

The mod teams behind Skywind and Skyblivion, the two massive projects remaking Morrowind and Oblivion within Skyrim, have been at work for a long, long time, and it's finally starting to look like that work will pay off. Both projects shared some extensive developer updates this week, complete with some absolutely gorgeous-looking in-game footage.

Now that the belated “next-gen” Fallout 4 update has finally arrived (nearly four years into said generation), Bethesda has at last offered up and enhanced way to play on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. However, the bar was already set fairly high by the excellent Xbox Backward Compatibility programme, of which Fallout 4 was an early beneficiary: thanks to the Xbox One X 4K patch and then the FPS boost, we already had the choice of whether to run in high frame rate or resolution modes (not both) on Xbox Series X and Series S. At least, that’s the idea. Currently it’s a bit broken on Xbox, but we can expect it to run as well as the PlayStation 5 version soon, and the improvements there are welcome.

It’s safe to say the reception of the Fallout 4 next-gen update has been less than ideal for Bethesda.

Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV show has supercharged excitement in the Fallout IP, leading to a significant surge in player counts across a variety of Fallout titles on Steam, but also for Fallout London, a fan-created mod for Fallout 4 that may as well be an entirely new entry in the series due to the breadth and scope of the project.

Rainbow Cotton, a poorly remembered 3D offshoot of one of the definitive entries in the cutesy shooter canon, is somehow making a comeback in English 24 years after its original launch, and the devs have provided a helpful explainer on the differences between emulation, remakes, and remasters. The catch is that they might've gotten it wrong.

Given the unrelenting thirst inspired by Stellar Blade's Eve, you might not be surprised to learn that director Hyung-Tae Kim is a big fan of some of gaming's most notable sex symbols, including Final Fantasy 7's Tifa and Nier: Automata's 2B. But you might not have expected Eve to have been inspired by the lead of a 21-year-old GameCube cult classic.

A Fallout 4 player had their collection of unique picture frames ruined after the game’s recent next-gen update was released. Fallout 4’s recent update was controversial, as it brought improvements to the open-world game, but it also introduced new bugs, broke mods, and created a few issues on some platforms.

Baldur's Gate 3 launched last year to widespread acclaim, and you can count Mr. Skyrim, Starfield, and The Elder Scrolls 6 himself to its many admirers.

Fallout 4’s average load times have decreased considerably on the PS5 after the game’s next-gen patch. The recent Fallout 4 patch has been controversial since its release, but it’s not without its perks for current-gen gamers, as shown by this change.

Ah, the Commonwealth. A great example of dense open world design, Fallout 4 still has its charms almost a full decade after its original release in 2015. We've spent a good ten hours or so with the game's freshly launched PS5 version, and we're here to report on our findings with regards to technical performance. For the record, we'll be doing a full review in the near future as well — but for now, consider this an appetiser.

The Fallout 4 free next-gen upgrade is now available to PlayStation Plus subscribers, albeit with an odd exclusion. Bethesda rolled out the next-gen update on April 25 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but members of PlayStation Plus who obtained the game through the service found themselves locked out of the update, leading many to purchase Fallout 4 separately to upgrade it to the next-gen version.

Bethesda’s next-gen update for Fallout 4 has made the experience of playing the game on Steam Deck worse, as it removed the option to change graphics. The next-gen update for Fallout 4 was eagerly expected by many gamers, but its release introduced new problems to multiple platforms.