Fallout 4's "next gen" update is out today and might break your mods ...

Fallout 4's "next generation" update goes live today. Timed to capitalise on the Fallout TV show's mad popularity, it'll encumber the 2015-released open world wasteland RPG with widescreen and ultra-widescreen support, Creation Kit fixes, and a "variety of quest updates" across Steam, Microsoft Store and GOG. There will be new items for the Creation Club, including the Makeshift Weapon Pack, which lets you blast people with a piggy bank like Elon Musk, and a new quest, Echoes Of The Past, in which you try to "stop The Enclave from spreading their dangerous ideology and gaining a foothold in the Commonwealth".

They're also bringing the game to the Epic Games Store and upgrading it to Steam Deck Verified status. Such days of bounty we do live through, but beware - it's possible the update will break existing Fallout 4 mods, which will be a problem for the very large numbers of you who've been downloading mods after watching the show. Indeed, the possibility of today's update messing with mods has already seen the creators of the promising Fallout: London delay release to assess the damage. If you're similarly concerned, you might want to disable auto-updates right now.

Last week, Nexus Mod community manager Pickysaurus offered the following speculations about how the "next generation" update might torpedo mods as they stand.

Firstly, it's almost certainly going to be incompatible with Fallout 4 Script Extender on launch, which will temporarily prevent the use of any mods that require F4SE to function. We're hopeful the F4SE team will get a sneak peek at the update a few days early to give them a head start. The script extender may not be updated to support the Epic Games release, depending on how different it is from the Steam/GOG builds.

Next, advanced mods may need updating separately, even if F4SE is made compatible. This can happen if any hooks into the game they use have changed.

Finally, any traditional mods (i.e. those created purely with the Creation Kit) may need some minor tweaks and updates based on the changes to the base game. This would be especially true for any mods that interact with the quests or locations that have been fixed by Bethesda.

You might want to hold off installing the updates till you know your favourite mods are compatible, then. Helpfully, the Nexus Mod folk have prepped a guide to disabling auto-updates across several versions of Fallout 4. If you're buying it afresh, they recommend getting the GOG edition and using GOG Galaxy to more easily flip between versions of the game.

There are no exact release timings for the latest Fallout 4 update - I'll link the full changelog here once it's available. Personally, I'm not desperate to play Fallout 4 again, even with piggy bank launchers and ultrawide visuals - I reviewed it back in the day and found the Boston setting underwhelming. I can't remember a dang thing about the story. I have, however, been revisiting the original 1997 Fallout, and would very much like to play another CRPG in that vein.