Fallout 3 Remodulated

Confession time readers, despite finding the Elder Scrolls games rather vacuous, and being an fan of the old school Fallout games I actually (whisper it) quite like Fallout 3. Oh it’s terribly made and full of bugs and poor gameplay, but one thing Bethesda totally pulled off was to nail the character of the Fallout world. It’s been two years now and I’ve decided to go back to the capital wasteland, but this time I’m not settling for second best, no more lacklustre gameplay or shoddy graphics, I’m going to fix all that, how? By installing so many mods they take up more space than the original game. Read on to see what I’m using.

Utilities:

First things first, these simple utilities will let you use all the mods on this list.

Fallout Mod Manager – This simple download lets you install and manipulate your mods, by launching via the mod manager you can decide which mods to activate at any point. It’s technically not essential, but honestly you’ll be far better off if you use it.

Archive Invalidation Invalidated – In the dark old days you used to have to add some lines of text to your ini file whenever you installed a mod with Fallout 3. It was dull, frustrating and didn’t work well. Then a wizard created Archive Invalidation Invalidated (his genius did not extend to names) through some sorcery you now merely have to install it, click it, and never worry about such things again, simply brilliant.

Fallout Script Extender (FOSE) – A few of the mods on this list (Weapon Mods Kits and FWE in particular) require the FOSE utility to work but annoyingly don’t include in in the download. It’s compatible with Fallout Mod Manager, so you can still launch from the latter and get the full effect of FOSE.

Visuals:

As you can see my wasteland looks very different (and I would venture, better) than the original version, here’s a list of graphical tweaks and overhauls I’ve added to achieve that effect.

Fellout – Without doubt the most important graphical mod you could ever install. Fellout changes the game’s grimy green colour correction for a more Mad Max style ‘blue sky and red dirt’ motif. I was initially sceptical that this would fit the setting, but the sun blasted bleakness it creates is utterly stunning. The use of blue sky and glaring sun is what’s made of of the screenshots in this thread so special. Unless you have a peculiar love for green you really, really have to install this.

NMC’s Texture Pack – Since the game was released this guy has been generating new, high resolution textures for every aspect of the game, now he’s done and it’s all packaged as one big pack. If you’ve got the machine to run it, this will be a big improvement in the quality of the in game landscapes, it comes in several different flavours, depending on what you can run.

Project Beauty – Ever been annoyed by the way in which Bethesda seem to think the human face gets paler in the middle? Well worry no more, Project Beauty massively overhauls the faces of all the NPCs in the game, subtly improving them to look more realistic. Despite the name it really isn’t about making them seem glamorous (it really wouldn’t’ fit the setting) just better designed.

EVE – Energy Visuals Enhanced – This brilliant little mod is focused on the game’s energy weapons, it adds a whole bunch of new visuals, particularly a variety of effects for a critical kill with an energy weapon. See enemies burn down to the skeleton, or stand in place and slowly turn to ash, or die a variety of other wonderful styles. Fully compatible with the new weapons introduced in the FWE mod described below.

Fallout 3 Re-Animated – A small mod at the moment, but one with a lot of promise. Fallout 3 Re-Animated is slowly overhauling all the atrocious animations in the vanilla edition, so far it’s mostly been weapons based, but I really hope it expands in the future. Use this and you’ll see characters aim down the barrel of their guns or hold their pistols pointing up when not aiming action movie style.

Enhanced Weather – While Fellout does add rain, this whole mod is dedicated to weather effects, giving you everything from the default clear days to ranging storms and everything in between. For the hardcore there’s even an option to make rain radioactive, adding a new terror to being caught out in the wasteland.

Enhanced Night Sky – One of the first mods I ever downloaded, this little gem simply replaces the night sky with it’s own lovely starfield, making clear nights all the prettier.

Gameplay:

Fallout: Wanderer’s Edition – This is the big one, Fallout: Wanderer’s Edition (or FWE for short) is a huge gameplay overhaul that changes nearly every aspect of how Fallout 3 plays. To list everything it does would take up too much space, but in a broad sense it makes the FPS portion of the game tighter and better playing, rebalances the skills, perks and attributes, improves follower behaviour, adds several new weapons adds an optional need to eat and drink for the hardcore… the list is endless, and nearly all of it is customisable. I suggest downloading the mod and studying the readme hard before deciding if you’re going to go with it or not, but I do seriously recommend it.

Mart’s Mutant Mod – This mammoth, customisable mod is all about enemies in Fallout 3. It manipulates their behaviour and (if you choose to) adds a whole variety of new enemies based on previous Fallout games. With this installed enemies might run away if hurt, different kinds of human and wildlife might fight each other, human and mutant enemies will grab weapons and equipment from the fallen, all in all it’s a far better AI set than anything Bethesda have ever come up with. It’s also designed to play nice with FWE.

Weapon Mod Kits – This popular mod lets you add scopes, silencers, laser sights and other bits of customisation to your favourite weapons. Again it’s also configured to work with FWE.

Misc:

DarNified UI – Let’s face it, the Fallout UI is a bit crap. This handy mod resizes and re-arranges it to work better on the PC. If you’re using this and FWE be sure to grab the crossover mod (follow the FWE link) to Darnify all the FWE menus too.

GNR – More Where That Came From – There’s actually a few radio mods knocking around, but this is the best by a long way. It uses the GNR extension utility to add in additional songs, but the creator has taken his time to search out and add tracks appropriate to the setting, most of them by the same artists (The Ink Spots, Billy Holiday etc) as the songs in the original game. The result is a mod that fits seamlessly into the original, but also lessens the amount of repetition when listening to GNR considerably.

Holsters – The smallest and simplest mod on the list, holsters just adds a bunch of equipable holsters to the game so your pistol is no longer glued to your side.

Load Order:

The order in which you load mods in the Mod Manager is important to make sure they don’t screw up. I’m going to copy my own order with these mods here, it’s by no means definitive, but I don’t crash that much:

NB: All .esm files should be loaded before any .esp files

• Fallout 3.esm
• (any DLC .esm files you might have)
• Project Beauty.esm
• FO3 Wanderers Edition – Main File.esm
• Mart’s Mutant Mod.esm
  
• CALIBR.esm
• CRAFT.esm
• Enhanced Weather – Rain and Snow.esm
• DarNifiedUIF3.esp
• GalaxyNewsRadio100[M].esp
• Enhanced weather .esp files
• FelloutFull.esp
• Fellout DLC .esp files
• Project Beauty – Broken Steel.esp (if you have it)
• FWE Main.esp
• FWE DLC .esp files
• Other FWE .esp files
• Mart’s Mutant Mod.esp
• Optional Mart’s Mutant .esp files
• Mart’s Mutant DLC .esp files
• Project Beauty – Point Lookout.esp (if you have it)
• WeaponModKits.esp
• Weapon Mod Kits DLC .esp files
• EVE.esp
• EVE Operation Anchorage.esp (if you have it)
• Holsters .esp files

Phew, that took a while, but you can’t argue with results and my game is better looking and more fun than ever. These are just the highlights of a relatively simple selection too, there’s a massive amount of mods out there, most of them at Fallout 3 Nexus. Hell even while writing this article I noticed a mod that lets you re-program Enclave Eyebots to play GNR radio, which I may well install right now.

“Thanks for listening children! And remember, don’t feed the Yao Guai!”