Fallout London feels like an actual Bethesda RPG launch: heaps of praise mixed in with plenty of crash complaints

Complaints of frequent crashes mixed together with heaps of praise? Fallout London's first day feels very much like a normal Bethesda RPG release.

For the uninitiated, Fallout London is the absolutely massive Fallout 4 conversion mod that brings the apocalyptic nuclear clouds over to the English capital. After five years in development, almost 100 volunteer developers involved, and multiple delays thanks to both global conflicts and Bethesda's mod-breaking next-gen update, Fallout London finally crossed the finish line yesterday.

All that turbulence seems to have been worth it since Fallout London has so far impressed with a lengthy main quest that rivals even the base game's - the modding team refers to London as "Fallout 4.5" for a reason - and callbacks to British pop culture that has everyone doing surprised Pikachu faces online. 

Very British Redditor Jellyfish_McSaveloy called it "very good," and was surprised by how "authentic" the city felt. "I expected the developers to get the major monuments right," they wrote, "but I walked outside Greenwich station and it's literally the same as the real-life location." 

Other players mentioned that you can find knockoff versions of English delicacy Heinz beans, Mr. Kipling's Cherry Bakewells, and a 'horse meat' food item - almost definitely a callback to the scandal where millions of products were recalled because supermarket chains were selling horse meat advertised as pure beef. The Fallout London team are, at the very least, big foodies.

Acclaim around an authentic city and interesting storyline isn't enough to drown out noise about, you know, the mod not properly working for some people. Several Reddit posts are littered with reports about Fallout London continually crashing, though one hero thankfully rounded up a list of potential fixes, so you can spend your weekend in another post-apocalypse completely unhindered. As long as the fixes actually fix your issues. 

Either way, it wouldn't feel like a proper Bethesda release without crossing your fingers to ward off the threat of a looming crash. Hell, even Fallout 4's long-awaited next-gen update didn't work properly. So, in other words, we're so back.

Fallout London arrived at the perfect time because Todd Howard recently said that Bethesda aren’t in a rush to develop more Fallouts: “I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things.”