Fallout 4’s Big Next-Gen Update: The Good, The Bad, And The Busted

Fallout 4’s free next-gen update is finally here, and it’s brought plenty of headaches with it. Patching in a 60fps mode for free on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S is a nice reason to dive back into one of Bethesda’s more controversial and arguably underappreciated post-apocalyptic RPGs, but some notable hang-ups are holding fans back from celebrating just yet.

Out April 25 nine years after the game’s original release and just in time to capitalize on the Fallout TV show, the Fallout 4 upgrade fixes some long-standing bugs, gives away creation club content and weapon bundles, and enhances the visuals on console with a quality mode prioritizing detail and a performance mode prioritizing framerate. Unfortunately, things start to get messy from there.

PC players seem to be getting the worst of it. Some report that the improvements are barely noticeable, while new performance issues, crashes, and busted mods make for a bad trade-off. One thread over on the Steam Discussions page ominously labeled “How bad is the update?” lists many of the problems, including the “weapon debris” setting crashing games when left on and long load times after hitting Concord in the main questline.

Ultra-wide support also appears to be rough, with the game stretching the UI across the screen, making it look thick and distorted. “No discernible difference between the official ultrawide support and the old fashioned edit-the-config method, still need an additional mod for a usable HUD,” wrote one player. Other PC players are frustrated that the update doesn’t include any DLSS support or bumped framerate performance. A few players are having trouble getting the game to launch at all now, and Fallout 4 is in an especially sorry state on Steam Deck at the moment.

Things are much better on console, though even there players are facing some frustrating wrinkles. On Xbox Series X/S, there appears to be a bug that locks the next-gen version to the 60fps mode. “Disabling the performance mode seemingly does nothing,” reported Digital Foundry analyst Thomas Morgan on Twitter. “It stays at 60fps and the res bound stays the same.” Others were confused as to why they couldn’t initially spot any changes between the modes. “I was switching back and forth earlier, and I thought I was tripping because I couldn’t find the difference,” wrote one player on the Xbox subreddit.

On PlayStation 5, everything seems to be in order with the update itself. Instead, the problem is that not everyone can access it. Fallout 4 is included in the PS Plus Extra subscription library, just like it is on Game Pass, but players who had acquired the game that way couldn’t initially download the update for free. Some even went ahead and bought the game manually because they didn’t want to wait.

That issue was cleared up overnight, at least for some players. Anyone on PS5 who owned Fallout 4 through the PS Plus Collection from when the console launched are still being locked out. There’s no update yet on if that’s by design or not, so base-tier PS Plus subscribers are left debating whether to wait, upgrade their membership, or just buy the game at its full $20 price (it was discounted to $5 prior to the next-gen update’s launch).

A much more minor yet still confusing issue on PS5 is related to downloading Fallout 4’s DLCs. To install the next-gen version, all of the existing DLCs need to be first deleted from the console. The versions of the DLC don’t automatically download with the rest of the PS5 version either. And even once players go to retrieve them, the PS5 versions of DLC add-ons Automatron (which is fixed now), Far Harbor, and more will seem hidden until you press X to show the download queue. From there players will still need to cancel the PS4 versions from downloading. That’s a Sony issue rather than a Bethesda one but it’s still annoying.

It might have been easier to look past things like missing textures in the new Makeshift Weapon pack or integral mods being broken until fixes can be rushed out, if not for the critical mass of low-level frustrations around the next-gen update. Hopefully, it all gets squared away soon. After all, there’s unlikely to be another new single-player Fallout until the 2030s.

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