Yes, it is a substantially castrated feature. You’ll never get anything like Enderal on PS4.
Still much better than nothing, though.
I don’t think you can get something as large and complicated as Enderal on Xbox One either. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.) This limitation on PlayStation does limit mods quite a bit more than Xbox however.
I don’t see why not. Yes XB1 mods are capped at 2GB, but there’s no technical reason why that couldn’t be increased, and MS has been very supportive of Bethesda this cycle.
Oh, sure, they may not be impossible. I’m just saying that if you look through the mods on Xbox One right now, something like Enderal isn’t going to be available. It’s mostly limited scripts, costume and weapon packs, and cosmetic stuff. Total conversion stuff isn’t there.
There are very few total conversions for the PC version too. But the XBone allows user-created textures and sounds, right? So no reason why it couldn’t happen.
Okay, but it hasn’t happened in Fallout 4, so…
Enderal requires SKSE, so that would be another obstacle to releasing it on Xbox. The Skywind (the upcoming mod that recreates Morrowind in Skyrim) team have said it won’t be possible to port their mod for the same reason.
I’m not aware of any Fallout4 total conversions. They generally take years to make.
True that SKSE mods won’t work. That is a limitation, but not necessarily an insurmountable one. Stopping creators from using external assets definitely is.
What do they mean by “external assets”?
No custom textures. No custom sounds. No custom models. Only the assets available in the official editor.
That to me sounds like only basic edits, like difficulty level and scripts. Why wouldn’t they allow sound or graphics? I mean, 90% of the mods for these games have some kind of custom textures or model, or sound, or… That limitation would even remove some of the nice interface enhancements.
Bethesda mentioned this during the beta period. Either it was a technical hurdle that they couldn’t overcome, or it was a policy issue that neither Sony nor Bethesda would back away from. I guess this is the compromise. Simple mods only.
People can create new areas (dungeons and the like) they just have to stick to the official editor stuff.
Yes, and that’s a huge bummer. Skyrim mods were all about mounting up on Falkor the luck dragon from the neverending story and firing acidic lightning-etched pearly white ropes of jism from your three-headed penis trident down at unending armies of homunculai composed of animated budweiser light with lime bottles with stumpy turtle legs.
There are youtube channels that to this very day regularly release videos of awesome and/or bizarre skyrim mods. None of that is possible without new assets.
If you want the full mod experience, the place for that is and always will be the PC. I just can’t see that kind of freedom being afforded on a closed system like a console, and if a console stops being a closed system I am not convinced it would meaningfully be a console in the current sense anymore.
But some mods on console is surely better than none, for those folks who haven’t got a PC to play it in.
Xbone allows pretty much everything except hacking the executable, which is what SKSE and ENB do. You can add your own textures, sounds, models, etc.
It’s true that huge mods like Enderal do require executable hacks, but comparing Xbone and PS4 just because both are limited compared to PC is a false equivalency when the Xbone version is slightly limited and the PS4 is castrated.
If mods are the deciding factor, you should be playing on PC. If it’s not, the deciding factor is probably what platform you have. But sure, if for some reason you have both an Xbone and a PS4 and not a gaming PC and you care about mod access but not enough to get a PC, then the Xbone has a clear advantage. I can’t imagine that describes many people, but presumably they do exist.
Tons of people have both consoles but no gaming PC. Most people have laptops that can’t play much more than Minecraft.
The mods I want most for Fallout 4 should be doable?
- Extra backpack strength for when I replay in Survival Mode.
- A mod that makes Survival Mode better (don’t want enemies to be lame bullet sponges).
- A mod that ups the number of enemies that can attack a settlement at the same time.
- A mod that turns off that annoying hammering noise the settlers make.
Aside from that, what I also really badly want that probably won’t be made compatible is more/deeper story elements and expanded exploration :(
Then I would guess those people don’t really care that much about mods. Plenty of those same people played Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas on console with no mods at all, after all. Probably Skyrim, too.
I have all 3 platforms. I don’t generally care about mods, as I only have time to play through massive Bethesda games once. If I ever did replay them, I want mods, but I can usually buy them on PC a second time for that experience (usually at a massive sale price). But having mods on the Xbox version could be cool for Fallout 4, since my experience with Fallout 4 at launch made it feel like an open world shooter, similar in some ways to Far Cry 2, but in a post apocalyptic setting. I really enjoyed that rental, and figured I’d be back. But when I do go back, I might be willing to try out some mods on the Xbox version. I just really enjoy the shooter experience much more on the big TV rather than in my computer room.