While Bethesda has long been an ardent supporter of mods and the modding community, Fallout 4 represents a new frontier for them- this is the first game in the series that will support mods on consoles (specifically, on Xbox One), and on PC, it will see Bethesda begin to de-emphasize Steam Workshop for modding, and push their own Bethesda.net service.
Speaking to IGN, Fallout 4 game director Todd Howard explained how Bethesda envisions mod support for the game working. He confirmed that they are hoping for the game to achieve the same kind of mod support that Skyrim did. “So, just like Skyrim, there are mods that can break your game pretty wildly, and so we have some safety things on the console for that, but at the same time, we are going to let people break their game. Because we try heavily not to.”
As for how mods will work, well, essentially, your save file will be copied, and you get one with the mods and one without- you choose which one you want to play on when you boot up the game. Howard also confirmed that Bethesda will not curate mods on consoles any more than they do on PC- which is to say, very little. This is in spite of the new Bethesda.net system that they are pushing this time around.
“We don’t want to. We’ll see how we have to go through that. The plan is that it goes through Bethesda.net, but … outside of things that we would normally take down — we take down things on Steam Workshop if it’s got things that are illegal, or things like that — we’ll do the same thing.”
Fallout 4 launches in November on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Mod support for the game launches early next year, and is presently confirmed only for the PC and Xbox One versions of the game. Stay tuned, and we will keep you posted on all news about the game.