There's a lot going on over at Bethesda right now: Skyrim: Special Edition is coming in October, The Elder Scrolls: Legends recently entered an open beta, and Nuka World, Fallout 4's latest expansion, is due later this month. However, while all those projects are moving forward, one highly-anticipated project from Bethesda remains far behind: mods for Fallout 4 on the PlayStation 4.
Many fans are aware of this, and as expected, they aren't too happy about it. Unfortunately, as vice president of Public Relations and Marketing at Bethesda, Pete Hines has been bearing the brunt of their fury.
By now, it should be no secret that mod support for Fallout 4 on the PS4 is long overdue, as Bethesda and Sony are still working on sorting out its many issues. When pressed about why there hasn't been an update about the subject, Hines stated that he can't say anything "until the evaluation process is over" and that he doesn't have "any new info of any kind."
@kfckfc123kfc I'm saying I can't invent news until the evaluation process is over and until that happens im not gonna say nothing
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 7, 2016
Reservations about news stories about non-news aside (which is likely as frustrating as an announcement about an announcement), the mod debacle on the PS4 has become a source of anger for many fans over the past few months. As you might recall, Bethesda announced on Twitter back in May that Fallout 4 Mods were "still on track" for June, while Xbox One owners would get theirs by the end of the month.
Xbox One players got theirs on time (and in largely working condition), but those on the PlayStation 4 were in for quite a shock when their turn came around on June 15. The Creation Kit 1.5.4 Update had three main problems: lack of sound file support, memory and performance issues when PC textures are used and a storage limit capped at 900 MB.
The Creation Kit was officially delayed at the end of June, and there haven't been any updates since, leaving fans to wonder when it would be fixed and come back (or if it even would). Fast-forward to the present, and PS4 players are starting to get antsy.
To be fair, delays happen, and that's fine. However, there has been no communication about the matter whatsoever, which certainly isn't. The latest update has been that Sony and Bethesda were working on the matter. Of course, that's hardly an update, as that was what Bethesda alleged back in June.
Amazingly enough, the biggest problem isn't even the fact that mods for the PS4 are long overdue. It's the fact that this is just another instance of problems that Bethesda has had with Sony consoles.
For instance, although the Far Harbor expansion had a number of problems across all platforms, the PS4 stands out because it was the only one with a fix that involved having to reinstall the game. Before that, the PS3 version of Skyrim (around the time Dawnguard came out) had a glitch that caused the game to freeze whenever you entered a body of water of a certain depth. The fix for this problem? Delete your game data files, and that was before Bethesda released a fix of its own.
What's more, this also leads to another problem: what does the lack of mods for Fallout 4 mean for Skyrim: Special Edition on the PS4? Aside from offering the chance for PlayStation owners to go back to the northern realm of Skyrim, the primary draw of the game are mods. However, if mods aren't present for Fallout 4 by then, they probably won't be present for Skyrim, either. Even if it does debut on Fallout 4 by then, does that mean fans can expect a similar delay once Skyrim rolls around?
Actually, scratch that — it would hardly be surprising if the launch of Skyrim: Special Edition marks when mods for both games arrive.
Complaints aside, late mods are obviously better than no mods, but it would be great if Bethesda and Sony could clue us in on what's going on. As time goes on, maybe we'll be graced with a real update and not something that we've known about for months now.
