Fallout 4’s (now more expensive) DLC doesn’t sound great

Fallout 4, for better or worse, wasn’t exactly all I was hoping for it to be last year. It’s a good RPG, just not a great one – making me long for the fond adventures I had in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3 and the slightly better Strip of New Vegas. One thing both of those games boasted along with their excellence was good, long DLC, with each receiving four substantial story add-ons that actually made the overall package a better one.

That’s not looking like the case for Fallout 4, and what’s worse is that Bethesda are expecting you to pay even more for their Season pass now too.

Last year Bethesda revealed that Fallout 4, like every other game on the market almost, would be getting a Season Pass consisting of four pieces of content. Sounded familiar enough, which made the blind leap into content that they couldn’t even detail at the time more acceptable. That content got a little less mysterious yesterday, and it’s somewhat spitting on the faces of the fans that blindly bought in.

The first, which comes out in March and costs $9.99, is called Automatron. With it you’ll be able to harvest “evil robots” and use their parts to make your own A.I controlled companions – fitted with all sorts of mods and voices to make them different. No story. The second, which comes out a month later and costs a measly $4.99, simply gives you cages to trap other poor wastelanders and pit them together in fights. It’s called Wasteland Workshop, and also has no story.

The third and final piece that Bethesda revealed is a little more in line with what I’d expect from a Fallout Season Pass. Far Harbour will give you a brand new questline within the Valentine Detective Agency, which will give you a front row seat to the conflict between Synths, The Children of Atom and and locals on a far off piece of the Marine. It’s a brand new story with a load of content, which is why it costs $24.99 alone.

Thing is, these three pieces of DLC form up three of the previously only four parts of the Season pass, which is running at retail for $29.99. It will stay that way until March 1st only however, when Bethesda will increase the price to $49.99 to accommodate even more content that they’re planning, but can’t share with anyone now. So really you’re being asked to pay even more for content you have no clue about – meaning it could very well end up being more bite-sized pieces of content that sound more like mods than real DLC.

It might just be a case of being too spoiled in the past by Fallout DLC, but it’s what makes me a little angrier about the thing. Bethesda are no strangers to great expansion content, so anaemic content that alters the game in a way that someone else could for free doesn’t really instil me with much faith for the rest of the planned content that fans are now expected to pay more for.

Last Updated: February 17, 2016