Fallout 4 Is Going Green
The Fallout 4 mod project called Fallout: Cascadia is looking to craft a new story for the game in Seattle and, in many ways, bring nature and beauty to the series’ standard apocalyptic settings. By focusing on Seattle, Cascadia focuses on twisting the game’s usual muddy greys and dull blues with a unique combination of plant life and sunlight.
“The biggest difference and what truly makes us unique in visual atmosphere is the vegetation,” said Dr. Weird, the mod’s director of implementation. “We wanted to create a world where nature shows subtle signs of having returned to a more natural order.”
From the looks of the trailer, this appears to include green conifers, architecture covered in vines, and ferns and saplings scattered across the Earth for a more natural feel. And while all of the game’s textures and assets have been touched up, most of the foilage is created from scratch.
The team created Cascadia’s world by compiling photo albums created from scouting trips in Seattle, which were transformed into concept art for key areas.
“I would say our project is closer to an actual studio production with actual deadlines for certain parts of the project and that helps us keep not only afloat but progressing like a train on steroids,” Dr. Weird said.
With that being said, the mod is still a couple of years from being finished, and in that time anything can happen, including legal action from Bethesda. But whatever happens, it’s clear that what the team has accomplished thus far is a unique vision of the Fallout universe.
“In all of this greenery, the fate of the world still shines through, a skeleton in the dirt with roots climbing over it, the graffiti of the dying peering through some vines,” Dr. Weird said when speaking of Cascadia’s post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest. “The total destruction and annihilation of any and all constructs has always been clear in all of the Fallout games, instead we want to create an environment where you can wander into a area and forget what happened to the world for a little while while maintaining that ‘post apocalyptic’ feel we’ve all come to know and love.”