‘Fallout: London’ is setting records, and setting its own record straight with a massive update.
It’s been two weeks since Fallout: London arrived, for free, and earlier than expected. As propositions go, it’s amazing: a fan-made Fallout DLC, which passes as official, that finally takes the franchise out of the U.S.–with knowing nods to its host, the original nation that tried to lay waste to American freedom.
Even though Fallout: London is essentially irresistible to even the most passive Fallout fans, it turns out that even GOG discovered it was way more popular than it expected. In the first 24 hours alone, London was claimed more than 500,000 times– the fastest redeemed game on GOG in its 16-year history.
The company attributed to developer Team FOLON’s “passion and creativity” and how it can “bring in a plethora of new, exciting ways to enjoy a game.” Still, the release of Fallout: London, despite GOG’s open commitment to making the installation work with an admittedly convoluted process–one that proved less than optimal.
Discussing those first few days, GOG said a lot of user problems arose from “missteps in the complex Steam installation,” though it, alongside Team FOLON, is learning from those early issues. Over the last couple of weeks, Team FOLON has taken time to offer individual troubleshooting to users via social media channels and its official Discord server, which now boasts over 82,000 members.
The ‘Atta-Boy’ is probably the finest ‘Fallout’-related pun you’ll ever hear.
Naturally, a lot of common issues have been identified, which has led to Fallout: London’s first update. While there doesn’t appear to be a massive fault among them, the team has put together a number of hotfixes that fix quests, gameplay bugs, NPC issues, plus additional modifications to dialog and audio.
You can check out the full list of changes in a hosted doc here. Hopefully Team FOLON and GOG will start putting them online properly, rather than Google Docs, but if needs must. Arguably the most important change is that the “Aluminium Tray now has British spelling,” and if this wasn’t a fan-made project, Brits like me would’ve demanded the head of the writer who made that mistake.
For what it’s worth, the guy that incorrectly named “aluminum” is Sir Humphry Davy, a man who’s coincidentally and clearly missing a letter from his own name. There are so many theories as to why it’s changed over the years, but the accepted line is that Sir Humphry called it “aluminum,” realised it didn’t fit with other metals in the periodic table, then changed it in the U.K. only, well before the metal was commonly used. The U.S. went its way, we went ours, but put it on the record that we Brits are more correct on this very specific thing, and we really need little victories these days, so don’t take this away from us, thanks.