Monthly Modder: A Better World

Fallout modders continuously raise the bar for what is possible in the Commonwealth wasteland, and not just in the breadth of storytelling they create, but the depth as well.

This is certainly the case for Elijah Houck and the rest of the team behind ‘A Better World,’ (Bethesda.net, Nexus) a mod that is still in development but promises unique storytelling centered on characters, relationships, and tough choices, in addition to some stunning new locales.

In our Featured Modder interview, the team details how they formed, what their goals are for the project and what some of their greatest challenges have been. Recently, they released a pack of cabin workshop items to preview the assets and content that will be included in the full mod. It has us very excited to explore their original locations of Abbot County and Vault-Tec Plaza, and to meet Jo, Liz and Dolos when the full mod releases.

Tell us about your goals for 'A Better World.' What sort of experience are you creating?

Sure! As a really high-level summary: A Better World tells the story of two women on the run from the Institute, Jo and Liz, and their mission to create a better, safer world. To support this story, A Better World features a dual setting split between the vast wilderness of Abbot County and the derelict ruins of an underground pre-war shopping center called Vault-Tec Plaza.

With A Better World, we’re trying to tell a story that is a little more intimate than what you might normally expect from an open-world RPG (or a mod for one!) While of course there are larger stakes at play, and new factions to meet, we’re really trying to shine a light on the relationships between our core cast of three - Jo, Liz, and a mysterious character named Dolos - and the effect their choices have had on their little corner of the world. We really want to give players the space to learn deeply about and connect with these characters before we ask them to make narrative decisions.

A Better World is similar in scope to a large DLC like Far Harbor. Like the DLC, our story begins in the Commonwealth, with a cry for help encoded in a pre-war advertisement for Vault-Tec Plaza.

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What aspects of the Fallout universe are you most hoping to highlight with this content?

As you may have seen in our videos, Abbot County is stylistically very different than the wasteland of the Commonwealth. While it features the ruins of a prewar city (you’ll have to play the mod to find out which city,) these ruins are half-buried, flooded and overgrown. The wilderness above is teeming with greenery, and life is simpler. But even here, we play with themes that you can expect from all good Fallout stories. Some of that is a bit darker: technology gone awry, escapism and oppression. But alongside that, there’s hope, cooperation, and the rebuilding of something new from what came before.
Vault-Tec Plaza, however, is your more traditional Fallout experience, with crumbling ruins and capitalism taken to its inevitable end; for example, human workers being outpaced by automation and impulse purchases used to fund the end of the world. Additionally, given this is a shopping center built by our friends at Vault-Tec, you can expect that more sinister tales lie beneath the cheery retro futuristic stylings.

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How did you all find each other and form the team?

Justin Hardin (our Audio and Gameplay Lead) and I have worked together on Bethesda mods for something like 15 years. We first collaborated on a postapocalyptic recreation of my hometown called “Alton, IL” for Fallout 3. Later, we met Andreas Stavaas (our Environment Art Lead) while working on a Skyrim project that met an untimely end. The three of us reunited in 2021 to get A Better World off the ground. It is hugely motivating to have help from good friends to shape something new!

Later, as we started showing more of the project to the world, we met a bunch of lovely folks through our Discord community who have been interested in contributing to the project in one way or another. To everyone who has joined us in making this thing, I can’t thank you enough for all of your amazing ideas and creations.

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What are some of your greatest challenges in creating A Better World?

I think in these large projects, the biggest nail-biter is always scope management. It’s sometimes hard to be honest with yourself and manage everybody’s excitement to make cool stuff, with the actual capacity of a small team. Though in the end, I think it’s nice to look back at the cuts we made along the way, as often the things that fall to the side weren’t ultimately the best fit for the project. The streamlining can be painful, but ultimately makes for a better game.

What are your current priorities, and what remains to be done?

Our focus is on completing the landscape dressing pass for Abbot County (on track for this summer,) populating the world with a variety of new creatures, and completing the combat behaviors and loadouts for our two antagonistic factions. We see these as huge wins, as it plants a solid foundation for the remainder of the content we need to build.

Afterwards, we will continue to flesh out the final third of our main quest, populate our settled locations (and yes, this includes new, buildable settlements!), and finish the remainder of interior spaces.

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Lastly, what are a few of your favorite mods?

I asked the team, and here are a few of our favorites from across the decades:

Classic Holstered Weapons, Fallout 4, shavkacagarikia (Nexus): A lightweight but impressive mod that works immediately with almost all modded weapons. It’s a great example of the ingenuity of the community.

Wyrmstooth, Skyrim, Jonx0r (Bethesda.net: PC, Xbox; Nexus) : Nice world design and stellar quests. The custom soundtrack is a great addition.

And a classic - the Unique Landscapes Compilation, Oblivion (Nexus). These terrain mods were created by many talented authors, and it’s great to see such a wide breadth of creativity appear while on a sunset Cyrodiil stroll.