Fully voiced DLC-sized Fallout 4 mod adds 50 quests and a new ending
The Fens Sheriff's Department is recruiting.
Back in 2019, modder MunkySpunk uploaded The Bleachers, a Fallout 4 mod that added a new district to Diamond City, beneath the bleacher seats of Fenway Park stadium. It was well-received, becoming "mod of the month" for October on Nexus Mods, and MunkySpunk's been working on an expanded version ever since.
Two-and-a-bit years later, The Fens Sheriff's Department has arrived. Building on The Bleachers, it plonks a significantly enlarged new area under the stadium's bleachers, with "two residential districts, a commercial district, two restaurants, and The Fens Sheriff's Department, populated by 15 uniquely named and voiced NPCs."
There's a storyline to go with it, in which the paramilitary FSD pushes out into the Fens where Diamond City Security fears to tread. There are sidequests and radiant quests too, as well as a questline involving a recruitable companion who has 4,700 of the mod's 17,500 total lines of voiced dialogue. None of those are for the protagonist, by the way, who stays silent for the duration.
You can also choose to side with the FSD over any of the existing factions in Fallout 4, in which case—assuming you haven't already finished the main storyline on the same save—there's a new ending you can unlock. Other additions include a new player safehouse, new workshop items, four new weapons (the FSD Tomahawk, FSD Blade, the FSD Synth Head Mace, and the Flamer Pistol), and a new paint job for your power armor complete with animated police lights.
If you've also got the popular companion mod Heather Casdin installed, its creator LlamaRCA has recorded almost 150 lines of additional dialogue in case you bring her along on the new quests. To pal around with multiple companions, Unlimited Companions Framework is recommended for bypassing the regular follower limit. It's worth it just to have Dogmeat around without having to dismiss someone.
If you've already installed The Bleachers, you'll need to uninstall that before installing The Fens Sheriff's Department, as all the earlier mod's contents have been included in a tweaked and improved form. Though if you're halfway through it, you should wrap that questline up first. Oh, and if you're a fan of Chris Livingston favorite Sim Settlements 2, don't worry, The Fens Sheriff's Department is fully compatible with it.
To trigger the mod's questline, head to Diamond City and find the Left Field Diner up the ramp at the back of the stadium. Walk in, and an NPC will approach to set things off.
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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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