Cel-Shaded ‘Fallout 4’ Is Loveliest Use Of Mods Yet, Post-Apocalypse Goes ‘Borderlands’

There have been many mods released for the PC version of Fallout 4 that either upgrade the role-playing game’s graphics or bring something insanely unique to the experience. A new tweak introduced by one fan takes the game in a Borderlands-ish cell-shaded direction that may be one of the most visually-appealing alterations yet.

Reddit user Reddit_is_wrong shared his stylized take on Fallout 4 along with a set of instructions on what mods to use to achieve the same result. As noted, this isn’t a single mod, but it is actually a set of different mods combined together with a SweetFX/Reshade ENB injector.

“I started off with a SweetFX preset for Fallout 4 and then tweaked the.ini file to turn on the “cartoon” cell shader. You can customize the.ini file to your liking, how strong the border is…etc,” Reddit_is_wrong wrote before explaining why he experimented with the cel-shaded look.

“Personally given how dated Fallout 4‘s graphics look, it’s a wonder why they didn’t try to go for a more stylized look instead of trying to go for a realistic aesthetic. If you’re going to go for a realistic art style but end up using textures which are much blurrier than gamers see in other games, it really destroys the suspension of disbelief. I remember in the first hour walking into the Museum of Freedom and seeing that N64 era banner texture in the main hall and thinking this game should take the Borderland route and use a more cartoony aesthetic. Thank you Sweet FX.”

A separate post by the Reddit user shared the.ini file that should be downloaded for those interested in testing out a cel-shaded Fallout 4 along with some of the mods used that can be downloaded from NexusMods.

“For cartoon settings I have this set:

>#define CartoonPower 10.0

>#define CartoonEdgeSlope 1.0

I’m also using these:

Darker Nights

Fr4nssons Light Tweak

Fallout 4 Enhanced Color Correction

and a bunch of texture mods.”

There are some caveats that must be noted when using these mods and the cartoon settings, however. This will affect the performance of Fallout 4 to some degree. How much depends on the power of your PC gaming rig and the graphics settings being used.

The cel-shading also has the unfortunate side effect of messing with the text on the user interface and potentially making your Pip-Boy, and other menu items, hard to read. Reddit user whargarbl135 provides the following screenshot as an example with Fallout 4 running at 1080p. He does mention that it was hard to read, but looked better in motion and is playable.

This will be one of those areas where you will have to play with the CartoonPower and CartoonEdgeSlope settings in the.ini file provided to find the happy middle ground between cel-shaded graphics and being able to read the menus. Perhaps another enterprising modder will discover a way to enable cel-shading in the game without affecting the UI text.

The Fallout 4 modding community is truly picking up steam at this point. There are dozens of useful mods that have been released via NexusMods. There is everything available from weapon and graphical tweaks to full sets of new items to use when constructing your settlement. You can even replace Deathclaws with Randy “Macho Man” Savage or Thomas the Tank Engine if that’s how you want to roll.

Bethesda Softworks has not signaled when it plans to release official Fallout 4 mod tools. They originally stated it would be sometime in 2016 and followed up recently by asking fans to “stay tuned” for news about the release of the new Creation Kit.

The release of the new Creation Kit for Fallout 4 will also signal the start of mod use on the Xbox One presumably followed by the PlayStation 4. One thing to watch out for on the console mods are the types Bethesda will allow, since the console machines don’t have the performance flexibility of PCs.

[Image via Reddit]