So an hour or so into my playthrough, by the time I reached the first semblance of society in the ruins of London, I have:

• Broken out of a lab,
• Been told to jump off a cliff via note,
• Derailed a train,
• Obtained a butterfly knife, from a shady man that my character keeps doing ticks with in dialog,
• Killed a man by trying to apply a bandage,
• And got attacked by men and women dressed as pirates.

Now, hours later, that energy is still ongoing and I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I had this much fun with an open world RPG. That fun can now be yours for the low price of a copy of Fallout 4.

If you’re somewhat entrenched in the Fallout fandom or the modding around Bethesda’s all-you-can-eat RPGs, you’ve probably heard about Fallout: London. It is an ambitious total conversion mod that takes the skeleton of Fallout 4 and creates a living, breathing world of its own.

A little warning upfront: If you’re not a fan of Fallout 4’s presentation, gameplay, and vibe, you won’t enjoy this mod either. While it has some clever tricks up its sleeve, under the hood it's still Fallout 4 wearing a tophat and speaking with a posh accent. What makes Fallout: London such a standout is the total commitment to the bit. It’s a Fallout game set in the now decrepit crown jewel of the former British Empire.

Seeing the city reimagined in that retro-futuristic aesthetic and the sheer level of detail bursting out of every nook and cranny can put even some of Bethesda’s efforts to shame. It helps that the city sports a more colorful palette compared to the greens, browns, and yellows of previous titles. London is a cramped city, but each district has a visual identity despite using a lot of the same assets. It's easy to get lost in its overgrown alleys and, if there's one thing to complain about, it is probably the obscene loading times when going in and out of buildings.

Your enjoyment of Fallout: London will depend on taste and standards, it’s a fully voiced mod but it's easy to pick out the self-indulgent dialog and amateur acting at times. There is a certain charm in this and I don’t want to knock it, but talking to four growly Englishmen who love to curse and use outlandish euphemisms back to back was the limit of what I could take. Quest structure also suffers from the same issue as Fallout 4, its nature as an RPG with hard status checks often grinds against its open world sandbox. There were a few times I had to intentionally fail certain dialog checks to progress a quest, instead of being able to work around them.

But after spending a good 10 or so hours with the mod, I’ve enjoyed it more than Bethesda’s takes on their respective franchise in the past decade. Fallout: London doesn’t take itself too seriously and loves to take the piss out of itself. There’s a Tea Crafting station, a British bulldog named Churchill, and an entire society of mutants who love to swim in the Thames.

This project is undoubtedly a labor of love, and while it is a nightmare to install it on the Steam version, the GoG version works flawlessly after installing a couple of fixes courtesy of the Fallout 4 modding community. It's on the same level as total conversion mods such as Enderal and Nehrim in that the good outweighs the bad by miles. Not only is this a strong showing for an international team that poured their all into the project, but it's also a statement piece in terms of fanfiction. Fallout; London might not be under the official banner of the franchise but it feels it always belonged there. It uses the blueprint of Fallout 4 to become its own thing and has more fun with the idea of a post-nuclear London than just being a Fallout fan game.