Improving visual fidelity and the overall graphics quality of Bethesda games is one of the most honorable goals any modder can set for themselves.

Feb 24, 2016  Via NexusMods. Thanks to Fallout 4, Red Rocket gas stations have become an iconic image in Fallout lore, representing the crisis that started it all and the fall of an entire civilization. Red Rockets Glare by Ceaseless and PDE is a lighting mod that restores power to the gas stations’ neon lights so that they glow tiredly, like the dying embers of the old world. Synth Nate in the SRB Lounge of the Institute; Synth Gloria at the firing range in the Advanced Systems room of the Institute; Synth Nora in the steam shower section of the Director's room; Looking for more Fallout full conversion mods that offer extended stories and new ways to play? Check out our full run down of best Fallout mods here!

It’s what keeps the games fresh and relevant, long after Bethesda’s own people have stopped updating them.

After the utter failure that was Fallout 76, keeping Fallout 4 exciting and beautiful has acquired a whole new meaning.

We can’t give in to despair. And there’s no time to waste vilifying Todd Howard. We’re most likely not getting any new Fallout content in a while, and we’ve got to make do with what we have to quench the thirst for retro-apocalyptic adventures.

If people are still updating and enjoying Skyrim after almost 10 years, what excuse do we have not to do the same with Fallout 4?

If you’re looking to give your game a facelift but don’t know where to start your journey towards absolute immersion, our texture mods ranking below is sure to point you in the right direction.

12. Fallout Texture Overhaul – PipBoy

I’ve always believed it’s the small things, the details, that make or break a game.

In this case, it’s the humble but ever-present PipBoy that’ll change to improve your experience.

This mod by prolific modder Gorgulla augments the resolution on the PipBoy textures greatly and adds much more detail to the model. Not only that, but it applies ambient occlusion to it as well.

If you’re up for it, you can also add a glass texture to the PipBoy’s screen or even crack it!

And don’t worry about it becoming harder to use. On the contrary, the mod will also enhance utility on the map so you have an easier time getting around.

11. Fallout Texture Overhaul – Power Armors

Also by Gorgulla comes another similar improvement, this time to something quite a bit larger – Power Armors.

Much like the PipBoy overhaul did for the retrofuturistic smartwatch, this mod promises highly-detailed and crisp textures on all power armors including every paint job, although I find that it works wonders with the plain version.

The results are striking.

As an added benefit, users can choose whether to use 4K or 2K textures depending on their needs and the power of their system.

10. Synth Overhaul – C.A.S.T

And if modifying the entirety of your exoskeleton arsenal isn’t enough, you may as well go ahead and overhaul the entirety of the synth species.

That’s exactly what MaaroTakai set out to do with their C.A.S.T mod, and the results speak for themselves.

The mod promises to add much-needed variety to the synths of the Wasteland and the Institute alike by introducing hundreds of new different armor variations including helmets, weapons, uniforms and more.

Not only do they change in color, but there are glowing and chromed armor pieces too.

No two synth encounters will be the same again.

9. Clean Water of the Commonwealth

After almost 300 years have passed since the bombs dropped, science suggests the environment in general and especially water would have recovered already – and yet, water in Fallout 4 is usually filthy or outright radioactive.

Thanks to modder Feyawen, that no longer needs to be like that.

With the Clean Water of the Commonwealth mod all bodies of water will look cleaner and fresher than ever before.

The mod includes three water color options, ranging from “just clear” to an unnaturally bright blue you’d associate with the beaches of Aruba, in the form of the Tropical Shaded version.

8. Better Handmade Weapon Textures

While the water of the Wasteland could use a little more realism to look better, handmade weapons would benefit from the contrary.

Really rusty things will indeed take on an unnaturally bright shade of orange color with time. But it honestly looks terrible on your handmade weapons.

That’s where user Mike_trx comes in with their improved textures that’ll take your handmade weapons from an embarrassingly ugly abomination to a more somber look of worn metal and aged wood.

7. Improved Map With Visible Roads

If you liked the PipBoy overhaul feature that improved the visibility of the map, but couldn’t quite get around to accepting why you’d spend valuable resources making your PipBoy 4K, then this is the mod for you.

It’ll greatly improve your quality of life by swapping the map textures with new ones highlighting roads, train tracks, topography, and the waterline to help you get around without damaging your sight.

Some map markers have even been moved to better describe the actual in-game landscape!

6. Wasteland Creatures Redone – Retexture Compilation

Personally, I prefer not spending hours upon hours gathering mods to improve my game.

If I can install a couple and be done with it at first, that’s for the better.

Thanks to NexusMods user Stabcops, sprucing up the creatures in the game falls in the realm of possibility for someone like me. Yesudas carnatic songs.

It compiles several retexture mods for creatures such as the Brahmin, Bloatflies, Deathclaws, and Mirelurks from all across the Wasteland.

It’ll make them look more vicious and radioactive, while also adding more noticeable variety to members of the same species.

The best part? It doesn’t cost you a single fps.

5. Hi-poly Faces

The faces in Fallout 4 are notoriously better than those of previous Bethesda titles. But that doesn’t mean they can’t use a bit of improvement.

My favorite mod for better visages is Hi-poly Faces by SQr17, as it smooths out the edges and makes everything less pointy without changing the art style and overall feel of the game’s characters.

All animations continue to work just as well as in vanilla, and you shouldn’t really experience any FPS drops whatsoever unless you’re barely even running the game with your setup.

4. Fallout 4 Texture Optimization Project

And if that’s the case, you’ll be pleased to hear that not all hope is lost.

You can get extra FPS through several means, and installing the Fallout 4 Texture Optimization Project mod is one of the best.

Modder Torcher realized the vanilla game uses many unnecessarily large textures that consume too many resources for their quality. So they set out to compress and resize textures individually in hopes of improving performance.

Who needs 2K grass textures, right?

The result is a significant FPS gain in most setups without any serious loss of graphical fidelity. Very nice!

3. High-Resolution Texture Pack

On the other side of the spectrum, we find the High-Resolution Texture Pack for Fallout 4.

This is a mod that promises to improve the look and feel of the game for those with systems good enough to run it.

It was created by modder Valus by tweaking the textures individually and, in some cases, replacing them entirely with more detailed ones.

Depending on your system, you can choose between the 2K improvement or the full 4K UHD treatment.

2. Vivid Fallout

There is, however, a mod that promises to both beautify the game and make the textures consume less V-Ram than the original ones… which seems too good to be true until you try it out yourself.

Vivid Fallout – All in One is a compilation of all Vivid Fallout mods by Hein84.

He’s been working ever since the game came out to overhaul all landscape textures including roads, rocks, bridges, and even concrete to make them look sharper and more realistic.

This is my go-to mod whenever I install Fallout 4 for a new playthrough.

And considering how heavily endorsed it is in the Nexus, I’d say I’m not alone in my praise.

1. Fallout 4 Seasons

But by far the most amazing texture mod is Fallout 4 Seasons, a modular install that lets you simulate the passing of seasons in Fallout 4’s Wasteland.

Modder FrogprincessQ4 and GameDuchess joined forces to create four different texture packs that will bring the green and lush of Spring, the dry heat of Summer, the bright colors of Autumn and the white snow of Winter to the Commonwealth.

Regrettably, rather than leaving it to an in-game season-cycling system, you’ll have to activate each season yourself.

But I can assure you the absolute makeover this gives your Fallout 4 is worth the little extra effort.

Fallout, as a franchise, has always been a series about telling stories from the post-apocalyptic world it takes place in. These stories are often filled with many emotions relating to the struggles of living in a post-apocalyptic world from various perspectives. Sometimes, these stories are about the survival of the human race, sometimes they’re about the brutality of humanity when pushed to the brink, and more recently – about what it means to be a human being.

It’s no secret that synthetic human beings are a massive part of Fallout 4’s story and focus. Called synths by those living in the Commonwealth, these are androids created by an advanced scientific organization known as the Institute. Synths are cybernetic organisms designed to resemble humans and house advanced automated intelligence, but are often discriminated against due to the Institute conspiracy that surrounds them.

In the Fallout franchise, synths are separated into three different generations. Generation 1 synths are entirely mechanical humanoids who are skeletal in appearance and thus a rough representation of a living human being. Like Generation 1, Generation 2 synths are also mechanical, but have more advanced frames covered in plastic skin panels. While they certainly don’t appear human up close, from a distance they could be easily mistaken as a normal human being. Generation 3 synths are most advanced and developed of the whole stock. Each has a bio-mechanical body capable of bleeding, respiration, digestion and exhaustion along with the capacity to process emotions and sensations. These Generation 3 synthetics are completely identical to human beings outside of a chip placed within them and thus are the main focus of Fallout 4’s story.

In order for the Institute to fully develop the Generation 3 synths they needed to obtain a pre-war test subject to experiment with. By obtaining the DNA of said subject they could finish their work on the third generation and send them out into the world. After finding out that pre-war humans remained in cryostasis, the Institute send out one of their mercenaries Conrad Kellogg to retrieve a pre-war human for their experiments – which takes place as your character’s son is taken from you at the beginning of the game in Fallout 4. The rest, as players of the game are well aware, is history.

Throughout the entirely of Fallout 4 players encounter a wide variety of synths across the wasteland as they complete the game. These synths are often hostile if affiliated with the Institute and are essentially the bogyman of the Commonwealth area, but can also be found as autonomous beings who just want to live out their lives like normal. See, unlike normal humans, synths can have their memory wiped numerous times – and if theyve managed to escape from the Institute, they are property the organization is trying to get back.

In many cases these Generation 3 synths just want to go out and live their lives free of the Institutes control. During the game players encounter many such synths alongside others who are now unwanted projects, such as the companion detective Nick Valentine. Considered a unique synth, Nick was one of two prototypes that bridged the gap between Generation 2 and Generation 3 synths who was imprinted with the memories and personality of a pre-war detective who volunteered for the project. Up until recently though, we thought he was the only unique synth – and we were wrong.

In the latest DLC for Fallout 4, Far Harbor, we come across Nick Valentine’s brother DiMA. Unlike his brother, DiMA was allowed to freely develop his own personality through experience until the two of them escaped the Institute together. While DiMA remained a free thinker however, Nick was disoriented and attacked him due to his personality imprint which caused the two to part ways. After being separated from his brother DiMA fled to the island of Far Harbor to hide from the Institute but without a programmed objective for his existence he merely sat – until he came to the conclusion that he could define his own objective in life. That decision resulted in him founding a haven for synths which is now known as Acadia.

Throughout Fallout 4 many players worked to try and understand the entire theme behind synth stories like Nick and DiMA’s but ultimately it’s a difficult thing to comprehend; to feel as a player who merely walked out of Vault 111 in search of his or her son. But in Far Harbor Bethesda flipped the entire concept in a way that really makes you question your existence (as a character within the game, of course).

Upon meeting DiMA for the first time he will pose a question to the player, suspecting that there is another reason for your arrival: he’ll ask you if you’re a synth.

As this conversation plays out DiMA will ask you to look for the typical signs synths find in their lives that make them question their existence including holes in your memory, feelings of unexplained isolation and unexplained dreams. He’s asking you to question your humanity, and the result for me was a series of mixed emotions. He asked me about my first memory, which as a player was the beginning of the game – where I took care of my son, prepared for my day and ran into Vault 111. DiMA was right, I didn’t have a memory of my characters first kiss, his first best friend or his experiences in the military. So was it truly possible, was it possible that my character was a synth?

It honestly makes a lot of sense based on the facts surrounding the Institute and their progress surrounding Generation 3 synths. The player character entered Vault 111 around 2077 when the Great War first began and was cryogenically frozen as part of the Vault’s experiment. Based on what we know the first Generation 3 synths were created around 2227, which is when Kellog comes into Vault 111 with scientists from the Institute and kidnaps your son for his DNA to finish their development. Once your son is captured though, you’re knocked out once again and we don’t know what happens until 2287 when you escape the Vault.

The running theory here is that during those 60 years after Shaun was kidnapped by the Institute they came back into Vault 111 and took your human body, replacing you with a Generation 3 synth imprinted with your memories as some form of test. If true, it means that your character would be one of the first Generation 3 synths who successfully was imprinted and carried out the life of their original being as if nothing had every happened – which in the end is the ultimate goal of the Institute.

Based on the choices you can make in the game this realization really hits home, especially considering that you can become a member of factions like the Brotherhood of Steel and the Railroad who have a severe hatred of everything the Institute stands for. Imagine how successful the Institute would consider themselves if one of their Generation 3 synths actually fought against them to rescue his or her son as a Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel.

Even if you ended up siding with the Institute in Fallout 4 though, the concept of your character being a synth remains with purpose. By going to find your son and taking his place as the leader of the Institute, it proves that the process has gone full-circle and a Generation 3 synth now leads the Institute in your son’s place. In a way true humanity was replaced by synth creations, which is one of the goals behind the Institute in the first place.

No matter what you believe to be true about your character, Bethesda really hit home with this narrative decision by helping to explain the struggle of being a synthetic individual in the world of Fallout 4. It’s worth pointing out that there are plenty of reasons working against the idea of your character being a synth too – such as when Father discusses his personal choice to wake you from cryostasis at the beginning of the game. But either way, it’s a great introduction for a new crazy way to view Fallout 4 we didn’t see coming.