It's easy to assume that, for the most part, fans never had any real issues with the weather system in Fallout 4. It's there mostly for decoration: watching fog roll in or a radioactive storm sweep overhead is great, but it doesn't do much in terms of actual gameplay. It's a beautiful form of set-dressing ... but that's about it.
As with most Bethesda games, the fans are already making some impressive mods: new weapons, new costumes and new mechanics are all par for the course at this point. And, while weather mods were popular in Fallout 3, most would think that similar mods would be a bit of a redundancy in Fallout 4 — fans are busy building lightsabers and giving classic Nintendo games the post-apocalyptic treatment, not tweaking the game's weather system, right?
Surprise: not only is the 'True Storms' weather effects mod designed to intensify Fallout 4's already-impressive storms, it's quickly become the game's most popular mod by a wide margin.
In all honesty, the mod is beautiful. The weather in the standard version of Fallout 4 is great, but True Storms takes it to an entirely new level. Modder FadingSignal went out of their way to include new intensities, new ambient tracks and even entirely new storms — a lot of open-world games don't even bother with weather in the first place, and one modder has basically recreated an entire system by themselves. At that point, it doesn't matter if you're a Fallout fan or not — that's impressive.
The full list of additions and improvements are as follows:
• Intense visuals during rainstorms — distant fork and sheet lightning in the sky!
• All-new heavy rain/dust textures, materials, visual effects, and particle geometry for truly heavy storms!
• No more “white rain” — particle materials are now using proper alpha blending and lighting, and are affected by the ambient lighting conditions.
• 20 all-new, intense thunder sounds, and a new method for much more unpredictable/random playback.
• New interior sounds for all weathers: wind, rain, radstorm, and thunder sounds for all rain types, but only inside locations where it makes sense.
• New weather types, with new particles/materials, including radiation rain, heavy dust storms, heavy fogs, heavy/light rain, and more!
• Weather chances have been slightly altered to give a little bit more diversity (the vanilla game heavily favors sunny weather.)
• Weather will stick around just a little bit longer — you will no longer experience 4 or 5 different weathers in a single day.
• Vanilla night brightness and several darkness levels available, for compatibility with darker nights mods.
• Volume slider for new thunder and rain sounds to give you more control for your audio setup.
• Heavy Fog and Light Fog - The Commonwealth at midnight when fog is rolling through is absolutely chilling. (Fog effects by Prod80!)
• Heavy and Light Rain - Rain storms are now heavy and loud, but there’s still a chance for soft rain, also with it’s own textures and sounds.
• Radiation Rain - Rads fall from the sky in two variants, heavy with 8 rads/sec (better pop a Rad-X!) and light rain, at 1 rad/sec.
• Heavy Dust Storm - Very low chance to occur, but you won’t want to get stuck outside when this hits.
If you were hoping that trips through the Commonwealth were just a bit more inclement, you can download the full True Storm mod from FadingSignal's Nexus Mods page.
