Fallout 4: New Settlement Mode DLC: Contraptions and Vault-Tec; Release Dates/Trailer and More!

The first Fallout 4 DLC announced at E3 was titled Contraptions, and as its namesake suggests, the DLC adds a ton of tools such as timers, weights, conveyor belts, and more that'll look geared towards enticing the more creative-minded settlement builders.

A category in which I certainly suffer in, as I'd probably be lucky to even have the necessary skill points to be allowed to build most of these things.

much less do it efficiently.

However, to those players who can build calculators and video phones in Minecraft, I'm really excited to see what the community comes up with here.

It looks like it's got a lot of potential in that regard.

It even seems that from the trailer that players can mass produce certain items, so it'll certainly be interesting to see what exactly the community can make of this DLC when it releases literally next week.

That's right, this DLC hits next week.

Now, as far as pricing, we have no definitive information as of yet, but honestly, I would be very surprised if it was priced anything higher than $10.

The previous Workshop DLC only costed about $5, so it's likely it'll fall somewhere in that ballpark.

These Workshop DLCs are typically geared towards a very specific audience of players, and I think Bethesda recognizes that, so I can't imagine this DLC being anything terribly pricey.

The second DLC announced by Bethesda was known as Vault-Tec, and is set to release this July.

This DLC contains the tools to essentially build your own vault in settlement mode, as well as what appeared to be my favorite asset, and quote, "...run experiments on your dwellers," which speaks to all of our inner sadists, if you will.

I'm not entirely sure what that means by experiments on your dwellers...

Perhaps they're going to go full on with this DLC, letting us pick our own overseer, I don't know, but it looks like if done right, it could be quite a fun DLC.

However, to those of you who use mods frequently on PC, or even Xbox One now, this concept may sound oddly familiar to you.

That's because there's a mod that essentially allows for you to do the exact same thing as this DLC is proposing, save for the experimenting on dwellers.

This mod is titled Build Your Own Vault, and lets you do that in any of your settlements, letting you build from the ground up your own personal vault in a very similar fashion to the one this DLC appears to be promoting.

And that right there bodes what I believe to be a very interesting question.

Was Bethesda perhaps a little bit too generous with mods for their own good? Now, by no means am I criticizing Bethesda's choice to give the community so many tools and assets to build and create their own mods, and then proceed to even get to port them over to consoles.

I think those were some of the most admirable decisions I've ever seen being made by a gaming company.

But what I am suggesting here is that perhaps Bethesda's options for possible DLC are being limited or at least somewhat hindered due to the fact that the community is able to create so much with these tools.

This Voltec DLC is an excellent example.

The community Bethesda themselves created and spawned pretty much came up with an equal product to what Bethesda themselves were developing both earlier and for free.

And if they haven't already, I think Bethesda is going to learn that the only way to compete with these free mods is to create a far superior product.

Meaning that these small DLCs Bethesda is doing, like the Workshop ones, like the Automatron DLC, that can all be emulated and done by modders, oftentimes, as appears to be the case with the Volt mod, even earlier than Bethesda can produce them.