Whether it’s pre-war Chinese soldiers lurking below the soil, killer power armour for raider bosses or imposing Brotherhood of Steel gunships patrolling the skies, Fallout 4 modders have added a lot of interesting things to The Commonwealth in recent months.
That said, sometimes the best Fallout 4 mods can be ones that simply bring something familiar from previous games in the series, such as Fallout 3’s Gary clones, to Boston, giving you a helpful dose of nostalgia as you fight for survival.
If you’re a vault dweller who enjoyed watching the Fallout 4 New Vegas team showcase their progress on re-creating the Mojave in Fallout 4’s engine late last year, a new mod by some of that project’s contributors might be worth adding to your load order.
Feel like taking on Fallout 4 with some trusty sidearms from previous wasteland adventures?
The mod in question is called ‘AEP-7 Laser Pistol and Pew-Pew - F4NV’ and is the work of a group of modders led by ShimSham000, whose previous work has given the Sole Survivor the ability to hospitalise foes by hitting them with a medical crutch and spruced up the camouflage paint jobs on offer for power armour.
This time, with some help from a crew of fellow modders including Cadavver and xrendermanx, they’ve brought the iconic AEP-7 Laser Pistol pistol from Fallout 3 and New Vegas to The Commonwealth as a standalone model, separate from the base game’s modular laser pistol/rifle.
Alongside the regular version of this classic energy weapon, which can be fitted with an array of modifications from New Vegas and Fallout 4 at a weapons workbench, come several unique variants you’ll recognise from your trips to Capital and Mojave wastelands.
Tucked away in various hidden nooks across Boston are Colonel Autumn's Pistol, Smuggler's End and Protectron's Gaze from Fallout 3, along with Fallout New Vegas’ Pew-Pew.
The latter of which you might be glad to hear can currently be obtained without becoming a Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle cap collector, though ShimSham000 does seemingly have plans to create a unique quest based around obtaining it at some point.
Also on the table for future updates are custom sounds and some new third-person animations for the pistols.
Before installing away and heading off to bag yourself a fresh, but familiar futuristic firearm, you’ll need to grab codeblackcrash’s ‘Munitions - Ammo Expansion Project’ and make sure your game has Fallout 4’s Automatron and Nuka World DLCs.
Regardless of whether your Sole Survivor is now feeling the rush of a warm laser in their hand without having visited the Silver Rush, make sure to follow us for more updates on interesting mods like this one for Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077. You can also check out our mods of the month for January 2023.