Development Diary: Horrors of the Deep Fog
"The Deep Fog is [___] Scary! Like, I didn't even run into too many creatures out here, but holy [____] was I smashing my VATS key nearly every moment that I could to make sure nothing snuck up on me - I was always on edge."
- The Salt Factory
New creatures come to Far Harbor in the first official expansion for Mutant Menagerie - Big Game Hunting! In Mutant Menagerie - Horrors of the Deep Fog, you'll run into familiar and new faces alike as you explore The Island. Fallout 4's most popular expansion has never been more diverse - or unnerving. Read on to learn about the philosophy behind the mod, the overall design process and, of course, gain a sneak-peek into the features and new creatures you'll be encountering!
A Post-Mutant Menagerie World
"I hope you like long, pretentious monologues!"
"I hope you like long, pretentious monologues!"
When I originally finished Mutant Menagerie and released it to the world, I could never have imagined how it would take off. It was my first big modding effort since my old Halo: Custom Edition modding days nearly a decade ago, and probably one of the largest projects I've ever undertaken in general. The philosophy behind Mutant Menagerie - Big Game Hunting was a simple one: pick a part of Fallout 4 that was lacking and fix it. I channeled my love of classic creature mods from older Bethesda Games and my love of modern hunting systems in video games to plan out one giant behemoth of a mod. The rest was, as the saying goes, was history.
After its release, I took two months or so to work on private affairs and art projects - things that I had been neglecting in order to finish the mod, its large follow-up update, and Mutant Menagerie - Patches. Now, roughly 5 months after release, I figured I'd share what I've been up to since my break from modding. I knew I wanted to do an expansion for Mutant Menagerie somewhere down the road, but I never expected to be tackling one of Fallout 4's major expansions this early after the main mod's release. The truth is, something happened in the final fourth-or-so of development for Mutant Menagerie. I began to be particularly drawn-in by the tonal differences the mod provided to Fallout 4's environment.
The Glowing Sea became a hazardous warzone full of deadly, high-level mutants, legendary enemies, and some strange creatures that couldn't be found anywhere else. The wilderness was full of ambient wildlife and wild game, where a player could hunt to their heart's content - free of disturbances (aside from the odd super predator or ambush encounter). Finally, there was the coast. Sea creatures like ghoul sharks and razor-toothed dolphins roamed beneath the waves, causing anyone that normally swam around coastal encounters to question their decisions. There was a tension to travelling that hadn't been present previously. Do you take on the band of raiders blocking the road, or risk swimming in open water to avoid them?
The point I'm getting at here is that building diversity and tone in the environments I worked on hooked me - hard. More-so than I looked forward to seeing new creatures in-game, I was excited to see how the role I designed for them would affect whatever environment I loosed them in. It was this fervor for reinforcing and building on the various environmental tones of Fallout 4 that led me to Mount Desert Island. Far Harbor oozes atmosphere - plain and simple. The more I messed around with moving various elements of it into the Commonwealth through Mutant Menagerie (God, do I love setting up those hermit crab ambushes), the more drawn to it I became. Before I knew it, I was scrolling on Sketchfab for eldritch-looking creatures and looking up Maine's local ecosystems. One night, I decided to crack open the Creation Kit and scroll through some of the exterior cells of Far Harbor while listening to its soundtrack - just to see how it felt.
The rest was, as the saying goes, was history.
Tackling Far Harbor
"Moonlit Ranging by Inon Zur Intensifies..."
One of the most widely requested features for Mutant Menagerie has been coverage of the expansion areas. Naturally, I couldn't just snap my fingers and populate Far Harbor with Mutant Menagerie creatures - nor would I want to. Far Harbor is widely considered the best expansion for Fallout 4 - and one of the best Fallout DLCs ever crafted. The haunting tone, Lovecraftian atmosphere, and inclusion of the RPG elements and player-choice - which was largely removed from the base game - immortalized the expansion as a critical darling after release and, arguably, as Bethesda Game Studio's best work in the last 5 years. I couldn't just haphazardly drop my creatures into that eldritch masterpiece without a solid game plan. A plan that now, as I surpass the halfway mark in the mod's development, I aim to share the major parts of with you all."Moonlit Ranging by Inon Zur Intensifies..."
Building Mutant Menagerie's First Expansion
Mutant Menagerie Comes to Maine
"Finally, onto the good stuff!"
"Finally, onto the good stuff!"
In Mutant Menagerie: Horrors of the Deep Fog, the usual suspects are all returning to hunt, or be hunted by, you - the player. With a creature roster bigger than that of Fallout 4, I already have plenty of tools at my disposal for making The Island more diverse, and deadlier, than ever. I took great care to inspect the environment and research Mount Desert Island's ecosystem both in Fallout 4 and in real life. The general consensus I came to was that the environment was colder and harsher than the Commonwealth - but overall not that different. New England is New England. Atmospherically, however, it was very different. Two things stood out to me when researching Far Harbor's worldspace and environment - the Deep Fog and the amphibious nature of the island.
The Island in Far Harbor contains a blend of freshwater environs, brackish marshes, and saltwater coves and coastlines.
Brave New Biomes
"I like this kind of research. Involves a whole lotta shooting!"
The cold, foggy water-world that is The Island allows me to rearrange the prominence and rarity of many of the creatures from Mutant Menagerie. Far Harbor features far less mutant bugs, for example, than the Commonwealth. Most of the mutants here tend to have some sort of relationship with either the ocean, the forests, or both. Hermit Crabs, Fog Crawlers, Anglers, and Mirelurks factor into the former while Mutant Wolves, Devolved Radstags, Ghoulish Yao Guai, and Gulpers fall into the latter - more or less. Acadia National Park and the depths of the Atlantic Ocean seem to be the two biggest influences for Bethesda when crafting the Lovecraftian nightmares of The Island.
In that vein, I knew I could shift my creature meta to meet the creepy, amphibious tone of Far Harbor. The sea creatures of Mutant Menagerie became more important than ever, while less-common heavy hitters from Mutant Menagerie, like the Riverlurks of MM1.2, could finally be given an opportunity to shine. Eventually, I began building separate dynamic spawns exclusively for Far Harbor - opting to exclude my original dynamic predator and prey spawns from the main mod entirely.
In Horrors of the Deep Fog, swarms of Riverlurks roam the brackish marshes of The Island in droves.
The Game Plan: Composing The Island's Ecosystems
"For an island with 'desert' in the name, there sure is a whole lot going on here!"
Just like in Mutant Menagerie - Big Game Hunting, a huge part of the mod is putting together ecosystems within the worldspace, and then designing scenes and encounters that match those ecosystems. Far Harbor is a smaller, denser worldspace than the Commonwealth, but one with a heavy emphasis on wilderness and isolation. In short, there is a lot of space to fill between points of interest. Thanks to my research takeaways I described above, I eventually narrowed down a system for introducing Mutant Menagerie to The Island."For an island with 'desert' in the name, there sure is a whole lot going on here!"
The exterior map of The Island - in all its splendor.
The Outer Rim.
I decided that the outer rim of The Island and its northern forests would act as conduits for ambient creatures. In Far Harbor, the radioactive fog that covers most of the island allows super-predators to thrive. As such, it wouldn't make sense for smaller creatures to survive very long further inland. Or, at the very least, not in large numbers. Most of the creatures seeking sanctuary on the outer rim are small and quick, implying that larger or slower wildlife haven't been able to sustain their populations during the recent outbreak of massive mutant monstrosities.
Ducks, Radhorners, and other defenseless creatures struggle to survive on the outer rim of The Island.
The Deep Fog.The deep fog in the central and southern regions of The Island, on the other hand, is described as a veritable hellscape full of indescribable horrors. The main goal here is enemy variety. No one ever says "Gulpers, Anglers, and Crawlers thrive in the Deep Fog." Instead, locals like Old Longfellow carefully pick the word things. Things live in the fog. Bethesda clearly intended the Deep Fog to be this place where anything can come after you at any moment. This is the philosophy behind Horrors of the Deep Fog - anything could be lurking in the fog.
The dynamic spawns used in the Deep Fog utilize a wide variety of creatures from Mutant Menagerie and vanilla Fallout 4. The Deep Fog regions will also heavily rely on dynamic spawns over leveled creature spawns - especially when compared to the Commonwealth. There were a lot of deliberately placed creatures in MM-BGH - primarily to ensure a specific quota of creature spawns were met. I needed to ensure the player could always find a certain, minimum number of each creature in the Commonwealth - regardless of how the leveled list RNG for the dynamic spawns played out. In Horrors of the Deep Fog, things are far less rigid. Dynamic Spawns are the overwhelming majority in the Deep Fog, while hand-placed encounters are much rarer and more curated. The immense spike in RNG is paramount to heightening the tension to match Bethesda's intent with Far Harbor's Deep Fog.
The Fog hides numerous surprises, like this Fog-Touched Cave Cricket.
The Ocean.
Lastly, the ocean coves of Far Harbor play an important role in establishing the tone of Far Harbor. Like in any good Call of Cthulhu campaign, I want the player to feel trapped and isolated. The Deep Fog that Bethesda established does an excellent job of setting this tone on land. The oceanic environments, however, kind-of fall flat in this regard. Before the release of Far Harbor, I was one of many players, I'm sure, anticipating that this DLC would introduce some serious sea creatures to Fallout 4. We wanted dolphins, ghoul whales, or the squid that was found in the game files. There was even the 'Hooked' achievement, which leaked before the expansion's release, that read "Defeat 30 Far Harbor sea creatures," stoking the fires of speculation up-to release. The potential was as high as the hype. As we all know now, the expansion's oceans would be as empty as the Commonwealth's.
Mutant Menagerie aims to complete Far Harbor's atmosphere by thoroughly populating the ocean waters and coastlines around the island. All sea creatures from Mutant Menagerie return here in force, filling the once-empty ocean waters and beaches with radioactive life. Other DLC creatures also help in this regard, as well, like Nuka World's Bloodworms. These originally-coastal predators return to their roots and populate beaches in Far Harbor, so watch your step. Ghoul Sharks and Dolphins roam the waters just off shore, creating a similar, moody tension to swimming as that which I mentioned previously - at the beginning of this article. It isn't enough to just have the same old creatures from the Commonwealth lurking beneath the waves, however. To establish the creepy, Lovecraftian brand of thalassophobia that makes the player feel truly isolated, the ocean needed something new. So with Horrors of the Deep Fog, the ocean waters of Fallout 4 will be more alive than ever.
Three-headed Sea Turtles join the ranks of multiple new ambient sea creatures found in Horrors of the Deep Fog.
The Game Plan II: Designing Far Harbor's New Threats
"And you thought The Island was tough enough already..."
"And you thought The Island was tough enough already..."
New Faces in the Fog.
As I said before, it wasn't enough to just drop the creatures from Mutant Menagerie into Far Harbor. The Island needed its own brand of predators and prey that better matched the environment and horror themes of the expansion. As of now, Horrors of the Deep Fog introduces 7 new creatures to Fallout 4, with more planned before release. Horrors of the Deep Fog leans even harder on Heavy Hitters than Big Game Hunting. In fact, 5 of the 7 aforementioned creatures are heavy hitters. Most new creatures are meant to fill the high-level, hardmode niche that Far Harbor promises. Some of the new creatures, like the odd and adorable sea turtles, will also come to the Commonwealth when you download Horrors of the Deep Fog. A select-few creatures, however, are limited entirely to Far Harbor's worldspace - like the deadly, armored cephalopod known as the Kraken. And yes, boss music plays when you encounter them in the wild.
The Kraken - a massive, armored, and heavily-mutated cephalopod capable of hunting both on-land and in-water.
Mutant Menagerie Unchained.
The best part of working with Far Harbor is that it, like Nuka World, acts as an endgame worldspace for high-level players to explore. Most enemies default here at somewhere between levels 15 and 30 - with levelled variants that climb well-into the 60s and beyond. A quick dive into Far Harbors leveled actors in the Creation Kit reveals how Bethesda built its leveled lists to really challenge players and subvert their pre-conceived expectations. Horrors of the Deep Fog is doubling down on this ideology and cranking the difficulty to 11. While I don't endeavor to create the dark souls of Fallout 4 mods, I am endeavoring to go farther than ever before in designing encounters that are a fitting challenge for the high level, power armor clad, modded-weapon-wielding vault dweller that this mod is built for.
Just like MM-BGH, Horrors of the Deep Fog assumes you either use mods, or know your way around Fallout 4. So grab your MG42, your Anti-Materiel Rifle, or your Ultracite Power Armor and travel into the Deep Fog. Many entertaining endgame encounters will await you in this mod. My ultimate goal is, as always, to make exploring the exterior worldspace more challenging and rewarding with all-new, bloodthirsty and/or huntable critters. The creatures of vanilla Fallout 4 aren't to be forgotten, however, as Horrors of the Deep Fog has one last major feature up its sleeve - designed to challenge even the most seasoned Fallout 4 veteran.
An ultra-dangerous Wendigo leaps at its sundered gulper prey - attacking with its razor-sharp claws and piercing, thunderous scream.
The Fog-Touched.The last new major addition to Far Harbor is an all new creature type - the Fog-Touched. Found almost exclusively in the Deep Fog of the island, Fog-Touched creatures are variations on vanilla and Mutant Menagerie creatures that have been changed by The Island's toxic fog. The Fog-Touched answer the question as to what effect the Fog truly had on the creatures of The Island - from both a lore and gameplay standpoint. In the age of Fallout 76, the Fog is less unique and intriguing as an element of the Fallout universe. Seeing as gulpers, anglers, and fog crawlers are all found elsewhere in the world of Fallout, and even the fog itself has been reused, to an extent, in Fallout 76. The Fog-Touched are a way to make The Fog of The Island unique again, and distinguish it from the similarly radioactive fog found in Vault 94 and the Mire of Fallout 76.
The Fog-Touched have been changed by The Island's Fog in a way not dissimilar to that described madness and corruption humans are said to experience. Fog-Touched creatures appear with ghostly discoloration - a sign of their prolonged exposure to the Fog altering their genetic code. All Fog-Touched are high level enemies, rivaling the strongest variants of their species. Fog-Touched creatures deal heavily increased damage, but often have less health and damage resistances than their untouched species equivalents. All Fog-Touched creatures have level scaling enabled, so they will scale up with the player's progress. In addition, every single Fog-Touched Creature is Legendary - From the radroaches to the deathclaws. They will also drop unique components and rare items that make taking them on worth the effort. Most Fog-Touched creatures will not appear in the dynamic spawns leveled lists until around at-least level 50, meaning the Deep Fog will now promise some serious late game challenges for returning players.
Even the lowly Radroach can become a potent threat when corrupted by the Deep Fog.
World Bosses.
In Horrors of the Deep Fog, careful consideration was taken into making the threat-level of creatures clear to new players. A big criticism of Mutant Menagerie was unexpected deaths or surprisingly difficult enemies. Sometimes, you can't count on a silhouette or health bar to indicate whether an enemy is meant to be a major threat, and this was something I learned the hard way. In Horrors of the Deep Fog, enemies that are intended to be boss-level encounters will feature boss music. This change will come to Big Game Hunting as well when the expansion drops.
Horrors of the Deep Fog will also feature a number of unique bosses that roam the fringes of the open-world. I dabbled a small bit in this for the original Mutant Menagerie mod, but now it's something that will be a bit more integrated into future releases. I really want this expansion to be full of intense new challenges for returning players, and this is one small, subtle way to ensure players get their money's worth (assuming you're one of the three lovelies that donated money, of course).
Ithaqua Enflamed - one of Mutant Menagerie's unique world bosses - stalks the shoreline of its private island.
Future Plans and Release
As of writing this, Mutant Menagerie - Horrors of the Deep Fog is about halfway through its development. Hundreds of spawns have been placed, and hundreds more will be placed before all is said and done. I hope you all get the chance to enjoy this mod very soon. In addition, a small content update will be dropping for Mutant Menagerie - Big Game Hunting that contains a number of bug fixes, some changes and additions, and general future proofing for Horrors of the Deep Fog compatibility. Horrors of the Deep Fog will be a separate mod from Big Game Hunting - complete with its own page and ESM. Big Game Hunting is required to use Horrors of the Deep Fog, but it is an optional expansion for those of you that already use Mutant Menagerie. Once I have finished expansions for both Far Harbor and Nuka world, I plan to put together an all-in-one version of Mutant Menagerie. Until then, however, they will be treated as separate entities - for the sake of compatibility and convenience.If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope to see you on the other side once this project is finished. If you like what I do, and want to support my work financially, feel free to donate to my BuyMeACoffee page linked below. As you all know, modding doesn't just happen in a bubble, and any income I can generate from my work helps to, quite literally, buy me more time to work on mod projects. Otherwise, take care and keep enjoying Mutant Menagerie! Your support, in all its forms, is greatly appreciated!
- Justin, AKA Delicon20
