Bethesda make big, divisive and generally extremely good games, but they really don’t seem to know what a PC are. While we’re certainly used to PC builds of their historically PC series coming out looking like they were sloughed off a console, hastily scraped off the floor, then dumped on a desktop, it still grates. It’s no surprise that the in-game graphics options are negligible, requiring multiple quits and restarts to tweak to satisfaction. It’s certainly no shock that the UI is blatantly designed to be viewed from a sofa, so madly huge and clumsy for us with our noses pressed to the monitor. But it’s pretty shoddy at this point that standard settings like FOV, particular widescreen settings, stuttery framerate limits, and switching off their perennially ghastly mouse acceleration, are hidden in .ini files. Fortunately the smart folks making Steam guides have it all figured out. I’ve explained a few of the fixes below.

Skip The Intro

I’ll start with intro skipping, since you’re going to want that gone if you’re testing any of the below. To get rid of that needless fizzing screen, head to the Steam directory where you installed the game (something like ‘X:\[your steam directory]\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Video’ where X is the hard drive on which you install Steam games). In there there’s a file you need to delete:

GameIntro_V3_B.bk2

Field Of View

FOV is the biggest issue for me. While I’m not generally one for fiddling with such sliders, playing Fallout 4 feels like I’m looking at everything through a toilet roll. Some hint of peripheral vision would be nice, and fortunately achievable if you’re willing to twiddle under the game’s bonnet.

To fix this, you’re going to need to adjust three different files. Firstly, find your Fallout4.ini file, which you should find inside ‘C:\Users\[name]\Documents\My Games\Fallout4\’

Open the file in Wordpad or your preferred text editor, and then scroll down to ‘[Display]’. You need to add a couple of lines:

fDefaultWorldFOV=XX

fDefault1stPersonFOV=YY

Replace XX and YY with your desired field of view setting for third and first person respectively. 90 is a fair bet, and where most games would have already had it.

You then need to repeat the step, but this time in the FalloutPrefs.ini in the same directory.

Then thirdly, you need to head to the Steam directory where you installed the game, and into ‘steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Fallout4’. In there you’ll find another file called ‘Fallout4Prefs.ini’, and you add the same two lines under ‘[Display]’ yet again.

Save all those files, and it should all be set. Here’s a before and after. The man rudely moved, but you can see how much more is on screen.

Before:



After:



Mouse Acceleration

Getting rid of horrid mouse acceleration is in three steps as well. Start off with the Fallout4.ini file in My Games, and this time scroll down to “[Controls]”. Under there you need to add:

bMouseAcceleration=0

Second, the Fallout4Prefs.ini in the same folder, and under ‘[Display]’ add:

bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1

Then finally you need to find the game’s install folder for Steam, which will be something like ‘X:\[your steam directory]\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Fallout4’ where X is the hard drive on which you install Steam games. In there you’ll also find a Fallout4Prefs.ini, and you need to add the same line under ‘[Display]’.

bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1

The excellent post by Gabi also details a few more fixes and issues that you can address, so if you’re struggling with anything else, take a look.