Bethesda’s Fallout franchise and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto have much in common.
Although Fallout replaces the bustling urban environments of GTA with a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, they’re both open-world epics telling the chaotic stories of those who inhabit these digital worlds.
Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5 have been two of the most popular and long-lived games of the decade, and a crossover has popped up in the minds of many.
It’s unlikely that Rockstar would adopt a post-apocalyptic atompunk style for their next open-world sandbox – but mods can bring a lot of Fallout’s charm to Los Santos.
Molotov cocktails are a vital tool in the urban antisocial toolkit.
With just a soda bottle, an old rag, and some gasoline, you can make yourself a devastating explosive that’ll set your enemies on fire. It’s a horrible way to kill someone, but they’re excellent for taking down vehicles and dispersing crowds.
You can make Molotovs a lot more exciting by replacing the boring, old soda or beer bottle with a Nuka-Cola or Nuka-Cola Quantum with this fun GTA 5 mod.
Considering Nuka-Cola Quantum has Strontium-90 among its ingredients, it’s safe to assume that this makes your Molotovs radioactive. Handle with care!
Fallout 76 might have been a massive disappointment back in 2018, but that didn’t stop the most hardcore Fallout fans from playing it quite a bit.
If you count yourself among them, you might enjoy plastering the facade of Hookah Palace with three enormous billboards advertising the game.
Seeing the friendly and optimistic face of the Vault Boy looking back at you as you drive by will give you the confidence you need to face the challenges of 21st-century Los Santos just as you would the 23rd-century Wasteland.
My favorite kind of video game merch is the kind that doesn’t just advertise a game but instead features some in-game logo or item that only fans will recognize.
This New California Republic t-shirt is just like that.
At first glance, most people might mistake it for the flag of California, which looks almost exactly the same. Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the bear has two heads, showcasing the mutations local wildlife underwent after the bombs fell.
Wear this so the last thing your foes think before you gun them down is, “hey, they play Fallout too!”
If I had to choose the two most well-known symbols in the entire Wasteland, they would have to be Vault-Tec’s Vault Boy and the Nuka-Cola logo.
Nuka-Cola has only gotten more popular after the apocalypse – with old NC bottle caps working as the Wasteland’s currency – and Vault-Tec was already ubiquitous before the bombs fell.
This long-sleeved t-shirt will show your love for this post-apocalyptic franchise more clearly than the NCR T-shirt, thanks to both of these 23rd-century cultural icons and its bright orange color.
Just as almost everyone in the modern world carries a smartphone, the Pip-Boy is a key gadget that makes a Wasteland survivor’s life much easier.
It helps the user keep track of their health and inventory and even features GPS technology. It links up with any remaining satellites in orbit to calculate the user’s location and make Wasteland navigation a piece of cake.
The Pip-Boy 3000 mod lets you forget about your smartphone for a minute and engage with this piece of atomic-age equipment.
It lacks some of the major features seen in the Fallout series, but it looks just like in Fallout 4. The Pip-Boy’s classic eerie green light is 100% functional.
Anyone who’s played PAYDAY 2 (2013) knows how important picking the right mask can be when planning a big bank heist.
You only get to rob a bank a couple times in your life. Might as well make some memories!
As a Fallout fan, I find this Vault Boy Mask absolutely fantastic for this purpose. It looks nice and cute, but everyone knows the worst psychos hide under the most inoffensive masks.
If you’re going to rob a bank wearing a Vault Boy mask, you have to bring appropriate weaponry.
High-tech guns are one place where the Fallout universe has us beat. After all, we’ve never made laser weapons viable in real life.
This laser-powered pistol is the Lone Survivor’s best friend in the early stages of their journey to rescue Shawn, and this GTA 5 mod brings it to Los Santos in all its glory.
It looks absolutely fantastic in both first-person and third-person views. Though it doesn’t fire visible lasers, the sounds are just like in Fallout 4, making it much more believable.
Some jobs require a lot more firepower than a simple pistol – even if it’s laser-powered.
The Anti-Material Rifle from Fallout 4’s Creation Club comes to put regular lead bullets back on the map.
It features a rusty, heavily weathered appearance typical of Wasteland weaponry and looks much more fearsome than any sniper rifles in the base game.
Canonically, the Anti-Material Rifle is meant to shoot .50 cal munition. This mod replaces the appearance of the regular sniper rifle, but it should be easy to tweak the code to replace the .50 cal Heavy Sniper instead.
One of the most universally loved weapon types in gaming has to be the Minigun.
There’s nothing like pumping hordes of enemies full of seemingly infinite lead. This weapon simply won’t stop shooting until you’re all out of bullets – or it gets so hot it melts.
The relatively low damage of each individual .5mm bullet means you can have fun trying to land as many shots into a single enemy as you can. They’ll be no different from Gruyere cheese when you’re done with them.
If you don’t mind lugging around over 12kg of metal in the middle of a firefight, installing this Minigun from Fallout 4 is a no-brainer.
You’d need some huge muscles to carry a minigun around and shoot it for longer than just a few seconds.
According to my calculations, you’d at least have to look like Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 5 (2009), meaning you’d need a couple rounds of steroids and a lot of weight training.
Or you can just get infected by the Forced Evolutionary Virus.
Those exposed to the FEV will eventually become giant muscular mutants with reduced intelligence. A minigun is like a Glock for these hulking brutes!
The ones from Fallout: New Vegas (2010) are especially gnarly, and you can quickly bring them into GTA 5 with this mod.
Another oversized weapon that would be perfect for the Super Mutants is the Gatling Laser from Fallout 4.
Powered by nuclear fusion, the Gatling Laser will spray your enemies with high-energy laser beams that’ll destroy their tissues faster and more permanently than bullets.
It’s like a gunshot wound that cauterizes itself – and if you survive, you’ll still probably get sick from the radiation exposure.
This mod brings a fully-animated, accurate-sounding Gatling Laser from the Boston Wasteland to Los Santos. The LSPD won’t risk messing with you again after tasting this.
With a ridiculous top speed of 531km/h, the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut holds the record for the fastest car ever made.
It’s a testament to humanity’s technological achievement – but it pales in comparison to what’s possible in the atompunk future of the Fallout franchise.
In-universe car manufacturers like “Chryslus” – Chrysler’s atompunk parody – were already selling sports cars that could break the sound barrier before the bombs fell in 2077. That means the Chrysler Cherry Bomb can go faster than 1234km/h!
Mods aside, we never got to drive one of these in Fallout 4 – but doing so in Grand Theft Auto 5 should be just as fun, if not better.
The protagonist of Fallout 4 – known primarily as the Sole Survivor – is one of the biggest bad-asses the franchise has ever seen.
Nate or Nora will destroy everything in their path with the sole focus of rescuing their son, Shawn. If you’re not with them, you’re against them – and there’s a lot of pain on that side of the divide.
While Nate is definitely cool, there’s something more memorable and exciting about Nora. It’s wanton violence fueled by motherly love – and maybe a tiny bit of brain damage from spending over 200 years in a freezer.
With this mod, you’ll be able to play as Nora with access to several outfits, including the regular Vault jumpsuit and the fresh and modern pre-war dress from Fallout 4’s opening act.
Obsidian Entertainment injected Fallout: New Vegas with the same special magic and attention to detail that made games like Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006) and Pillars of Eternity (2015) so influential.
The New California Republic Ranger should immediately be recognizable for any New Vegas fan. After all, they’re on the cover art!
They capture the vibe of the post-apocalyptic Wasteland of the Fallout series perfectly with their run-down clothes and dusty gas mask.
This mod brings all of this radioactive epicness to Los Santos with a high-quality character model ported straight from the PC version of New Vegas.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
