“This is a very curious case” Fallout: London’s project lead on explaining Fallout and what mods are to John Bercow, plus making a quest for Neil Newbon

As you might be aware, massive Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London managed to recruit some pretty big names to go alongside its core voice acting pool.

Baldur’s Gate 3 star Neil Newbon and former UK Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow – the latter having become a household name in Britain thanks to memes about him telling MPs to shut up by yelling ‘Order!’ – were arguably the most unexpected inclusions. So, how did their cameos come about?

Speaking to VG247 for an interview which also featured chat about how the mod’s release has gone and the cut quest line that’ll be arriving in a future update, Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter revealed exactly that.

“So, the advantage of us having to do the delay due to the next gen update was that although we were fixing the systems, we were just play testing and play testing and it literally just stemmed from a stupid conversation between myself and Callum, who was the head writer/head scripter,” the modder recalled, “We were just sitting there, and we actually had already had a voice actor doing the role, who was just a member of the team, and we were like ‘oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we had John Bercow’? They were like, ‘well, let’s just reach out’, we did, and he was up for it.”

“He was like ‘this is a very curious case’,” Carter added. “He wanted to know if it was a commercial endeavour and we’re like, ‘No, we’re just volunteers.’ We had to explain what a mod was and what Fallout is and he was like, ‘Yeah, sounds fun’, and he just sent over some voice lines.”

Meanwhile, when it came to Newbon, Team FOLON found itself in the opposite position in terms of making contact. “I’m sure my team are going to shoot me for saying this, but I had no idea who he was,” Carter told me. “He actually reached out to us via Twitter, I believe, and said ‘I’d love to be involved, blah, blah, blah’, but we get loads of those messages and I just glazed over it.

“[Then,] I happened to be streaming at one point and my team were like, ‘Uh, why’s Neil Newbon in your inbox?’ I’m just like, ‘Oh, I get loads.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, but it’s Neil Newbon.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, I’ll reply I guess’ and my team are just screaming at me, they were like ‘Please reply to this man, get him on board.’

“We gave him basically like a bit role, like a very small thing. He pushed for more, he enjoyed the character of playing Barry the Boat. The whole Barry the Boat quest was basically Neil Newbon’s idea, because he wanted more to do with the project. So, we ended up having to write this whole quest because he wanted more stuff to do,” the modder revealed, adding: “We had great fun working with him.”

Have you run into Bercow or Newbon while exploring Fallout: London yet? Let us know below, and make sure to check out our array of helpful guides to things like the mod’s companions and quests.