Benjamin Burnley, frontman of the Pennsylvania active rock staples Breaking Benjamin, would really, really, like you to download his Fallout 4 mod. It would mean a lot to him. On Saturday night, Breaking Benjamin played a headlining gig at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. During the show, drummer Brian Medeiros broke a snare, and a drum tech had to come up to help him fix it. That meant that the band had some dead time onstage, and Burnley used more than five minutes to give the crowd a speech about his Fallout 4 mod.
After playfully admonishing Medeiros for rocking too hard, Burnley told the crowd, "I'm gonna take this time to do something I never do, and I don't care who gets mad at me." He then said that he was about to do something "selfish," something that he planned to do during the show anyway, and he revealed himself to be someone who makes amateur Skyrim and Fallout 4 modifications. He went on, "I'm sorry, everybody, a lot of you are not going to know what the fuck we're talking about." But the crowd kept cheering, so he kept going.
The story unfolded. Benjamin Burnley, we learn, just made a Fallout 4 mod where you stay in first person, though third person mode still works. (I don't know what any of this means, but that's what he said.) Burnley told the crowd:
I want you to go and download that fuckin' mod. It's called True First Person. Now even more importantly, I'm gonna tell you why I'm doing this. There was a modder. So there's, like, a clique. There was a modder in the community that was really mean to me and bullied me and said, "Aw, your mod is shit! You don't know what you're fuckin' doing!"
Basically, Burnley wants to make it so that his mod gets downloaded more than the other guy's mod, and he's using his platform as frontman of the popular active rock band Breaking Benjamin to make it happen. He had a vaguely self-deprecating tone when he told this story, but you could tell that he fully meant it. You can see much of the speech in the video below, starting at the 45:23 mark.
But wait, there's more! That video cuts off before the speech ends, and he still had a solid two minutes left to go! He gave detailed instructions on how to download the mod, with the screen behind him showing the relevant info, and told the crowd, "Tomorrow, I better see all my motherfuckin' downloads going up!" He also said, "You know, when you post a mod, you're supposed to be able to grow and learn and make it better. And right off the bat, this fuckin' asshole shitted on my mod, and he didn't let me update it!" You can hear the rest of his monologue in the Reddit video below.
The band even posted their own excerpt from this stirring speech:
@.breaking.benjamin Ben don’t play about his mods #nexus #fallout4
♬ original sound - Breaking Benjamin
On Monday, Burnley posted some video from his mod on YouTube. I don't really know what I'm looking at here, but maybe you do.
Stereogum's fearless leader Scott Lapatine did all the research into Burnley's mod, and he notes that Burnley first posted his True First Person mod on Sep. 1 and that there were "legitimate complaints" on his Nexus Mods post. I'll just quote Scott at length here:
For example, it wasn't compatible with the original Fallout 4 version 1.10.163, and there were compatibility issues with some camera mods, plus users reported body/weapon clipping. And because he disclosed that the mod was AI-assisted, some modders suspected it was vibe-coded, which they weren’t thrilled about. Burnley fixed some bugs and then got more negative feedback from another user on his latest version (1.2+) — the one mentioned at the concert — yesterday: "I love Breaking Benjamin as much as the next guy, but this just isn't a well thought out mod. It may add immersion but it breaks anytime you turn too fast while wearing bulky armor or fall. Your arms constantly clip into your face. Unless you or someone else creates an animation set to be used specifically with this mod to remedy those issues, it isn't a good mod. And it being seemingly partially vibecoded is a whole other can of worms that puts me off."
Burnley has been responding to his Nexus Mods comments. But Breaking Benjamin are scheduled to play Toronto's RBC Amphitheatre tonight, so he might be too busy today.
