Is Broken Steel Actually Fallout 3's Best DLC?

[Music] it was the dawning hours of 2012 for weeks I had been walking what Google Maps tells me was a mile and a half every day to a gaming Lounge because access to Internet Was scarce where I was living I had been running through their meager library of games before I came to Fallout 3 but once I found it I was there to stay I fell in love with Fallout 3 and by extension the entire Fallout franchise it was everything that I had loved about Oblivion but in a dark Grim take on a post-apocalyptic setting but a few weeks in I decided to push the story line forward and it was over 404 game not found the story line ended and there was no more world to explore this sort of hit me out of left field because for the past few weeks I had been playing Oblivion with guns but unlike Oblivion that let you keep playing and exploring when the main quest was completed Fallout 3 permanently locked you out of your character I wasn't necessarily angry I was just more disappointed than anything a few months later I moved and started trying to build a new life for myself and decided I would go ahead and buy Fallout 3 it was even cheap enough that the Game of the Year Edition with all DLC was easily affordable to a rarely working temp as long as you were willing to deal with all the games for Windows work around BS it was at this point when I first encountered the Broken Steel DLC and was wholeheartedly thrilled to see that among other things this DLC gave back the ability to keep exploring and playing the game after completing the main quest that one little piece of Oblivion that I had been missing had been restored but beyond that basic ability to keep exploring the side quest and investigating interesting places that should have just been a feature anyway is Broken Steel really that great of a DLC does it really add content as its name suggests or in true Bethesda fashion does it just lock quality of life features behind a pay wall well that's what I hope to determine today I will be evaluating Broken Steel from from the perspective of storyline explorable area new object usefulness and expansion to gameplay mechanics each of these categories will be ranked from one to five leaving a total possible graze isit good score of 20 points if that sounds like fun to you make sure you have your Metro pass in hand and have paid your tithe to Confessor Cromwell because I'm gray you're watching great gaming and today I'm evaluating Broken Steel oh and the story line section is going to have mad spoilers for both the DLC and the main game it's a 16-year-old game you're complaints are invalid The Story begins with another Fallout 3es jumble of semicoherent conversation Snippets out of context similar to the time jumps encounter during the Vault 101 prologue which I actually like as a means of ensuring this DLC uses the same storytelling cues and it makes it feel like a new chapter was added to the main quest line instead of just saying here's some unrelated tact on busy work give me money anyway you wake up to find Elder lion standing over you like a creep and he fills you in after what went down at project Purity you fell into a coma and have been lying in the Citadel for weeks now meanwhile the Brotherhood of Steel has been mopping up The Enclave with the help of Liberty Prime and there's much work to be done the Brotherhood has cut a deal with Rivet City security to protect shipments of the purified water coming out of project Purity while the Brotherhood coordinates distribution and protects the site meanwhile the Brotherhood needs to keep the pressure on with the Enclave until they're gone or scattered to the wind I love this interaction because Lion's demean and conversation both changed depending on whether you were a coward who sent Sarah Alliance to activate the purifier or whether you were selfless and went in yourself he doesn't blame you if Sarah dies but he is distraught over the death of his daughter and I found that pretty sad and all the more admirable that he's willing to continue to stick to his humanitarian ideals even after his daughter died upholding those ideals after you've been adequately Exposition you are free to leave the Citadel and you can either go help stabilize the situation at project Purity or you can go kick some Kami ass with Liberty Prime as if this was even a choice we head over to a tunnel on the edge of the map which seems to be the preferred Fallout 3 manner of kicking off dlc's and we get the skinny from the Paladin in charge of this assault they're about to hit an enclave stronghold and you're really just there to mop up anyone who manages to make it past Liberty Prime I have to say I never noticed it before but this instant marks the exact moment of the decline of the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel in this place there's no talk of protecting Innocents only of destroying their adversaries in Liberty Prime they had discovered the means by which to project power that is beyond contestation and they were using it with ruthless abandon paladins and knights strolled past piles of bodies strewn about the place as scribes busied themselves with the grizzly task of stripping the power armor from corpses wasting no time in their designs to outfit their own troops with the best technology available I can't believe I had never noticed this the first time I played Broken Steel maybe it's just having the 2020 hindsight of having seen what happened in Fallout 4 and The Fallout TV series that let me see that they were already becoming more brutal and unfeeling even before Fallout 3 was well and truly concluded and that Owen Lions really was all that was standing between them and becoming the very thing they were hoping to exterminate in their campaign Against The Enclave or maybe I was just infatuated with the concept of the BOS as being the good guys regardless this analysis of the disturbing turn in BOS Behavior can wait because death is a preferable alternative to Communism and it's time to kick the enclave in the nards holy hell this mission is glorious it's the greatest thing ever Liberty Prime is invincible and the Wasteland will finally be free wait what's he talking about orbital strike imminent uh Liberty Prime what did you mean by orbital strike imminent Liberty Prime well that was mildly devastating The Enclave is going to pay for this and victorium so we fight our way through this actually rather sprawling facility and learn that The Enclave has somehow discovered a pre-war orbital strike platform form and are massing what's left of their forces at Adams Air Force Base but before we can just go attack Adams we are sent on a fetch Quest okay this is starting to sound suspiciously like automatron from Fallout 4 you immediately know who the baddies are and where they're located but some plot device requires side mission before you can go well anywh who you have to go to all only to locate a Tesla coil and damn I love the level design here gray okay fine I'll stay on topic but I am going to bring this up again you can count on it the mission itself is pretty straight forward lots of death Claws and other things that can kill you instantly if you're unwary and of course you arrive to discover The Enclave has beaten you there but thankfully you fight your way through and arrive at a surprisingly awesome for Fallout 3 lab and collect the Tesla coil fetch Quest over at least this one wasn't a freaking radiant Quest now on to the actual Mission so the path to Adam's Air Force Base is blocked by rubble and debris and radiation so our only chance of reaching it is a secret Metro station used by the president to move around the capital which is actually pretty cool it takes an urban legend from our own world and sort of canonizes it anyway we get there only to find the places infested with Sentry Bots which are already a ruiny day enemy but also with feral ghoul reavers which are horrifyingly op bullet spongy nightmares added by this DLC I'll have more to say on them in expansion to gameplay mechanics but damn I hate these things after talking to a pre-war supercomputer that gain sentience on its own we convince it to activate the train once we clear out all the reavers and we Rite it to ad Adams hot damn it gets fun from here so we luckily emerged from the metro station inside Adams AFB and right next to the location of a Brotherhood care package containing a Tesla Cannon constructed from the Tesla coil we procured earlier and holy Adams a radiated Airbase this thing shreds through the otherwise heavily defended base like a taser through soggy toilet paper where the hell did I come up with that analogy sorry about that anyway the base is loads of fun and as we fight our way through we start to encounter be assault teams taking advantage of the chaos that we're creating we fight our way past a massive sand crawler oops wrong Channel by the way I have a sister Channel where I discuss a wide variety of sci-fi related topics you should check out greay galaxies when you're done here back to the topic at hand you have to take a round about way to get on board this mobile command station but once you get inside it looks freaking amazing this place screams high-tech pre-war and I'm actually a bit bummed that this served as the basis for the brotherhood's technology seen in Fallout 4 but the original just looked so much cooler you fight your way to the top level Target the mobile command platform with their own weapon of mass destruction and head outside to wait for your inevitable Doom only to get rescued by a BOS commandeered vertebr at the last instant they take you to a safe distance and you watch as the platform becomes a smoking pile of pridwin parts and that's it for the main story like I mentioned earlier there are three other quests that were added related to project Purity which add quite a bit to the World building like Splinter groups beginning to form in the children of Adam that take a more militant and extremist view which sort of lays the groundwork for the children of Adam that we see in Far Harbor and that transition feels a lot less jarring than I think it would if we didn't have broken steel to bridge that gap between Gaines there's also interesting interactions with Rivet City security who are taking on a larger role within the capital Wasteland not just inside the confines of Rivet City and you can kind of see an intriguing relationship start to form between them and the Brotherhood of Steel this really makes me wonder about how the Brotherhood came to possess rivet City's reactor for installation into the pridwin I had always kind of assumed that they took it like maxon's Brotherhood always does but seeing the trade deals being worked out the cooperation happening between Rivet City security and the Brotherhood of Steel it almost seems like rivet City's security Force might have actually been sort of annexed into the Brotherhood of Steel ranks and Rivet City just became a BOS Outpost all of this is strictly conjecture of course but that's what I'm loving about this exploration of Broken Steel viewing it in the context of serving as a prequel to Fallout 4 it opens up so many possibilities and makes the Brotherhood of Steel feel a lot more Nuance than I think I've really given them credit for in recent years Arthur Maxon still sucks but that's a topic for a different day when it comes to ranking the storyline of Broken Steel I'm going to give it four Verte birts out of five it's too short and sparsely spread throughout the missions to really consider it exceptional and it takes a while for that detour to all only to pay off but it eventually does and in a very big way so yeah yeah four out of five seems pretty fair here so explorable area is actually pretty damn great where it was added the dungeon Dives are a bit long for my liking without a breather but seriously these things are great at one point you're trying to cut through an underground deathclaw Nest all of the terror of fighting your way through Quarry Junction and Fallout New Vegas but with the claustrophobia and restricted movement of a narrow cave the presidential Metro is well it's okay it's made worse by the reavers and Sentry Bots but the level design itself is good and it's cleaner more preserved appearances a nice change of pace from the usual crumbling state of the capital ruins the Tesla lab is pretty okay honestly I've never explored the whole thing before this playthrough because I'm a bit of a safe scummer but this time I failed the terminal that bypasses the intended route to the lab and it was pretty generic but it also felt right at home in Fallout 3 and the Chamber itself was amazing and I was actually impressed that Bethesda was able to accomplish these great effects in the short time between the release of Fallout 3 and Broken Steel being released they really pushed the envelope for implementing environmentals so you know what Todd for the first time on this channel I'mma give you a Kudos Adam's Air Force Base felt a little repetitive after a while but it was also so cool to see the suburbs that exist on most military bases for officer housing the statues and decorations that tend to Adorn the administration buildings in these bases the sharp transitions between what looks like Industrial warehouses and practical purpose-built structures I've visited my share of military bases and though I've never visited Adam's AFB I have to say that they nailed the feeling of being on a US military installation as far as explorable area they didn't give us a whole new map like Point Lookout or the pit but damn if they didn't do their best to make every inch feel intriguing well planned and taking many of the resources that were already there and changing the ambience just enough that it doesn't feel like they were just copying and pasting elements that we had already encountered a dozen times over the lack of new open world maps does lose at a point in the old scorebook but I feel that five Liberties minus a prime is fair in this case you could argue for a three out of five but at a certain point you're just nitpicking or looking for something to gr up about for the sake of it so I'm sticking to my score of four out of five so this DLC doesn't add a whole lot to the game in terms of new items most are just unique variants of existing weapons and armor and I mean they're usually really good almost overpowered in most cases the Hellfire armor and heavy incinerators added to Enclave troops makes them so much deadlier to deal with but their durability is also pretty lame I have to say two weapons from this DLC absolutely own and that is the Precision Gatling laser for dealing with those Close Quarter Shooting Gallery areas where you don't want to get caught in your own weapon Splash radius and the Tesla Cannon where you can just go nuts at long range absolutely wrecking enemies left and right lag bolts glasses are a nice boost to sneak can lockpick without robbing you of the ability to wear a helmet and there are a small number of Alien Blaster rounds and an Alien Blaster in the mobile command platform Armory so there are a few options for Unique gameplay experiences I don't know that I consider these mus Haves and the fact that you can only get these after the main story has concluded likely means by the time you get them there isn't going to be much left that requires a handy weapon and a sturdy suit of power armor so it's a bit too little a lot too late I'm going to give new object usefulness a two Tesla cannons out of five which is pretty harsh but again if you're trying to 100% the game before finishing there's no real use case for these weapons and armor once the DLC concludes but damn if they aren't glorious in the interim so this is a very difficult thing to gauge I really struggled with this category simply because there really weren't any new mechanics added Broken Steel didn't add a new crafting system or even just new components and recipes to what existed no settlement building or a new player home that needs customized it didn't add weather systems or environmental danger effects to the capital Wasteland it didn't create a more Dynamic set of conversation outcomes it really was just more of the same gameplay Loop that we had already grown accustomed to throughout the entire main quest line of Fallout 3 it did give us new classes of enemies feral ghoul reavers Super Mutant overlords and Enclave Hellfire Troopers and these things can be nightmares the first time you encounter them but at the end of the day these new enemy classes are just higher level more bullet spongy more damage de versions of enemies we had already had and they were more of a frustration or hindrance to gameplay than anything else a lot of players who had only ever played Game of the Year Edition probably weren't even aware that those enemy classes were added in this DLC but it would be lazy or intentionally dense if I didn't acknowledge that Broken Steel gave us one thing one hugely necessary thing for firsttime players who don't know all the places you have to go before you've seen and done everything the ability to finish the game and then keep exploring the capital Wasteland to allow players to reserve certain Side Quests for a sort of head Cannon epilog or to ignore them entirely cannot be understated and in that respect I think it has the greatest effect on a base gamees mechanics of any DLC I am aware of from any video game this simple yet elegant addition to Fallout 3 could easily justify a five Lions out of five but the simple fact that this was the only Mainline Bethesda game to ever be locked out upon main quest completion in the first place could easily justify a laughable one Todd out of five so I think in lie of more convincing information I'm going to have to default to a middling three out of five so just in case you weren't keeping score at home Broken Steel earns four points for story line another four points for explorable area two for new object usefulness and three for expansion to gameplay mechanics 13 of 20 is actually decently respectable in playing through this DLC and its entire for this project I gained a whole new respect for the non-narrative storytelling that Bethesda is capable of the fact that they were already sewing the seeds for Fallout 4's Brotherhood before they had even started work on that game is so cool and honestly I hadn't played through this DLC in over a decade since before the release of Fallout 4 so this was a great chance to view it with fresh eyes and a lot of New Perspective that I had gained from everything I had experienced in the world of Fallout and our own since then I love this DLC and I am so excited to see see what the other DLC can add to Fallout 3 as I hopefully move forward with this series I'm a bit curious what you thought of my scores was I too generous too harsh do you think Broken Steel Stacks up against the other DLC for Fallout 3 or was it more or less just a quality of life patch locked behind a pay wall until next time stay safe and remember it's better to be dead than red [Music]

Channel: Grey Gaming

Views: 4,960

Keywords: Fallout, Fallout 3, Brotherhood of Steel, Broken Steel

Id: ECj0S57o6sE

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024