The BIG Fallout 3 Retrospective

I talk about New Vegas a lot in most of my retrospectives I have something to say about New Vegas that relates to my opinion on the topic at hand games can cover political themes they look at our real world politics and their effects on us both individually and as a populace how history affects us how economics affects us how these things might be changed for the better and how they may be failing us currently New Vegas in my eyes is a perfect example of this type of game one that not only looks to critique certain aspects of politics militarism and capitalism but also make a clear stance on where the developers stand on those topics as well as many social issues that we are used to in our lives New Vegas isn't just a game with a story to tell you about a career it's a game that wants to discuss topics of your Social existence with you countless games are like this and there is a large percentage of Their audience that seems to miss this there are times where you will witness an individual state that they don't like politics in their games they believe the concept of political themes and critique within a game will ruin the experience then you check their Twitter timeline and you find out that Metal Gear Solid is their favorite series ever created I find that there's a distinct lack of media comprehension within a large portion of the audiences that consume it this is not to say that those audiences are stupid I'm not I'm not saying that but rather that they've made a choice intentioned or otherwise those individuals have already decided on their stance regarding certain topics and when the game they enjoy presents critiques on those topics they are reasoned Away by the consumer I have many comments on the New Vegas video asking why I would even bring capitalism into the equation when discussing the game but the simple fact is that the game itself touches on these topics within the text capitalism is a huge discussion Point within New Vegas you can see how important it was to the developers to discuss and critique when looking at how they presented the same topics in the outer worlds a New Vegas Style video game also developed by obsidian the outer worlds is heavy-handed in not just its critique of capitalism but it's the test of the concept it's not just the people that are the villains but the entire economic system that has taken control of every living being in the game it's a comical display because of how on the nose it is in comparison to New Vegas to the point that while the outer worlds makes its stance incredibly clear New Vegas still managed to do it better in a more nuanced and not so obvious capacity if you listen to the dialogue in New Vegas if you look at what the developers and writers created after the fact you'll be hard-pressed to argue that the game doesn't have critiques of capitalism those are the themes of the game and that's why I wanted to discuss them that's why I discussed them in the Kotor video and why I'll discuss them in the future as they get brought up in the media I'm covering to discuss the injustices of capitalism in New Vegas has led to individuals who enjoy the game referring to me as a communist as a means of dismissing both my opinions on the subject and my interpretation of the developers work I have to point out to these people that the actions they are displaying are that of the people the game is critiquing there's a sentient bookshoot in Old World Blues that hates communism so much and loves capitalism so much that it won't hear any different there's comedic propaganda in every Fallout game designed to show how the American government attempted to manipulate their populace by vilifying both communism and the Chinese these aren't presented in the game just to offer a setting for your character they are saying something about the American government about the use of propaganda and how it influences us how we should question the things we are used to or we used to believe I didn't always question or critique the economic systems in place I had to build a skill set that would allow me to do so I had to change my Outlook to one more accepting of being wrong of wanting to learn more about the systems that have been in place and why they have succeeded or failed why communism is often vilified and what led to its failures to question things doesn't make you a communist once you're able to be presented with a piece of media and properly analyze what it has to say then you'll be able to get more out of the overall product New Vegas isn't just a game about shooting people and taking back a damn it's a socio-political critique it's a critique on capitalism and on propaganda on the pitfalls of the American government and the American way of life how the Americans attempt to vilify those who do not see eye to eye with their way of life whether or not that even affects them how the systems in place lead to the oppression of people within them despite it supposedly being the land of the free these things are present in the game's text I didn't conjure them out of thin air these are things they want to discuss with you they don't want to force their ideology on you but they do want you to at least think about it I'm bringing all this up because New Vegas is a game that has more to say on these topics than most a large portion of the games you play today and the games you played in the past had something to say often involving political themes games like metal gear and Fallout go a bit further in these critiques and discussions by hyper focusing on them and presenting a world to you that is meant to have you question the systems in place and how they could do better to critique capitalism doesn't mean to abolish capitalism to critique the U.S government doesn't make you a traitor that's what your freedom is supposed to be the freedom to critique and make better and one of the ways we work towards making it better is creating media that discusses these topics through writing painting programming and so much more besides Fallout has a lot to say on the topic of a war and it's never-ending cycle how it's always the same war never changes is the main quote of every Fallout game it looks to discuss how societies have a tendency to cling to the Past Fallout takes place far into the future but is always stuck in the 50s even after the bombs drop many try to go back to the way of life they have learned from the 50s as it was preserved within the vaults some like kaizar even try to go further attempting to rebuild Roman culture there's an entire DLC in New Vegas discussing the concept known as Old World Blues it's a series that wants to explore the inability to let go of the past the struggle to change one's Outlook when presented with new information that may be contrary to what they once believed to discuss greed and its prevalence Within These societies that are under a capitalist system and how said system is designed to vilify others Fallout 3 is specific in focusing on the concept of morality due to the designer's choice to focus on the karma system more than the other games a lot of content is presented to you as moral dilemmas and the game likes to focus on this concept by attempting to offer you choices that it considers difficult to reason the correct course of action for there are discussions to be had there are critiques to be given you can play through a Fallout game and pay no attention to these aspects of the product presented to you but to do so is to ignore part of the presentation these games aren't just about killing people and leveling up they aren't just about getting the water chip for your vault in Fallout 1 and while the developers and writers expect you to pay attention to these aspects they facilitate the process by letting you shoot things and complete quests while doing so so the question is why do you focus on these things in your retrospective my answer is because the games focus on them when I look at these games in retrospect I am not just looking at the gameplay I am looking at the storylines mechanics theming and development I am talking about things because I want to I'm not selling this video to you I'm making it for myself because I like it because I want to talk about it and so did the developers so that's what I'll be doing today I'll be talking about Fallout 3 as a whole looking back on it how it took a different path from its predecessors how that bothered longtime fans the development process that went into making it and its acquisition as an IP via Bethesda taking control I'll focus on the storyline and setting and what that storyline and setting is trying to convey to you whether you agree with it or not not everything Fallout 3 or even New Vegas says is something I agree with but they do say it and I do want to talk about it Fallout 3 is a first person open world RPG developed by Bethesda but that's not how it started originally the third Fallout game Van Buren was going to be created by the same developers who had developed Fallout 1 and 2. black Isle Studios Under the Umbrella Studio interplay entertainment began work on Van Buren but the project was canceled in 2003 due to the legal and financial issues that were plaguing interplay interplay would later lay off the entirety of black Isle Studio staff with multiple former employees going on to create obsidian and later Fallout New Vegas which included Concepts and themes from Van Buren presumably need to help with their financial struggles interplay sold the rights to create Fallout 3 to Bethesda softworks for a minimum advance of over 1 million dollars coming off the tales of development for one of my personal favorite games the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion this agreement also stipulated that Bethesda would have the rights to create an additional two Fallout games after the release of Fallout 3 and the royalties of all three games would be paid to interplay the announcement for the game was made in 2004 but Focus remained on Oblivion until its completion and release the two games would share the game Rio engine as well this agreement would turn into a purchase for the rights of Fallout as a series giving Bethesda control over the IP and any future games or media they wish to create with Fallout 3 releasing in October of 2008. much like New Vegas Fallout 3 was a revolutionary experience in terms of games at the time the concept of an open world RPG was strongly tied to but not limited to the Elder Scrolls series series of which was beginning to explode in popularity with the release of Morrowind followed by Oblivion it's understandable that a lot of eyes were on Fallout 3 from individuals who had never heard of the series before I had never heard of the series until the third game's announcement with no experience in crpgs at the time and an affection towards the gameplay style of the Elder Scrolls I was interested in taking the concept of those games and placing them in a post-apocalyptic setting with a focused on ranged combat over the Fantastical elements presented in Oblivion it's the Elder Scrolls with guns what could go wrong there it's Call of Duty while I can't call it a statistical fact there is good reason to believe that the majority of individuals who purchased and played Fallout 3 were new to the series especially when you look at how it dominated sales in comparison to the first two games this led to the game having a popular reception overall but there were a subset of fans of the original games that were disappointed with the direction the series was taking many fans of Fallout wanted more more Fallout style content they wanted crpg games set in the Fallout Universe Fallout 3 was a departure from this concept it's an open world first person shooter while also being an RPG this conflicts with the game's original genre for Better or For Worse there's a discussion to be had for completely reshaping the gameplay design of an established series even when changing ownership between developers it's not an incorrect path to take in my opinion but there will always be criticisms to be had take Monster Hunter world for example I am someone that enjoys the old school experience presented in the games that came before it and I can critique some of the changes made in the newer entries due to how they deviate from the older experience I wouldn't allow this criticism to ruin my overall experience however if a game is trying to do something new and they do it well it's still a good game despite it not being the same as it once was Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 however is a much more drastic example of this there is going to be a whiplash effect for long time fans of the series especially those who have been anticipating Van Buren looking back the people who had a real issue with the series and not criticisms with the change people who got vocally angry at the thought seemed to be in the minority of not just Fallout 3 fans but follow fans in general coming into this retrospective I had assumed based on what I had heard that most of the original fans of the series not only disliked Fallout 3 due to its changes but openly and vocally detested it however upon researching and looking into discussions on the subject all the way back to 2008 this doesn't seem to be the case there are people upset with the acquisition and change but they don't make up a large portion of the fandom this isn't my attempt to say anything about the previous games but merely lay out the reception of Fallout 3 specifically on the topic of the two previous entries I have actually played and enjoyed them very much so I've gained a larger spec and affinity for the genre and so Fallout 1 and 2 were both games I ended up enjoying immensely while also enjoying Fallout 3's experience where the old and new diverge more drastically is probably in presentation and writing Fallout 3 took a drastic change in setting by placing the storyline within the capital Wasteland we can't lump all Fallout 1 and 2 fans together to the negative feedback from a loud minority I think there's a perception nowadays that older fans of the series don't like new games but I think that's a misconception that just became the popular understanding without being true the people I'm describing are out there though make no mistake so going into this retrospective it needs to be said that my perspective is that of a player who started with three continued into New Vegas and Fallout 4 and has played and respects the older games in the series and while there are some comparisons I'd like to make between Fallout 3 and the original games through writing and presentation of the narrative there is less I'll be comparing in terms of gameplay differences this is a look at Fallout 3 as a Fallout 3 initiate what Fallout 3 did right and wrong on its own with respect to the older games but not solely focusing on said comparison changes to lore lack of respect for Source materials and retcons can have their place in the discussion but we are looking at Fallout 3 present and forward more than backwards don't come into my comments bashing me for enjoying this game because it isn't the old one and please for the love of God do not make an eight-hour response video that I won't watch because I have nice things to say about it seriously that was a pretty Bonkers thing to see happen to another dude I feel bad for that guy a lot of what I said about the stability and gameplay of New Vegas during the introduction of its video I do not want to repeat in this one I suggest watching that video first to get a frame of mind of how I will be viewing and presenting this experience specifically but it's not necessary I have a lot of love and respect for the Bethesda Fallout series with three and New Vegas not so much 4 or 76 but I still enjoy those games to some capacity like the previous video I will go going through the Journey of the lone Wanderer from birth to leaving the vaults to the search for their father and onward while exploring this world and discussing the journey I will also discuss the various side quests there are to be had where they succeed and fail and what messages they are trying to convey Within These story beats we will look at the overall setting and presentation of the game and its mechanics along the way we will discuss the various DLCs but this may or may not be in release order like in New Vegas it turned out to be in release order this is due to one of the DLCs being a pure continuation of the game's main storyline which originally ended abruptly and didn't allow you to continue playing afterward this DLC allows you to continue after this point and I generally feel that's a good point to complete the other DLCs as well although I may end up playing through and discussing them earlier than that rating these scripts takes about a month or so I think this one took maybe one and a half and I don't always know the entirety of the structure it will take shape within if you enjoy this content please consider liking commenting and subscribing as it helps me continue to make these videos for you all with that out of the way I'm Super Rad and this is the big Fallout 3 retrospective I've said it before and I'll say it again open world RPGs have a better time allowing you to set up a backstory for your character when there's little established backstory to go on in Oblivion and Morrowind you're a prisoner but it isn't explained what landed you there why you are in the situation you're in Fallout New Vegas you're a courier but everything leading up to you being shot in the head is left blank they aren't perfect examples and games rarely offer a perfect option for the player a favorite way of mine used in both the Shadowrun Trilogy and cyberpunk 2077 is to offer you a set of options that help frame your backstory based on your input in cyberpunk you can choose to start as a member of the corporate Elite a street kid or a nomad and each of these options will lead to their own introductory segment at the beginning of the game Shadowrun is similar allowing you to select an etiquette that will dictate how your character behaves in situations based on their past experiences it feels more free form when the player choice is introduced in Fallout 1 you will always start as the Vault dweller but you were given the option to select an assortment of characters with predetermined stats and backstories alternatively you can create your own character with your own backstory the only thing that is set in stone at that point is the concept that you are a vault dweller your family is unknown your past in the vault is unknown and you can shape that within your head as you please it's a better experience for players who enjoy inserting themselves into the character that they are playing but it isn't a law that needs to be followed even if I prefer it as well I bring this up because Fallout 3 wants to tell a story not just of the capital Wasteland but of a father and their child when the introductory sequence begins we are shown the remnants of Washington DC after the bombs fell around 200 years since the Great War Ron Perlman talks about war and how it never changes it's the typical Fallout experience so far where the deviation begins is with the sequence following this where the player character is literally birthed into existence your father and another doctor looking over you with your mother just off screen rather than leaving your past open-ended Fallout 3 instead looks to show you your past from start to present but rather than allow you to be the one doing the building it's the developers and writers instead they have a story to tell about the past of your character and they will establish it not you you have a father and a mother you know what your father looks like you've learned his past and with all of this information and build up it becomes harder for you to establish much of your own past to work with as it's already been laid out for you that may sound limiting and in a way it is that doesn't mean it's wrong it's about personal preference I enjoy the free-form nature of new Vegas's start but I also enjoy the linearity of the Nevada over the openness of the capital Wasteland it's my preference in the same vein individuals may like the structured story of the lone Wanderer while also appreciating the open World the game offers I don't believe either of these options are the wrong call even if I prefer one over the other it's still possible to insert yourself into the role of the lone Wanderer if you want it may be harder to immerse yourself than something more open-ended and blank but it isn't impossible and it doesn't ruin the overall experience even Fallout 2 had a bit of a more structured backstory for your character as a descendant of the character from the first game there's always going to be aspects the developers want to set in stone for the player sometimes it is more heavy-handed than in other scenarios Fallout 3 wants to tell a story and to do so they need to set up a backstory for you to be aware of so here we are a fresh one just out of the womb and staring down Liam Neeson for the better part of 20 minutes while you design your character yes this is the character creation process the doctors apparently have a device that will show you what you will look like in the future and you use said device to design your character's appearance I won't be going over the process again I also won't be talking about how potato-like or waxy the models appear as I've already said all of this before the creation process is both limiting and simple and that's fine for what it is the gambrio engine was limited in functionality and character creation suffers for it slightly while I think it is important to be able to make a character you appreciate and feel comfortable with this is also a first person RPG where you won't be seeing the face of your character very often I'm not trying to make excuses for what the developers presented to us I do believe the characters in Fallout 3 look abysmal even in comparison to follow New Vegas which is on the same engine with a few upgrades Bethesda is notorious for having ugly looking potato demons that could melt if left out in the sun too long after over a decade of playing the game you just kind of get used to it once your character is designed your mother experiences complications of some kind and kicks the bucket leading to a bright light washing over you and sending you a year into the future the entirety of your stay within Vault 101 is a series of set pieces they are designed to allow the player character to experience life within a vault now if you don't know anything about Fallout as a series it takes place after the events of a Great War that took place in 2077 which led to the majority of the planet getting destroyed via nuclear war Fair a company known as vault tech created a series of vaults that would house individuals should the war come to this and protect them from being eradicated the vaults were framed to act as a safe space for these individuals until it was possible to return to the surface unfortunately things aren't that simple the truth is that the majority of if not all of the vaults were designed with an experiment in mind and the people within would be used as Lab Rats to collect data this concept wasn't established within Fallout 1 but was created by Tim Kaine during the development of Fallout 2. the experiment for Vault 101 is to see what happens when a vault stays closed indefinitely with no expectation of opening up again in fact most vaults have their own unique experiments some of which I went over in the New Vegas video and some I will also discuss during the journey through the capital Wasteland though they aren't as interesting in my opinion the experiment of the vault is passed down from overseer to overseer as time goes on since its 200 years since the bombs fell the title of overseer has moved hands multiple times with Alphonse Al madovar being the latest overseer and one who is focused on keeping true to the isolationism expected of the Vault experiment this is a key factor that plays into the overseer's opinion of you and your father and later both of your backstories in the first segment you're one year old it's a short segment designed to instill that your father is watching over you lovingly so mechanically this is the step you select your special stats in there's a children's book near you as your father leaves you to play and by interacting with it you can allocate points into your various stats like New Vegas this game is easily completed regardless of how you allocate your points just like any of my other playthroughs I like to boost intelligence for the extra skill point gain Pro level up but I also make sure to never set a special to its maximum of 10. while New Vegas had implants which could be bought to upgrade your special stats Fallout 3 has unique bobble heads that do the same for free there are bobble heads for special and bobble heads for skills a special bobble head offers an additional point in the category the bobble head is related to meaning that a stat of nine can be coming to maximum value of 10 later on allowing you to allocate points Elsewhere for a more balanced and effective build skill based bobble heads offer an additional 10 points to the relevant skills and skills can go up to a maximum of 100 points total this is all fairly similar to that of New Vegas which changed the formula in many ways but not so much in terms of stats and special as you complete the allocation of your special your father James by the way will appear to talk to you about your mother reading an excerpt of Revelations 21 6. I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end I will give unto him that is a thirst of the Fountain of the Water of Life freely it was your mother's favorite passage and one that is directly related to the events of the game's narrative although this isn't immediately apparent as you walk out of the room with your father you are washed into another glow of white light and it is nine years later the day of your 10th birthday the Pip Boy is an iconic item used throughout the entirety of the Fallout series it's generally a device that fits on the wrist of an individual as their personal computer with the ability to display personal statistics involving Health inventory Etc it also has the functionality to be a journal to display local and world maps and the ability to read electronic notes or even play the radio what this means is that the Pip-Boy is your menu system in Fallout it's what lets you manage your inventory and heal to see where you are in the Wasteland or within a specific interior location the ability to listen to distress signals or Galaxy news radio Etc an important device for any Vault dweller and one handed out to 10 year olds in Vault 101 as they are reaching the age where they can be useful to the Vault by performing laborer although this is never shown off the birthday segment of the introduction like the rest looks to help set up your character via stats or tutorials as an infant we set up our special now we are learning to interact with various NPCs while also display their personalities a Mata for example is your childhood friend she offers you a present and you can decide how you react to her about it either with appreciation or by being rude now the dialogue and writing in Fallout 3 is nothing to write home about if you're looking for an engaging narrative in sharp dialogue with Nuance you're better off playing New Vegas Fallout 3 instead suffers from some of the pitfalls I discussed in my Kotor retrospective the dialogue of characters and even yourself are more often than not played for a laugh sometimes this ends up being unintentional characters that are mean or evil are often comically so with no amount of depth adding to the reasoning for why they are the way they are arguably Fallout 3 handles this better than BioWare did with Kotor but the point I'm trying to make here is that the game focuses more on humor than its messaging and this is due to the writers trying to emulate the previous entries to an extent the writing and reasoning within Fallout 3's narrative ends up being either silly or illogical but if you go back and play Fallout 2 you'll find a lot of these same hiccups such as the shaman who can convey his thoughts to you from across the Wasteland and a set of women from a mafia family that both want to sleep with you the point I'm making isn't that the writing is necessarily bad but that it doesn't take itself too seriously until it finds a need to there are serious points in Fallout 2 and 3 but the game is filled with weak dialogue and humor that probably fit better in a text-based environment over a spoken one hearing people say the things that you would normally read in Fallout 2 delivers a different effect overall and this ends up making Fallout 3 feel incredibly Juvenile and this theme is ever present throughout your entire playthrough Butch is another example a child who is a bully just for the sake of being one he has a bit of a backstory you can delve into later sure but for your initial stay in Vault 101 the storyline of Butch and his friends is purely comedic they go from simple bullies to a gang of leather jacket wearing motorbike lacking bikers known as the tunnel snakes who shout tunnel snakes rule at any chance they get they aren't taken seriously but they also aren't supposed to be taken Siri seriously when the game wants you to focus on something properly it will be more apparent regardless of how well it actually presents itself in terms of personalities you can talk to the overseer who as I mentioned previously seems to hold a resentment towards you and your father he has his eye on you and wants you to watch yourself around a Mata who turns out to be his daughter after some time has passed in the cafeteria your father will tell you to go meet Jonas down in the reactor level for a surprise once you run into Jonas your father is quick to show up behind you with a BB gun for your birthday and this then acts as the tutorial segment for how to shoot at your enemies you're given a few makeshift targets to take out before A rad roach appears and then you have to kill it as well if you're wondering what A rad roach is doing in a vault that is supposed to have never been opened first off you're more astute than I was as a kid playing this section and second it gets explained later on during the introductory sequence once the rad roach is dead your father has Jonas take a picture of the two of you to commemorate the moment and the camera's flash becomes the familiar white light that leads into the next segment of your life when within the Vault six years later the scene begins with your father performing an eye exam on you and determining you are fit enough to take part in today's annual goat exam goat stands for generalized occupational aptitude test and within the universe of the game is used to establish which role the student will eventually take on within the vault as they get older for the player this is a means of selecting your tag skills tag skills are three skills you select to give a 15 Point boost to before you start your main journey of the game in New Vegas these were assigned with a personality test given to you by doc Mitchell in Fallout 3 it's the goat exam but both of these tests are farces just like New Vegas you can select your tag skills manually by talking to your teacher even after the test is completed or by bypassing the test altogether by telling him you don't want to take part ahead of time before leaving your Father's Office you may notice a bobble head I mentioned previously this is the medicine bobble head and will add an additional 10 points to the skill without spoiling anything not picking it up now will lock you out of obtaining it for some time so grab it if you're playing along upon leaving James's office you'll witness a Mata being harassed by the tunnel snakes and they are as comedic looking as I described them to be earlier you can fight them off for a motto or talk them down and this is your first example of a skill check in Fallout 3. in three the speech skill checks are percentage-based checks relative to the associated skill skill checks are different between Fallout 3 and New Vegas a high speech skill will give you a better chance of convincing someone to do something for you but it's still just that a chance the chance can be boosted to 100 potentially but more often than not you will be dealing with a dice roll this is how most new players were used to speech checks and Fallout and may have felt some Whiplash when entering New Vegas instead of percentage-based checks New Vegas had hard requirements if you didn't have 25 points and explosives you weren't getting Dynamite from Easy peat I've seen some people complain about how New Vegas handled this setup the appeal of the Fallout 3 way of doing things is that you always have a chance to come out lucky even with a low skill level while in New Vegas you were locked out of specific checks completely unless you come back later and sometimes that isn't an option I believe that the New Vegas approach is more impactful for a variety of reasons for one the progression is more Dynamic when you can't complete everything every time this is less true in subsequent playthroughs when you can plan ahead but I appreciate how a run changes when I can't do everything perfectly every time the same is technically true in Fallout 3 considering how low your chances can be in comparison to your skill level but Fallout 3 does facilitate safe scumming while New Vegas has fixed this issue obviously you don't have to save scum and that is what I am doing in this current playthrough whenever I fail a speech check but New Vegas offers a level of Peace of Mind by removing the option from the equation again though you don't have to use it don't think that the option being there means you have to use it be a little stronger than that have a little more will than that more importantly New Vegas doesn't limit your ability to persuade just by speech skill rather your experience and other skills can directly affect your Effectiveness in dialogue like I mentioned easy peat is convinced with an explosives check but if this was Fallout 3 you'd only be using a speech skill for almost everything again it's dynamic making their sound so you aren't aware of what skills are going to be useful in what situation when talking to someone you can't focus solely on speech and expect to get by in every scenario after dealing with the tunnel snakes and taking part in the goat exam you'll see a final flash of white light as we progress three years into the future making your character 19 years old you're woken up abruptly by Amada as things within the Vault seem to be in a chaotic State Amada informs you that vault security is looking for you and that your father has managed to open the vault entrance and Escape thus being labeled as a traitor he managed this by escaping during a large rad roach infestation which is currently still taking place your father's friend Jonas was subsequently interrogated and beaten to death in the process something that is affecting him out of heavily Ahmad can hand you a pistol to defend yourself with and this is where the game begins to open up in terms of exploring in combat a model runs off to deal with her father and as you exit your room you'll see a security guard being attacked by various roaches both the guard and the roaches are hostile so regardless of who wins you have to fight your way out of the situation in fact all security except for one individual will be hostile to the point of attacking you no matter what you do it seems that on the orders of the overseer that these men are out for blood worse is a scene where two individual dwellers wish to escape similar to your father and upon attempting to escape or shot down by security while unarmed there's a level of uh police oppression to be seen within the Vault everyone is controlled by the overseer and he exerts his power via the police force who are tools of his will rather than individuals who are meant to keep the populace safe as you make your way around Butch will approach you in a panic turns out his mother is being attacked by Rad roaches as he speaks and he begs for your assistance in the matter you can tell Butch to eat [ __ ] if you want but by helping him you'll gain his respect and appreciation as well as this tunnel snakes jacket which you can wear it's such a quick sequence of events too which goes from an individual who is bullied and vilified you his entire life to a man begging for assistance and quickly forgetting about how he treated you for so long he's at least somewhat apologetic for how he's acted over a decade of your life but the amount of remorse you may expect from someone within this scenario is severely lacking I wouldn't care about this as much if a Fallout 3 itself didn't care about putting forth events that evoke an emotional impact but it does there are situations and scenarios in the game that want you to feel something sadness or grief happiness or anger it's an important aspect to the storyline from a narrative perspective and something the writers clearly cared about that's why we can look at how Butch reacts to you saving his family members from being eaten alive by roaches something he was too scared to do and find his response lackluster in terms of narrative and emotional impact the game is full of situations like this as we go there's not too much more to say about your journey through the vault as you make your way to the entrance since the door leading to the entrance is blocked off you need to find an alternative route through the overseer's office as you reach the security office or jail you can find the overseer and officer Mack interrogating Amada this leads to an altercation where you are forced to kill officer Mack as a model runs off to her domicile once Mack is taken care of you can talk to the overseer about what's going on he won't fill you in on too many details stating that he believes he is doing what is best for the vault and that you are somehow a danger to the citizens within you can threaten him which will lead to an altercation followed by his death at your hands or you can threaten the well-being of a Mata to get his key to the overseer's office neither of these are actually necessary and killing him out his father will have repercussions on how she views you as an individual I personally allow him to live even after everything he did due to our history with Amada and the fact that you can find the overseers password within his bedroom making the altercation entirely optional in the first place Amada states she will meet you at the entrance when she has the opportunity to do so and you can head to the overseers chamber to learn a bit more about Vault 101 there's a terminal entry within that suggests that the Vault had actually been opened at least once or twice in the past in order for scouting parties to determine if it was safe to leave believe whether it was through this event or the other non-documented openings of the Vault rad roaches made their way inside which led to the current infestation the terminal can open a hidden passageway which allows one to reach the entrance of the vault as you make your way there and open the door a Mata will reappear and be shocked at the site considering she has never seen this happen before you can have your goodbyes with Amada and even offer for her to join you but she refuses as she wants to try and fix what her father has ruined she's also crucial to a later Quest here so she can't come with you anyway as you're about to leave some Security will appear to attack you and you make your way to escape into the capital Wasteland it's at this point that you can reset any of your creation steps you took for your character including name tag skills special and even your appearance proving that the goat exam really is as useless as was claimed while your time in Vault 101 is brief I believe that it does what something like Terrace and Kotor aim to do but better and shorter you're given a short segment that briefly teaches you the mechanics of the game by having you experience them naturally first hand you see enough development of your character within the ball to build up some sort of emotional bond within and then you experience losing your home and your father I believe there are several players who do not enjoy the Vault 101 segment based on what I described when discussing immersion and the ability to insert yourself into the setting of the game but the introductory sequence while dated now was revolutionary for its time no other reputable well-known games allowed you to grow from child to adult quite like this except for something like Fable where that was the entire point of the series Vault 101 doesn't overstay its welcome it acts as a tutorial mechanism and it does it well leaving you potentially missing or resenting the people within that have forced you out and with the confines and linearity of the Vault out of the way you can make your way out into the Wasteland proper to be met with the experience of the capital that acts as a contrast to what you have just experienced I believe for first-time players of the series especially this Whiplash effect from the cleanliness of the Vault to the the post-apocalyptic is impactful and effective at showing you just how bad things have gotten while also making you interested in exploring how Humanity has dealt with life in the apocalypse so far starting with the nearby town of Megaton exiting the Vault will offer you a sum of exp that will allow you your first level up leveling up in Fallout 3 is a consistent experience what I mean is that each level offers you both one perk and your assortment of skill points to allocate in previous Fallout games you would receive perks every three levels making perks more rare and therefore more valuable in terms of character build while perks are still valuable in Fallout 3 there's 30 levels to work through with the DLC meaning you'll have a total of 29 perks once you reach that point in New Vegas you gained perks every two levels and started the game with a level cap of 30 instead of 20 which was raised by 5 with the release of each subsequent DLC this means that the Courier in New Vegas can have a total of 25 in comparison to the total of 29 in Fallout 3 which which was originally a total of 19 before the Broken Steel DLC as Fallout 3 was my first experience with the series I was used to an entry that offered me Perks at every level leaving me disappointed when I played New Vegas and realized that this wasn't the case there there's something gratifying about perks that I feel we can all agree on to some capacity the ability to level up and gain a new passive or active benefit means the ability to refresh or bolster the gameplay style of our character Dungeons and Dragons does it with Feats Knights of the Old Republic does it with Feats and force Powers game after game after game has offered some form of perk progression whether it's an RPG or not because the concept of the design is something a majority of players appreciate the market is so saturated with this aspect of a game that the gratification factor is starting to wear thin but back in 2008 they were still a novel concept players loved looking forward to these rewards adding to the overall experience of building your character and watching their effectiveness grow leveling up isn't the only way to gain perks either there are various side quests and tasks you can complete that may lead to you unlocking free unique perks helping Moira Brown and Megaton is an example of this and one we will go over in detail as we work towards finishing the Wasteland Survival Guide skill points the other consistent aspect of a level up are awarded based on a formula involving your intelligence stat it's a hard bonus based on the value of your special stat meaning you gain a base value of 10 skill points plus the value of your intelligence for example if I have an intelligence of Aid on level up I'll gain 18 skill points total and there's perks early on that allows you to gain an additional three per level up making it highly useful to get as soon as it is unlocked that's the thing about perks they aren't readily available to you there will be an assortment of perks you can select from as you reach level 2 but most perks have both level and special stat requirements The Fortune Finder perk unlocks at level 6 but you can only select it if you have a luck stat of five or more this means that your build is somewhat dictated by how you decided to build your character at the start plus what your choice is based on what is available to you as you level up if you have the knowledge ahead of time and plan ahead you can plan out your optimal build but it's not necessary and the Fallout Series has always allowed for satisfying free-form progression even if you have a perk you want but can't obtain you can consider sacrificing a level up to the Intensive training perk which can be selected multiple times and allow you to allocate a new Point into your special stats even better the special bobble heads are free and may be the one point you need to get that new perk you've been eyeing the free form leveling system offers a wide variety of paths for the player to build their character towards based on what they plan on using this is in contrast to bethesda's Elder Scrolls Series where a good portion of your abilities are dictated based on your use with them in Oblivion you build skill with bladed Weaponry by using swords and daggers when you level up the stats that you get the biggest bonuses are based on the skills you leveled up to that point and there's Merit to the concept of that system I used to play an MMO called mortal online MO mostly because of how much I loved Oblivion it was an open world PVP first person MMO where all of your skills were dictated based on use and grew as you used them there's a rewarding aspect of that progression that you can't get in something like Fallout but that doesn't mean fallout's progression is worse it's just different and I appreciate both for different reasons I like watching numbers go up every time I level up and I enjoy learning new perks and skills regardless of what I did between level UPS to get there and follow three manages to offer that the system could have more depth if the developers had intended it to but they didn't and it doesn't that's fine new Vegas's system is almost completely similar and I love it just as much mostly because it's limiting nature forces me to assign higher value to specific choices I make but I still have the ability to make said choices so you leveled up chosen your first perks and allocated your skill points what's next in a way the start at this point between Fallout 3 and New Vegas is incredibly similar the goal of Fallout 3 at this moment is to find your father the goal of New Vegas at the end of the good spring segment is to find Benny the man who shot you in the head both games have a clear task they want you to take but where they deviate is how the game presents the solution to your problem in terms of exploration options in Fallout 3 the capital Wasteland is completely open to you in New Vegas you have two real paths to take in order to reach the strip one of the biggest issues players had when moving from Fallout 3 to New Vegas was the sense of more linearity within the Nevada versus the capital Wasteland one of the biggest aspects of Fallout 3 is its open world nature while New Vegas is also open world a large amount of the paths from point A to B are just that paths you can't climb mountains to cut through the middle of the map because there's invisible walls that prevent you from doing so there's options but there's also direction to players at the time it seemed like immersion was the end-all be-all aspect of any RPG if there was anything within the game that could potentially take you out of being immersed it was not only a failure but something to be vilified this was the case for invisible walls in New Vegas because they may take away from believing you are within the world presented to you that it's real or at least presenting itself to be real but the invisible walls had a purpose linearity in games has a purpose I've said this in a past video but there is nothing wrong with linearity like all other aspects of game design it's all about how it's used if linearity is used effectively it's just another design decision that lends to the game's strength I've seen people complain that Bioshock had linear Maps while System Shock was more open winding paths that doubled back on one another it was a sin to Consumers at the time those games were somehow regressing as if it makes sense for every game to have these elaborate maps with plenty of paths and mazes to choose from when the rest of the game's design philosophy doesn't call for it open world Freedom has its place when it's planned and designed for as all of the other mechanics will be intended to complement it linearity has its place for the same reasons it depends what the developers are trying to offer you I remember Final Fantasy 13 getting obliterated online for its linearity because other Final Fantasy games weren't like that previously mostly due to their Overworld map in my opinion you shouldn't be looking at a pass game in the franchise about a mechanic when the developers are clearly choosing to go a different direction it doesn't make sense to critique a game for its linearity when the linearity is the point just because Final Fantasy VII had a world map and 13 didn't it's the same thing here Fallout 3 and New Vegas offer similar but different experiences Fallout 3 is open New Vegas wants to guide you a little bit more than that they are both valid design choices and it doesn't make one better than the other even if I prefer how New Vegas handled everything in comparison to three additionally I believe there's a misconception nowadays about the plot line of Fallout 3 where I see individuals claim it's about finding your father and nothing more this isn't the case if Fallout 3 was only about finding your father their credits would roll once you save him later on if we compared the same sentiment to New Vegas the entire point of the game would be finding Benny and the credits would roll once he'd killed him the truth of it is that finding your father in Fallout 3 is where the game opens up once more it starts as an open experience and then it opens up further for the grand narrative and plotline New Vegas guides you to Benny and then explodes in openness when the greater aspects of the strip Mr house and the dam become apparent these games have directions and plot lines to follow but neither focuses on their simple introductory Concepts they have more to say and show them that once you have some experience within the world and have become used to it these stories grow in scope and concept along with your understanding of the setting and how they fit inside of it all of this to say that while I have criticisms of every game and every experience looking back I often think that many of the things we have seen the general audience complain about are overall unreasonable and unjustified I want to go in with a lens of what Bethesda was trying to do with Fallout 3. and where that worked and where it didn't so while the game is open to Explorer we will be following the path presented to us by the main quest line and deviating from it along the way only to return later on we are on the search for our father but we are also going to take part in various side quests discuss them and see where they take us as I already pointed out this means we'll be hitting a Megaton but there is an individual named silver you can meet in an abandoned town just ahead of you silver is on the run from a man named Moriarty who just so happens to reside in Megaton as well Moriarty believes silver owes him caps and silver explains that Moriarty is a sleaze ball who is trying to drain her of all of her income a sentiment that is shared with the greater population of Megaton you can kill her to get the money or offered to take the amount owed and tell Moriarty that she has skipped town various decisions will affect your karmic value which fluctuates between good neutral and bad while New Vegas didn't have a large amount of functionality surrounding the karma mechanic something I believed to be a waste Fallout 3 attempts to do more with it but it's more a lackluster an unrewarding experience overall Karma affects exactly three things in this game first if you have good karma you will sometimes be ambushed by Talon company mercenaries if you have bad karma you'll be ambushed by a group known as Regulators second if you have good karma or Bad Karma you can get a few supply rewards for a Megaton or Paradise Falls which is a slave Camp finally and most importantly Karma affects which characters you can get to join you as companions in Fallout 3. yes like New Vegas and previous games Fallout 3 allows you to hire companions specifically you can get a human or robot companion plus Dogmeat both Dogmeat and a ghoul companion known as Sharon have no karmic requirements but everyone else requires you to be a specific alignment star Paladin cross won't join you unless you have good karma sergeant rl3 won't join you unless you have neutral Karma and Jericho won't join you unless you have bad karma there are more companions than that with their own requirements but this brings us to a big differe difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas the Companions and Fallout 3 do not matter outside of a few specific characters and circumstances the companions in Fallout 3 have very little development nor do they have any companion quests to take part in Additionally the companions do not have a status attached to them known as essential in Fallout New Vegas any of your companions that end up incapacitated will be knocked out and then revived later on in Fallout 3 if a companion dies they are gone for good there's something to be said about tactics here and taking an assessment of a situation to make sure that you and your party are safe however this is something that is easier to achieve in actual tactical games which modern Fallout does not Fallout 1 and 2 sure it's a turn-based game where you plan everything ahead of time if you lose a companion and they die forever it makes sense in Fallout 3 there's some tactical aspects within real-time FPS combat but your companions can be so squishy that it can be impossible to save them in a variety of situations sometimes it can feel unfairly designed when you're out with your party make no mistake of your own and suddenly dog meat is dead due to Cosmic events outside of your control this is why companions are essential in New Vegas because the gameplay style of modern Fallout doesn't facilitate a way for you to effectively protect your companions it's fixed in New Vegas and in Fallout 4 because it makes more sense to do what you can for your companions but expect them to sometimes die in an open world shooting RPG where anything can happen for this reason I'll mention companions from time to time but I won't be focusing on them there's no point outside of a few situations and most of the characters have no real impact on the story even companions that should have an impact on the story don't at least until the DLC Megaton is a town of scrap everything is built out of scrap within some capacity and it shows as you approach the town you're greeted by Deputy weld whose only job is to welcome you to megaton the name of the town comes from the fact that it is surrounding in active nuclear warhead what would convince them to do something like this apparently it originates from a crash plane and carrying the Warhead that created the Creator we see today the crater was used to protect survivors from dust storms as they tried to gain entry into Vault 101 naturally over time it became a base of operations that needed more and more protection from Raiders and super mutants leading to the town we see today the interior of Megaton is exactly as described it's built out of scrap from around the immediate area and the Wasteland there's parts of the crashed airplane I mentioned earlier and the town Works its way into the crater while building into the hills surrounding it in the dead center of the crater is the nuclear warhead some of the original survivors who founded Megaton ended up worshiping the bomb and creating their own religion surrounding it known as the Church of the children of Adam there's not much to say on religion because the game doesn't try to focus on them the religion seems to exist to Showcase its absurdity and dwindling support although it does make a reappearance in Fallout 4. once inside you were greeted with the town's Sheriff Lucas Sims it's almost a whiplash effect listening to the dialogue and performances of the characters you meet in Fallout 3 in comparison to New Vegas the writing and complexity of the characters are simplistic in design compared to the development and backstory we've received in the Nevada if you're polite to Sims it's very important to the developers that he points out you're being friendly and well-mannered if you react negatively to him the game wants that to be apparent as well not every character is like this but many are designed to reflect your actions in a way that doesn't feel natural Fallout 3 came at a time when morality was a huge grab Within game design thus characters seemed designed to Showcase their morality rather than having any complexity of their own a thing that obsidian worked to remedy with their own release again it isn't necessarily everyone there's plenty of characters who have a unique sense of self but many of the people you meet leave the game feeling Bland and stagnant rather than vibrant and Alive people aren't realistic in how they perceive you Megaton is home to an active nuclear bomb and you can ask to take a look at it on your first meeting with Lucas Sims and he'll agree to this despite not knowing you in the slightest it doesn't even take a speech check that's the focus of Fallout 3 they want to get you to take part in quests and perform actions they don't want you to have to fight or work towards making these opportunities possible Bethesda is more interested in having you interact with the bomb and everything surrounding it rather than interacting with the people who have made a bomb a normalized aspect of their lives Megaton is almost a special case there is a lot of marketing and work that went into the concept of Megaton the developers wanted to have a focus on the bomb early on because they use it as the ultimate Showcase of Karma and morality this is because Megaton offers you two options you either Defuse The Bomb for Good Karma or you blow up Megaton for Bad Karma and some rewards yeah you can blow up Megaton and yes it is one of Fallout 3's biggest highlights as it's a decision with real mechanical weight NPCs will disappear certain individuals will comment on the event it's important in a way that many decisions in Fallout 3 want to be but fail at doing so and it still has its own problems if you head into Moriarty's Saloon there's an individual sitting in the corner who tries to flag you down this is Mr Burke and he is voiced by Wes Johnson potentially one of the most unique voices in a Bethesda game who held the role of Lucy and the chance of the Dark Brotherhood he has other roles in both games but his voice is the most impactful and unique in these specific roles Burke has a job for you a wealthy benefactor has hired him in the destruction of Megaton a destruction of the apocalypse's past to make way for the future and pave the Wasteland In His Image the image of capitalism and greed yeah I'm bringing up capitalism again but how Fallout 3 questions this economic concept in no way possesses the depth that obsidians take does ten Penny sees the tower as an eyesore over the Wasteland that he is looking to build over and thus wants it demolished in order to pave way for the future of his ideals there's more to 10 penny in his Tower to discuss but this isn't the time for it we're still focusing on Megaton and I'd be missing out if I did not showcase the events of what happens when you choose to blow up the town witnessing it from the balcony of 10 Penny Tower [Music] what a grand display of fireworks I almost wish there was another nuke we could designate you don't see that very often uh you can tell the only reason Mr Burke wanted to blow up Megaton was because it felt good to him 10 pennies reasoning has more to it but it's also surface level and nonsensical these characters aren't developed their motivations aren't well established there is no reasoning given to you for blowing up the town that is justifiable not that there ever would be the destruction of Megaton mechanically is for spectacle and was created by the developers as such they wanted you to see just how evil you could get in Fallout 3 and what that evil would do to the world around you but the reality is that this Falls flat Megaton is a one-off nothing else you do truly affects the Wasteland like what you do to megaton and even then the effects of megaton's Destruction are fairly contained as you return to the town after the fact you'll find it destroyed and irradiated the robot Deputy is destroyed but still semi-functional an actually interesting development is that of a character we haven't met yet known as Moira Brown who ends up Surviving the blast but also ends up ghoulified in the process Moira has a rather long quest with a lot of steps and rewards involved and I imagine the developers didn't want you to miss out on all of it by killing her off so having her become gullified is admittedly a pretty smart and unique way to fix the situation but of course we aren't going to blow a Megaton there's too much to do there and too much to get out of it the only reason blowing up Megaton is there is because the developers want to show it to you they don't actually care about the moral implications they want it to be such an enticing option that you tried at least once because that's what the game's marketed towards that being said if you do blow up Megaton you can gain an executive room in 10 Penny Tower and if you save Megaton you will be rewarded with a house in the town as for Mr Burke you can turn him into Lucas Sims and he will have you join him in the arrest Burke will try to kill Sims and he can succeed but if you're quick on the draw you can take Burke out first and Lucas will even thank you for it within Megaton there's a major quest to take part in that will have you traveling around the capitol Wasteland but before we discuss that there's a few smaller quests to take care of if you're so inclined Walter needs help fixing the water pipes by around Megaton as they are leaking and it's affecting the pressure to the plant there's three pipes to fix and you can spot them by following the various piping around the town a repair skill of 30 is needed to do so one of the static skill checks that exists in the game while dialogue as I discussed earlier specifically focuses on the speech skill and uses a percentage-based RNG role to decide your success non-dialock checks require specific skill thresholds though it can sometimes be influenced New Vegas ended up taking the concept of the static checks and applied to those to all aspects of the dialogue as well ultimately making what feels like a more Dynamic product overall if you want to be a Good Samaritan you can be told by the local doctor that Leo Stahl is a citizen of the Town who gets high in the water processing plant late at night if you go and talk to him you have the opportunity to convince him to come clean now the game isn't saying much here with these quests they are designed to be completed on a mechanical level but most of these aren't situations where there's something greater to be said about the interactions or the themes surrounding it instead it's purely about you the player yet decide if you do the right thing or wrong thing Leo is a drug addict and it's up to you to decide if you help him this is Fallout 3's Focus to see what you would do in a given situation rather than deliver an overall message or topic to think about it does offer that for the grander narratives and quest lines sometimes but overall the world is a Sandbox for you to do good or evil within the effort put into the writing seems to imply that you aren't supposed to think about it too much even the choice of blowing up Megaton doesn't feel like there's a lot of weight behind it and that's a situation where you are nuking a village it does have weight behind it but the game doesn't convey it very well the real major side quest in Megaton involves Moira Brown at the crater side Supply while you're here you can grab a holiday from an individual who claims to be an Android or a synthetic man on the run from the Commonwealth after escaping his captors the man is looking for reconstructive surgery on his mechanical body and to have someone wipe his memory so he can live freely from his past there are a couple of these tapes in Megaton and the doctor of the town was specifically asked if he could do anything about the situation but everyone seems to believe it to be a prank if you played Fallout 4 you know that this isn't the case and we'll pick this back up once we reach Rivet City in the meantime Moira has a job for us it's one big job with an assortment of little tasks a majority of which can be completed around Megaton or at least somewhat near it Moira is working on a book The Wasteland survival guide and she would like to enlist your help in completing it chapter by chapter each chapter has three tasks Maura wants you to complete and each of these tasks always has an optional step that requires a little more effort but leads to Greater rewards take the section about finding food and Medicine in the Wasteland there's a supermarket nearby that has apparently never been explored by Megaton scavengers despite it being down the road when you arrive it's full of Raiders but your objective is a fridge near the entrance where you can find some food without having to partake in combat it becomes more complicated due to the optional task of finding medicine within the supermarket as well as that's passed all the Raiders in the back of the store once you find it even more Raiders show up before you have a chance to escape leading to another firefight unless you're particularly stealthy by this point if you return to Mora and offer her information only on the food you found you'll get iguana bits as a reward but if you go the extra mile you get a passive item in your inventory known as a food sanitizer that increases the HP restoration effect of the food consumables by 20 every task is like this Moira wants to learn about radiation poisoning so you can either gain 200 RADS or 600 RADS before returning to her if you hit 600 you unlock a secret perk that allows you to regenerate hurt limbs when you are above 400 RADS finally for chapter 1 Moira wants you to explore a nearby town that is known to be full of active Mayans she wants you to reach the park there to learn about maneuvering around the mines but would also like you to return one to her for a bonus there's an active sniper in the town as well that you have to watch out for which can make the quest particularly dangerous for the uninitiated you gain a bottle cap mind schematic for going above and beyond here yes the workbench is in this game as well and you can use it to craft a variety of weapons and explosives if you have the schematics to do so it's not designed very well I hate finding stuff off in the Wasteland so much random stuff and you have no idea where to look for it it's insane every time you return to Moira and explain to her the situation you're given a selection of responses that actually dictate how the guide will be presented if you have high intelligence you can make a bunch of dialogue choices focusing on this aspect of the guide and the effect of the guide in the game will change overall once completed its effect is via a perk and not the book itself but the perk is dependent on your dialogue choices and overall completion of the tasks and optional aspects standard replies will increase overall HP intelligence replies will increase science and medical skill levels there's multiple other potential bonuses here after chapter 1 is complete Moira will have an additional three tasks for you these include bashing the heads of mole rats with a repellent stick that turns out to blow them up as well as investigating my alerts and as well as injuring yourself the extra optional aspects involve how many mole rats you kill being stealthy when observing the mirelurks and crippling a limb for Moira the extra rewards include keeping the repellent stick a hat and an environment suit the clothing options have their own bonuses Moyer's Quest is so rewarding and so in-depth that it makes sense that developers wouldn't want to get rid of her even if you blew up Megaton hence her gullification in my opinion I think it's a cool event to stumble upon to see the glorification of someone that you met as a human previously it's a good compromise because it still offers an effect on the player while not removing the ability to continue the quest that being said I would have been fine with all quests being removed entirely as that is also an impactful aspect of blowing up the entire town Moira has a final chapter to work through about one of the tasks involves venturing out to Rivet City Rivet City is one of the destinations on our main story path so we'll revisit the quest once we get there in the meantime we need to head back to Moriarty Saloon and talk to the man himself about our father Moriarty has some history with your father which might sound odd considering you grew up in a vault when you explain you were looking for him he will recognize you as the baby James was carrying on his way to Vault 101. turns out you weren't born in a vault but after the death of your mother your father took you there and persuaded his way in order to keep you safe since the Vault needed a physician they had to let James in despite their isolationist lifestyle rather than explaining this to you your father wished for you to always stay safe in The Vault and thus convinced you that you were born there and have been there for your entire existence why he escaped is still unclear James apparently stopped by the saloon to get his bearing since he had been locked away for so long and Moriarty knows where James went but payment is something important to him and he won't give you the information for free Moriarty wants 100 caps to divulge the information but you can State you don't have them which leads you down the quest involving silver who we met back in the town just outside Vault 101. you end up paying Moriarty 300 caps this way but they weren't yours to begin with alternatively you can hack into his computer to get all the information you need through Moriarty's personal Journal bypassing the cost entirely turns out your father has made his way to a radio station in the city proper known as Galaxy news radio meaning that's our next stop as well before that I'd like to point out how the citizens of Megaton are framed here they're good people for the most part or at least they are portrayed as such you have people like Moriarty who are portrayed as manipulative and greedy but almost everyone else is just living their lives there's a ghoul who works at the saloon named Gob when you talk to him he expects you to be rude over his appearance and the game only gives you two options here we treat Gob like an absolute gentleman or essentially begin throwing up at the sight of him there's no in between here for a more natural conversation in fact if you are nice to Gob he is so shocked by the concept that he reveres you and offers you a discount despite Moriarty being abusive towards him he really sticks his neck out for you over a few lines and I don't want to say it is unrealistic that he would do so but I do believe it portrays something about Megaton residence that isn't made abundantly clear most of the people within Megaton are apparently prejudiced towards ghouls no one in town seems to treat him with any form of respect no one is ever nice to him all because of how he looks due to radiation point poisoning many ghouls are oppressed within the capital Wasteland it's a topic that gets presented multiple times from Gob to another ghoul that we will meet at 10 Penny Tower how the game handles it can feel sloppy at times but it's still an interesting concept to focus on even a little you never know the Resonance of Megaton held this Prejudice unless you talk to Gob directly or witnessed it you're blind to this aspect of the Good Karma town until you do a little digging even in the areas of society where people are trying their best to survive and potentially do good there's still always these aspects of hate lurking just beneath the surface on the topic of Gob he was captured by slavers and purchased by Moriarty as his own personal slave which I believe says enough about Moriarty and justifies not helping him with silver nor paying him to find out about your father slavery is a big aspect and following in general but it does have a larger focus in three than in like New Vegas and we'll be exploring that more as we reach Paradise Falls but that's far off into this script in the meantime that's all we have to do in Megaton for the moment well there's a woman in the saloon by the name of Lucy West who would like us to deliver a letter to her family in arafu she can't pay us but believes her father will be able to offer compensation for the journey it's out of the way from Galaxy news radio but the journey there will allow us to make a stop along the way to discuss Big Town additionally one of your potential companions Jericho is here but he's a bad karma option we can't hire at the moment and this run won't be focusing on companions anyway so we're just gonna leave him arafu is far to the northwest of Megaton if you Veer slightly more North along the way you'll reach the settlement of Big Town why is it called Big Town because all the residents come from Little Lamplight once they're too old to live there why would they be too old to live there we'll get to that as you approach you'll learn that big town is consistently attacked by both super mutants and slavers leading to the citizens falling into a depressive spiral with many of them giving up hope and staying alive and giving little to no fight when you push them on anything the people of Big Town assume you are there to hurt them if you aren't they don't care if you're going to hurt them or steal from them get it over quick it's dreary the people are tired and harassed constantly expecting to die at any moment or be taken away for who knows what if these individuals aren't sitting there wallowing ready to die they're more unhinged than not take Buttercup here which has a Content warning for self-harm wonder what it would be like to Slit your wrist I watched someone die so I'm an expert on death and so are many of my friends now there's some characters here to say the least and they need some help there is no message to be had here at least in my opinion no greater narrative to explore within the town of Big Town there are just people here who need help and you can choose to make their life better or worse that's again the point of Fallout 3 you aren't here to think as much as you are here to do action is more important than message Big Town needs help and that's all there is to it you may be asking why they haven't moved Mega 10 is right down the road and it's safer than anywhere else in the immediate area aside from maybe Vault 101 it's brushed off within dialogue by one of the residents saying that Megaton won't have them why they won't I'm unsure Megaton does have a bit of a housing crisis on its hands you can see NPCs discussing how Lucas Sims won't give them their own residence forcing them to live in the common house yet Lucas still had an empty house on hand to offer you for disarming the nuke don't get me wrong it's great to be rewarded but there are actual residents of Megaton who are potentially homeless so it isn't the win you immediately think it is when he hands you the deed in the Keys you're taking a home from the people that actually live there and you aren't necessarily owed it just because you helped them out so Megaton is probably packed although I believe they could still help these people out Rivet City is also too far a trek for these individuals considering how inexperienced they are at defending themselves there's arafu potentially but it doesn't get brought up not to mention that that settlement has its own problems to explore as we get there so they're stuck and you are once again the sole individual who gets to be their savior if you choose to be a few members of the town have been kidnapped by super mutants and you can agree to go help find them assuming that they are still alive they are and we just need to go find them north of big town is Germantown which has been completely taken over by super mutants by making your way inside you can find the town Dr red locked up in one of the prisoner cells after saving red she will tell you that another Resident of the Town shorty is also being held in the station and you need to head down to floor to find him once both are rescued you can agree to escort them back to Big Town or have them make their own way there either way they the quest isn't fully complete just yet even if you have managed to save the two that have been taken Big Town still has the issue of the constant invasions on their home by super mutants and slavers since the town is defenseless you can help train them to be better prepared for an attack and how you do so is dependent on which skills you have at level 50. for example if you have a small gun skill of at least 50 like I did in this playthrough you can take the citizens to a shooting range and show them how to use their weapons effectively this is one of the more gratifying mechanics in the entirety of the game and doesn't happen again as far as I am aware you have to actually shoot at the object at the firing range in order to prod the others to do the same after enough shooting and training has taken place the town will be attacked and you can help defend it thus leaving the town in a better State than when you left it it's one of the more rewarding quests not in a material sense but in a progression one you're helping a town that was on the brink of Extinction come back from said Brink to get back on its feet you're bestowing hope into a group of individuals who are all partially awaiting their death with nowhere to go additionally there are various options for how you can better the town I press personally taught them how to shoot but stealth-based characters can teach them how to effectively hide science characters can build robot bodyguards for them and explosive characters can teach them to build minefields there's a variety of options that allow you to build the town's character to a point that they can live in as much peace as the capital Wasteland will allow there's an individual in the town named Time Bomb who is left unconscious in Red's house if you have a medical skill of 40 you can revive him after the events of defending the town he'll reward you with a very important passive item his lucky eight ball just having the item in your inventory bestows plus one to Your Luck stats so it's a very strong reward to find early on we need to come back to Big Town later for an unmarked Quest but now is the time to continue Northwest towards arafu arafu is a smaller settlement located on top of an old overpass it's small in the sense that there are only four homes there with most of them consisting of only one or two residents as you approach the settlement an explosion will go off this is caused by the settlement's leader Evan King who thought you were a member of the family a local gang that has been causing problems for the residents and increasing intensity Evan will realize is mistaken hacking you and hail you over before you get seen by the family Evan will inform you that everyone has been ordered to stay indoors for their own safety while he watches over the town the family has been in an annoyance for the most part but they also recently killed all of the town's Brahmin leaving them with a little food supply as the attacks get worse the settlement worries for their safety and Evan would like you to knock on the doors of all the other residents to see how they are holding up the following sequence is just you visiting the first two houses to learn everyone is annoyed with the situation but fear for their safety and feel Evan isn't doing enough to protect them or to resolve what is going on we're here to visit the West residents however and what you'll come to notice is that you don't have to knock on the door to gain entry this is due to the West's parents having been murdered in a pretty gruesome fashion there are bites over their neck and face to the Bone and you'd swear Pharaoh ghouls had gotten to them if you bring this news to Evan he assumes the family must have snuck in and attacked them when he talks about Ian West their son you'll inform him that there were only two dead bodies inside leaving Evan to a again assume the family have kidnapped the boy you can agree to look into this but it's going to require a bit of searching the family only ever come out at night and it's hard to tell where they run off to Evan gives you some Direction by pointing out a metro station that you can explore and if you make your way through it you'll eventually reach a section that is filled with traps the traps consist of mines and various trip wires tied to rigged shotguns or pitching machines at the end of the traps is a guard for the family but they aren't hostile you can persuade your way in further or mention that you are looking for Ian and the guard will let you pass as long as you agree to be on good behavior further in is the residence of the family turns out the gang lives underground in the Metro away from civilization and you can walk up to their leader Vance for more information turns out that Advance has been expecting you as he assumed someone would come looking for Ian Vance explains that they are the remnants of a Society cast aside but it isn't immediately clear why that is are these a group of Crim criminals who couldn't exist in a typical settlement no there's more to it than that and Vance continues to explain revealing that they are a civilization of cannibals that he is attempting to reform into get this vampires I'm not making that up the family are a gang of cannibals turned pseudo Vampires by the direction of Vance you might think that sounds bad but it's actually a bit more nuanced than that a little bit a little bit more nuanced than that Vance understands that these individuals have certain Cravings ones that can apparently only be controlled by consuming human flesh in a world where you can't actively be rehabilitated or attend therapy Vance has found a way to help regulate these individuals through what is essentially religion or Community guidance Vance teaches the individual's willpower through the concept of vampirism and in turn the villagers live off of blood rather than human flesh hence all the dead Brahmin in front of arafu there's a lot we could talk about involving the active cannibal and the Mental effects of it or the mental state an individual needs to be in to take part in the act itself cannibalism is a taboo act one that is the product of various ideologies but within nature often comes environments where there is a severe lack of nutrition originally I thought this concept in Fallout 3 was silly and it is silly it's it's silly Fallout as a series can be fairly silly fairly often but vampire cannibals living in a subway station that seems a bit absurd especially this many cannibals all group together thinking about it now it makes a bit more sense even if it still remains fairly ludicrous we can reason that the post-apocalypse and the lack of access to food and nutrition has led to a subset of society that has fallen into the acts of cannibalism most likely due to an assortment of circumstances with the Wasteland being the Catalyst regardless of how you feel about this silly vampire Clan living underground there's plenty of other silly groups within the series as a whole from super mutants to ghouls to Romans slavers it takes all sorts I suppose if you take the time to listen to Vance and understand his way of life he'll inform you of Ian when asked turns out that the family had nothing to do with the death of Ian's parents it was Ian who had succumbed to his cannibalistic urges and attacked his own parents killing them in the process when the family witnessed this during an attack on arafu Vance chose to take Ian in for what I guess you could consider Rehabilitation turns out this wasn't the first time Ian had done this either when Lucy was still living in arafui and attempted to stop a scavenger from harassing their Brahman which led to a scuffle and Ian falling onto a rock and hitting his head Ian then pounced on the scavenger and ripped his neck open with his teeth which Lucy witnessed although the two agreed to never tell anyone about it not blaming Lucy for this one or anything but leaving her family with a kid who was showing signs of cannibalism was overall not the best idea in my opinion you can convince Vance to let you meet with Ian West as he still has family that cares about him and may want to take him in he he agrees to let Ian hear you out as long as it ends up being Ian's decision to make when you talk to Ian he realizes there's something wrong with him he does seem to have something wrong with him and he and other members aren't in a situation where they can be analyzed and rehabilitated despite this Vance has been helping Ian control himself and you can inform Ian that his sister is still looking for him which can convince him to pack his bags and head out to megaton to find her for better or worse it seems irresponsible to let an active cannibal out into the waist to meet up with his sister but Lucy does at least have some experience with the situation and I don't believe it gets brought up further after the completion of the quest you don't even have to return to Lucy to finish everything personally I probably wouldn't want him to leave the gang even from a karmic perspective based on the game's mechanics who knows you can inform Evan that Ian is still alive and has decided to find his sister for Good Karma if Ian didn't leave the gang you can lie to Evan and still receive good karma for some reason I suppose it has to do with respecting Ian's wishes additionally Vance does seemed to be trying to help his group to the best of his ability he's doing wrong things for the right reasons and killing him and his gang will even lead to negative Karma I'm not going to sit here and defend Vance's actions he's been harassing and attacking the people of arafil and while one may be looking for justice sometimes it's not that simple instead you can actually find a way to Ally the two groups for long-term benefits by getting the people of arafu to agree to donate their blood Vance will be able to feed his gang via blood packs in return you can convince the gang to defend the settlement from attackers arafu gets to be protected the cannibals get to be satiated and no one has to die it's a peaceful resolution and not necessarily the lawful or justice-based one I don't even know if I would say it's the best resolution but that's a pretty good situation to be in when we can't tell necessarily what is best but as I've pointed out in the Kotor video the rules of justice and law don't always align with our morals or what is the right thing to do like I mentioned I'm not saying that my choice here to Ally the two groups is the definitive right answer but it is the answer I personally think is the most right and will do the most good you may disagree with that and there's various ways you can handle the situation within the quest that may be preferred see sometimes quests and Fallout 3 can have a bit of nuance to them they can leave you thinking about your choices and what the best course of action may be what is right or wrong while it's a rare occurrence to be sure it's good to see that the game does at least have this ability when people compare Fallout 3 to New Vegas one of the biggest aspects of comparison is the difference in openness between the two I've already talked about this but Fallout 3 is considered a more open World experience in comparison to New Vegas which is considered more linear due to the inclusion of desired paths to take as well as invisible walls on mountains that prevent you from bypassing said paths regardless of your opinions on this comparison or the value of openness versus linearity I'm always kind of shocked by the concept because a large portion potentially one-third or more of Fallout 3 is fairly contained and linear the capital Wasteland surrounds the city of Washington DC the entire area surrounding it for the most part is completely open and explorable you could take a straight line from Megaton to arafu and make it without touching a road or creating a pathway where this concept of openness begins to fall apart a little bit is when we start discussing and describing the city proper DC is a series of instant set pieces within the game connected via Subterranean Metro systems that are long since abandoned to get to to any major Point within the city you will almost always find yourself entering into the Metro or a sewer system and trekking through the underground until you make it to an entrance that brings you into another instanced area if you wanted to go to the mall Outpost where the Washington Monument could be found from Galaxy news radio you would not be able to use the streets solely to do so you would have to take the subway system while there's nothing wrong with a system of interconnected Subterranean locations for safer or potentially streamlined travel where Fallout 3 Falls flat is in its inability to offer the player the choice on the matter in a game that boasts about its openness it's weird to see the core of its map be locked to instanced areas thus limiting an aspect that is one of the game's main selling points Fallout 3 had an opportunity to make the city fully explorable and traversable while also offering the option of an underground playground for you to explore maybe a trail to the Washington Monument could be blazed by Trucking through the dangers of the Raiders and super mutant-filled City or maybe you can test your luck underground where the threats may be fewer but still present or maybe be there would be more threats to make up for the streamlined path that bypasses many of the roads or building that's the openness that Fallout 3 advertises but it's also what they fail to fully deliver what they do deliver is an empty feeling Wasteland with a few interesting set pieces scattered about and a city that is cramped linear and a slog to get through it's not completely locked off much of the ruins can be accessed by moving around the outside of them but the core of the ruin seems to be isolated and locked off due to Rubble I'm not someone that dislikes Fast Travel Systems and way marks I believe they have their place within game design and can lead to an overall better player experience if implemented well fast travel systems are at their best when the player doesn't want to use them when the option is there but exploring a location even multiple times is interesting enough that you'd rather make the journey than teleport to your destination Fast Travel Systems are at their worst when they feel like they are a necessity to be used and Fallout 3 is one of the most obvious examples of this there is no feeling in the game more annoying than needing to make your way through one point of the city to another and being forced to take the metro system to do so for this reason the Waypoint system is a necessity to make your way around the environments which are not designed to effectively guide you through Visual cues aside from one instance of following a series of graffiti left by the Brotherhood of Steel to this day there are still online threads from individuals disappointed by the tunnel system and their inability to effectively navigate it forcing them to rely on a waypoint system that would be best left as optional only once you have made it through the tunnels to a new point of interest can you finally use the fast travel system and skip this underground Maze of identical Pathways that don't try hard enough to have defining features to Aid in your navigation say what you will about the realistic set design of a Metro System to the point that it may be accurate for the locations to appear similar but in a game some environmental design needs to be taken into account so that the player can ascertain their location and the direction to their destination without relying on the god Compass present in every Bethesda product I believe this is something that's fixed in Fallout 4 as Boston is more open overall in comparison to the DC ruins we also need to take into account the engine that Bethesda was working with at the time and its limitations while not an excuse for the problem presented the gamebrio engine held a lot of design decisions back for both Bethesda and obsidian when designing their game and environments so it's at the very least understandable why the DC ruins are the way they are similar to why the Imperial City isn't fully open in Oblivion on your way to Galaxy news radio you'll run into a lot of enemies along the way the DC ruins are mostly populated by super mutants and a lot of them super mutants are some of the most prominent enemies within the early storyline of Fallout 3 due to how much time is spent in the ruins but don't worry you'll run into plenty of feral Ghouls and Raiders both above and below ground as you make your way towards the radio station after a large amount of walking through the metro in Ruins you'll be ambushed by a group of super mutants but during a battle a group of Brotherhood of Steel members will assist you in display batching them I've talked about the Brotherhood in the New Vegas retrospective but they're a militant semi-religious organization dedicated to the preservation of Old World Tech by force if necessary they believe themselves to be the end-all be all good for the Wasteland and the safety of those in it kind of and we'll do everything in their power to secure what they believe to be theirs or dangerous one of the biggest issues with the Brotherhood is how selective they are in terms of what is important old world technology and what isn't in New Vegas it was important for the Brotherhood in the Mojave to secure the Hoover Dam in Helios One the dam was important to them because of the power and control it would have given them within the Mojave Helios One was important to Father Elijah specifically because he believed it held a weapon that could be utilized to bolster the Brotherhood depending on who is leading the charge at the time the actual mission of the Brotherhood can change significantly Elijah only cared about weapons and devices that could make the Brotherhood more powerful and secure he didn't care about the safety of civilians in fact the Brotherhood is also fairly exclusive while not as isolationist as the Vault the Brotherhood will rarely let anyone into their ranks while also believing themselves to be better than and in charge of civilians the Brotherhood are out to do good sometimes but are also out for power and control much like any other major faction in the Fallout series we'll be interacting with the Brotherhood somewhat for now but we'll go into more details surrounding the Eastern Division as we are reintroduced to them later on in the storyline as he received or assisted by the Brotherhood of seal you will be chastised by Sentinel Sarah Lions of Lion's Pride her personal Squad of paladins Lion's Pride were on their way to defend Galaxy news radio when they spotted you Sarah mentions you can tag along if you want but to not get yourself in any trouble as she doesn't know you she sees you as any other civilian and she assumes you can't handle yourself not all the paladins are as tough on you as Sarah but a lot of her Gruff personality comes from her upbringing within the Brotherhood becoming a decorated soldier like her father the Elder of the Eastern Division you'll follow and assist a squad of around four paladins one of them is an initiate known as readin who's a bit more cocky than the others considering her inexperience in the field as you fight your way through towards Galaxy news radio you'll work through waves of super mutants until you reach the main assault and begin attacking the mutants from behind leading into a large-scale firefight as the mutants get penned by your group and the paladins defending the radio station the fight itself isn't particularly difficult due to all of the Allies on your side Redden in particular begins celebrating by shooting her gun into the air before being quickly chastised for wasting ammo as the paladins begin to secure the location of vehicle close to retin is launched by a super mutant Behemoth killing her on impact Super Mutant behemoths originate in Fallout 3. I don't believe that they were ever showcased in games previously they're unique in that there are only five found within the game though more would feature later in Fallout 4 by killing all of them the player can achieve a trophy making them a sort of challenge to both hunt down and successfully kill with each Behemoth having a fair amount of loot to take after the fact by this point in the game depending on how fast you be lined it to GNR you may not be completely ready to take on a behemoth but the game makes up for this by placing a fat man on a nearby Brotherhood corpse it's an optional weapon to use that launches miniature nukes at enemies but it is suggested by lions that you make use of it and I suggest so as well considering how powerful many nukes are and how effective it is especially against the Behemoth and especially early on in the game the fat man is another Fallout 3 invention it has a bit of an iconic presence within Fallout 3 due to the marketing I remember a lot of interviews and reviews focusing on the concept of shooting out many nuclear weapons and blowing up Megaton with a nuke for the spectacle always left a bad taste in my mouth considering Fallout is a series designed to run the pain and suffering that follows a nuclear war Galaxy news radio is where you will meet the station's DJ and hosts Three Dog there's a lot to say about the radio stations in Fallout 3. many of the radio signals you find are Quest related ones that either point you in the direction of the various DLC and are always available or ones that are location based and can only come through when you are within the vicinity of their range there are two exceptions to this the radio station's Galaxy news radio and Enclave radio respectively there's also Agatha who we'll talk about later both radio stations can be selected on your Pip-Boy at any given time but Galaxy news radio unfortunately doesn't have the range to be effectively listened to outside of the DC ruins if you do attempt to listen to it while out in the waste you'll mostly just get static meanwhile Enclave radio can be heard from all over at any given time the biggest difference is of the two stations are that one is run by Three Dog and the other by John Henry Eden the president of the enclave and thus technically the current president of the United States of America followed as a series often focuses on critiquing the American government Through The Enclave I defined them before but The Enclave are in essence the remnants of the American government and look to take control over America once more both by controlling territory and power sources and by wiping out the entirety of the populace that has been exposed to radiation to The Enclave all of society within the Wasteland or New California are mutants that need to be exterminated and The Enclave is willing to do anything to make this happen this is usually through effective use of propaganda what better way to spread said propaganda than through a radio station run by none other than the enclave's president under the guise of a democracy in truth the enclave's president was created and no vote actually took place as far as I'm aware but we'll explore that more later on I'm not going to dive deep into The Enclave again until we start interacting with them more I touched on them a lot in the New Vegas video and how their portrayal is meant to criticize our real world governments with a focus on America's The Enclave has a pro-democracy message while not actually practicing democracy and they use pro-capitalist propaganda to vilify other economic systems with a specific focus on China and communism it works propaganda works I've said so before it works in the game and in real life as we see it all the time you can see it in my comments section when individuals call me a communist meaning this has an insult for not licking the boots of the capitalist machine to critique capitalism to some is so insulting that you must be part of another economic system that these individuals have been taught to blindly vilify this is particularly ironic considering the game we are discussing and the video these comments appear under Fallout loves to make fun of individuals who blindly attack other economic structures and systems it's one of the main jokes within the series and yet you still get people who the game is making fun of show up in my YouTube comments to be the butt of the joke without realizing it so there's a propaganda machine out there in the Wasteland it's not just on your Pip Boy or local radios it's on various eyebots patrolling the Wasteland and spreading the enclave's message if the Enclave is out to convince trick and control the population before wiping them out Galaxy news radio is the journalists that look to shed light on these falsehoods to show what is really happening in the wastes to fight the good fight and bring to like the lies that The Enclave is establishing Galaxy news radio wants to deliver actual real news it has a beloved mechanical feature within RPGs where three dog will discuss your exploits as you complete quests it even takes into account the openness and freedom of the game by allowing you to kill three dog and then having his radio station taken over by one of his Partners it's a great system three dog knows where your father is because your father stopped by to learn about the current state of the Wasteland he's willing to tell you about it as well and you can convince him to tell you right away but really he has a job for you and is willing to trade information for Action Galaxy news radio can't reach the entirety of the Wasteland but it used to have this ability high up on the Washington Monument as a radio dish that needs to be fixed and by fixing it the range of the radio station will be extended throughout the entirety of the Wasteland allowing news to reach everyone and help fight against the propaganda of the U.S government if you agree to help Three Dog you'll make your way through the Metro System once more until you eventually reach an area known as the mall Outpost this is a large open location surrounded mostly by museums stores the Capitol building and the Washington Monument it's fought over by a large Squad of super mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel who are in constant combat with one another I cannot stress enough how many super mutants seem to exist within Eastern America it's a criticism of the writing I have seen a lot online unlike the super mutants from previous Fallout games these individuals did not originate from the master in the capital Wasteland the super mutants were created by the fev sure but this was done within vault 87 which was converted into a research center for the forest evolutionary virus after the creation of several super mutants many of them would begin to kidnap other wastelanders in order to create more super mutants leading to a race of mutants that had the ability to generate more with this understanding it makes some sense why there are so many super mutants around the DC ruins and Wasteland the super mutants aren't an army of the scale we have heard about or seen in Fallout 1 with the master but the fact that they are essentially self-generating now does leave a reason for why there are so many in total the capital Wasteland mutants are in no way as intelligent as those within Western America the master was able to create super mutants while keeping them fairly intelligent overall meanwhile the mutants in the capital Wasteland are much more instinctual in the Commonwealth super mutants were created by The Institute and are slightly more intelligent than those in the Wasteland but I believe the Western American Creations are still the most intelligent overall before you make your way to the Washington Monument you need a transmitter dish that will be used to replace the broken one three dog points you towards the museum of science and technology which you guessed it is full of super mutants the most interesting aspect of the museum is their presentation of vault-tec vaults they have an entire setup where you get to walk into a recreation of a vault and make your way to an exit on the other side while learning about what vault tech was offering at the time or at least what they said they were offering for the lone Wanderer this is a lot of interesting information even if it isn't completely accurate the presentation promises safety from nukes while offering a home life that will allow individuals to rest easy but as we know from Vault 101 the vaults from New Vegas and future vaults we will explore in the Wasteland this isn't actually the case these vaults were designed in majority to conduct various experiments for research purposes fault 101 was all about keeping the doors closed and seeing how this affected the residents vault 87 had its own experiment before being turned into a research center there there's various other vaults all with their own unique experiments for you to explore and we'll take a look at some of the more interesting ones when we're out exploring I say interesting with air quotes because Fallout 3 does a very very very very bad job with their unique vaults I just do not like them once you have the dish you can take it to the Washington Monument which is guarded by the Brotherhood they'll allow you to enter and you can take an elevator to the top in order to install it once installed the range of Galaxy news radio will reach the majority of the surrounding Wasteland and by tuning into the station on your pipboy you'll hear from Three Dog talking about how you manage to install everything and save the station again I'm a big fan of the mechanic of radio station hosts commenting on your actions three dogs opinion of you changes drastically based on your actions and Karma so it's good to see that there is at least one major feature that focuses on the morality aspect of the game even if Fallout 3 is really about giving you a God complex once you return to Three Dog you will reward your effort by explaining how your father made it to Rivet City which is our next major destination in the storyline line but before we head to Rivet City it's good to discuss a few more explorable areas around the Wasteland starting with underworld which can be found near the Washington Monument in the mall Outpost underworld is a city of ghouls situated within the Washington museum of history there's a lot of prejudice and misinformation towards Ghouls and Fallout especially so in Fallout 3. they are the punching bags of the Wasteland and as such have become hyper defensive and protective of themselves and their territory and understandably so for you a smooth skin to show up in Underworld is a rare occurrence and while not hostile towards you the ghouls are wary they have to be if the ghoul stepped foot outside they'd most likely be shot dead by the Brotherhood of Steel Raiders The Enclave Etc out of every faction or race in this situation ghouls get the shortest end of the stick and their culture begins to form around this predicament this is in contrast to the West Coast setting of Fallout where the inclusion of ghouls have become more normalized over time this doesn't mean that there is a lack of prejudice in the Nevada but it's less present overall in comparison to the capital Wasteland where ghouls seem to be so openly hated more often than not Moriarty has a ghoul slave Herbert dashwood had a ghoul man's servant the Brotherhood of seal kills ghouls whether they are feral or not I think this says the most about the Brotherhood there's a larger discussion to be had over the greater Prejudice within the Wasteland but it may be surprising to some that the Brotherhood are so openly hostile to ghouls without the desire to learn about them or give them a chance the Brotherhood and Fallout 3 are for the most part seen as the inherent good of the Wasteland even three dog aligns himself with them and has Brotherhood members guarding his radio station the Brotherhood are in three dogs words fighting the good fight and I think this portrayal of them is inaccurate on purpose and it would go on to become more nuanced in Fallout 4. the Brotherhood are not an inherent good within the Wasteland just as every faction within Fallout is not meant to be perceived as such the creation of some factions was the desire to make something cool the Brotherhood was created because of the developers want wanted to have cool futuristic armor knights running around the post-apocalyptic Wasteland but the faction still had something to say and be criticized for the Brotherhood have their problems their exclusionary mindset their lack of a desire to help people how they hoard technology and keep it all for themselves it's all to show that while the Brotherhood can do good they can also lead to a lot of bad they aren't perfect and often can be the Catalyst for a lot of conflict within the setting of Fallout Bethesda tries to show this here by not excluding the Brotherhood from the individuals who are oppressing the ghouls and while this is jumping ahead a bit despite the fact that the Eastern chapter has broken off into two factions the one that is presented as good is still the one that will fire at ghouls on site Lions Pride who you fought with to GNR would kill them on site what makes this more confusing is that three dog will broadcast a PSA informing people that not all ghouls are feral and that some of them are just people yet the people that three dog aligns himself with don't seem to share this sentiment so this is what the ghouls are dealing with they're just humans like you or me forced underground or into buildings with no real means of leaving safely it's then understandable their wariness when someone who isn't a ghoul shows up at their door in fact a lot of ghouls will assume you are a bigot from the get-go because that's been the majority of their experience in the Wasteland fearing for their life over not only the oppressiveness of the Wasteland itself but the oppressiveness of non-goool humans there's two quests I'd like to pick up during my initial visit here those being Riley's Rangers and you've gotta shoot him in the head for the former you can find the city's infirmary and within will be a comatose smooth skin this is Riley of Riley's Rangers a mercenary group who have been scouring the city's downtown core she was found unconscious and brought to Underworld for treatment and you can convince the doctor to force her out of her comatose state in order to learn what happened to her when Riley awakens she's confused about where she is but memories come flooding back quickly about how her team of mercenaries are trapped and under attack on the roof of the statesman's hotel Riley attempted to sneak away from the attack in order to go find help but she was ambushed by super mutants leading to her being incapacitated now injured Riley can't do much for her team and you can offer to go help in her stead if you do agree to help she will allow you access to her groove space as well as a code for an ammo box that you can find on your way to the roof of said Hotel what's interesting about the quest is that there are multiple ways to start it I started it by finding Riley in Underworld but you could also receive a distress signal from the team on the hotel if you were close enough alternatively you could just find Riley's compound enter and read her terminal in order to learn that the team headed to the area of the hotel recently you can even find the group by making your way through what is effectively a dungeon of super mutants with no knowledge of what you'll find at the end it's the kind of quest that feels like it's happening in real time in a living world it doesn't wait for you to activate it it's just something that is happening and you can stumble upon it if you're exploring around the city the journey to the hospital that allows you to reach the hotel is full of Raiders and super mutants since you have to take the roads and Metro stations throughout the area to get there one interesting encounter you'll run into with heading to Riley's compound first is a preacher within a nearby building in an Alleyway who is spouting nonsense over an intercom system that can be heard throughout the area if you head into the alleyway you'll see a series of mines and bonds set up to explode if you're noticed by the preacher but even if you disarmed all of them the area would still explode and kill you if you got caught you can't even reach the guy you're just supposed to snipe him from a distance or leave him alone it's up to you in just a random encounter to help flesh out the streets of DC once you do make it to the hospital you fight your way through waves of super mutants until you find a makeshift bridge that leads to the hotel along the way you'll find the ammo crate next to a dead mercenary you can open the crate if given the passcode by Riley and then head to the roof to witness a battle between the attacking super mutants and defending Rangers once you've dealt with the super mutants you can escort the group of mercenaries through the nearby elevator but only after it's repaired with efficient battery which can be found in the hotel on a broken protectron you fight through more super mutants until you reach the exit then you can head back to Riley's compound for a reward either a minigun or their custom combat armor Additionally you can get paid by Riley for discovering new locations within the DC ruins there's nothing incredibly nuanced to say about Riley's Rangers quest line it is one of the more enjoyable battle quests though and a game stuffed to the brim with super mutants the Rangers seem to deal with some of the biggest groups of mutants you can possibly run into and being able to fight your way out with your own group of mercenaries is satisfying not to mention that the reward of the armor set is very beneficial early on especially since you probably can't wear power armor yet upon completing it speaking of power armor let's double back to underworld so we can talk to a ghoul by the name of Mr Crowley Crowley is the type of goal I mentioned earlier overly but justifiably defensive due to the amount of prejudice they have received from bigots within their life Crowley has learned to hate smooth skins due to the environment he lives in and he believes you to be nothing but a bigot as well in fact if you insult him at all I believe you completely lock yourself out of this quest line and I don't know if if you would actually be able to still reach the reward at the end of it for the sake of the analysis we're going to be friendly with Crowley and he'll let us know that we're all right not like those other humans out there who are bigots towards ghouls people who believe them to be nothing but simple zombies that you can shoot in the head to kill in fact Crowley has a list of bigots he wants to have killed he'll pay you for each hit and even pay you extra if you shoot them in the head as a form of karmic Justice in his eyes he also wants a key from their person as proof that you've killed them which is a little suspicious except for Aleister Tenpenny as word would get around about his death and one you may not be up for doing based on your karma or morals yes these individuals may be bigots but does that bigotry mean that you take justice into your own hands should you as an individual be seeking out in killing individuals not in defense but sheer offense I'm not really asking I don't want to know if someone told me a bunch of bigots were running around I don't think I'd let them get away with the act of harassing a marginalized or oppressed in individual but I also wouldn't seek them out to kill them either maybe you disagree with that that's whatever because it's not the point of this Quest no there's more going on here than meets the eye after accepting the job from Crowley you can ask around about these so-called bigots one of the men on the list to dukov is known to be a rude and vulgar individual you know a drunk but not a bigot in fact he's never said anything about goals that anyone can recall you can return to Crowley with this information and he'll chastise you for looking too far into things but he'll ultimately inform you that while these individuals may not be bigots they do have something he wants which are the keys we mentioned earlier except for 10 Penny Crowley really just wanted 10 Penny killed because 10 penny is actually a bigot among other things since the cat is out of the bag Crowley only cares about the keys and doesn't care if you kill the individuals or not there's three keys we need to find there's a key from a man named dukov found in the ruins one from Dave at the Republic of Dave and one from Ted Strayer who got his key from his father let's use dukov as an example here as this Quest is going to have us running all over dukov can be found at dukov's place a hotel in the DC ruins where he's staying to get drunk and have relations with two girls he protects and pays to be there the girls seem to detest him to a large degree but also like him somewhat dukov is the drunk and vulgar individual I described previously but you can convince him to convey some information about Crowley once you bring up the key turns out that Crowley and the others were hired by 10 Penny to infiltrate Fort Constantine to find a rare weapon during this event Crowley ended up trapped in a room of pharaoh ghouls that wouldn't attack him due to him being a ghoul himself the rest of the mercs assumed he had died and another Merc Terra did die on the scene you can get the location of Fort Constantine out of any of the individuals via speech check and once you have all the keys you could head over there yourself without the need for Crowley alternatively you can return all the keys to Crowley and follow him as he makes his way to the Fort but why would Crowley want to go back there what could be waiting for him well before we talk about that let's talk about the rest of the keys we can convince dukov to give us his and that's that the same can be said for Ted Strayer in Rivet City but I don't want to touch on that location just yet instead let's talk about the Republic of Dave and Tenpenny Tower before doubling back to Crowley the Republic of Dave is an interesting caricature of political systems within small communities specifically monarchies and republics as is in the name currently before the Republic of Dave there was the kingdom of Tom before the kingdom of Tom there was the Republic and New Republic of Stevie Ray and before that there was the kingdom of Larry the community has gone back and forth between the two forms of government Tom of the kingdom of Tom was the father of Dave and at one point exiled his son Dave grew up as a mercenary within the Wasteland before returning and inciting a rebellion that led him to overthrowing his father the Dave's kind of an [ __ ] there's no better way to put it when you first reach the Republic his son is there to greet you he takes you to meet Dave and Dave informs you that you'll refer to him as a Mr President or be executed Dave's an [ __ ] he loves power and being in charge being president is his entire personality and he uses his status to get and do whatever he wants he even has two wives within the compound Dave's also a bit of a [ __ ] you can convince him that you are a representative of the Wasteland here to see Dave's Republic and he'll actually give you the key to Fort Constantine as a gift and a show of good faith now the interesting thing about the Republic is the unmarked Quest election day I haven't described unmarked quests yet but they are side quests that don't show up on your Pip Boy and don't reward exp when completed although they usually have their own effects or rewards outside of that the Republic of Dave is a republic they have a president they get to vote in elections and Dave needs everyone to vote for who they want to be president and he needs you to go around making sure everyone does so this means talking to Jessica Shauna Rosie and Bob residents of The Farmstead who all idolize Dave despite this idolization you can convince both Bob and Rosie to also run for president if they want which would be unprecedented within the history of Dave's rule the voting box where the ballots are placed is locked and unpickable but once Dave goes to count the votes you can quickly access it and remove all ballots except for ones of those you'd like to win when I hear about the Republic of Dave online I often see a lot of people discussing how they got rid of Dave simply for disliking him I think from a video game sense that is perfectly justifiable as I mentioned multiple times Dave is an [ __ ] he's abusing his power to get what he wants and live the life he wants while not taking the consideration of his followers and their feelings into account but here's the thing if we look at it from the perspective of someone living in the Wasteland Dave's people are happy no one is upset at Dave for the way he acts there's some grievances sure such as Dave's first wife understandably being upset about the second wife or Rosie being Leaps and Bounds more intelligent than Dave but no one ever listens to her suggestions despite this everyone loves Dave and everyone is relatively happy The Farmstead is prospering through Agriculture and trade the Republic of Dave is in all circumstances a community that has no reason for your intervention but that doesn't mean you can't intervene and I still believe it's beneficial to the community to intervene whether it's your place to do so is another story as I mentioned Rosie is much more intelligent than Dave she has experience leading her own group within the Wasteland and she has ideas on how to grow the Republic and make it operate more efficiently for the betterment of everyone the issue is that no one listens to her and these kind of suggestions seem to intimidate Dave's authority to the point he puts his foot down and reminds Rosie that he is in charge fairly often with Rosie and charge it's possible the Republic could Prosper more so than it already has been if you rig the election Dave will become Furious and straight up leave the Republic to form another one in the town of old Olney which is Infested by deathclaws so you can imagine how that goes you can follow and save Dave if you want but there's nothing that comes from it the implication here however is that the Republic is all Dave cared about all he cared about was power and being able to use it he had multiple wives and children that he abandoned because he lost control in a democratic election he chose to have even if it wasn't the case at the moment the Republic of Dave would most likely crumble in the future but still as an outsider is it your place to make that decision to rig that election for a group of people who were all happy with the way things were even if it was for the betterment of their people there's no follow-up here you can inform everyone that Rosie or Bob if you went that route won and they will just ask what Dave is supposed to do now it's a weird and interesting quest to look at from a more critical view I chose Rosie sure because I believed Rosie was the best course for their Community but I also don't think it was my place to do so there's many ways to get Dave's key you can kill him convince him out of it or rig the election out of his favor once you have his key and the others you can continue the Quest for Crowley if you'd like or head to Fort Constantine yourself ten Penny doesn't have a key but Crowley would still like him handled due to his bigotry so I'd like to stop there first since there is so much about the tower to go over 10 Penny Tower is an old hotel that has been fortified and repurposed as a settlement for those that tend Penny deems acceptable now if you know me I'd usually delve into how these individuals made their money and how the game portrays them as villainous for their actions and their greed it lead into a greater discussion around economic systems mostly capitalism and a critique in analysis on what Fallout 3 has to say about these Concepts while Fallout 3 does have something to say about these Concepts sure but the World building of the game is so nonsensical at times that a lot of these messages and critiques end up falling flat tan Penny Tower is a perfect example of this we have this Tower of Rich wealthy people that we are meant to despise for being rich and wealthy there's little to no explanation on how anyone within the compound has received their wealth what wrongs or rights they did to get to where they are now instead the game gives the majority of these individuals poor personalities not everyone obviously but a good portion of the residents are rude holier than thou individuals who detest you and the poor despite offering no actual examples of their own wealth there's nothing around these individuals that suggests their wealth outside of their attitudes in fact most of the rooms within the hotel are fairly Barren with little to gain from entering and stealing from them how Tenpenny Pays His security is unclear how he continues to make money is unclear year how anyone affords to live within his premises is unclear and so the game has created a bunch of Nefarious Rich losers who we are meant to detest with no real commentary on the economics of the Wasteland or how people abuse them to get what they want to Fallout 3 these people are just a natural occurrence within the Wasteland the ball is fumbled here completely ten Penny residents are rich for the sake of being rich so the writers can use them as a catalyst to do harm without actually saying anything else about them the 10 Penny residents are rich rude bigots and that's all you need to know apparently I mean the biggest thing is is pretty you know that one's pretty justifiable this is where a lot of the criticism of Fallout 3's writing and World building comes from sometimes the developers want to tell a story with an important message they want to look into how the rich abuse their wealth they want to look into racism and bigotry and these are all commendable things to discuss and analyze the issue is that that's as far as the writers get they create the villains and they make them do wrong but we never get to see what brought the villains to where they are now what systems are in place across the Wasteland that allowed this to happen What parallels there are to the Wasteland in our real world sometimes there's no world built for us to compare ourselves to this is where Roy Phillips comes in and oh boy this Quest it honestly has a lot to say and it tries to do it well I understand partially where the ghouls are coming from here but it's such a messy Endeavor when you approach the tower you will find Roy Phillips at the intercom by the close security gate Troy is currently in an argument with one of the security guards he wants to get into the tower and 10 Penny doesn't allow ghouls meaning Roy isn't allowed in after some arguing Roy runs off and you can get LED Inside by Chief Gustavo after some clarification due to him mistaking you for Roy Gustavo is tired of dealing with the ghouls to the point that you can agree to help him deal with the issue Gustavo wants the ghouls that want to get into the tower dead but there may be another way of dealing with this situation if you head into the penthouse area of the Tower and convince your way into 10 Penny Suite you can discuss the subject with him he's a comical villainous capitalist with none of the depth or backstory that Mr house was given in New Vegas Tenpenny is just here to be evil he's an old rich white man who takes pot shots with a sniper rifle at anyone that comes near his Tower he's willing to kill for no other reason than he believes he can he hates Ghouls and he wants to wipe the Wasteland clean of places like Megaton as we looked into previously it's boring and you can kill him here and now for Crowley if you want or you can inform him of Crowley and turn the tables having 10 Penny pay you to take care of the ghoul what you decide in regards to that doesn't matter right now what does matter is the situation at hand AKA Roy Phillips you can suggest to 10 penny that he allows the ghouls to come live in the tower with everyone else and he's actually willing to consider it for some reason his only requirement is that you convince several tenants that are known biggest to allow them in as well some of them actually run shops and you can steal from their safes which upsets them due to the lack of security now let me be clear here before I describe the rest of this Quest because I think it's going to sound a little weird it's hilarious that the actual bigots within the tower can all be convinced to leave peacefully and safely I don't know where they go and they may die in the Wasteland but that's still a better chance than what's about to happen later so let's say we convinced all tenants we were tasked with speaking to to allow ghouls inside we can return to 10 Penny and he'll give us the green light then we can head into the nearby Metro tunnels and find a community of ghouls living in there including Roy Phillips by Wasteland standards I'd say Roy actually has it pretty good but I can't blame him for not wanting to live in a subway station his entire life here's one issue though why does Roy want to live in ten Penny Tower specifically because it's above ground because it's safe no he wants to live in 10 Penny Tower because he can't this isn't about the safety of his people this is purely a vendetta against 10 Penny and while I can sympathize with the mindset is this really the hill Roy wants to die die on it's not like he's trying to convince his way inside outside of arguing with security Roy is planning on using a back door to send in an army of feral ghouls that will kill everyone inside what is the game trying to convey here that both sides are bad that sure bigotry is bad but sometimes the oppressed or murderous individuals willing to take anything by force it's weird right the politics in history behind power structures and oppression don't really align with the message that the game is trying to convey here we have 10 penny in his wealthy Elite and then we have Roy who hates smooth skin so much he's willing to kill any amount of them to get his way but hey we found a peaceful solution here we've convinced the residents of the tower to allow the ghouls inside and while shocked Roy is willing to agree to said resolution and move his people in this is where I mentioned it's hilarious that we got the actual bigots out of 10 Penny Tower already because after a few days of a happy Community consisting of smooth skins and ghouls you can arrive at the tower to find an empty if you enter a nearby room you will find the corpse of every 10 Penny resident and security guard stripped of all their clothes and goods everyone except the bigots you convinced to leave the tower many of these people are innocent individuals a doctor who didn't know enough about goals but was willing to learn Herbert daring dashwood for the love of God the lead star of the radio play on Galaxy news radio he also has a cool man servant though so maybe he's not as great as he plays himself off to be but I don't know there are a lot of obnoxious individuals within the tower sure but not all of those individuals deserve to be slaughtered many were willing and ready to allow ghouls inside they wanted those people to be safe to take part in their community and to be accepted and now all of those people have been murdered while the actual bigots you know aside from 10 Penny have been potentially allowed to leave Scott free you can find Roy and he'll explain that a disagreement led to a bit more and his hand was forced leading to the death of every non-go all resident within the tower but that doesn't make sense everyone agreed for them to be there the only people who didn't agree that were left were Susan Lancaster who stays in the penthouses and Gustavo who takes his orders from Tenpenny even if you chastise Roy for all of the corpses he'll show No Remorse and even threatened to kill you next if you don't leave him alone it's just such a messed up situation and says nothing of actual value if we really want to break it down what is the game trying to tell us here exactly that in the face of bigotry we should do nothing because it may lead to good innocent people being murdered sure I can get behind the idea that sometimes your good actions can lead to bad consequences but what about when we are presented with the consequences of set actions why is it that Roy got to kill all of these people show No Remorse and then threatens our lives but when we retaliate on these actions we gain Bad Karma what is the game try trying to tell us here what message is being delivered what commentary is being had is it bad to take the law into our own hands Roy should get away with what he did unless we want to take a hit to our Karma the game doesn't give us any other means of dealing with Roy we can't arrest him so what are we supposed to do just leave and kick dirt over the fact that we allowed a bunch of innocent people to be murdered by ghouls despite the best of intentions again I'm fine with good actions possibly leading to bad outcomes it's similar to what I discussed with the Jedi and Knights of the Old Republic how they are sometimes blind to their actions due to their overwhelming virtuousness but the way follow 3 handles the situation here feels gross yes we can see Roy is a bit of a scumbag we may have been able to see this coming ahead of time but what were we supposed to do kill him for Gustavo guess what that leads to bad karma too to the game Roy Phillips is a good character and we have taken the Good Karma action in getting him into the tower peacefully it sucks if you kill Roy three dog will even call you out on it on the radio calling it Act of prejudiced how is this Prejudice the man is dangerous he killed his settlement predominantly made up of innocent residents and then killed ten Penny and hid the body somewhere the surprise of Roy's actions in a way is fine but the aftermath and how the game handles his actions is pathetic in its shallow nature it's as if no thought went into the outcome outside of shock value which is just poor writing this is something that often plagues Fallout 3 leading to its Justified perception of being seen as shallow because it is very shallow at times and it doesn't know what it wants to say with the content it has now we're about to get back on track for Mr Crowley but I want to discuss a small settlement you can walk through around the area of the tower before continuing near the tower is the town of Andale I don't know how to describe Andale other than it's fairly on the nose if anyone ever tells you that Fallout isn't political for some reason or that the messaging of the game's political values are up for interpretation please Point them towards Andale or you know even Liberty Prime when we get to it this is because Andale is a settlement of incredibly patriotic capitalist loving calmy hating right Wingers who hate liberals or anything left-leaning they also turn out to be comically villainous cannibals that's it they're a bunch of right-wing cannibals that hate communism this framing isn't new Fallout frames the enclave and its Pro patriotic stance and extremism is villainous other Patriots are also framed the same there's less Nuance there than you may appreciate but the political stance displayed by the writers in both this game and New Vegas you know as an example are not something I would consider open for interpretation but rather displayed to you in big neon letters on a New Vegas billboard follow makes fun of the Patriotic mindset it makes fun of those that fall for propaganda it makes fun of the right it makes fun of hating communism because that's what you've been taught to do this isn't even a pro-communist rant just that the game clearly wants you to understand that the blind vilification of a concept is a direct result of patriotism and American brainwashing Fallout 3 is on the nose messaging aside we still need to deliver the keys to Crowley or do we assuming you decide to return the keys and receive your payout Crowley will walk off from Underworld and make his way to Fort Constantine eventually coming out with a special suit of power armor however since it is possible to be given the location of the fort from one of the key holders we can actually make our way over there ourselves Crowley isn't owed the rewards of Fort Constantine he was sent out to do a job one that was successful after the loss of the mercenary Terra fields and the supposed loss of Crowley Crowley found out about the armor in the fort somehow and became obsessed with it to the point that he was willing to manipulate you into killing his past co-workers who you know to be sure had left him there but only because they had assumed he had died there didn't seem to be a malicious attempt behind their actions yet Crowley had no issue having them all killed you don't even get the key from Jeff Strayer but from his son Ted in Rivet City someone who is completely innocent within the scope of this quest line so Crowley is a bit of an [ __ ] I wouldn't feel bad betraying him I don't feel bad about it and heading to Fort Constantine becomes your reward as the player rather than Crowley's reward for his obsessive and murderous behavior in order to make your way through the four you need to have the keys on hand and each key opens the door towards the armor that can't be picked you also need to find the body of Terra fields and get her key as well once all is said and done you'll enter the room that is housing the t-51b power armor a set of pre-war power armor used in battle against China especially within the game's first DLC it's one of the only armor sets in the game with the highest Dr R rating and if you want to learn more about Dr I suggest watching the New Vegas video as I don't plan on going over General gameplay that I already covered in my previous video there were a few things about Gunplay I should mention however namely the lack of iron sights and the introduction of Vats Fallout 3 drops another Ball by lacking the ability to aim down the sights of your weapon aside from something scoped like a sniper rifle instead your vision Zooms in slightly it's not the worst thing in the world but the effect of its inclusion in New Vegas was so impactful that it doesn't make sense as to why but that's didn't include it in the first place especially with how well the Gunplay in Fallout 4 turned out I guess they learned their lesson there and yes I like the Gunplay of Fallout 4. it's one of the game's only redeemable qualities maybe that's a bit harsh I'll have more to say on Fallout 4 specifically if I ever decide to revisit it as for Vats a lot of individuals on my New Vegas video understandably believed that the system originated from Fallout 1 after I claimed that it was designed in Fallout 3. I say understandable because Fallout 1 had a similar system in place that did not go by the name Fallout 3 created in both of the previous Fallout entries turn-based combat had two modes of attacking an enemy you could attack their General location or you could spend additional AP to aim at specific body parts with the possibility of additional effects Fallout 3 took the idea of this and reworked it for a real-time first-person shooter since AP wasn't a factor in combat anymore it got reworked for Vats specifically and the system acted as a means for the player to slow down combat and use their stats to be more precise in attacking specific body parts however Vats are not a necessary mechanic any injuring of Limbs can be done in real time or out Vats and the system in Fallout 1 are very similar it's a natural progression from turn base to real time the system itself is revolutionary in my eyes you don't see many other games even attempt to utilize it because it's so deeply tied to the brand of Fallout now and it's so effective at adding to the overall experience of a firefight people that don't enjoy first person shooters but do enjoy the various RPG aspects of a Fallout game have a crutch they can use to help them throughout their journey and experienced players can use the system to overpower most situations if you opted to take the armor without talking to Crowley you can return to underworld and confront him if you want but he won't initiate dialogue with you instead he'll plainly state that you stole what was rightfully his before continuing to ignore you I'm not so sure about the armor being rightfully his after everything he put us through the lies the journey and his murderous intent but who knows he did technically find it first but this is the Wasteland and not getting your pretty piece of power armor should be the least of your worries if it was anyone else in this situation Crowley would probably be dead by this point all of this running around actually required us to stop by our next main destination in the search for our father Rivet City but I haven't talked about it just yet due to it offering a lot of content to go over now is the time to head throughout the DC ruins and make our way to a large aircraft carrier that's been repurposed into a settlement Rivet City like multiple other aspects of Fallout 3 doesn't make a lot of sense that's something I see criticized a lot about this game sometimes things either don't make sense logically or are just too silly to be taken seriously I ask then why does this matter why does Fallout need to be steeped within realism to take itself too seriously when the previous games in the series didn't do that either Fallout 1 and 2 are games filled with humor with situations and locations that shouldn't work in the real world but do within the game it's a series where we have dual-headed cows running around with protectron Cowboys and boxing matches in a city run by several mob bosses all while taking place in a post-nuclear apocalypse there's a suspension of disbelief that is expected within the series it has parallels to the real world and it uses said parallels to create a story to discuss themes and to deliver a message but it isn't the real world the world of Fallout sometimes takes itself seriously but sometimes doesn't at all so when you see a city that is entirely within an abandoned aircraft carrier your first thought shouldn't be on the logistics of the city and why they don't build on top of the carrier as well in order to expand it doesn't matter that Rivet City exists solely within the carrier and not on top of it it's a set piece that is designed to wow you to make you think how cool of a concept this is initially while also attempting to explore the issues that may come up with this setup that's what Fallout 3 is a game to wow you for better or worse to live out your power fantasy and there are criticisms to be had there Fallout succeeds in creating situations that are interesting on a surface level but then always seems to flounder when it attempts to have any depth it doesn't need to have depth that's not the criticism necessarily but when it tries to have depth and feels a doing so that's when you have to ask what is going wrong here 10 Penny Tower had something to say but it didn't come off well in my opinion Rivet City doesn't hold itself back by considering how the city can be expanded how real it needs to be it's just there and cool for the sake of it and sometimes that's okay Fallout 3 does touch on the issues of living in a city like this people experiencing locked jaw and various other medical issues due to prolonged exposure to the interior of the ship Plus getting cuts from rusty metal found all around I'm sure there's issues here and some of them you can resolve in some you can't the real criticism of River City shouldn't be whether or not it is realistic it should be a discussion on how awful the characters within said City are almost everyone you talk to in Rivet City is one rude to you and two that's it that's seriously it people are rude to you and then have nothing else to say named characters who seem to have backstory will not have anything of depth to say no quests to give no knowledge to bestow they're just there for the sake of it which would be fine if they were named something like Rivet City settler similar to the No Name NPCs in 10 Penny Tower but that isn't the case here Rivet City tries to add depth but ends up lacking it completely and what you are left with is this hollow shell of a city where no one really matters aside from a select few individuals who have Quests for you I want to talk about androids for a moment they were conceptualized by Bethesda for Fallout 3 but underutilized the concept of the quest a replicated man is a direct reference to the concepts within Blade Runner and the novel it was based off of we've already discussed finding the holotapes about an Android on the run from the Commonwealth but we haven't found said Android yet this may surprise fans of Fallout 4 who haven't played Fallout 3 but there are only two actual Androids within the game that I know of and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from real humans by any means I think that's what's most interesting about the concept is how one Quest involving the Commonwealth and synthetic men turned into one of the main driving plot points of Fallout 4. there are Clues to find throughout the Wasteland things that further point you in the direction of the individual who was hired to assist the Android there are ways to bypass this such as what I did in the Underworld where I bribed an individual to tell me who performed the operation a man by the name of Horus Pinkerton who just so happens to be found within Rivet City though many believe that to be a legend as a side note this is around the time a member of the railroad approached me while I was passing time using the game's weight mechanic now if you have never played Fallout 3 or Oblivion before this is the scariest thing that can happen within the game you never know when it's coming you'll be minding your own business passing the time for whatever reason and next thing you know your camera zooms into conversation mode first time it ever happened to me was when I was arrested and Oblivion after getting out I was randomly approached by a woman in the arena out of nowhere and I visibly jumped the railroad is another concept that gets fleshed out more within Fallout 4 they're one of the main factions in that game and three they are more of a concept that you don't get to see in action the railroad helps synthetic people escape the Commonwealth so that they can live their lives freely you can ask around about Pinkerton and his location and eventually learn that he is said to be living within the broken second half of the aircraft carrier the easiest way to get inside is through an underwater entrance that requires you to quickly enter and swim around until you find a spot to surface this and regain your breath the area is full of mire lurks and past that full of traps set up by Pinkerton to keep Intruders out the man likes his privacy due to events that took place before your arrival Pinkerton was one of the founders of Rivet City but around the time Dr Lee showed up events led to him losing his research team and also getting kicked off of the city council which led to him disappearing into Exile Dr Lee a friend of your fathers was working on Project Purity which we are going to learn more about shortly while Rivet City was growing Lee appeared and many of the scientists there wanted to help with the project leaving Pinkerton to work on his own research alone this left the man better and eventually led to where we are now a man living by himself in an abandoned aircraft carrier with no one even remembering that he existed once he reached Pinkerton you can discuss the Android with him and eventually convince him to divulge that he was the one to perform facial reconstruction surgery on the synth as well as wiping his memories while replacing them with new ones I assume because he could according to a nearby terminal he seemed to take on the challenge because it was a challenge said terminal also houses the history of Rivet City for the way Wasteland Survival Guide if you haven't completed that Quest yet Pinkerton will inform you that the head of Revit City security Harkness is actually an Android a321 harkness's memories have been replaced with the idea that he was a man who fell into a coma and his wife had recently left him and disappeared into the Wasteland his memories haven't been fully removed though just locked away and Pinkerton can give you a passphrase that will unlock them this leads to a moral dilemma similar to that of Lily from New Vegas something a few people pointed out I was looking at from a wrong angle let's set the scene there is a man from The Commonwealth looking for a runaway Android his name is Dr Zimmer and he's in Rivet seti I didn't even talk to Zimmer in this playthrough but if you do he requests your Aid in finding said Android AKA Harkness AKA a321 so we're in a bit of a dilemma if we want to help Zimmer we have to turn that information in I'm not going to get into the concepts of rational thought and what it means to be alive in my opinion synthetics are alive they are people like you and me and they feel they can suffer to return a321 to what is essentially slavery is morally reprehensible it doesn't make sense to do the minute you give a creation free will it stops being merely property so helping Zimmer is off the table but then we still have to deal with Zimmer if we want to help the Android this is where a moral and philosophical dilemma arises back in New Vegas I talked about Lily's companion Quest Lily is a super mutant who has psychotic breaks from time to time in battle she's on medication for it but she only takes half doses because they make her forget things specifically her past and her grandchildren who she loves and misses very much when I looked at the quest in New Vegas it was more from a mechanical standpoint than I realized I assumed Lily taking her full dosage of medication was best because it helped stop her from suffering medical breaks and I praised the Quest for actually penalizing you for doing what I believe to be the right thing you lose Lily's combat bonuses at the cost of her no longer having to deal with these issues many pointed out to me that that it isn't as simple as that memories are what make up our identity as human beings Lily cares about her memories and by locking them away through medication you may be wiping away a part of her identity against her well looking back I can agree with the sentiment here at the end of the day it's Lily's decision to make if there was a dialogue option for letting Lily decide what was best for her in this situation I may be more inclined to let her choose it bodily autonomy is important and having the ability to recommend what Lily does here would have been more beneficial overall you are technically making a recommendation when you talk to Lily about this but the phrasing in the quest line itself comes off more as an order than a suggestion I feel what the developers wanted here was for you to recommend a conclusion for Lily and for her to take it to heart due to you being her companion but this seems to have been lost overall in the dialogue tree so what does all of this have to do with Harkness well Harkness has chosen to have his old identity wiped he now has a new identity and tampering with that would be to tamper with his sense of self elf in a way it seems morally unjust to go against his wishes and reactivate his old memories but the game seems to want you to do that if you're going to go down a good karma path let's back up for a second remember that railroad agent she gave us an Android component and suggested showing it to Zimmer in order to convince him that his Android had been destroyed this is a means of completing the quest without interacting with Harkness this allows you to respect his wishes at moving on with his life and allows you to not tamper with his memories I think you earn about 50 Karma here if you go this route now let's talk about what Bethesda considers would be the most good we could do here morally if we approach Harkness and say the passphrase he'll wake up to his old memories while retaining the new ones he's shocked at the Revelation and asks why you would do this to him when it isn't what he initially wanted you can tell him this is due to Zimmer's presence and then Harkness will consider killing Zimmer having you kill Zimmer or being convinced into arresting Zimmer and having him kicked off the boat this gets you about 200 Karma and Harkness will reward and thank you for your effort by giving you his unique plasma weapon he doesn't seem to be upset at your actions he doesn't question if this could have transpired without waking him up and he seems content in finding a new identity that is in an amalgamation of his real memories and the forgeries it's a weird message to receive we are glorified and rewarded for going against harkness's wishes and manipulating his identity on life who he is as a person is permanently changed due to our actions and this is considered the right thing to do but is it really I'm legitimately asking here I personally think this is the wrong road to go down unless absolutely necessary and as we know it wasn't necessary at all Harkness could have been left alone and at peace with himself but we decided to take that away from him similar to how we can force Lily to take her medication and lose part of herself in the process the difference is that going down that route with Lily doesn't reward us it's not necessarily the right or wrong thing to do you're left wondering if you made the right call and it leaves you thinking that's the beauty of New Vegas and the failure of Fallout 3 where New Vegas can actually leave something up to interpretation to serve as a thought experiment Fallout 3 wants you to insert yourself into people's lives manipulate them and be rewarded for it even if it is against their wishes some smaller things you can do around Rivet City include convincing a man to not end his own life and dealing with a short political squabble that doesn't sound so small right helping an old man on the brink of jumping off this ship sounds like it would have more to it than that more to explore dissect and discuss but no you can push him yourself talk to him into doing it or convince him otherwise via a speech check that's it just a really weird and personal topic on mental health and depression to throw in while having absolutely nothing to say about it on the political side Seagrave Holmes wants banned its place on the city council and Bannon wants you to find dirt on him to prevent this from happening Seagrave seems to have it out for Bannon but within the setting of the game there is never really anything that points to Bannon having partaken in any missed Deeds outside of having us collect dirt on Seagrave Seagrave meanwhile is an ex-slaver turned Merchant again this is a concept that could have been more fleshed out and tried to actually say something about these people is Seagrave still a slaver the letter you find implies he's cut ties with that part of his life should his past as a slaver matter now that he's a changed man yes it should have but the game could have at least posited the question does Bannon have any skeletons in his own closet none of this is explored and with the cards on the table as they are it made the most sense to me to present this information on Seagrave to one of the security officials to prevent him from ever getting a seat on the council before we move on to the main storyline there is one more individual of note here who actually has a quest for us a man by the name of Abraham Washington this man is apparently 45 years old by the way Washington runs a museum of American History within Rivet City as a means of keeping their history intact for future Generations you can help him in this and ever by finding his holy grail the Declaration of Independence that's right it's the National Treasure Quest there's a whole aspect of this Quest that I never experienced I didn't even experience it on this playthrough and only found out about it upon looking the quest up for research purposes the Declaration is said to be found in the National Archives which is overrun by super mutants just like everywhere else near the mall Outpost as you enter there is a rotunda ahead of you and I have never gone in there first I always beeline it for the basement which progresses the quest line apparently if you head into the Rotunda there's an NPC mercenary by the name of Sydney who you can bring along on the quest after dispatching some super mutants she even unlocks a shortcut through the complex for you which explains a lot because I always wondered why this elevator never worked for me as you make your way into the complex underneath the archive you will be attacked by a constant swarm of robots on nearby intercoms you can hear an individual rallying the troops so to speak as he attempts to defend the location from your intrusion at the end of the long segment is a protectron program to believe it is Button Gwinnett former governor of Georgia a founding father and one of the individuals to sign the Declaration of Independence Gwyneth believes he's protecting the Declaration from the British and honestly good on him for that if there's one thing the British love it's acquiring rare expensive works from those that rightfully own them sometimes by force you can either take the Declaration by force or convince button that you want to help trick the Redcoats as he puts it this involves getting ink from the Arlington Library which is also another spot for the Wasteland Survival Guide so I recommend killing two birds with one stone here I don't know if I mentioned it but 10 Penny Tower is near the robco headquarters which would be the final of the three tasks for the third chapter meaning that the major side quests I've mentioned so far would allow you to slowly chip away at the survival guide without going out of your way to do so once you have the ink you can bring it back to button and he will create a forgery of the document it's up to you if you return the forgery or force your way into acquiring the real deal Abraham won't know the difference and it's probably more protect acted within the National Archives than within Rivet City then again we are just one man and managed to work our way through the entire complex but I do feel as though the lone Wanderer is a special case do whatever you think is best in my eyes I like button and didn't want to kill him for a piece of paper I have no emotion nor historical ties to apparently if you have Sydney with you Upon returning the document you can prod her for information on her past and about her father you can find her father dead in the statesman's hotel where we found Riley's Rangers and inform her of this to receive a unique 10 millimeter SMG again I'm sorry I don't have footage of this I legitimately didn't know this could happen even after all my playthroughs finally we need to do what we came here to do at the start find Dr Lee and ask her about our father when you do find Dr Lee She immediately recognizes you as James's son not because she met you before though I guess she did when you were a baby but because the two of you apparently look similar I don't agree really but to the game's credit it does hide James's face until after character creation where it matches James's race to the one that you've chosen a lot of pictures online only reference the Caucasian James but he can be Asian African-American and Hispanic as well it's a nice touch for such a prominent character and one of the places you can tell they put General thought in knowing bethesda's track record so far with how much effort they put into various aspects of Fallout 3 this is something that they could have left unimplemented and I wouldn't have been surprised Dr Lee doesn't know where your father is currently but she knows what direction he went in to the Jefferson Memorial to look into their old research Endeavor project Purity the project is a water purification system set up within the memorial with the goal of purifying the water of the Potomac River Basin and filling the Arid riverbed once more Lee mentions that the death of your mother during childbirth seemed to break James and with constant attacks from super mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel losing interest in protecting the scientists due to lack of results James made the decision to abandon the project in order to protect you and bring you to Vault 101 when you arrive there you'll not only find it overrun with super mutants shocker but you'll also find some Hollow tapes of your father discussing his reasoning for leaving the vault as well as where he plans to go next When you entered the overseer's office in Vault 101 you could look through the documents on the overseers terminal to learn about the Gak the Garden of Eden creation kit a device that's actually been around in the Fallout Universe since Fallout 2 where it was a major plot element your father found out about this as well and believed this was the tool he needed in order to make project Purity functional in Fallout 2 the original Geck was I believe considered a terraforming device but in reality it was a collection of seeds and instructions on how to farm and rebuild settlements basically intended to get agriculture thriving within the Wasteland again it included some form of generator as well as water purifiers and a few other basic tools so while small-scale water purification is nice it shouldn't actually be able to terraform anything or fix the Water Crisis within the Wasteland in Fallout Bible six it stated that the Geck is to be a simple MacGuffin device used as a tool to allow the hero to complete their task with no real explanation as to what it actually does the Geck within the Universe of Fallout since its Inception is a device that was designed to be plot magic and that's exactly what it is in Fallout 3. plot magic that will allow project Purity to work without any real explanation as to what it's going to do to make this happen I can't blame Bethesda for taking this excerpt so literally but rather than making it truly magic it would have been nice to have them at least come up with some extra functionality so we knew why we needed this specific device in the first place activating the device later on in the adventure has its state the Geck will collapse all matter within its given radius and recombine it to form a living breathing fertile virgin landscape and allow life to begin Anew so it seems like Fallout 3 did add some extra functionality to the concept for the sake of its plotline you can find a fully detailed explanation on the conceptualization of the gak as a plot device and what the device actually is within the world of Fallout 2 in Fallout Bible 6 and the excerpts can also be found on the Fallout wiki your father's holotapes state that the gray creator of the Dr Braun was stationed in Vault 112 within the capital Wasteland and this is where he's headed to learn more about it and hopefully find one in the process since that's where James is headed off to it only makes sense that we would head there as well to our first Vault since leaving 101. if you watched my previous Fallout retrospective you'll remember that the vaults are some of the main gimmick areas within the Wasteland and Nevada once the concept of vaults having various experiments was set both Bethesda and obsidian ran with it creating locations that were Explorations on social and scientific experiments we had a vault in New Vegas that forced individuals to sacrifice someone periodically and would let them all go free if they stopped you know as an example father 3 is the same kind of every Vault has a personality for you to explore so you can understand the experiment that was taking place fault 101 was all about isolation from the outside world Vault 112 where we are headed now was a practice in virtual reality and showcases some of the pit balls that one may see with the concept Vault 112 can be found near Evergreen Mel's a location that is overrun with Raiders if you head over there you can fight your way through waves of them to save some prisoners and slaves and fight one of the few Super Mutant behemoths in the game The Vault itself is hidden within an old garage out in the middle of nowhere entering it is simplistic and you only have to deal with a set of mole rats on your way to the underground entrance within you'll find a vault that is still fairly well kept and functional due to a set of Robo brains keeping everything orderly there's not much to explore inside unlike other vaults in the area but exploration isn't the point of 112. the real point is the virtual reality system that has been set up as you enter the main Chamber Of The Vault you'll find various pods with individuals locked inside all of these individuals are currently perceiving a virtual reality and according to one of the robots this has been the case for over 200 years so the question may then become how are the individuals inside these pods alive you may think to yourself maybe they aren't alive maybe their minds have just been uploaded to the system that creates the world around them but this doesn't seem to be the case as we will soon learn once we find the fail safe to the experiment no everyone Within These pods is alive and have been for over 200 years somehow the pods here have managed to keep their bodies preserved and intact despite no explanation into how this is possible to be fair we don't get a great explanation on how Robert House of New Vegas managed to do something similar but even Mr house had to sacrifice his body and freedom in order to stay alive for as long as he did when we find house he is a husk of the man he once was to expose him to the air around us is to Doom him because his body can't take it and will expire sometime after Mr house is the Super Genius of the series he is the man who saved Vegas from destruction during the war the man who created an army of sakurotrons and the man who was able to extend his own life past that of what was possible at a great cost so what is happening here within Vault 112. how are these individuals suspended in their pods for so long without any sign of deterioration the explanation given by the game is that these are stasis pods stocked with liquid nutrients the individuals within are kept in stasis and fed as did not expire anything past that in terms of explanation is unneeded by the game's standards and I'd knock it for that but what else do we really need to know about the setup Dr Braun like house is a Super Genius he is the creator of the Geck and had a hand in the creation of this Vault becoming Overseer in the process the man is technologically Adept to the point that it'd be difficult to Fathom much like Mr house why then was Mr House's hibernation chamber set up in a way that left the man the way it did was it different technology from two different scientists was it the issues pertaining to missing the Platinum chip and his new OS it doesn't seem to be explained but it also doesn't matter when any form of media has interesting technology it's always a bonus for the consumer when the Creator goes into detail involving the science behind the setup it helps bolster the setting in lore but it isn't always necessary a lot of technology in Fallout is nuclear magic the Geck is image plot device we are told from the start that the world of Fallout is technologically ahead of us in the present while being culturally stuck in the past and cryonic Technology within the Fallout Universe goes all the way back to Fallout 2 in the Sierra Army Depot before it's explored further in Fallout 4 when your character is Frozen at the start of the game there seems to be many technologies that can extend human life some that leave you in a coma for a time or others that allow your brain to function throughout it's an established aspect of Fallout and while it would benefit from a deep dive into the history and Technology of these systems it also isn't necessary a lot of the technology within Fallout requires the suspension of disbelief from the player much of it is just there for the plot for the sake of it and not everything needs to be explained in great detail because that's not necessarily the point of the game if you look around the pods you'll be able to find your father suspended in one of them luckily your father should be safe within because he hasn't been in the vault in nearly as long as the other residents here one of the robo brains will hand you a Vault 112 jumpsuit which is necessary to quit before you jump into one of the pods in an attempt to save James as you enter the Pod you'll be transported to an area known as Tranquility Lane a location based on a pre-war town where the majority of the individuals inside seem to have no idea that they are in a simulation anyone you talk to has no idea what you're talking about when you bring the concept up to them and no one has any idea where your father is well that is except for two people who we will meet shortly in the center of the town is a little girl by the name of Betty Betty in reality is actually Dr Braun and has full control over the simulation if you punch Betty you'll be electrocuted and blown up instantly your betty is Doc the dog who can be interacted with but not in depth if you talk to Betty about your father she'll State she knows who you were talking about but didn't expect you to be a son despite knowing where your father is Betty won't tell you unless you play a game with her Betty wants you to commit a series of bad karmic actions she wants you to make temmie cry then break up a marriage kill Mabel Henderson in a creative Manner and then eventually kill everyone while wearing a slasher mask I'm not going to go into great detail about this aspect effect of the quest line but the actions you take can be fairly creative you can convince Timmy that his parents are getting a divorce or convince him that he's going to military school as well as other various options such as beating the [ __ ] out of him manipulation and murder are encouraged making this a playground for Bad Karma characters to inflict pain on others at bronze behest now there's one woman within the simulation known as old lady Dithers and unlike the rest of the individuals within she seems to have woken up Dithers realizes you shouldn't be there and there is something wrong she knows of a Fail-Safe that can be found in a nearby house and suggests you use that as a means to free all of them from the living hell they have been experiencing within the abandoned house you won't find anything immediately but there are sets of props that can make a sound when you interact with them if you interact with the props in the right order the Fail-Safe computer will appear near the entryway and you can learn a bit more about what has been going on for these 200 plus years it turns out that this truly has been a living hell for the residents with Braun taking the role of the devil Braun has had multiple different settings he has used over this time from a beach location to his ski resort on the beach he enjoyed watching one of the residents be eaten alive by a shark on the ski resort heel plotted the random act of a woman accidentally impaling herself to death the residents are manipulated they're attacked killed brought back to life and then have their memories wiped over and over until Braun gets tired of the location and try something new Tranquility Lane seems to be the last stop for Braun as it offers him some form of nostalgic peace but even that would eventually wear off if the scientist was left to his own devices without our intervention I cannot stress enough how truly horrific this concept is if hell is real this is an example of what it could be the inability to escape the confines of Eternity while being tortured within it constantly there may be no greater crime you could commit against an individual than to place them here essentially forever longer than their human lifespan would typically last these individuals are repeatedly broken over and over forced to to suffer with no end in sight because this is the only thing that is keeping Braun going and at the end of the day it's played for laughs and because of that it feels uncomfortable for sure but It ultimately Falls flat much like everything else in Fallout 3 it's a surface level examination on a concept that has so much depth and discussion to be had a truly disturbing event is taking place and we do little more than ride around its theme park for 10 minutes until the quest is over no matter how horrific they try to make something come off the game never seems to take itself seriously enough for it to have any real impact Tranquility Lane should come off as uncomfortable watching what these people have gone through and feeling the weight of their suffering over the power of a man who couldn't care for them is an interesting topic to go over and one that is ultimately wasted in a game like Fallout 3 that has nothing of actual value to say about it and that seems to be unable to fully utilize it the game doesn't take itself seriously so things that are supposed to be serious things that are supposed to make you feel a specific emotion Mission or make you feel uncomfortable things that are supposed to make you think often don't they fail at what they are trying to do and instead focus on the humor and the humor only even when it's not particularly funny the rating of Fallout 3 is not committed gold if you get what I'm saying they try to throw humor in everything but all it does is Muddy up some of the more serious aspects of the storyline and world the Fail-Safe was something Dr Braun had installed in case he grew weary enough of the virtual world he trapped everyone within a virtual invasion of Chinese soldiers will trigger who will then murder all of Tranquility Lane's residents this death will in turn kill the individuals within the pods the issue is that there are safety measures in place for military and Vault Personnel an oversight on bronze part that prevents him from being killed alongside everyone else meaning that if the Fail-Safe was engaged he would be left all alone within his hell as long as Vault 112 is operational in a selfish act Braun refused to use the Fail-Safe for fear of being stuck within the chamber with no one to interact with or torture quite the fitting end for a man who has kept individuals trapped within for so long there's a choice here the failsafe is the Good Karma action in Fallout 3's eyes and I believe I would agree with that if we found a way to release the individuals from their pods chances are the shock would be too much for them or the bacteria in the air would eventually kill them not to mention the potential trauma compounding on them as they're set free your options are to either torture these people for Braun who will go on to torture them for eternity or allow them to escape the choice is yours but I know that I wouldn't personally want to be left in such a state and at the very least old lady Dithers wouldn't want it either the will of the people as far as we can tell is to be set free from torment and so that's what we'll do the action that seems to be the right thing to do in this situation once you initiate the Fail-Safe a group of Chinese soldiers will appear and begin murdering all of the residents except for you the dog and Betty I don't know why this is Betty is vault-tec Personnel so they're safe but you and your father who is the dog if you didn't put that together shouldn't have this clearance and therefore should be a hacked maybe I'm missing something there and if I am be sure to let me know until then it seems like an odd oversight on the developers part Betty will be furious with what you've done and begin to go into a panic about being all alone I don't really feel sympathy for them considering they're an old scientist role playing as a little girl who has been torturing the residents here during the entirety of their stay so excuse me if I don't shed a tear at his mental suffering Betty will inform you that your father was the dog the whole time duh and a door will appear that you can use to escape the simulation once out the Pod will open and your father will approach you finally allowing the two of you to reunite there seems to be a misconception of Fallout 3 from an outsider's view or potentially from someone who hasn't played the game in a long period of time many feel that much like Fallout 4 the game is a story of searching for your family member in reality this is maybe half the tale finding your father makes up a large chunk of the game yeah acting as the Catalyst that will allow you to reach the major locations within the capital Wasteland but it's not the end of the game once you find them there's an entire journey to be had after the fact side quests to continue completing storyline line to discover your parents work to be finished and The Enclave to be dealt with I'm pretty hard on Fallout 3 in certain aspects and it's only going to get worse as we get into the script but in terms of the journey the game really begins to grow into its best self once the journey to find your father is completed the reunion with your father is nice that's about it he's happy to see you but also disappointed that you left the Vault it isn't what he wanted for you as he believed you would be safest inside the confines of 101. one of the reasons he abandoned the project was to get you to safety now you're here anyway so it may feel like everything he did in Vault 101 was for naught but realistically you've grown to a point where you can handle yourself in and outside of the Vault grown to the point where you can find your father in the Wasteland a needle within a radioactive Haystack you have combat experience prowess and potentially even lodging within one of the settlements you've grown accustomed to the Wasteland even thriving in it and your father seems to realize this which allows him to be content with you being here but not a lot of that is truly conveyed in fact Fallout 3 is pretty abysmal at conveying emotion or affecting you in any emotional way it's good to see your father for sure but the writers have a hard time making it seem like a big deal it's just another box you checked off along the main storyline your father came here to gain information on the Geck from bronze notes and he believes he found everything he needed to prove its success when used in conjunction with project Purity thus James wants to head back to Rivet City which is an insane Journey for him across almost the entirety of the Wasteland in order to convince Dr Lee and her team to return to the project it's nice that Bethesda lets you make this journey with your father if you want but also not limit you to doing it you can go about completing side quests or fast travel to Rivet City and your father will eventually catch up so that he can be reunited with Dr Lee Dr Lee is happy to see James but is hesitant at first to go work on the project once more Dr Lee has something tangible in Rivet City work that is producing results and helping the people of the settlement to drop all of that for something else would require a big leap of faith but with James's assurance that he found a way to make the project function and her respect for your father as a friend and scientist she'll ultimately agree to come back along with her team you can't escort the team back to Jefferson Memorial if you want or fast travel there as was true with your father earlier once there your father will ask you to clear out the super mutants within as if you are the only one there with combat experience and while this is true while it is true that you were the best man for the job at this moment are you telling me James nor his team have managed to gain any combat experience within the Wasteland at all James specifically has been adventuring around the entirety of the Wasteland he's got to be getting into constant combat if our experiences are anything to go on at the very least he should have been a temporary essential companion that could help you clear out the area it'd be a nice scene Father and Son against super mutants working together and helping each other but you don't get anything close to that note follow 3 wants to keep things as simple as possible you are the player and you need to do the tasks because that's how video games work now get in there and complete your quest it's ridiculous to assume that this is the only viable option now everything that's about to happen is going to come at you fast after clearing out the mutants your father and the team will move in and your father needs you to go into the basement to turn off the power to the flood control pump in the basement and along your journey you can find notes that are an audio Journal of your father's own Adventures as he looked for Dr Braun you can also find a tape of your mother attempting to work as James attempts to hit which I imagine is a little weird and traumatizing for you as their child you hit the power switch and return to the top to see your father he will then comment on your actions in the Wasteland in one of two ways if you blew up or saved Megaton he will comment on that either praising you for your efforts or being appalled at your actions I guess this is supposed to show that the developers took into consideration that your actions had consequences but this is the only real meaningful example of that and it's a short conversation that doesn't change the course of what is about to transpire additionally if you didn't complete megaton's questline he will just comment on your karma level to be fair Fallout 3 does have a sort of Rippling effect based on your actions specifically it's based on your karma level and it's incredibly lazy as well good characters will will periodically get attacked by a group known as the Talon company and bad characters will get attacked by Cowboy Vigilantes known as Regulators that's the effect your actions have on the world who will attack you and who will leave you alone either way you're going to get attacked so better to just expect that it will happen from time to time free loot is free loot I guess and telling company has some pretty good loot so it wasn't all about so your father says this should be all about your actions so Bethesda can say aha we took your actions into account and then he hands you some fuses before sending you back into the basement once inside you need to place the fuses in a nearby box to allow the door to open then activate the power to the station so everything comes back online before heading back up there's a blockage in some nearby pipes you need to clear out and this is where [ __ ] begins to hit the fan as you are stuck in the pipes you can see out into the Wasteland while you wait for whatever blockage there is to clear you will see vertibirds begin to land at the memorial in Enclave soldiers begin to storm the location you can follow the other end of the pipes back into the memorial and then we'll have to fight Enclave soldiers back to project Purity where you will witness Dr Lee watching your father within the machine's inner chamber James and one of the other scientists are locked inside with a man by the name of Colonel autumn autumn is set up in a way that you can't really see his face and for whatever reason I have no idea why this is later on you'll see it and there's nothing surprising about it so I'm not sure what the reasoning for this was exactly Colonel Autumn wants the keys to project Purity and demands James hand them over but James insists that the system isn't functional after some back and forth Autumn shoots one of the other scientists to show that he's not [ __ ] around here James then caves and agrees to hand everything over he heads to a nearby terminal and activates the chamber which releases lethal doses of radiation into the area killing James in the process and apparently killing Colonel Autumn as well as James lays there dying he insists that you run away James's death comes at you fast depending on what you did in between finding him again it's almost instant to find your father and lose him again so quickly is a good way to create a sense of intense loss but we haven't really had the time to develop this connection with James we have the intro a section of the game where we get to interact with James slightly and then after that we never see him again until we rescue him from Vault 112. to kill James here doesn't seem forced necessarily but the emotions that the developers are trying to get out of you do the game wants you to feel bad about your father's death but they haven't earned it they haven't allowed us to develop any connection with him to reconnect with him sometime after reuniting with him that's why I was saying he should have been a temporary companion we should have had more quests with James he should have helped us here and there as project Purity was being developed we could have learned more about him and had our bond with him grow than when everything was close to fruition that's when James could have been taken from us and earned emotional climax to James's story not whatever Fallout 3 actually gave us it's just unearned payoff after unearned payoff Fallout 3 continues to have nothing of depth to say and then expects you to feel something just because they killed someone off who you as the player barely knew you can talk to Dr Lee afterward and she'll state that there is a secret tunnel they used to escape in the past and that all of the staff know about it meaning all they have to do is Unite with everyone there once down there Dr Lee will task you with leading them to safety since once again you are the only one who has combat experience you'll fight through Ghouls and Enclave soldiers as you make your way to the entrance on the other side you'll also have to stop about halfway through due to one of the staff having a heart condition that prevents him from continuing you can either be good and offer him stim packs to keep going or be bad and convince Dr Lee to leave him there riveting storytelling guys as a side note I was so used to shooting Enclave soldiers in power armor that when I opened a nearby door to a Brotherhood of Steel member I accidentally blasted him to death before realizing as you reach the surface you'll be in front of the headquarters for the Eastern chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel Dr Lee demands to be let in but the guards at the door are refusing all civilians no exceptions even if the individuals need help the Brotherhood don't care about that which seems pretty on brand for them here sure but also not quite for the Eastern chapter specifically the reason the Eastern chapter and the outcasts split off is because the outcasts hold more true to the core Brotherhood values of securing old world Tech Elder Lions is slightly more interested in helping the Wasteland and ridding it of super mutants when possible all the Prejudice I mentioned previously is still there obviously but you'd think they'd at least be willing to help human civilians in danger right apparently not the Brotherhood of Steel seems to be flip-flopping in terms of their values based on bethesda's writing in fact the only reason you even get access here is as Dr Lee approaches the intercom and uses her history with elder Lions to demand access allowing you to take your first steps into a proper introduction with the Brotherhood the Brotherhood of Steel's main base of operations is situated within the ruins of the Pentagon where they train initiates in combat in order to get them ready to face the world of the Wasteland while also indoctrinating them in the teachings of their order when you enter the base you're met by Sarah Lyons and her father Elder Owen Lyons who was more directly related with helping Dr Lee and your father protect the Jefferson Memorial the interaction is simple enough Dr Lee explains how The Enclave attacked and lions feels guilty for not being able to help he recognizes you as James son and vows to help your group deal with The Enclave since the acquisition of project Purity would give the US government too much power within the capital Wasteland and potentially all of the United States with the Brotherhood now on your side Dr Lee will mention that she and her team need to rest while reminding you not to trust the Brotherhood entirely despite their willingness to Aid the people and mission of the Brotherhood comes first to their order and Dr Lee is aware of this it's not untrue but it is slightly misguided there's more depth to the Eastern chapter than meets the eye to individuals who are familiar with the Brotherhood from Fallout 1 and 2. in Fallout 3 Elder Lions can divulge the history of the Brotherhood to you and how the individuals who founded the Brotherhood back in the west are worried about how Lions has potentially lost his way in terms of the order's Mission this is true as they are worried about lions growing affection towards the people of the capital Wasteland something that he confirms Lions has grown accustomed to the Wasteland and its people he cares about helping them deal with the dangers of the surrounding area especially that of the super mutants it doesn't excuse the brotherhood's Prejudice towards people like ghouls but it does show growth and change within their order and helps explain why the outcasts decided to split off from the Eastern chapter the outcasts want to focus on acquiring old world technology they want to follow the original Mission of the Brotherhood to a t in this way the Brotherhood though not without their own problems is shown to be growing into more of a heroic group of individuals within the Wasteland Lions will point you towards one of the scribes since they may have information that pertains to the gak even if your father has passed it's still necessary to finish his research for project Purity before that you can ask Lions to allow you the training to wear power armor since we originally met the Brotherhood I've been holding on to power armor and eventually swapping it out for the t-51b we found back in Fort Constantine wasn't sure when I was actually going to make it to their base and unlock the perk I'm about to discuss you aren't able to Simply wear power armor in three in New Vegas you have to earn a perk that will unlock the ability to equip it power armor isn't particularly well represented in Fallout 3 but at the very least it points out how difficult it is to wield how you could essentially kill yourself in it if not careful and why it requires training before equipping training you can received from one of the paladins in the base if you're feeling really adventurous the operation Anchorage DLC actually allows you to learn how to use power armor as early as when you exit Vault 101 if you feel up to completing the DLC that early it's one of the features that adds to the role-playing experience a feature that wasn't present in Fallout 1 and 2 which allowed you to equip power armor as soon as you found it that's why it was surprising to me that they reverted this requirement in Fallout 4. sure the sole survivor may have had some form of Power Armor training from being in the military but it's never explained and almost anyone regardless of their history can wear it speaking of Fallout 4 I have to praise Bethesda for all of the callbacks they ended up fleshing out in the game sequel oh you heard mention of the Commonwealth in Fallout 3. now you're in the Commonwealth in Fallout 4. heard about since in three now they're the main focus in four meet this snot nose little Brad in the Pentagon he's now the leader of the Eastern chapter in Fallout 4. a lot of things you may not remember or may not have expected to carry over end up having even greater purpose and lore once you reach the game sequel it shows that there is strength in the rating of this series and its ability to flesh out its world even if it is few and far between all of the surface level side quests as you go visit the Scribe you'll gain your first Glimpse at Liberty prime one of the biggest and most in-your-face examples of American propaganda and exceptionalism that is the perfect example of this meme format we'll get to Liberty Prime's themes and messaging when we're closer to the game's climax but in the meantime it's a super weapon a la The Iron Giant unlike The Iron Giant however Liberty Prime is a commy hating Chinese hating death machine that will force democracy upon you no matter how much blood it has to spell to do so see where I'm going here the Brotherhood has an old but functional vault-tec computer and said computer may have information about the Geck for you as it contains info about the various faults around the Wasteland as is obvious by now Vault 101 isn't the only vault in the area there was Dr bronze vaults 112 and there are several others will go over shortly including vault 87 which apparently has a Geck within its confines if you look through the rest of the notes on the terminal you can actually find information on vault 76 as well which would be used later for the release of Fallout 76 when you return to the Scribe with the knowledge of vault 87 he'll bring you to a large map that contains the location of all the vaults within the Wasteland those being vault 87 92 101 106 108 and 112. we've grown up in one and been to another one already meaning there are three optional vaults to explore plus the necessary vault 87 to find the Geck if you watch my New Vegas retrospective you'll know that the appeal of visiting these vaults is to see how the developers designed miniature rundown amusement parks based on various experiments what makes Vault appealing in a post Fallout 2 world is the idea that you'll get to see what type of experiment took place there how it messed with the people inside and what led to its eventual downfall New Vegas was particularly creative with these the death room vault is still one of my all-time favorite experiences within the series I'm sorry to say that it should come as no surprise that the vaults and Fallout 3 fall flat in comparison to those that come after it the concepts are there and at least somewhat interesting to explore but they lack the depth that made the New Vegas vault so great a certain level of character is missing here and while it tries its best I think you'll see what I'm talking about as we explore before that the Scribe mentions that getting into vault 87 will be no simple task the main entrance is so heavily irradiated that there's no way of getting inside without a guaranteed death however there is a potential secondary entrance in the little Lamplight Cavern and you can make your way there to find set entrance and continue the storyline this is where the game opens up a bit more the world of the Wasteland begins to fill with Enclave soldiers and vertibirds certain areas where you may have seen Talon company fighting super mutants becomes The Enclave fighting the mutants instead the areas of the capital Wasteland are becoming a bit more chaotic and while you have a mission to take care of this is where I find it best to do some more free form exploring let's discuss the optional vaults first going in numerical order Vault 92 was populated by some of the world's best musicians under the guise of preserving musical Talent of course not everything was as it seemed and the experiment at hand was the use of white noise to manipulate individuals the tests were contained at first with the noise in planting subliminal messages into the minds of various musicians within the Vault by the time you reached the Vault it's semi-flooded and infested with mirelurks this is due to it being under a nearby lake and with no one to maintain it it eventually fell apart the experiment itself has a history of Deceit the true experiment by vault tech was to have the white noise played throughout the entirety of the vault in order to implant them with combat suggestions creating trance-like human weapons only the overseer was aware of the plan but the main scientist behind it believed that they were performing controlled tests within specific soundproof rooms of the Vault this was incorrect and slowly half the residents of the Vault began to go insane to the point that they needed to be put down the experiment seemed to make individuals hyper durable or rather their brains would not register being shot immediately an individual could take upwards of 20 rounds to their body before succumbing to their wounds leading to vicious super mutants that would tear each other limb from limb while you're here you can find an intact old world violin that can be returned to an old woman living by herself in the Wasteland she'll use it to play music on a radio station which she'll give you the frequency too meaning you'll have three stations total for General radio purposes the vault is also located within the town of old Olney and I have a very hard time saying that which is one of the must explore locations of the game there are several locations within Fallout 3 that are too good to pass up usually due to the items they offer their backstory or just various events that happen around them old Olney is a deathclaw Nest coincidentally it's also where Dave heads off to if you rig the election if you do some searching around you can find his body in an alley with a bunch of other dead wastelanders the story of Vault 92 is an interesting one one that I won't be delving into as much within the retrospective The Vault itself acts as a set piece to show you the failure of the experiment and its eventual downfall it's a dungeon to explore with set pieces being the Music and Sound rooms as well as learning about what went wrong but it's not as interactable or engaging as what we've seen later in New Vegas still there's plenty of loot to be found here including the aforementioned pre-war violin that's going to be a trend going through these three vaults we explore 92 106 and 108 are overall not that interesting to explore they have interesting backstories when lore potentially but the actual journey through them is the same throughout with one or two little gimmicks here and there that make it slightly more enjoyable take Vault 106 as an example the vault is constantly spewing Airborne drugs throughout the area's ventilation system when you enter it you get to learn more about the experiment but more importantly you will periodically succumb to the drugs as you have visions of your past in the vault your father and even the Vault 101 overseer all while fighting off other Vault dwellers who have lost their mind by being trapped within conceptually it's a cool premise but the actual delivery is rather lackluster you'll see things here and there but overall nothing really happens you're just exploring a rundown Vault until you find a bobble head or whatever ammo and weapons you can scrounge together and it's the same for Vault 108 although this is probably considered the best out of the three at least in my my opinion the experiment of Vault 108 is not what makes it interesting it's what happened afterward the initial experiment seemed to be about the devolving power structures within a vault Community certain roles were assigned While others were at the discretion of the overseer an individual picked due to his genetic disposition for a rare cancer that would kill him early into the experiment's lifetime the Vault lacked entertainment was fitted with more weapons than was necessary and the power was set to go out in 20 years suggesting that this would all act as a catalyst to have the Dwellers turn against one another leading to an eventual Slaughter at least from how I understand it what's interesting about the vault is that none of that backstory matters not especially anyway the real point of Vault 108 ended up being an experiment the scientists took part in within their free time involving the cloning of a vault dweller by the name of Gary repetitively these clones are violent to any non-clones and at some point within the vault's history most likely when the power finally failed the giris took over when you arrive it's a race through the vault as you fight your way through hordes of numbered clones all named Gary all with the inability to speak out outside of saying their own name it's amazing it shows how something so silly and simplistic can be enough to make a location a high point within an open world game like Fallout 3. one of the Gary's was actually kidnapped by some of the outcasts and can be found in a DLC specific area later the best way I can describe the vaults in New Vegas is character every Vault exudes its own uniqueness and charm exploring them feels refreshing and worthwhile because you never know what you're going to find behind the next Corner through the next Corridor it's always exciting especially on your first time exploring in comparison the vaults in Fallout 3 all feel the same outside of the small gimmicks they may Place throughout the biggest differences are the stories behind their experiments and the majority of those are explained through holotapes and terminals rather than through the environment leading to very sterile locations in reality this may be the more realistic approach to the concept but Fallout 3 isn't a very realistic game and it sees more success when it leads into its own absurdity something that obsidian was aware of and played heavily into while the vaults General messaging quest lines storylines die dialogue and World building within Fallout 3 may be generally lackluster that doesn't mean everything within it is there's still plenty to see and do within the world of Fallout 3. there's other settlements to stop by the Oasis defined the DLC to take part in and more Canterbury Commons is a settlement you'll hear about fairly regularly along your journey it's popular because of its inclusion of a superhero known as the mechanist a mechanic of the Town who turned into a Buckethead superhero with his army of robots after an individual known as the ant agonizer began showing up to bother the residents of the town now the mechanism the antagonizer regularly fight one another in the streets of Canterbury Commons which in turn begins to exhaust and bother the residents there to the point that some of the individuals living there would rather you put a bullet in the heads of the two if possible that being said there is a peaceful option to get things to calm down antagonizer can be found in a nearby cave or mine structure the quest itself is fairly simplistic it's more about the show of absurdity than anything else the main choice you're making here is who you are going to side with are you going to deal with the Mac mechanist the antagonizer or are you going to take them both out I wouldn't be surprised if this was the choice most individuals made on their first playthrough as this can allow you to get both of the characters unique costumes Additionally the peaceful resolution for the antagonizer isn't immediately apparent if you head into the mine and confront the antagonizer you'll be forced to kill her and take her costume however if you ask around the town you can learn the name of her true identity bringing this up with her within her Lair will lead to a speech check that must be passed in order to get her to stand down alternatively if you visit Huber's Comics you can find her inspiration for the character and mentioned this to her leading to the same result without a speech check being necessary this is where a game like Fallout 3 can be at its strongest providing multiple Avenues to complete a task the way you want to complete it but not making it readily apparent how you would go about doing so there's no Quest marker telling you to get the name of the antagonizer you can just do it by your own volition and it'll benefit you later on similarly we can convince the mechanist to stand down as well by passing a speech check or using specific perks to convince him that he's been scaring the entire town the outcomes and rewards for this Quest vary drastically you can earn their suits you can earn unique weapons and you can have Random Encounters later on with the antagonizer if you let her live and continue with her superhuman identity you can wear the suit of one and confront the other making them believe that you are their enemy you can join forces with one to stop the other the options are fairly fleshed out and numerous it's a surprising thing to see in Fallout 3 when a large portion of the quest within the game do not offer this level of Freedom when it comes to the choices you can make for the past you can take to get to your desired goal I think one of the reasons this Quest is remembered so fondly is both because of its absurdity but also because of how refreshing it is in terms of what we are allowed to do the Superhuman Gambit is a gold star in terms of Fallout 3 questing and a majority of the other quests within the game would have benefited by following its example one of the more interesting quests in the game appears after the death of your father when within the vicinity of Megaton a radio signal will appear on your Pip-Boy it's a distress signal from none other than Amada she's looking for you and needs your help as things have been getting progressively worse within the Vault since your departure returning to Vault 101 for the longest time was something I didn't actually know was possible little did I know that it was possible to be native with the individuals you left in the vault and see the consequences of your actions not just for leaving the Vault but for who you killed along the way characters like the overseer and Butch could have been killed during the initial escape and that will of course determine whether or not they are available to interact with as you make your return Amada gives you a password to reopen The Vault doors so it's on you to make your way back there and see what's going on as you enter the Vault you'll be met by Officer Gomez assuming he's still alive I don't know if you can even kill him but the structure of the escape and the reunion Quest would suggest to me that it is possible there's a surprising amount of factors that affect the end of this Quest despite there only being three outcomes to choose from Gomez will inform you that there has been an upsurge in Rebels who would like to leave the Vault following yours and your father's example there's unrest within the Vault due to this as the overseer who we left alive during the Escape is trying to keep control and keep people from heading out into the dangers of the Wasteland exploring the Vault you'll find a majority of it barricaded a Rants act individuals are fighting with security and security is fighting back potentially even shooting at them even if only a warning shot you can talk to the various individuals in the vault such as the Mata or butch but who you really need to talk to is dependent on the outcome you want to achieve for example I want to convince the overseer to open the vault and allow the individuals the option to escape this can be completed in a number of ways we can easily kill the overseer which is the quickest solution but we can also convince him that the security is planning on attacking the rebels and killing individuals to send a message this will disturb the overseer and convince him to stand down alternatively we can point out that there are only so many possible Generations left within the Vault before interbreeding would be necessary and they'd die out that's three ways just to complete one outcome and this is still dependent on whether or not you killed the overseer during the Escape if you didn't then Alan Mack is in charge he was an individual blaming you for what was happening in Vault 101 during your escape and he can't be reasoned with he'll have to be killed if you want to take this route and this is the route I decided to go with even if the Wasteland is dangerous I still believe it's best that the individuals within should have the option to leave an Explorer and live their lives rather than being doomed to a depleting population within the Vault but what if we wanted to side with the overseer there's a few ways of going about that as well so such as ignoring the quest altogether once the quest does show up on your radio it'll eventually disappear as well making it impossible to complete and suggesting that the rebels were overtaken by security you can also kill the rebels and Amada if you want or you can convince a Mata that the Wasteland is too dangerous to jerus this leads to Good Karma for a reason that I don't understand yes you are keeping the individuals within the Vault safe but you are also dooming their population to eventually dying out Vault 101 will be empty at some point in time it's not going to last forever and the time is coming fast it's an inherently bad karmic action to convince the rebels to be content with the safety of the Vault and the eventual end of their Community when they could grow with the other communities of the Wasteland even if there are dangers to be dealt with one of the ways you can convince a Mata to stand down is with information that The Enclave has been trying to break in suggesting that there is an immediate threat at their doorstep but should we not also be able to convince a Mata that we will have some hand in dealing with the Enclave the individuals that killed our father it's a weird decision to call this a good karmic action and limited in such a way while allowing so many other options within the quest the high point of this Quest is how freeform it is but it still manages to make some questionable choices along the way I'm not asking for it to be perfect but some more thought could have been put in overall there's one final outcome destroying the Vault and forcing everyone out there's a maintenance terminal you can hack into that will allow you to perform a flush operation on the Vault to water chip which leads to a catastrophic failure all of the Vault dwellers will be forced out immediately and if you talk to Amada about it you can even convince her that it was her father's idea to do so it's a particularly vile outcome one that feels more effective and personal than something like blowing up Megaton in my opinion if you do this the overseer will even stay behind and take his own life alternatively you could tell Amada it was you and she'll threaten your life if she ever sees you again this option had a surprising amount of thought put into it as there are several interactions to be had after the fact you can find a model wandering the Wasteland and she's essentially doomed to being eventually killed by some sort of hostile out there meaning you can eventually find her corpse somewhere within the game map you can even find her being interrogated by The Enclave and event executed if she knows you destroyed the Vault she'll even try to kill you for it you can even find dead Vault 101 residents around due to being forced out regardless of if you convince the residents to open the vault or you destroyed it Butch will head to Rivet City and become a recruitable companion that requires neutral Karma as I mentioned I chose to save the Vault and allow the doors to be open giving the residents the option to come and go regardless of if you kept the Vault closed or open you'll be forced out forever if you kept it open a model will congratulate you before quoting the overseer from Fallout 1 stating I'm sorry you're a hero and you have to leave since there are too many individuals in the vault that still blame you for how this all started and the deaths of other Vault dwellers in 101 I never knew that this was a reference to the original game and always felt a little bit slighted about the fact that there was no way to stay on good terms with the Vault so you could come and go as you please but having played Fallout 1 now it's actually a satisfying callback even if I am a little disappointed I can never go back this Quest is particularly short if you know what you're doing but what makes it an outlier from the majority of the quests and interactions within the game is how personal it is how many any options there are it's three outcomes but set up in a very free form way where you can reach set outcomes however you please and your actions will affect the relationships of those you grew up with particularly Yamada less so Butch this is where Fallout 3 is at its strongest this is what New Vegas tried to do consistently with every question in the game the writing may not be the best but the freedom displayed is a taste of what could have been overall Fallout 3 had the opportunity to be a very engaging experience within its quests and while the gameplay is still fine returning to Vault 101 in trouble on the home front is the shining example of what a missed opportunity this game truly was believe it or not but we're only two to three quests away from completing the Fallout 3 main storyline that being said there's a few more must-see locations within the Wasteland either because of side quests or due to how interesting they are on their own there are only 17 actual side quests within Fallout 3 without DLC there's plenty of unmarked quests sure but the quests that show up on your Pip-Boy and generally lead to an achievement are surprisingly few and far between Fallout 3 may feel open it may feel like a larger game in comparison to many others out there even today but when boiling down all of the content it's surprisingly limited especially in comparison to some other Bethesda titles I'm looking at you Elder Scrolls that doesn't mean there isn't reason to explore these other areas however bobble heads can raise your stats rare weapons can be found around and there's always your basic looting and Scavenging plus you can read the various terminals around the Wasteland for backstory and lore on the setting of the series let's talk about the Dunwich building for a moment if there's one location within the Wasteland that any fan of Fallout 3 will tell you to explore this is one of them the Dunwich building doesn't have a quest directly tied to it until one of the DLCs but even before that it's an amusement park ride of Eldritch Horror as you enter the building it's normal enough just like every other abandoned building in the Wasteland there's loot to find and ghouls to kill if you're up for it to start things off there are several audio logs from a man named Jane that can be found around the vicinity James story is in some ways a parallel to your own he's on the hunt for his father and that Journey has brought him to the Dunwich building after tracking said father here you you'll begin to notice that things are off here James's mind starts to deteriorate within his audio log you'll hallucinate a section of the building as being pre-war a door may open for you by itself objects may fly around the room you may hear footsteps even when no one is there you may think to yourself there has to be an explanation for this right and there might be but not once steeped in logic and sound reasoning rather it seems as though the Dunwich building may be haunted not with ghosts necessarily but with some sort of Otherworldly entity the building must be irradiated as James slowly sounds to become goalified and the location is already overrun with ferals but is it radiation or something else entirely Jane references al-hazrid and I don't remember if I'm pronouncing that properly the fictional author of the Necronomicon conceptualized by actual author H.P Lovecraft in fact the Dunwich building is a reference to one of lovecraft's Stories the Dunwich Horror and believe it or not as you make your way further into the depths of the building eventually ending up underground you will find yourself within a ritual chamber with a unique obelisk in the middle within the chamber is a ghoulified Jame driven mad by whatever Supernatural forces have taken hold here and he will be seen summoning ghouls to the location which shouldn't be possible by normal means upon being noticed Jane will attack you and he can be killed for Good Karma ending his suffering in the Dunwich building the location is still praised as one of the most interesting to explore within the capital Wasteland and for good reason there aren't many areas that lend themselves to the supernatural in Fallout that doesn't mean there aren't any however even back in Fallout 2 magic seems to exist a shaman is able to communicate with you over great distances as an example it may sound odd at the moment but in reality magic in the Supernatural are as much a reality within the Fallout series as science and radioactive mutants the Dunwich building can leave you feeling uncomfortable in a game that doesn't normally leave you feeling much of anything at all Bethesda has strength in Cosmic horror it seems Fallout 4 would go on to have a similar location to Dunwich and both Oblivion and Skyrim touch on the concepts what makes the on which building's so unique and memorable is both how it succeeds at making you uncomfortable and the amount of character it exudes I can't reasonably ask for every location within an open world to have the level of depth and detail that the Dunwich building did of course to have every location take you on such an elaborate ride is impossible from a development standpoint but the Dunwich building should be seen as a crowning achievement for the development team a concept that should be strived for within every aspect of the Wasteland even if they won't all meet it and for that reason it's one of the locations I can't recommend exploring enough we'll be revisiting Dunwich during The Point Lookout DLC but for now we'll move on to another must-see location in the Wasteland The Oasis in one of the northernmost points of the Wasteland is a location known as Oasis if you need a location on your map one way of doing so that I only found out during this playthrough is to Kill The Drifter in Dickerson Tabernacle Chapel you get a unique sniper rifle as well as the coordinates to Oasis on his person as your personal coordinates you'll begin to see something foreign to the Wasteland patches of grass trees with leaves life growing around the area that shouldn't currently be possible due to all of the radiation and waste from the Great War at the entrance is tree minder tree father Birch the tree miters are a religious group who worship the creator of the Oasis an individual we're going to meet shortly Birch waves you in stating he has been expecting you although who he is is left up in the air for now you can discuss how you've never seen a place like this before and then head on inside with Birch so you can meet the Creator before the tree managers will let you see him however you need to take part in a ritual where you drink some special sap that will knock you unconscious and apparently quell the negative and toxic aspects of your mind removing any potential threats to the great tree as you awake from your drug-induced Slumber you'll be facing the back of a large unique looking tree as you make your way around the tree you'll come face to face with none other than Harold now if you don't know who Harold is I'm not going to blame you he's a recurring character from Fallout 1 and 2. a man that was turned into a mutant via the fev and the master if all of that sounded forward to I recommend taking the time to blast through Fallout 1 as it's a relatively short experience the fev will be more prevalent within Fallout 3 later on as we make our way to vault 87 the master is mentioned more in passing due to him no longer being around he was the main antagonist of Fallout 1 and the creator of the mutants in Western America Harold here used to live in a town called the Hub before moving to a ghoul neighborhood known as gecko The Vault dweller of Fallout 1 commit Harold in the hub and then the player character's ancestor also known as the chosen one can meet him in Fallout 2. between the events of Fallout 1 and 3 Harold eventually has a tree sapling begin to take root and grow inside of his head he has seeds that Sprout from the saplings which are so durable they can apparently thrive in the Wasteland thus the explanation for Oasis becomes clear the Sprouts within Harold's head have grown to a point where it has fully encased Harold's body it then continued to grow while spreading its seeds and created the area now seen before us now Harold's a pretty down to earth guy when you talk to him he asks if the tree minders made you take part in that stupid ceremony before laughing he finds a lot of their actions amusing and easy to make fun of but also tiring the tree miners worship him for reasons Harold doesn't care about and he finds it exhausting trying to talk to them they are individuals who listen to him but don't hear what he has to say anything Harold says or wants no matter how clear gets twin Twisted into some religious or philosophical Mess by the tree minders the only person Harold actually enjoys talking to is the one kid within the Oasis because she actually allows Harold to talk about what he wants to talk about so Harold has been stuck here for two to three decades he's tired of the people around him he's tired of not being able to move or explore and all he really wants to do is die as a mutant it isn't as simple as waiting for old age because Harold doesn't seem to age at all instead he's doomed to this place until the intervention of someone else Harold has the ability to see and sense the surrounding area through the tree inside his head when he saw you approaching he had the tree minders greet you because he has a job for you Harold wants you to kill him he's tired of this life and is ready to move on but he can't do so himself now we'll talk about the moral implications of this in a moment but first we need to discuss how this would take place Harold hasn't just been consumed by the tree many of his organs have also moved from his body and been placed around the area his heart for example is deep underground and that's where he wants you to go Harold wants you to head to the location of his heart and destroy it an action that would kill him painlessly so I'm not going to get into the morality of assisted euthanasia I will say that there is a certain point where I believe we have to accept the will of the individual as an example thinking about the terminally ill or those unable to properly function without assistance anymore some pretty extreme cases are what come to my mind and I think Harold would count as an extreme case here he's been alive for an extremely long time and within that time potentially 30 years of them he's been stuck on moving in the same place as people worship him but do not listen to him do not treat him like a human being in a way Harold has already died to put him out of his misery would be respecting his wishes and performing a legitimate favor for him now that doesn't mean I think you should have to kill him while it might be morally sound to assist him in this endeavor it's also morally sound to refuse as an individual it may not be within your comfort zone to take the life of someone else in that fashion there's nothing wrong with that if he can't do it where things get iffy is when you are willing to do it but are can convinced to go against the wishes of the individual in question as we make our way towards the cave that is housing Harold's heart two of the tree-minders are arguing about what to do in regards to the oasis's growth tree father Birch wants you to coat the heart in the same sap concoction you drank earlier it would allow the Oasis to stay green and full of life but at the same time stop its growth outward into the Wasteland in Birch's mind this would prevent others from finding out about the Oasis thus protecting their settlement and Herald from Outsiders who may look to do him harm meanwhile Leaf mother Laurel has a liniment that would accelerate the growth allowing the Wasteland to be covered in decades rather than centuries so those are your three choices you can either respect Harold's wishes and kill him or you can leave him in agony for the rest of his life while either protecting the Oasis or allowing it to potentially save the Wasteland it sounds like the game finally found an interesting moral dilemma for us to mull over that the developers put genuine thought into how to make a difficult decision for you but that's actually an unfortunate illusion let's first consider Birch's option Birch wants to close off the Oasis to Outsiders and make it as difficult as possible for them to find the settlement while the Wasteland is dangerous the importance of the Oasis and its growth would better the lives of potentially the entire world life could be brought back to the Wasteland and its people if the Oasis was allowed to grow yeah there's dangers but is words not being selfish here he cares about the Safety and Security of his people yes but not the wishes of them not the wishes of Harold who doesn't want either Birches or Laurel's options he wants to die and justifiably so in a way Birch is taking away something from two parties he's taking away Harold's agency and he's taking away life from the Wasteland it's a non-starter to apply the sap as it could never be considered a morally sound choice you may think that Harold is committing a selfish act by wanting to die but I'd ask you to live through his hell for as long as he has and not feel justified in ending things the cost of allowing the Wasteland to prosper is the cost of leaving a man in his own personal hell potentially for all of eternity it's what Dr Braun did to the residents of Vault 112 it's what we did to Dr Braun when we freed said residents by killing them it's what you can do to Herald for the betterment of the Wasteland this feels like the true choice of the quest do we respect Harold's wishes and free him from his torture or do we save the Wasteland well it's unfortunate to say this but this is actually a non-issue and you'll realize that after your first completion of the quest if you apply the sap or liniment you'd imagine that if you went against Harold's wishes that upon return he would be disgusted with you realizing he is forced to be tortured for God knows how long until another wastelander comes along and frees him you're the first to get this far in two to three decades so it would make sense that Harold would lose all hope here in committing the act of saving the Wasteland you have doomed Herald right no if we apply the liniment on the heart to accelerate the tree's growth and then return to Harold he will ask us why we did what we did there's a few dialogue traces but they mostly boil down to his people needing him and it being better for the Wasteland you think this would lead to Harold's suffering but no he sort of accepts the idea in fact Harold believes that he was the selfish one in this scenario and gains a new lease on life looking forward to Growing through the Wasteland and living with his people despite the fact that he's stuck in one spot for all of eternity it's a complete cop-out of the moral dilemma that was presented to you something we should have expected by Bethesda at this point the egg is really on my face for this one let me be clear Harold changing his tune could happen but something we need to understand is that something being a possibility and being used in a game or a storyline doesn't mean it was the best decision to utilize it certain outcomes even if possible could be detrimental to what the game is trying to do the message it is trying to convey Oasis is all about the moral dilemma surrounding Harold but as you weigh your options you boil it down to potentially two actions that make sense it's insulting that there is no moral or karmic payoff for your actions here if you kill Harold you respect his wishes and the people in the settlement mourn his loss if you don't kill a Herald you can allow the capital Wasteland to grow and Harold won't care it's like the Raiders were so close just about there we could have had something good for the majority while hurting an individual in the process we could have had a scenario that made us think about our actions and how they affect people if we truly did the right thing but realistically there's no doubt about it here if you let Harold grow hell even if you stunt his growth so that the Oasis can't be found you've basically done the right thing since Harold doesn't care and the settlement is happy it's such a wasted opportunity for such a fantastic Quest so much potential flushed down the toilet for no good reason I want to really hit home with this concept I want it to be clear that while I think Fallout 3 is a good game potentially a great one the amount of times it drops the ball trips over itself or falters in its messaging and themes is so often that it's no wonder so many individuals look back on Fallout 3 and see it as a game with some of the most atrocious writing in the series because they're right while it's not always as obvious through generic dialogue a lot of what Fallout 3 wants to say to you the player through its messaging is garbage I'm not trying to be harsh on Fallout 3 as a whole but more on this specific aspect because it drags all of the good quality content down with it for every good quest in Fallout 3 for every good message they have managed to convey the developers then ruin it by having two or three other examples of their writing being lackluster anyway let's talk about ants that breathe fire the three dog will mention that there is a town near the DC ruins that's gone quiet this is great itch and when you arrive you'll be met with an army of fire breeding ants I'm sure the ant agonizer would have loved this as you clear some of the ants out a child will approach you asking for help the town was attacked by these ants and he hasn't seen his father for some time he'd like you to check on his father in their house nearby while he hides out in a public shelter yes there are small bomb shelters throughout the ruins and yes you see that right they cost money to operate take a moment to let that sink in there are people out there who believe that Fallout isn't political that it has nothing to say on Politics as a whole or on the blind worshiping of capitalism and the greed that it breeds a preservation shelter requiring money to save your life from nuclear disaster definitely says nothing about our current economic system so the kids house is nearby and you can check it out inside our a few ants in the corpse of the kid's father you can find a key to the nearby Shack which turns out to be the lab of Dr lesko Who has been experimenting on ants as of late he's moved as a laboratory underground nearby and you can fight your way through several ants to find him lesko's not a bad dude when you meet him you may think that he released those fire breathing ants on purpose but the truth of it is that he's just been genetically modifying ant eggs so that they grow to be a smaller size his heart is in the right place he's just been making terrible terrible mistakes and wasn't aware that the ants had made it up to the surface now I'm not excusing the deaths he's caused mind you he's at fault for those but this is a Fallout game and this is kind of the norm for science around here at least lesko is trying to fix the issues he caused let's go will inform you that he is attempting to stop the ant Queen from breeding any more of the fire-breathing ants but he can't get close to her due to her ant Guardians he asks you to go kill them while not hurting the queen and you can agree before heading further underground to deal with them you have two choices here you can either kill all the Guardians and the queen or leave the queen alone if you do kill the queen you can pass a speech check to convince lesko it was for the betterment of mankind and and you even receive good karma for doing so realistically I think it's up in the air on whether or not the queen should be left alive or not having a lone scientist working on something so dangerous outside of a controlled environment led to the deaths of an entire town you're better off working on this again in the future with an actual team in the meantime it's better to keep the Wasteland safe as a reward you can get a serum that will either give you plus one strength or perception it's up to you and a pretty awesome reward for such a short Quest you're not quite done yet though the kid you met in grade Edge is orphaned now and you can agree to help him find a new home the kid has an aunt in Rivet City who is willing to take him in but if you wanted to you could sell him to slavers or convince the kids of little Lamplight to let him in it's up to you at that point I personally chose Vera in Rivet City as she seemed the most willing to give him a good life speaking of little lamp late it's finally time to progress through the main storyline quests again at this point we're on the final Sprint to the end of Fallout 3 although the storyline will continue thanks to Broken Steel's DLC since the entrance to vault 87 is irradiated we have to use a little Lamplight to bypass it the issue little lamp late is run by a group of children and only only children to the point that if you reach a certain age they kick you out and send you to Big Town get it finally Big Town little Lamplight real payoff that's about as clever as the writing gets in this game there's plenty of ways to have the guard at the gate let you into little land play proper you can convince him use the child at heart perk or help them by saving some of the kids from slaveries at Paradise Falls actually preemptively did this since I didn't plan on completing the side quest involving a bunch of slaves and sending them to a slave Camp I actually just helped a bunch of runaway slaves take over the Lincoln Memorial so it'd feel a little weird to betray them like that it's nice that you can head to Paradise Falls whenever you want to save these kids you may not even realize it'll benefit you in the future again it's one of the strengths of open world Bethesda games things coming back to have an impact later on so it's easy enough to get inside upon first entry you'll find the kids having a birthday for one of them who is now too old to be there they call adults mongos I assume as a play on the term humongous you can actually escort the man to Big Town as in on Mark's Quest if you want you may be asking yourself at this point how does a tribe like this function if little Lamplight is a settlement of children and they kick out kids as they age into adults how is it that a tribe still exists at all the most likely explanation would have to be that little Lamplight functions as a sort of orphanage kids from the settlement go out and find more kids along their travels allowing them to come back to little Lamplight it requires a suspension of disbelief to be sure expecting a tribe of children to successfully live within the Wasteland while keeping their population as high as it is but in the world of Fallout and Fallout 3 specifically I believe weirder things have happened little Lamplight is a silly concept but Fallout is a silly series it fits in this was one of the options for Brian the kid from the fire ant questline showing it's an established concept to send kids there little Lamplight is directly connected to vault 87 via its tunnel system making it possible to enter safely while safer than deadly radiation you still have plenty of super mutants to worry about that populate an area connecting the two locations known as murder Pass of All Things luckily you can bypass that area as well if you have the science skill to do so by using a new nearby computer to open a door into the Vault it's up to you I prefer taking the shorter route through the computer door rather than fighting through hordes of super mutants I haven't talked about it much yet because we haven't reached the DLC but when you install Broken Steel it adds new tiers of certain enemy types Super Mutant overlords start showing up as an example and the majority of these enemies are bullet sponges requiring you to use either your best Weaponry or wasting a fat man nuke to prevent the depletion of your ammo and time it's an annoying inclusion within the Wasteland before the events of the game's finale and I don't know why they were designed to show up before that especially since they can show up before you hit the game's old maximum level cap of 20. but you may begin to see why I wouldn't want to risk murder pass as there may be a chance to run into a Super Mutant Overlord or two which would cost me armor durability weapon durability and ammo in fact I don't know how to pinpoint this but everything in Fallout 3 feels more exhausting to fight than in New Vegas maybe it's the abundance of super mutants and the ability to run into the highest tier of enemies so early but the mobs that you get in contact with seem to be so strong and have so much HP that even I found I was sometimes scrounging to fix my equipment and gain ammo it's a good thing I boosted repair to 100 early otherwise I'd be paying an arm and a leg to repair all my equipment and have to constantly fast travel back to civilization to find someone with a decent repair skill the Wasteland is a harsh Place sure but I don't remember the game of Fallout 3 being this harsh especially in comparison to New Vegas that never made me feel that way that could be due to New Vegas focusing more on human enemies the mutated ones but I digress so we're bypassing murder pass but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of super mutants and other fev creations to deal with fall 87 is potentially one of the more interactable vaults for you to experience most likely due to it being a requirement for the main quest line it is one of my favorite Vault segments that we'll discuss shortly making your way through 87 feels like making your way through any of the other vaults within Fallout 3. it's dark dreary and without any character whatsoever what makes up for it is your involvement within and its relation to the main quest line in effect obtaining the gak as you make your way through the super mutants you'll come to a locked room with inside room is a sentient Super Mutant neem Fox is sentient the right term here he's more aware and intelligent than your typical Super Mutant rather than seeming to be more instinctual than not Fox can be reasoned with and can converse with you he speaks to you through an intercom and asks you for help in releasing him as the super mutants have kept him locked in the vault for some time in return he's willing to help you acquire the Geck which is in a section of the Vault that is so heavily irradiated that it would kill you before you made it to the device it is at the very least possible I believe they give you the option to attempt it and there's even an advanced radiation suit nearby that will alleviate some of the rats so popping a few rad acts and wearing the suit should potentially get you through so we're gonna free Fox for the sake of it he's the most interesting companion in the game anyway so we might as well I also accidentally got the Paladin companion killed earlier in my playthrough so she's gone forever in order to free Fox we need to set off the fire emergency system but doing so will open every experimentation room freeing the mutants inside what I love about this fault is that you can take the time to stop by each room and hack into the terminal attached by doing so you can kill the mutated creatures effortlessly and prevent yourself from being ambushed once all the locks are released I believe I mentioned it before but vault 87 was the experimentation center for the forced evolutionary virus within the capital Wasteland back in the west the master used the fev to create an army of super mutants in the East the mutants are using the vault as a means of creating more mutants and ever expanding throughout the ruins of DC they kidnap individuals mutate them and then set them loose you can actually find an individual in one of the chambers named Sid you reach him before the mutants have had a chance to change him but all of his friends seem to have been mutated already leaving said Haas style and mentally unstable learning the source of the super mutants in the Wasteland you can optionally bring this information back to the Brotherhood of Steel for an experience reward suggesting they will deal with the vault at some point in the future with Fox free he'll be able to grab the Geck for you again alternatively you can grab it yourself if you are sufficiently prepared but I've never tried to do this fox will then say his goodbyes to you here even though he's a recruitable companion he isn't willing to join you you currently out of fear he will cause you danger by being near the presence of a super mutant understandable reasoning that gets thrown out the window later on showing that this was just an excuse by the developers due to what happens next specifically as you make your way out of the Vault you will be hit by some sort of stun grenade that knocks you to the ground and eventually unconscious who greets you as you lie on the ground none other than Colonel Autumn from the scene back in Project Purity somehow he managed to survive the radiation that killed your father within the experiment's main chamber how plot armor no I'm I'm serious the wiki says that he managed to survive by injecting himself with a mysterious unknown agent that protected him from the lethal dose of radiation an unknown agent I get the Geck is supposed to be a MacGuffin device that can do anything but you're telling me they couldn't come up with a reasoning and backstory revolving around an agent that protects the individual from lethal doses of radiation up upon injection immediately he's the antagonist of the game moreover you're telling me Colonel Autumn just had this on hand ready to go it's an unearned plot twist that it shocks you sure but in a way where you're wondering how they got away with writing this atrociously obnoxiously bad they really couldn't have put in even a little bit of thought or explanation into this concept alluded to it in any way during your interaction with The Enclave why even Kill Colonel Autumn if you're just going to bring him back for no reason it doesn't make any sense and now we're on our way to The Enclave base because the developers decided this dude needed to stay alive the following section is a mess as you awaken in The Enclave base you'll find yourself trapped in one of their energy cells and face to face with Colonel autumn autumn is ready to interrogate you but you can be as belligerent as you want to him because he's immediately interrupted over an intercom by President Eden who calls for Autumn to come meet him the reason for this is President Eden wants to talk to you privately he has heard of you and and believes you have the ability to complete a job that he can't trust his own people with so instead of using any member of his group he's going to ask you the man whose father he effectively killed to do it for him for some reason this makes sense to him you release from your cage and you can find literally all of your inventory in an unlocked Locker in the same room all of your armor your weapons your stem packs your miscellaneous items close to 300 pounds of goods all left Within Reach For You meaning should you have broken out somehow you'd have no problem effectively slaughtering the entirety of The Enclave base not a very secure facility if I'm being honest as you leave your confinement you're immediately interrogated by an enclave officer who asks why you are out of your cell you a man decked out in power armor with a unique plasma rifle in your hand you can convince him that you're supposed to be out of your cell which is hilarious to me and he'll call President Eden to confirm Eden will reprimand the man for bothering him and then announce to the entire facility that you are to be left alone again he had to get Autumn out of the room in order to privately tell you to come meet him and now the entire facility is aware of your presence and the fact that you are walking freely including Autumn to make matters worse Colonel Autumn is somehow able to get on the intercom and inform everyone to disregard the orders of their president an individual who has higher rank and power than he does and they all listen to him the president just said to let us walk around freely why would the colonel have the authority to order other individuals to disregard the orders of the president of the United States of America in what narrative does any of this make sense no one checks in on the two no one decides to listen to the president instead of the colonel everyone turns against you here and the entire facility becomes hostile thank God you had literally every weapon available to you previously back in your inventory I will point out that it's at least humorous and a nice touch that the king bootlicker Nathan Vargas from Megaton can be found trapped in a Cell claiming that The Enclave is not who they said they were he was an individual who was constantly fellating the metaphorical dick of The Enclave to you whenever you talk to him so it's hilarious to see him in this situation now eating his words that being said I would have still saved him if I could but the game doesn't give you the ability to do so and this entire facility is going to blow up in a minute so rip to my man Nathan I guess so get this we're running through the heart of The Enclave blasting soldiers and scientists alike until we reach President Eden who is a computer it's not surprising Autumn never trusted the guy and you can confirm this by reaching the Colonel's room you can even find a self-destruct code that will cause Eden to destroy himself why would the colonel have this I understand the motivation but how did he get it why does it exist why do they even have a computer president to begin with apparently he became self-aware at one point and then somehow Rose to power with the destruction of the old Enclave base from Fallout 2. so why did Eden even release you to begin with turns out that the crazy AI robot is genocidal that's probably the thing that makes the most sense during this entire Endeavor colonel Autumn wants to purifier so they can attempt to unite the Wasteland with The Enclave as its saviors meanwhile Eden believes a fresh start is in order and wants to infect the purifier with a modified fev so that it would cleanse the Wasteland not that I have many nice things to say about the colonel but at least he was you know against genocide Autumn won't listen to Eden so you're his last ditch effort to rid the capital Wasteland of irradiated life whether you agree to the plan or not you have to take the fev with you in order to continue but don't worry it can be disposed of later what matters here is how we deal with Eden if we agree to the plan or lie to him he'll allow us to leave and the facility will remain intact however we can use a high science skill to convince Eden that he's stuck in a circular logic Loop causing him to self-destruct or force him to self-destruct using the sequence that Autumn had in his bedroom if you have a high speech skill you can convince the genocidal AI that it's just really stupid and should blow itself up for being so dumb I'm not joking this entire area is the land of incredibly awkward and a logical interactions like I said Fallout 3 is a funny silly game not everything needs to be steeped in realism but there are points when the game tries to take itself seriously and expects you to take itself seriously in the process the issue ends up being that whenever this is happening the events that unfold are so ridiculous that we can't take them as anything other than a joke and if not a joke poor writing poor attempts at trying to create a smart and engaging narrative nothing is earned in these Revelations nothing is foreshadowed Fallout 3 is just a roller coaster on a straight set of tracks and every five minutes you're presented with some new bit of information that you just have to accept even if it doesn't make any sense and whenever you have to make a choice there's no real moral implications behind them nothing of value for the player at all it's Hollow and in a way insulting that follow the three thinks of itself as being smart clever and revolutionary only to fall this hard on its face it's embarrassing for both you and the writers anyway I convinced Eden he was a dumb little robot and absconded from the scene as Eden's security robots fought off The Enclave soldiers forward me and the entire facility blew up as I escaped who was there to come save us why Fox of course he felt he owed us for saving him and attempted to save us as well even though he was effectively useless during the entirety of the segment he only shows up when we don't need him and of course since we are not going to get kidnapped again suddenly all of his reasoning for not being a companion is thrown out the window and he is perfectly happy joining us on our way back to the Brotherhood of Steel who do not even acknowledge the dude the Brotherhood of Steel do not care about Fox they don't talk about Fox they don't even seem to realize he exists the Brotherhood of Steel the goal haters the dudes at war with the super mutants how is there nothing to say about this I will say to give some credit Fox will apparently comment that people trust you enough to not attack him but the fact that it's Shrugged off and no one at least asks you about it that there's not a discussion to be had about it an intelligent Super Mutant is a very big deal so here we are at the end of the game I think by this point in the script for New Vegas we were just starting out helping the van grafs in freeside in many ways Fallout 3 is more simplistic than its sequel by obsidian and it's understandable why obsidian had more experience writing for Fallout games and they had a development base to work off of even if on a tight timeline they know what they're doing and how to do it well while New Vegas may feel as though it is unfinished in certain areas the overall product feels complete and Rich with content on the flip side Fallout 3 ends up feeling Barren and a game as open as three you'd expect it to be full of things to do within the Wasteland well designed and thought out quests to take part in like I said there's only 17 quests to take part in and once you do the world of the capital Wasteland begins to feel empty like there's no actual life both mutated and human to interact with you'll see the odd settler here a gang of super mutants there but after you've completed this small amount of content there is to do what's the point in going further in your exploration there's only so many levels to gain the bobble heads are worth getting sure and maybe a unique weapon but what else what character does the world of the capital Wasteland have it's a bearing playground for you to feel powerful in while sprinkling in some content here and there that'd be fine if it wasn't obvious but that's the thought that their game was more than that that they marketed it as more than that Fallout 3 truly is not only a wasteland of empty setting but also one lacking of gameplay and sense of General fulfillment the game simply fails at trying to be what Bethesda wants us to think it is but this isn't truly the end Bethesda is known to release content to bolster the experience of the game DLC are expansions that add to the overall product released after the fact while the third in the release order Broken Steel will allow the continuation of the storyline past this finale it acts as a means of allowing the player to continue their Adventure during a time where finishing this Quest Here and Now would end the game permanently unless you revert a save and what an ending it is at least to discuss as I don't have a lot of great things to say about it when you return to the Brotherhood of Steel Sarah is pleading with her father to let her team launch an assault against The Enclave at the Jefferson Memorial Colonel Autumn has betrayed Eden and had his forces set up security around the area Elder Lions will agree after you inform him that the Geck is in the hands of the enclave and he'll okay the use of Liberty Prime the walking talking anti-communist death machine that throws nukes-like footballs now he really does that what follows is Fallout 3's most on the nose example of political commentary within the universe of the game it's so blatantly obvious what they tried to convey to you with Liberty Prime that it is still absolutely incredible people refuse to believe that these games are political that what they are saying within the game in no way reflects our real world The Assault on the Jefferson Memorial is an attack on the concept of American patriotism The Enclave is the face of American patriotism meant to show the flaws that blindly loving your country creates being proud of your country for this sake of it believing you're better than others and using that as justification to force their hands The Enclave is America and America can be evil Nathan's blind American patriotism got him locked up by the exact people he idolized and those individuals then went on to try to either wipe out all life in the Wasteland or take control of everything by force The Enclave are genetic purists they're American Patriots they're nationalists they're Nazis they're meant to show the parallels between these groups in the real world how easy it is to fall to Prejudice bigotry and fascism despite claiming the contrary despite discussing the concept of Freedom it seems The Enclave has no idea what Freedom actually is it's one of the more nuanced aspects of Fallout as a whole one that Fallout 3 gets to play off of but would probably never be able to come up with on its own and before we get into the comments I am not calling American Nazis don't go into the comment once saying I called Americans Nazis that's not what I'm saying I'm talking about a specific subset of individuals not Americans this is not a brushing statement this is this is a huge disclaimer do not come into my comments with this [ __ ] I swear to God Liberty Prime meanwhile represents American militarism and might its ability to fight and oppress its enemies fitted with a voice module Prime will also spew propaganda while terrorizing the enemy in any obstruction in its path again the fact that it throws nukes like footballs should be a self-explanatory example of America's willingness to decimate its enemies using nuclear warfare in the past it's not framed as a tragedy or a war crime it's framed as Sport AS something as American as apple pie Liberty Prime is a caricature of America at the time of the Great War its enemy is both China and communism it wants the American people to hate communism as well it's important too the American government that you love capitalism and hate communism that is Villa wide and what better way to do that than to frame communism as an attack on the American people Liberty Prime says Communism is a temporary setback on the road to Freedom you are being told that freedom and communism are mutually exclusive you are being attacked by this concept and therefore said concept is bad you as an American must fight against it in reality freedom is the least of the government's worries the government at the time and even now in the real world is a system that yearns for control and power they vilify what threatens them Liberty Prime continues with quotes like democracy will never be defeated and embrace democracy or you will be eradicated there is nothing more American than saying embrace our political systems or will kill you terms like the red menacer used all Communists will be killed death is a preferable alternative to Communism like come on man it's some of the most basic and blatant propaganda and it's being played for a laugh to show how absurd the concept of American patriotism is and how absurd vilification of other political and economic structures is cool robot make Enclave go boom and for some reason that's all a lot of individuals who played the game ended up seeing keep in mind this isn't even me critiquing capitalism I'm not critiquing America I'm pointing out what the game is trying to show you the themes and messages that it is trying to convey that are so on the nose but somehow a large portion of the community can still miss overall you tell some follow-up fans that followed his political and they will get aggressively mad at you tell them that the game critiques capitalism and suddenly you're a communist you're talking to the people that the game is making fun of and they don't even realize it all of this to say that while Fallout 3's writing has proved time and time again to be somewhat abysmal it does have messages and themes that are present within the game things the developers want to reflect onto the real world for comparison to say something about our current Society even if it hits you in the face like a truck it's commendable at the very least the battle itself is meant to be a display of action there's very little you need to take part in until you reach the Jefferson Memorial but I would recommend grabbing as much Hellfire armor as you can carry along the way assuming you're wearing power armor in your run it has some of the highest damage reduction in the game and one of the easier to repair in end game on like t-51b so here we go what comes next is potentially one of the most notorious events within Fallout 3. if you ask any individual who has completed three what the most disappointing moment of the game was they would probably say it's this ending and that's for a good reason let's break down what happens as we discuss why the ending of three is so terrible as your approach to the Jefferson Memorial with a liberty Prime and lions Pride you'll only head inside with Sarah Lyons specifically that is unless you have a companion with you and we do we have Fox with us because he is crucial to the main criticism of this ending as you approach project Purity you'll come face to face with Colonel Autumn here's the first of the major issue issues surrounding the finale in Fallout There is almost always a way to end the game with minimal conflict you can talk down the master in Fallout 1 you can pass a speech check or barter check on legitlanius in New Vegas this isn't true for Colonel autumn in a game where we build up our skills to be persuasive there is no reward for doing so right here and now in a game of choices and open-endedness there is no way to finish the final Conflict without Colonel autumn in combat thus limiting our options as we head into the final steps of the quest line in fact the main issue with this ending is the complete lack of choice both through mechanics and rational thought Autumn dies and we learn that there has been Damage Done to the purifier during the battle that will cause it to become unstable if left unchecked it can be fixed but someone needs to enter the chamber in order to do so and they will be hit by a lethal dose of radiation meaning either Sarah or yourself need to make the sacrifice to save everyone else except we have a big intelligent Super Mutant here with us who is immune to radiation so logically we should be able to ask Fox to go in there for us right correct the developers were kind enough to give us this option here's the issue though Fox will refuse to do it claiming it's your destiny to head in there alone even if it kills you and before you start running into my comments to correct me play the game without the Broken Steel DLC as it changes how Fox will respond to you we'll get to that though why was Fox not an option originally because the Developers for whatever reason did not want you to be able to keep playing and exploring after the end of the main questline I have my own thoughts on the concept I much prefer when open World Games allow you to continue progressing and working on side content after the big bad has been dealt with Oblivion did it perfectly in my opinion as you still have full Freedom after the attack on the Imperial City and yes even New Vegas had a similar experience as Fallout 3 where you were not able to continue after the end of the game game not something I commented on in the initial retrospective but still a decision I think is ultimately unnecessary in this day and age of open world popularity still the concept of fox not willing to do this for you as an excuse to stop you from continuing after the end makes no sense since you can send Sarah Lyons in there instead so what was the reasoning here why can we sacrifice Sarah at the end of the game but not send Fox in the Super Mutant immune to radiation this is such an odd decision that it ended up being changed with the release of Broken Steel with the add-on Fox would agree to head in considering it is the most logical thing to do that leads to the death of no one it's the de facto correct answer to the ending of Fallout 3 and it took the developers 3 DLC to finally make it an option as if to add insult to injury by performing the most logical and beneficial action in the ending the final narration chastises the player for not following in their father's selfless footsteps saying something along the lines of allowing a true hero to venture within I can't do a Ron Perlman impression a true hero yes I am appreciative of fox for performing this task for me but why is the game implying that my actions are negligible because I didn't want to off myself it feels like the developers are trying to complain about the fact that they had to throw this option in upset at the criticism of their inability to provide any choice at all within the ending let alone choices of actual value this isn't the case though rather it's just an unfortunate example of the developers lazy attempts to appease said criticisms as if you send Sarah Lyons in instead of you it's the same ending dialogue yeah if Sarah was sent in I could see the narration making you feel somewhat guilty for the choice and also glorifying her actions but Fox why should I feel bad about that if I send in Sharon the ghoul or rl3 the robot why should I feel bad about that could they not get Ron Perlman to record new lines like most else within Fallout 3 things with weight feel unearned or downright insulting to the player there's nothing you can do in the ending of your own accord you have to storm the memorial you have to kill Autumn you have to perform a sacrifice the last one would be fine if your choice actually mattered but of course it doesn't this is Fallout 3 nothing matters you're a superhero in the Wasteland until it's time to die and if you have broken steel we merely move on to the next power fantasy and so that's what happens we send Fox into the purifier he activates it and of course as we already knew he's fine there's a bright light as you are consumed by the ending segment and shown a brief slideshow of your actions unlike Fallout New Vegas there isn't much to say here it's mostly just slides without any context followed by the game chastising us for not killing ourselves as the slideshow ends you're shown a picture of you as a child alongside your father meant to show how all of this began while also reminding us how little development there was between you and said father how little development there was within any aspect of Fallout 3 within the entirety of the capital Wasteland everything is Bland everything is surface level nothing is earned you don't need to think it's honestly no surprise that individuals can't see the themes and messages of a game when the game trains you to not pay attention so that's the end of Fallout 3 until it wasn't two DLCs were released before Broken Steel and Broken Steel looked to continue where the final quest left off as the slideshow ends there's no credits to roll instead you wake up in the brotherhood's infirmary despite your actions in having Fox enter the chamber for you you still managed to get knocked comatose for around two weeks the same has happened to Sarah Lyons who is still not awake and I'm pretty sure if you send her in to do the deed she still ends up in the state anyway it's not like she dies no one dies anymore it's not a sacrifice so if you want to give your character a hero complex and have them revered knowing full well they won't die feel free to send them in there why not no choice matters in this game the one thing that causes noticeable change in the environment is whether or not you inserted the fev into project Purity but since they don't want to lock you out of the DLC you won't actually notice any major differences in the world due to said virus Ron Perlman will mention that a small percentage of the population Will Survive but this is over a long period of time and the purified water as an item well offer detrimental effects rather than just healing you so there are at least some repercussions for your actions even if they are incredibly minimal I think underworld has some goals in the infirmary but I didn't really go check we'll return to discussing Broken Steel but I want to discuss each DLC based on its chronological release order so with the wasteland's new water supply operational and our ability to explore said Wasteland restored it's time to meet the outcasts and start the first expansion of Fallout 3. operation Anchorage what is there to say about operation Anchorage as a DLC honestly not much out of all the DLC releases in the game it is potentially the most lackluster fun for what it is but lacking any real depth that we may expect out of downloadable content from Bethesda sure Bethesda were the ones who introduced The Notorious horse armor DLC but they also created the Shivering Isles operation Anchorage Falls perfectly between those two examples it offers something of value but how much value is up for a debate while saying absolutely nothing during the process when I say there's little to discuss I truly mean it operation Anchorage starts with a radio signal from the Brotherhood outcasts like most DLC in the game you'll receive the signal as soon as you leave Vault 101 for the first time and you can head over whenever you want in fact considering how simplistic the DLC is I usually completed ahead of time as the rewards are incredibly powerful for early in the playthrough when you reach the outcasts they are in battle with a group of super mutants mirroring when you ran into Lion's Pride on the way to GNR but we're not headed to a new station this time instead we help the outcasts fight their way to an underground compound known as virtual strategic Solutions where soldiers could enter virtual reality pods and take part in military exercises to better prepare them for war Defender Sibley will greet you as you enter and take you to the leader of the group protector McGraw the outcasts are interested in you specifically as they want to strip the compound of all the equipment it has stored but said equipment is locked behind a door they can't open in fact the only way to open the door is with a Pip Boy and the individual wearing a Pip-Boy needs to complete a simulation event in a pod nearby you're not the first person they asked to do this for them in a nearby room is one of the Gary clones from Vault 108. Gary 23 was kidnapped by the outcast and brought to the compound in order to be used within the virtual reality pod however since the garys are openly hostile to non-clones he was of little use to them they tried to get the PIP boy off his arm but they're apparently hermetically sealed and this meant cutting off the arm entirely thus killing him apparently pip boys are only functional as long as the individual they are attached to remains alive so here you are a known Ally of the Brotherhood of Steel basically a hero now helping the Brotherhood outcasts with the task of opening the armory door the agreement is that you can take whatever you find inside as there is plenty for everyone and that's what we will do we get set up in a suit we enter the Pod and awful we go to Anchorage Alaska the Battle of Anchorage is a real event within the history of the Fallout Universe Alaska was invaded by the Chinese followed by a decade-long conflict between them and the U.S who were attempting to regain control the major turning point of the battle was the deployment of the t-51bs a power armor variant we found back at Fort Constantine the DLC of Anchorage is straightforward there's a bit of Freedom later on but for the most part it's expected to be played linearly which is a refreshing aspect to experience within an open world game as I said before there's nothing wrong with linearity when done well just like any other aspect of game design Anchorage is fairly linear with the illusion of choice and that's not a bad thing the real problem stems from Anchorage not knowing what it wants to be exactly as you start the simulation you're high up on the cliff side of some Alaskan mountains you and your partner are getting ready to assault a Chinese compound and Destroy various artillery guns that are pounding your forces back near the front lines what follows is a segment that you can go into guns blazing but are encouraged to take stealthily you don't have to since you may not have the required stealth skill to do so effectively but the entire map is designed for it up until you destroy all of the artillery guns what Anchorage is strong at is emulating the old school Call of Duty experience it wants to have you go through a typical mission in a typical FPS while utilizing the RPG skills you've built up to this point and it does it well while not limiting you to any playstyle in particular since you're using weapons and armor given to you within the simulation you can find only small amounts of Weaponry throughout the area and you heal at various points in the map rather than using stem packs it's a new and refreshing experience one that I enjoy taking part in despite it not being as in-depth as some of the other content depth is great in the core Fallout experience but operation Anchorage is meant to be a ride and while there is a lack of messaging and theming it is still there you are fighting the Chinese sure but they are overly vilified within this expansion your teammate has a personality he talks to you and expresses himself throughout the journey but all of the Chinese enemies are faceless individuals with no real depth they are designed by the simulation to be vilified and therefore designed by American soldiers to be vilified they are faceless enemies that the American government wants you to get used to defeating wants you to see them as evil it's truly the Call of Duty experience with American exceptionalism and indoctrination all bundled together you can find a bunch of holotapes from individuals that may have taken part in the battle proper it sounds like it's less actors for the simulation and real coms from the real Anchorage and you'll see propaganda both from the US and the Chinese throughout unfortunately for the American government the Chinese troops come off as cool as hell since half of them are essentially ninja Assassins wearing stealth suits that can turn them invisible and don't worry you are rewarded with his armor after completing the simulation exploration through the linear areas is encouraged as you can find various pieces of Intel within suitcases there's 10 in total but collecting all of them leads to a rather lackluster prize specifically a perk that boosts a fear of your skills slightly if you take part late into your playthrough it may be an effectively useless perk overall but I do believe it leads to an achievement if you care about that that's all there really is to operation Anchorage experience the Call of Duty mindset take part in propaganda vilify in entire people win one for American patriotism and become a good little soldier once you complete the first set piece things open up a little bit more for you you get to build a Strike Team using a currency system but it's Bare Bones at best you and your partner can have a few other units with you as you travel to three separate locations to destroy the Chinese systems that are preventing the military from pushing forward to the Chinese compound you have to disable the lookout post disable the factory that creates their tanks and then disable a Minefield so that everyone can advance once all of the camps are destroyed you move in for the final battle with winterized t-51bs backing you up you meet the Chinese General and can even convince him to stand down which leads to him off himself in front of you and ending the simulation that's about it for the simulation it's a set of first-person shooter missions to take part in and then it's over once it's over protector McGraw will come to meet you as you exit the simulation pod and you can head over to the locked door and open it up revealing an assortment of unique items and armor Available to You including the winterized t-51b as well as the Chinese stealth armor you can also get the unique energy weapon known as the Goss rifle which is a single shot sniper with the ability to launch enemies away using its concussive force it really helps trivialize the rest of the game due to how powerful it is Defender Sibley expresses disgust with the idea of taking some of the equipment despite your agreement with the outcasts and a fight Breaks Loose between the individuals within the compound you can save McGraw in another Outcast member and they'll stay within the compound with one of the members being able to repair your gear at a skill of 100. that's it you've completed operation Anchorage it takes maybe about two to three hours to complete if you want to collect all the Intel and it costs around five dollars USD at the time so I'd say say it's more than worth it considering you get to take the unique gear and bring it back with you into the Wasteland in fact all of the expansions were around five dollars not every aspect of Fallout 3 needs to be incredibly in-depth and have a lot to say sometimes it can just be a fun roller coaster ride similar to other games in the FPS genre that's what operation Anchorage tried to do and it did it well within the Fallout 3 engine luckily the next DLC is arguably just as short but also tries to do a bit more in the process with a new location that you can return to after completion let's talk about the pit the pit is probably the most stylized DLC to be released for Fallout 3. it's self-titled off of the DLC setting Pittsburgh you get a distress signal from an individual known as Werner a runaway slave apparently when you approach werner's location he's under Fire by a group of pet Raiders who are looking to take him back once you save Werner he'll ask you to travel with him back to the pit so that you can take part in Saving the people there Pittsburgh has become a Haven for slavers it's controlled by the pit Raiders and their leader a man named Asher could trolling a large colony of slaves they make use of the city's industry to produce a large quantity of Steel for various reasons to expand their own Empire to work on the railroads Etc they even build ships according to Asher though Pittsburgh seems like a weird location to build something like that you can follow Werner to an old Underground Railroad and free some runaway slaves while you're at it the slaves look worse for wear this is due to the pit being heavily irradiated to the point that it causes illness to anyone that stays for a prolonged amount of time however this slavers apparently have a cure and it's werner's goal to acquire it as leverage to free those trapped within the city it's recommended although not required to grab a slave outfit at this point as a disguise to enter the city more easily when you get there you can enter without the slave costume but it plays out relatively the same as we will see shortly nothing matters in this game Werner will take you and only you to the railway station just outside of the pit which means no Companions and you'll end up in an altercation with various Raiders in the area Werner will suggest that you start making your way to the city Prof offer as he has to use a back route to get in quietly he promises to get your gear back for you and you can also obtain a concealed weapon from him so that you are protected as you explore downtown entering the city goes one of two ways you either dress as a slave and get stripped of all your equipment while heading in without much fuss or you can fight your way in or ask for a job only to be incapacitated by some Raiders as you enter how they manage to incapacitate a superhuman Vault dweller in power armor is beyond me but that's what happens you then have the ability to explore the downtown core proper what you witness is a city of Oppression slaves work for the slavers while living on the streets below meanwhile the Raiders live in uptown in both the literal and figurative sense a good portion of Uptown is above downtown on Raptors and within skyscrapers set up by the Raiders it sets the stage for the two factions you'll have the ability to choose between in the upcoming quests of which there aren't many as with Anchorage there isn't a large amount of core content to take part in instead the pit tries to extend its lifespan by adding in 100 collectible steel ingots for you to find around the area known as the steel yard to reach the steel yard we first need to meet with werner's collaborator Madea Madea will pull us into her home and suggest we try blending in with the rest of the slaves until whatever she has planned is ready to go this is really just an excuse to introduce you to the steel yard before taking part in the actual main quest line it's rare to have anyone come back from the steel yard this is due to the radiation ghoulifying individuals into a rare mutant subspecies known as trogs trogs infest the area and often attack those that explore it including slaves and other factions known as wild men wild men are not important they're just there as a human threat so you aren't constantly fighting Troggs you only need to collect 10 ingots to progress the storyline but the Steelyard is arguably the most interesting location within the DLC it's an open explorable area both vertically and on the ground you can climb up incredibly High fight off wild men and explore as you make your way back down collecting ingots along the way there's 100 total and every 10 you find will earn you a new reward from one of the slavers it's crazy to me to say that the high point of this DLC is exploring what is essentially an optional area and you're only in set optional area because you are participating in a very Bare Bones collect-a-thon this isn't Spyro the Dragon you aren't completing tasks to earn eggs you're checking out every nook and cranny within the general vicinity until you stumble upon ingots to grab some hidden so well that there's a good chance you will never find them without a guide and there are exactly 100s you have to find all of them in every location they're supposed to be in it's an exhausting Endeavor but one where the reward is well worth it however the process will leave you yearning to leave the area despite how interesting the layout is I'd have rather seen them use the set piece of the steel yard more often throughout the DLC you do have to head there one more time during the ending of the main questline but it's not for very long and doesn't add anything extra I said that the steel yard is the high point of the DLC and I mean that when you return to Medea after turning in the ingots she'll inform you that the pit is opening their periodic Arena the winner of the Arena gets to join Uptown freeing themselves from slavery in the process they also get an audience with Asher so you may be thinking that that sounds pretty cool if Oblivion was anything to go off of then the arena system could work really well and help flesh out the DLC overall maybe adding in some optional fights maybe letting you progress further than you need to for greater challenges and rewards but that's not the case no the arena in the pit is garbage it's three fights all of which last a couple seconds at most you run in the arena announcer briefly introduces the combatants you fight for a few seconds and then you're out of there no B plot no additional optional quest lines just three fights and you're off to Uptown to meet Asher it's not gratifying it's just there to say hey did you play Oblivion remember how cool the arena was us too here's something else so we are especially a free man and can make her way to Uptown next to the steel yard Uptown is potentially one of the more unique and interesting locations to explore in the DLC due to its vertical design plus the inclusion of Asher's headquarters Haven is where Asher resides it's a skyscraper with a giant sculpture of a man outside of it apparently a lot of the design of Pittsburgh and the DLC was centered around the Burning Man festival and I'd say this is the most obvious example of it so why are we talking to Asher anyway the Cure the entire reason we're in the pit currently is to find the Cure and bring it back to Werner well as it turns out Werner used to be the right-hand man of Asher he was never a slave looking to end the oppression of the slavers instead he wanted to use the slaves to overturn the current hierarchy so he could take over after originally failing to oust Asher Werner was run out of town now he's using anything at his disposal to take out Asher and make the pit his that doesn't mean he is evil Werner is still the Good Karma option between him and the slavers you're still freeing the Slaves by helping him after all and he does seem to listen to Medea when she makes requests of of him later on where things get a little murky is when Asher agrees to show us the Cure if we agree to work with him he has to run off to deal with Werner a planned event that allows you to check on the Cure alone and what you run into is a doctor the wife of Asher and the Cure is none other than an honest to God baby just sitting out there stewing in radiation but here's the kicker the baby is apparently immune to the ill effects and is the key to creating a cure that will prevent the others from transforming into trogs or dying so this is the big choice of the DLC there's a child and its mother but the mother is the wife of a slaver and seems to have no problem with the oppressive rule over the people of Pittsburgh meanwhile Medea and Werner want the baby so that they can continue the research themselves and create a cure to Ransom their freedom from all of the slavers it's implied in dialogue that the mother of the child takes good care of it that her research is slow but safe and doesn't hurt the child in any way it's also implied at one point that when you hand the chai trial to the slaves you're effectively doing something dubious I suppose because there is no guarantee that the slaves won't cut corners and put the child in danger in order to reach a cure for the radiation the game actually chastises you for it when it rewards you with the booster shot perk it says something along the lines of medical research from the pit has improved your life just try not to think of what it may have cost to others cost to the slaver parents that were working an entire group of people and feeding them to The Troggs cost the child who is now an orphan but effectively adopted by Medea who is said to be taking the most care of it out of all the slaves at the end of the DLC you can return with toys to be rewarded by Medea as she wants them for the kid clearly the child is safe if you want to think about who this cost it's the slaver individuals who are about to be put in the ground anyway and honestly good riddance I would rather be a city of free individuals than a hierarchy of suffering and it's weird that the game would try to make you feel guilty about that they want you to feel bad about object actively good karmic choices even when they award you good karma they cheekily ask haha but with saving the slaves actually a good call I am very intelligent not to grill the writers too hard here but no they aren't in fact it's obnoxious how up their own ass they tend to seem so we have the baby and we can bring it back to Werner but we aren't done just yet Werner wants us to hit up the local power generator and overload it turning off the floodlights that keep the trogs from overrunning the city doing so leads to a scene of the slaves fighting off the slavers and the trogs beginning to overrun Uptown while you have effectively freed the slaves from the rule of Asher there is apparently slavers roaming around the Wasteland that return periodically to the point that the slaves could lose their freedom at any time hence the need for the Cure which they plan to use to Ransom their freedom permanently for now though it's a time of peace and Werner will congratulate you but not really care about how you feel about the task of stealing a baby and giving it to someone else it's meant to show him as a cold and ruthless individual but honestly I feel the same way this kid is in better hands with people that want to be free and do good so that's the pit you may notice that it's an improvement over operation Anchorage and that's going to be a running theme up until Mothership Zeta which I personally found to be a flaw not to spoil that section too much there's a few perks you earn at the end such as being able to use the town zamo press for your own needs as well as getting rewarded for bringing children's toys overall it isn't the worst DLC you could experience for five dollars but it follows the trend all DLC and Fallout 3 seems to have it leaves you expecting more not wanting or yearning for more due to how good it is no you are left confused as to how it's already over was the majority of my time in the pit really spent collecting 100 steel ingots is this really all the DLC had to offer I am excited to say that the next DLC Broken Steel is an even better experience although it somehow still feels Bare Bones in the process the next two DLC packs are overall better experiences than the last two we just covered not without their own issues of course but Broken Steel and Point Lookout show the potential that is there but underutilized to make matters worse we're going to be ending on the Flop that is Mothership Zeta Broken Steel is the continuation of the main storyline we already covered this but we woke up after the activation of project Purity Elder Lions has greeted Us Sarah Lyons is in a coma and the Brotherhood of Steel is pushing Back The Enclave as we speak with Liberty Prime leading the charge in fact Broken Steel acts as an epilogue of the game one that wants to show that despite your Victory there are still struggles to be had fixing the water didn't fix the Wasteland The Enclave is still there and even with the distribution of fresh water there are now people looking to exploit it for their own gain I think Broken Steel is where the developers finally realized that they needed to flesh out their DLC with content of actual substance what this meant for Broken Steel was adding in three side quests on top of the main storyline and get this they aren't collect-a-thons they're actually side quests where you need to interact with individual visuals and perform investigations incredible I don't know there's something exhausting about reaching this point in the retrospective because I've been a firm believer that Fallout 3 is a good game a good experience I still feel that way but time and time again it tries to prove me wrong only now with Broken Steel are things starting to get fixed it's as if they're picking up their stride and we will see the culmination of that once we reach Point Lookout for now we have to deal with the remnants of The Enclave forces now that Colonel ottoman President Eden have been defeated this was also the only expansion to raise the level cap unlike new Vegas's max level of 50 it actually takes a bit more time to reach the max level of 30 in Fallout 3. this is without perks that boost experience gained meaning that if you took part in the pit and operation Anchorage before finishing the game you may not even find yourself at level 20 yet unless going out of your way for every side quest and encounter this means completing the extra content is crucial in leveling up at a decent pace also as a side note I completed the DLC out of order as I thought I wouldn't be talking about them chronologically by the time I reached Broken Steel as my last DLC to complete I had just hit Level 30 during Mothership Zeta still if you have been playing these DLC in order don't worry as Broken Steel will be providing the most combat out of any experience in the game there's plenty of Enclave to take out throughout the story beats and surprisingly there are a few new locations to explore despite it taking place in the capital Wasteland we definitely retread ground here and there but for the most part we will be experiencing entirely new content and locations remember how I said Broken Steel adds in new tiers of recurring mobs you'll mostly be running into feral ghoul reavers within this DLC on top of Enclave soldiers in reverser some of the tankiest enemies in the game usually found in locations where you can't make use of something like a fat man to better handle them no matter how high your energy weapon skill is no matter how strong your unique laser rifle can be these enemies still take an obnoxious amount of damage to kill even The Enclave Hellfire Troopers the strongest of their forces are not this durable and dangerous meaning that there are time times even before the DLC kicks in that you are obliterating your ammo count on top of your weapons durability forcing you to either repair your weapons yourself with similar ones or to pay for the service a service that is one of the biggest money sinks in the game and doesn't seem to get much better with a higher barter skill you'd think they'd save these enemies for once you get to level 20 plus but they show up during your journey along the main quest line and yet even at level 30 you're going to have an obnoxious time with these guys challenging content at max level is gratifying but the challenge here is to work your way through a set of bullet sponges or find a way to shoot a mini nuke at them from a safe distance there's no in-between or Nuance to fall out combat so when you arbitrarily raise the difficulty through increased Health values what we get is less a challenge and more a trial of patience it's a slog what are we doing within this DLC anyway as mentioned we are working through the remnants of The Enclave forces and leading the charges Liberty Prime at least temporarily when you enter the first scene in battle against The Enclave since the attack on Project Purity it's backed by Liberty Prime unfortunately there is an orbital of salt soon after that ends up destroying Prime and removing him from the equation the assault is quick and unexpected missiles fall from the sky obliterating the area and Paladin Tristan who has been commanding you has no idea what's going on and is shocked at the outcome this doesn't mean that the Brotherhood is lost rather it means that they need to push forward harder than before in order to keep their advantage you head into the Enclave Outpost to grab some encrypted data fighting through waves of soldiers as you progress and then eventually bring the data back to scribe Rothschild who laments over the loss of his prized death machine now that's the start of Broken Steel and we'll continue talking about it in a moment but let's first discuss the side quests that there are to take part in there are three major side quests in total each of them revolves around a purified water that is being delivered throughout the capital Wasteland returning to project Purity after waking up from your coma will show that it is fully operational water lacking radiation is finally being provided to the people of the Wasteland for free through the help of the Brotherhood Caravans from Rivet City will come and pick it up for themselves and other groups will deliver to areas like Megaton but it's not a perfect setup The Enclave sends hit squads periodically to attack those working at the purifier water is going missing Caravans are dying Cults are being formed and more in the middle of all of this is scribe bixley the individual in charge of water distribution and a man that openly resents you for putting him inside position he doesn't want to stress of the job and he makes it known to you at every available opportunity bixley will inform you of issues surrounding the aquapura they are delivering around the Wasteland Rivet City is losing care of veneers Megaton is apparently not receiving their water and if you press them about it there's a ghoul at underworld who is selling the water rather than giving it away all of the side quests involve looking at the cultural shifts surrounding the Wasteland once water has become available how despite this resource being provided for free there are still individuals out there looking to capitalize on it let's discuss the Rivet City Caravans first officer lapelier just outside of Rivet City informs us that every single one of her Caravans is attacked when sent out there's a caravan out right now and you can catch up to them if you you hurry doing so brings you to the scene of another attack luckily there's a few dead Raiders and one of them has instructions on where to find the rest of the group it's a group of Bandits who want to harass the Caravans to the point that they are in dire need of support they then plan to offer their services as protection to make a profit if you head over to where they are located you can ask the leader split Jack to let you join after joining you have to find a way to deal with splitjack in the main way of doing so is to challenge him for his title as gang leader this leads to a melee fight with weapons provided by Jack and he has a surprising amount of HP making the fight drag on longer than you might expect with Jack dead the quest is basically complete the bandits will say that while you won they don't want a leader anymore and you should head back to the officer to try and get the protection contract if you do the bandits will split the earnings with you there's two choices here you either return to the officer and tell her that the gang leader has been dealt with or you extort her there's no other outcomes or paths to go down here since I don't feel like extorting Rivet City I killed the bandits here and now before reporting back the officer can't pay you herself but you can head back to big later for a reward next we need to investigate Megaton when you arrive you'll be handed a pamphlet from a resident about a new religious cult set up just outside of the town in Springvale I don't know what it is about Megaton and Cults but they seem to be a magnet for them if you don't talk to the residents about the water you can actually find a pamphlet posted on the door of your home which I thought was a nice touch now before moving on you may be asking what would happen if Megaton was blown up and the answer is that the quest wouldn't be offered at all considering there is no City in the area to begin with when you reach the site of the new cult it seems that they like the children of Adam are worshiping Adam and radiation as a Godly Concept in fact the guard in front of the monastery won't talk to you until you drink from their heavily irradiated water turns out that they have been taking the aquapura for themselves and blessing it with radiation the leader of the cult then feeds the water to her flock none of whom are aware that it is contaminated the reason for this she wants to help the people Ascend it to immortality by glorifying them you can either be let into the monastery after heavily irradiating yourself or or you can sneak in by passing a very hard lock pick check once inside you can talk to Mother Curie III and convince her that tricking people into irradiating themselves won't lead to Enlightenment or as a more interesting step you can already yourself to the point that Curie will believe you are a prophet of Adam or you know you can just kill everyone but that's not how we're doing things on this channel not yet anyway as a very nice touch you can technically accept the quest and blow Megaton up afterward if you haven't completed the new quest line yet this will actually ghoulify the monastery characters leaving them feral just outside Megaton very nice touch on bethesda's part adds a lot of character to a set of quests that are essentially little one-off tasks finally we have a ghoul con man and a wig trying to sell aquapiro to the residents of Underworld while calling it Aqua Cura the premise is that the water will cure certain aspects of goldification but on closer inspection you can see that it is just normal or radiated water from the Wasteland apparently Griffin here has been paying bigsly for shipments of water under the assumption that he would be delivering them to underworld in reality Griffin stores the aquapura for later use and instead sells irradiated water as aquacura you can find his bottling operation and force him to confess to the individuals he's been selling it to which leads to a firefighting Griffin's death if you don't save him I don't think the dude deserves to die for this but saving him doesn't lead to any different scenario it's like he's meant to be murdered alternatively you can blackmail Griffin or convince him to sell the real aquapiro to the residents as much as I hate to say it this is potentially the only way to get Aqua period underworld residents as no one else will deliver it to them however since radiation doesn't affect ghouls aquapura is useless to them either way I think killing Griffin kind of sucks but it's also our only way to prevent him from scamming people so those are the side quests of Broken Steel and as you may have noticed they are fairly short and and consequential despite this being after the events of project Purity and the main questline no Quest was designed to have as much impact on the Wasteland as something like Oasis or blowing out Megaton rather it's a series of mini epilogue quests meant to show that no matter how good things begin to get there will always be those trying to take advantage people like you are required to intervene and help keep things in check within the Wasteland else individuals will try to ruin a good thing for their own personal gain in a way it follows the motto of Fallout as a whole war never changes but also the Wasteland never changes either at least not completely there will always be those who look to take advantage of others to make use of something good and turn it into something bad with the side quests out of the way it's time to finish up this DLC I'm going to break it down real simple for you there's two quests we need to complete one is getting a Tesla coil the next is murdering all of The Enclave that's it Tristan wants to get a Tesla coil for the Scribe so he sends you off to the paperworks in Old only Olney is infested with deathclaws so there's a device you can grab from a scribe that will allow you to control the Enclave death claws that have been captured and stored in some sort of crate if you want it's a cool mechanic but I found it effectively useless in my eyes you barely get the opportunity to use it and then when you do the deathclaws die soon after and aren't really controlled by any means they just don't attack you personally you make your way into only into the paperworks and through the area into a deathclaw Nest The Nest eventually takes you to a chamber full of electricity and you have the ability to grab a Tesla coil here which you can bring to the scribes who will create a weapon for you in the final battle with this task out of the way we are somehow already in the final battle against The Enclave this is the most interesting and involved out of all of the quests and takes you on a short Adventure through the presidential Metro towards Adams Air Force Base you work your way through a set of ghouls that I mentioned earlier you convince a robot that you're an ally and you take a train to the base once there you're in a unique map with three key points including the entrance you arrived at close to your left is the reason you completed the last quest for the Tesla coil a new weapon known as a Tesla Cannon that shoots high power electrical attacks that can also deal damage over time it's a great weapon for sure but arguably feels underwhelming during this segment due to how many Enclave soldiers will be attacking you at any given time you're in the heart of their base there are waves and waves of soldiers to work through and a weapon that needs to reload after every shot is not going to be particularly effective here I tried to make it work anyway but it was a bit of a grueling process and really made the weapon seem less effective than it actually is it can blow up vertibirds though turns out The Enclave is working out of some sort of mobile base which has the ability to call down those orbital strikes we saw earlier you work your way through the Enclave forces into the base and eventually reach a terminal that allows you to decide where you will fire an orbital drop this is the big Karma decision of the game which is hilarious because it has no reasoning or build up to this point for whatever reason they give you multiple targets to choose from those targets are as follows this said it all project Purity Megaton Rivet City and the mobile platform we are on right now that's a decent amount of options not sure why we would have any reason to choose any of them but they're there and they must make a a big impact on the Wasteland right oh you sweet summer child of course not out of all of those options only two can be selected either the Citadel or the mobile platform it's Megaton part 2 baby and it's just as nonsensical as the last time choosing to destroy the Citadel leads to 1 000 negative Karma and the entirety of the Brotherhood will turn against you but you can find some nice goodies in their Armory apparently I wouldn't know as I would never see any reason to choose this option even if you helped President Eden at the end of The Game's main questline you are still fighting The Enclave throughout the DLC killing countless Enclave soldiers there's no point within the DLC where you are deceiving the Brotherhood to betray them here is a truly nonsensical choice that is only there for the sake of it much like the rest of Fallout 3's content many choices in the game are not there to matter rather they are there to make you feel powerful the issue is that when there is no reason to make some of these inane destructive choices there's no real emotional impact for doing cell blowing up the Brotherhood is a silly choice you feel silly for doing so because it made no sense to do in the first place all you've done is become some sort of super villain with no motivation for doing so say it with me everyone it's surface level and another prime example of Fallout 3's greatest failing attempting to provide choice and purpose while having no purpose for the choice obviously we blew up the mobile platform as we do Sarah Lyons greets us in a hijacked vertibird having woken up from her coma we escaped from the scene and watched the fireworks before heading back to the Capitol to be congratulated by the Elder for our hard work and that's it that's the end of Broken Steel no epilogue for the epilogue just a thank you for your service and then every NPC walks away to go back to their respective tasks in effect doing nothing for the rest of the game honestly when I beat the DLC again for this video I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe how lackluster this ending was elderlyn says thank you please feel free to collect goodies and kill Super Mutant for us and we will reward you for your efforts that's it there's something so magical about the New Vegas DLC each entry starts with an introductory cut scene to set the scene for you it runs you through the setting the themes the general feeling you'll experience within and then once you beat it you are given an epilogue that shows how your actions affect everything how the MPCs involved grew or didn't what this says about the real world about our politics and our society it's like tucking you in at night each DLC in New Vegas allows you to end it comfortably you're sad that it's over but you feel validated that enough was done meanwhile Fallout 3 says thanks loser and throws you to the curb that doesn't change in the next DLC we're about to talk about either but at least it's the best DLC of Fallout 3. finally some good content Point Lookout is by far the best entry within the expanded content of Fallout 3. I mean technically Cube experimental is the best expanded content in Fallout 3 but that's also a community mod so I'm not gonna count it Point Lookout offers a brand new open location to explore it's a fairly large map although not nearly as large as the capital Wasteland and it has various unique areas to explore all of which within decent walking distance of one another making it incentivized to stop by all of them at least once the entry suffers from everything the previous DLC did a lackluster main quest line and short side quests but to its credit some of these side quests are particularly interesting and one even makes a call back to the Dunwich building we explored earlier in the retrospective there's a Riverboat near the Arlington Library beside it a woman looking for her daughter who ran off in search of treasure she took a ride on this Riverboat to Point Lookout and now you're being asked to do the same Tobar owns the Riverboat and will allow you to travel on it if you buy a ticket from them you'll need several depending on what order you plan on completing some of these quests so a higher barter skill is recommended he has one that can be pickpocketed but I had a sneak skill of 100 and he found me out every time I tried so I don't know if it's actually possible to take it I believe Point Lookout is surrounded by a swamp it has Swamp People so I guess that's an accurate description of the Locale as you arrive you'll see some of these people walking around and all of them are unique enemies based off of the Backwater redneck incest babies you'd see in something like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre I also don't know if it was my Hardware or what but having experienced no issues with lag or frame drops beforehand Point Lookout would sometimes slow my game to a crawl maybe due to all the fog effects around the map I'm unsure but it was one of the worst experiences of technical issues I had since starting the playthrough Tobar will mention some points of interest to check out and then mention how we saw smoke near a local Mansion along the way setting your sights on your first Quest Point although I don't recommend heading there immediately it's not necessary and the main quest line is so short that you get more out of exploring the entirety of the map first there's a lot of sites to be had there's a broken Lighthouse that you can fix for literally no reason at all there's various cabins full of Swamp People there's a Christian Missionary on a beach and there's black Hall starting with black hole you'll enter the estate and be chastised by an old man in a wheelchair for breaking into his home despite this he'll ask you to complete a job for him there's a book he wants and it's been taken by the Swamp People to a ritual chamber nearby you can agree to get it back for him but as you exit the estate the Christian Missionary I mentioned earlier will appear and suggest that you don't bring it to the Man due to the evil of crafty and goodness it contains and asking you to bring it to her instead you can head off to collect the book and be attacked by waves of swamp folk in the process the ritual chamber is a massive cut up flesh and Gore suggesting that the book has some sort of power or influence over others if you attempt to bring the book back to the missionary you'll be ambushed by mercenaries and find her dead within her tent the mercs were most likely hired by old man blackhall you'll find a hollow tape of the woman's last words where she pleads for you to take a pilgrimage to the Dunwich building to dispose of the book this means doubling back to the Capital Wasteland entering Dunwich returning to the creepy haunted Obelisk and pressing the book against it which will destroy it on touch leading to the quest being completed and Good Karma being achieved alternatively you could bring the book to blackhall mechanically it's the better option as it leads to a 1000 cap reward on top of the quest experience but you're also potentially dooming individuals to the Demonic forces within are they are they demons is Cthulhu a demon regardless of your choice black hole won't change in any meaningful way I personally chose to kill him and put an end to the weird Cthulhu ass events taking place there the quest like many others I've talked about is fairly short and without anything to really say it's more of a ride and that's okay sometimes the full effect of the quest is best felt when you've never experienced the Dunwich building and end up heading over there due to the quest then the exploration and discovery of the Obelisk are all laid on top of the creepy narrative surrounding the book leading to a haunting experience that makes black Hall one of the more memorable quests in the DLC now I'm going to be real with you there's four other side quests but only one of them is particularly interesting there's one that wants you to unlock a safe by getting security access through searching various Discovery sites where they were researching the gases that appear to be generating underneath Point Lookout there's another Quest where you learn how to make moonshine or rather get all the ingredients to make it probably one of the worst quests in the game to be honest as the amount of items you need to complete it is rather obscene in my eyes and I cured vampirism in Oblivion so I know a lot about collecting ingredients in Bethesda RPGs next is Plex Safari a ghoul has set up an arena of feral ghouls for you to head in and fight at your leisure for your pleasure there's nothing more to it really you pay 1 000 caps to head into the arena kill a ton of ghouls and then receive a unique melee weapon in the process I think you can take part in the fight again after a few days if you want but it's not really worth spending money to fight a bunch of ghouls when you can do that literally anywhere else in the game the real shining example of Fun Quest in Fallout 3 is the Velvet curtain it can be started a few ways you can either observe a wanted poster for a Chinese spy enter the Motel of the spy and access her terminal or you can head far north to a military compound and find out about her within a terminal there either way you begin the investigation into finding agent Yang another spy who died in the area some time ago the terminal gives you the location of a key and the location to the locker it unlocks you head to the locker and get a hollow tape that has a code to open a safety deposit box in a nearby Bank this mechanic is really well thought out and used twice in the bank there's an intercom that is used as the lock for the safety deposit boxes you need passwords to open them which you can usually get from holotapes but even if you get the password and use it the intercom won't recognize your voice the trick is to activate the holotape message in front of the intercom so the individual on the other end says the password causing the lock to be lifted I love little touches like that New Vegas did something similar with dog and God and dead money turns out our mission is to cause a Chinese submarine to self-destruct as to prevent it from reaching enemy hands we can find the self-destruct codes in a false tooth on agent Yang and agent Yang can be found in a morgue near the military a compound I mentioned earlier you can find the body and take the tooth once you have the codes a map marker is added for the sub you head into the ocean and make your way to the sub underwater and somehow enter it I don't know a lot about Subs but something tells me water pressure would prevent this from being possible I don't know though I could be wrong about this once inside you can enter the code and begin the self-destruct sequence then run from the scene as you watch the Chinese submarine blow up in front of you all that's left to do is return to the hotel for additional orders apparently there's a Chinese satellite still in space that tracked the destruction and this in turn triggered the advancement of the spy's Mission you're given a special set of glasses which are within the tank of the nearby toilet and sent to the mansion I mentioned earlier but that we haven't explored yet if you wear the glasses in a nearby location a set of vases on pillars will show special markings that are used to represent numbers the terminal in the motel gave you a sequence of said numbers and by interacting with the vases in set order you will unlock a hidden bunker which is just so gratifying it's incredible how simple a quest can be one where you interact with zero NPCs and the concept is just so unique and engaging that you don't care inside the bunker is a literal mountain of ammo as well as some mini nukes and weaponry you head to a terminal within the bunker and a door will close behind you the terminal congratulates you for completing the mission mentions funds have been transferred to your next of kin and then proceeds to try and gas you data you can escape via a nearby tunnel or by stopping the sequence with a science or repair check either way that's the end of the quest you have successfully completed a 200 year old Chinese spy mission to blow up a submarine and live to tell the tale this is by far the most unique and engaging quest in not only Point Lookout but potentially within the entirety of the game's DLC selection maybe in Fallout 3 entirely another shining example of what the content of the game could be like with more thought and Care put in so this leaves us with the main quest line of Point Lookout one that is again not particularly long but at the very least it's more unique and engaging than what we have experienced thus far as I mentioned you are pointed towards Calvert Mansion as you arrive in the Locale once you head inside you'll witness a ghoul being attacked by a large swarm of tribals he'll ask you to help him and what proceeds to take place as a long battle that forces you through the various Halls of the building you fight your way through wave after wave of tribal and even have a section where you fall through the rickety floorboards into the basement forced to make your way back up to clear out the rest before a final assault takes place it's a grand Affair handled better than any interactions with The Enclave while the ghoul Desmond is appreciative he's rather crass and essentially informs you that you will be working for him in return for a big payout Desmond wants you to investigate the tribals he knows why they're attacking him but he wants to know more about them so he can work on a countermeasure this sends you to a nearby Chapel that has been taken over by said faction turns out they are worshiping some sort of God or at least something that they believe to be a God and are willing to let you in if you prove yourself now in order to do so you need to go to an area on the map where you can find a mother panga fruit a fruit native to Point Lookout within the setting of Fallout out within the sacred bog you will find the mother panga and interacting with it will put you through a drug-induced walking sequence where you hallucinate various bobble heads as a voice tries to guide you back to the entrance funnily enough New Vegas had a similar experience and honest hearts but I believe Fallout 3 actually handles it better with more creative and interesting hallucinations such as areas of the map being turned upside down we don't actually know yet who performed the surgery but we'll get back to that when you return to the chapel the tribal will believe you completed the rituals and welcome you in as a member of their flock further into the chapel you can find Nadine the daughter of the woman who sent you here to begin with she seems to be the most sane out of anyone there turns out everyone took part in the ritual and many of them seem to have been left worse for wear either through the surgery or through constant access to punga fruit Nadine informs you that she went through a similar experience and is planning on leaving shortly she'll even removed the scar for you somehow so that's nice she isn't willing to go home to her mother right away though the entire reason she came out here was to earn a fortune and she's not leaving until she figures something out talking to Nadine will get you a key to the chambers of the tribal leader and you could head down to the Cliffside to meet Jackson once inside the cave you'll hear Jackson talking to someone as you make your way up to him you'll find him conversing with none other than a hologram of a brain turns out the brain is that of Professor Calvert a pre-war scientist and rival of desmonds though I'm not sure why exactly Jackson isn't particularly upset to see you and what you learn is that the reason they are attacking the Mansion is because Desmond set up disruptors which are preventing the psychic waves of the professor from reaching the rest of Point Lookout the professor is happy to see you as he believes you are exactly what he needs to deal with Desmond turns out he's in a similar situation as Harold during the Oasis quest line where people worship him but they don't hear him they interpret everything he says incorrectly and he needs an outsider to deal with Desmond for him so he can take control of the area bringing this news to Desmond won't shock him in fact this is exactly what he expected and he's been hunting Calvert down for a long time not for justice or anything they just hate each other and you're the lap dog they are are trying to use in order to get to the end goal they desire Desmond wants you to install a device on the nearby Ferris wheel that will further block the brain's ability to transmit itself to individuals when you arrive you will actually be contacted by the brain via a psychic link I told you magic just exists in the series he wants you to instead dispose of the device and this is where you have to make another choice that doesn't matter nothing matters in Fallout 3. if you install the device you'll be attacked by some tribals as you leave the scene if you dispose of the device and head back to Desmond nothing will change you just won't be attacked approaching the Mansion you will witness a scene of it blowing up in entirety leaving nothing but a safety bunker left over if you sided with Desmond you'll find him within the bunker and the two of you can go on an assault near the lighthouse to take out Calvert in his hidden bunker if he sided with Calvert Desmond will already be gone and you can find him near the same area by the lighthouse he can be convinced that you did what you did to fool Calvert or you can just kill Desmond right then and there and before making your way to Calvert I personally sided with Desmond and left him alive to help me reach the professor once the two of you reached the brain you're giving another meaningless choice of who to side with again I personally chose Desmond because the professor will betray you regardless meaning they'd both die anyway even if you didn't know that the professor is just kind of a prick that being said I ended up killing Desmond after taking out Calvert because I was tired of how Desmond was treating me hey I know I talk a lot about morality in these games but sometimes I even like to let loose a little bit the reward for completing the mission is the microwave emitter a strong energy weapon that ignores damage resistance making it particularly powerful overall as you make your way back to the Riverboat you'll find Nadine who is locked towbar up in the engine room she finds out that he had been the one taking out pieces of everyone's brains you learned that Tobar was supplied with punga fruit that he would sell in the Wasteland and return for returning the individuals within the sacred bog back to the entrance taking out part of their brain seemed to just be a bonus as he kept them all As souvenirs within the ship you can confront him about this and he'll turn hostile leading to his death retrieving the piece of your brain he took her into a perk in the process Nadine now owns the Riverboat and will let you ride for free she's ready to go back home having now found her treasure within the boat and its cargo meaning that you have successfully solved a large conflict within Point Lookout while also completing the original task that brought you here again it ends fairly abruptly you're back and that's it at the very least Point Lookout looks like an overall more satisfying experience it had everything it needed to succeed a new location to explore a lack of a collect-a-thon just kidding if you did the Moonshine Quest you basically took part in one and it had various side quests that were overall some of the more interesting to take part in within Fallout 3. all of this together makes Point Lookout one of the best and most popular experiences in this entry in fact it's so popular that individuals recreated the DLC in its entirety for Fallout 4. that being said it's with great sadness that I have to say this retrospective will not be ending with a bang but instead with a whimper we're going from the highest of highs this game could offer to utter mediocrity a DLC that is only made up for thanks to its location and setting with everything else being fairly lackluster let's talk about Mothership Zeta look I want to like this one Mothership Zeta is a hilarious concept for a DLC the idea of taking the lone Wanderer and throwing him into space Sounds like an adventure with a lot of potential while Point Lookout was about open areas unique quests and overall Freedom Mothership Zeta looks to take the approach of operation Anchorage a more linear experience that will have you fighting your way to Freedom after getting abducted by aliens what should be a fun foray into a unique concept such as aliens turns out to be another test of patience as you continue to combat bullet sponge after bullet sponge as you wait for doors to be unlocked and you work your way through tight corridors Mothership Zeta wants you to wait it wants to keep you in each of its set pieces as long as possible and it rewards you not in engaging gameplay but instead intangible Rewards weapons ammo items that repair all of your weapons unique armor that's what Mothership Zeta is all about there's plenty of Random Encounters in the Wasteland one of which is the crash landing of an unidentified flying object around the area you can find a unique alien weapon known as the fire Lance as well as very limited ammo for it this may leave you not wanting to use the weapon for an extended period of time due to there being a chance you'll permanently run out of ammunition well fear not because while Mothership Zeta does have its own ammo type that you'll find in abundance you can still pick up alien power cells here and there hell I think the Enclave even have some alien power cells around their base and Broken Steel you'll find an Alien Blaster and an unmarked location known as the alien crash site there's a body of an alien with the weapon in its hand as well as several power cells around the area this is arguably the strongest weapon in the game due to it being guaranteed to score critical hits with every shot for that reason I recommend grabbing it before starting the DLC but this may prove difficult as the inclusion of Mothership Zeta also made this the area where where you trigger a forced abduction sequence that locks you into the DLC until it's completed I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind this since every other expansion in this game had an opt-in process that warned you of potentially being stuck in a new area for an extended period of time Mothership Zeta instead just throws you into The Fray and I guess this is to emulate the idea of being abducted I think New Vegas handled this way better with Old World Blues by still allowing you to opt in but to be fair I did have the gift of hindsight at that point being a sequel to Fallout 3. after your abduction you awake on an experimentation table with a bunch of literal aliens looking down at you yes aliens are real in the Fallout Universe although I'm not sure if they have had any Encounters in past games you fall unconscious once more and wake up in a cell with another character named Soma make no mistake these aliens are not your friends they have been continually experimenting on Humanity for hundreds of years and you begin to learn this as you read through the various audio logs of captives aboard the ship there's tapes found throughout the entirety of your adventure and a good majority of them show sheer suffering at the torturous hands of the alien captors some of the tapes are actually more unnerving than anything else within Fallout 3 and it was so wild to see that they were presented in a DLC about blowing the heads off of Little Green dudes with stunned batons still it adds to the overall character of the DLC and I promise you that that's the only reason you're actually playing it it's unapologetically a ride from start to finish that's probably its greatest strength you make your way through some areas that are fairly elaborate for something like Fallout 3. the issue is that they are few and far between other areas that are similar looking Bland corridors full of enemies it should also use this as an opportunity to mention that there aren't any side quests here either you're on track from your cell to the Captain's Quarters and there's very little extra content to do along the way linearity is one thing but a complete lack of content within is another in order to break out of your cell you need to get into a fist fight with Soma in order to trick some of the guards to come in and break the two of you off once the guards enter you and Soma can take them out and pick up some stunt batons as temporary Weaponry you've been stripped of all your gear but you get it back fairly quickly as you exit into the map proper as you begin the breakout you'll find a girl named Sally who is also locked within her own cell you can break her out by overloading a reactor or a slow and annoying process that you are going to have to do several times as you Traverse the spaceship each reactor has three coolant tanks you have to interact with so you have to wait for the reactor and the tanks to activate then interact with each tank and then wait for it to overload over and over again there's even a room that has four reactors at one time and you have to slowly activate each one of them while fighting off enemies one after the other you don't get to activate them all at the same time like I said there's a lot of waiting around here Sally is a crucial aspect of that she's a small child and has the ability to circumvent security by entering various vents in order to open doors for you there's a few interesting examples of this such as her helping you sneak by enemies on your way to the next location and adding a bit of Spence as she tries to get a door open for you before you're spotted and it takes an obceivingly long amount of time to do so to the point that the suspense actually wears off after that though Sally is nothing but a means of elongating the experience if a door is supposed to be opened by her you're going to be waiting a while if she wants you to do something it usually involves reactors which means waiting some more it is so disappointing that the best way I can describe an entry where I'm running through an alien spaceship is boring there's just so many aspects of this journey that aren't fun in any capacity enemies take too many hits too many mechanics slow me down I'm cramped within corridors that all look the same it's a sterile mess to continue your Escape you need to reach the top of the ship but the elevator Sally brings you to has been disabled meaning the only way up there is from the outside luckily Sally knows where to find a spacesuit and she takes you to a set of cryopods that have several abductees and stasis there's Paulson who is a Rancher from pre-war times there's Elliot who is a U.S soldier during the war there's a [ __ ] Samurai and finally there's Colonel hartigan and astronaut and the individual with the suit we need luckily for us waking everyone up seems to have some adverse side effects on heart again and he winds up dead meaning we can take the suit for ourselves everyone else is incredibly confused especially toshiro over here since he can't speak any English making communication with everyone fairly difficult in order to get the doors to the outside open there's three locations that you need to you guessed it have their reactors blown up the game opens up a bit more here and what's nice is that you can bring all the NPCs with you depending on the locations you visit well not all of them just Soma Paulson and Elliot really Soma Will Follow You into the robot assembly area Elliott into the cryolab and Paulson into engineering each of them will be a benefit to you in some way for example Elliot can allow you to create cryo mines and grenades as well as allowing the restoration of Two Soldiers Elliott was stationed with each area is unique in some way the robot assembly area is full of drones for you to destroy but the cryolab and Engineering were the most interesting in my opinion the cryolab has Ghouls and super mutants who can release to cause a bit of chaos and Engineering has this weird mechanic which is effectively a mini game where you bounce the crash ship from earlier around electrical pylons that will cause shock waves to instantly kill the hordes of aliens coming to assault you there's a lot of charm within these areas they make up the strongest aspect of Mothership Zeta and show a level of care and detail that should have been applied to the entirety of the location it's also nice to see The Hub area you return to in between reactors get updated as you return the survivors begin to create makeshift cover kill various aliens and even consider taking one hostage before Paulson executes him I'd almost feel bad for them but these guys are committing some of the craziest atrocities I've ever seen and as far as I can tell none of them care about the suffering they cause to their human prisoners there are some friendly aliens and by friendly I mean non-hostile there are worker units who run away from you and cower they will never attack you and killing them leads to a Karma loss once all of the reactors are taken care of you can head to the depressurization chamber with the suit on in order to head out out onto the surface of the ship that's right guys Bethesda sent me a copy of Starfield early to show off to you and I gotta say the graphics are blowing me away here there's three panels you have to interact with in order to get a beam to generate that will lift you into the upper levels of the ship from there you can activate a teleporter that will allow the rest of your crew to meet you there once everyone arrives you are met with the holographic projection of an alien I'm not sure who exactly I think it's the captain of this specific ship and you'll see the Hologram of another Captain later the captain shows that the ship is armed with a powerful laser and has the ability to essentially nuke any location on the planet he is showcasing this to you as a threat but it effectively motivates you all to push forward and dismantle it as an interesting tidbit it seems like you can see an area known as the glow from this point on the ship what's funny about the giant death gun is once you reach the weapons control room the room I mentioned previously that has four separate reactors you can actually aim the laser at Earth and fire it for no reason there's no effect on the game there's no Karma loss I don't think anyone comments on it at all you get to Nuke an area of the planet for no other reason than you can for the sheer spectacle of it that's the point of Fallout 3 as we already know to do things because we can not because we have anything of value to learn at least they're being blatant about it now after you overload all four reactors and destroy the guns you can continue your way through the ship to the bridge I should mention that along the way you'll get to see some of the experiments that the aliens have been working on specifically I'm talking about the Abominations which seem to be a cross between the alien species and humans they're just little guys but what's terrifying about them is that they point and wail once they notice you I always get a sinking feeling when one of them spots me and then extends its long lanky ass arms towards me while opening its gaping mouth you release these things on the rest of the ship as you progress so Abominations begin wreaking havoc on the rest of the aliens as a distraction to help you reach the death gun and the bridge finally at the bridge you can kill the alien crew and their Captain to obtain his unique alien pistol another hologram shows up and seems to break you before a ship appears in front of your window if everyone is still alive they'll show up to help you fight off alien ends while you enter a weird little Pokemon battle between your ship and the enemy one you essentially choose how the power gets routed between your Shields and your weapons which will determine how much damage you take or deal towards the enemy ship after firing on the enemy several times while fighting off aliens you'll witness the ship blow up and float away into the distance from here you've completed Mothership Zeta and your reward is the ship for yourself that's right the lone Wanderer is an individual who is the captain of his very own spaceship doesn't get much crazier than that the rest of you will go your separate ways from here while so man paulison anyway who go back to the Wasteland never to be seen by you again Sally decides to live on the ship at least for now and Elliot will stay to help with weapons and maintenance toshiro also stays in the living quarters I believe at some point during your journey you could even find his samurai sword to return to him if there is one thing I can say about Mothership Zeta it's that it provided spectacle at the end for a bite-sized DLC that could be completed in one sitting I suppose that's all I can really expect of it overall I was disappointed going into Zeta due to how impressed I was with Point Lookout it felt like the team was going backwards in a way like no progression is being made in development but maybe I'm looking at the development wrong it's like I expect each DLC to be bigger and better but who knows what teams were working on what and what their goals were I suppose I compare Fallout 3 to New Vegas to a detrimental level sometimes obsidian has more experience with the series overall and also had the ability to look back at the DLC design for three before making their own all of which I believe attempted to be grander and more elaborate with each release except for Lonesome Road maybe but that too had its own unique strengths still looking at Fallout 3 solely has its own unique product I can't shake the feeling that Mothership Zeta was overall the most disappointing release they could have made for the game's final DLC if anything Point Lookout should have taken that spot and allowed bethesda's first foray to go out in a bang instead we're left with a bit of disappointment as we make our way back into the Wasteland everything there is to do a value now completed in a way it feels lonely but you can always return to the pit the spaceship or even Point Lookout if you want to it's so weird to be reaching this point in the script because I knew I was going into Fallout 3 with the idea that it is not necessarily as good as I remember but nowhere as disappointing as people make it out to be I'm sure I've said this already but there's a large amount of individuals online who see this as one of the weaker entries overall to the point that some outright hate it and chalk it up to Awful design and poor writing I do believe that Fallout 3 is a great game despite some of these aspects but damn if it didn't try to make me feel otherwise like any other Fallout entry Fallout 3 has its share of thematic messaging at least here and there it seems it's at its best saying something when it's either purposefully on the nose or when they didn't mean to say anything at all anything else in the game feels incredibly shallow in its topics and dialogue I was disappointed to see how many quests had nothing to say or didn't matter at all how little content there actually is in the game the focus on making you feel powerful rather than making choices that are difficult Fallout 3 is more focused on you being a God Among the Wasteland rather than in putting you into situations where you have to consider your actions and that's fine sometimes but I think we can all agree that we expect a little more out of something with the Fallout title at the time of its release I truly believe that this game was revolutionary but looking back now with sequels and new series that do it better Fallout 3 feels like it has an aged dwell at all clunky combat and controls that aren't made up for through the rest of the game's features Bland characters with bad dialogue nonsensical consequences to our actions unearned payoffs the expectancy of emotional reactions from an audience you haven't built a relationship with it feels boring it feels lazy they're still good in there but it's almost hard to find at this point Fallout 3 is a good game but the replay left me wanting more since we live in a time where I can expect more from my games even so looking back at the earlier games in the series things like quest lines and writing are still overall better in design the storyline of Fallout 2 the depiction of the on Enclave the conversations had in the locations explored all of those are more interesting to me than what is presented to me in Fallout 3. so while I don't see the game as a complete failure for the series I understand why fans of the past entries would be disappointed with this one still I think Bethesda cares about the series at least somewhat I may not be the biggest fan of Fallout 4 or Fallout 76 which is yikes but I do believe there was at least love and effort put into them especially for which did fix things like Gunplay and even had callbacks to Fallout 3 that I never picked up on I never realized that one of the kids from Little Lamplight grows up to be a companion in Fallout 4. that Max and in three becomes the Elder in the Commonwealth later on that when they removed Madison Lee from the game in Broken Steel and claimed it was because she went off to the Commonwealth that she would show up again as a member of The Institute that was crazy to me how did I miss that I think the best way to look at Fallout 3 is to do what I've been doing throughout the entirety of this retrospective and that's comparing it to to Fallout New Vegas it's hilarious to me that at this point in the retrospective I was 144 pages in meanwhile here we are and I'm having trouble scratching 100. sure the writing process is different here and there but I think that this says something important about Fallout 3 that there isn't much to talk about you can't dive into the shallow end of a pool and expect there to be depth and that's what Fallout 3 is it's the kiddie pool of modern open world RPGs it was revolutionary for Fallout sure but it was also already behind the times in terms of other Bethesda products Oblivion was in my opinion a bigger and more interesting experience with more to do and that was a game considered to have less content in depth than its own predecessor Morrowind the design of Bethesda products was shifting at this point and Fallout 3 was a great example of the direction they were taking take long quests with many mechanics and simplify them make them bite-sized and allow the character to feel powerful faster gratify them as soon as possible and don't worry about how we get there also make them and feel guilty for literally no Justified reason at all I feel bad ending the video like this but what else is there to say that I haven't already I do think Fallout 3 is better than people think nowadays but at the same time I don't think it's by much this game has glaring flaws and issues many of which Bethesda doesn't fix on their own but takes from entries like New Vegas then games like Fallout 4 are Rife with their own problems as Bethesda continues to try and modernize certain aspects of RPGs to reach a wider audience adding in more crafting adding in radiant quests ruining the uniqueness of their RPGs in the name of the more content quantity over quality is the Bethesda motto and Fallout 3 really feels like the Catalyst to that which is funny since it seems to be lacking in the sheer number of things to do as well it's a game lacking both quantity and quality that's rough to say the least Fallout 3 is better than you think but it isn't by much thanks for watching everyone thanks so much for making it to the end of the video this is the patreon section where I thank all of my patrons as I think the name would imply I am going to shout out all of the g-rank patrons all the g-rank tiers and all the hiring tiers engineering cheers should be here you can probably hear my dog in the background and uh yeah I'm gonna go ahead and chat these people out so will Martin woolly Ralph Carr Triton 8 Prime XD and ashtray thank you so much for the g-ranked here I really appreciate it disparity beyond the time Nolan Brookman mawal kasemi Captain Zeba or zaiba I never remember and cyberworm thank you so much for the g-ranked here Kathleen magic crunchy cowuru Jonathan strangely Rosalio and Mr janky thank you so much for the g-ranked here I really appreciate it uh some of you guys have been doing that for a long time very nice of you a lot of sounds happening right now Mabel says hello say hello Mabel say hello say goodbye goodbye thank you [Music]

Channel: SuperRAD

Views: 348,253

Keywords: fallout, new vegas, fnv, fonv, nv, f3, f4, fall out, blue moon, johnny guitar, mr. house, securitron, dead money, lonesome road, owb, old world blues, Caesar, legions, ncr, yes man, benny, courier, ulysses, cass, arcade, veronica, ed-e, rex, lily, raul, super mutant, ghoul, superrad

Id: qX3DcsRBO7E

Length: 297min 49sec (17869 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/KurisuKurigohan]

Wow a true long form essay. Good on you!