Okay guys, the aliens in Fallout were an Easter Egg…

Hardcore Fallout fandom at No Mutants Allowed cuts to the chase in showing how they really feel about the latest DLC announcement for F3.

That’s, um, pretty much how I feel about this latest announcement myself.

You can catch that and more over at No Mutants Allowed but be sure to have your flameproof waders on. The site is home to the truly hardcore Fallout fans out there as well as an impressively detailed repository of all things Fallout related which should come as no surprise. It’s a great site and a resource for all things Fallout and while I don’t entirely agree with some of their views on the franchise, Bethesda’s latest announcement of what the next two pieces of DLC are going to be like haven’t made me all too excited.

The first one is the reputed “Point Look” which had been rumored but never confirmed, until now. The only details that we have of what that one is supposed to be like is that it will take place in a swampy land with new dangers. Okay, doesn’t sound too exciting there. I never did like swamps in any game I had played, there’s just something…blah…about a swamp populated with the requisite bad guys, as if the marshy, malaria-infested humidity that they usually come with isn’t enough of a challenge. Still, I’ll likely be snagging that one up if it sounds interesting enough. It could be a swamp…with a GIANT MISSILE SILO IN THE MIDDLE OF IT FILLED WITH HALF ROBOT WAR MACHINES. Or not, I don’t know yet.

But the next one has me taking a fork to a lump of mashed potatoes and wishing that I was Richard Dreyfuss…”Mothership Zeta” will pit the player against, you guessed it, aliens. That’s right, the big eyed, ray gun toting, extraterrestrial inhabitants of outer space as opposed to the homicidal, acid spewing variety found on corporate space ships and colonies. I really don’t want to sound negative about this since on one hand, it does sound like it could be silly fun. On the other hand, it also comes off…from a veteran’s perspective…as overkill for something that started out as a random encounter in Fallouts 1 and 2. Like when the Coneheads became a movie. Augh…

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit, but still…Fallout’s universe has its own, understated humor…always had with the first two games by picking up on a thread here and there, subtle nods to the things we take for granted today but spun to make you chuckle when you least expect it. Kung fu fight in Fallout 2? A box of water chips in the sequel mocking those of us that fought to find just one in the first game? A sadistic Secret Service supermutant?

But this? Ahh…hmmm…. Over the top, sure, but Fallout has always had something of a serious side to itself that the small pieces of random humor within its narrative had only brought out, coloring each event that it was found in and giving the player something to smile about before focusing on how they were going to tie up all of their loose ends before their home ran out of water. I took the aliens and their velvet painting of Elvis from the original series with a large amount of humor filled salt, not even considering that it might be something that could become its own campaign sometime later.

Bethesda doesn’t need to give the hardcore crowd any more ammunition than they already have collected, but even as a huge fan of the series, I don’t think the ‘canon’ really needs this ‘twist’.

Besides, the better choice would have been King Arthur and his merry band of knights. They were in Fallout 2, also, along with a lot of other geeky goodies. Guardian of Forever, anyone?

You won't 'officially' see the Guardian of Forever in Fallout 3, unless someone mods it in, because it would just be plain weird. That, and Bethesda might draw the ire of Paramount's secret army of assassin lawyers this time.

Broken Steel up and after all the bugs, it was worth it

Broken Steel went up yesterday and I’ve been plugging away at it…and you know what? It’s really good.

But first, the things I learned while waiting for the DLC and in getting it to work:
1) GFWL still seems to be a work in progress for PCs
2) I still had to copy the mod files into my game directory
3) If the expansion still doesn’t start up after the ending rolls (you should get “Two Weeks Later”), turn off all of your other mods other than the official ones from Bethesda (Operation Anchorage and the Pitt). I had to turn off my custom repair mod which seems to have gotten Broken Steel to work for me. Mod boards are also filled with quite a few posts about community add-ons no longer working after updating the game to 1.5 with the pre-patch for Broken Steel.

After figuring all that out and getting it to work, I am happy to report from the wastes that it was worth the trouble.

I like it a lot more than I did the Pitt…it just felt more complete and the side-quests were pretty creative ranging from having to deal with a snake oil salesman to slumming with a gang and going so far as to challenge the leader for control. And the ending? Wow…you can really be an evil schmuck if you want to.

The way that it shows off the results of your actions after activating Project Purity added even more lore to the game in the way that clean water has changed the landscape. Just listening to the Scribes bicker at the Project, or listen to the comments that the Brotherhood makes concerning the current operations against the Enclave were also part of the fun.

Now that the three DLC are created, there’s only the rumor about the fourth one…codenamed “Point Look”. But I also can’t wait to hear more news as to what the crew over at Obsidian have planned with their own spin on Fallout when they take players back to Vegas!

They also do little plastic bottles, too, but without charging people. If only that were like the real world...

Broken Steel pulled for PCs

Somehow I’m not surprised?

I was all ready to download Broken Steel, the DLC add-on for Fallout 3, when I couldn’t find it on Games for Windows Live. Digging a little deeper, I hit the forums on Bethesda’s site and discovered that it was pulled because of issues. Although not everyone has run into these, quite a few vocal users are more than happy to share their stories.

What issues? How about the GFWL DRM breaking the DLC as VG247 reports? Achievements not working? The DLC simply not activating? The official forum is filled with these stories and more. One poster has even gone so far as to say that Broken Steel is a “Broken Steal”. Aside from the linked reply on VG247, Bethesda’s official site has been quiet about the user complaints piling up in their forums.

At this point, I’m just waiting for the download like everyone else, but after the Pitt, you’d think that Bethesda and Microsoft would realize that something simply isn’t working right, or that Q&A has to take a harder look at what is going on. The only download that I didn’t have these kinds of issues with was Operation: Anchorage and the solution to my problem with that was an easy copy-paste to another directory.

Dropping GFWL might not be so easy, either, given the integration with Fallout 3, so calls to have Bethesda simply go another route may not be as simple as picking a new content provider from the short list.

I guess we’ll wait and see what happens next, but I’m not holding my breath. Time to burn a little time with more Thunder Force VI.

PC users revolt against GFWL, demanding that Bethesda drop the service and choose something else. Like Steam, Stardock, or back to the old way of doing things like they did with Morrowind.

Ready for more Fallout 3 DLC? Here’s a few new pics for Broken Steel.

The Pitt wasn’t exactly the most fun that I’ve had with Fallout 3 given the technical issues riddling its broken landscape, but the upcoming Broken Steel sounds like it could be just the thing to help get past it.

Here’s a short list of what Bethesda is promising to flash blind players with once it hits on May 5th:

• raising the level cap from 20 to 30 along with including a new perks, two confirmed so far:
  Steel Nerves – speedier regeneration of AP points
  Puppies! – If Dogmeat dies, he’ll come back as a puppy that can be recruited again at certain points in the game. Neat.
• New monsters including the armored Ghoul Reaper, Overlord Super Mutant, and a new Enclave soldier with a flaming personality
• New quest involving the Brotherhood of Steel fighting against a revitalized Enclave across the DC Wasteland
• New areas to explore including a Presidential Metro line running beneath DC and the Enclave’s new digs
• New weapons such as the awe-inspiring Tesla Cannon which can apparently down a Vertibird in one shot. Yeah, you’ll need that.

Since work on this DLC was mentioned to have begun in December of last year, I have high hopes that this won’t have the kind of issues that The Pitt suffered from. Aside from changing the ending allowing the game to be more open ended, depending on what you chose to do at the climax of the adventure the Wasteland will reflect your decision in whether you followed the “good” side or snuck in something special for “evil”.

And here are a few juicy pics to show off some of the new stuffs:

The Brotherhood of Steel and their valiant superweapon, Liberty Prime, bring their arsenal of freedom to the oppressed masses of the Wasteland!

The Enclave won't be happy to see you again after what happened the last time you visited one of their hangouts.

As you can see, our newest Super Mutant, the Overlord, epitomizes our focus on crushing their foes into bloody paste and then pulverizing them some more just to be safe.

Here's a Presidential Perk that will come in handy.

If only you thought about attaching those pipes to a bottling plant first, but noooooo. You had to activate it "for the good of everyone". Pffft.

Finally, my Big Guns skill won't feel so useless anymore!

Life after the Pitt

I finished the Pitt earlier this week, but…what happened to the quality control?

There were more than just one or two ways in which players could easily break some of the logic in the game, whether it’s taking a path less traveled or simply running away from your enemies. None of the DLC for Oblivion gave me nearly as many issues as the Pitt did. I’m not even going to touch the problems that Xbox 360 owners have experienced already, requiring Bethesda to pull the DLC and then re-upload it.

That said, when it works, there’s a pretty decent story and some nice loot found within it. Modders should be able to have a field day in populating their own ideas of what the rest of post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh should look like since what is available feels like one tiny block. But I hope that Broken Steel, the last DLC and the one that changes the ending, raises the level cap, and delivers one whallop of an adventure in clearing out the Enclave from the DC area, won’t have as many bizarre problems as this one did.

I do have a bit more faith in that it will be a bit more solid, though. Bethesda’s Jeff Gardiner has noted that they had started working on Broken Steel shortly before Christmas last year, after they wrapped up work on Fallout 3, meaning that it may have gotten a much longer lead time in development than the other two had. With the high level concepts that they’ve been juggling around for this last piece of DLC, I’m hoping that’s the case.

It's not a bad place to visit as long as you can overlook the problems that go beyond the new tenants

Could that be…the gauss rifle?!

IGN has posted a great interview with Jeff Gardiner, the lead producer for Fallout 3, talking about the DLC “Operation Anchorage”. I had guessed that they would use some kind of simulation angle to get the player into a battle that happened two centuries earlier and I was right, and the new art looks great! Check this shot out from IGN’s site:

It might be a simulation, but the interview says that we'll be able to use new toys in the main game. Hopefully, they will include THIS.

Mmmm, the Gauss Rifle… Anyways, it’s a good read. The points that stuck with me from it were:

• a new perk called Covert Ops
• focus on combat/stealth combination
• new weapons, armor, and acheivements…I guess it’s not all in your head
• four to five hours in length
• involves the liberation of Alaska from Chinese occupation; sounds like you’ll also be leading and commanding tactical teams of NPCs in helping accomplish this…sweet.

The interview also touches in the next two DLCs, The Pitt (taking place in Pittsburgh), and Broken Steel which will somehow work your character back into the main game. If you’ve seen the “heroic” ending of F3, you’re probably asking the same question I am…how?!