Mortismal Gaming checked out Fallout 3:

Fallout 3 - Retrospective Review

Thanks Couchpotato!

Inverse looks back at Fallout 3:

15 Years Ago, a Legendary Bethesda Franchise Delivered the Perfect Open-World Game

15 years later, not many open worlds care to be remembered.

During your first few visits, Megaton is a maze. The dormant nuclear bomb serves as an imposing landmark, marking the center of the town. While all makeshift paths and bridges converge into it, it's easy to get lost. Moriarty's Saloon is right up north, but I kept sprinting to the west until I learned which corners to turn. It took me a while to find the shortcut that leads straight to the clinic from the upper side, too. This confusion is, in part, ironic — Megaton is dwarfed when compared to the likes of Rivet City, a settlement built inside an aircraft carrier, found on the southeastern corner of the Wasteland.

Spend some time getting to know its inhabitants, however, and you'll quickly realize Megaton's actual size bears no relevance. It's the townsfolk and their stories — from the Children of the Atom religion to Moira Brown's excitement over creating a survival guide for the world outside these walls — that make it a world of its own.

15 years after the release of Fallout 3, I still know my way around Megaton. Despite being one of the first you encounter across the Wasteland, it's a strong example of a design philosophy that few open-world games have since managed to replicate, one in which density trumps scale, creating a sense of place that strives to be remembered.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

In 2008 Fallout 3 was released by Bethesda:

Fallout Retrospective - A New Generation

The team shares their story of showing Fallout 3 to Fallout creator Tim Cain. See how the torch was passed as Bethesda Game Studios takes command of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises.

The Gamer reports that the GFWL DRM has finally been removed from Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition on Steam, seven years after being discontinued by Microsoft.

Fallout 3 On PC Finally Removes Games For Windows Live, Seven Years After It Was Discontinued

[...]

In the latest Steam patch notes for Fallout 3, it was announced that it would be removing all trace of Games for Windows Live, bringing it more in-line with the GOG and Windows Store versions that forgo it. If you already have Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition installed through Steam, Bethesda recommends that you reinstall the game to remove any of the previous dependencies.

[...]

@Apoqsi Fallout 3 and New Vegas have received sizeable content patches and there has been an update to the Steam DB.

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Looks like Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas GOT UPDATED on the Steam Database! What could it mean? Is Bethesda finally fixing the games? Are they preparing for a Fallout 3 Remaster & New Vegas Remaster?
Let's discuss in the comments!

Fallout 3 DB: https://steamdb.info/app/22300/dlc/
New Vegas DB: https://steamdb.info/app/22380/dlc/
SteamDB FAQ: https://steamdb.info/faq/

Many A True Nerd looks back at Fallout 3 and thinks its better than you think.

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Fallout 3 is an utter classic that came out 10 years ago, and some rather unkind words have been said about it in that time. So I'd like to tell you just how good Fallout 3 is, and how parts of it might even be the best a Fallout game has ever been...

@IGN Feargus Urquhart revealed recently that Black Isle Studios worked on two different versions of Fallout 3, with the original being a 3d production.

On the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, Urquhart revealed that before Black Isle began work on its more widely known Fallout 3 project, codenamed Van Buren, the studio also worked on another version of Fallout 3 that ultimately led to the creation of Icewind Dale.

"It was actually the second Fallout 3," Urquhart said of Van Buren, noting that Black Isle's first Fallout 3 project was in the works a bit earlier, after Fallout 2 was complete and Planescape: Torment was still in development.

While the studio's previous Fallout games were in 2D, Black Isle wanted to bring Fallout into 3D with this new project. "Now 3D was the cool stuff. So we were going to move from being a 2D engine and be a 3D engine, and so we actually started working with this 3D technology called NDL," he said.

@IGN they speculate that the recent unbanning of Fallout 3 from Germany is connected to an imminent HD release for the game.

Bethesda has said it will reveal why it worked to unban Fallout 3 in Germany "in a couple of weeks," suggesting that a re-release of the 2009 RPG shooter might soon be on the cards.

IGN Germany reports that Bethesda "initiated a difficult and rarely-successful trial" with the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Minors (BPjM) in order to de-list Fallout 3 three years before the end of its statutory ten-year sentence.

In a process involving detailed application letters, costs of up to several thousand Euros and scrutiny from a 'Big Council' of 12 delegates made of German community organisations, State Assessors and BPjM Group Members, the publisher won its case to remove the ban

"In the case of Fallout 3 the request for de-listing was granted even though only seven years passed since the game was banned," the BPjM said in a statement. "The Big Council decided at its meeting on February, 4th that Fallout 3 will be removed from the list because its content is no longer classified as harmful to minors from today's perspective."

IGN Germany asked Bethesda for comment and received the following response; "We cannot give a statement at the moment, but will answer your questions in a couple of weeks."

Fallout 3 was almost a very different game.  And one which probably would be better suited to more old-school tastes.  Behold...the Van Buren demo.

Thank you, Couch.

Everything changed when Bethesda gained ownership of the Fallout brand. The creators of The Elder Scrolls franchise have a specific vision of how a post-apocalyptic wasteland adventure should look like and we have to deal with it, no matter if we like it or not. In cases of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the players could still harbor some hope that the good times can and will be back; for those players, Fallout 4 was the very definition of disillusion. But what if… What if the post-nuclear franchise never left Black Isle? How would have their “number three” looked like? There isn’t a single fan of the franchise that hasn’t asked himself this question, and today, we’re here to answer it, even if only partially. Not theoretically, of course - we are going to test what the developers managed to create before the brand was pried from their financially stiffening fingers. The tech demo of Van Buren has been forgotten by nearly everyone, and yet it can still be found on the internet. What we have at our disposal is only a small sample, but it’s enough to make one thing very clear – it would have been a Fallout 3 completely different from the one we eventually got.

More information.

Here is a different way to look at a game. While under medication an editor at Gaming rebellion has played Fallout 3 and feels it has its lows and highs.

Although for me, and in my (in real life) medical condition, I didn't mind the grind so much while in my hazy state. Even with fast travel, prepare to walk, a lot. I mean a whole hell of a lot, but my (IRL) medical issues were pleasantly distracted discovering POIs, making the endless hikes worthwhile. I didn't discover every single POI, but after 90 hours, along with the repetitive nature of the game, I feel that I got the entire Fallout 3 experience. So no rating, no scoring this game. For various reasons Fallout 3 would scale very low and very high. If you have enjoyed Bethseda's previous games, you will enjoy Fallout 3. The addition of active combat made it both more fulfilling and at times, frustrating. This is also a manic depressive adventure, so if you can deal with the ups and downs like your weird cousin Fred, and if you're the type that can overlook technical failures (bored Liam, clipping, so much walking) than you're going to have a blast. If not, then perhaps don't spend any time in the DC wastelands and stick with the far superior Borderlands or Metro series instead.

Games Radar has an editorial about why the scrappiest location the Fallout 3 is the most beautiful:

Then, having consigned a substantial chunk of itself to oblivion, the game does something equally selfless - it gives you something you're supposed to think is rubbish. It asks: was it worth it, your new penthouse in Allistair Tenpenny's glittering castle, with its uninterrupted view of the bigoted old codger shooting whatever creatures he didn't pay you to blow up? And how's your friendship with the reptilian Mr Burke and those other incestuous shut-ins? Or the germ-free water and ghoul-free corridors? Bland, you confess; life without Megaton makes the Wasteland feel small. It makes Fallout 3 feel worse.

In other news Games Radar also has a list of 28 little known facts about the Fallout games after the end of the world.

Mike McGrath of Those Gamers published an article that takes a look back at Fallout 3.

Let’s go all the way back to 2008. The Spice Girls had finished their reunion tour and 14 year old Mike’s biggest worry was figuring out what the new Call of Duty was going to be. I’d seen Fallout 3 in all of the gaming magazines but paid little attention to it. RPG was a dirty word to me as I associated it with Final Fantasy type games, so when a mate asked me whether to buy Fallout 3 or Resistance 2, I immediately said Resistance 2. Looking back I have never been so happy to be ignored in my life because a week later I got my first taste of a game that would forever change my gaming habbits. I knew I loved Fallout 3 when the first enemy (a dog of all things) just jumped out of a bush and scared the livin Jesus out of me. The next day I went out and bought the game myself and have been playing it ever since.

Damien Lawardorn of Only Sp posted a new four part article this month where he talks about how you can craft your own Narrative experience in Fallout 3.

Even as I stood blinking dumbly, waiting for my eyes to adjust to a light brighter than any I had ever seen, I heard the Vault door slam shut behind me. That place had been my home for nineteen long years, and now my best friend had cast me into exile. I could have broken down and cried for the future I’d lost when I shot a hole through the back of The Overseer’s head, but I wasn’t thinking of that at the time. Nor was I thinking of how I’d left my sweetheart behind that cold steel door, most like to never see her again. I wasn’t thinking of what I’d lost and left behind. All I was thinking of was that I had to find my father. He’d left the Vault, and left me to suffer the consequences, and I wanted answers, no matter how far I had to search to find them.

The other three parts of the article can be read here , here, and here.

Pixelated Shawn Bird shares his opinion about how game developers should fix their games. He uses Fallout 3 as an example, and I agree with him.

Last year during one of the big Steam sales I finally got my hands on Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition for around $5 and I thought I was stealing it. That was until I sat down to play it and found that the game would constantly freeze and I would have to bring up my task manager to shut it down. At first I thought it might be a silly glitch, but then I learned that it was a deep rabbit hole of which there was no return.

I am not a PC gamer because I know my way around installing games and screwing with game files and folders. I only became a PC gamer about five years ago now and it is because of how easy Steam makes it to play games. Sure I had Diablo II and a few others back in the day, but for the most part PC gaming was out of my element and so I stayed away and stuck to consoles. Consoles, you know like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, hardware that could still play Fallout 3 on if I had it for those systems. I actually did own it for both of those systems at different times, but of course traded them in for that lustrous gaming credit to purchase other games.

I have put hundreds of hours into Fallout 3 and even all the DLC for it. I have completed 99% of all the game’s missions. I even collected all the bobbleheads on more than one occasion. So you might be asking “Why rebuy it?” Well I miss it, a lot and now on PC I can livestream it and/or make YouTube videos of me playing it and all the whacky things that happen. Fallout 3 is an amazing game, one of the most popular from last generation. It is the reason we all are clamoring for a Fallout 4, that and surely partially because of this whole debacle. That is what upsets me the most about this whole situation. If it was a game I didn’t care so much for I would just cut my loses and go on my way, but I love Fallout 3! It is even on my top ten list of games from last generation. I really want to play it again and unfortunately, I can’t under these circumstances.

Kotaku has news about a new speedrunner who beat Fallout 3 in under 24 minutes. Now I really don't care, but some of you might find this interesting.

Watch as speedrunner BubblesDelFuego jets across the capital wasteland, all in the name of speed. Bubbles manages to beat the game in an astounding 23:55, beating the previous record of 24:20.

The previous record for an "any percentage" run was also held by BubblesDelFuego, by the way. He beat his personal best, though you can look at the Fallout 3 leaderboard in this Google Doc here.

Bubbles makes use of many well-known Fallout 3 speedrunning strategies here, such as 'load clipping' (which allows you to move through objects as the game is loading), and 'dialogue skips' (quick-saving and quick-loading allows you to skip dialogue). These are glitches that are available to anyone who plays the game.

I'm amazed not just at the number of ways one can simply walk through geometry, but how many highly dangerous situations a player can simply...run through. Bubbles finds himself sailing through locations bursting with either super mutants or people equipped with power-armor, but nobody manages to stop him. Of course, knowing that he could simply run past everything didn't help, as I still found myself watching with panic.

If your interested in reading a late review, and taking a poll for Fallout 3 then head on over to Press Start to Begin were they have both. Here is a small sample.

Fallout 3 came out in October 2008, roughly five and a half years ago. It won a large number of Game of the Year awards, deservedly so. It was one of the most revolutionary games of its time. It’s an open world FPS done right.  If you haven’t had the chance to play this game, get it. Be sure to get the Game of the Year edition, it comes with all the DLCs.

Much like leifofrohan3891 in her review of Fallout 3, I didn’t play this game when it was new. I was starting to get back into gaming at that time, playing games like Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 as well as Dead Rising. I played Fallout 3 for the first time less than a month ago, only recently beating it. And I can tell you, I was impressed. The game held up well, offering better gameplay and graphics than a lot of modern games.

Nouse takes a look back at Fallout 3 in this new retrospective.

This game revolutionised the way I looked at games. Yes it may have stolen many hours from my life but if you haven’t experienced any of the Fallout series this would be the perfect modern starting point; and if you just want to start a new game, the awesome nature of this game will be the greatest value for money I could ever think of.

If you ever wanted to play Co-Op in Fallout 3 you can now thanks to a bunch of talented modders who finally released a mod called the Vault-Tec Multiplayer Mod.

This is an intermediate release with a lot of new features and fixes. It still lacks server-side damage calculation / hit detection, which is planned for gary 3. See this video using this release: http://fuch.si/dh

• A lot of fixes and improvements
• Huge extensions to server-side scripting interface
• Inventory now completely server-sided, resolving several issues
• Foundational / default scripts for getting started

Please update your version. Previous releases will no longer be able to use the master server.

Note: the Windows version of the server comes with pre-compiled foundational scripts. On Linux, you have to compile them yourself. Ask in the forums or checkout the makefile in the repository for help on this.

The Escapist Magazine has news that Bethesda will be removing Windows Live from Fallout 3. This shouldn't be a surprise as the service will be shutting down.

Fallout 3, Bethesda's open-world post-apocolyptic RPG, has recently had several strings pertaining to its Games for Windows Live functionality removed, according to the folks over at Neogaf.

Games for Windows Live has been dying a slow and agonizing death. The service, which was never really very popular from the start, saw several games abandon it last year before Microsoft finally threw up its hands and said "I give up".

With Fallout 3 set to have its GFWL functionality removed, it doesn't leave too many more games that rely on the service. Games that relied on the service as their sole point-of-sale, such as Gears of War and Halo 2, dissapeared for sale forever when the service shut down.

Ties that Bind is a new mod for Fallout 3 that adds a new family member to your journey through the game. I just started playing and so far it's enjoyable.

Ties that Bind - A Narrative Companion Mod

The mod was inspired by Liam Neeson's emotionally evocative portrayal of the player's father, and aims to build on this experience through a character who voices many of the natural responses the player has to the game's events. The tie between the player and Amanda will eventually grow even stronger than that with the father, as she is always with him/her through thick and thin, until the bitter end where her survival will rest in the player's hands.

Features

Ties that Bind features over 700 lines of dialogue, written by the same talent behind The Institute, and professionally voiced by actress Amanda Jane Herries. It promises a compelling story that adds to and enhances the original Fallout 3 narrative; including cutscenes, dynamic experience, and choices with genuine consequence.

You can download the mod off the nexus.

Eurogamer has new article looking back at games that defined this generation, and Fallout 3 was one of them.

For many years the Fallout community was a strange place to lurk. An airtight vault, where denizens in musty blue uniforms would desperately bang on the inside of its thick metal door for attention. Day in. Day out.

They dreamt of a shared isometric past and the brown tint of forgotten wastelands. In truth, however, the prospect of the Van Buren project - a true Black Isle Fallout 3 - had died with the studio that created it.

Hope faded, and the water chip malfunctioned: the countdown to oblivion was well underway.

Their salvation was unexpected. Bethesda descended from upon high, and vowed to recreate Fallout in its own image. Underdog-rooters everywhere high-fived, Vault Boy gave a cheeky thumbs-up and there was much rejoicing.

The old guard Fallout faithful, however, feared 'Oblivion with Guns'. As it would turn out, perhaps, rightly so. The Bethesda takeover was like watching wads of foreign cash being injected into your favoured ailing football team - suddenly expected to play in front of bigger crowds, display fancier footwork and dispense with a long-maintained little-league mentality.

Fallout 3 however (alongside the likes of X-Com) came from the right place - a design team energised and invigorated by the approval of their teenage selves. It used the past as an intelligent stepping stone towards modern mass-appeal roleplay and, arguably, eased the passage of kickstarted re-apocalypses like Wasteland 2.

Today, even a half-thought dedicated to a post-Skyrim Fallout 4, running on the next generation consoles and modern PCs, can lead to a permanent and debilitating state of arousal.

Ron Perlman makes a habit of stating "War, war never changes" - it's his opening gambit at dinner parties. He must know, however, that it isn't true. War had to change, and Fallout had to change with it if it were ever going to survive outside the vault. The fans it left behind, the hardcore who thought it tainted by exposure to the outside world and cast it out, were saddened. That can't be denied. The way Fallout 3 strode out, blinked beneath an unfamiliar sun and went on to thrive, however, genuinely made it one of the greatest experiences of this generation.

Will Ooi has a new retrospective on his blog about Fallout 3 were he writes that the game broke the fanbase in two.

The production of Fallout 3 had suffered through a long and sordid affair, with the rights to the franchise undergoing a protracted saga after the closing down of the series’ original development house, Black Isle Studios, and the cancellation of their vision of the third installment, codenamed Van Buren, before eventually leaving the grasp of a post-Brian Fargo Interplay (a memorable figure behind many revered 90′s RPGs who’s now back on the scene after Wasteland 2′s Kickstarter success) and landing in the hands of the Elder Scrolls developer, Bethesda Game Studios.

When this reimagined Fallout game did arrive in late 2008, a full decade after Fallout 2 (and not counting the best-forgotten console-market-focused Brotherhood of Steel, which incidentally existed at the expense of Black Isle’s version of Fallout 3 under disastrous new stewardship at Interplay) and with Morrowind and Oblivion lead Todd Howard at the helm, it did so with a Megaton bang. Despite the almost-unanimous critical acclaim and Game of the Year awards that left other big-hitting titles like GTA IV, Mass Effect, Bioshock and Metal Gear Solid 4 in the dust, another apocalypse was taking place over at the Fallout forums – chief among them No Mutants Allowed and the Fallout Wiki – with the existence of the latter an indication of both the richness of the series’ lore and commitment of its fanbase.

The ripple of complaints tore through quickly and in great intensity, with old school fans making known their feelings that Fallout 3 resembled and respected little of what had come before, more FPS than RPG and essentially a standalone title that sought to appeal to newcomers who had never played, or even heard of, the originals. Gone too was that West Coast of America setting, with Washington DC’s Capital Wasteland being undoubtably vast and detailed, but also severely lacking in internal consistency and logic – in 200 years since the war, how could these communities still live in squalor without any viable trade or agriculture? What, exactly, do they eat?

Mogwins has provided us with an article were he takes a look back at Fallout 3.

Every music fan has a story of a much-loved artist who fell from grace upon hitting the big time. They're often deemed to have "sold out", or had their creativity compromised by the restrictions of a major label. Of course, many of these tales are simply I-knew-them-first elitism, while others are just the result of an artist's new direction no longer gelling with a fan's personal taste. Some of these stories, however, ring true: Mass-market appeal is often achieved at the expense of the very quirks and rough edges which were central to the original appeal. Assessing the quality of both music and games is intrinsically subjective, but any personal history makes merit-based judgement even more difficult...

Nukapedia talked with Erik Dellums who is best known for his role as "Three Dog". They talk about "That dog gone tweet", Fallout 3, and much more.

You might recall a piece from a week or so back from the California Literary Review that speculated on Fallout 4 being set in Boston - they're back, speculating on other settings:

New York City?

Yes, yes, I know. I just spent a whole article saying western states are the heart of Fallout. But aside from the plot considerations I alluded to, there’s a major reason why the Boston rumor has as much credibility as it does.

Not only is the Northeast mostly untapped in the Fallout world, but considering the popularity of the game (and the supposed “lackluster” success of New Vegas) a direct, linear progression from Fallout 3 makes so much sense from a sales perspective that Bethesda would have to be pretty dumb to not follow up with Fallout: New Fan Service. Say what you will about their abilities as game designers – lord knows I have – they’re damn smart businessmen.

It seems that’s what happens when you dump all your points into Barter and Luck!

My argument for New York as opposed to Boston is simple: why settle for the opening act, when you’re really waiting for the headlining band? Like John Lennon said, New York City IS the Rome of the modern world, and there’s little reason this status would’ve changed by the time the bombs fell, so it seems inevitable that a Fallout game will get here eventually. If there’s going to be (ideally) alternating locations for the Fallout series, some in the East and some in the West, let’s just get to the Manhattan Project everyone’s expecting!

The California Literary Review has an editorial about how Boston doesn't belong in Fallout 4. This is the first part of the post on the video game blog, the second part will deal with five places better than Boston for Fallout 4.  They see Fallout as a frontier tale set in the western states of the USA. An excerpt about this:

The two genres most dominant in Fallout – Post-Apocalypse and Western – are rather the same thing in a lot of ways. The frontier life is almost indistinguishable from living in a shattered civilization, apart from the technology available. Fallout is simply a Western epic but with lasers, and a well made one at that (unlike certain Favreau helmed projects). But while the Frontier Westerns are about the freedom of new lands and the promise of a new life found within wild borders, post-apocalyptic tales most often dwell in the anarchy of old lands and the slow death of the last among them. Fallout, in attempting to be the post-apocalypse with a sense of humor, had to find a way to coexist between these two extremes. It’s through the Southwestern setting, and all that came with it, that I feel Fallout found its true identity, it’s true balance. The heart of the desert, a place centered on the nothingness of empty space and the total freedom the player has to choose in this void. There is no major history to decay, for the place is timeless; there is no culture to lose, for the people are ongoing.

Although not specifically on Fallout 3 (it uses it as a basis though ) an article is available on 'The problem With Story' about the problems the writer has with the character creation part of RPGs.

I could have chosen any RPG here. Demon’s Souls, Dragon Age, Skyrim, anything that uses a face and character creator. But clearly, Fallout 3 creates a specific attempt to connect you to your character more than any other game of its type by actually having you experience your birth, childhood and adolescence.

By all accounts you should connect to this character the most, after having experienced literally everything they have as well. But you don’t. Walking through Fallout 3’s wasteland, I’m more struck by the sense of loneliness and despair than I am any type of grief when I’m killed by a fellow raider.

Why? What is it that whenever my character is killed or damaged, I have absolutely no concern for his wellbeing?

Thanks BlackCanopus.

This seems a bit lae to the party but Resolution Magazine has an in-character journal on Fallout 3 called A Vault Dweller's Journey (Part 1 and Part 2).  The intro:

ONLY A few days ago I was safe and comfortable inside vault 101. Funny how quickly things change, how fate can lead you into such danger so quickly. On leaving the vault I almost immediately found myself having to kill in order to survive. A Bloatfly, the size of a human head, attacked me just a few short steps from the vault door.  My father left the vault only a matter of hours ago but I found little trace of him. I came by a town called Megaton close to the vault, seemed like a good place to ask some questions but I’ve never been good at socialising and those I met must of known it, they decided I was a prick after taking one look. Perceptive bunch.  The only person that seemed to like me was the sheriff of Megaton, Simms, but that soon changed when I opened my mouth. Still, he did help point me in the right direction for information about my father, a local bar owner, Moriarty, so that’s where I am now, in a bar waiting for this guy to show.

NMA sent word they have noticed some new concept art from Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 DLCs from artist Wesley Burt.

"Demakes" are new to me but Bethsoft has put one together to market Fallout 3 for the Japanese market.  For those interested, you can download a "game" that looks like an 8-bit RPG with Fallout 3 references - you'll need to understand Japanese or just be interesting in futzing around.  Full story at the Bethblog (thanks to Omega for a similar story).

The Bethblog has posted a couple of apparently previously unreleased concept arts from Craig Mullins, showing views of the capital.

For the small handful of people who have Fallout 3 on the PS3 and are Playstation Plus subscribers, the EU Playstation Blog has news you'll be able to grab all the DLC for free over the next two weeks.

Alrik sent us a link to an interesting piece on Fallout 3 from a site called Critical Distance.  It's an impressive examination of the critical response to Fallout 3, with dozens of links to articles and some of the issues they examine or praise they have.  Here's a quote as an example:

The NPC writing didn’t just foul up the immersion, it also fiddled unpleasantly with the game’s approach to morality. In “Fun and loathing in Las Vegas Washington D.C.”, Ben Abraham identifies a tension between the portrayal of certain characters and the feel of the game. In his opinion, Mr. Burke comes across as a very cartoonish, moustache-twirling villain that is inappropriate in the context of the gritty, realistic game world. The game seems to make judgments about characters, sometimes without asking the real questions.

I express a similar complaint in “There’s nothing in it for you”, arguing that the game doesn’t provide the NPCs or the player with reasons to be evil beyond sheer insanity. In particular, the relative abundance of supplies in the Wasteland seems to defeat the feeling of desperation that might make an attractive core for such a personal narrative. Shamus Young had similar problems with Mr. Burke’s quest, as he describes in “The Power of the Atom”, where he critiques the flimsy writing behind what may be Fallout 3’s most affecting visual sequence. David Wildgoose, in contrast, found that the information he dug up on Megaton’s citizens from Moriarty’s computer, painting them as “sleazy losers”, helped him see Burke’s side of it. For me, the chief reason for evil comes not from any of the writing, but rather from the V.A.T.S. system. In “Power’s joy and sorrow” I opine that the system presents killing as an empowering pleasure, and in that way makes a case for war.

Steam now offers each of the five Fallout 3 DLCs for a price at 9.99 US dollars each. A but steep, since the GOTY edition retails for about 50 US dollars. However, if you only miss one or two of them, it may well be worth it.

VATS: How Bethesda Set Their Sights On The Lowest Demoninator and Hit a Bullseye is the title of editorial at Duck and Cover on the "dumbing down" of Fallout 3.  You can probably guess at the content from the title but it's not without some pertinent points.  An early snip:

When one saw the increasing “streamlining” under the helm of Todd Howard, coupled with an approach that showed little fidelity to RPG roots, into a more console friendly shooter style game. The message was becoming clear, the appeal would be to the gut, not the mind. Rather than appealing to the RPG crowd with a fundamentally sound RPG, they would go for a more corporate, trendy, “McRPG” style of game that would put training wheels on it’s RPGs so as not to alienate the lowest common denominator. A profitable approach I’m sure, but not the most conducive to RPG fundamentals or fidelity to Fallout and it’s RPG system, which was Fallout’s entire rasion d’etre.

As the veil slowly lifted on Fallout 3, we began to see this more Oblivion-like approach (same design team, same engine) with some familiar Oblivion concepts new to Fallout (FP perspective, mini-games, scaled down threats, large but shallow world, same reliance on marketing, gimmicks and superficial graphics or big name Hollywood voice actors, r) added in as well, mostly at the expense of Fallout’s defining and integral RPG foundation.

Shamus Young from Twenty Sided has turned his attention to Fallout 3, with one of his "Now Playing" videocasts.  Basically, this is a 43 minute video with Shamus and a couple of friends commenting on Fallout 3 as they play.  To quote, they "kick the crap out of it".

UK site Resolution Magazine has a retrospective piece on Fallout 3.  The author explains why it didn't work for him, despite loving Oblivion.  Here's the intro:

Let’s go back in time a couple of weeks. It’s the end of the month. Saturday. My bank account lies in ruins. A trip into town to trade some games beckons. I rummage through the pile, trying to sort out anything that might fetch me a fair rate of exchange. Fallout 3 stares back at me, dusty and neglected. I pick it up, hesitate, put it back. I’ve been meaning to return to it for months now, and I promise myself yet again that I will, and soon. Then I wonder: “why?”

I pick it up again, my resolve clear.

I feel as if it’s somehow my fault that I don’t enjoy Fallout 3. I feel as if I haven’t made enough effort. Everyone else seems to like it. Forum threads are heaving with praise, critics gush over its never-diminishing returns. I feel like the lone voice of dissent, the guy standing there saying, “Look! The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

Xbox Live is offering an exclusive sale for Gold members, giving all 5 DLC add-ons for Fallout 3 at 50% off (400 Microsoft Points). The sale started yesterday, March 22nd and will continue through Sunday, March 28th. 

Rampant Coyote catches up with this century, having finally finished Fallout 3.  Like a lot of people, he found the ending unsatisfactory and writes about the difficulties of using this sort of ending.  Spoilers, if you haven't finished FO3:

I finally finished Fallout 3 last week, as my new computer could finally run the game and only crash once every hour or so instead of every three minutes. I took plenty of time, and even took the “explorer” perk so I could check out much of the additional content beyond the main storyline. I played it without any of the expansions, like Broken Steel, which I understand “corrects” the ending of Fallout 3.

But I still wanna rant. If you have played the game, too, you may already know what I want to rant about (though the title of this post probably gives it away).  IMO, it’s not a trivial thing to write a good martyrdom story.  There’s a lot more to the story of Jesus than “oh, and then this guy chose to die to save others, the end.” I didn’t like it in the Matrix movies – where the whole martyrdom thing was at least handled better than in Fallout 3, but the later movies sucked the joy out of the first movie anyway – and it really  has to be handled very carefully in a game  where you are playing the would-be sacrificial victim.

In an editorial entitled 'Videogame fans need to shup about everything', Jim Sterling from Destructoid looks both at how Diablo fans want to maintain Diablo's tone as darker - as well as some of the upheaveal that was going on between Bethesda and the fans of Fallout. Here's one of his rather spicy comments:

So, these people were complaining about a new game for their favorite franchise that was pretty good by all accounts and made a lot of money, ensuring future Fallout games for quite some time. Yet, had these guys had their way, I doubt we'd even be talking about Fallout DLC, or New Vegas, or anything Fallout-related right now. Had these guys had their way, we'd have a game that looked, sounded, and played like something from 1997, and it would have sold to a small group who would then have likely complained that it hadn't changed enough.

We don't normally cover the various Fallout 3 mod interviews found on the Bethblog but I thought the recent Fallout: New Vegas news might have some dusting off the box for a re-play and Dustin Jackson's work sounds particularly interesting:

Your series of Fallout 3 quest mods contains very little combat. Are you generally a fan of nonviolent games — or at least games that allow for a less-violent approach?

I think that giving players different ways to tackle situations makes for more engaging, realistic situations. There’s just not that many games that routinely offer the player the ability to resolve situations through speech options. The fact that Fallout takes place in a shattered wasteland also contributed to my desire to craft adventures that focus on the remnants of lives before the war instead of combat. I like the thought of wandering ravaged cities, picking my way through rubble, and then intently reading a note about which flavor of frosting a grandma was trying to decide to use on a birthday cake on two hundred years ago. A study in contrasts.

A little schadenfreude at the expense of Bethesda in this article at Bitmob.

Ages upon ages ago, I asked you to participate in a quick survey on Fallout 3's best and worst glitches. You've no doubt noticed my inability to do any of my own writing on time at this point, but I do churn out quality work on a daily basis because I love you all.

Anyway, the results are in. Since Tiger Survey doesn't have an option for your name, and I forgot to ask like the moron I sometimes am, none of the results are identified. Feel free to claim your responses in the comments.

Now, on to the funny. (Lucky, lucky, Jason Wilson never experienced a glitch with this game. Aren't you a fancy man?)

Nominated with Call of Duty World at War, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots; Fallout 3 takes Ultimate GOTY award from the Golden Joystick awards in London.

This is the award every publisher wants to win, the Ultimate Game The Year award. If you pick this one up, you've made a really good game. In the nominations were giants such as Fallout 3, Call of Duty World at War, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto, IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. See - them's some big guns.But there can be only one. And the golden gong went to... Fallout 3 and Bethesda.

A brief break from the Dragon Age show, with a review of the entire group of Fallout 3 DLCs on the PS3 at a site called GameFocus.  Here's their conclusion and scores:

Broken Steel Final Score is 8/10
Mothership Zeta Final Score is 9/10
Operation Anchorage Final Score is 7/10
The Pitt Final Score 9/10
Point Lookout Final Score 8/10

Pros

+ More content for our favorite post-apocalyptic RPG
+ Adds a lot of great quests and gear to use
+ Expansion of game to level 30 with Broken Steel is fantastic
+ Breathes new life into the game for those who ran through it the first time

Cons

- Some of the content might seem pricey for just a few hours of gaming
- Not the best place to see the expansions at their finest

If you've been holding out on Fallout 3 DLC to get the whole package, Bethsoft announces the Game of the Year Edition is now out:

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition Now Available

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition is now available in North America, and will be available in Europe on Friday, October 16th. The game includes Fallout 3, winner of over 80 Game of the Year awards, plus all five game add-ons -- Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

Some details on Fallout 3 DLC for the PS3 and a planned Game of the Year Edition from the official site:

The first DLC for PlayStation 3, Broken Steel, will be available next Thursday, September 24th in English territories. That will be followed by the release of “Operation: Anchorage” and “The Pitt” on October 1st, and “Point Lookout” and “Mothership Zeta” on October 8. Check here for details on a new game update for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

Additionally, we are also pleased to announce that Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC) will be available at retail on Tuesday, October 13th. The Game of the Year edition includes Fallout 3 and all five DLCs. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions will retail for $59.99 and the Games for Windows version will be available for $49.99.

A couple of days ago, Bethsoft announced the Fallout 3 Addon Pack #2 is available, offering  Broken Steel and Point Lookout at retail.

Gamebanshee has posted a comprehensive look at the Mothership Zeta DLC for Fallout 3. You can find links to everything described below here along with this description:

As expected, we've put together a full review, a comprehensive walkthrough, a profile of the new perk, equipment database additions, a batch of new screenshots, and a set of achievements for Bethesda's fifth and final Fallout 3 DLC installment. A bit of what to expect from the review:

"Then there are the enemies -- all three of them. Despite the DLC being combat-oriented, with almost nothing in the way of meaningful dialogue, quests or decisions, you keep fighting the same enemies -- aliens, robotic drones, and odd creatures called abominations -- over and over again. Worse, the enemies all drop the same limited number of alien items, including a grand total of four new types of weapons, and so looting your kills and the numerous containers in the mothership isn’t a lot of fun, either."

Here's a rip of a list of Mothership Zeta reviews from the official site:

New reviews for Mothership Zeta are available at G4TV, GameFocus, Game Trailers, Kotaku, UGO, The Hachiko, 360 Junkies, Cheat Code Central, GameDaily, EndSights, GamerLimit, AtomicGamer, Koku Gamer, Feed Your Console, Gamervision and Game Revolution.

Linear, repetitive and some tedium still gets you a 7/10, apparently.  From GameZone's review of Mothership Zeta:

On the whole, it seems Mothership Zeta is a simple bit of entertainment that doesn’t last very long. Even if you don’t mind that it plays like a big shooting gallery, things tend to get rather tedious early on. There’s nothing that will keep die-hard fans from going nuts over it, but even they will be forced to admit that this is far from the highlight of Fallout 3. There are trinkets that can be collected, and much scenery to be admired, but not really enough to keep players coming back for more. When push comes to shove, the penny-pinchers will find the earlier downloads to be more worth the price of admission. 

Another disappointed reviewer hands out a 6/10 for Mothership Zeta, this at Destructoid:

By this point, I began to see a somewhat alarming trend. "Mothership Zeta" consists of you walking through corridors, fighting a few aliens, walking through more corridors, coming into a room, pressing buttons, more fighting, and finally tampering with cooling systems to open doors. This would be absolutely fine if Fallout 3 had a decent first-person shooter mechanic, but that simply isn’t the case.

6/10 is the score for Fallout 3's Mothership Zeta at IncGamers, with their review criticising the linear shooting:

The greatest element of Fallout 3 is the exploration and the freedom to come and go as you please when and where you want to. Mothership Zeta, however, plays out like Operation Anchorage and is all very linear. At one point in the game you can choose in which order to play a handful of the missions, but there really is no feeling of true exploration as you're herded down one corridor after another blasting aliens. Sure there are a number of areas in the ship to visit from the cargo room (amusingly decked out with mementos from Earth which the aliens have been collecting) to the machinery-heavy engine room, but it all starts to get too familiar too quickly. Whilst, as ever, the visuals are impressive, once you get past the initial awe and excitement of being beamed aboard an alien ship it all starts to wear a little thin.  There are a couple of standout moments, the finale being one and another about half way through when you get to don a space suit and carry out a space walk (Dead Space anyone?), but they are frustratingly few and far between.  Operation Anchorage was combat heavy and Mothership Zeta is no different. Bethesda has attempted to give you the option of taking a stealthy approach, as at the start of the game you team up with a child abductee, who scouts ahead (having climbed into the ships walls, Newt from Aliens anyone?), advising you of the locations of the aliens. However, this does not really work, as inevitably you will have to blast some of them at some point in order to progress. At this point, the others in the vicinity always come running.

AtomicGamer serves up a review of the latest Fallout 3 DLC, Mothership Zeta.  Apparently the action is zany but linear, though the overall score is 81%.  Here's an early snip:

Zeta beams you up for a little bit of the ol' alien probing, and from there you'll have to get free and fight your way through the ship to escape with your life. If you're wondering where aliens came from, well, clearly you haven't played enough Fallout - and yes, there was a dead alien for you to find in the third game, as well, complete with unique weapon. Well, you'll get a lot more than that with this $10 package, as it delivers a mostly linear dungeon-like experience with plenty of action and lots of angry green aliens (and their droids) to fight.

Unlike the last DLC pack, Point Lookout, this one gives you little in the way of choice on how to do things. You won't find much exploring of the alien's ship to do, but what you will get is a good few hours of action and a solid ending full of fireworks to enjoy. It's nice to see a complete change of scenery for once. When it comes to completely pulling you out of the Capital Wasteland element, no DLC has gone quite this far, not even Operation Anchorage - you haven't seen something quite as tripped out in this game since your trip down Tranquility Lane.

The Edge Online isn't as generous, scoring 6/10 for linearity, design issues and bugs:

Whoever designed such beauty should be pretty peeved at the game around it. The strictly linear story and onslaught of enemies, many of who like to hang back and soak up ammo with their energy shields, leave little tolerance for errors and flaws. On this particular spin of the Fallout bugs roulette wheel, we encountered a script bug so catastrophic that we couldn’t finish the game - we actually had to clip through a doorway and use console commands to bring everything back on track. Early community feedback suggests this is as bad as it gets, but it’s a far from isolated case.

Design flaws include a bizarre decision to cordon off most of the ship after completion, locking away any unique items you previously overlooked. Much of the game commendably favours stealth players but the rest can feel shambolic. The much-vaunted spacewalk in the souvenir Gemini Spacesuit gets plenty of build-up, and could have been extraordinary had it not been 30 seconds long. And there are a fair few nagging Bethesda-isms in there, too, such as you losing karma for shooting often indistinguishable alien workers.

Meanwhile, Barry's Review Blog looks at Point Lookout with another review-cum-in-character-story, with a score of 8/10:

Fallout 3: Point Lookout has enough few brilliant and memorable moments that makes it a worthwhile addition to your library of Fallout 3 content. Though much of the main quest and most of the side quests are top notch, the ending of the main quest falls short of the drama and excitement of The Pitt and Broken Steel. No doubt some will find "the lesser of two evils" choice you are forced to make at the conclusion of Point Lookout a refreshing change. Others may feel that Bethesda ran out of creative steam for not bringing Point Lookout to a stronger ending with a greater reward (or penalty) for the player having to make a strictly good or evil choice. But with Mothership Zeta, the fifth and final Fallout 3 DLC add-on now available for download, Bethesda may very well be saving their best, for last.

Eurogamer seem rather disappointed with Beth's latest DLC for Fallout 3.

Where Mothership Zeta really falls down is the complete lack of inspiration in the mission design. Generally you can rely on Bethesda to intelligently weave complex scenarios around practically anything, with the key characters each having their own specific agenda. Once you've taken in the situation, it's entirely down to your own moral leanings as to which direction you decide to take any given mission. Never quite knowing who is really the good guy, or the least bad guy has made for some thrilling missions in past Bethesda games (and past DLC), but none of that applies here. At best, you can rope in some characters to help kick arse, but for the most part you're reduced to the most soulless of gameplay tasks - breaking machines by pressing buttons.

With repetitive, largely uninspired corridor combat, and boring, linear and samey mission design, the least you'd hope is that there would be some supplementary side quests to extend the lifespan - but not so. Having delivered five main quests, five side-quests and three unmarked quests in the vast Point Lookout expansion, to follow that up with such a limited DLC pack is curious. Throughout its programme of downloadable releases, it felt like Bethesda was learning and improving its output. But having started poorly with Operation: Anchorage, it concludes Fallout 3 in equally disappointing fashion.

Geek.com has a roundup of all five Fallout 3 DLCs, although they haven't actually played Mothership Zeta.  Here's a snip on Point Lookout:

Point Lookout takes to you a swampy, forested land that seems to have never left the Civil War era. The land is also post-apocalytic, but it still has some trees and rather than fighting mutant beasts, you battle deformed hillbillies and tribe members. The missions in Point Lookout don’t seem particularly important (save a girl, find a religilous text, defeat the big bad guy in his underground lair) but they are enough to get you to run through the map. The real value of the DLC comes with the side missions, including one involving a spy, which turns out to be on of the longest and most involved missions in Fallout 3.

Mothership Zeta has landed, according to the very short blurb at the official site.  Note they specify "final DLC":

Fallout 3's final DLC, Mothership Zeta, is now available for download on Games for Windows LIVE and Xbox LIVE for 800 points.

With Mothership Zeta due Monday, three new things have hit at once.  First, Ausir writes in to point out an interview at Polish site Polygmia that comes replete with an English version:

Aliens in previous Fallout games, as well as in vanilla Fallout 3, were mostly small easter eggs, with hard to find alien spaceships or weapons. What made you decide to make a full-fledged add-on focusing on them and how does it fit with the rest of the Fallout setting?

In the base Fallout 3 game, we have the crashed alien spaceship, Recon Craft Theta, so we had already lain the groundwork. And that's an actual location, not really an Easter Egg, so it does imply some kind of extraterrestrial presence in the game world.

Beyond that, using the Alien theme just felt really natural for us. UFOs and aliens are a big part of 1950s pulp fiction (who can forget the UFO crashing into the Capitol Building in "Earth versus the Flying Saucers"?), so featuring that in a DLC seemed like a great way for us to explore that element of the fiction.

Next, Bethsoft's Pete Hines sends word of a new dev diary from world arist Istvan Pely:

I've always wanted to know the story behind Recon Craft Theta. Finding a crashed UFO in the middle of the Wasteland would peak any explorer's curiosity. The pilot's corpse you find is clearly alien, and his technology is clearly quite advanced, given the deadly effectiveness of a certain gadget you find here. Yet the fact remains that this spacecraft, advanced or not, is lying smashed in a ditch just northeast of nowhere. And the story might have ended here, if not for the faint garbled radio transmission your Pip-Boy picks up from the UFO's distress beacon. If your primitive bit of technology can detect the beacon, there's little doubt that "others" are listening as well.

And with that begins the Vault Dweller's final and most fantastical adventure in the Capital Wasteland, or rather several hundred miles far above it. The concept of the UFO visit emerged early in the idea-toss sessions we had for DLC, in fact it was the very first thing to pop into my mind; it just seemed a natural fit. But we saved it for last, as a fitting conclusion to the Vault Dweller's story. The whole "where no man has gone…" business and all that. It's a fresh new venue with completely original environments to explore, hopefully instilling a sense of discovery of the unknown. It starts with an abduction, and your ultimate goal is to regain your freedom. But, if you play your cards right, you'll have a pretty massive item of loot to call your own (with an infinitely massive place to keep it).

Finally, a new trailer has been released (thanks also Kostaz).

Bethsoft has updated the PC version of Fallout 3, adding the Achievements in anticipation of the Mothership Zeta DLC.  The update is automatic through Live, or the file will be available at the official site soon.

Bethsoft is pointing out Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta DLC interviews at Go! Gaming Giant and Talking About Games.  Neither breaks new territory so head over if you are following Mothership Zeta and want to read all the material.

Another day, another review of Point Lookout for Fallout 3.  AtomicGamer obviously really liked it, awarding 85 out of 10:

You'll get a lot of the same choices you're used to from the original game: side with the bad guys or... the other bad guys? Take on combinations of enemies with up-close or distance weaponry? Grab the perks (maybe from leveling past, say, 25 after the Broken Steel pack) to increase your combat efficiency or make non-combat roles a little more convenient? What I like about Point Lookout is that it serves as a follow-up for Broken Steel's increased level cap and conclusion of the Enclave storyline nicely, and with this DLC pack's landmass being much larger than you might expect, there's plenty to explore. Of course, if you only do the main quest and then run back to the Capital Wasteland, then you might be disappointed in the overall length of Point Lookout - it just doesn't last as long unless you're willing to poke around the new acreage to find the additional side quests and out-of-the-way areas to explore. One nice thing for those who haven't finished the original game is that unlike the previous DLC pack, Point Lookout works for characters of all levels, although I recommend you stock up on ammo and make sure you can field repair your weapons easily - not being able to quickly pop back to your Megaton shack is a bit of a drag.

We've added three new Mothership Zeta screens to our galery, enjoy!

MTV has a brief preview/interview on Mothership Zeta with input from Jeff Gardiner.  Here's a bit on weapons:

Mothership Zeta is full of the most high tech weaponry in the game. It includes a Shock Baton for melee fighters, multiple new firearms including an Alien Atomizer, a pistol, and the Alien Disintegrator, a new rifle. There's also a new grenade type, a Cryo Grenade, which freezes enemies for a short period of time. On top of that there are new unique weapons, and a new heavy weapon

The official Fallout 3 site has a list of new Point Lookout reviews, so here's a rip:

• Game People
• The Scotsman
• NG-Gamer
• GamingXP
• GameOn

...and a sample from the last:

Other new opponents include a distinct new Mirelurk variant, Smugglers who don't take kindly to competition and an insane religious cult, The Tribals, who play a large part in the main quest. With a little exploration you stumble across a huge mansion under attack by these spiritual maniacs and are soon roped into investigating them. Whilst the story is relatively short, there are some nice interesting missions and you are forced to make decisions which have a few unexpected outcomes. With only a handful of individual tasks it is very easy to rush through to the end and I imagine some might feel short changed.

However, the missions feel part of the environment. Instead of being a virtual reality simulation or set of quests, this feels like a new location. Searching through the undergrowth to stumble across a group of Swampfolk standing in a filthy and dishevelled children's play area is incredibly sinister, especially when there are dolls thrust on spikes and skeletons hanging from trees. Similarly, finding a half sunken research ship with a sinister back-story is also a little chilling.

MTV asked Bethsoft if Fallout 3's level cap could possibly be increased beyond the current lvl 30 and received this (somewhat humerous in my opinion) response from Jeff Gardiner:

I know from the outside this seems like a fairly simple proposition, but doing this could unbalance the game in a variety of ways.

Another generic Mothership Zeta interview is available, this time at GamePro:

Travis: Tell more about the aliens themselves. What are they like, what are they called, why are they "pissed"?

Jeff Gardiner: The aliens are the same type that people claim are currently abducting people around the globe, small grayish-green with long appendages and big heads with huge eyes. They are studying humanity to see if we're a threat, they have no proper name.

We have four new screens from the latest Fallout 3 DLC Mothership Zeta for you.

Mothership Zeta is scheduled to be released on the 3rd of August and has the following features:

Description: Defy hostile alien abductors and fight your way off of the massive Mothership Zeta, orbiting Earth miles above the Capital Wasteland. Mothership Zeta takes Fallout 3 in an entirely new direction - outer space. Meet new characters and join with them in a desperate bid to escape the Aliens' clutches. To do so, you'll wield powerful new weapons, like the Alien Atomizer, Alien Disintegrator, and Drone Cannon, and deck yourself out in brand new outfits, like the Gemini-Era Spacesuit and even Samurai Armor.

Story: A strange Alien signal is being broadcast throughout the Capital Wasteland, originating from a crashed UFO. Is it a distress call, or something far more sinister? That question is answered when you find yourself beamed aboard an enormous Alien spacecraft, with only one alternative - to fight your way to the bridge of the ship and secure your escape.

Key Features:

• Find and exploit new and destructive alien technology, like the Alien Atomizer and Drone Cannon.
• Explore the vast Mothership and learn the secrets of the Aliens' master plan.
• Thwart the Aliens' attempt to stop your escape, and take over the Alien ship before it wreaks havoc on the unsuspecting Earth below.
• Fight against the Alien Invaders, their robot drones, and turn their own horrible experiments against them.
• Ally yourself with an unexpected array of characters, both from the Capital Wasteland and from Earth's past.

Worthplaying has the news that the full range of Fallout 3 DLC will be rolled out on the PS3, starting in September.

A pretty general interview on Mothership Zeta at OXM:

So when and where does Zeta fit into the events of Fallout 3? How will players discover the Mothership?
As with the previous DLC, there will be a radio broadcast... this one is unintelligible, however, and will lead the player to the alien crash site they may have already found in Fallout 3. The player will then find themselves aboard Mothership Zeta, in Earth's orbit. Let's just say it won't be the friendliest of greetings. From there, they'll meet other abductees, and plot their escape. They'll have to explore and exploit the alien ship- and even spacewalk to escape!

We've already seen the Alien Blaster in Fallout 3 - will there be new technology for gamers to play with?
Most definitely. The player will have a handful of tasty alien technologies to play with. There are new fire arms and melee weapons, which will comprise the most powerful weaponry in the game.

Sol Invictus takes Fallout 3 to task at Hellforge for rehashing old story lines:

War, war never changes. Apparently, neither does Fallout's plot.

Fallout 3 was heralded by numerous video game publications for its supposedly remarkable storytelling, a rarity in video game entertainment. Picking up awards from the Academy of Internactive Arts and Sciences for Best Role Playing Game and Outstanding Achievement in Story (Original), the more ignorant among us would expect for a title of such distinction to offer a storyline as outstanding as any Booker Prize winning book.

Those of us with less naivete might expect for the story to be, at the very least, on par with the stories crafted by Bioware and the now defunct Black Isle Studios.

With few willing to indicate the scarcity of original plot in Fallout 3, save for a few probably rabid fans of the original games who despise Fallout 3 just for the sake of doing it, it rests upon my shoulders to set things straight. Of course, I say this in jest. Anyone who's played any of the previous games will understand where I'm coming from with this bold claim against Fallout 3's superiority in storytelling.

GameBanshee dropped us a line to point out Point Lookout Explored - a batch of features including walkthrough, database and a review.  Here's a snip from the latter, with author Steven Carter explaining why the quests didn't impress:

As an example, at one point a guy asks you to find a book. Well, to claim the book you only have to kill about five enemies in one small basement, which takes about five minutes. If you then return the book to the guy, that’s it, quest over. But in one of exactly two places in the DLC where you actually get to make a decision, you can also choose to destroy the book. For that case you have to visit the Dunwich Building in the capital wasteland, and, in amazingly great contrast, the Dunwich Building is about five times larger and five times more interesting than anything in the DLC, and it puts all of the new content to shame. If I’m working for Bethesda, I don’t make that sort of contrast so easy to notice.

This weekend's Steam sale includes Fallout 3, which you can grab for 50% off at USD$24.99.  Fallout 3 is one of those titles with localised prices, so different territories may differ/

A small collection of Point Lookout reviews, today.  From MTV:

The Look
Point Lookout definitely has a unique vibe, compared to the rest of the game. The fact that the ocean is always in sight (since it’s a peninsula) gives the map a very open feel, but bring in rustic backwoods mutants and you have something ripped from “Deliverance.”

The Lows

The New Weapons
Simply: There aren’t enough of them, and the ones that are there aren’t terribly different from weapons we’ve already seen. The lever-action rifle, for example, uses the same model as Lincoln’s Repeater, a unique rifle already found in the game. The double-barreled shotgun looks neat and fits the setting, but is outclassed by the combat shotguns of the mainland. There is a new energy weapon and a new grenade type, but overall it seems a little lacking on this front.

IGN, who scored it at 8.5/10:

Those that explore it all will find five cool side quests and a handful more unmarked quests that can easily eat up hours of your time. The same care and attention to detail was put into this area that you find in the Capital Wasteland which makes this densely packed area one of the most rewarding places to check out in all of Fallout 3. There's a lot to see here, as well. I spent an entire day wandering the swamps and still haven't seen it all. The quests will take you about five hours to work through but you can easily spend a few more just seeing the sights and working through the unmarked quests. Bringing the lighthouse back to life was my favorite little extra.

...and NMA, who cite "clunky combat" but otherwise seem to have enjoyed it:

The gameplay itself is pretty solid. The quests available to the player are varied and interesting, each having a solid backstory connected to places and events within Point Lookout, not to mention that there are a number of plot twists that are bound to take the player by surprise (not an exaggeration) and quite enjoyable scripted sequences, with perhaps the best being the bad trip you go on at one point. The structure of the quests has room for improvement - for instance, the main plotline, featuring Desmond's great game, is linear and you have to progress through the stages in a predetermined order, with no opportunity to tackle an objective in an alternative way or skip it entirely. The other major quest, the Velvet Curtain has a far better structure and can be started in several ways and, while still being fairly linear, gives the player more freedom than the main quest. Other sidequests are for the most part uncomplicated FedEx quests.

Peter Hines has told Eurogamer that Fallout 3 DLC is nearly ready for the PS3:

We are trying to put the finishing touches on it now, but as I said above it's a different task than DLC on another platform, and so there are things we have to finish doing and testing before it's done on PS3.

They also have a Point Lookout review from a day or two back, with a score of 8/10:

Once you start following the main story arc, Point Lookout reveals itself to be a strong contender for the best portion of DLC in the series to date. Dancing between the typically contrasting demands of two sets of squabbling factions, your first task is to visit a potty-mouthed ghoul called Desmond, a former secret agent who finds himself going to slightly absurd lengths to defend his mansion from a tribal cult. Under attack by mercs, you go in, kick some butt and pick up the trail.

A site called Computers N Stuff has the latest Broken Steel review.  It's generally positive but here's a snip on the downside as they head to a score of 7/10:

It’s all not completely plain sailing however, as the new foes are rock-hard to take down for no other reason than ‘they’re high level foes’, the new Ghoul Reaver creature frequently glitches out (rendering them invulnerable unless you target their legs in VATS) and, yet again, the entire main portion of the add-on is just combat, combat & more combat – Oblivion with Guns this is! If the side-quests can offer up placid & non-violent solutions to dangerous situations, why do I have to mow down an entire Enclave battalion single-handed (with the promised ‘support’ coming from scripted sequences and fighting going on ancillary to the mission area)?

From the someone-has-too-much-time department comes the Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures Studies Fallout, Physics, Also Beer.  Kotaku looks at some of the silly weight comparisons in Fallout and decides beer should be the universal reference standard:

What bothered me about Fallout was not so much that the heavy weapons, like a Flamer, weighed only "15." Maybe they're made from futuristic lightweight metal. No, it's more that a pair of freaking TWEEZERS was equivalent in weight to a motorcycle helmet. It's not even that the WG figure represents a total encumbrance factor – that either the item's size or fragility makes it difficult to carry - because a pool cue has the same WG figure: 1.

Edge Online has the first review of Point Lookout we've linked.  Describing it as "the best and the worst" of Fallout 3, the overall outlook is pretty positive:

There’s much to see and do in Point Lookout, but the guiding principle of the Wasteland still applies: one man’s treasure is another man’s trash. Go into it expecting a killer souvenir like Chinese Stealth Armour (Operation Anchorage), the Auto Axe (The Pitt), or a shoulder-mounted lightning launcher (Tesla Cannon from Broken Steel, reviewed here) and you’ll come out disappointed. Memories of great battles are in equally short supply. But if you want a microcosm of Fallout 3, equal parts adventuring, grinding, questing and scavenging, you might just think it the best expansion so far.

Bethsoft has released the Point Lookout DLC and the required v1.6 maintenance patch to match.  Here's the post at the Bethblog, complete with appropriate links:

Point Lookout is now available to download for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows. You can buy both versions online through the Xbox LIVE Marketplace and Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace (be sure to download the GFWL Client if you haven’t already) . Also be sure to check out the latest screenshots, the Point Lookout trailer, and the team diary on the creation of Point Lookout.

For the Games for Windows version of Point Lookout, make sure you have the latest game update (v 1.6). Get it here.

Via the Bethblog comes another Fallout 3 DLC interview at a site called the Hachiko.  Joel Burgess and Jeff Gardiner answer the questions about both Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta:

How does the current UFO relate to the Mothership Zeta DLC? Does the radio signal the craft's broadcasting play a part in the DLC's story? Will we find out how/why the ship crashed in the first place?

Jeff Gardiner: The crashed ship is a scout ship which is broadcasting a beacon for rescue. The Mothership Zeta quest doesn't go into details as to why it went down.

I've heard players will be abducted in the Mothership Zeta DLC? Is there any word on how this will play on the screen? Will players just poof onto the ship? Will the old fashioned anal probes be applied? What's the spectacle basically like of seeing the ship for the first time and getting inside to play?

Jeff Gardiner: Yes, the player will be abducted, and you'll have to download the DLC to see how it plays out.

Barry's Review Blog - which used to be Barry's Rigs 'n Reviews - has a lengthy look at Broken Steel, including an in-character story segment.  Ultimately, the score is 9/10 and here's a snip:

Speaking of perks, Broken Steel adds 14 new ones to the mix to compliment the expanded Level 30 cap. The No Weaknesses perk obtainable at Level 24, for example, sets any S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats to 5 if they are lower than that number. At Level 30, Almost Perfect, maxes out all of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats to 9. If you're bored with your character's current Karma status and want to navigate through life in the Capital Wasteland with a different "moral compass," Escalator to Heaven, Karmic Rebalance, and Devil's Highway will instantly reset your Karma to good, neutral or evil, respectively. Nerves of Steel allows your Action Points for V.A.T.S. to regenerate faster. And the Warmonger perk gives you the ability to create all of Fallout 3's custom weapons without the prerequisite schematics.

Joel Burgess and Nathan Purkeypile - lead designer and lead artist respectively for Fallout 3: Point Lookout - have penned a diary on the creation of this DLC:

It all started with a piece of scratch paper.  We had just been told that Fallout 3 would receive a fourth installment of additional content.  That is pretty much all we were told, in fact.  The two of us were asked to think it over and come back with ideas.  The brainstorm sessions that followed were summarized on a messy piece of scratch paper containing a series of seemingly unrelated words: “Swamp, Boardwalk.  Mansion Siege.  Organ Thieves.  Steamboat.  Cultists.”  The next few months would see those scattered concepts come together as what we feel is a fun and fresh new chapter in Fallout 3.

With Point Lookout, one of our primary goals was not to create just a quest, but a whole new region for players to explore. Straight away we knew that we wanted to focus on what we felt was one of the great strengths of Fallout 3 –a world too full of stories and surprises, ripe for exploration and adventure.  For us, the world is a main character, and choosing our location was intrinsically tied to the tone of the content.

There are also six new screens here.

Kotaku reports Gamestop has broken the next Tuesday launch date for Point Lookout, selling a retail pack with download codes that apparently work now.

MTV has the shortest of snippets from Bethsoft's Jeff Gardiner, saying that Mothership Zeta will be more linear and action-oriented, like Operation Anchorage:

Jeff Gardiner, Bethesda’s lead producer on “Fallout 3″ DLC, wouldn’t confirm what sort of weapons we’d be seeing, but he did say that you’ll definitely be getting more ammo for your Alien Blaster, and there will be new galactic doodads to tool around with, as well. As for the style of play in “Mothership Zeta” he said it’ll be “more action-oriented.” Like “Operation Anchorage”? “Just a bit more focused [than "Point Lookout"], with less of an emphasis on exploration.”

A new Point Lookout interview is up at a site called Go Gaming Giant, covering familiar territory:

Can you tell us a bit about the quests in Point Lookout? What will the quests have us doing?

The main quest will lead you to investigating a mysterious cult of locals who have taken over the area by infiltrating them. There are also approximately half a dozen side quests, which include delving into a mystery of Consance Blackhall and her occult obsession, helping a local whose sick and needs a special tonic, and helping a local kid who hasn’t been mutated from years of living off swamp water.

NMA takes a look at Broken Steel for Fallout 3, concluding the DLC paves the way for more addons but falls short on its own.  On the level cap raise:

While the new level cap might sound like an improvement it only further unbalances gameplay that was already terribly unbalanced to begin with.
If the player had detailed knowledge of the perk system and the locations of stat boosting elements such as books, it was already possible to max out all of the player's skills during the main game. However, most players would not have a maxed-out character at level 20, and now the player can fill up the last stats he or she may have had to ignore during Fallout 3's main quest.

The result is basically a character that is good at everything, if it would be a real person he or she would be a rocket scientist, brain surgeon, athlete, assassin and commando in one. Even on top of all the maxed out skills, the perk “Almost Perfect” ups all the characteristics to 9. 

Courtesy of the Bethblog, here's a list of Point Lookout previews:

• Shacknews
• GameDaily
• Gamespot
• Destructoid
• Team Xbox
• IGN
• 1Up
• GameSpy
• Aeropause
• The JRE
• bsn*

Planet Fallout has a short preview of Point Lookout from E3:

The locale was also visually stunning. I would relate it to a darker version of Coney Island after lapsing into disuse for about eighty years. As you pull up, you get an overlook of the dock area of the main landing for Point Lookout and can easily see the mansion in the distance. The rustic look permeates everything about it and though I didn’t get a chance to see it, the swamp areas are supposedly to be incredibly creepy. Not only that, but the boardwalk area was deserted and filled with old papers floating around and grimy and dirty… Exactly as it should be in Fallout 3.

There's a Guiness record for everything, isn't there?  Todd Howard and Fallout 3 have claimed the prize for Fastest Selling Multi-Platform RPG, according to VoodooExtreme:

Guinness World Record recipients included Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Wii Sports, who received the record for the Best Selling Video Game with sales of 45.7 million to date.

Major Nelson and Mark Whitten from XBOX LIVE received the award for the Most Popular Online Console Gaming Service during Monday night’s Microsoft party. Xbox Live serves 20 million active subscribers to date, representing 67% of the total install base as of May 2009.

Blizzard Entertainment’s Mike Morhaime and Paul Sams accepted the records for World of Warcraft for the Most Popular MMORPG with a total of 11.6 million subscribers and Starcraft for being the Best Selling Strategy Game for a PC, selling 9.5 million copies worldwide.

Bethesda Softworks’ Lead Designer Todd Howard was awarded with the record for the Fastest-selling Multi Platform RPG after Fallout 3 sold over 4.7 million copies in its first week on sale from October 28th to November 4th 2008.

The entire Infinity Ward team were officially presented with the record for the Most Played Online Video Game as Call of Duty 4 has an excess of 15 million minutes played daily and the up and coming US band The Dares performed the First concert to Take Place Simultaneously in the Real and Virtual Worlds in SOE’s new massively multiplayer game Free Realms.

In addition Charles and Kai Huang of Red Octane received the accolade for the Best-selling Rhythm Game Series for Guitar Hero’s sales of in excess of 25 million copies.

An honorable mention goes out to Steve Wiebe who unsuccessfully tried to win back his Donkey Kong crown from Billy Mitchell. Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies were on hand to witness the potential new record. Wiebe’s final score of 989, 400 points fell short of the 1,050,200 score achieved by Mitchell in 2007.

Big Download reports the next Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout is due June 23rd:

Like the three previous DLC expansions, this fourth entry is designed to be played for between three to five hours. It takes place in a vast swampland area that is actually based on the real marshlands of southern Maryland. You won't have too long to wait for this next DLC. It's due for release on June 23 for the Games For Windows Live client.

Some hands-on impressions of Point Lookout at IGN:

In fact, that's something that Bethesda is specifically going for, attempting to create an H.P. Lovecraft vibe with the entire pack. Point Lookout is stepped in thick fog, with a number of new effects for the environment, including new water, sky and tree textures to make Point Lookout look a bit more off kilter. Even stranger, however, are the "monsters" that you'll face. The newest ones are the Hillfolk, mutated people that seem completely ripped from "The Hills Have Eyes." There were a number of these creatures that silently attacked us with different implements, such as shovels, axes and even double barreled shotguns. As rustic and simplistic as these weapons might seem, you shouldn't discount them on looks alone. These items are extremely powerful, particularly if you repair these items into better condition.

Bethsoft has a trailer for the upcoming Point Lookout DLC.  Here's the accompanying blurb:

DESCRIPTION: Point Lookout opens up a massive new area of the Wasteland – a, dark, murky swampland along the coast of Maryland. So hop on the ferry to the seaside town of Point Lookout, for the most mysterious and open-ended Fallout 3 DLC adventure yet.

STORY: Buy a ticket and hop onboard the Duchess Gambit, as Tobar the Ferryman takes you to the strange seaside town of Point Lookout. What secrets does the dilapidated boardwalk hold? Who lives in the sprawling mansion? Why is the Punga Fruit so important? And what horrors lie in the depths of the murky swamp?

Point Lookout is the most open-ended DLC yet, and allows you to explore a huge, swampy wasteland any way you’d like. A completely new quest line allows you uncover the town’s hidden secrets and wield powerful new weapons like the Double-Barrel Shotgun against the swamp’s dangerous, and deformed, denizens.

KEY FEATURES:

• Discover and explore an entire new area – the beachfront town of Point Lookout, with its decrepit boardwalk and surrounding swamplands loaded with adventure.
• Explore the chilling mystery that pervades this once sleepy town, with a new quest line and open-ended gameplay.
• Encounter unique new swamp denizens and weaponry that will test even the toughest characters.
• Exclusive new perks and achievements!

The Bethblog brings news the first Fallout 3 retail Add-on Pack (Operation Anchorage + The Pitt) is now in stores (presumably NA, anyway).  They also have a shot of an included Vault Boy poster.

In related news, you can read a new diary by the Prima author working on Guides for the DLCs.

Here are a couple of new Fallout 3 DLC reviews.  First, NMA has a critique of The Pitt:

There is a distinct shortened feeling to the Pitt, as every experience - be it a location or quest - promises some depth, only to let you skim across the surface, ramming you into the end before you well into the DLC.

A "return to the grey areas of morality" of Fallout 3 was one of the Pitt's promises, but like Fallout 3 itself the concept of "grey area" seems to have been missed pretty widely here. There's a certain half-heartedness to how the obvious bad guys (slavers) are supposed to be deep, and the other side is more annoying than it is good. Confused morality, surely, but deep? Not really.

...and Worthplaying takes a look at Broken Steel, awarding a score of 9/10:

As mentioned above, most of Broken Steel's campaign, which is about five hours long, is centered on flushing out the Enclave and wiping out their final remaining stronghold at the new Adams Air Force Base. The difficulty level of the game has been jacked up for this task, forcing you to work through military bases chock-full of the Enclave's new Hellfire Troopers (heavily armored soldiers who carry a "heavy incinerator," which shoots extremely deadly fireballs), subway systems teeming with Ghouls and sentry robots, and even a harrowing run through Old Olney, a.k.a. Deathclaw Country. Helping you through all this are a few new toys, including the Tesla Cannon that you get access to late in the mission. This bad boy can wipe out just about anything that stands in your way with one shot, and thanks to the fact that it uses a fairly common source of ammo, you'll be able to enjoy its destruction long after the Enclave has been thoroughly decimated. While the first half of Broken Steel may not feel like a fair fight, once you turn the tables and become a one-man wrecking crew, all will likely be forgiven.

IGN is the first site with an interview on Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.  Todd Howard provides the answers:

IGN: Operation Anchorage focused on combat. The Pitt offered morally grey questing. Broken Steel extended the main story and lifted the level cap. What will be the main selling points of Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta?

Todd Howard: We just try to do different things, do some stuff visually and gameplay-wise the main game didn't do. So the vibe of Point Lookout is really different, and the same with Mothership Zeta. With Point Lookout, we wanted a larger landscape, a new place to explore; really explore, as opposed to Anchorage and The Pitt that are more linear. With Mothership Zeta, that started as something we always kind of joked about, doing an alien-abduction game. It's crazy visually, since we couldn't really reuse any art from the main game. Fallout 3's lead artist Istvan Pely is heading that DLC up, and it's some great stuff. It looks like a new game.

Bethsoft has announced two new DLCs as well as DLC support for the PS3.  The previously rumoured Point Lookout is a new swamp area, while Mothership Zeta is an alien abduction (no, I'm not kidding).  Finally, retail packages are confirmed for the end of the year - here's the full PR:

We are pleased to announce that Fallout® 3 downloadable content (DLC) is coming to PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. We have been working on implementing it for a while and look forward to bringing it to PS3 gamers via the PlayStation Network.  Operation: Anchorage will be released for PS3 in late June, followed by the release of The Pitt and Broken Steel 4-6 weeks apart. Release dates will be forthcoming. 

In addition, a new update will be released for PS3 that will allow users to download and play the new DLC. The release date for that update will be announced at a later date.

There are also two new DLCs planned for all three platforms:

·         Point Lookout – Explore a massive new swampland area filled with new quests and content.

·         Mothership Zeta – The aliens have returned, and they’re pissed. Experience an alien abduction first hand and find out if you’re tough enough to survive.

 

Point Lookout will be available in late June for Xbox 360 and PC. Cost will be 800 points or $9.99. It will be available through Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live and through token cards available at retail. Point Lookout will be available on PS3 after the first three DLCs have been released.

Mothership Zeta is scheduled for release in late July for Xbox 360 and PC. Cost will be 800 points or $9.99. It will be available through Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live and through token cards available at retail. Mothership Zeta will be available on PS3 after Point Lookout.

Finally, new Fallout 3 products will be available at retail this year.

Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack #1 includes The Pitt and Operation: Anchorage on a disc and will be available for Xbox 360 and PC on May 26.

The Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack #2 includes Broken Steel and Point Lookout on a disc and will be available for Xbox 360 and PC in August.

Retail versions of the game add-on packs for PS3 are not possible and the DLC will only be available for download online via PlayStation Network.

A Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition will be available in October. It will include the original game plus all five add-ons for $59.99 for Xbox 360 and PS3, and $49.99 for PC.

Here's another review roundup for Fallout 3: Broken Steel, taken straight from the Bethblog:

Pete Hines has popped up at OXM in an interview that covers Fallout: New Vegas to the DLC but without any real answers:

You can't talk about Fallout New: Vegas, but in general terms, is this the first step in Bethesda expanding the Fallout IP and world?
First step would presume that there are other steps. We felt that this was a good opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of because these are guys that know Fallout, including a group of folks who worked on the original Fallout. We felt this was a good way to do something in the universe that was appropriate and cool but not affect anything that Todd Howard and his group wanted to work on going forward.

The Bethblog has a list of Broken Steel reviews from around the web - some of which we've covered, and some we haven't.  Here's a direct rip:

• Xbox 360 Achievements
• Videogamer.com
• IGN
• ArsTechnica
• The Xbox Domain
• Screw Attack
• That Videogame Blog
• The Hachinko
• Cheat Code Central
• The Globe and Mail
• Project COE
• USA Today
• AusGamers

More good reivews for Broken Steel with positive press at Kotaku and IGN.  Kotaku strangely seems to think the original ending is spoiled by the re-write:

Broken Steel adds about five hours of new quests to what used to be the end of Fallout 3. It raises Fallout 3's level cap from 20 to 30, introduces some new weapons, perks and enemies. The expansion is set two weeks after the base game and spans the full game map plus new regions. Broken Steel puts the player in the service of the heroic, armored Brotherhood of Steel on a series of group and solo missions to defeat the enemy Enclave's most powerful weapon of war.

The question for most DLC expansions is whether they are worth the price. But, for this one, the other question is how a player will feel about DLC that undoes the ending of a game they may have already completed.

...while IGN rated the pack at 8.5/10 but felt players shouldn't have to pay to fix the level cap:

The lift in the level cap isn't a superficial change either. Three new achievements exist for reaching the new level cap -- one each for good, evil and neutral karma. New perks have been included as well. Though they aren't as imaginative as some of originals, they will help players who feel they've made a mistake in the past. One allows you to get Dogmeat back anytime your dog companion dies. Another will turn every 10 bottles of Nuka Cola you collect into a Quantum. You can even snag some at the higher levels that will reset your karma to whatever extreme you'd like.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that players shouldn't be required to pay in order to gain this level cap lift. Together with the new quests, it makes for quite the attractive package, but a level cap adjustment is the sort of thing that should be made available to everybody at no cost. Let's not forget about the PlayStation 3 players who are stuck at level 20 and have no option to buy Broken Steel.

NowGamer has a Fallout 3 Retrospective inteview with input from Emil Pagliarulo and Todd Howard:

A particularly lazy criticism of Fallout 3 is that it’s just ‘Oblivion with guns’. But beyond the jarring way the camera fixes every speaking character lifelessly in the centre of the screen, genuine similarities are difficult to spot. The fact is, Oblivion may be great, but it’s inferior to Fallout 3 in all matters but for those of personal taste. The progress is obvious in the dialogue, the voice-acting, the characters, the environmental design and – most importantly – the quests. The absence of guilds released the design team from having to honour restrictive categories, and allowed the shift in emphasis towards more choice, rather than more missions. This is the root of Fallout 3’s side quests being as compelling and considered as its main story. They provide all the incentive a player could need to stray from the path and remake the future, and Bethesda sweated and strained to make it work.

More positive press for Broken Steel with IGN's review saying "this is the add-on you've been waiting for".  The score is 8.5/10 and here's a snip:

Playing through the new content took me roughly seven hours which is a bit longer than the past Fallout 3 add-ons. Along the way, you'll find a few new enemies and a few new weapons to deal with them. The new Tesla Canon must be the most powerful weapon in the game yet, capable of taking down Vertibirds and most any enemy in a single shot. There's also the Heavy Incinerator that spits long range balls of fire. Fire that baby up in VATS for a great looking kill. These new toys and the hours of gameplay would be enough to satisfy many and that isn't even getting into the feature that has Fallout 3's hardcore fans so excited.

The Bethblog brings news that Broken Steel now works and is available from GfWL:

Many of you have already noticed that Microsoft has re-hosted Broken Steel on Games for Windows LIVE. For more details on downloading and using Games for Windows LIVE, head here.

To access the DLC (Games for Windows and Xbox 360), make sure you have the Fallout 3’s latest title update, version 1.5. When connecting to LIVE, you’ll be prompted for the update. Alternatively, PC players can download it from our site.

While we wait for Bethsoft and Microsoft to fix the PC version of Broken Steel, here are two very positive reviews.  The first is from VideoGamer, who score 9/10:

The environments aren't fundamentally different to what you've seen before (although the Air Force base has trees!), but working your way through the new quest line feels like a cross between traditional Fallout 3 questing and combat-heavy scenarios reminiscent of Operation Anchorage. Now before you reach for your pitchfork, don't worry, the combat isn't shackled as it was in Operation Anchorage. Much of it takes place in buildings and environments within the map. Some areas are new, some are reused, and there's a dash of off-map travelling, but the point to make is that the combat is, unmistakeably, much better. Because the level cap has been raised and because you're up against tougher enemies, it feels more like the game did when you took your first tentative steps into a Metro tunnel, or explored an abandoned building for the first time.

...and Ars Technica says it's "worth your money":

Ultimately, though, Broken Steel is the extra content that fans of Fallout 3 have been waiting for. It provides an epic conclusion to an epic story and lets players continue adventuring afterwards, should they desire to keep on exploring and wrap up some loose ends. Not only that, but it makes the game challenging again, something that seemed to be missing for those of us who had maxed-out our characters and were traveling around with heavy-duty equipment.

Since this DLC affects the ending, expect spoilers.  Still no obvious word on the status of Broken Steel for the PC.

The Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3 has been released and, according to reports, is broken on the PC and has achievement/gamerscore issues on the X360.  Issues first started popping up in this thread on the official forums and sites like Eurogamer and Edge Online followed with reports.  From Eurogamer:

It looks as though there's a problem with the PC version of Fallout 3's latest downloadable content add-on, Broken Steel.

According to early posts on the Bethesda Softworks forum and our own experiences here, the DLC downloads and then throws up an error.  [...]

Bethesda has been in touch to update us on the PC version: "We're seeing the same error, which is a Games for Windows Live DRM Install error. Microsoft is working on fixing it, and we'll let everyone know once we've verified it."

Apparently the X360 gamerscore problem is a "synch" issue with the servers that will correct automatically, with no loss of Achievements.

Broken Steel was withdrawn for the PC but I can't log in to GfWL at the moment to check the current status.

In related news, Planet Fallout has the "ultimate Broken Steel inteview":

So what new things will be introduced with Broken Steel?

Broken Steel presents the player with several new things. First and foremost, we’ve removed the ending of the game as seen in Fallout 3 and created a smooth transition to a set of brand new quests that picks up right where “Take It Back!” left off. In addition to that, the game no longer ends after the Main Quest… you’ll be able to adventure through the Wasteland as long as you wish. Second, we’ve raised the level cap from 20 to 30 to help accommodate the fact that the game no longer has a finite ending. Third, we’ve provided a large amount of new content to the game to keep the challenge level high for upper-level players: multiple new creatures and NPC types, new weapons, new armor, and new perks. Last but not least, we altered parts of the Wasteland to reflect all the changes that occurred due to the player’s actions in the Main Quest with new encounters, additional “Water Quests” and new locations.

Bethsoft has kicked up an official trailer for Broken Steel.  Their site has the video in four formats, ranging from 31Mb to 80Mb.

NMA has noticed an unexpected Fallout 3 entry on two online shopping sites.  MSN Shopping and eStarland both have a pack listed with Broken Steel and something called "Point Look" for $19.99 and a September release.

It's a complete guess but given that Bethsoft will soon be bundling Operation Anchorage and The Pitt for retail, "Point Look" might be a 4th DLC and this is the future retail bundle.

Eurogamer sought clarification from Bethsoft and got a "no announced plans" non-denial:

A spokesperson for Bethesda has told Eurogamer "there are no announced plans for additional DLC beyond Broken Steel" for Fallout 3.

A short interview with Bethsoft's Jeff Gardiner on the Broken Steel DLC is up at TalkingAboutGames:

How will old quests and random encounters stand up to level 30 characters? We're looking forward to streaking through the Deathclaw Sanctuary with impunity.

JG: The power ramp from 20 to 30 is steep.  It will take a while to get there but the player will be able to really specialize and ‘max out’ a lot of skills and attributes should they choose.  Despite this tougher creatures will appear in areas of the wasteland (including dungeons) that are not directly affected by the main quest.

Forging the Steel is the title of a Broken Steel DLC dev diary written by Jeff Browne, Lead Level Designer, and Alan Nanes, Lead Designer:

Once an author puts the last piece of punctuation on the final sentence of his creation, the story is traditionally over. However, with our latest downloadable content project, we were determined to break with this tradition by taking the ending of Fallout 3 beyond that epic moment in the purifier and beginning a new chapter in the saga of the Dweller from Vault 101. We had to revisit old locations and characters, change plot elements and yet still keep the tone and consistency accurate while at the same time provide an entertaining and rewarding experience for the player. It was a challenge we were determined to meet head-on, and the result is “Broken Steel.”

Beyond the mere fact that we were continuing Fallout 3’s story, we were given the task to raise the level cap from 20 to 30. Many issues stood in our way: balancing past level 20, providing new creatures and new NPC’s to challenge the post-level 20 players, creating new weapons and armor, handling the experience points, and generating new freeform quests to name a few. We knew going into this project that many questions had to be answered and that a lot of work had to be done.

Bethsoft has released a v1.5 patch for Fallout 3 (50Mb) as the Broken Steel DLC approaches.  Here are the notes:

New Features

New achievements for Broken Steel

Bug Fixes

Fixed issue with VATS calculations not appearing properly for perks (PC)

Fixed crash related to altered references between master files

LOD objects render properly when loaded from DLC worldspaces

Fixed issue with companion NPCs not loading into cells immediately after player.

GameSpy has a preview of the upcoming Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3:

One of the first things I noticed about Broken Steel is the fact that it will feature a bunch of new enemies, provided your character is above level 18. The Feral Ghoul Reavers are similar to their creepy cousins, but they pack quite a bit more punch, tossing grenades with reckless abandon, safe in the knowledge that they're covered with heavy body armor. Speaking of armor, the new Enclave Hellfire Troopers that you'll encounter in the military base are wearing some stylish new gear, as well as sporting a badass new weapon that we'll talk about later. Finally there are the new Supermutant Overlords, which I unfortunately didn't get to see. I only pray they're tougher than the Supermutant Behemoths that I was taking out with ease by the end of the main game. Those guys were wusses.

1Up has picked up an newsbit from a UK site called Electronic Theatre who say the first two DLCs for Fallout 3 will be released in a retail package.  Apparently, Operation Anchorage and The Pitt will be released together for X360 and PC in Europe on May 29, and Amazon.com shows a US release for May 26th.  Broken Steel isn't included, which seems an odd decision.

Exploring A Devastated World at Gamasutra is an interview with Emil Pagliarulo on the creative prcoess of writing for Fallout 3:

A number of facets of Bethesda games are not particularly in vogue in a broad design sense -- lots of text, a relatively low proportion of scripted sequences, and so on. How do you know that stuff will work?

EP: That is true. I think about that a lot, actually. For a lot of console games in particular, it's all about level of polish. We know sometimes that our games don't have the production values of Metal Gear Solid or something.

We don't have those kinds of production values. That's just a fact. But what we do have with our games, partly because we're an older company and we've been working together for a long time, are very strong PC roots at Bethesda.

If you look at Daggerfall and Arena, those were both PC games. We're all sort of old-school PC gamers that added consoles. I think a lot of our sensibilities are based in old PC games. And I think that Fallout 3 shows that.

There are a lot of PC game sensibilities in that game. I think what that means for gamers is that there's a lot of inherent depth there. It's not just systems, it's not just graphics. It's like there's a little bit something extra.

Our goal, anyway, is to capture a little bit of that magic of PC games. I think a lot of our audience is in that same category. They see what we do and appreciate it. I think there's definitely some of that going on. There's not a lot of that on the console, so it's almost like we have that novelty quality, too. We have those niches -- the giant open game niche, and also this PC game novelty niche, too.

The Bethblog is pointing out footage from Broken Steel on G4TV:

Tonight on G4TV, the X-Play crew premiered the first footage of Fallout 3’s third DLC, Broken Steel. On their site (or above), see the extended edition of Adam Sessler’s interview with Todd and Emil. Keep in mind there’s some minor spoilers, especially if you haven’t completed the main quest.

Broken Steel hits Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows LIVE May 5th.

In our latest review, we take a look at Bethesda's second DLC addon for Fallout 3, The Pitt.  Here's a sample:

The flow of the overall game works much better than in Operation Anchorage - I have highlighted some annoyingly nonsensical moments, but most people won't get hung up on those.  You get your quest, you move from task to task until you get to a fork in the road, make your choice, then proceed to the conclusion.  Everything wraps around your central mission, and the pacing is set nicely to keep you on the edge of action at all times.  The game design seems centered around providing enjoyable combat throughout at the expense of well thought out level design, so you get areas that are great in terms of pinch-points and vantage-points but fall apart badly when you turn around and look at how it is all laid out.

Read it all here.

Looks like everything is about Fallout this week...the recent Bethsoft press event that saw New Vegas announced also revealed more details about the Broken Steel DLC.  First, the official release date has been delayed a little to May 5th and new screenshots are available.

If you haven't played the ending of Fallout 3, you may want to skip any quotes from here on because Broken Sky changes the ending and spoilers are inevitable.

Here's a list of new previews out there, primarily ripped from the Bethblog:

• Eurogamer
• Kotaku
• IGN
• MSN
• Shacknews
• USA Today
• Joystiq
• Gamespot
• Team Xbox
• Giant Bomb
• MTV Multiplayer
• Edge Online

Here come those spoilers.  From Giant Bomb:

The new conclusion of the main quest still has you dealing with the activation of the water purifier that is the centerpiece of Project Purity. The twist is that you'll survive the radiation if you go in yourself, and other options--such as sending in the radiation-resistant mutant, Fawkes--are also now available. This effectively takes care of the most ridiculous thing that happened in that entire game. Previously, Fawkes had some lame excuse that prevented you from "outsmarting" the game's ending. Man, even mentioning it now still gets me all hot and bothered. Other sidekicks can also venture in.

...and GameSpot:

As well as wandering around the Capital Wasteland doing new side quests and mopping up what may have been left of the original game's multiple quests, many of which will still be available, the main quest will take you across the wasteland too. This will take the form of attacking Enclave bases and attempting to give the Brotherhood of Steel an even greater tactical advantage to wipe out the Enclave problem once and for all. One such mission that was briefly showcased was a quest to find a tesla coil in an effort to construct a new weapon--the tesla cannon.

We haven't really tracked any Fallout 3 mods but I noticed this comprehensive mod pack mentioned at Planet Fallout and thought it might interest some.  The 5.3Gb package covers everything (and I mean everything) from adding dancing animations (?) to Pipboy skins and mods to added quests.

A new version of The Pitt is available for X360 owners experiencing freezing and other problems.  From the Bethblog:

A new version of The Pitt is up on Xbox LIVE. If you’re experiencing crashes when trying to access content on The Pitt, delete the content off your hard drive and re-download. If you haven’t experienced any issues with freezing, there’s no need to re-download.

To delete the previous content for The Pitt, follow these steps:

• Sign in to Xbox LIVE then press the guide button
• Go to Settings->System Settings->Memory.
• From here, scroll down to Fallout 3 and press A.
• Select Fallout 3: The Pitt (Marketplace Content) press A then choose Delete, then Yes to Delete.

Now, you can go and re-download the new version for no charge and begin your adventure.

Bethsoft has a roundup of Fallout 3: The Pitt reviews, some of which we've missed, so I'm going to rip their list for you here:

  Reviews for The Pitt have made their way online. Videogamer.com says, "“I had a great time with The Pitt, and it single-handedly reinvigorated my interest in Bethesda's masterpiece.” Additional reviews can be read at Gamespy, Eurogamer , GameFocus, Feed Your Console, Gaming Nexus, Koku Gamer, Atomic Gamer, Game and Player, and What If Gaming. 

GameSpy is the big one in that list, so here's a sample from them (4/5):

Disappointingly, The Pitt was released as a corrupted file to countless Xbox Live users. How much goodwill can you lose by releasing a broken, buggy product? $10 is not an insignificant amount of money for what amounts to a couple hours of content. Since the re-release of the download, users are still reporting rampant freezing issues and assorted other bugs, some reporting a complete inability to access the new content. Xbox Live offers no refunds, so they're left with little recourse. In my own experience with the current version of The Pitt, I got stuck in a wall without being able to get out, forcing me to reload and wasting considerable time.

I enjoyed The Pitt far more than I did Operation Anchorage, despite its problematic release. It feels like an extension of the core game, embracing the soul and the RPG fineries of the original game while still taking a step in a new direction. If your level 20 character, like mine, is a min-maxed weapon of destruction, you may want to crank up the difficulty. But even if you do cruise through any battle, you'll still find that The Pitt's locations are a pleasure to explore, and completionists will find a great collection challenge here that will keep them busy for quite some time.

GameBanshee gives Fallout 3: The Pitt the full treatment with a review, walkthrough and equipment database.  The review score is 7.6/10, with author Steven Carter finding it mediocre:

The Pitt is the second DLC pack released by Bethesda Softworks for Fallout 3. It follows in the footsteps of Operation: Anchorage, which was released in January. Operation: Anchorage offered a completely different look and feel than the main Fallout 3 campaign, but it also stripped away almost all of the game’s role-playing elements, and so it wasn’t warmly received. The Pitt takes the opposite approach. It delivers quests and situations that fit right in with the main campaign -- but to the point where you might feel like you’ve played them before. I think The Pitt is a step in the right direction for what people would like to see from a DLC, and it’s certainly an upgrade over Operation: Anchorage, but Bethesda isn’t exactly wowing anybody with their crafting skills.

Worthplaying also has a review and are even less impressed, scoring 5.8/10 after having trouble with Games For Windows Live and finding the content feeling "unfinished":

Wastelanders disappointed with the shoot-'em-all backdrop of Operation: Anchorage will find the Pitt's story line to be refreshing. Players will get to pick through a few interesting dialogue choices and experience an unexpected twist toward the end that nearly feels as if it had taken a page of gray morality from The Witcher, but without that, it would otherwise have had a hard time competing against some of the other side-quests from the main game. Much of that feeling is due to how unfinished the rest of the DLC feels, if the glitches weren't enough of an indication that something was wrong.

The Pitt seems to be having a hard time, with the Bethblog saying they are working on freezing issues some players have encountered:

Since The Pitt went back up on Xbox LIVE last Wednesday, we’ve received feedback that some folks were experiencing freezing issues while trying to access The Pitt. We’re working with Microsoft to get a version of The Pitt up that corrects the aforementioned freezing issue. Once the content is up and available, we’ll let you know.

We’d like to thank all our fans who generously and methodically reported what they were seeing on our official forums, via email and on this blog. This data was immensely helpful in tracking down these issues.

Thanks again to everyone for their support, patience and feedback.

Another review for Bethsoft's The Pitt DLC, with AtomicGamer awarding 81%:

While can be blazed through in less than two hours, speed runs aren't really the best way to play - I thoroughly enjoyed myself over the course of four to five hours in exploring, finding the secrets, finishing the main thing, and then going back through it to catch anything I missed. Then I took the loot I got out with back into the Capital Wasteland to serve up even more hot death to the Super Mutants in the DC ruins. Unfortunately, though, the loot to be had from isn't quite as good as the couple of key pieces you'd get from completing . They look and sound good and are a lot of fun to use, but don't expect any game-changers. For me that's where a lot of the depth of DLC should come from - not only in adding a new adventure, but letting the gear and perks that you get from completing it change the way you play the original game as well as future DLC and even user-made mods, and in that sense, is a bit of a disappointment. Overall, though, if you found to be worth your ten bucks, you will likely find this one to be an even better buy.

7/10 is the score for The Pitt at IncGamers:

The Pitt is a step back and in the right direction to the more traditional quest lines of Fallout 3 with several morally ambiguous choices, but it is a frustratingly short campaign, albeit short and sweet, I completed and explored it all in five hours. There maybe some longevity in replay: as mentioned there are a few different moral routes to explore, I just hope that the next installment does allow leveling up and is more of a challenge to those of us that have fully explored and stated up in the Capitol Wasteland.

This sounds like an insight into the design development process for Fallout 3 but is really more of a dev profile for Emil Pagliarulo:

However, after a few years at Ion Storm, which  Eidos Interactive shut down in 2005, Pagliarulo realized he missed the East Coast. In 2002, he again called Hines and asked if they had any positions open. He was immediately hired and put to work on The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon expansion pack. He would eventually become of one the lead quest designers on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, penning the fan-favorite Dark Brotherhood storyline. Some of the violent imagery in its quests was a factor in the game's being re-rated M for Mature  post-release.

Our first review of The Pitt comes from Eurogamer, who staunchly criticise the buggy launch before going on to say this second DLC is much better than Operation: Anchorage.  The score is 8/10 and here's a late snip:

For new features, then, it comes up a little short, but it makes up for it in other ways. The quest is lot more interesting than Operation: Anchorage, offering greater variation, scope for non-linear exploration and degrees of NPC interaction. While still linear in terms of the order you do the tasks, the hub-like environment is more atmospheric and immersive, and graphic tourists will be delighted that Bethesda has once again provided a set of magnificent locations to explore, rich in detail and intrigue. The further you progress, the more enjoyable it gets.

That said, it's an uneven experience. After an interesting introduction, the decision to force you to basically dungeon-crawl against identical (unchallenging) enemies until you get bored is a questionable one. Of particular concern is how easy it makes things for players, and given how long most of Fallout 3's audience will have been playing the game by this stage, you might have expected a sterner test from Bethesda. Make sure you crank up the difficulty if you're visiting with a maxed-out character.

Fallout 3 has won the 9th annual GDC Developers Choice Awards for Game of the Year.  You can head over to the official site for more or Blue's has a handy roundup.

From the Bethblog:

The English version of The Pitt is now available for download on Xbox Live. If you downloaded the (corrupted) file that was originally available, you will need to delete it before downloading the new version. If you haven’t deleted DLC content before, here’s the steps you’ll want to take:

• Sign in to Xbox LIVE then press the guide button
• Go to Settings->System Settings->Memory.
• From here, scroll down to Fallout 3 and press A.
• Select Fallout 3: The Pitt (Marketplace Content) press A then choose Delete, then Yes to Delete (make sure not to delete any of your game saves)

Once the original version is deleted, you can re-download The Pitt again free of charge.

Shacknews says Pete Hines has updated them on The Pitt, saying a fixed version should be back tomorrow:

It looks like the corrected version of the Fallout 3 "Pitt" downloadable add-on will arrive on Xbox 360 tomorrow, developer Bethesda has informed Shacknews.

"Finishing some tests but if all checks out we should have The Pitt back up and available by tomorrow afternoon," Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines told us.

The Bethblog explains the X360 version of The Pitt DLC has been buggered up:

We are continuing to look into the issues people are experiencing with The Pitt for Xbox 360. As of now it looks like the file for the English version on Xbox Live was somehow corrupted. We are currently working with Microsoft to remove the existing file off of Live to prevent any further downloads. Our plan is to replace it with a new file as soon as possible. We hope to have another update for you shortly.

Bethsoft and Microsoft have released The Pitt for Fallout 3.  You can read about about it on Microsoft's Live site or use the Live client to purchase it (800 point thingies).  Here's the description, again:

The Pitt opens with a desperate radio message, and a meeting with its sender, an escaped slave named Wernher. Wernher claims that the leader of The Pitt has created a cure for mutations… and he needs you to go in and retrieve it. From there, the player can proceed in a number of ways, in true Fallout 3 style. Do you fight your way in, or disguise yourself as a slave? Ally with the slaves, or join their Raider overlords? The Pitt is very morally ambiguous - there's no real right or wrong, just choices to be made, sides to be chosen, and a mystery that could send shockwaves throughout the entire Wasteland.

Key Features

• Explore an entire new area - the post-apocalyptic ruins of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known as The Pitt!
• Find and use new weaponry, such as the AutoAxe, a new melee weapon with a powerful, serrated rotary blade hungry for flesh.
• Discover new side quests and subtle plot elements and determine your path in this place where nothing is "right" or "wrong."

Exclusive new perks and achievements!

The Bethblog is pointing out new interviews for The Pitt DLC, at VG247 and Totally360.  The first is too short to bother quoting but here's a snip from Totally360:

The effect of entering Oasis or Operation: Anchorage was quite powerful given what a radical change it was from the Capital Wasteland, can we expect something similar here?

The Pitt itself is the vision of several developers who grew up in Pittsburgh.  It’s full of unique architecture that has a different color pallet and feel from downtown D.C.  The buildings are decrepit, but still intact.  The Raider area is filled with their usual displays of disemboweled corpses and spray paint.  Perhaps the most striking part of the Pitt is the bridge that leads into it and the ominous black smog that erupts from the still working Steel Mill.

Head over to Gametrailers for the first official gameplay trailer for FO3: The Pitt (standard def, high def).

Thanks, Vistaer!

Bethsoft has released their usual trio of new screens for The Pitt, which you can view at the official site, and Senior Producer Jeff Gardiner writes a dev diary about "the process of Game Creation in relation to our Downloadable Content":

Towards the end of the development of a game, there are three pretty well known, but very loosely defined phases, known as Alpha, Beta and finally Gold. Prior to that there are two major phases, Pre-Production and then of course Production itself which is where the bulk of the game goes from documents on paper (or in someone's gray matter) to the screen where we can all enjoy them. It was right before we went Beta that the decision was made to start thinking about our DLC. Now, before you think we just cut existing content from the game in order to milk our fans, let me explain in more detail how we view these various stages.

Pre-Production is a smaller team of core leads, working out the high-level theory from game rendering to character modeling to systems design. It's here where the story is born and concepts are drawn out. On Fallout 3, this phase began while we were still working on Oblivion. For Operation: Anchorage and the other DLC this phase was relatively short as most of the game systems, and obviously our core technology, wouldn't be changing.

Bethsoft Senior Producer Jeff Gardiner has been interviewed at Planet Fallout about their DLC program including, of course, The Pitt:

How many people work on the DLC content? Tell us more about the development of The Pitt.

We have approximately 25 people, plus QA dedicated to each DLC. The bulk of that is the art staff. The development cycle is very short – thankfully we’re not trying to establish our technology so it’s pretty much all content creation. Since the teams are tight and focused we get to have fantastic brainstorm meetings and cross-departmental work – such as Artists pitching design ideas.

Tell us about the art direction of The Pitt, will it be a unique and recognizable area?

It’s very unique. Pittsburgh isn’t bombed out, so it’s collapsing under years of decay and neglect. The Raiders that have take over have propped up the area with sheet metal catwalks and their typical displays of flayed corpses and spray paint. The smog from the still working steal factory looms overhead, its blue black smoke contrasting the red and orange hues of the building below.

The Bethblog pointed out a preview of The Pitt DLC for Fallout 3 at OXM UK a couple of days back.  Here's a snip:

It's at this point that The Pitt shows that it retains Fallout 3's ability to deftly and subtly allow your decisions to influence the action, that makes you want to revisit. As you approach the slave camps, you notice a couple of slaves dashing for freedom, who get blown up by the mines. Will you take their slave outfit and get into the camp that way? Will you try to join the slavers as a recruit? It's up to you.

Once you join The Pitt, you then have to figure out how to achieve your goals while maintaining the facade of being a weak-willed slave worker. The Pitt works as a central hub almost in the same way Megaton did, the difference being that The Pitt is much bigger and the suffocating sense of oppression gives it an entirely different feel. Slaves are covered with cuts, bruises and skin peeling off their faces. The sound of clanking metal and whirring grinders create a noisy din. Guards tell you to "**** off" if you try talk to them. The Pitt isn't a nice place to be.

Pete Hines and Emil Pagliarulo are guests at the Adrenaline Vault's latest podcast:

Episode #22 - This week Pete Hines and Emil Pagliarulo from Bethesda Studios return to the show and they sure have a lot to say. They chat about the success of Fallout 3 and the soon to be released DLC. They give their opinions on the value of video game reviews and they fill us in on some of their favorite video game stories. They also talk about the iPhone and how excited they are about it. With the release of Halo Wars and its expansion on the Halo story the podcast crew chats about some of their favorite stories in video games and the importance that they have on the overall experience of a game.  

Mike 'txa1265' Anderson takes a look at Bethesda's first DLC addon for Fallout 3, Operation Anchorage:

Horse armor.  Those two words are enough to get even the most staunch supporters of 'DLC' (downloadable content) riled up.  That is because what it offers - Colorforms for your horse for $2 in real money - felt like a rather blatant money grab.  It seemed that Bethesda and Microsoft teamed up and said 'let's test this system by holding out including something trivial from the game, then offering it for a small sum and see how many suckers ... errm, customers are interested'.  While the DLC for Oblivion and many other games has greatly improved (though in many other cases it has not), the fundamental question of the 'value proposition' dogs every DLC release - and with good reason.

Read it all here.

Whatever your opinion of Fallout 3, their PrepareForTheFuture.com promo website was nicely done.  The Bethblog looks at the process of putting it together with Gasket Studios and AKQA.

Bethsoft sent us a note saying they have released three new screens for The Pitt.

Meanwhile, Eurogamer says the release date has been set for March 24th:

Bethesda Softworks has announced that The Pitt, the second downloadable expansion for the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Fallout 3, will be released on 24th March.

...alongside their own preview:

If Operation: Anchorage was the equivalent of a war film - a wasteland rendition of The Guns of Navarone - The Pitt is a prison movie. You enter its bleak red-brick confines in as a slave, bereft of your weapons and equipment, and mingle with an imprisoned workforce which has revolution on its mind.

Wherever you go there are reminders of films like Fortress and an atmosphere borrowed from that most brilliant of prison-set games, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Sure, during the filming of The Shawshank Redemption Tim Robbins never had to crawl around a ruined factory grinding the limbs off scuttling Nosferatu-style mutants while searching for ten quest items - but that spirit of jailhouse revolution is certainly what Bethesda is after.

If you don't like using the Live thingy to update Fallout 3, Bethsoft has released manual patches (~45Mb).

Matt Grandstaff announced a new Fallout 3 patch on the official forums, although it doesn't fix anything.  Rather, it adds the Achievements for The Pitt in readiness for the second DLC release:

Today a new update (v1.4.0.6) is available on Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows LIVEUpdate 1.4 Notes (PC and Xbox 360).

It's a small update in preparation for the game's second DLC, The Pitt, which is slated for release this month.

New Features

• New achievements for The Pitt

Support for multiple downloadable content

62% is the score for Fallout 3's Operation Anchorage DLC at PC Format:

This is Bethesda’s attempt at turning Fallout 3 into a linear run and gun shooter – in the simulation, the looting and talking are removed almost entirely, and health and ammo are replenished from glowing red pods placed in certain areas of the environment. Unfortunately, much like the ‘climactic’ battle in the game proper, the Gamebryo engine simply isn’t capable of the kind of bombast required to represent large scale conflict. What’s more, while Fallout 3’s combat is enjoyable in small doses, it’s not up to the standard of a modern FPS. Its three hours of solid combat with identical soldiers gets wearing extremely quickly with nothing else to distract you.

Bethsoft's Todd Howard discusses The Pitt at D.I.C.E. in these two pieces.  The first is a video interview at GameSpot and the second is a community interview at MTV with the questions supplied by readers via Twitter:

graemepass @multiplayers Is it as combat focused as Anchorage? Because that’s not what I want.

Hines: No. It is much more in line with some of the other stuff in “Fallout.” There are these two factions. There’s a story: the slavers vs. the slaves. And you have to figure out who you want to believe and who you want to help. Clearly, there’s combat involved, but there are multiple ways to go about doing things. You have to decide ultimately what you think is right, because there is no real right or wrong.

GameSpot is reporting a Todd Howard segment from D.I.C.E. on the daunting task of tackling a Fallout game:

"Great ideas never, never die," Howard said. "We were in love with the first game and felt it needed to be done again."

That confidence in a game is essential, Howard said, adding, "You have to really have faith in your idea because there is no data that will prove it valid." Charts and graphs and details such as install base shouldn't play into the decision to make a game, he said. If install base mattered that much, he noted, then everyone would just keep making board games because there are a whole lot of tables out there.

Two major sites have previews of the second DLC for Fallout 3, The Pitt after some play time at the D.I.C.E. Summit. From GameSpy:

The action actually kicked off at some point after the start of the mission, as I was already on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. A new character named Wernher was helping me to sneak into a slave outpost in order to find a cure for radiation mutation, and he told me that the only way in was to either pretend to be an escaped slave or a slaver that was looking for employment. Either way, I'd be stripped of my weapons and everything in my possession, except for a single pistol or knife that I'd be able to smuggle in (I don't even want to know the specifics of where or how). After crossing a bridge that was peppered with mines, I reached the gate and tried to talk my way in as a fellow slaver. When the sarcastic bastard manning the gate told me that all I needed to do was head inside to fill out an application, I knew I was in trouble.

...and IGN:

If you weren't thrilled with Operation: Anchorage's heavy focus on combat, you'll likely enjoy The Pitt a lot more. There's lots of dialogue, several side quests, and a bigger emphasis on exploration for this second game add-on. There are several different ways you can approach the process of getting into the slave camp. I decided to just walk up and say hi. That didn't go over so well with the slavers. And if you're worried that all of this "saving the day" business is going to turn your evil character good, don't. I found at least one place to be nasty inside of the steel mill. While the slaves sweated with steel production, one slave had carved out a niche for himself. He sells information to his captors as a snitch. Give him some juicy gossip and he'll trade you some stimpaks for the info.

Three new screens from the upcoming Fallout 3 DLC named The Pitt can be found in our gallery, or by clicking on the links below.

A site called Experience Points has an interesting piece on roleplaying in Fallout 3, when illuminated against a Pen&Paper experience.  The author created motivations for his character and set out to see how well the game supported his choice:

Despite these barriers, I had fleshed out my character to my liking and came out of the vault comfortable with my decisions. My evil actions would be driven by mistrust, paranoia and a desire to find my father. Yet the game design did not facilitate this interpretation. I stole to survive, yet for every Stimpak I would steal, I would lose Karma points. At one point, my negative karma allowed one "shady" gentleman to view my character as a potential compatriot, despite the fact he had never seen me steal or kill. The personality I gave my character was not the personality Fallout seemed to be shepherding me towards.

Popmatters has a thoughtful review of Fallout 3 written by Michael Abbott from The Brainy Gamer, whom we've linked before.  The score is 9/10 and here's a sample:

Despite Bethesda’s notable progress rendering believable human characters voiced by convincing actors (Fallout 3 is a huge improvement in this regard from Oblivion), the game serves as a reminder of just how far we have left to go. All too often, the characters in Fallout 3 function as stiff, mummified information kiosks. They behave like automatons, ambling from one place to the next with the illusion of purpose. As I’ve written previously, engaging an NPC is like hitting his PLAY button. He stops and looks at you, the “camera” centers him in the frame, and his animatronic mask-face emotes. The voice acting is much improved and significantly more varied than in Oblivion, but the facial animations remain primitive and unconvincing. The person I’m looking at and the voice I’m hearing rarely seem properly matched. 

VoodooExtreme says the first full preview of The Pitt for Fallout 3 is in the UK Official Xbox Magazine.  You'll have to read it for the full thing but here's a snip via VE3D:

The Pitt consists of a large 'dungeon' area, an abandoned steel yard, as well as a settlement divided into two halves; Downtown, occupied by slaves, and Haven occupied by their masters.

For the first time players will be able to interact with Raiders other than by fighting them, says the mag, and one major quest has you taking on the role of a slave, investigating rumours that the Raider boss has found a cure for mutation.

Side quests and unique items are promised, naturally, including the fearsome-looking Auto Axe, which a bit like a chainsaw crossed with a Black & Decker hedge trimmer.

Another review of Operation Anchorage with thoughts running in the "not worth it unless you love Fallout 3" direction:

I ran into a few different problems in my time with Operation Anchorage such as getting stuck in the level and having my squad just stop following me. As someone who didn’t encounter any bugs in the base fallout 3 game, this surprised me and not in a good way.

Operation Anchorage seems to take the great varied gameplay of all of the other Fallout 3 quests, but strips out all of the other options other than “kill the Chinese guy in front of you”. If you specialized in the non-combat skills, there are very few opportunities to actually use them. Verbal/Social and Hacking/lock picking skills have a couple situations where they come in handy, but any other non-combat skill ends up being worthless.

Bethsoft has told GameSpot the two upcoming Fallout 3 DLCs have both been delayed a month:

"The next DLC for Fallout 3, The Pitt, will be out in March," Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines said. "Broken Steel will be out the following month, in April."

...and GameZone has a general DLC interview with Jeff Gardiner:

Q: For gamers that are specifically looking to increase their clocked time within the Fallout 3 world, how many more hours will Operation Anchorage, The Pitt and Broken Steel offer to them?

Jeff: Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt both offer about four to five hours of gameplay within the quest lines they introduce.  They both offer new weapons, armor and perks that the player can then use as they see fit within the game as a whole.  The quest line in Broken Steel is about the same length, but we’re also increasing the level cap to 30, as well as amending the main Fallout quest line so the game doesn’t end….  This will allow the player to keep exploring the wasteland for as many hours as they’d like.

It's NMA's turn for a Operation: Anchorage review.  There's no score but the result is clear:

What further degrades the gameplay is how sparsely populated the battlefield is. One would expect the final confrontation between American and Chinese forces in Anchorage to include massive amounts of soldiers and ordnance with, but no, the operation feels more like a small skirmish on the sideline of the actual battle. Tense trench warfare in Anchorage is a yawn-inducing walk through narrow corridors, blasting the occassional mandarin-speaking grunt to pieces in overpowered VATS. A large vehicle depot supporting many tanks is a small yard with ten grunts to kill. The final "push" adds injury to insult, as it consists of six T-51b Power Armour soldiers running through an ice field to blow up a door.

A batch of three Operation: Anchorage reviews, today.

• GameBanshee - 6.4/10
• Gaming Nexus - C+
• IncGamers - 6.5/10

Here's a sample from GameBanshee with a sentiment shared across all these articles:

Operation: Anchorage adds four new quests that will take you about five hours to complete. There are also some new items that you can find, such as the gauss rifle, which is the energy weapon equivalent of the sniper rifle, and some of these items can even be taken with you after completing the simulation (thanks to the armory that the Outcasts are guarding). But otherwise there’s little to recommend about the DLC. It’s linear and it’s easy and it adds almost nothing to the Fallout 3 universe. To me it sort of felt like a quarter of an expansion pack at half the cost, which isn’t a good thing.

I'm told by Briosafreak from Planet Fallout (check out their Operation: Anchorage FAQ if you need anything) that the issue that locked out many regions (such as Australia, NZ and Portugal) from accessing this DLC have been fixed.  My interest has passed, so I haven't checked personally.

On to a review roundup.

• Xbox360-Achievements.org - 9/10
• 360Evolved - 9.5/10
• AtomicGamer - 78%

...and an interview at [OC]Modshop.

Two more new Operation: Anchorage reviews, with neither being won over.  Let's start with VideoGamer.com, who call it "Falllout 3 vs Call of Duty: Winter Edition". The score is 6/10 and here's a taste:

What this essentially means is that you get to play through roughly four hours of Fallout 3 vs Call of Duty: Winter Edition. All role-playing elements of the game are completely scaled back, resulting in a simple first-person shooter with added VATS. There's very little in the way of pick-ups: ammo and health are now dispensed via little machines dotted around the maps, and because your enemies disappear when they die, it's impossible to loot corpses. As a result of these changes, and the fact that you are now fighting Chinese soldiers, it's quite remarkable how different it all feels from the Fallout 3 we know and love.

Unfortunately, in this case being different isn't a particularly good thing. Aside from the fun and games of VATS, combat was never Fallout 3's strong suit. Your enemies are as brain-dead as ever, and the chances are that you'll cut through them like a hot knife through butter. While you don't have access to any of your old equipment, your in-simulation character retains the same stats as your "real-world" adventurer - and indeed it's possible to level-up while you're playing. If you happen to be at a reasonably experienced stage when you join Operation Anchorage (we used a save at level 15) then you'll barely bat an eyelid, never mind break a sweat.

...and a site called The Reticule says "just don't buy it":

Escape this dull world of horrendous blue and grey, you’ll find yourself in… another horrendous world of blue and grey. Where Fallout 3 is pretty well stylised in this respect - it looks like a stereotypical barren wasteland - O:A is simply just horrific. The “squad choices” amount to little more than talking to that dull US soldier friend from the start of the simulation to choose what weapons they have. If you want squad control, go download the Enclave Commander mod. Hell, Bethesda even advertised it themselves weeks ago, clearly in anticipation of their failure. You then proceed to have the wonderful world of choice dangled in front of your eyes, only to realise you’re basically choosing little more than the order in which you follow a small number of linear paths. There’s a few nice touches along the way. It’s nice seeing the T-51b’s given their proper place once more especially. But nothing truly justifies either the financial cost. It’s not particularly long either - there’s a lot of people understandably annoyed at how short it is on the Bethesda forums. The rest are obviously having fun getting the darn thing running.

The Reticule also has this invaluable tip:

One useful little nugget of information for you all is the location of the actual game files. Following this procedure will allow you to play without GFWL running. Bliss:

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Xlive\DLC

From here, copy the .bsm files into C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3\Data

And there you have it! You’ll be able to do everything normally as per the good old ways.

Meanwhile - though not a review - MTV Multiplayer is impressed so far.  On bodies disappearing so there is no looting:

I knew Bethesda’s downloadable content would be a different experience, but I hardly expected them to toy with gamers expectations for how they should play “Fallout 3.” If that’s the approach they’re taking with each of these downloadable expansions, I need to buy some more Microsoft Points.

Contrary to the first review at Eurogamer, Destructoid scores Operation: Anchorage at a hefty 8/10:

Operation: Anchorage is focused almost entirely on combat. So, right off the bat, if you are not a fan of Fallout 3's combat system, you will almost certainly loathe this expansion. If you found the combat to be entertaining but wanted a little more challenge because you've reached level twenty and are swatting Super Mutants like flies, on the other hand, you're in for a treat.

Looks like Fallout 3 is on everyones' mind today.  Let's start with the Eurogamer review, where Will Porter awards a score of 5/10 after criticising the nothing-but-a-shooter design and the pricing for 2.5 medicore hours:

Sad to say, but remove the role-play dynamics from Fallout 3 and you're left with a slightly duff shooter (hey, even Todd Howard agrees). Operation Anchorage could have got away with it if it had been clever and more knowing, like the Tranquillity Lane simulation in the full game, but as it is it just feels shallow. For example, expositional holotapes are found in dull, obvious closets directly on your path and behind the easiest of locks; hacking into computers never really goes beyond redirecting the attention of a gun turret; hardly anything can be picked up or ferreted around in. Just so much of what makes the Fallout 3 experience such a complete and all-encompassing one is stripped away, and if you've already spent a fair proportion of the past four months in the DC wasteland you'll feel like you're only playing half the game you love.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun finds buying Operation Anchorage from GfWL is so long and traumatic, there's no time to talk about the content:

Restarted. Run GFWL. Log in. And there it is. The evidence that Operation Anchorage exists. My MS points balance is empty, which means it needs to launch IE (dust flying everywhere) and asks me to log in again 30 seconds after logging in. You can’t buy 800 points, obviously. You have to buy 500 or 1000. I don’t want 500 or 1000, I want 800. £8.50 for 1000. Of course it requires a credit card, there’s no option for Paypal or Google Checkout. Nor even a Switch card. It’s gotta be about those credit cards! Fortunately mine’s already registered from 360 excursions, so that will save time.

The official site has a new trailer if you'd like to see it in action.  In related stuff, MTV Multiplayer just reached the end of the standard game and writes about their confusion with the abrupt design.

You can now break out your credit cards, fire up Games for Windows Live and grab Operation Anchorage for Fallout 3:

The Brotherhood Outcasts are trying to acquire advanced military technology, and the only way to open the vault containing these relics is by completing a tactical simulation only you can enter. In Operation: Anchorage you will re-live the epic Battle of Anchorage from Fallout lore. Find your way into the simulation, stripped of resources, and survive within the rules set up by the simulation’s creators. The Chinese red army is everywhere, so secure the surrounding mountain side and fight your way into the Chinese base.

Now it's Corwin's turn to examine Fallout 3 in our second review of Bethesda's entry to this revered series.  From the intro:

What’s in a name? If we listen to the hype, or the controversy surrounding the title of this game, we’d have to assume a name means a great deal. Let’s deal with this issue immediately so we can address the far more important aspects of this game.

No-one argues that the game contains many of the same elements we find in the earlier iterations: Pip Boy; Super Mutants; Vaults; BoS; etc, but many are complaining that the differences are too great. Rubbish!

Read it all here.

MTV Multiplayer sent Todd Howard three critcisms of Fallout 3 - the performance as an FPS, the ending and VATS - with Howard responding briefly but frankly:

Criticism #2: The ending isn’t very satisfying and much shorter than other “Fallout” endings

Howard: Based on the feedback I’ve seen, most people are pissed off that it ends, not the ‘ending’ itself. Maybe that’s one and the same, I don’t know. That’s another thing we’re changing in DLC3 [downloadable content #3, "Broken Steel"]. We really underestimated how many people would want to keep playing, so that’s probably the last time we’ll do something like that.

The Bethblog is pointing out an article at Gamefocus providing tips on the Fallout 3 G.E.C.K. kit.

It's been a long time coming but we finally have not one - but two - reviews of Fallout 3.  Today, Michael 'txa1265' Anderson takes a detailed look at FO3 in a massive 5-page article almost as epic as the game.  A quick taste from the intro:

First and foremost: anyone who denies that Fallout 3 is 'Oblivion with guns' is either lying to you or themselves. At the same time, anyone who claims that 'Oblivion with guns' is all that Fallout 3 has to offer is being similarly dishonest.

Read it all here.

...and watch out for Corwin's opinion tomorrow.

If you're interested in playing with the Fallout 3 editor, the Bethblog has their second Quick Tips video titled Bunker Kit & Snap to Reference.

The community Q&A for Operation Anchorage we noted the other day at GameSpy is now complete so you can head over and see what the readers asked Bethsoft's Jeff Gardiner:

GSpy Reader: Will the Operation: Anchorage content be open-ended like in Shivering Isles, or will it be a wholly linear experience akin to not-so-notable downloadable content we've seen from other games?

Jeff Gardiner: Operation: Anchorage is a more linear experience. However, there are decisions to be made within the scope of the content itself. The player has the choice on how to outfit their strike team. They also get to decide how to approach and subdue the Chinese Stronghold, as well as how and if they'll help the Brotherhood Outcasts. Subsequent DLC, The Pitt and Broken Steel, will contain more open-world gameplay.

The Bethblog is pointing out an upcoming community interview on the Operation Anchorage DLC at GameSpy of all places.  Head over if you have a burning question you'd like to submit:

Rather than simply ask the developers our own questions, we thought it would be more fun to let you, our readers, do our work for us. So, if you've got some hard-hitting questions for the team at Bethesda, either pose them in the comment section below or head into this forum post to post them. We'll be choosing your ten best questions and running Bethesda's replies on Friday afternoon. Please limit your questions to the Operation: Anchorage DLC, as the team isn't quite ready to discuss the other content that will be available in the coming months. Ask away

Three new screens of the Fallout 3 DLC Operation:Anchorage can be found in our gallery.

The nominations for the Writers Guild videogame awards are out with Fallout 3 getting a nod.  Here's the list via Variety:

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (EA). Writer: Haris Orkin. Story Producer: Mical Pedriana.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (Mousechief). Writing: Keith Nemitz. Additional Writing: Adrianne Ambrose.

Fallout 3 (Bethesda). Lead Writer: Emil Pagliarulo. Quest Writing: Erik J. Caponi, Brian Chapin, Jon Paul Duvall, Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, Bruce Nesmith, and Fred Zeleny. Additional Quest Writing: Nate Ellis, William Killeen, Mark Nelson, and Justin McSweeney.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts). Writers: Haden Blackman, Shawn Pitman, John Stafford and Cameron Suey.

Tomb Raider: Underworld (Eidos). Story: Eric Lindstrom and Toby Guard. Screenplay: Eric Lindstrom.

Nominations need to have a specific credit for "writer", "story scripting" or similar and be a member of the WGA.  In other words, it's an award by the WGA only for the WGA.

Pete Hines sends word that the long anticipated patch for Fallout 3 is now available.  This patch is required for the upcoming DLC, with Operation Anchorage launching on January 27th.  The patch notes:

Bug Fixes

Friends notification no longer causes the game to pause. (Playstation 3)

Fixed occasional crashes during loading and waiting.

Friendly or neutral NPC health bars, when taking damage, no longer flicker repeatedly.

Fixed issue where certain NPCs would occasionally disappear from the game.

Fixed issue where dead NPCs would occasionally come back to life.

Fixed rendering issue with the Gatling Laser gun's tracers.

Fixed issue where the haircut menu would occasionally not appear properly.

Added ability to remap your VATS and pip boy buttons.

Fixed rare load/save issues that would cause NPCs to behave incorrectly.

Fixed issue where quest objectives would occasionally not update properly due to talking activators,

intercoms and conversations.

Using Radaway from the Pip-Boy's Status Menu repeatedly no longer crashes the game.

Player no longer gets stuck in level up menu if their skills are maxed out.

Fixed issue where multiple followers would occasionally not load into an interior.

Fixed rare issue with getting stuck in VATS mode.

Fixed rare crash with fighting NPCs with corrupted data.

In game radios will now play properly if player was listening to the radio in the Pip-Boy first. (Playstation 3)

Fixed rare crashes while loading and saving games.

Fixed rare issue where player would fall through the floor while in VATS.

Fixed occasional crash after scoring a critical hit in the head with a Railway Rifle.

Prevent NPCs from inadvertently dying from falling.

Fixed occasional issue where the controller would stop working properly.

Fixed crashes related to repeatedly equipping and dropping clothing and armor into the world.

 

Quest Fixes

Fixed several instances where quest item stayed in inventory permanently after completing quests.

Fixed an issue where the distress message would occasionally not play in Trouble on the Homefront.

In The Waters of Life quest, the Citadel gate will open properly if the player fast travels away after exiting the Taft Tunnels but before reaching the Citadel gate with Doctor Li.

For the Home Sweet Home quest, the broken protectrons in Big Town become active at the proper time.

In The American Dream quest, fixed specific issue which prevented the player from accessing their belongings in the locker by the door if they left the room first.

Fixed infinite caps exploit in Strictly Business quest.

Fixed rare instance where Dad would have no valid dialogue during The Waters of Life quest.

Prevent issue during the Finding the Garden of Eden quest where player would fade to black, instead of traveling to Raven Rock, while in combat with a follower.

Fixed several XP speech exploits with certain NPCs.

Fixed XP exploit with a robot in Fort Bannister.

Fixed issue where player's controls can become locked permanently during The American Dream.

Bethsoft dropped us a line to point out three new Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage DLC screens.

Lead Producer of Fallout 3's DLC Jeff Gardiner interviewed at Eurogamer.

Eurogamer: The 800 Microsoft Points price point is often challenged by gamers - look at the Gears 2 Combustible Map Pack, for instance - and you have some experience with pricing issues. How's the reaction been so far? Are you still comfortable with it?

Jeff Gardiner: We're offering several hours of unique gameplay - along with a bevy of armor and weaponry the player can use throughout the entire main game of Fallout 3. Reaction has been very positive.

Eurogamer: With G.E.C.K. (good name, by the way!) now out and about, will PC gamers be able to take advantage of the Op Anchorage and other DLC assets when they come out?

Jeff Gardiner: Yes, you can use content in the DLC to create new plugins and mods, but anyone who wants to use those plugins/mods will have to have bought the DLC and have it installed.

Titled Afterthoughts, 1Up has a retrospective interview with Emil Pagliarulo on Fallout 3.  There are a couple of interesting spoilerific answers, such as this one here about the design of the ending (don't read on if you haven't finished the story line):

1UP: Somewhat related to that: Why are companions not an option for inputting the Project Purity code? You already have the option to have Sentinel Lyons input the code in your place. There are three viable options for an alternate to input the code: Fawkes, Sergeant RL-3N, and Charon. The player has already experienced a situation where Fawkes can enter an irradiated room and perform a task, RL-3N should follow his programming to obey you, and Charon would not only become healthier due to the radiation, but he's established as essentially a slave who will do whatever his contract-holder orders him to do. To the player, the inability for either to input the code seems really contradictory.

EP: That's a great question, and one that's obviously come up quite a bit in different forums. Let me try to shed some light on why the game is like that -- it's a pretty interesting look inside the development process.

All of the followers were implemented into the game fairly late in development, after the main story had already been nailed down. So, you know, we had the scene at the end of the game, with deadly radiation, and never really compensated for the fact that you could have a Supermutant, or Ghoul, or robot, who could possibly turn the purifier on for you. We'd only ever planned for you sending Sarah Lyons into the purifier, because we knew, from a story standpoint, that she'd definitely be in there with you.

What we could do -- and what we did ultimately do -- is cover that stuff in dialogue. You can ask those followers to go into the purifier, and they'll tell you why they won't. We felt that fit with their personalities, but really, they didn't "sell" that to the player in a single line of dialogue. So, in the end, the player's left with a, "Huh, why the hell can't they do it?!" sort of feeling.

So the story does kind of break down. But you know what? We knew that, and were OK with it, because the trade-off is, well, you get these cool followers to join you. You meet up with Fawkes near the end of the game, and it's true you can go right with him to the purifier. So we could've not had him there as a follower, and that would've solved the problem of him not going into the purifier -- because, at that point in development, that was the only fix we had time for. But we kept it, and players got him as a follower, and they seem to love adventuring him with. Gameplay trumped story, in that example -- as I believe it should have.

So if we'd planned better, we could've addressed that more satisfactorily. But considering how it all went down, I feel good about the decision we made there.

A less than positive review of Fallout 3 can be found at the Codex.

More than anything else, Fallout 3 suffers from a lack of cohesion, consistency and craftsmanship. Across the board, the quality of content runs the whole gamut (though moments of brilliance are particularly rare.) The game's highest "achievement" is the quantity of content and to this end, I feel like Bethesda have achieved absolutely very little. There's nothing in Fallout 3 that couldn't have been accomplished in four years by a hundred enthusiastic kids with rich parents.

There's really no critical justification for something that prides quantity over all else. Nobody lauds a movie that runs for 8 hours just for the sake of it. Nobody takes a ruler to a library and judges books by the width of their spine. Nobody pretends a gallon of waffle-house coffee has any worth beyond the caffeine it contains. Same goes for a four litre box of cheap wine. Fallout 3 shares the same metaphorical space as fast-food, bulk buys, movie marathons. If the only thing you care about is having a metric fuckton of something, then it's probably worth getting. But even then, there are far superior products in the form of MMORPGs and games with "unlimited" procedural content.

NMA let us know they have a Fallout 3 mod roundup that lists new mods hosted at NMA and Fallout 3 Nexus recently.  They plan to update every Thursday, which should keep us on top of the latest mods.

Shamus Young's examination of Fallout 3 turns to the Tenpenny Towers sequence - spoiler apply.  Let's set the scene:

Tenpenny Tower is a high-rise building in the middle of the wasteland, and is the nicest place in the game. Everyone else in the game resents the residents of Tenpenny because they’re all “rich”.

But what does that mean? Nobody in this game produces anything. Unlike in previous Fallout games, there are no farmers who eke out a miserable existence from the scorched earth. You can travel the entire wasteland in the game and not see a single farm, or garden, or anything else. (They have some cows, but it’s not clear what the cows eat.) Everyone just meanders about all day. People go to the bar at the end of the day and spend their money on booze, but the game never explains where they get their money, where their food comes from, or what they do for a living. (Or where the booze comes from, given the shortage of stills and raw materials.)

What makes the people of Tennpenny Towers “rich”? Their nice clothes? Their clean building? In that case, it’s pretty hard to feel angry at them. The rich people aren’t benefiting from ill-gotten gains from raiding, or slaves, or from cheating others. They’re just doing well. They do just as much work as everyone else in the world. (Zero.)

From the Bethblog comes news of two short Fallout 3 mod articles on the 'net.  UGO has three Fallout 3 Mods 4 All, such as Repair Rethought and Improved Dogmeat.  MTV Myltiplayer also selects three recommendations, including MrLabTechnician and Slower Leveling.

Yes, Fallout 3 again.  UGO has a short interview with Jeff Gardiner, Bethsoft's lead producer for FO3 DLC:

UGO: Will players be allowed to play as their existing characters in the DLC? Since “Broken Steel” takes place after the main story, how will this be addressed? Will it work similarly to Shivering Isles, where the new quests simply get added to your Pipboy, or will you have to load up a brand new game?

Jeff Gardiner: Yes, all of our DLC drops right into an existing game.  Which is a double edged sword, or course, it requires a lot of testing and fine balance tuning on our part!  In our third DLC, “Broken Steel,” we’ve come up with a way of allowing the player to continue on past the game ending… by changing it!  You will not have to load in a new game to play any of the DLC material – though you will have to finish the main quest to experience most of what “Broken Steel” has to offer.  That being said, we are raising the level cap, so even if you don’t complete the main quest you can experience the expanded content by leveling up past 20.

After getting the good stuff out of the way, the first part of Twenty Sided's Fallout 3 criticism is a look at The Power of the Atom quest (very early game spoilers apply):

This is not the worst quest in the game. But from a writing standpoint the dialog suffers from an almost criminal lack of ambition, and as someone who would love to write this sort of stuff I found the missed opportunity to be endlessly frustrating. And since Pete Hines won’t return my phone calls, I’m afraid you must bear the brunt of my ravings.

As you enter the town of Megaton - a town built around an undetonated atomic bomb - you’re approached by two NPCs. The first is the mayor, who will pay you to disarm the bomb. The second is a shady character named Burke, who will pay you to set off the bomb and destroy the entire town. If you do as the mayor asks, you’ll be given a house in town. If you do as Burke asks…

The Bethblog has news that a patch for the PS3 version of Fallout 3 has been released, as well as news that other platforms are in testing:

Today in both the UK and the US, an update (v1.10) for the PlayStation 3 version of Fallout 3 went live. The patch adds Trophy Support, fixes Friend Notification issues, and also fixes a number of other issues reported within the community. When you boot up the game, you should see a notification to download the 24MB update.

Again, the update is presently available only for the English PS3 version of the game in the US and UK. Updates for other PS3 territories, as well as Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, are on their way — right now those are in the final stages of being approved. When we have more news, we’ll let you know.

Another PC GotY award goes to Fallout 3.

Bethesda's Fallout 3 not only outshone the studio's previous game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, in just about every way, it accomplished the impressive task of satisfying most non-extremist-level fans of Black Isle's venerable Fallout series. Creating a vast world that is a convincing representation of a dismal, post-nuclear wasteland while also being consistently compelling is no mean feat, but here it is.

The sheer amount of content in Fallout 3 is extremely impressive, considering what a consistent level of quality it maintains -- and how much of it a player is likely to completely miss, based on the choices made, the NPCs killed, the routes traveled, and any number of other variables. The main storyline pales in comparison to the larger breadth of experiences to be had throughout, and the vast wasteland begs to be lived in.

To sweeten the deal for PC gamers, Bethesda has also released the G.E.C.K., an end user editing tool that can author any type of single-player content featured in Fallout 3 -- which will surely extend the title's already-considerable shelf life.

Fallout 3 takes Gamespy's PC GotY with Warhammer Online 2nd, WotLK 4th and Mass Effect 8th. The full list can be seen here.

When it was announced that Bethesda Softworks would be developing Fallout 3, longtime fans of the post-apocalyptic franchise let out a groan that could seemingly be heard across the Internet. Questions abounded: Would the game be isometric? Could players beat Fallout 3 solely through the use of dialogue? Would it just be Oblivion with guns? Fallout forums were full of doom and gloom posts that suggested Bethesda would invariably ruin the franchise. Thankfully, that couldn't have been further from the truth, as Fallout 3 ended up not only being the best game of the year, but one of the finest titles of this generation.

Twenty Sided's Shamus Young is about to embark on one of his typical series of post-mortem reviews, this time for Fallout 3.  This first post covers The Good Parts:

Fallout 3 is a fusion of two wildly popular game franchises, in much the same way that Taco Ice Cream would be a fusion of two wildly popular foods. It takes the gameplay of Oblivion, and splices it with the setting of Fallout. There are other gameplay elements they’ve introduced to act as adhesive between the two disparate systems, which both add and detract from the whole in equal measure. In order to help confuse both players and (more importantly) reviewers, Fallout 3 has better gameplay than Oblivion, but a worse story than Fallout. So figuring out if the game is good or bad depends a lot on which axis you’re traveling on - which of its progenitors you’re using as a standard.

Bethsoft has announced the Garden of Eden Creation Kit toolset for Fallout 3 has been released (8.47Mb).  In addition to grabbing the file from the link above,  there is a Wiki to provide help and the Bethblog has some tutorial videos.

Fallout 3 DLC Producer Jeff Gardiner speaks to IGN about the freshly revealed Operation Anchorage, which will be released in January:

IGN: The liberation of Alaska was hinted at a lot during Fallout 3. What can we expect out of that simulated battle?

Jeff Gardiner: In Operation: Anchorage the player will find themselves able to re-live the famous liberation of Anchorage from Fallout lore -- inside a simulation similar to one found along the main quest of Fallout 3. Once the player finds their way into the simulation, they'll be stripped of their resources and have to survive within the rules set up by the simulation's creators.

The Chinese red army is everywhere, and the player will first have to secure the surrounding mountain side and then fight their way into the Chinese base. The player will have to use a lot of their standard combat skills, along with several new tools that will only be available in the downloadable content. These include interactive Strike Teams under the player's command and unique armor, weapons, and other exotic gadgets.

IncGamers have some info on Fallout 3's DLC.

We recently reported that Operation: Anchorage was imminent, but now we know just that little bit more. Basically it's a trip into the history of Fallout 3 and is a counter-offensive training simulation used by the government to stop the Chinese army rising to power again. 

The focus of the DLC pack will be on stealth and combat, and having lost all resources, adventurers will have to survive within the simulator’s parameters.

As well as new armour, weapons and tools, there will be a Covert Ops perk as well as new achievements.  No trophies as there are still no plans for a PS3 DLC package, so this will only apply to PC and 360 users.

Here's a short Fallout 3 roundup.

• GameBanshee writes their Fallout equipment database has been relaunched to "include all items from Fallout 3, new advanced search functions, and a more robust layout to allow for more item locations".
• Italian RPG site La Maschera Riposta sends word they have a "lengthy" review of Fallout 3 for any Italian readers, with a score of 5/5.
• MTV Multiplayer has a piece called Fallout 3 Loses Some Luster After Level 20, with the author starting to lose interest after hitting the level cap.
• Fallout 3 vs Reality at Games Radar compares photos of real-world DC locations with the in-game version.

MTV Multiplayer has a short piece about the missed opportunity with players able to discover Bethsoft's own ruined offices:

Many of the “dungeons” in “Fallout 3″ look exactly the same. They may have different layouts, but the art keeps a consistent, if eventually tiring, look.

How Bethesda Softworks counters this is by hiding creative stories about the world of “Fallout 3″ inside through computers, audio books and more.

Because of “Fallout 3″’s setting, they were even able to include themselves. Mostly. The “Bethesda Ruins,” found just southwest of “Germantown HQ” in the wasteland, is technically where Bethesda’s apocalyptic offices are.

Unfortunately, Bethesda didn’t do much with it.

Just to balance things, here's a link to their older (spoilerific) Don't Miss Vault 106.

Gamers' Creed found themselves in cowbell heaven while playing Fallout 3. Their review can be found here.

Dude... where's my story?

We had some internal debate over the story in Fallout 3. I've given it some thought, and I can see where it was weak. The dialogue is dicey at times, and there are moments that defy logic. So much, in fact, that the game was in danger of sliding to a 4 score, instead of 5. Ultimately, this is a highly subjective area in a review. Part of my perspective is that the diaglogue/story never pulled me out of the immersive nature of the game. In the end, that is what matters the most. Even if I was asked to do something that seems totally ridiculous now, I was perfectly fine with it while I was in the game. Plus, some of the side missions were really well designed.

And...thank God the voice acting is a lot better than in Oblivion. They actually have more than 3 actors this time around.

Creepy, creepy, creepy.

The graphics and textures for the monsters in the game are top quality. We're getting to the point where computer graphics are becoming very realistic. When faced with an enemy, the minute details are astonishing. In fact, in some cases, you can spot a grenade hanging off the belt of an enemy and actually target it. Needless to say, it's just an explosion of fun when it's hit.  

Whether it's giant radiated scorpions, or mindless ghouls (hapless humans who've mutated due to massive amounts of radiation), this is not your father's Washington DC. It's Mad Max on steroids. If the critters aren't trying to kill you, the environment is. Radiation, hidden land mines, swinging dead cow traps (I'm not kidding), there's no telling what you might blunder into if you're not careful. And you know what? That's exactly how I imagine it would be.

Briosafreak of Planet Fallout interviewed Fallout 3 voice actor Wes Johnson who's sense of humor shows in the interview.

PF: Ron Perlman complained a bit about the degree of perfectionism asked in the Fallout 3 voiceovers, he had to repeat a single sentence almost one hundred times. Did you have to endure the same?

WJ: I have a theory. I think because the folks at Bethesda are fans of Fallout, they basically heard him say “War... war never changes,” and went, “Again! Do it again!!” I know I would have...

Sometimes, you’ll repeat the same phrase a number of different ways, mostly because you don’t know what context it will be spoken in during the course of the game. There need to be several options. Plus, when saying “Hello,” there are about 400 different ways it can be said. Are you happy to see them? Unhappy? Sarcastic? I have no problem giving as many takes as needed in a game like this, because you want there to be a special layer of immersion. More takes means more flexibility as far as I’m concerned.

That being said, using a bullwhip on the voice actors to make them repeat their lines is simply uncalled for.

PF: Do you have space for ad libing or is everything very strictly scripted?

WJ: Sometimes. But for the most part, it’s all there in the scripting. Emil Pagliarulo is one of the best writers in games today. He has such a wonderfully dark sense of humor, and he writes games that he HIMSELF would want to play. Now, in regard to how you PLAY those lines, that’s another story. Bethesda has suggestions on how I should approach these characters, but they’re great at letting me experiment, and bring something new to the table. In Oblivion, I was asked to bring a Robin Williams manic quality to Sheogorath. But after thinking about the character, I felt a more Billy Connolly approach might work better. And since he was a schizophrenic character, and a Daedric Mad God to boot, I mixed the accents.

I had him sway from Scottish brogue to lyrical Irish, depending upon his moods and his sways from manic to dementia. Lucien Lachance on the other hand was meant to be a straight “race” character, just like all the other Imperials, but Mark and I decided to play with him a bit. I went a little off the rails... really got into it. It worked out far better than we expected it would. To interpret Emil’s work in the Dark Brotherhood quest, and then in FO3... great privilege.

The Edge staff give a more critical review of Fallout 3 than most though I disagree that it's really impossible to find your way around the map with the Pipboy & compass. I don't think the breadcrumbs idea from Fable 2 would really be fitting a Fallout game. The score is 7/10.

As wastelands go, Washington’s is a surprisingly busy place, and the game contrives to distract you with meaty side-quests at every opportunity. The broad strokes are well considered, and the best recall the ingenious freedom that marked earlier Fallout games: an encounter with some slavers can find its resolution through complicity, violence, stealth or a fluid combination of all three; a group of cannibals prove to be much more open to reason than their grisly pursuits would suggest; mediating a land dispute between some over-privileged humans and their ghoulish neighbours gives the player several delightful avenues of self-expression.

The writing isn’t quite as consistent as the ideas that underpin it, however, and though dialogue trees rarely collapse into total logical failure, they do sometimes assume knowledge the player has yet to gain, and often have an unreal quality to them – as if human emotions had been explained to the writer secondhand.

5 Llamas is the score.

Bugs aside, there is no doubt in my mind that Bethesda has crafted a spectacular instalment of the Fallout universe and their best game to date. While the main story can be finished in a rushed 20 or so hour stint, you’re doing yourself an immense disfavour by not exploring the rest of the wasteland, an exercise that can probably take close to 150 hours! The four years of development Todd Howard and his team have lavished upon this magnum opus have given birth to a game true to the world’s canon and abundant with all the original elements that have made this franchise the cult classic that is. The Fallout universe has always exhibited a combination of dark humour, ridiculous pop culture references and disturbed individuals co-existing within a blighted land rife with bloodshed, death and utter devastation. This is a world where you will experience emotional extremes from minute to minute, where the horror of walking through a raider’s torture chamber is counterpointed by the last few computer log entries of survivors, stricken with radiation sickness over two hundred years ago. Walk through Arlington National Cemetery amongst the headstones of the fallen, as the dust billows around you and faint trumpet wails echo off the shattered surroundings. Scour the countryside and ruined townships north of D.C. as you listen to various radio stations broadcasting the latest news or popular tunes from our 1950’s. Rest assured that over every hill and around every corner there will be something fresh and unexpected waiting to absorb another hour or two of your life. And at the end of it all, when you’ve seen and done all that you can, climb to the top of Tenpenny tower at dawn and savour the view one last time as the Washington Monument pierces the horizon in the distance.

This is the world of Fallout at its immaculate best.

More reviews on Fallout 3 can be found at the following locations.

JustPressPlay gave it an A+:

The game itself is amazing. This is a game that can get you into the Bethesda genre and play Oblivion as well. Fallout 3 gives you the reins to fix or further destroy the Capitol Wasteland. You can be a good guy, bad guy or just neutral. You can create your own weapons like the roadway rail gun which uses rail spikes as ammo, and which has large amounts of ammo throughout the map.The guns range from a .38 special to a combat shotty to the Fat Man (A mini-nuke launcher). You have full freedom and lots of missions to complete. Great game and my personal Game Of The Year.

Fragland awarded it with 93%:

The first hour of Fallout 3 is already enough to realise that you're playing a deep and richly filled game. The voice-acting is great and from the first seconds on the world is set up up to the smallest details just as it should: with a deep background story and lots of characters, each with their own personality and motivation. Not only do the surroundings enchant you with their vividness and reality, it gets truly impressive thanks to the freedom and choices you can make. Each decision you take has little or a lot of effect on your character, the world around him or whether your grandma gets angry on you or not. You can let's say wipe out an entire city and all NPCs, quest and objects included, or decide to let it remain and bear its fruits.

And Hardcore Gamer gave it a 4.5/5:

Fallout 3 is the biggest accomplishment in adventure gaming since Oblivion. It’s incredible how fun and deep this game is. Everything in the game, from the graphics to the sound, is very well done. With a ton a quests and a huge world to explore, Fallout 3 will keep you busy until the next Bethesda release.

Bethesda announce today the release of a creation kit and three pices of downloadable content:

Bethesda Softworks Announces Creation Kit and First Downloadable Content for Fallout 3

Editor to be Available in December; Downloadable Content coming for January, February, and March

November 25, 2008 (ROCKVILLE, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, today announced plans to make both its editor and downloadable content available for its award-winning game, Fallout® 3 in the coming weeks. The official editor for Fallout 3, called the G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit), will be available for free download in December and will allow Games for Windows® users to create and add their own content to the game. In addition, the first official downloadable content, Operation: Anchorage, will be available exclusively for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Games for Windows® in January, and more downloadable content coming in February and March.

“We’ve always seen the original world of Fallout 3 as a foundation for even more content. Some created by us, and a lot more created by users,” said Todd Howard, game director for Fallout 3. “It’s fun to create your own character, but it can be equally fun to create your own adventures. We can’t wait to see what the community does with the G.E.C.K.”

The release of the G.E.C.K. provides the community with tools that will allow players to expand the game any way they wish. Users can create, modify, and edit any data for use with Fallout 3, from building landscapes, towns, and locations to writing dialogue, creating characters, weapons, creatures, and more.

Three downloadable content packs will be coming to Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live starting in January that will add new quests, items, and content to Fallout 3.

• Operation: Anchorage. Enter a military simulation and fight in one of the greatest battles of the Fallout universe – the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from its Chinese Communist invaders. An action-packed battle scheduled for release in January.
• The Pitt. Journey to the industrial raider town called The Pitt, located in the remains of Pittsburgh. Choose your side. Scheduled for release in February.
• Broken Steel. Join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all. Continues the adventure past the main quest. Scheduled for release in March.

GameBanshee writes in to say they have their Fallout 3 review online (as well as the start of their database).  The score is 8.4/10 and here's a snip on the character system:

Bethesda also dumbed down the character system a bit, which I found to be kind of sad but not entirely surprisingly, since games seem to keep going in that direction. For example, the traps and throwing skills of the original Fallout games were combined into a single explosives skill, and even with a low rating in the skill I never failed to disarm a trap. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to fail. Then there’s the minimum strength requirement for weapons, which doesn’t exist any more, and so characters can use any weapon they want, even if it’s bigger than they are. And finally, the prerequisites for perks were reduced. Fallout 2 had some perks that required an attribute rating of 10, but in Fallout 3 the highest attribute requirement is 7. That might not sound like a bad thing, but it means that most characters can learn all (or nearly all) of the perks, and you’re not forced to make any choices. A good character development system should always require you to make choices.

If you're into podcasts, two sites have conversations on offer with Bethsoft on Fallout 3.  The Adrenaline Vault welcomes back Pete Hines and Emil Pagliarulo - both former editors at the site - and Gamers with Jobs catches up with Pete Hines.

Scars of War indie developer Gareth 'Naked Ninja' Fouche kicked up some Fallout 3 impressions on his blog yesterday.  We've seen a zillion reviews already but I thought it might be worth linking to one of our own community.  Gareth finds the wasteland exploration compelling but the story department underwhelming:

Bethesda have surpassed themselves in the environmental design department, truly, not since Morrowind have I enjoyed just getting lost and wandering around so much. Not only is the setting beautiful, the map is packed with locations to explore and discover, and thankfully they have avoided Oblivion’s problem of only having 3 types of dungeon to explore. I’m surprised by how often I run into a sight I haven’t seen before.

Several sources wrote in to point out NMA's Fallout 3 review written by the famous (infamous?) Vince D. Weller.  Vince isn't impressed with the cohesion of the setting but finds the quests quite well designed:

The East Coast “wasteland” is anything but dead and empty – one of many inevitable changes brought by switching the format from a “classic”, isometric RPG focused on exploring through dialogue to a first person, sandbox RPG heavy on the action side. Running into enemies at every step is a traditional sandbox feature. Sticking with Fallout's "dead wasteland" atmosphere would have made traveling in first person unbearably boring. As a result, the "wasteland" seems overcrowded: hungry monsters, trigger-happy raiders, super mutants, and stray, hostile robots of all shapes and sizes are everywhere. Evil-doer hunting Regulators and do-gooder killing Talon mercenaries complete the picture.

The setting’s casual approach to nuclear explosion is especially jarring. You get out of the vault, look at this brave, new world, and someone promptly asks you to detonate a nuclear bomb inside one of the towns. Why? Because it's cool, apparently. Later on you will unavoidably run into a super duper mutant who can only be taken down by a several direct nuclear blasts that, oddly enough, have only a few meters radius and are harmless to people outside this radius. Shooting old rusty cars results in even more nuclear explosions, which makes you wonder if there really was a big War or if a simple car accident caused a chain reaction of exploding nuclear cars across the States.

In other news, Shamus Young's Twenty Sided blog revisits some cynical questions asked a while back and finds Fallout 3 doesn't measure up so badly and Gamasutra has a piece called Escape from Vault 101 that finds the changes made by Bethsoft work well in the end.

As Moriendor points out we have missed some of the more positive reviews for Bethesda's Fallout 3 so here's a few:

Hooked Gamers 10/10.

There is no doubt in my mind that Fallout 3 will end up a classic that will be remembered by many for decades to come. The game does its predecessors justice by successfully offering a modern take on one of the most revered franchises of the past. It has been a long time since I awarded a game a perfect score but Fallout 3 deserves nothing less.

Games32 9.1/10.

Without any doubt I can say that this is Bethesda's greatest game yet, and that can't be contested by anyone (*I think* - fingers crossed). They've done a remarkable job with the graphics and environment, and the moment you get out of that Vault 101 and look at all the world around you, your jaw will drop because of the size alone if not for something else.

Lastly, Boomtown's 8/10.

Overall Fallout 3 is a great game hampered by a few problems. Many people will be drawn to the RPG elements while hardcore FPS gamers might sit this one out. The main campaign lasts 20 hours which is easily doubled if you take on the numerous side quests available. The game concludes nicely, but ends after that so any side quests you want to take on need to be done before the last mission. Bethesda has done the Fallout series justice and should be proud of the game they made, unfortunately, the scope of the project was too much for them and the PC game felt unfinished in places, but simply outstanding in other areas.

It's time to pick the Fallout 3 reviews back up and this contrasting pair is a good place to start.  2404 is a fairly critical piece with a laundry list of complaints and a score of 7/10:

Bethesda has greatly improved on the anemic fetch quests and insipid characters of Oblivion, and this time around people are a bit more fleshed out and quests are more interesting.  The amount of distinct quests outside of the main storyline is very small, but each is broken up into several sub-quests that are often lengthy in themselves.  Most of the time, these sub-quests are ‘go to location x’ and ‘talk to y’ or ‘bring me a amount of b’ or something equally generic.  Not that the original Fallouts didn’t have dumb quests, but Fallout 3 suffers from a severe lack of real set-pieces like Junktown.  There are a couple of quests that come close, like those involving Tenpenny Tower or Megaton, but very few times did I complete a quest and think “wow, I’m glad I spent time doing this.”

3 News doesn't know much from firsthand experience but they're pretty sure it's awesome:

Fallout 3 is a completely different kettle of fish to the others. From what I’ve seen (and there’s HEAPS to see, believe me) it is far superior. Big thumbs up to Bethesda Studios. The main thing that blows your mind with this game is the massive scale. I’ll be honest and admit I’ve never played Oblivion, but I understand the hype, and can assure you Fallout 3 blows it out of the water. Exploring the outside wastelands is an absolute joy. You can walk for hours, everything is new, and everything looks amazing. See that point on the horizon? You can go there. While certain ‘themes’ pop up (the office, the shop) they’re all slightly unique and make you feel like this is a real (once breathing) world. What’s more, there’s reason to go there: You never know where that med pack is going to be, or where you might find some more ammo, or a bed to rest (and heal) in.  To be honest, the magic they’ve created here is pretty much the reason for the rating I’ve given this game: There’s nothing else like it. You can lose yourself for days.

Several sites are pointing to a short bit at VideoGamer.com with Microsoft and Pete Hines confirming Fallout 3 will be the first title provide DLC through the new Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace (catchy name, or what?):

Microsoft has confirmed that Fallout 3 will be the first title to offer DLC through the newly announced Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace.

Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing for Bethesda Softworks commented: "Games for Windows LIVE helps us expand the Fallout 3 universe and bring the full experience directly to gamers. Through the Marketplace we now have a no-nonsense way to deliver updates and great downloadable content. It's really a complete package, and a great fit for Fallout 3."

CVG goes a little bit further, with Microsoft apparently saying new "quests, foes and weapons" are on the way:

Microsoft says the DLC will be the only way users can receive "the complete Fallout story, including new quests, foes and weapons."

NMA has added an interactive map and recruitable NPC page to their Fallout 3 info, as well as a brief roundup of new mods.  Head here for their newsbit.

ComputerGames.ro have a lengthy review of Fallout 3 available ranking it with a 7.2. Their final thoughts are these:

To me, Fallout 3 is Bethesda's best game yet, but it's got more holes than a sinking ship. It's a perfect symbol for contemporary games: oversimplified, too accessible and way too commercial. The clever, edgy dialogues are gone, along with the complex relationships and the depth of the game world, replaced by a flawed visual feast, generic conversations and a gameplay fit for the masses.

An interesting side effect of Fallout 3’s release was that many players who were unfamiliar with the series decided to give the first two titles a try in order to “get it”. Which lead to a worrying amount of people registering on forums and writing things like “I can’t get out of that cave at the start of Fallout. This game is too damn hardcore / difficult.”

The Fallout games aren’t really difficult. Least of all hardcore. However, they do demand a minimum amount of logic and thought from the player. Compared to Mass Effect or Oblivion, they don’t push you towards the end. You need the determination and a minimum degree of inventive thought to make your way up in the world, and towards your own objectives.

This is perhaps Fallout 3’s biggest failure: it’s not nearly complex or cerebral enough for the role in role-playing game to really shine.

So despite the claims of Pete Hines, I stand my ground. Fallout 3 hasn’t been released yet. And since Obsidian’s website doesn’t have an announcement about it...

Bethesda-created-Fallout-spin-off, you may have set the world on fire, but you didn’t manage to start a flame in my heart.

We haven't really kept track of the deluge of Fallout 3 reviews since the initial burst but the Codex writes in to say they've kicked up an opinion:

As we all know, voice acting is nothing without the right dialog. In this regard Bethesda delivers… something. There’s good dialog, there’s some bad dialog, and then there’s some “so bad it’s good” dialog. Most of the bad dialog really isn’t that bad if you stop to think that the person you’re talking to just might be crazy, and there sure are a whole lot of them 200 years after the world was obliterated. Maybe it’s the radiation. As the player, you are given a wide range of options to choose from. Thankfully, and unexpectedly coming from Bethesda, choices are not “ghost” choices. That is, two choices don’t end up giving you the same response. Choices are also filled with skill checks. The whole game is filled with numerous skill checks for practically everything you do, along with dice rolls to accompany them, but dialog is where it is most apparent and most thoroughly used. Still in this general area, it is well worth noting that “wrong” choices don’t usually lead to an attack. You suffer consequences and can live with them.

The first patch for Fallout 3 has been released and as indicated by Matt Grandstaff the other day, it only addresses some limited crash bugs (6.5Mb):

Bug Fixes

Fixed occasional crashes when exiting the game or using Alt F4 to exit.

Fixed crashes when using Alt-Tab while binks or credits were playing.

The game now restarts properly after title updates finish installing.

Thanks, narpet!

Bethsoft sends over this PR, announcing a successful launch and 4.5M units shipped to retail:

Bethesda Softworks Announces Successful Launch of Fallout 3

$300 Million Worldwide Launch Across Three Platforms

November 6, 2008 (ROCKVILLE, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced that its hit title, Fallout® 3  has enjoyed record sales at launch, reflecting the huge consumer demand for the game. Approximately 4.7 million units of Fallout 3 were shipped worldwide last week for the Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows® representing retail sales in excess of $300 million.

Released on October 28 in North America at midnight store openings in over 2,000 retail outlets nationwide jammed with fans eager to get the game, Fallout 3 quickly became one of the industry’s top sellers around the world. For example, in the United Kingdom where it was not released until Friday, October 31 the rapid sales of Fallout 3 have led the game to be ranked number one among all video games, as well as being the number one game on each of its three platforms.

Hailed as one of the most anticipated games of 2008, Fallout 3 received a 10 out of 10 review score from Official Xbox Magazine, a result then repeated around the world with perfect scores by some of the industry’s most influential and respected critics including: Gamespy, GamePro, UGO, the Associated Press, MSN, The Washington Post, Guardian, FHM, Scripps Howard, G4-TV, The Toronto Star, MSN, and Eurogamer.  MSNBC’s review offered the observation that it viewed “Fallout as a no-brainer for game of the year.” The Daily Star in the UK echoed that conclusion, saying “You can hold all bets on game of the year – I think we have a winner.”

The successful launch of Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks follows the success of The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion®, which remains one of the highest scoring games ever published and earned “Game of the Year” honors in 2006. Fallout 3 has been featured on over 100 magazine covers across the globe and is available in eight languages. The initial retail shipments of Fallout 3 included both the Regular version of the game as well as a limited “Collector’s Edition.”  A Fallout 3 Official Game Guide in both the regular and collector’s edition versions has also been a strong seller. Fallout 3 is slated for release in Japan on December 4th.

Fallout 3 features one of the most realized game worlds ever created. Set more than 200 years following a nuclear war, you can create any kind of character you want and explore the open wastes of Washington, D.C. however you choose. Every minute is a fight for survival as you encounter Super Mutants, Ghouls, Raiders, and other dangers of the Wasteland.

Fallout® 3 has been rated Mature by the ESRB.  For more information on Fallout 3, visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com and www.prepareforthefuture.com. 

In other Fallout 3 news, IGN Music has an interview with composer Inon Zur.

Planet Fallout adds a comment from Matt Grandstaff on the official forums about the patch revealed yesterday.  If I understand correctly, it seems this first patch (now coming some time this week) will only address that old crash-on-exit bug and a full patch is still being examined:

Hey all, I wanted to give you an update on this…

It looks like this patch might not being going up today, but you should expect it sometime this week. You should know the patch only fixes some crashing on exiting the game, as requested by Microsoft.

We’re also moving along with pulling together a more extensive update. We’re still in the process of going through and looking at any issues/fixes, and once that is done there is lots of additional testing/fixing that has to be done before it can be released. Similarly, we're looking into matters on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

When I’ve got more information, I’ll pass it along.

Hmm.  IGN has a platform head-to-head.  You know which won, right?

There's no question that the PC wins this Head-to-Head with the most fully featured, best looking, and best running version of Fallout 3. If you have both a 360 and PS3 I would recommend going with a copy of the game on Xbox but the differences aren't drastic enough to warrant the purchase of new hardware. The PS3 version is still a great buy.

Overall
1. PC
2. 360
3. PS3

...and a site called Neoseeker has a piece titled 11 Ways Fallout 2 was better than Fallout 3.  Some good points, although I don't agree with all of them.  This one I definitely do:

7.Immersion free NPC's

Most of the dialogue in the game is not memorable, consequently, most characters are forgettable. Many times half way through conversations I just clicked right through to the end bit, where they dispense the quest or what-not.

People like the wasteland super-hero Antangonizer just would not exist, even after a nuclear war. Give me a break.

So many characters are just so unbelievable -- even by RPG standards. The NPC's don't exist as non-playing characters. Most exist solely as pieces of game mechanic furniture -- like the Nuka Cola machines everywhere that somehow, amazingly, all still have Nuka in them. They are function. Not personalities.

I don't want to battle through a legion of Super Mutants, climb through a tunnel, then run into this strangely dressed guy deep in the wreckage of the Wasteland that greets me by saying, "What would you like to purchase?"

In the real world, I've never met anyone anywhere who introduced himself, and then thirty seconds later offered me some money to nuke a city. I wish there were more NPC's in the game that didn't give quests or heal you or trade with you -- they are just like, you know, NPC's that are doing there own thing. 

The most important thing in this short Fallout 3 roundup is news of an imminent PC patch from Eurogamer.  Here's a snip from a transcript of a recent chat with Pete Hines:

Will there be a patch to add southpaw controls for the left-handed people out there? And what about a fix for the various PC niggles?

Pete Hines: Well on the 360 the console itself actually handles that. You change it in your control options, so we don't bother doing it in the game. I'll have to check on how PS3 works.

As far as fixes, there's a PC update coming out later today that will address a few PC-specific things that have come up. Can't give you any details yet beyond that as far as what else might be in the works for any of the three platforms.

Edge Online says Fallout 3 is topping all three charts in the UK.  It's interesting to see the format breakdown:

It was the 360 version that sold the biggest share of Fallout 3 discs, representing 55 percent of the title’s total purchases, with PS3 and PC versions attributing to 28 percent and 17 percent respectively. Yet despite the 360 version taking twice as many sales as the PS3’s, and three-times as many as the PC’s, today the game sits atop all three platform charts. 

...and NMA has converted a Vince D. Weller Let's Play from the Iron Tower forums into article format.  It chronicles Vince's first five days playing with lots of screens.

The Bethblog has a post that explains if you decide to log into Games for Windows Live after you've started playing Fallout 3, your save games will end up somewhere else:

PC users now get achievements and friends lists similar to how Xbox Live works. Here some cool things you can do with Games for Windows Live.

1. Earn achievements. You can create a free Games for Windows Live profile or link your Games for Windows Live profile to your existing Xbox Live profile. That’s right — you can earn Fallout 3 achievements twice, for both PC and Xbox 360. To link your Xbox Live profile, create a Games for Windows Live profile using your Live ID (ie, the email and login you used to link your Xbox Live profile to Live ID — that is, how you log onto xbox.com)

2. Once you link your Xbox Live profile, you’ll be able to see both your Games for Windows Live and Xbox Live friends together via the Games for Windows Live dash.

3. Question: Hey I was playing the game for a while, then logged onto my profile and my saves are gone? What happened?

Answer: Your saves are kept in specific directories tied to your profile. But don’t worry - you can go into your My Games folder and copy those saves over to your Profile’s save game directory.

For example, on my computer running Windows XP, under the Saves directory, I have two folders - Player1 and acheng. I can simply copy all the saves from Player1 to acheng, and I’m able to access them while logged on with my gamertag. On Windows XP, look in your My Documents\My Games\Fallout 3\Save folder. On Windows Vista, the path is C:\Users\{Username}\Documents\My Games\Fallout3\Saves.

For more troubleshooting tips, visit the Games for Windows Live technical support pages.

Gamasutra examines the unkillable children in Fallout 3, finding the decision hollow for various reasons:

Pagliarulo states that killing children using Fallout 3's impressive engine is not something that would have passed ESRB checks anyway. That some violent games have grisly features cut or dulled in order to secure a specific rating is news to no-one, so why the need to elaborate on and justify the decision in the public sphere? Because, says Pagliarulo, the decision to self-moderate was a moral and ethical one.

Problematically, in singling out and self-censoring one particular type of 'crime' in his game, Pagliarulo by implication justifies all the others as being non-gratuitous and necessary. Last night I blew the head from a homeless scavenger girl, one who was barely into her twenties.

The slow motion camera tracked her head's explosion before lingering on the crimson fountain spurting from her neck stump. Is this kind of interaction and feedback socially responsible? And so then what's the difference to killing a minor?

Is the life of a make-believe child really worth more than that of a make-believe adult?

We'll take another Fallout 3 review roundup soon but we've already posted a bunch, so for the moment, we'll go with other tidbits.

• Gamasutra takes a look at Fallout 3's critical reception, although they miss the opportunity to take a deep look at the press coverage and simply grab a handful of review quotes.
• At the Bethblog, Bethesda is explaining their use of Securom after previously claiming the DRM scheme would be minimal.  It still is, they say:
  • For Fallout 3’s copy protection on PC, we use the same security model as we did for Oblivion - a simple disc check. We only use SecuRom’s disc check functionality for copy protection. We do NOT limit the number of installs. We do NOT use online authentication or any other SecuROM functionality except for a disc check when you install the game and when you launch the game. We do not install any other programs and we don’t have anything that runs in the background while you’re playing the game.
  • If you experience issues installing the game, try running setup.exe directly off the disc. That will resolve most compatibility issues.
  • Get the latest information from our tech support forums, including this specific thread related to SecuROM.
• MTV compares the real Washington DC metrorail map to the layout in Fallout 3.  Turns out they're rather different...but then, we knew that.

German print mag GameStar posted an overview over a couple of mostly technical points. Basis is the German Fallout 3 retail version for PC.

Summary:

• No blood at all. The German version is cut. According to the article the Austrian and Swiss versions are not.
• CP: SecuROM, but without online activation and install limits. The DVD needs to be in the drive.
• GfW Live: optional, but limited to one account.
• Loca clearly improved on to Oblivion. [Oblivion had a terrible localisation. ; ed.] Not much to complain about it.
• F3 is not ALT-Tab friendly.
• The options menu is buggy. Especially widescreen resolutions are often not saved.
• The author mentions in surprisingly mild language that some menus seem to have been adjusted for consoles, which means a lot of scrolling for mouse users.

So Bethesda censored the game, although it was quite clear that even the edited version would be rated kJ (aka "18").

Round Two.

• GameSpot - 9/10
• Gameplayer.com.au - 9.5/10
• CrispyGamer - Buy It
• Gamers with Jobs - no score but very positive
• The Escapist: "I was deeply and profoundly affected by this game."

Here's a snip from Tom Chick's review at CrispyGamer:

The combat might be a sore point for some players, but I loved it. Bethesda's objective seems to be letting you play it as a turn-based slow-motion decapitation sim, or as a slightly clunky shooter. Take your pick or just alternate as the mood strikes you. For folks who prefer to play it as a shooter, Fallout 3 offers weightless ammo, and plenty of it. Those of us who mostly use the nifty turn-based "V.A.T.S." system will never want for a bullet. V.A.T.S. lets you target body parts, shoot the weapon out of someone's hand, or cripple him so he can't chase you. At least, that seems to be the idea: In practice, there never seemed to be a reason to do anything other than simply close the distance and queue up a series of sure-fire headshots. Hand-to-hand combat (use the biggest blade you can find!) and explosives are overkill, as they should be. But well into my second playthrough, the ridiculously gory deaths still haven't gotten old.

Just in case you haven't heard, Bethsoft sends word that Fallout 3 is now available in NA:

Bethesda Softworks Announces More Than 2,000

Fallout 3 Midnight Store Openings Across the Country

Fans Nationwide to Help Usher in One of Year’s Biggest Videogame Launches

October 27, 2008 (ROCKVILLE, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, has announced that in response to huge demand for it’s award-winning game, Fallout® 3, more than 2,000 stores across the country will open tonight. Starting at midnight, customers can pickup pre-orders and buy the game at retailers nationwide. The retail chain, Best Buy, plans to have special midnight events at stores in the Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dallas and Chicago metropolitan areas.

“Fallout 3 has been a labor of love for the team at Bethesda and we can’t wait to get the game into the hands of consumers,” said Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda Game Studios for Fallout 3.  “We’re looking forward to celebrating the launch of Fallout 3 with the fans.” 

Members of the development team at Bethesda Game Studios will appear at the Best Buy store in Rockville, Md., near the studio’s offices, to meet with fans. Special festivities will include game kiosks, giveaways, contests, and a live radio broadcast from the event with DC 101 FM.  Game director Todd Howard will be on-hand along with other key members of the development team to sign copies of the game and chat with fellow gamers.

In other news, Ausir sends word of an Across the Wastes contest at The Vault Wiki.  Sponsored by Bethsoft, 5 copies of the game plus other goodies are on offer.  Here's an outline and head over to the contest page for the full details:

The goal of the contest is to make it from Vault 13 (the starting location in Fallout) to Vault 101 (the starting location in Fallout 3) in seven clicks or less. Simply navigate from the Vault 13 article to the Vault 101 one by clicking on article links within the wiki's articles about the Fallout world and games.

On your way to Vault 101, you also need to visit at least one location from each Fallout game (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3), not counting Vault 13 and Vault 101. Other articles on your route do not have to be locations, but you can only use each article once. Every location that appears in more than one game counts for only one of them.

Well, here we go - the first batch of major web reviews.  Let's start with IGN, who have a lengthy 5-page article and a score of 9.6/10.  A snip on the writing and dialogue, which they really liked:

The conversations you'll have with the various people you meet in Fallout 3 range from disturbing to hilarious, but they all have one thing in common: fantastic writing. You'll want to hear everything every person has to say, but to do that you'll have to play the game more than once and likely more than a few times. While the dialogue system doesn't take the cinematic leap that Mass Effect did, it brings so much depth that the simple listed responses become quite powerful. Some perks, stats and skills add new conversation options. If your strength is high, you might be able to intimidate someone. If you're playing as a female character, you might be able to flirt your way through a sticky situation with some men. Or, if your speech skill is high enough, you might be able to lie your way to key information. The way you talk to the people you meet can drastically change the story you're writing.

GameSpy note a couple of minor issues - more so that IGN - but the score is still a hefty 5/5.  Their article is shorter but also less detailed.  Again, they really like the story:

Examples of this presentation are everywhere, from the slides that pop up on the loading screens to the posters that line the walls of the subway. Maybe we're just suckers for retro-futuristic designs, but we couldn't help smiling every time we saw (and by saw, we mean destroyed) a mechanical man that looked strikingly similar to Robbie the Robot from "Lost in Space." We also really enjoyed the engaging and entertaining storyline, which is leaps and bounds better than the run-of-the-mill sword-and-sorcery plot featured in Oblivion.

...and then on to GameShark, who seem to take a balanced view, pointing out a number of deficits but still concluding this is an excellent game.  Hardcore Fallout fans will want to take a look at this one, because they do contrast Bethesda's work against  the originals.  Their rating is 'B+' and here's a critical bit on plot missteps, since the other two reviews have liked the writing so much:

It’ll surely come as no great shock that your dogged pursuit of your father has you stumble onto a much larger story that affects the entirety of the game world. Nor should it be surprising that everything you’re intended to take for granted isn’t necessarily based on reality. The ideas of fighting the “Good Fight” and sacrificing for the sake of others are prominent. But, much like Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, this intricate and compelling story too frequently gets tripped up in its implementation.

Take your aforementioned exit from the vault. Everyone in the vault was born in that vault. Everyone there has spent their lives together. Yet, we’re to believe the day dad leaves, the vault’s Overseer is so enraged that he orders everyone to be confined to quarters, has a man beaten to death, intends to have you killed and threatens to kill anyone else found in the vault’s corridors? Even if the Overseer were established as dangerously unstable, which he isn’t, we’re to believe nearly every vault security officer is willing to listen to these orders and ready to gun down the same vault civvies they’ve known their entire lives, with no questions asked? That doesn’t strain credibility—it holds it over its head and then snaps it over its knee.

[Update] Adding a bunch more...

Alec Meer admits at Rock, Paper, Shotgun that he struggled with his review at IGN UK.  He ultimately calls it a "must play" but laments a considerable lack of polish in a number of areas.  The score is 8.8/10 but the text reads much lower:

The real trouble is there's this air of, almost, incompetency to the game at large. Yes, it's supremely competent on a certain level: it's this huge, atmospheric place filled with toys and fights and quests and choices. At the same time, the game's filled with cock-ups so glaring that you almost wonder if it ever got play-tested before release. To name but a few: friendly NPCs that run directly in front of your bullets (even in the slo-mo VATS mode); occasional spelling and grammatical errors that could have been fixed by spending a couple of hundred quid on another proof-read; an optional third-person view so badly animated you'll never want to use it; passers-by bumping into one another and grinding to a enmeshed halt; cutscenes triggering in the middle of firefights; people greeting you pleasantly in one second then threatening you in the next; and the mad cacophony of multiple characters all speaking at once. Many of the same problems as Oblivion, then.

IGN AU sees it much like the main IGN review - all's good and a score of 9.5/10:

A big part of what adds to Fallout 3's replay value rests within its sense of morality. Morality and consequences are two interconnected elements of the game design – and have been since the original games – and to a similar extent in Bethesda's RPGs too. The framework for your moral compass rests within the decisions you make in conversations, your approach to handling conflicts and quests, as well as whether you tend to help yourself to other peoples' belongings or plant live hand-grenades on them when they're not looking.

Eurogamer's reviewer sounds a bit scared of the open world but still didn't find it difficult (score: 10/10):

It isn't, however, all that difficult, and there's no option to crank up the challenge, other than making things difficult by heading off to areas that are too dangerous. If you even vaguely follow the main storyline, there's rarely anything that feels beyond you. This worked for me - it's more than big enough without the game bashing me over the head every five minutes - but it'll be understandable if others hanker for more brutality.

Such scenes of breathtaking destruction soon become the norm, but the sheer craft never fails to impress.

And when you get all the way up to level 20, you simply become a bit too good for the game. With your abilities capped, you're generally such a badass that the tension is reduced as you explode every head you aim for. With no more levelling possible (at least until the DLC, perhaps), there's no longer the same sense of reward, and it turns into a bit of a victory march. This is a problem specific only to truly committed players, but in a series that attracts an unusually large proportion of hardcore gamers, the endgame is relevant.

An 8/10 from Jeff Gerstmann at Giant Bomb:

Most of the quests in Fallout 3 can be completed in multiple ways, and the way you finish a quest can have substantial ramifications. Take, for example, the side quest called The Power of the Atom. This is one of the first side quests you might encounter in the town of Megaton. Megaton is so-named because there's a live nuclear bomb in the center of town. It leaks a bit of radiation and some local nutjobs worship it as some sort of great deity. The local law enforcement would be appreciative if you could quietly disarm the bomb. But a shadowy businessman in the local tavern offers you a hefty sum if you can rig the bomb to explode, instead. Since Megaton has other side quests and is also the place where you find your first lead on your father's whereabouts, blowing up the town can be a pretty dramatic act if you do it early on. It's a very cool moment.

Unfortunately, most of the other quests don't quite have that level of impact. But that doesn't mean they aren't clever or interesting. You'll get sent on a lot of different missions, either purely as side endeavors or in order to satisfy a person and convince them to give you the next piece of the main quest line. And there are still others that you might be able to circumvent if your statistics are properly aligned. The speech skill seems especially useful for this, as talking your way out of violent situations is usually much faster and easier than blasting your way through the entire game. But some quests won't require you to have specific skills. It's more a function of whether you're going to play like a jerk, and choose the most negative thing on the dialogue tree, or try to be a bit more even-handed. The game does a good job of making you feel like your dialogue choices are meaningful, even if they're just different tones of voice that ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

• 1Up - A+
• VideoGamer - 9/10
• GameDaily - 8/10

Let's get straight to it.

The Bethblog is pointing out a new blog entry from the Prima Guides author.  This sixth part has an overview of the Tour of the Capital Wasteland chapter.

Bethsoft world artist Nate Purkeypile has a dev diary describing a playthrough with one of his characters named Edward the Cannibal.  A sample:

Edward was always very talented with small guns and how to repair them, when he was growing up in the Vault he always dreamed of being a hero and making his father proud. Initially, he was just a good guy who was wandering the wastelands checking out all the wonderful things to see. Since he was mostly just roaming around and not doing specific quests for people, a couple of times, things went wrong. Sometimes, a grenade would be thrown, and someone who was not supposed to be there, died accidentally. Eventually he started to get a reputation as an “evil-doer”. This made him very sad, because he thought he was being a hero of the wastes. A clean-shaven one at that, beards were for evil people as far as he was concerned.

One day, they started to send hit squads after him. At this point, he was very talented with small guns, and due to his skill at repairing weapons, he was able to build a massive stockpile of weapons. The result of this is that they had pissed off a badass with a lot of caps to burn. This is when things started to turn sour. He decided that if they thought he was evil, he was going to show them just how evil he could be. He joined the slavers, he grew a beard and he started stealing things. He was no longer a hero to the people.

Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo writes for Edge Online about Fallout 3 and violence:

I often struggle with whether or not we as game developers should have a heightened sense of social responsibility when creating entertainment.

Fallout 3 is an M-rated game—made for adults. Its violence is over-the-top and has been a central focus of not only our game, but the entire franchise. This is a series that in previous installments allowed players to kill children, right? When Bethesda first started developing Fallout 3, we had early conversations about whether you’re going to be able to blow the kids’ heads off . (Let’s be clear, with the ESRB’s rating system, that’s not something that would fly anyway.)

GameSpy looks at the sound design with an interview with Lead Sound Designer, Mark Lampert:

GameSpy: Was it difficult coming up with musical inspiration for a game that takes place after the bomb?

Mark Lampert, Lead Sound Designer: Inon Zur composed the game's musical score, and I think he really enjoyed approaching the music with "desolation" as the ultimate goal. The key was to let the music provide a thick fog of atmosphere but also not get in the way or steal the show, and I think he did a fantastic job of creating the sound of the ravaged Wasteland while still managing to retain a sense of curiosity for the player.

It's certainly dark, but there are small pockets here and there in the music which make me feel more like I'm in a strange land worth exploring as opposed to everything being utterly hopeless. A lot of his instrument choices that you'll hear in the public areas such as towns were meant to evoke ideas of Middle Eastern bazaars or the American western frontier.

...and Worthplaying has a last-minute interview with Pete Hines:

WP: Karma. There are a lot of numbers and a lot of stat values in Fallout 3, but with everything our player had, we didn't see any specific numbers for Karma, although we did see a lot of "Karma up," "Karma down" notices while playing through the game. What can you tell us about Karma?

PH: Karma is intentionally meant to be a bit ambiguous in terms of, you get some feedback about whether you're good, neutral or evil and how good, neutral or evil. There are different ranks of Karma, but we didn't want to assign a number to it and say, "Your Karma is now 14," or "It is now -32." We'd prefer it to be a rough guide, a rough barometer of how you're playing the game, how good or evil or neutral you're being in the world based on your actions and the decisions that you've made. We want to allow the player to adjust that as they go along by the kinds of things that they do. If they find themselves being too much of a Goody Two-shoes and they want to go out and wreak some havoc and terrorize people, they can, and their Karma score will slide down appropriately. Or vice versa, they've done evil things and decide that they want to try and repent and do better, then they can spend a lot of time doing nice stuff and getting their Karma to go up. We wanted it to be ambiguous, and it's not the focal point of the game, it's just another aspect of how you're acting in this world, what kind of person you're being.

The Washington Post talks to Todd Howard about the city of Washington in Fallout 3:

Q: How close did you try and stick to the real-world map?

Howard: Not that close.

When it comes to really high-level geography, we did that, but the timeline in Fallout splits after World War 2. We did a lot of studying of D.C. and the history of D.C. and how it was built. We wanted to do the big things [like] the Mall and we did Dupont Circle and various other sections of the city in the flavor they are. Georgetown, the Key Bridge, the Pentagon -- but the Pentagon is now this big fortress that the Brotherhood of Steel lives in, they're kind of like the knights of this world.

The problem is, when you get into a game, when you're actually playing and walking around, the scale doesn't work. It doesn't feel right. So we would go down [to Washington] and walk around and see how it felt and translate that to an appropriate scale in the game. So it has a similar feeling but it's dramatically compressed in some places, and some places are opened up a bit.

This will only benefit a small group of readers but if you're lucky enough (or crazy enough...you pick) to live near a handful of certain Best Buys stores in the US, they'll be opening at midnight on the 27th for early Fallout 3 sales.  From Blue's:

Bethesda Softworks and Best Buy Bring Fallout 3 to Fans with Midnight Launch Events Across the Country

Fans to Help Usher in One of Year’s Biggest Videogame Launches

October 24, 2008 (ROCKVILLE, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, and Best Buy Co., Inc. have announced that in response to huge demand for Bethesda’s award-winning upcoming game, Fallout® 3, there will be midnight openings at Best Buy stores across the country the evening of October 27. Best Buy customers at select stores in the Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dallas and Chicago metropolitan areas will be among the first to play one of the most anticipated videogames of the year.

“Fallout 3 has been a labor of love for the team at Bethesda and we can’t wait to get the game into the hands of consumers,” said Todd Howard, Game Director for Fallout 3. “We’re looking forward to celebrating the launch of Fallout 3 with the fans.”

The Fallout 3 team’s hometown Best Buy in Rockville, MD will serve as the flagship location of the midnight events, with special festivities including game kiosks, giveaways, contests and a live broadcast from the event with DC 101 FM. Game director Todd Howard will be on-hand along with other key members of the development team to sign copies of the game and chat with fans. In addition to the Rockville event, 11 Best Buy stores across the country will be hosting special midnight sales events.

Read on for the exact locations.  The PR calls for queues to start from 3PM!

Fallout 3 is now available for preload on both Steam and Direct2Drive.  The D2D version is currently restricted to NA and a handful of other countries, while the Steam version appears generally available.  FO3 unlocks 28th for NA, 31st for Europe and Asia Pacific.

Steam also has the manual online if you'd like to look through all the details.

FO3's Lead Designer interviewed over at Gamespy.

GameSpy: The Fallout series is well-known for providing plenty of freedom to the player in terms of allowing free-roaming exploration and a non-linear approach to tackling its storyline, with plenty of side-stories. Does Fallout 3 take a similar approach, allowing for multiple ways to approach the story?

Emil Pagliarulo, Lead Designer: Well, the main quest is fairly straightforward in the sense that it has a set narrative -- you leave Vault 101 in search of your father, and you're trying to find out why he left, where he went, what he's up to, etc. That said, by the end of the main quest, you've made some really significant decisions that ultimately change the destiny of the entire Capital Wasteland.

But I think the really cool thing about Fallout 3 -- and this is pretty much true of the previous games as well -- is that at any time you're free to just abandon the main quest, head off into the Wastes, and see where life takes you. It's a wide-open world; we don't restrict your movement at all. So in that sense, yeah, it's very much classic Fallout. It's all about exploration and discovery. What's out there? Who can I meet? How can I affect those around me, for either good or ill?

Not too many Fallout 3 things today, either.

3D Zone.bg  has an interview with unspecified members of the Bethesda "team".  A wide range of questions but nothing really new:

3dz: OK, let’s talk about the balance between role-playing and action elements in Fallout 3. It seems that RPG elements are a bit hardcore, while the action feels more like a FPS. Is this intended?

BT: Well, we want people to feel like they can play the game however they like. If you’d rather play it like a story-driven FPS and not get into the stats and role-playing, feel free. If you really want to power game and get into the stats and numbers and how best to buff out your character, or spend all your time in dialog, or however you want to roleplay, you can do that too. We don’t think it’s up to us to tell you how you should play the game. We want to give you that freedom and let you go, and do, whatever you want, however you want.

Well-known RPG press specialist Desslock has been interviewed at Planet Fallout by Briosafreak about his thoughts on FO3:

PF:You went there and came up with a column in PC Gamer, the famous “Memo to Bethesda”. In it you gave five tips for Bethsoft not to screw up Fallout 3. Now that you’ve played the game let’s get back to those tips. Did they got the combat right?

Desslock: Yes, the combat is great, in my opinion – it’s repetitive, and over-the-top violent (necks are apparently very brittle after the apocalypse), but it’s consistently rewarding. I’m very pleased with VATS.

PF:But no kicking rats in the groin now, though…

Desslock: One of the bigger disappointments is that there’s no targeting of body parts in melee combat at all, apparently for balance reasons. Melee combat definitely gets short shrift in general, and there’s far too much ammo lying around compared to the other Fallouts, although the change in locale somewhat justifies that.

The Prima Guide blog has an entry on the Bestiary

Yahoo has an article on sequels, with Todd Howard suggesting Fallout 4 should around three years away

[Update]...and adding an interview with Emil Pagliarulo at Gaming Nexus.  Again, nothing new, so here's a random snip:

How will the missions work out in Fallout 3? Any chance you could describe some of the new mission types we'll be seeing in the game?
For us it’s never been about trying to squeeze in a certain number of quest types, or filling a quota. For Fallout 3, we really just wanted to tell some interesting stories, and give the player a chance to make real choices and determine the outcomes of those quests. So there are fewer quests than there were in Oblivion, but they’re much richer, much deeper. Most have multiple paths and solutions. And, because it’s Fallout, even the simplest task might seem like a clear-cut fetch quest on the surface, and then reveal itself to be something much deeper. So we had a lot of fun with that.

The quiet before the storm, I think.  A handful of new Fallout 3 items to report but you can feel the weight of upcoming reviews pressing down.

The Bethblog is pointing out another blog entry from the Prima Guide author.

PSM3 Magazine comments on the performance across the three platforms, after a leak of their PS3 review criticised the game on that platform:

The PC version of Fallout 3 is gorgeous. The colours are vivid, the draw distance is endless, the textures are high-res and the lighting effects are beautifully subtle, especially when you're gazing over the Capital Wasteland at sunset. It's the best-looking of the three.

The Xbox 360 version's textures are noticeably rougher than on PC, and objects in the distance aren't quite as clear. It does, however, boast an impressively solid frame rate. The game is, otherwise, identical.

NOW, the PS3 version looks the same as on Xbox, but things in the distance are slightly jaggier/rougher, the textures seem 'muddier' up-close and the frame rate is choppier, especially during the last few story missions (which may be the same on Xbox, but we've not seen the equivalent scenes to comment). We won't spoil anything, but the set-pieces here are MASSIVE, and the engine quivers under the weight of what's happening.

...and The Brainy Gamer sent his video game students out to play Fallout / FO2 before Fallout 3 was released.  The results are interesting - a couple of snippets:

So when I handed them Fallout (half played the original, half the sequel) with no instructions or special preparation, they struggled. A lot. They had the original manuals, but almost nobody read them. After exiting the vault, they had no idea where to go or what to do. Their movements were limited for no apparent reason; "action points" made no sense; and they died within minutes nearly everywhere they went. [...]

Suddenly, they got Fallout. They grokked the mechanics and embraced the non-linear gameplay. They made peace with uncertainty. But more importantly, they built a relationship with the character and the offbeat but perilous world.

After coming to terms with Fallout, some students report back that they don't think FO3 will capture the real essence of Fallout.  Head over to read it all - time will tell if they are right or not.

Thanks to NMA for the last two items.

Finally, GameBanshee has a new interview with Gavin Carter:

GB: We haven't heard a lot about Radiant AI in Fallout 3. What has changed with the implementation of Radiant AI in comparison to how it was handled in Oblivion?

Gavin: The biggest change is that we now have years of experience in how to best use it. The Radiant AI system is not just a simple system that instructs NPCs where to stand at what time. It's the entire framework that we use to create quest content in the game. Any action an NPC ever does runs through Radiant AI at some point. So what we've learned through Oblivion and Fallout's development is how to extract the best behavior from the system and get it onscreen where the player will see it. We now more activities that NPCs can engage in, and things like sandbox packages, where we can instruct an NPC to interact with anything they find in a particular area instead of standing around dumbly. It adds up to better NPC behavior and a more lively atmosphere in the game.

GB: Detail your approach to player karma and reputation a bit for us. Does Fallout 3 utilize a karma system without a separate reputation system? If so, what exactly does karma represent in the game - reputation, a mystical sense of good or evil, or a combination of the two?

Gavin: Karma could be considered to be reputation in some senses. At a basic level, it is a value that we use to track the sum total of your good and evil actions in the game. It’s a way to communicate to the player which side of the line they fall on and to what extent. Certain characters will have different reactions to the player based on his or her karma. For instance, some followers will refuse to join you unless your karma matches their own personalities.

Jonric at RPG Vault has an interview with Fallout 3 composer, Inon Zur:

Jonric: What were the major considerations that factored into your being selected to create the score for Fallout 3?

Inon Zur: I think it was the combination of music styles that I have created, especially the ambient music, which is almost like sound design, but is also mixed with orchestral elements. They thought it would really capture the attention of the fans because they were looking to give the score a different angle from the music that was in the previous Fallout games. And this is why they went for my style - because I could give them the ambience and the weird decadence plus an almost low-fi sound, but also bring up some more dramatic, orchestral elements with it when needed.

Notes on Pulling Down the Sky is the title of a diary at the official Fallout 3 site on level design:

Fallout 3 has been the first Bethesda Game Studios project with a dedicated level design team from the outset. With this resource, we were able to set our sights higher than ever before. We knew early on that one of our big concepts for the game was to challenge the traditional RPG divisions between towns, wilderness, and dungeon. With that mission in mind, we actively sought to blur the lines and create a world that was at once believable, unpredictable, and above all; entertaining.

The Washington, D.C. area was a natural choice of setting for the game. Despite her architectural beauty and social significance, the Capital is surprisingly neglected as a setting in videogames. We believed, as locals, that we had a great opportunity to do her justice. This setting has been a blessing in many ways. The U.S. Capital is thick with imagery and symbolism which is only amplified against an apocalyptic backdrop. This is a city of beautifully distinct architecture and a variety of local charms from neighborhood to neighborhood. Those of us who don’t live within D.C. herself are a very short metro trip away from the heart of downtown, so research and inspiration were never far away.

Quiet on the Fallout 3 front - only two minor newsbits.

The Bethblog is pointing out a G4 X-Play special:

Be sure to tune into G4’s X-Play tonight for a special one-hour edition. The first half of the show will be business as usual, as they’ll be covering last week’s Tokyo Game Show. After that, they’ll be airing their Fallout 3 Special that you won’t want to miss.

The action starts at 8 p.m. eastern time. Check your local listings for more details.

...and the official site has three new desktop wallpapers.