Fallout 3 - Broken Steel Dev Diary

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.