Let's Talk About Fallout 4 DLC - Automatron

Fallout 4 has its first DLC up to bat. While not a particularly lengthy offering, clocking in at about 2.5 hours, Automatron feels more like a nice appetizer than a proper meal. That's not to say it's bad, more to say that money conscious among you may want to wait for a sale. Allow me to break it down.

Automatron adds several new weapons, outfits, armor pieces, and rather than present an entirely new area has opted instead for tweaking several current locations, though the tweaks are substantial enough to make the areas stand out, and there's certainly no shortage of "Phat Lewt" in these changed locales.

The basic premise of Automatron is that a familiar-sounding fellow called The Mechanist has unleashed an army of homemade robots onto The Commonwealth under the guise of peace. In reality, the machines are killing just about anyone they come across, and it is up to you as the only person who can get shit done to put a stop to it. You are aided in this quest by Ada, a new Robot companion (Who you may also tweak to your whims), and the entirely new mechanic of Robot Workbenches. This is the meat of this DLC, and I'm happy to report it's very well realized.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas DLC Ranked by Fans

We recently asked you to rank Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas DLC from the best one to worst, and you did it (again)! This "social experiment" was not as big as the last one, when we asked you a bunch of silly questions, about what would you do If Fallout Was Real. Instead, this time we focused on a simple DLC rank, from the best to the worst, and here, you will find the results from our social media pages; Facebook, Google+ and YouTube Channel. Vault-Tec inc. wishes to thank all the Fallout fans involved in our studies! You make us stronger and better prepared for the future.

It is never too late to comment your favorite Fallout 3 and New Vegas DLC on Facebook and Google+ posts, or comment on Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas rank DLC videos on our YouTube Channel.

I will not bother you with the processing of collected data about ranking the DLC. All you need to know is that the final results are combined, from all the comments from our social media pages involved in this project.

The Results for Fallout 3 DLC

It was somehow a lot easier for you to rank Fallout 3 DLC then New Vegas, but I think we got such clear results simply because of one more DLC then New Vegas have. Broken Steel DLC was way before other Fallout 3 DLC, and not to mention that it didn't get below 3rd position. I guess we all respect the fact that free roam after you finish the game is the most important thing in Fallout universe.

Without any further rambling, here are the results of Ranked Fallout 3 DLC:

1. BROKEN STEEL DLC
2. THE PITT DLC
3. OPERATION ANCHORAGE DLC
4. POINT LOOKOUT DLC
5. MOTHERSHIP ZETA DLC

The fact that Mothership Zeta DLC was way beyond other Fallout 3 DLC is only telling us that we don't prefer Aliens in such form as it is DLC, but rather as easter eggs, like in other Fallout games. I believe the only reason Mothership Zeta DLC got a few points was the gear.

The Results for Fallout: New Vegas DLC

As mentioned above, we got some slight problems while ranking Fallout: New Vegas DLC from your comments. Nothing to worry about though. It was just Dead Money and Old World Blues DLC since they both shared the exact same number of ranking points. Let's check the results first, and I will explain the whole thing below;

1. LONESOME ROAD DLC
2. DEAD MONEY DLC
3. OLD WORLD BLUES DLC
4. HONEST HEARTS DLC

As you can see, the Lonesome Road DLC is ranked the best Fallout: New Vegas DLC, but despite the fact that it was way above all the other Fallout: New Vegas DLC, it had a few low-position ranking comments.

To get back to Dead Money and Old World Blues DLC; I had to make a decision to put Dead Money before Old World Blues simply because Dead Money have better higher-position ranking comments than Old World Blues. I didn't make that decision based on my personal favorite.

Despite the fact that Honest Hearts is the lowest ranked Fallout: New Vegas DLC, it was just a few points behind Dead Money and Old World Blues DLC. I think, that in the end, a good story count, no matter what.

Thank you again, for participating in another Vault-Tec inc. "social media experiment"! I hope you enjoyed as much as I did creating it. Don't forget to comment your favorite Fallout 3 and New Vegas DLC on Facebook and Google+ posts, and on Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas rank DLC videos. This list will be updated every month! 

Fallout: New Vegas DLC Stories

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In case you've missed some of them, the stories that fuel each DLC of Fallout: New Vegas. These add-ons are Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Courier's Stash and Gun Runners' Arsenal. The last two add-ons are only item packs, so we will not focus on them at this point. Each pack adds new quests, items, perks, achievements and other content to Fallout: New Vegas. The Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition, includes all add-ons packs. This article is divided on total of two pages. First page include Dead Money and Honest Hearts DLC, and the second page include Old World Blues and Lonesome Road DLC stories. Enjoy!

1. Dead Money

The first add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. Dead Money is set in the Sierra Madre, an opulent and extravagant resort that was to be the greatest casino in the west, except that it never opened. The bombs fell before the grand opening, and the Sierra Madre froze in time, its state of the art security system locking the place up tight. And so the Sierra Madre faded from memory, only occasionally being seen in posters across the wastes, until it took on mythic ghost story status, a supposed "City of Gold" in the Wasteland where all the treasures of the Old World were rumored to be held.

The Sierra Madre is a mythical place in the wastes, with travelers risking their lives to find it. Only one man truly "found" it and lived. After the fall of HELIOS One, Father Elijah of the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel set out to find new weapons to eradicate the NCR, and in the process he found the Sierra Madre. Upon waking in, the courier will find they have been stripped of all useful armor, weapons and aid. The player is greeted by Father Elijah's hologram, which explains that the Courier has been fitted with an explosive collar and that he, Father Elijah, demands the player to recruit three companions in order to carry out a heist for the centuries upon the casino.

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

2. Honest Hearts

The second add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. As a punishment for failed him in a  first battle of Hoover Dam, Caesar sentenced Joshua Graham (the Burned Man) to a gruesome death: covered in pitch, lit on fire and tossed off the cliffs of the Grand Canyon. Rumors around the desert indicated that he somehow survived this brutal treatment, but nothing ever came of it. Caesar then sent Ulysses to the Great Salt Lake to rally the White Legs to destroy New Canaan. With his help, the White Legs found a large supply of weapons. The White Legs then destroyed New Canaan, sending Joshua Graham, and the New Canaanites to Zion Canyon, where the Dead Horses stand with them against Caesar.

The Courier then arrives in the Zion Canyon with the Happy Trails Trading Group Caravan. Things go horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a White Legs raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave, you meet the Burned Man, Joshua Graham, who is surprised that it is a different Courier than Ulysses that came to him, as he had figured Ulysses would come to murder him.

The Courier becomes embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. It's a familiar formula of exploration, choice, murder and a decent (but not entirely gripping) storyline. The decisions the player character makes will determine the fate of Zion.

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See also: Fallout 3 DLC Stories

Fallout 3 DLC Stories

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In case you've missed some of them, the stories that fuel each DLC of Fallout 3. Bethesda Softworks released five DLC packs for Fallout 3 for all platforms. These add-ons are Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Each pack adds new quests, items, perks, achievements and other content to Fallout 3. The Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, released on October 13, 2009 for all platforms, includes all five add-ons packs. So, we start with the first one - Operation: Anchorage.

This article is divided in a total of two pages. The first page includes Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt DLC and the second page include Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta DLC stories. There is also our "Rank the Fallout 3 DLC" Social Media discussion video (the first video below), and we could really use your thoughts. Enjoy!

1. Operation: Anchorage

Once the add-on is downloaded, the quest objective for Operation: Anchorage will be activated by a radio broadcast stating, "This is Defender Morrill. Any Outcasts listening on this frequency report to sector 7-B, Bailey's Crossroads. This is a high-priority message; backup is needed at our location. Any personnel listening on this frequency, please report at once." A marker will be shown on the world map near the Red Racer factory.

The Brotherhood of Steel Outcasts have set up in the remains of the VSS Facility, a pre-War compound of Virtual Strategic Solutions, Inc., and are trying to unseal the door of the VSS Armory which they think contains advanced combat gear and weapons. The only way to unseal this door appears to be by surviving a military virtual reality simulation of Operation: Anchorage and the only way to enter this simulation is via a computer interface device, like the Pip-Boy 3000.

So it comes down to the Lone Wanderer to go inside and complete a simulation of perhaps the greatest battle of the Fallout universe: the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from occupying Red Chinese troops. The simulation is set during the Anchorage campaign, which occurred between June 2076, when the T-51b power armor was first introduced, and January 2077, when Chinese forces were completely driven out of Alaska. Evidence locatable in the Outcast Outpost makes it clear that the simulation is not an accurate recreation of the battle in many important ways; however, these ways are never detailed but are blamed on General Chase, who was the military correspondent for the simulation program.

After exiting the simulation, the Lone Wanderer is allowed into the armory and can grab anything he/she wants. Opening the armory spurs a heated discussion between Defender Sibley and Protector McGraw, which culminates in Sibley and most of the other Outcasts starting a mutiny against McGraw and Olin. This is a battle that the Lone Wanderer can decide with no negative reputation to the Outcasts so long as they do not attack either McGraw or Specialist Olin.

  2. The Pitt

The Pitt is the second add-on for Fallout 3. In contrast to Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt involves a more traditional quest line with several morally ambiguous choices. When The Pitt first loads, the player will be informed of a new radio distress signal from a runaway slave from The Pitt named Wernher, who informs the Lone Wanderer that he needs help in retrieving a cure for the mutations plaguing the town developed by The Pitt's raider boss, Ashur. In order to successfully reach Ashur, the player has to give up their gear temporarily.

The player then is able to familiarize themselves with a new weapon, the auto axe, and compete in a fighting arena called The Hole. The town itself consists of a large "dungeon" area (The Mill), an abandoned steel yard and a settlement which is divided into two districts: Downtown, which is inhabited by slaves and Haven/Uptown, occupied by their masters, the Slavers.

The main quest involves the player character taking on the role of a slave in order to investigate rumors that the raider boss of The Pitt has discovered a cure for mutations that have plagued many inhabitants of The Pitt. Troglitic Degeneration Contagion (TDC) is a degenerative disease that plagues all the inhabitants of The Pitt. According to Dr. Sandra Kundanika, it is the result of intensively concentrated ambient radiation exposure combined with the unique industrial toxins and pollutants in the region that surrounds what was once Pittsburgh, an effect that is intensified by the fact that half of the Pitt's inhabitants have resorted to cannibalism.

Marie, daughter of Sandra Kundanika and Ishmael Ashur, was born with a natural adaptive immunity to TDC, offering hope that one day a cure for the Pitt's whole population can be developed. So far, the efforts at synthesizing this cure have been slow-going, mostly because Marie is still a baby, and, being the only test subject, she must be treated with care. The Pitt has unique vendors, and you are able to return after you complete the story.

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See also: Fallout: New Vegas DLC Stories

Fallout 3 DLC Stories (Page 2/2)

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  3. Broken Steel

Broken Steel is the third add-on for Fallout 3, and it's quest line is of the same length as the ones of Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt. Unlike these add-ons, in order to access the new story content from Broken Steel, the main storyline from the base game has to be finished. Broken Steel alters the ending of the original Fallout 3 to allow continued play after the end of the main quest line. When the player reaches the final point of the quest "Take it Back!", new options are given to allow specific followers to enter the reactor, but the original options still remain viable.

Regardless of what is chosen, however, the player will wake up two weeks later at the Citadel (unless they allow the Purifier to explode, which automatically ends the game), having been knocked unconscious by an unknown energy spike. Sarah Lyons will also be in a coma, unless she activated the purifier in which case she will have died. In those two weeks, the Brotherhood has been using the now-reactivated Liberty Prime to root out the remaining Enclave presence in the Capital Wasteland. The player joins them, only to watch Liberty Prime be destroyed by a devastating orbital strike. Taking out this new threat becomes the top priority. A short side-mission is arranged to equip the player with the powerful Tesla Cannon, after which they move on the Enclave's massive Mobile Crawler base, located outside of the Wasteland at Adams Air Force Base. After fighting through the base personnel, a control station at the top can be used to call an orbital strike on the base itself, destroying it. Alternatively, the Citadel can be destroyed, marking the player a traitor to the Brotherhood of Steel.

The third add-on for Fallout 3 adds new enemies including albino radscorpions, feral ghoul reavers, super mutant overlords, and Enclave Hellfire troopers. These are equipped with new armor and weaponry that the player can acquire. Broken Steel also adds several new perks to cover the additional 10 levels as well as some new encounters.

  4. Point Lookout

Point Lookout is the fourth add-on for Fallout 3 and  like all add-ons (except for Broken Steel), is playable at any time during the main storyline; the player could travel there immediately after exiting Vault 101. Once the content is loaded, you receive a message on-screen that initially starts the quest The Local Flavor. Unlike other add-ons, the player doesn't need to complete the main quest in order to travel back to the Capital Wasteland. Provided they can pay the ticket cost, the Duchess Gambit will travel back and forth anytime. It takes a month (30 days) of game time to travel to Point Lookout. As with previous add-ons, the main quest line is said to add about three to four hours worth of game time.

Point Lookout, unlike the other pieces of downloadable content, does not have a specific goal. Rather, it adds a large area for the player to explore, with new enemies and items to find. One major quest line focuses on the rivalry between Desmond Lockheart and Professor Calvert, two scientists who have been feuding since before the Great War. Desmond has survived as a ghoul, while Calvert became a living brain in a jar. The feud can be ended by the player in either Desmond's or Calvert's favor. Other quests include following the trail of a long-dead Chinese spy and discovering the mystery of the Lovecraftian tome known as the Krivbeknih.

  5. Mothership Zeta

Mothership Zeta is the fifth and final add-on for Fallout 3 where an alien mothership abducts the player, making the whole add-on take place onboard the alien ship in orbit around Earth. The player character is able to return to the ship and use it as a "home-base" of sorts once the main quest is completed, although most of the ship will become inaccessible.

After being beamed aboard, the Lone Wanderer is subjected to an alien medical experiment. In the cutscene, the player character passes out during the procedure and awakes in a cell with another abductee named Somah. She explains that all of their equipment has been taken. She comes up with a plan of escape - staging a fistfight so that the alien guards will intervene, then overpowering them. They soon come across Sally, a little girl who was abducted soon after the Great War, who asks them to help her escape by destroying the reactor in the room. After freeing her, she says that she knows a lot about the ship and will provide aid in turn.

Sally leads the Lone Wanderer to a room with several cryo-tubes, to acquire a spacesuit from one of the frozen abductees, an astronaut (who, unfortunately, does not survive the "thawing" procedure). The suit is needed for a spacewalk outside the ship to access a teleporter; first, however, the generators in three other areas of the ship must be destroyed in order to provide a distraction. Three of the abductees will offer to assist in each of the generator areas: Elliott Tercorien will help with the Cryo Labs, Somah will aid traversing the Robotics Factory, and Paulson will aid with the Hangar.

After enabling the teleporter, the survivors are beamed to the upper section of the Mothership, where they witness a demonstration of the ship's Death Ray as a threat to scare them into surrendering. The player character must then fight through several portions of the second section which consists of a weapons laboratory, biological experimentation lab, and Biological Research. At the conclusion of this journey, all surviving companions can again join the Lone Wanderer by means of the transporter from the Observation Deck. After fighting through to the Death Ray control center, then the living quarters, the bridge is finally accessible. There, all of the abductees must defend the bridge from aliens attempting to re-take it, while at the same time using the ship's weapons to defeat an attacking alien vessel similar to their own.

Upon defeating the ship, the abductees celebrate and Sally or Elliott (whichever gets to the player first) reports that in the midst of all of the chaos on the bridge, Elliott and/or Sally pushed a button which dropped a beacon on the surface near the Recon Craft Theta crash site. This beacon allows the Lone Wanderer to return to the Capital Wasteland or teleport from there to the Mothership (though most of the ship is now inaccessible).

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I was wondering, now that we covered all of the Fallout 3 DLCs, which one did you like the most? I could easily say that every DLC is unique in every way (new world to explore, items, etc..), but the stories that fuels them are at the top of the list! Agree?! You can share us your thoughts on Facebook or Google+ post. Also, share this with your Fallout friends.

See also: Fallout: New Vegas DLC Stories

Let's Talk About: Fallout New Vegas DLC

Why waste time with an introduction? Here's my thoughts on the New Vegas DLC.

Dead Money

Alot of people don't like this one. And I totally get why. Dead Money is brutal, but not in the way we've come to expect out of these DLC. There's no suped-up unstoppable enemies, no annoying bullshit boss, and it's most DEFINITELY not a monotonous grind, though the environment can grate a bit. Dead Money whisks you away to the fabled Sierra Madre; Something really cool in New Vegas was that all the DLC were constantly hinted at before they even came out, so some of you with a sharp eye may have heard of this fantastical place before you were deposited at its door. Specifically, you get kidnapped and brought there before a rather prominent figure, Father Elijah, who you also may have heard of in the regular game. He's done this because he wants you to help him break the tight security on the ancient yet pristine casino in order to access its mysterious vault full of untold treasures.

Art Deco makes everything better. It's a fact.

It's certainly an interesting take on a plot, to say the least; A bank heist on a bank that's been abandoned for hundreds of years but still armed to the teeth. To that end, you spend Dead Money running around gathering your crew, setting up the heist itself, and finally following through with it, albeit with some twists and turns. All of that sounds pretty cool, right? That's because I haven't brought up any of the HORRORS that await you playing this. Dead Money could be best described in gameplay as survival horror; You are stripped of ALL equipment, with no way of getting any of it back, and now you have a freakin' bomb collar on your neck that will blow up if one of your fellow heist members dies or you get close to the incredibly annoying and omnipresent faulty speakers that exist throughout the Madre's labyrinthine Spanish Villa exterior. There's also a fuckload of traps, and a damn near unavoidable toxic cloud that will you dead in about 4 seconds of exposure. That's not even mentioning DM's new and ONLY creature, the Ghost People. Jesus, these guys are spooky. Ghost People lurch around all slow and creepy, then they start hopping around like olympic athletes when they see you, often times hucking spears and gas bombs at you, and you can only kill them by removing a limb. Otherwise, they keep getting back up to try again!

KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT

Now, this is gonna sound crazy...I fucking LOVE Dead Money. Call me crazy, but this is exactly what difficult SHOULD be. It's not difficult because it's unfair, it's difficult because it challenges you to play the game a different way. I also think it's not so bad; If I can beat Dead Money on HARDCORE, and I DID, then people should have no trouble playing on normal mode. They just have to think differently. Aim for limb shots instead of head shots, always carry a knife to chop off the Ghost People limbs, and NEVER STOP CROUCHING. But more to the meat of this DLC, the strongest part is the story, or rather the back story. You learn all about the Madre, its history, why it was made, and about its mysterious creator Frederick Sinclair. What starts out as a fairly simple "Do what I want and no one gets hurt" story quickly becomes a tangled web of desires and betrayals. That's not even grazing the fucking impeccable design of your companions. All of them are not as they appear to be initially, and talking to them unlocks deep, wonderfully written stories and motivations. Rewards are also quite lovely this time around, awarding Energy Weapon enthusiasts with the stupidly powerful Holorifle, and lovers of Guns with a BAR! Dead Money nets a 10/10. Haters gonna hate!

Honest Hearts

Honest Hearts is certainly alot safer than Dead Money. You join up on a caravan heading to the Mormon town of New Canaan only to have your entire caravan killed by Legion hopefuls, The White Legs, just as you enter none other than real world national park Zion Valley. It is there that you meet The Burned Man, who some of you should know as the Legate before Legate Lanius. Turns out he didn't die despite being LIT ON FIRE AND TOSSED DOWN THE GRAND CANYON. Nope, he just walks away looking like a mummy with a kickass Colt .45 and Bible quotes to boot. There's also some other dudes that...exist I guess. They're kind of interesting, but The Burned Man, or Joshua Graham, effectively remains the only memorable character in this.

He just sits there checking pistols...SO COOL.

The story is also very straightforward; The local tribes that live in Zion are torn between fighting the White Legs or merely evacuating The Valley. This is complicated by the fact that Joshua really wants to fight the White Legs, AND that Zion was untouched by the bombs and is absolutely GORGEOUS. Seriously, this DLC is worth playing for a look of Zion alone! There's also this actually very interesting back story about how the natives came to believe in a god called "The Father in the Caves", that is really worth looking into, since it's both well written and offers some damn good loot when you complete it.

The White Legs always have really good equipment to loot, which is nice.

There's not really alot else to say about Honest Hearts, which I suppose is its problem: It's rather plain. Yao Guai from FO3 make a return, but unless you count the Green Geckos, the only substantial new enemies are just super sized versions of the regular creatures. To be fair though, nothing will make you shit your pants in fear quite as well as several Giant Cazadores flying at a Mach 1 collision course with your skull. It offers some nice rewards, and there are really cool parts that shine through the mundanity, like Graham and Zion itself. 7/10.

Old World Blues

Immediately bouncing back from the blandness that was Honest Hearts comes Old World Blues, which is easily the wackiest experience Fallout has to offer. You get teleported to The Big Empty, a crater that used to be a mountain housing a massive scientific facility. The Big Empty's name is a bit of an oxymoron; It is indeed VERY big, the largest of all the DLC to date, but it is most certainly not empty.

Dotted all across Big MT are facilities where all manner of bizarre top secret experiments were carried out, so expect to find both really cool stuff and horrific monsters that want a taste of your face. You could literally explore for HOURS without so much as touching the story, but that's not to imply the story isn't also fun. In a rather strange twist of events, your kidnappers this time are brains floating in also-floating jars, who call themselves The Think Tank. These goofballs were the head scientists of Big MT before the war, and now they spend all day just capturing hapless fools and lobotomizing them. For some reason, you managed to not be lobotomized, but now your brain, heart, and spine are all out of you, and your brain has...Run away. I'm dead serious.

Writing this must have been a lot of fun.

The Think Tank, with no idea how to fight or defend themselves, then task you with defeating their traitor Dr Mobius and his ARMY OF ROBOT SCORPIONS (It's actually said this way, very loudly, every single time.) who they think has your brain, but in case it wasn't obvious by the fact that they somehow forgot what humans look like (Your toes are mistaken for penises.), they're kinda stupid. Not to mention one of them actually MADE THE FUCKING CAZADORES. Talking to them is a blast though, all of it very funny, and fans of the Venture Brothers will notice that Dr 0 is voiced by the same talent behind Rusty Venture! The story is actually somewhat heartfelt and melancholy at some points, making the title seem more fitting, but for the most part is a very funny, self-aware sort of sci-fi adventure, with plenty of swag to keep you coming back for more. 8/10.

Lonesome Road

LR was intended to be a finale of sorts, the last DLC as well as some manner of closure for The Courier. All throughout the game hints have been dropped regarding this mysterious "other" courier who turned down the job that ultimately got you shot in the head. Well, in Lonesome Road, he reaches out to you, inviting you to come face him in a hellhole known simply as The Divide. Similar to Point Lookout, you can leave LR anytime you want, which unfortunately removes alot of the urgency from what is intended to be a sort of "race against time" affair. As the name implies, you are to travel with no companions and you can bring anything you want for this, and you'll NEED everything because LR pulls out all the stops to give you one last ball pounding. Deathclaws that scale with your level are EVERYWHERE, the new enemies in the game, The Marked Men and The Tunnelers, are both crazy tough, and The Road itself has no doctors of any kind.

It's fairly normal to fight 3 at a time in this DLC.

 The landscape is what I'd imagine the world immediately after the bombs to look. The area that became The Divide was actually a stockpile for nukes, and alot of them went off before they could even be deployed, so The Divide is a savage land wracked by radioactive dust storms and consists of twisted steel and rubble almost exclusively. There's not much back story except your own, which the game attempts to put together that you are actually responsible for all this devastation, and now Ulysses, the other courier, wants revenge by using the still working nukes to blow up New Vegas...Wait, that doesn't make sense!

This guy is about as intimidating a pomeranian.

Ulysses goes on about this big spiel that you ruined a budding society, so his response is to...do the same fucking thing? How petty! It seems weird that it just sorta throws this on you and expects you to care, seeing as how one of the main points in Fallout is to have a character with a blank slate. There are some nice action sequences, a fairly epic finale, and some really nice weapons and upgrades to the ED-E companion. The story is lame, which is a bit disappointing, and I was frankly expecting alot more out of it. After so many hours sunk into the game, I suppose my expectations were just too high. Lonesome Road gets a 7/10.

If you like this stuff, please comment about it! It feels good to actually get some talking in a series called "Let's Talk About", and it validates me making more of these. Aw hell, I'm gonna keep making these things anyway. Next time, we'll be begin talking about the cancelled Fallout games, starting with the Fallout 3 that never was, Van Buren! Until next time.

More Let's Talk About:

• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fallout 2
• Fallout Tactics: The Beginning of the End
• Fallout: BoS and the rape of Fallout
• Fallout 3 - Part 1
• Fallout 3 - Part 2
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Fallout 3 DLC

Let's talk about: Fallout 3 DLC

Author's Note: Wow, it's been awhile. I understand no one was chomping at the bit for more of these, but at the same time, I really wanted to keep coming back to work on it some more. So here I am, ready for another Let's Talk About, I hope you like it.

Downloadable content is a rather contentious issue, ya know? People are very split on it for some reason. The argument for dictates that through DLC you have a way to go back and continue to enjoy an experience without paying full price for it. The argument against says that more often than not the content provided should have been free, and that DLC's are just a way greedy developers can nickle and dime their fans. While I can certainly see both sides, and there are times when the latter is true, never has the former been more apparent than with the Fallout DLC's.

There are 8 of them in total, 4 for 3 and 4 for NV. I'm going to break each one down separately so you may draw down separately, so this might be a bit lengthy. Here goes.

Operation: Anchorage

History is really important to Fallout's overall theme. It being a "what-if" sort of universe where we all decided plastics and fuel efficiency were dumb, it's interesting to look back and see how it all turned into nuclear armageddon. Operation: Anchorage does that...Sort of. Specifically, it covers the high point of the conflict between the United States and China, that acted as the prelude to said nuclear armageddon. It's explained away with a fancy VI machine the Brotherhood Outcasts contract you to use for them, in exchange for "phat lewt". You are placed in the shoes of an American soldier, tasked with carrying out the aforementioned Operation: Anchorage.

Gameplay takes a bizarre turn in this one; As it is a virtual reality, you cannot loot bodies since they phase out of existence. You heal all damage and refill ammo and pick up new weapons at pre-determined points as you run along gunning down commies. Apparently Bethesda wanted to see what would happen if Fallout was a Call of Duty clone. To be fair, there are attempts at new RPG-sort of things here. You get to form a squad using a limited number of tokens to select members, and you get to choose what path you take to the end. Unfortunately, this is sort of lost since your squad mates kinda suck and you'll be doing most of the work anyway. There's no inherent challenge to it whatsoever, and there's about TWO FUCKING QUESTS, after which you win and get the delicious swag promised to you.

I actually forgot about this fucker. Never mind, DLC is hard as balls.

The swag alone is worth it, and it is mercifully short, but ultimately Anchorage gets a 4/10.

Broken Steel

I mentioned in my FO3 review that the game had a shit ending, and it did. It's rather funny how angry everyone got with the ending to this game, yet Bioware just went ahead and did the same thing years later, for a TRILOGY of games no less. But unlike Bioware, Bethesda was quick to fix the issue with Broken Steel, a special add-on that changes the ending, and then some. See, it lets you actually continue playing after the main campaign, and even offers a brand new, HARD AS BALLS campaign that I actually really like. This one has a lot of great cinematic moments, and the explosive climax makes me completely forget the utterly bland story presented up until this point. New enemies are added, and most of them are wicked powerful, if not utterly broken. Ghoul Reavers, in particular, soak up a stupid amount of damage while still being able to chunk your health at even your highest levels with the best armor.

Fuck these things, too.

The whole game has been reworked to be more challenging to higher level players, and it works. Broken Steel is the only DLC that I'd say is quite necessary. 10/10.

The Pitt

This was the first DLC that added a genuinely new location, and the remains of the urban tumor that is Pittsburgh is certainly one that immediately catches your eye. It's a stark, glowing furnace of hellfire, quite literally.

Play "Engine City" from Bioshock to this. It's oddly fitting.

The Pitt, as Pittsburgh is now called, is a massive ammunition plant, run by an army of slavers and their respective slaves. You are presented with the choice of liberating the slaves or siding with the slavers but before any of THAT happens, you start out as a slave. You are tossed in with all your gear confiscated, forced to fight the new deadly creatures called Trogs as you collect metal for the furnaces and fight in a gladiator arena for your freedom. Aside from the ridiculous amount of new armor and weapons The Pitt brings to play, the story is the only one of all the DLC's that actually allows choice in how the conflict is resolved. The Pitt itself is a very interesting locale, and I wish there were more quests in The Pitt itself. The Pitt also comes with a morale choice, as the people of the Pitt all suffer from this bizarre disease that's never explained in great detail.

Deciding their fate ultimately has little impact, and it feels tacked on. The Pitt gets a 7/10 from me.

Point Lookout

Point Lookout is pretty much what I wanted out of a DLC; A vast new and unique land to explore, with new quests and characters to love. It's a shame it's so horribly unbalanced, but who cares?! Fallout in exotic locations is one of my immediate deal makers, and Point Lookout puts Fallout on the swampy islands of Maryland, so sign me up!

Fallout: Louisiana needs to happen!

The best part about this particular DLC is that if you get frustrated or don't have the levels to take it on, you can just leave! The story is not forced on you like every other DLC, and this is for the best considering the insane difficulty of this particular item. Point Lookout makes you its bitch with artificial difficulty that is out of this world; Tribals that should take and do as much damage as Raiders suddenly fight like they're Enclave troopers, and don't even get me started on the fucking Inbreds, that, despite being...inbred, are incredibly smart and can accurately shoot you square in the face with a double barrel shotgun at 500 kilometers. Were it not for the locale and variety, I'd tell Point Lookout to kiss my ass.

The story's a pretty good one too, despite its distinct feeling of unimportance, and like most DLC has some very nice rewards that are worth working for, so ultimately Point Lookout scores an 8/10.

Mothership Zeta

This is the worst time I've had with the series since Brotherhood of Shit. Granted, anything is better than THAT, but this is still absolute garbage, despite the loot. Do you remember in Fallout 1 that you could find a wrecked alien spaceship, complete with alien skeletons and working gun? Well, Mothership Zeta attempts to follow up on that by having you straight up abducted. Though the presentation is cool enough, and the alien spaceship has some cool scenery, it stops being fun about 5 minutes in, when you suddenly realize in horror that the entire run through the ship is going to be the same: A monotonous grind through nonthreatening enemies and the occasional bullshit hard moment. The game TRIES to add variety with a group of NPC's, all of which are people abducted from Earth over a long period of time and cryogenically frozen. You can even meet an honest-to-god SAMURAI WARRIOR, who even speaks Japanese!

You aren't important, are you? 'Cuz I really like your armor...

Awesomeness of that aside, the gameplay consists of running through increasingly uninspired and boring alien ship environments, gunning down the same weak and ineffectual "Grey"-styled alien for about 3 goddamn hours. There are some attempts at variety, with a spacewalk section, some sort of strange "Alien Pinball" sort of thing, and the conclusion in which you fight another ship (This is not even close to being as cool as it sounds.). There's also these insanely powerful "Abomination" creatures, which are implied to be alien-human hybrids. Implied meaning there is virtually no story in this thing and you just have to infer. The game goes all Bioshock on you by leaving a crap load of Audio Logs that frame a story but it ultimately falls flat because there IS NO FRAME. It is never explained what the aliens want, why they abduct people, or why they create these hybrids that just end up killing them too, anyway!

Fuck Mothership Zeta, not even the incredibly powerful and high value alien weaponry would make me play this shit again, 1/10.

Don't agree with me? That's awesome! Share your love for Fallout and comment DLC feels bellow, from the best to the worst (if there is the worst one in your world), and you try to rate them. It is the whole point of "Let's talk about" series, to talk about and share love for Fallout. Make sure to read the next Let's Talk About to learn what I think about the New Vegas DLC.

More Let's Talk About:

• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fallout 2
• Fallout Tactics: The Beginning of the End
• Fallout: BoS and the rape of Fallout
• Fallout 3 - Part 1
• Fallout 3 - Part 2
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Fallout: New Vegas DLC