FALLOUT 3 UPDATE: (spoilers herein)
I was able to play for several hours this weekend, and here is my report.
So... I blew it. It looks like I missed my chance to go back to Vault 101. And, more importantly, get the achievement for doing so. And even more important- get the bobblehead and therefore the achievement for that.
I was subconsciously saving all of the DLC until I was done with the original game... but then I realized: Before Broken Steel you had to play Anchorage and The Pitt before beating the main game. So, I should let myself enjoy them in any order that I wanted. And what I really wanted was to go back to Vault 101... but Dogmeat's puppy was staying dead for a really long time and I didn't want to go in there without him... I've also been carrying this power armor around with me everywhere though I can't wear it yet... and the Fort Constantine armour I had to give to Charon, my mute zombie sidekick who talks too much and steals my kills. I knew that I would get "power armor training" for completing Anchorage and that I couldn't take my puppy with me anyways. So I decided to off and do that.
It appears I did everything required to enact a special feature in the game which makes the Vault 101 Distress Signal disappear- preventing me from entering the Vault.
MEGA SAD!
Potentially the worst part was that it was clearly noted on xbox360achievements.org not to start any DLC after getting the signal and before completing the Vault 101 mission. BUT, I had been feeling like I had been relying on online spoilers too much, so I stopped reading those notes AT EXACTLY THE WRONG TIME!
By the way... I think Dogmeat's puppies usually respawn in about 2-5 minutes... But for some reason, I didn't get a new puppy for about 2-3 real hours this time. I blame this for the unfortunate series of events. (Aside: I'm not sure why I keep bothering with that dumb dog. He dies so frequently that he's hardly worth the effort. Where's the horse dog armour when I need it?!?! Apparently Albinoradscorpion hide could make a very efficient cuirass for him...)
The googles tell me that going to and returning from The Pitt directly to Vault 101 may re-enable the signal. I toyed with the idea of reloading my save from before going into the Anchorage sim... but as much as I enjoyed Anchorage- it's 2-3 hours I don't really want to replay at the moment. So, I'm off in the Pitt... hoping against hope that it will work. Man! Collecting these ingots sure is fun! So far I have ~70 of them- without cheating. Though I'm sure I'll have to cheat soon to get the rest.
I quite enjoyed Anchorage, but that might be because I had already heard the arguments against it. I knew it was more "shootery" than the rest of the game and that there wasn't "ammo" or "stimpaks" as much as there were just refill stations. I still ran up to the bodies of the enemy soldiers- hoping to loot them before they disappeared... but all in all I thought it was quite a nice departure from the rest of the game. I thought the history was fun, and the gameplay was very "first ten minutes of GoldenEye, 006 and 007"y. (No 005 (nor Mrs. 005) though...) which I thought was cool. But even better was the scenery! I'm sort of blown away that they put that much work into the building assets and the new characters for so "short/cheap" an add-on... but the scenery was the real highpoint here! For some reason, I had imagined that it would be fought over very flat tundra and would be basically a white wasteland. I was pleasantly proven wrong.
So far I am enjoying The Pitt as well. It's another pretty big break from the world of Fallout 3- and having to give up all of my equipment (including my hard (and recently) earned Power Armor... is actually kind of nice. As I sort of brought up before- I am an uncurable hoarder/flipper of all the junk found across the wasteland. The same thing happened in Oblivion or any other game like this. I generally carry about 200 (maybe as low as 180) lbs of my "normal gear" and can then carry another 100ish lbs of stuff to take back to my Megaton apartment or sell for caps. As the game goes on, and my wallet gets fat and the value of special armor/weapons gets very high- my threshold of value/weight starts to go up. White I might pick up 5-1 stuff at the beginning to flip, I eventually move on to only 15-1 or higher stuff. (Always picking up the 0 lbs stuff!). But in the main game- I've really forced myself and I'm actually pretty good- I don't pick up anything just to sell anymore. I pick up stuff I'll eat, wear, shoot or use to repair stuff. So what does that have to do with The Pitt, you may ask? Well, it's been kind of fun to have to scrounge for/conserve ammo again... I'm not sure where he stuck that pistol, but I has shocked to see I only had 24 bullets for it! And then I was carrying 5/300 lbs and I could pick up everything is sight! I'm not sure if there's anyone to trade with in The Pitt... but if there is- MAN, I am ready to trade some bent tin cans and some scorched books!
I just realized that the feeling of "getting away from my character" and "starting over in another time/place" that I'm getting from these DLCs is sort of the reason most of us play games in real life... Probably the way it felt when I started playing Fallout 3- to get away from real life. How interesting that after ~60 hours that Fallout 3 is a "real life" of its own and my Fallout 3 guy ("Mad Matt", if you were wondering) needs to "play a game" to get away from it all. Hmmm....
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I've been glad to have my puppies with me, but I've otherwise been a little torn as to whether I should have installed Broken Steel. I blew right through the former level 20 cap and I'm probably only about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through the main story. Anchorage and The Pitt have brought me all the way up to level 29- so I'll have no room for progression by the time I actually start Broken Steel. Ah, well... without I wouldn't have the puppies... and I would have the Mysterious Stranger, or the "Refill VATS when you get a kill" perks either. So... I guess it's best that I did it. One of the first perks I picked (maybe when I created my character... do you get to pick a perk then?) was the "rapid learner" perk, which means I get XP faster. I wonder if I shouldn't have opted for that... since I've hit the max and I've got so much more game to go.
It was nice to use the "here and now" and the "devil's highway" and "karmic balance" perks to get the other 2 Level 30 achievo's when I hit level 29. It sure beat going to Megaton and going on a murderizing spree to get my Karma down at levels 6, 14 and 20. Especially since I was in the Pitt and couldn't really go anywhere else. And there were no red terminals that I could start to hack over and over and over and over again either.
Oasis seems like the only real moral dilemma in the game. Blow up a town of innocents to get a swanky apartment in a nice hotel? Not really. Joining a Slaving ring for... fun and profit? No. Running around collecting Nuka Cola Quantum instead of doing something useful or important- HECK YEAH! But when I got to Oasis... I had a real "Good of the One" vs "Good of the Many" decision on my hands. Perhaps this makes me a liberal, but I ignored his free will and exploited him for the good of the Wasteland. The thought- "I would sacrifice myself, so therefore I can sacrifice him" went through my head... though I realize it's dangerous reasoning. But he's the only character to be in all of the Fallout games, so I guess that made it harder to kill him. But like I said, it was the first dilemma that asked more than "Are you a selfish jerk? Or a paragon of 'doing the right thing'?" Though I thought the Ft Constantine one worked well too. I didn't realize at first that there was more to the story than the first guy had told me. It was easy to kill Dukov, but I didn't want to kill the kid or Dave (of the Republic of Dave). Now that I think about it- it reminds me of Castlevania- Symphony of the Night. Not so much a question, but a measure of how thoroughly you gather information before deciding to act.
I did not read about Oasis before going up there... so that might have increased my enjoyment of it. But it also made me very nervous about drinking their sap... especially since I had just run into a trader who told me that nature was moving and smiling at him right before he died from a druggy sap overdose.
AntAgonizer- this is another quest that I forced myself not to spoil, but it reminded me of why I spoil. I went to talk to the AntAgonizer (love the name!) right after getting the quest- I had discovered the entrance to her place on my way into town. Unfortunately, she was a little more touchy than I had expected- so she tried to kill me, but I kill better than she does so I won. I had expected to talk the two down and get a peaceful ending to the matter. But since she was the "villain" I didn't feel too bad for wasting her. But then I reported in to the guy in town before dropping in on the "good guy" and I guess he'd moved on by then. I wish I'd realized that I didn't have 10 minutes to hike up the hill and collect my caps before he'd found a new town to protect. I would have liked to have at least talked to him. :(
Tranquility Lane - Ah yes. I think I saw a short-short description of this quest before I started it, which I think spoiled the surprise a bit. Nonetheless, this was a great section of the game. I loved playing the kid, and the little girl was downright evil. I looked for a "peaceful, non violent" solution to "other people" problem... but couldn't find one. I bailed on the girl's plan pretty early and found the terminal... but wasn't too satisfied with that solution. I saved it, tried it. And then reloaded to see what the girl could offer me. I'm usually a believer in life- meaning that most life is better than most death. I don't think I really wanted the "other people" to die... but the game sure suggested (via karma) that that was the best decision.
That section reminded me heavily of the section at the end of BioShock 2. Which started me thinking of my interest in a BioShock detective game and how you could probably do a bang up job doing it as a mod to FO3. But that's another post for another day.
However, I think someday I'd like to live in a culdesac set up like Tranquility Lane. With the playground in the middle. That was pretty cool. (I also liked seeing the "cookie cutter homes" before they were wrecked.)
