Empire of the Iguanadons

It's been a long time since I've played either Fallout or Fallout 2, so Bethesda had mostly a clean slate from which to work as far as I was concerned. That may be good, bad, or whatever, but what little I still remember from the old games shouldn't be too much of a problem. For those somehow not familiar with Fallout, the series deals with the remnants of human civilization in the United States following a devastating nuclear war. A series of underground vaults were built to house and protect a select few to continue the species after a set amount of time. Each game in the series deals with you needing to leave the safety of your Vault and venture out into the wasteland. Fallout 1 took place mostly in Southern California, ranging as far east as Phoenix and as far north as Las Vegas. I forget exactly where Fallout 2 took place, might be because I was bitterly disappointed with it. Fallout 3 takes place on the east coast, in and around the ruins of Washington DC, also known as the Capital Wasteland.

The game is built around an updated version of the Gamebryo engine which also powered Morrowind and Oblivion. Bethesda has made some improvements, clearly inspired in part by fan mods for Oblivion. Distant land display seems to have been largely fixed up. Graphics in general appear to be significantly improved, though very much stylized to fit in with the apocalyptic theme. They've incorporated a number of small touches like containers that animate slightly when you open them, traveling merchants, birds that circle over populated areas, and other things like that. They chose to abandon any use of weather such as rain, quite possibly they've yet to figure out how to do it right and figured it wasn't important to the story to have it anyway. There are still changes in the cloud cover though. Lighting appears to have been vastly improved. What looked at first like static graphics with no actual light halo turned out to be more or less highly focused spot lighting. This only really becomes apparent if you stand under one, or near one on a wall or something. The use of ambient background light hasn't been completely removed though. I suspect it would have become tedious in the extreme to play given the large number of underground and interior locations you need to visit. Probably the best and by far the most welcome tweak is the ability to adjust your companion's tactics and inventory when/if you happen to pick one up. Yes, it seems you can only have one companion at any given moment. The game will force your hand in this. Or at least it did for me. On the plus side, companions can carry a hell of a lot of junk and they don't require constant ammo replenishment. Apparently the game lets them be endlessly supplied.

Perhaps the most unique thing about the way they handled combat was the addition of VATS. It's entirely optional, but if you want to use a sort-of turn based approach to combat that works vaguely like the first two games, VATS is it. This is where the locational damage system really shines, and you even get some really nice slow motion camera shots of it. I'm told that the entire experience is exactly like the Deadly Reflex mod for Oblivion, but I'm sort of doubting any user mod could be this good. VATS is also good for getting yourself out of some tight jams, provided you can hit the activation key fast enough to freeze the moment. Spend some time with VATS, and just for shits and giggles, take the "Mysterious Stranger" perk when it's offered. I did, and later in the game when there was a hell of a lot of shit happening, seeing him pop in from time to time and help finish off a nasty was worth one hell of a laugh.

There's no shortage of places to visit and people to talk to and thank God Bethesda was able to make background conversations less monotonous. At least they fit the locations you were in and weren't a universal expression of disgust for radscorpions or mole rats. There are also plenty of interesting little side quests to keep you busy. Any location of even minor significance has something going on, sometimes quite funny just to observe for as long as the game will let you do so. If you're like me and love to explore, then you'll probably get absorbed in the act of doing just that. In locations that offer up potential companions for travel, even they are varied and interesting, though they do tend to revert to the drone role pretty quickly once they're following along.

Background atmosphere is pretty good too. Play around with the radio in the Pip Boy. Not only is some of it amusing as hell to listen to, it's occasionally important to the story, though not required. Right from the get go you'll be able to pick up the broadcasts of The Enclave. Now, supposedly Fallout fans know who these guys are already. But I don't recall them. Maybe they were part of Fallout 2? In any case the propaganda material they use for the broadcasts is amusing. You can also listen to the musical interludes in between assuming you like patriotic tunes. The other major station is Galaxy News Radio - and without giving too much away - as you play through the game, take the time to stop and listen to the DJ. He'll sometimes tell everyone about your exploits. He also sometimes gives some hints about things you can do to pass the time.

See a random car sitting around somewhere? Wonder why sometimes you hear explosions but can't find the reason? Go shoot a car. Stand back, I mean way back at first, and wait. If you hit it, it'll burst into flames. Wait long enough and it'll explode in a very huge way. Nice huh? The bigger the vehicle, the bigger the boom. Use wisely and don't do what I did for the first few levels and stand on cars for a better view. Guess I got lucky there. I'd have been really happy with the ability to level a building. But I'm sure there's technical reasons for why this couldn't be done.

The opening tutorial is tied in very nicely with the main quest. It's not as rigidly forced as the one in Oblivion. As you progress through it, you can make decisions during it that will have impact later. Should I end up playing through again in a different style, I'll try out one such alternative to see how it works out. The main quest itself is fairly well done and engaging. For the unfortunately brief length of time you get to be involved in it. I find this aspect of the game to actually be quite disappointing. I'd already heard rumors of how short it might be, but... damn. I wasn't expecting it to be over this soon. What's probably worse than that is the fact that once you're done, that's it. The game ends and you are no longer able to continue. There are supposed to be several ways you can end the game, so perhaps the path I ended up on had no outcome that allowed for continuation? I have my doubts about that considering the rigidness of events. There's a lot of stuff I haven't done yet that I wanted to check out but am now unable to do. If all of the end-game paths lead to the same result of being unable to free-form afterward, this game is going to have a very short life span. I have my doubts about how good the replay value will be other than to try playing as a ruthless evil bastard instead of the mostly goodie two shoes I ended up with. It's also eluding me right now how there could be any expansion packs or even intermediate DLCs made available. You'd have to deliberately halt progress on the main quest in order to have much hope of seeing any expansion content.

The game also has some serious issues that need to be addressed. Left on the default difficulty level, I found myself continuously low on health, often with a crippled limb or two to show for my efforts. A challenge is one thing, but come on. I *DIED* so often I got fed up and lowered the difficulty setting to easy. Yeah, thanks for penalizing me on the XP gains. Really people. I just want to explore and kill stuff I need to kill. I don't want every last battle to feel like it'll be my demise!

Given you start with very little and you pretty much suck at everything you do, including VATS combat, honing your initial skill set quickly is very important. I quickly realized that survival meant rapidly advancing the small guns skill. It's truly the only vital skill there is. Everything else is secondary to being able to shoot things dead. However, you're going to be forced to take on lockpicking and science as well. A vast amount of game content is locked away behind doors, in containers, or behind various computer terminals. Without being able to pop them open, you may as well just swim the radiated Potomac River. And the lockpicking mini-game is more or less a must do since the force lock option usually results in a permanently broken lock. Same with hacking into computer terminals. Pretty much a must do since failing your final attempt results in a permanent lockout.

Don't bother with repair skill early on. For some seriously dumbass reason, Bethesda made it so you can only repair stuff if you have more than one of the same thing. So if your favorite pistol or rifle is damaged, tough luck. Sure hope you have the caps to pay for it. You'll be spending an obscene amount of time looking for safe havens to have your stuff repaired by various NPCs. Who apparently don't obey the restriction on needing multiple pieces of the same thing to fix yours. User mods already exists to fix this problem. Some simply reduce the use damage to manageable levels. I instead chose one that eliminated it all together. Yep. Repairing your shit is that much of a hassle to me.

Ammo is scarce until later in the game, at which point you become flooded with it. But by then who cares since your time in the Wasteland is short. I wound up with so much ammo in my inventory I ended up randomly shooting up cars just to watch them explode. While that is still cool to see and never got old everywhere I went, it just underscores the problem. Too little early on, too much later.

The DC Ruins are very very tedious. Sure, it's cool and all to be able to see things like the National Archives, the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and all that stuff blasted into ruins ( or mostly anyway ) but what's not cool is having to navigate a labyrinth of underground subway tunnels to get from section to section of the city.

They've not quite solved the issues with companions getting in your line of fire. Not long after acquiring everyone's middle game favorite, the combat shotgun, I spent more time reloading from bad kills than making progress. Damn companion kept stepping in front of my shot as I was taking it. Which usually resulted in their deaths. The enemy never managed to kill any of the companions I traveled with. That was my honor alone. They also haven't gotten any better with path finding. There were several instances where the companion following me simply refused to tag along and instead made a long journey around half the area I was in. Often drawing out mutants while exploring the DC Ruins. They also spend a hell of a lot of time pursuing their victims, even when they can't actually see or shoot at them. Which means I ended up having to run after them to provide support to keep them alive, while wasting time in the process. Oh, and a big word of warning. Don't ever give your companions grenades! They have a nasty tendency to chunk them right under your feet instead of under the enemy's feet. Similar warnings on the use of missile launchers or the Fatman weapon. Especially in the DC Ruins where there are lots of cars.

Damn you Bethesda. Damn you for implementing a level advancement cap. I don't care if it spoils anything or not. Upon reaching level 20 I wondered why the hell I wasn't getting any more XP. Even for doing the little things like picking locks, but most especially for killing high level baddies. Turns out after a trip to the official forum that there's a cap at level 20. Mods exist to break the cap, but due to an ill conceived game script, the game will crash if you attempt to advance to level 21 as an evil character, and reset your karma to 0 as a good character. Neither outcome is worth the hassle. And for all the mod community has managed to accomplish, fixing this one requires access to a script compiler. Which means we need a CS.

But the worst problem has nothing much to do with any of the mechanics or level scaling or bad combat AI. It's the graphical glitches. You don't need to be terribly observant to spot what I'm talking about here. Getting walls that look like they have hairline seams in them? They do. Dark places with light leaking through where it doesn't belong? Yep. Bad tileset placements. Worse still is the staggering number of objects which have been placed into the game that are floating above where they should be sitting. Cups on tables. Parts on benches. You name it, it's probably floating. Even corpses over the ground after you kill things. The problem is so bad in some places it becomes a serious distraction. The only good news here is that in the great outdoors, I spotted very few examples of floating rocks or trees. So perhaps they perfected their procedural landscaping. But the wall seams and floating objects reek of people who know the CS, but never tested their shit in play.

Over all, I'm somewhat disappointed. I didn't like being locked out of the game upon finishing it. The story arc was good and despite the large number of flaws, it was enjoyable while I was actually able to play. Though tedious at times ( DC Ruins! GACK! ) there's plenty of interesting content to explore. Most of which can be just as much fun as following the main quest. Many of the smaller flaws such as the repair issues and scarcity of supplies early on can be solved by user mods which already exist. The most annoying flaw that needs fixing though is the level cap. That's got to go, or at the very least be extended safely. I hate to say it, but Bethesda appears to have fallen short on this one. It doesn't live up to their reputation, despite some shining moments.
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

Hi. I'm Whir. I'm here to disagree with you again.

Well, obviously we agree on a lot, the game was definitely too damn short.

Some things differ between our experiences though it seems. For instance, I kept the gameplay at normal. I think I may have died four times the entire way through. I credit my affinity for selling everything in my inventory to buy stimpacks. Stimpacks are life. You can kill bad guys without bullets, but you cannot heal in combat without a stimpack. Well, you can probably eat, but that's just dumb.

I didn't notice the placement problem you mention, nor the wall seams. Everything seems fit and tidy for me. In fact, I was pretty impressed by the way the physics actually work a little better than Oblivion's at times.

I did actually firmly believe that you could not succeed at this game without a high small arms skill. I have, however, upon getting on with my second game, found this to be very and unrealistically untrue. I am doing so much better with the baseball bat than I ever did with guns it's ridiculous. Pretty much what happens is you run up to the bad guy, go into VATS, put them in, and go. You'd think "if I run up to a guy with a shotgun, I'm going to get my face owned," right? Nope. You are too close for them to actually hit you with you guns. I get shot with pistols occasionally, but almost never with longarms unless they tag me as I'm running in.

Also, mines. God damn. Seriously. Mines are so completely made of win it's almost ridiculous. Especially when paired with the typical stupid "follow me as I back up a lot" AI. There's a quest where you kill these mutant fire ants... All I did was mine them all to death. Though I did actually end up getting a gun somewhere and using it for the last part of the quest.

I also thought the VATS system made the game too easy at the end. Supermutant? Walk up, VATS, two headshots. Enclave power armor? Walk up, VATS, two headshots. Difficult isn't even on the radar.

I will say one thing, though: Also, Moira is one of the most entertaining NPCs in an RPG I've ever played.

As a side note, I never took any cohorts except for big dude at the end and he never got in my way or ran too far off. Maybe just different play styles on our parts saved me there.

Indeed, stimpacks are life. I also took to selling every last little thing I could find. Eventually I ran the merchants out of caps and stimpacks. I didn't run across our Outcast bunch until a lot later in the game or I'd have certainly used them and the mountain of laser pistols as barter for stims. Laser pistols which sucked ass clear to the end of the game. Absolutely useless.

Maybe the wall seams aren't always noticeable? They were for me though and it grew to irritation levels. I suspect I've simply spent too much time modding Oblivion to let stuff like that go. It's a simple matter of setting the ambient light color to black even if you have an ambient light level. Unless they changed how that works with FO3.

Interesting about in-your-face bashing tactics. I dismissed melee entirely as foolishness. I'm surprised those kinds of tactics continued to work well for you for so long given some of the overwhelming numbers you face at times. Also noted on the mines, as I used similar tactics in the same fire ant quest, but found them otherwise too dangerous in most situations. About as dangerous as giving companions grenades.

VATS can indeed make the game too easy, but consider. Two headshots on anything is one headshot too many to be believable at all. Mutant, Enclave, or otherwise. If I tag something with a shotgun shell that fires 12 bullets and all 12 tag the target in the head, I expect instant and gory death to be the result. Toward the end, as I managed to get my energy weapon skills up, I achieved the glory of single shot kills on practically any body part. But that was a long and bloody journey that should not have been.

Yes, that whole end-game sequence leading back to the Memorial was one of the best things I'd ever seen. Except I wasn't planning for the whole thing to just abruptly end 5 minutes later. I was hoping to break off at some point so I could go looking for some of the other interesting things I'd heard mentioned. But that's just wrong on so many levels coming from Bethesda. I realize lots of games have defined endings, and you can tell as you play when you're dealing with such a thing. Bethesda made a name for themselves with open-ended gaming and they dropped the ball badly on this one. Even if they manage to churn out some DLC the size of Knights of the Nine, I doubt they'll get it released quickly enough for me to give a shit. I can very clearly see that even if I choose to become the scum of the wasteland that I'll still be forced to follow the main quest the way they want it done. Of course, one can ignore it entirely, but then one does miss out on a pretty decent plot line. Hopefully this won't be too much of a spoiler for others, but a word of warning. Once you've been given the go ahead to enter Vault 87, that's it. After that it's more or less a done deal. So if you don't want to bring the game to a screeching halt 20 minutes later, halt the quest there and go explore or something. Apparently there's a great deal out there I never found because I chose to take care of the main quest.

Moira was definitely cool. The whole Guide to the Wasteland was a pretty clever way to get in a tutorial about how to handle various creatures, and to illustrate to the player that they can indeed "play hurt" without much trouble. Maybe if I start a new guy I'll be able to finish her stuff.

Well, you and I clearly have much different styles of play and such. Companions saved my ass so many times it's not even funny. Without them I doubt I'd have had the patience to put up with a lot of things. Just don't ever give one a grenade. I can't stress that enough

BTW, I wrapped a small portion of your comment in spoiler tags. Try to use them. They exist for a reason

I didn't think that was too much of a spoiler. Hehe.

OTOH, did you know that at character creation, you can drop SPECIALs from five to pick up more extra points? I made a new character and found out by accident. Then I had a character with agility and luck of 10 and I pretty much never miss, even with the junk pistol or 10% durability hunting rifle. It's kind of ludicrous. I actually started metagaming and at level three my energy weapons is already 60 something. I know where to find a laser pistol early on, so I'll see how that goes.

I guess all I can recommend is that if you want to spend time doing stuff in the game, simply flat out ignore the main quest after you get out of the vault. There are like 8 quests you can do right from Megaton and they all lead to or show you (as long as you explore well) to other side quests in other places. Still, with only about 50 quests total in the game, it won't take long to do them all.

Only 50 quests in the entire game? That seems like a small number considering the large number of locations on the map. I sure hope Bethesda didn't overload the map with locations just to provide excuses to release add-ons. Especially since once you pass the point of no return on the main quest it would do little good for that particular character to bother with expansion material.

Pete Hines has also already confirmed they're not going to raise the level cap, so that's going to once again fall to modders to resolve if/when there is a CS available to the public. Right now, current cap removers will just crash the game. I reached level 20 with really no special effort and haven't even seen half of the locations the full map has on it.

As I understand it, the only aspect of the game that has issues when you use a mod to raise that max level cap is the allocation of skill points and only because the game doesn't know what to do with skills that exceed 100 and once you've maxed all the skills you can't leave the menu with points remaining, thus there is another mod that lets you allocate the extra points as you wish (up to 225 or 255, whichever it was) and there is the option of using a console (~) command to simply close that menu and proceed regardless. Having not reached that point in the game myself, I can only speculate and go off what's listed on the site I got my mods from though.

It's a widely known problem on the Bethesda forums, and on the Fallout Nexus site where the level cap removal mod is located. Or at least the one I saw. They've confirmed the script for leveling up can't handle going over 20. Evil characters crash upon reaching level 21, good characters loose all their karma. As I said, neither solution is viable. Access to the CS will be required to fix it. But by the time the CS comes out, I suspect not many people will be playing anymore. I won't be unless I decide to go evil with my next play. If there is a next play.

Hmm, so if I use the mod I got from the Fallout Nexus site for it, I will either crash the game or lose my Karma when I hit level 21? Regardless of the skill points thing? Hmm..while the initial reaction would be that that really sucks, I have to wonder how much impact would the karma lose actually have (obviously the evil character crash is far worse). And this is something Bethesda has already acknowledged as being a serious bug that they have no intention of fixing?

That's like Sacred 2's issues with DRM & Securom.

No, this is a bug users discovered after breaking the cap that Bethesda is not going to fix because it's not how they designed the game to work. Pete Hines has already said they have no intentions of raising the cap. So you can't pin the bug on them for it.

So, you're saying that it's not really a bug then since it's acting that way only when players alter the game via mods to essentially break the game?

Exactly. Bethesda designed the game with a 20 level cap. Their scripts are properly programmed to handle a level 20 cap. The game only breaks after people hack up mods to remove the cap, thus resulting in behavior Bethesda did not design for. So yes, it's most definitely a player generated bug. It'll be fixable with a CS too, but the longer we go without one, the less likely we are to get it.

Well here's another kick in the face to game fans: http://www.videogamer.com/news/13-11-2008-9918.html

Seems the Fallout 3 DLC will only be available if you subject yourself to the DRM laden bug ridden Games for Windows Live system. I can only wonder what it is the PC fanbase did to piss Bethesda off so much.

Well, given that "Games for Windows Live" is free, I had to wonder why my copy of Fallout 3 included a "LIVE Access Key", gues now I know.. now I just have to wonder if it's worth visiting to get the DLC.

Ok. Bethesda seriously needs to fire Pete Hines. He sucks as a marketing guy. He doesn't even know WTF he's talking about apparently. Bethesda just put out a press release re: FO3 stating that the CS is coming next month and announced 3 official DLC mods. One of which will allow play past the end of the game. Their press people have been throwing around that junk "Games for Windows" thing lately and Hines previously kept tagging the "LIVE" part on to the end of it when he'd respond to interview questions. Well, apparently "Games for Windows" is some kind of gay new Microsoft thing that's just a fancy gimmick for "PC User with Vista" and the "Live" part has nothing to do with it. And no, it doesn't mean you need Vista to play it. Thankfully.

So what's this mean? Full scale user mods are on the horizon sometime before the end of the year. So for those of us who despised the level cap system, we don't have to wait long to have that glaring issue fixed properly. And if DLC can circumvent the ending, I'll lay odds users will beat Bethesda to the punch the day the CS is out.

So did anybody, in the first part of the game, flip the switch that And what happened!?! :D

Very cool, Samson!

No, Zenn, hadn't tried playing that way, maybe with another character..

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I see all of you talking about not being able to get to level 21. in actuallity there is a way to reach level 21 on the 360 version (idk if this works on the ps3 but assuming it does) without the game crashing. ever try to go through a door just after it says level up on the bottom right? well if you haven't I'll fill you in on what happens. it temporarily stops the level up screen from popping up (for how long i'm not sure but found it only showed the level up text after i killed someone or something). now there is a glitch here. I won't tell you exactly how it's done but i will give you a hint. you have to do it at level 19 going on level 20. you have to go through a door at this point before the level screen pops-up...that's all i'm going to say. good luck with finding the glitch.

Good luck, indeed, given that we were all talking about playing this game on PC rather than PS3 or 360.

On PC, I think someone has already got a mod to safely remove the level cap. Apparently one of the pre-CS mod utilities that's out there has recently gotten the ability to compile scripts. So those of us who want our caps removed without having to pull silly bug exploits can do so. I'd much rather go that route than rely on some cheesy trick that may only work for level 21, and only if you're fast enough to open a door just as you level up.

Sounds like good news to me, especially when you consider he was saying he thought that trick might only work on the 360 version of the game with a possibility ofthe PS3 version as well, but he didn't even imply that he realized there was a PC version, let alone that his trick might or might not work on it.

ok let me clarefy the trick "does" work on the 360 I never said it didn't. seciond this trick by passes the whole cap itself you can get to any level you want. the reason I said I was unsure if it worked on the ps3 was because I only have the 360 version. unless the versions between the two and the pc one as well (thanks for telling me that btw I just found this forum when I was searching for fallout 3 stuff so yeah) are different then there is no reason why it shouldn't work. though if you got any kind of patch for the game then there is a chance it won't work.

the main idea of this glitch was to see if people where smart enough to figure out what to do. Now a-days we rely on mods and so on too much to use our brains. not saying that anyone here is dumb. just saying now adays we hardly use our brain power at all to figure things out and instead rely on others and guides to help us. which there is nothing wrong with that just that it would be nice if we used our brains more. oh and one more thing before people start flaming me I know modding requires alot of skill I'm not refering to them when I say this.

oh and one last thing I did know there was a pc version just didn't know this forum was only about that.

This isn't a forum

And the post was about the game, not necessarily the PC version of it. Though of course that's what I played and so I'll use a mod. I'm sorry, but using my brain power isn't an issue. When you have to know that opening a door between level 19 and 20 just before the leveling screen comes up is the solution to a problem, that's blind luck. Not puzzle solving. The game gives you no clues whatsoever that doing so will work, so you can't have any way of knowing to try it without someone stumbling over it by accident first.

Sorry if you misunderstood what I was saying, but it's not that you'd left any doubt that this might work on a 360 but rather that none of us are using a 360 (which is the only place you said that you knew it did work) or even a PS3 here and reading the previous post comments would've revealed that. I also apologize if you took offense at my saying "but he didn't even imply that he realized there was a PC version", it happened to be a true statement rather than any sort of snide remark. Finally, as Samson already pointed out, this isn't a forum, even if it's got many of the features of one including somewhat lengthy (and oft heated) discussions, but as Samson didn't (and probably shouldn't have to) point out, it is rather his personal blog. On the other hand, however you might have found this little niche of the Internet, I'm sure we'd all happily greet a new member to the site should you decide to remain on for our other discourses as well.

well thank you and btw it's more then just opening the door there is more too it. I just was giving a hint at it so people would have to use their brains that is all. I will think about it not sure if I will stay but there is a good chance of it.

Sounds fair enough, on all counts, to me.

So I've unlocked this post. For a good reason. To warn people. Do not buy the just released Operation Anchorage DLC unless you have some particularly pressing reason to fork over $10 to Microsoft. Yes, true to their word, the stupid fucks at Bethesda have gone through with plans to distribute their content exclusively using Games For Windows Live. Now I have no desire to register to find out firsthand, but word has it over on the official Bethesda forums that the add-on pack is "selling" for 800 points. I have no idea WTF that even means, but since GFWL is a total copy of the X-Box 360 system, I can only imagine it's points in the X-Box marketplace or something. Thing is, it's being widely reported by early bird buyers ( damn fools! ) that you have to buy a minimum of 1000 points. Which means you're going to be ripped off for whatever the cash value of 200 points is. And guess who gets the money. No, not Bethesda. Way to go buttfucks. The most colossally bad marketing mistake of your company's history. And you get screwed right along with the rest of us!

For the smart ones out there, just go use PirateBay and get your DLC the right way. Yes, you read right. I'm openly advocating that if you want it, pirate it. Get treated like a thief, you may as well play the part. If you feel guilty doing that, then cut a check to Bethesda Softworks for $5 or something and explain the situation to them.

Also - and I think this was the big warning sign - the official patch for Fallout 3 was released a week or so ago. Yes, it apparently fixes some issues. And yes, it forced GFWL down your throat during the installation process and proceeds to hook into your game whether you wanted it or not. And there was no warning that was going to happen. Great. Assholes.

Nice, so the official patch finally came out (which fixes stuff like not being able to play beyond level 20 and so on?) but it forces you to participate in M$'s Games for Windows Live thingy??

Forced participation in GFWL seems like the direction they're headed. The client installed itself without my permission while the game was being patched. I was not pleased one bit and promptly removed it again the first chance I had. The game doesn't seem to care that I did that, but the gall of them to force it on me when I didn't ask for it is unforgivable. If this is what they're going to do with TES V I'm not going to buy it.

I can't agrue your logic, but if the game will still run, patched, without so much as a complaint once you uninstall the GFWL client that's not quite as bad as it could be I suppose. Still very disappointing that they'd go that route, especially when it means they're losing out on profits from their first expansion and their customers are getting ripped off from it too.

Well, it appears I was actually wrong. I thought I had uninstalled GFWL when I loaded Fallout the other night. When I tried to do so again this morning the game refused to load citing xlive.dll being missing. Reinstalling the 1.1 patch put it back. So the GFWL client is required to be installed in order for the game to even load now. Regardless of whether you have the Anchorage add-on or not apparently.

Further, it seems that Bethesda has not fixed a certain engine bug we modders find all too familiar:

What you're looking at there is the noticeable lack of landscape beneath the additions to the game from the Anchorage.esm file. A classic fubar with Oblivion was always that a master file cannot alter the contents of another master file otherwise chunks of landscape will disappear from the world. Much like what happened here in the western DC Ruins. The landscape beneath the new stuff added by Operation Anchorage is missing and all the statics are floating over the top of where it should be. The ugly looking dull blur below that is the underlying LOD land mesh. So yeah. Borked all around. You have to turn off collision in the game just to reach that door. This is what people are shelling out $12.50 for. Wonderful, isn't it?

Nifty, so, if I decide to install the 1.1 patch then I lose landscape and access to certain parts of the game and am forced to accept GFWL as well, then I get the option of spending $12.50 to add on an expansion pack that will compound the problem? This is sounding better and better.

Er, close.

The 1.1 patch forces the GFWL client on you whether you want it or not. The game will load and play just fine though even if you're not logged into it. Which obviously I won't be.

The Anchorage add-on is what corrupted the landscape. Classic case of an ESM altering another ESM's contents. Always failed with the same kind of results with Oblivion. Bethesda clearly doesn't know how their own program behaves.

You'd think they'd have figured out how to fix that by now. That or they just don't care, which I guess is always a possibility.

I suppose I should also wonder how the crap I got GFWL, or what appears to be it, installed on me when I don't have 1.1. On the scale of "How the hell?" issues with this computer, not really high enough to worry about right now.

That gun is much better than my gun.

Oh, ok, so the landscape breaking is only with the expansion. Not quite as bad then.

You'll have to forgive me for not being a modder and thus not really following the whole "classic case of an ESM altering another ESM's contents" bit, but I do agree with Dwip that if it's been a problem that long, you'd think Bethesda would've worked to address it by now unless they just don't care.

I also have to agree with Dwip that you've pictured quite a nice weapon there... if you don't mind my asking, where'd you find such a beast?

I honestly don't think they care. It wasn't considered a normal thing for Oblivion. Masters made by modders weren't even supposed to b supported by their own construction set. So I really don't know why they'd have an add-on that does this when it's an obvious problem. Further, I really wonder if they QA'd it at all because this would have been terribly obvious.

As for the gun, I acquired it as part of the missing android quest and that's all I'll say without spoiling further. It's basically a souped up plasma rifle.

One thing Fallout fans may like about the Anchorage add-on, you can get and use a Gauss rifle. It's been a classic weapon throughout the entire series. Making it available as part of the add-on means other mods could simply introduce it into the normal flow of the game if they wanted to.

That's a shame, but is it that uncommon anymore?

Ah, will have to try to find that quest then.

A gauss rifle would be nice, but I think I could get by pretty well without one too.

Well it seems The Pitt is out now. I shall acquire a copy and check it out. I'm not holding out hope of it being stable though after seeing a massive flurry of game stopping bug reports relating to it. Would be a shame really as this DLC looks on the surface to be much more interesting than Anchorage was.

With all that's been going on in my life this year (plus the month or so before that) so far, I'll have to game vicariously through you, so be sure to let us know how it goes!

Well. I wish I could tell you how it went/is going/will go, but the DLC will not load. Or, rather, it won't start the quest. I don't know why that might be other than some bizarre side affect of the damn thing being an ESM when it should have been an ESP. I even went and tried it on a friend's PC who was stupid enough to have paid for it legitimately. No dice. In addition to having the usual missing landscape bugs, the quest's radio signal refuses to start. The NPC that's supposed to be there exists, but he's it. Nothing else. Not even the supposed new metro station that leads to Pittsburgh. I killed 3 raiders who were attacking the guy and now all he'll do is stand there like a dumb shit telling me there's no time to waste or something.

Being mod savvy, I loaded the file into FO3Edit. Looked for the quest ID. Figured I'd get the console to do my bidding. No dice. The console acts like the content isn't even loaded. It won't even acknowledge the NPC I can clearly see standing right in front of me. I honestly don't get how anyone is able to play this thing at all, let alone with bugs. I'm quite surprised that more problems like this haven't been reported but it seems either nobody has seen what I see or they're getting their threads deleted. I mean hell, Anchorage worked after being coached into loading. The Pitt however does not, so therefore I cannot tell anyone if it was worth it or not.

I'd say don't waste your money. Games For Windows Live has proven to be a complete joke. My friend who was dumb enough to pay is now going to seek a refund from Microsoft, on threat of filing a class action lawsuit for selling defective software. Oh well. Back to Oblivion I guess. Fallout 3 just isn't worth doing jack shit with.

Wow, damn shame. You'd think if they're going to sell an expansion mod they'd at least make a show of an effort to debug it to the extent that it'll at least load up on most player's computers.

Well I think we can officially close the book on Fallout 3 now.

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=985364

Page 9, post #166 tells the whole story in a nutshell, but you may as well read the entire thing if you have time. Basically their last official patch completely breaks mods contained in .esp files, which is the only format the Fallout 3 CS will allow you to save them in.

The only way to un-break them? Mark every single last reference in exterior locations in your plugin as persistent. For those not totally in the know, this means that every mod that adds buildings, people, items, or whatever will generate megabytes upon megabytes worth of information bloat in the save game system. Gstaff, the community liaison to the developers, has given strong indications the company has no intention to fix this.

For the technically savvy, there is one other way to fix this. Convert your mod into a .esm file. Apparently whatever the patch does makes it possible for .esm files to correctly alter the landscape. Using FO3Edit you can toggle the ESM flag on your file and then rename it as a .esm and in theory that should work. Now if only they'd bothered to make the GECK save as .esm files if this is truly what they're intending to have happen.

The 1.5 patch does have some good fixes. Apparently companions following you through doors won't spawn standing in your face anymore, or in the cases where mods let you get multiples, you won't be stuck in the center of a giant mass of them. VATS has also apparently been fixed as well. Not that I ever really noticed it broken, but hey. But those two things are far outweighed by the implied "fuck you" to the modding community.

I predict Fallout 3 will die a slow and painful death as people cease playing it. One can only hope they don't royally fuck over TES V the same way.

Guess it's lucky for me that I'm not really a member of the modding community, but it's still a real shame to see them choose to bring the Fallout series to a final conclusion through technical alienation of the modding community and rediculous problems in expansion modules that are being sold as add ons with known bugs that entirely prohibit the use of them.

Well ok. In fairness, this topic which has yet to die (DLCs, yeah, you) needs another update and clarification of issues.

Patch 1.5 is still an evil piece of shit as far as mods. GECK still saves as ESP files. However, ElminsterAU worked out something with FO3Edit (modder's tool) that will solve the issue and make any mod playable with 1.5 without crashing the game, and I'm assuming also without damaging current saves. It seems to have resolved any potential issue and I got in a long game play session today to put it through paces and had not one single problem to report until the game pulled it's usual "sorry, my memory is full now, I'll be crashing" thing it's been famous for since launch day.

I can confirm without a doubt now that VATS is fixed 100%. Loads of people on the forums insist it isn't, but I had a blast roaming around the northern area blasting things from a distance with my Gauss Rifle and all my bonuses from perks kicked in without ever lagging once. Not being able to target grenades always felt like a bug to me, so I don't care that you still can't do that.

So on to DLC. I installed The Pitt and went for a look. Still got that broken landscape issue blocking access to the trigger point. After some more hair pulling, cursing, screaming, and yes even a complete wipe and reinstall of the game, I figured out why the DLCs have been giving me that broken landscape you can see in my Anchorage shot up there. I cleaned them using FO3Edit. A practice so commonplace it became habit forming in Oblivion. Well, great, but apparently Bethesda's DLC master files don't like it when you do that. Putting unmodified originals back in alongside the 1.5 patch has resolved that now too. And I must say, despite all the bitching and crying and whining about how bad The Pitt was, what I've seen so far has been pretty cool. Lots of neat new buildings, some rather interesting baddies to slay, and the backdrop of ruined Pittsburgh is great. The real kicker though is the working steel mill. You wouldn't think that's terribly impressive, but it's something that has to be seen to be appreciated. It's all backed up by an interesting story that took a hell of a twist on me I wasn't expecting. It pays not to read too far into threads on the official forums, for I suspect the entire plot line has been laid bare there. So The Pitt is definitely worth the time. Just not the hassle of GFWL - get it on disc.

Oh yes, those of you who don't know, the DLCs are going to be on disc finally. The Anchorage/Pitt combo comes out on Tuesday, with Broken Steel and a new one called Point Lookout sometime in August. Though I will have played them through by then, I'll most likely do right and buy them that way just to make my consumer vote known. Discs trump GFWL any time.

Point Lookout seems interesting from descriptions. Some kind of swamp down south of DC somewhere. Some dude took a crappy pic with his cell phone that shows big trees and not much else, but hey. More green in Fallout 3 can't be bad

Also a 5th DLC coming too. You can only get it as part of the Game of the Year package on disc, but it will apparently also be sold over GFWL. Mothership Zeta. Something to do with an alien abduction after they "return" and are "pissed" for some reason. As if the player had anything to do with it, but we'll see. Could be quite interesting or a complete bomb.

So I eat my words. The book is not closed, it just needed to be rewritten

Very nice, I was really enjoying Fallout 3 when I still had time to play it, maybe I'll have to make a renewed effort to make some time for it again afterall now.

Also, sounds great that the DLCs are finally going to become available on disc, guess Bethesda figured out that folks weren't so happy with having to go through MickeySoft.

So now my choice apparently becomes "Wait and see how much the discs are" or "Wait and see if GotY is a better deal than the discs," which it probably isn't because I have zero interest in the alien stuff. In any case, thank God they're getting past the GfWL thing. I have yet to get past sighing and shaking my head at the 1.5 mod shenanigans, but hope is good.

Soon, new character. I shall play you more soon.

Oh, and from poking about the FO3 news section, my favorite bit of the IGN interview:

IGN: Once again, we must ask: will any of these downloads offer up Dogmeat Armor?

Todd Howard: How much would you pay for one that uses Liberty Prime's voice chip and makes Dogmeat talk like a giant robot while blasting people to chunky soup?

You be the judge. The price on GOTY has already been announced, $49.99 for PC. The game plus all 5 DLCs in one. Hopefully with at least one more patch to resolve the two remaining issues - ESP mods not being broken and the "I choked on memory" bug that's still there.

Also, it's pretty funny, but in the whole time I've played and wandered the wastes, I've yet to run into where Dogmeat is

Well, I already own the game and don't much care about the extra DLC. So it pretty much depends on if GOTY is going to be close to or slightly above the cost of just getting the DLC discs. I didn't see the prices for those, so...

I figure we can probably count on the one more patch for at least the ESP thing. If only to avoid the rep hit for breaking their best feature.

And...really? Dogmeat's location is pretty central to a lot of stuff, I thought. Went by there all the time. Amusing companion, but kind of annoying. He finally glitched out and tried to eat the fire ant queen in my game, so I threw up my hands in despair and eventually ended up with Cross. Who is awesome.

I dunno, I guess I just never happened to go wherever Dogmeat is hiding out. In the past two games he's never been worth much as a combat partner so I didn't go out of my way trying to hunt him down. And like you I ended up with Cross, who kicks much ass but still has glitchy background dialogue like all the other Brotherhood people. They never have fixed that but it's not exactly game breaking either.

If I end up playing through a second time I'm gonna be evil and see how that works out. Even if only up to the point of blasting Megaton off the map.

If DLC pricing is anything like it is right now, they should be about $10, which means at x5 + the game you'd be saving a bundle with GOTY. Since each DLC disc has 2, count on those being $20 discs. At least it's not a KOTN+house mods package like the last time So no matter which way you go, GOTY seems like a great deal if you can wait for late October to get it all.

Yeah, I just checked Amazon, and they want $20 for Anchorage/Pitt. That's not even a choice, really.

Depending on how bored I get between now and October, I'll probably at least go mini-evil. I want to see the supposedly awesome Megaton nuking for myself.

Need to play more Oblivion, too. Once I remember what all mods I want. Argh. Stupid awesome games, getting made even better.

$50 for download or $20 for disc? Nope, that's not a choice at all.

No, the $50 is for the GOTY package in October. Each DLC currently sells for $10. Although with the $2 extra you have to fork over because of how GFWL points work, it's really $12 each. So $12 x 5 = 60. Whereas you get GOTY which is the game and all 5 DLCs for $50. So it's pretty clear that the good deal is to wait. The second best being to buy the DLC packs on disc. And don't even bother with GFWL.

Ah, I misunderstood then, though it still sounds it's a no-brainer, especially if the DLC packs come even less expensively once they're out on disc.