Sony
Fallout 3: Broken Steel
By Matt Warner
Oct 14, 2009, 7 :36 am

At long last, the ill-begotten stepchild version of Fallout 3 has its coveted downloadable content! As of this writing, all five DLC packs for Fallout 3 are up on PSN. Bethesda has juggled the release sequence from the PC and 360 versions, meaning PS3 owners get to experience Broken Steel first. A word of caution before we get going: Broken Steel is a direct continuation of the original game's plot, and as such there will be spoilers!

When the original Fallout 3 ended, so did the game, which is a rarity for a Bethesda title and it isn't hard to see why some of their fans got upset over this. Bethesda games are almost the antithesis of the Japanese RPG experience; rather than have an elaborate linear story arc with lots of character development, Bethesda usually opts to have relatively little story and virtually no character development, instead concentrating exhaustively on world-building. The story is in the elaborate history crafted for the world and the little details strewn about so the player can piece it together rather than have it explained by party members and NPCs.

The studio's previous two big RPGs, Morrowind and Oblivion, were vast sprawling fantasy sandboxes first and foremost, with most of the content spread around and existing well outside of the comparatively-small main plotline. Chewing through the primary quests was optional for the most part and the game never really hurried you along that path. If you did complete the main quests and “beat” the game, it coughed up an ending cinematic, patted you on the head, and turned you loose back into the forest so you could keep playing.

Given that Fallout 3 didn't seem like a radical shift from Bethesda's usual shake at game design, players were a bit shocked (and usually dismayed) when the game actually ended with a full stop at the end and summarily dumped you back to the Main Menu without even a credit scroll. It seemed like a weird about-face from the usual policy: On the one hand, it offered some closure to the plot and had a stamp of finality about it that usually isn't present in Bethesda's games. On the other hand, much of the game's content was likely left unexplored before the player unwittingly triggered the final few quests and found themselves locked out of more exploration, with unfinished quests still dangling. If you already knew which quest was the last one and waited to trigger it, it led to some strange scenarios where your allies are literally standing there waiting outside the door to the final stage for possibly months while you go traipsing around looking for Bobbleheads.

Probably realizing (likely based on the amount of hate mail they got about it) that this wasn't the best way to tie things off at the end, Bethesda have set about to fix it with the Broken Steel download, and therein lies the biggest draw for players who enjoyed the exploration and freeform aspects of the game. The game's hard ending has been removed, the level cap has been bumped up to 30 complete with new perks, and the wastes have been repopulated with a smattering of new high-level goons for you to fight. That alone is enough to warrant a purchase if you were a big fan of the standalone game, although you could argue that it's really just fixing something that should've been in the game in the first place and now you have to pay for it.

Nonetheless, this brings Fallout 3 more in line with Bethesda's other open RPGs and that's sure to make a lot of fans very happy. Despite neutering the bite of the original ending, this is still an improvement and adds quite a bit to the overall experience.

The additional content included in the DLC kicks off once you finish the original main plotline. To recap: You and the Lyon's Pride have battled your way into the Jefferson memorial to reclaim Project Purity, and upon killing (or talking down) Col. Autumn and achieving victory, are informed by Doctor Li that the purifier is overloading and must be activated immediately or it's going to blow up and take you all out with it. The only problem is, the main chamber of the purifier is flooded with lethal levels of radiation, so someone is going to have to sacrifice themselves to go in and turn it on.

There's a neat little snag in the plot here that Bethesda went back and fixed.

Originally, your only options were to either go in yourself and sacrifice your life for the greater good, or chicken out and get your combat cohort Sarah Lyons to do it. That's all well and good, but while she and you are having the conversation about who should go in and die of radiation poisoning, there's a good chance that your other NPC follower is either a ghoul or a super-mutant, both of whom are rad-immune. This can lead to an incredibly bizarre scene where your character basically says “Well, sorry guys, I have to go kill myself by entering the chamber full of lethal radiation that Fawkes here happens to be completely immune to so I can push four buttons on a keypad and it's not like I could've just told him what to push and then not have to die or anything. Welp, seeya!”

Thankfully, this truck-sized logic hole has been plugged, and you can now have a radiation-immune follower go in instead. Slightly less dramatic, sure, but at least now your character doesn't appear to be a suicidal moron when a better solution is literally standing right next to them.

You still get the same ending cinematic once the purifier kicks in, only now your character will wake up two weeks later, having been driven into a coma by the radiation (or “energy spike” if you were outside), but otherwise perfectly fine. You're informed of the state of things, with the Brotherhood of Steel moving to wipe out the relocated Enclave base of operations to finish them off for good.

And, at this point, you can either hop right into the additional four main plot quests, or you can pack your gear, fetch your followers, and just head back out into the wastes to take care of any unfinished business. The new content isn't on any kind of time constraint, so this is the perfect opportunity to drop those last Super Mutant Behemoths.

In fact, the wandering around and grabbing some extra experience is somewhat advisable, if not immediately then at least at some point before the final pack of missions, because they're all extremely combat heavy.

The new quests kick off with the re-introduction of the hilariously awesome super robot Liberty Prime, who you hopefully remember from the standard game's epic finale where he stomped his way across half of Washington D.C. throwing nukes like footballs and generally kicking Enclave ass en masse for the best ten-minute interactive cutscene money can buy. This time he's being dispatched to an Enclave hidey-hole in the far Southwest corner of the map and you, now a freshly minted Brother of Steel yourself, are told to go along for the ride. Things somewhat predictably go FUBAR and it becomes up to you to shoot your way in one side and out the other.

Note that that's really your only option here, and the missions themselves somewhat suffer for it. Diplomacy goes right out the window and anything else resembling subtlety soon goes right with it, a point driven home when you're turned loose inside an entire giant outdoor Enclave base with a ludicrously overpowered super weapon (which you get to keep afterward) and are basically told to blow the whole thing to hell. This is great if you loved the combat aspect of the game, but the near-zero amount of any kind of dialogue options, lack computers to hack, and general straightforwardness of the missions leave something to be desired. It's four straight missions of nonstop streams of enemies in a few new locations.

It's also over very quickly, clocking in between three to five hours total for the main plot; there are other sidequests though, which combined with the amount of time it takes to get to the new level cap means you'll very likely be playing for longer than the amount of time it takes to complete just the primary missions.

Still, what Broken Steel's new content lacks in length, it makes up for in intensity. The sheer amount of enemies who will attack you at once has been dramatically ramped up, with many of them posing a serious threat even to a fairly powerful character. Getting caught in a crossfire, particularly on the final mission, will usually spell death. Expect to finally have to dig into that giant pile of stimpacks that has sat untouched since you turned level fifteen, because you're going to need them.

In keeping with the combat-oriented theme, stuff in Broken Steel does blow up real good (and real frequently). It gives the game almost an action-movie vibe and remains kinetic right through the whole thing, including nice touches like having vertibirds that the player can shoot down and scripted sequences of The Brotherhood launching an attack on Enclave forces.

So, while we lose out in subtlety, at least the action is polished and intense.

Once you've cleaned the Enclave out for good (or before you get around to it), there's also a few other new quests added to old locations in the game. Some are somewhat obscure – one involves observing an NPC interaction just outside of Megaton, which is easy to miss if you don't know to look for it. The others get referenced by Paladins in the citadel, but it's up to you to trek over there and talk to the relevant NPC before the quest will actually begin. There's a bit more of a classic approach to these quests, so if you built up your character's speech and science skills, here's where you get to put them to use.

All told, and if you do everything there is including hitting the level cap, you're looking at around ten hours worth of gameplay, which isn't bad for the money. Just be sure to do everything and not just the brief Brotherhood missions or you may feel a bit shortchanged.

As a final note: If you own the PS3 version of the game, you're almost certainly aware of the bugs plaguing it: frequent crashes, random extremely long load times, etc. If you were hoping that this DLC might also patch some of those problems away, you're going to be disappointed. If anything, I experienced more crashing and framerate hangs after installing Broken Steel than I had before, though I'm not sure if this was really because of the DLC or just because my save files are getting up in size and the game had been running for several hours straight. Also, there was a bizarre bug upon first installing Broken Steel where my traveling companion, Star Paladin Cross, got stuck in the room your character wakes up in after Project Purity, refusing to leave even if I fast-traveled somewhere to get her to re-spawn. Eventually I had to physically shove her out of the room to get her to follow me again, which is a little disconcerting.

If you were hoping for more stability like I was, this is a bit of a letdown, as it seems to make it slightly worse. Hopefully a free patch is incoming at some point.

Overall: 8/10

Broken Steel is a bit on the simple side, but there's no denying that it looks good and is fun to play through. Given that it makes extensively exploring the original game much more approachable in addition to giving you the extra content to chew through, this is essentially a must-buy for anyone still actively playing the game or anyone who would love an excuse to go back to it. If you wrapped up Fallout 3 months back, now's the time to dust it off and dig out the Chinese Assault Rifle for another tour. Broken Steel also preps the field for the remaining DLC packs, so it's a good investment towards extending the life of an already massive game even further. Recommended.


(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.)