Review: The Pitt (Fallout 3 DLC)
Apr. 4th, 2009 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenThe second Fallout 3 dowloadable quest came out a few weeks back, but it took a while before I managed to get my copy of the game stable enough to play it. Must learn to stop downloading every single mod that looks vaguely interesting…
This one takes you to Pittsburgh, which didn’t come out of the war any better than Washington did. It’s overrun with slavers and raiders, and radiation poisoning has mutated many of the survivors into savage beasts. One of the slaves has escaped, and he’s come to the Capital Wasteland looking for someone brave or stupid enough to liberate the Pitt.
Obviously, the add-on doesn’t offer such a huge area to explore as the base game does. You’re pretty limited in where you can go; only a few small areas exist. It actually feels rather like the towns in Fallout 1 or 2, with only a few key areas mapped out. That’s alright, I suppose, but it means ruined Pittsburgh doesn’t have any of the fun little secrets that ruined DC has. It looks nice, I’ll grant you that – the new areas use a lot of new textures and meshes, so the Pitt looks as distinct as the DC ruins or Rivet City or Megaton do. Still, it feels a little linear.
There’s a few odd choices. The quest makes a big deal about you having to disguise yourself as a slave and give up all your gear – yet once you’re inside the Pitt, you can loot some decent armour and weapons almost immediatly, and nobody looks at you funny. Slaves aren’t subject to much scrutiny, it seems…
You also get a nice new melee weapon, the Auto-Axe; a large chainsaw axe type thing. Almost immediately after receiving it, you get a perk that lets you do +25% damage with it. Why not just have the weapon do more damage to start off with? Or there’s the arena – where you have to complete three fights to advance, and that’s all there is. Why not let you go back there? A few random arena opponents can’t be that hard to program, and would give you a reason to go back to the Pitt once the quest is over.
And why aren’t there any shops or bars in the Pitt? The main quest makes a big deal out of how many people are there and how the Pitt’s leader wants to make the city a major industrial power, yet all the residents seem to be slave labourers or raider guards. There’s nothing to the Pitt other than the things directly related to the quest. It doesn’t feel like a real settlement, just a place to go through once to get some experience and loot.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun little side-quest – but it feels rather incomplete. There’s some nice touches early on – you can try to deal with some slavers, but they recognise you and are automatically hostile if you’ve already attacked Paradise Falls. Also, one character finally explains the reason there’s so many slavers in Fallout 3 but so few slaves is that they’re being sent to the Pitt. That sort of detail really highlights how bare and almost unfinished the rest of the quest is – you end up either destroying the slavers or crushing the slave rebellion, but nothing seems to change. You’re the big damn hero who saved the day; after that, the Pitt should be your home away from home. Give me a house, a guy who sells rare weapons, a reason to come back here. Instead, the survivors of the quest barely treat you differently, and all that’s left worth visiting is an ammo maker to turn scrap metal into bullets. Useful, sure, but not what I was hoping for.
I find myself actually rather warming to Operation Anchorage after the Pitt; sure, it was linear and didn’t add much – but it didn’t overreach and prove ultimately disappointing.
I do very much like the ‘tribal power armour’, with a cow skull replacing a missing shoulder pad, though.
This one takes you to Pittsburgh, which didn’t come out of the war any better than Washington did. It’s overrun with slavers and raiders, and radiation poisoning has mutated many of the survivors into savage beasts. One of the slaves has escaped, and he’s come to the Capital Wasteland looking for someone brave or stupid enough to liberate the Pitt.
Obviously, the add-on doesn’t offer such a huge area to explore as the base game does. You’re pretty limited in where you can go; only a few small areas exist. It actually feels rather like the towns in Fallout 1 or 2, with only a few key areas mapped out. That’s alright, I suppose, but it means ruined Pittsburgh doesn’t have any of the fun little secrets that ruined DC has. It looks nice, I’ll grant you that – the new areas use a lot of new textures and meshes, so the Pitt looks as distinct as the DC ruins or Rivet City or Megaton do. Still, it feels a little linear.
There’s a few odd choices. The quest makes a big deal about you having to disguise yourself as a slave and give up all your gear – yet once you’re inside the Pitt, you can loot some decent armour and weapons almost immediatly, and nobody looks at you funny. Slaves aren’t subject to much scrutiny, it seems…
You also get a nice new melee weapon, the Auto-Axe; a large chainsaw axe type thing. Almost immediately after receiving it, you get a perk that lets you do +25% damage with it. Why not just have the weapon do more damage to start off with? Or there’s the arena – where you have to complete three fights to advance, and that’s all there is. Why not let you go back there? A few random arena opponents can’t be that hard to program, and would give you a reason to go back to the Pitt once the quest is over.
And why aren’t there any shops or bars in the Pitt? The main quest makes a big deal out of how many people are there and how the Pitt’s leader wants to make the city a major industrial power, yet all the residents seem to be slave labourers or raider guards. There’s nothing to the Pitt other than the things directly related to the quest. It doesn’t feel like a real settlement, just a place to go through once to get some experience and loot.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun little side-quest – but it feels rather incomplete. There’s some nice touches early on – you can try to deal with some slavers, but they recognise you and are automatically hostile if you’ve already attacked Paradise Falls. Also, one character finally explains the reason there’s so many slavers in Fallout 3 but so few slaves is that they’re being sent to the Pitt. That sort of detail really highlights how bare and almost unfinished the rest of the quest is – you end up either destroying the slavers or crushing the slave rebellion, but nothing seems to change. You’re the big damn hero who saved the day; after that, the Pitt should be your home away from home. Give me a house, a guy who sells rare weapons, a reason to come back here. Instead, the survivors of the quest barely treat you differently, and all that’s left worth visiting is an ammo maker to turn scrap metal into bullets. Useful, sure, but not what I was hoping for.
I find myself actually rather warming to Operation Anchorage after the Pitt; sure, it was linear and didn’t add much – but it didn’t overreach and prove ultimately disappointing.
I do very much like the ‘tribal power armour’, with a cow skull replacing a missing shoulder pad, though.