RSIgamers

The eagerly anticipated Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3,  raises the level cap to 30, adds new perks, new weapons and 3 main storyline quests.  Does it live up to expectations?

Firstly, the story.  The new quest line revolves around you and the Brotherhood of Steel trying to deal with the Enclave remnants after their defeat at the Project Purity at the end of Fallout 3.  Broken Steel retcons your character’s supposed death at the end of Fallout 3 and takes place 2 weeks after.  The game doesn’t waste any time throwing you back into the action with the first quest involving an assault on an Enclave outpost with the assistance of Liberty Prime.  Unlike Operation Anchorage and the Pitt which took place in totally different areas, most of Broken Steel takes place in the standard brown and gray Capital Wasteland we’ve all come to hate.  The only new environment you’ll see is Adam’s Air Force base which is where the final quest takes place.

You’ll be doing a lot of fighting in this DLC, mainly against Enclave soldiers, but there’ll be sections during the quests where you have to deal with a lot sentry bots, feral ghoul reavers, and deathclaws.  The difficulty will really depend on your character going in.   Personally, I had built a pretty tanked character by the end of Fallout 3, and I was able to breeze through most of the DLC quests, but I did have a few close moments where I had to spam stimpacks during a firefight with several robot sentries and a horde of ghouls at the same time.  Players who have level 20 characters (especially with Grim Reaper’s Sprint) may not exactly find this DLC challenging.

There are also two new major weapons for you to wreck havoc with in the game.  There’s the Heavy Incinerator, which is an upgraded flamethrower that is capable of shooting balls of flame that burns on impact.  You’ll run into plenty of Enclave soldiers carrying this weapon, so ammo and repairs are never a problem, and it’s quite good for dealing with large packs of enemies without needing V.A.T.S.

The other new weapon is the Tesla Cannon, which fires bolts of electricity that causes AoE damage on impact.  It’s also very damaging, but because every shot requires a reload, it’s better as a sniping weapon and not very useful in big firefights as you can only get 2 shots off in V.A.T.S with full AP.  I did find it really useful in taking out laser turrets at long range, and against sentry bots.

With the level cap now at 30, Bethesda have included some new perks to go along.  The problem is that most of these perks are very mediocre , compared to some of the ones already in Fallout 3. Grim Reaper’s Sprint actually made getting to level 20 worthwhile.  Some of the new perks in Broken Steel lets you convert 10 Nuka Colas into Quantums, build custom weapons without schematics, or change your karma to very good, very evil, or neutral.  It kinda feels like some were added just to make getting some of the achievements like Nuka Cola Challenge and Weaponsmith in Fallout 3 easier.  Most of the perks don’t really add any value to your character, so there’s no real incentive to level past 20.  Even the best perk, Almost Perfect, which sets all your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats to 9, is only available at level 30, and combined with the rather short length of the DLC, chances are you won’t be reaching level 30 for now anyway.

With the newly announced Point Look and Mothership Zeta DLC packs coming in a few months, there will probably be enough content by then to get to level 30 easily.  Having said that,  Todd Howard has confirmed in a interview with IGN that Point Look and Mothership Zeta do not affect the level cap in any way.  This means that getting Broken Steel currently is and will be the only way to continue playing the game without reloading a save game prior to the end of Fallout 3.

I suppose this DLC would give players who haven’t actually finished Fallout 3, or played Operation Anchorage/The Pitt the most value for money. If you have played Fallout 3 to death like I have, you may find this DLC just ‘more of the same’.  During the 6 or so hours that it took me to finish the main quest line, I never quite got to the levels of addiction that I had while I was playing the original game.   I was also kinda pissed off about the all the XP I lost by completing quests when I was already level 20 in the first game.  But for people who haven’t fully completed Fallout 3, reached level 20, or played Operation Anchorage/The Pitt, getting Broken Steel first will give you the best mileage out of the added features.  The raised level cap and being able to continue playing after the first game has finished gives players some incentive to go back and finish any quests they previously missed.  If you fall into any of the categories I mentioned, I highly recommend getting Broken Steel before the other DLC packs to give you the best possible experience.  Otherwise if you’re looking for something new and fresh, I’d spend my 800 points on Mothership Zeta when it comes out instead.

Liked

• Pretty much non-stop action and combat from beginning to end
• Increased level cap and being able to continue playing the game adds extra value to Fallout 3 as well as future DLC

Hated

• More of the same brown Wasteland.  Operation Anchorage was a nice change of scenery, maybe they could’ve greened up the Wasteland a bit since fresh water has been restored?
• Boring and unimaginative new perks that don’t really add any value to your character
• Short main quest line
• Wasted XP gains for people who finished Fallout 3 at level 20

YJ previosuly completed Fallout 3 with 1000/1000 achievement points at the start of Broken Steel.  Character was level 20 and had mostly max stats for important skills like repair, medicine, science, lockpick, speech, small guns, large guns, energy weapons.  Broken Steel was played on ‘Normal’ difficulty and completed in around 6 hours.  YJ was level 24 when the final quest ended.