Secchan's Corner: Game completed: Fallout 3 + DLCs

I mentioned in my weekly post from last week that I had major problems getting this game to work at all. When I finally managed to start the game I soon realised that I had maybe 20-40 minutes of uninterrupted playtime before the screen would freeze and I'd have to force-quit. To make the game work at all I also had to disable all autosaves and thus F5 became my best friend:

Killed an enemy?

Save.

Picked up loot?

Save.

Discovered a location?

Save.

Before entering a place?

Save.

After entering a place?

Save.

Before talking to someone?

Save.

After having talked to someone?

Save.

Walked 20 steps without any interference?

Save.

Got a new quest?

Save.

Completed quest?

Save.

Heal.

Save.

Level up?

Save.

Having no idea for how long I'd be able to play this time, and having all autosaves disabled made me slightly paranoid. Sometimes the game would work without a hitch for an hour, maybe two. Then sometimes I could barely play two minutes before the game would freeze. And because of the freezing and force-quitting I tried to squeeze as much playtime as possible into the minutes I had, which meant that I rushed through this game without proper exploration or getting a proper connection to any of the characters.

I gave this game a bad review on Steam, purely for the fact that despite all the amazing *sarcasm* guides about how to get this game to work on Windows 7 it still wouldn't frickin work until Toni provided a random solution (that wasn't mentioned anywhere whatsoever online that I could find) that at least got the game working, but didn't solve the freeze problem.

But despite all the negativity and the rushed way I had to play it, it still managed to grab my attention, and if it wasn't for the freeze thing I may very well have fallen in love with this game, which makes it even more frustrating that my computer specs wouldn't allow me to play it properly (my computer is too modern #firstworldproblems). But since it's Bethesda it was more the DLCs and the random locations and the side quests that caught my attention. It's the same with both Oblivion and Skyrim - all the fluff is better than the main story xD But it took a while so it wasn't until the last few days that the game really grew on me despite the frequent freeze-ups.

I really enjoyed the Point Lookout DLC, mostly because I thought it was cool with Desmond and the Brain. I killed the Brain in the end, because I ended up liking Desmond in some weird way. This DLC also provided my first shock as I approcahed Desmond's mansion and it was blown to pieces! Also getting high as fuck and having the weirdest game experience ever was cool, though it ended sadly by finding mom :( And finding out that it was the ferry man who had been seeling the cultists' pieces of brain! Ew.

1). Mom in the drug-infused vision. 2). Desmond's mansion blown up. 3). The Brain! 4). The ferryman's jars of brain pieces

But the creepiest part of this DLC was when I got to Blackhall Manor. I entered and was approached by an old man who eventually asked me to recover an old book, an heirloom, that had been stolen from him. I accept and leave the house. Outside I encounter a woman who claims that the book is evil and that he wants to use the rituals inside it to control the native swampfolk, and maybe worse. I go to pick up the book and then I decide to destroy it. To do that I had to go to the Dunwich Building in the Wasteland (rather than in Point Lookout). The evil book was the first clue. The name Dunwich was the second. When I got to the end, a cavern at the end of the tunnels below the building, I found an obelisk. A whispering obelisk that wouldn't shut up. I activated the obelisk and chose to destroy the book. When I activated it again I got a message saying that everyone with the knowledge to investigate this obelisk further either didn't have the means or were dead... Dead investigators. Lovecraft.

1 & 2). The obelisk. 3). The old man from Blackhall Manor praying at his basement altar. 4). The woman who told us about the book was murdered.

I also loved some parts of Mothership Zeta DLC. Getting abducted by aliens, Sally who's still a little girl but who's been on the ship for 200 years, the random Japanese samurai who only spoke Japanese (this was hilarious because I understood perfectly), the space walk was cool, and the space invader fight in the end was awesome.

1). Getting abducted. 2). Getting probed. 3). SAMURAI! :D 4). Samurai snuck off alone and this is how I found him.

In the main game one of the most memorable side quests was Oasis, where I found a tree-man named Harold. I liked him, but instead of killing him like he asked I made him grow faster. He approved of that afterwards. All the vaults were of course memorable. No 101 where my char came from, no 112 where I found Dad after a creepy afternoon in Tranquility Lane, no 87 where the Super Mutants originate, no 106 where everyone went crazy after a gas experiment gone awry, no 92 where I picked up Agatha's violin, and no 108 where all survivors are clones of a man named Gary and all they can say is Gary (that was seriously creepy). I also enjoyed the quest in Arefu involving vampires, the quest in Andale involving cannibals, and the quest in Canterbury Commons involving a superhero and a super-villain. The quest in Rivet City with an android who'd run away, changed his face, and wiped his memory was really intersting. And I enjoyed playing the quest called Those! that was so obviously an easter egg in and of itself and a reference to the very old movie Them! that I like.

1). Harold. 2). Harold's heart in the tunnels underneath the oasis. 3). The super-villain. 4) The superhero.

I didn't like Broken Steel at all tbh, and preferred the ending the way it was, I didn't need the add-on. The Enclave broke up after their base was destroyed and their leader gone. Organisations tend to do that when they don't have a clear leader. Has happened before, will happen again. Why did that require some extra ratification? I felt that Broken Steel was completely unnecessary, but a part of it comes from the fact that I wasn't even allowed to finish it. After the final building has exploded I'm supposed to board a stolen Enclave plane and get back to the Citadel, but every time I activate the plane the game freezes. So I can't finish the quest. I can't use the console to finish the quest, because the DLC is on a different map and so I can't fast-travel from there back to the Wasteland. I'm effectively stuck because of the freezing, and so I haven't finished the absolute last five minutes of the post-game DLC.