Headscratchers / Fallout 3 DLC

Surviving Operation Anchorage

• Did they just not know about PTSD? You're forced to fight and nearly die against armies and if you die in the simulation you die for real. Anyone who survived the simulation should be able to say they served just by surviving it.
  • Presumably its less impactful than it appears; relatively advanced VR that looks kind of real but still feels like an advanced video game. The glowing health dispensers might help with that. As for dying in the simulation, I assumed that was due to the age of the technology and failsafes breaking down.

Pitt slaves

• Why aren't the Pitt slaves collared? True, they'd then put one on YOU in the quest, but they'd also take it off later. Besides, in this one's opinion having one of those equipped would be kind of amusing, or at least a new something to think about before you open fire on that guard. Also, how do you get away with never having to do any sort of work in the Pitt?
  • As I recall, you are quickly ordered to gather leftover ingots for exactly this reason, and immediately afterwards get chosen to fight in the Hole. It does seem awfully convenient that you're the only slave poking around on his own, though.
  • The fact that they weren't collared bugged me because it stood out. It's rather obviously different, and my guess is that's specifically so they don't have to put it on you, even though they could easily have done so and just had Ashur remove it...hell, having a "disable all collars" part of the quest would have been a way to lengthen it a little. Win-win.
  • If I remember correctly, during the course of The Pitt you find out that Trogs only stay out of Up/Downtown because the lights are on. That's all the "collar" that Ashur needs, in my opinion. If the slaves start getting out of line, all he would have to do is order the slavers to safety and shut off the lights.
  • Plus the only way out of the Pitt is the single bridge over a river so irradiated it's instant death. A bridge completely covered in land mines. A bridge overlooked by at least 3 sniper perches. And then you have to pass through a camp of raiders loyal to Ashur. Then navigate a maze of more than 200 miles of underground tunnels so complicated that Wehrner said you'd never make it through without his guidance. Where are they going to go?
  • If you play through supporting Ashur or read his diaries, you find out that his long term goals are to cure the disease and build a working nation. Collaring the slaves with explosives would not be a good way to make them a happy and productive society later. What really bugged me about the Pitt was the way it acted morally gray even after you find out that Ashur wants to help everyone and the other guy admits he just wants to kill the baby because he hates Ashur. The good/bad was pretty obvious at that point.
  • I was unhappy with both of the apparent choices. But there is a middle choice that I took. Not ideal, but it left me feeling better. You steal the baby. Talk to Sandra, tell her she won't shoot you with the baby. She agrees but says her snipers will take you down. This proves to be optimistic on her part. Don't harm her. She won't attack you without provocation though she draws her sidearm. Exit the building. Kill every raider in uptown. Kill every raider in the Mill. Talk to Midea. Express disappointment at kidnapping baby. Meet Wernher. Give him the baby. Go whoa dude, you didn't tell me there was a baby involved. Listen to him call you a pansy. Listen to second part of his plan. Object to loosing the trogs. Tell him you're going to go make up with Ashur. Pass speech check to convince him to leave without violence. Retrieve baby. Return baby. Listen to Sandra call you an asshole. Talk to Ashur. Listen to Ashur go wtf man, you killed all my dudes, and the slaves revolted, and you kidnapped my baby, but you know what? fuck it, we're still bros. Ask him to free the slaves. Listen to him say no, but will do in the future. THE END. I liked this because I had a hard time siding with slavers against slaves. But I also had a hard time killing the only scientist with a legitimate shot at finding the cure. So I thought it taught Ashur a valuable object lesson about the cost of oppression, leaving the slaves in a better bargaining position. Kind of Magna Carta meets Chinese Assault Rifle. And to RP it out, I can always come back in a couple years to make my point again if need be.
  • Let's not forget that Ashur has also got in his employ, a gang of total and complete psychopaths who raid other communities for food. The Pitt is a pirate state and even Ashur calls them "slaves" when he's talking to you in private. Given he's got Amon Goethe style people running his camps, shooting at the slaves for fun and death-matches, Ashur is just a self-justifying asshole. There's a better option than both of them. Say "I am the New Lord of the Pitt" and keep Werner as just your stooge.
  • It's wonderful that people are objecting to the questionable morals of the rulers of the Pitt, but consider another nation whom kept slaves, offered the slaves a chance to earn their citizenship through combat, had a strong militaristic rule at the beginning of its history, and became one of the most powerful nations of the world at that time in the face of overwhelming numbers of barbarian tribes at the edges of their lands. Despite everyone saying he's "bad", at the point of time the Fallout universe is in Ashur's emulating the Roman empire is an effective way to build a nation out of nothing.
  • Welcome to New Vegas. Say hi to the Legion for me.
  • There's a difference between Ashur's methods and the Legion's methods, though. I wouldn't really say that Ashur was emulating Rome as much as he was emulating the Feudal systems, which is fitting considering that the Brotherhood of Steel is ostensibly a knightly order.

Point Lookout enemies being tougher than Enclave and BoS

• Point lookout. I know it's supposed to be played after Broken Steel. I know it's clearly advertised as "bloody motherfucking" hard. But come on, tribals, with hunting rifles, that wreck apart a level 30 lone wanderer with a T51-b in perfect condition? Seriously, unleash two or three of those guys on Raven Rock, they will be more efficient than Liberty Prime. Add another group of three or four, they will clean the goddamn capital wasteland. That's why there is no Deathclaws, no Super Mutants, no Enclave and no Radscorpions in Point Lookout, the tribals and swampfolks with their .32 rifles, their axes and their two hundred years old double-barreled shotgun rip them apart. So what's the deal? Is Point Lookout located straight on the Hellmouth? Is there a mysterious isotope in the air that renders power armor paper-thin? These are friggin' tribals who barely wear clothes: inbred, radioactive, mentally retarded hunter-gatherers, for God's sake. They shouldn't be able to even shoot straight, let alone shoot vast holes through your titanium plating.
  • This really burned my biscuits. Unless they're a combat vet, the average redneck has never been up against anything more dangerous than a wounded puma or maybe a bear. While you might have to shoot a couple that were even dumber than their companions, the demonstration of the kind of firepower the Lone Wanderer and Co. could unleash would send the survivors running back to their cabins with soiled underwear. They run and hide from highway cops with revolvers ...an obviously dangerous person packing military-grade hardware? They wouldn't do jack unless you did something truly outrageous.
  • The Swampfolk aren't average rednecks. They used to be average before the war, but over the multiple generations since, they've degenerated due to a combination of factors: radiation, New Plague, and perhaps also they inbred for way more generations than is healthy. Now, they're only a couple of rungs above an average Vault 87 Super Mutant in terms of intelligence and sanity. That combined with being fiercely territorial means they're hostile to almost all outsiders (I say almost because they do trade with a few non-Swampfolk like Madame Panada).
  • Fake Difficulty at its finest: Tribals and Swampfolk inexplicably get 35 points of unresistable damage per hit.
  • Agreed, it's annoying. Somehow, after defeating the power armored, energy weapon toting army, having freakin' swampfolk be that dangerous is ticking me off.
  • It's just psycho and yao gai meat on all the time. Considering they're radiationless thanks to their punga heavy diet, (and no nukes hitting the area) it makes sense for them to be stronger than the radiation poisoned, cancerous wastelanders.
  • At the very last, Mothership Zeta's level of difficulty will be justified, by you know, alien tech. The one, basic alien handgun you find in each game is always the Infinity +1 Sword. It makes me shudder to imagine the alien's big guns and equivalent to power armor.
  • Not that strange, actually. Considering you can easily one-shot most Enclave soldiers in their power armor with a simple hunting rifle and maxed Small Guns stats, and that rednecks and hicks are traditionally very good shots....
  • Oh, thank god, that was supposed to be hard. My only ragequit in any part of this game was those stupid goddamn tribals.
  • What annoyed me, who stopped the main quest before going to Vault 112 and completed all of Point Lookout before returning to the Capital Wasteland, was how a Tribal in leather scraps could take 4 or 5 .44 MAGNUM rounds to the head before dying when a Super Mutant drops from a single headshot!
  • Not to be sarcastic, but I actually am going so far as to claim A Wizard Did It, or something like that. In Point Lookout, you have the option of retrieving a Tome of Eldritch Lore from the swampfolk, and either destroying it, or giving it to an evil old man. Said book is tied to an evil obelisk in the basement of the Dunwich building. While the secret machinations of an eldritch horror do not mesh well with the rest of the universe, it could explain why these freaks are so tough.
  • It's laughably implausible, but more logical than "Point Lookout mud has bullet- and energy-repelling qualities when smeared on your skin, and Point Lookout bullets are covered with armor-penetrating hillbilly saliva."
  • Basically, "Klaatu... verata... n... Necktie. Nectar. Nickel. Noodle."
  • Having thought about this for some time, I've come to the conclusion that it's not the rednecks that are so powerful. It's a combination of things. The atmosphere of the swamp deeply affects things that aren't native and thus used to the place and its unique toxins, the rednecks are so mutated by the muck and inbred over 200 years that they have a terrifying physiology that lets them hit harder than a human body should be able to swing and take the kinds of hits that would snap a wastelander in half, the unmarked psychological effects that the tribal totems have on a newcomer like the Lone Wanderer that cause their otherwise unbreakable spirit in the face of wasteland horrors to falter and weaken their body and finally the sheer perverted evil that permeates the air itself. Point Lookout is like one great big sickly gangrenous blotch that you're wading into like some kind of half cocked vigilante, without realizing that the local bacteria are a hell of a lot more adaptable to this place than you.

Purpose of Mothership Zeta aliens

• Before anyone ask, no, as far as I know, we never learn what the aliens were really up to in Mothership Zeta. But it's a Cliché Storm, so their goal was probably fairly classic.
  • Elliot does have several Cliché Storm theories, none of them are really infirmed or confirmed. For all we know, he may have been right about everything, or wrong about everything.
  • The presence of the abominations seems to hint at experiments to create Super-Soldier. For what usage is anyone guess.
  • Someone didn't go into the Giddyup Buttercup lab. One of those robots ripped 5 wastelanders to shreds without even dirtying itself. And if you look it in the eyes, it's eyes flash red.
  • I still don't get the purpose of the aliens modding the Buttercups. It would have made some sense in normal times; then they could have been used as robotic sleeper agents.
  • Collecting humans to use as museum exhibits, with a few as test subjects. Since every attempted probe ended in the alien's death
  • In one of the audio logs, it's hinted that the aliens may have caused the war in 2077. Since their ship is in massive disrepair, they keep coming back (Toshiro is from the early Tokugawa shogunate), and they have those half-bred abominations, it may be that they are scavenging anything they can to fight some other enemy. Perhaps the second mothership wasn't an ally, but a rival faction? WMG
  • No, I don't understand either how we manage to use the Death Ray we sabotaged ten minutes earlier.
  • An alternate generator, maybe, but it's not handwaved or justified in any way.
  • Actually I've been mulling over this for quite a while, and I think I've got an answer.. two completely different settings for said Death Ray the generators in the Death Ray Control area only handled Ship-To-Planet use, while an unknown set of generators in an unseen part of the ship handled Ship-To-Ship use.
  • I think you've got it. Modern warships have different, isolated weapons systems for different kinds of targets, both for efficiency and to hopefully prevent everything being knocked out by one lucky shot.
  • I can think of an explanation or two as to why no weapon on the mothership is as powerful as the vanilla's Alien Blaster, but that's about it.
  • An older model not issued anymore because it's too expensive and hard to maintain, using expensive ammo, eventually replaced by more reliable and cheaper weaponry (do take note that said cheaper weaponry is still very powerful by the wastelands or even the Enclave standards, with the Destabilizer, even if only at prototype stage, probably being by very far the strongest energy weapon ever seen in a Fallout, barring the easter egged alien blaster)
  • Or a service weapon vs a security weapon. The blaster was on a probe to a hostile planet. The guns on the ship were like cop weapons, just to control prisoners. Hence most of them use shock batons.
  • Sally continuously creeps the hell out of me, acting as Aliens's Newt while somehow possessing fairly advanced knowledge about the ship and its innards, acting very detached with thing like "Yeah, dad, ma and sis are dead, so is the world I was living in, now to the next air vent I can crawl in". Until the very last second of the adventure, I was continuously expecting for her to go One-Winged Angel, backstab me, reveal a plan of some sort, and then act as final boss. Somehow, it never happen. I'm still thinking about putting her in the Creepy Child trope however, but as I write those lines, I wonder if Mary Sue wouldn't be more appropriate.
  • I completely agree if not One-Winged Angel I expected SOME sort of Face–Heel Turn from her. she just had that sort of thing written all over her!. Also Toshiro bugs me he seems to serve no purpose other than Rule of Cool.
  • I have to add Sally mentions her parents are dead but her Sister is alive in stasis somewhere. Yet we never find her.
  • The point of Mothership Zeta is that Aliens have been here since the 1800s to collect as many human specimens since every single attempt to infiltrate Earth was a failure by the Aliens. After the Earth gotten nuked, it was one last collection period to see how many humans they can take back to their homeworld to be Human Popsicle exhibits as a sign of our brutish ineptitude.
  • The Giddyup Buttercup didn't kill those people. Those people killed each other. The toy drove them to butcher one another, though with what kind of influence I don't know. Fear? Lust? Greed? Inexpressible fury?

Morality of The Pitt DLC

• The entire Pitt campaign just left a bad taste in my mouth. I understand what they were going for; not every quest should have an obvious "good" solution and an obvious "evil" solution. However, I think they took it too far, and ultimately it was designed so that you ended up feeling like a bastard no matter what you did. Let heroes be heroes, damn it. That doesn't mean handing their good ending to them on a silver platter; by all means, make them work for it; but at least have the option be there. Why can't I convince Ashur that it's in everyone's best interests, including his own, for him to not treat the slaves like crap? Why can't I smack Werhner upside the head for manipulating me and treating a baby like an object? Why can't I be sympathetic when I'm explaining myself to Sandra rather than acting like a friggin' terrorist? There is a difference between "creating a morally ambiguous choice" and "creating a choice and only giving the player morally ambiguous options".
  • I think you sort of missed the point of the whole campaign - it should leave a bad taste in your mouth. All three Fallout games had far too many Obvious Good Solutions and Obvious Evil Solutions, and it was high time that either solution in the games actually made you hate yourself a little bit no matter what option you chose. According to Wordof God, the only reason the baby doesn't die in one of the endings was because they knew they'd catch hell for it.
  • Which is fine, but the issue was with the execution, not the concept. Creating a truly morally ambiguous choice is tough because there is almost always a "right" thing to do in any given situation, even if it's hard to find sometimes. In this case, it would have been persuading Ashur to ease up on the slaves to prevent a revolt. Aside from the horrible treatment they're receiving, they have every reason to continue working for him; security and regular meals are about the best anyone can hope for in the wasteland. That, and they'll be helping him develop a cure for their disease. It'd work nicely for everyone. But no. You can't even attempt to do that, not because it isn't feasible, but because the developers want you to hate yourself. So they only give you options that will make you hate yourself.
  • I think your naive implication that there is almost always a "right thing to do" in a situation is diametrically opposed to the facts that The Pitt is trying to show you. Your argument that Ashur can be persuaded to 'ease up' on the slaves wouldn't work: 'easing up' on the slaves mean less productivity and more escapees, further slowing down the rebuilding of the City and the development of a Cure. Don't forget, the slaves know where the Cure comes from, and still doesn't care.
  • I don't think that's the case. Sure, it's possible that easing up on the slaves will make them become lazy, but the boost in morale from effectively no longer being slaves could well counterbalance that, not to mention the increase in physical health from no longer being smacked around all the time. I also don't see why there'd be more escapees. Again, the whole reason they want to escape in the first place is the way they're being treated; otherwise, working a steady job in exchange for food, shelter, safety and a cure for your disease is a pretty sweet deal as far as the wasteland goes. Also, you know what'd really slow down productivity? A revolt that gets half the slavers killed and almost all of the slaves killed. Especially when backed by a very competent and very dangerous Wasteland wanderer who just stormed the Arena without breaking a sweat and to whom you just gave back all his super-advanced equipment.
  • What do you expect Ashur to do? Ask his overseers to be nice to the slaves? His overseers, who are a bunch of raiders, who have no respect for the lives and well-being of others, who have lived and worked in a place where violence is Inherent in the System for decades? He may be the undisputed leader of the Pitt, he may be charismatic, he may be strong, but he's still just one man. He can't monitor his men 24/7, he has to make sure that all operations of the Pitt, from steel production, hunting, scavenging, and defense are running smoothly, and then there's his family and ever-important daughter to take into account. And easing up on the slaves so soon after they just tried to stage a revolt? Out of the question. And even if things go in the way you would like them to, there's still a lot of dog shooting going on, as just about every single one of the slaves is someone who was forcibly yanked out of whatever place they were originally living in (it's implied some people from the Capital Wasteland get shipped to the Pitt) to live in this cesspool where most everyone comes down with TDC, one in five mutate into an inhuman Troglodyte, and the only way to get any sustenance is to effectively commit cannibalism. Ideal life, indeed.
  • I personally think siding with Ashur is ultimately the better option. Yes, he's a bit of a tyrant, but in the end he's a more or less decent guy trying to improve life in his city for his people and his family, and genuinely intends to use the cure when he's able to. Wernher, on the other hand, is a selfish Jerkass who is ultimately in it for himself and sees the cure as little more then a bargaining chip. Plus, siding with Wernher means you steal a baby and give her to someone who clearly won't take good care of her. Yeah, Ashur isn't the nicest guy, but he's miles ahead of Wernher.
  • Or you could side with Werhner, and at the end assume Ashur's dark throne as Lord of the Pitt, making Werhner your stooge. After all, you did singlehandedly ensure the success of the rebellion.
  • I think the best option is the one that's not available: destroy the mill, and remove every last reason anyone would want anything to do with the Pitt and let the place die out afterward. Instead, he'll just have to settle with siding with Wernher, and hope that under his weak leadership and lack of any sort of army, the whole place will eventually just collapse in on itself, with the mill becoming forgotten in the years to come.
  • How is destroying the mill or letting it become forgotten good for ANYONE? That's almost spitting in the face in the point of the series; the survival of humanity and them getting back on their feet (of course, how the player decides to do this is always up to them). Why sabotage that effort?
  • I was unhappy with both of the apparent choices. But there is a middle choice that I took. Not ideal, but it left me feeling better. You steal the baby. Talk to Sandra, tell her she won't shoot you with the baby. She agrees but says her snipers will take you down. This proves to be optimistic on her part. Don't harm her. She won't attack you without provocation though she draws her sidearm. Exit the building. Kill every raider in uptown. Kill every raider in the Mill. Talk to Midea. Express disappointment at kidnapping baby. Meet Wernher. Give him the baby. Go whoa dude, you didn't tell me there was a baby involved. Listen to him call you a pansy. Listen to second part of his plan. Object to loosing the trogs. Tell him you're going to go make up with Ashur. Pass speech check to convince him to leave without violence. Retrieve baby. Return baby. Listen to Sandra call you an asshole. Talk to Ashur. Listen to Ashur go wtf man, you killed all my dudes, and the slaves revolted, and you kidnapped my baby, but you know what? fuck it, we're still bros. Ask him to free the slaves. Listen to him say no, but will do in the future. THE END. I liked this because I had a hard time siding with slavers against slaves. But I also had a hard time killing the only scientist with a legitimate shot at finding the cure. So I thought it taught Ashur a valuable object lesson about the cost of oppression, leaving the slaves in a better bargaining position. Kind of Magna Carta meets Chinese Assault Rifle. And to RP it out, I can always come back in a couple years to make my point again if need be.
  • I want to know why, if I side with Wernher and the slave, there's no option to offer to get outside help. Instead it's "orphan a baby girl, leave her with slaves who will not care for her like her own parents did and who probably have less combined medical and biological knowledge then any one doctor in the Capital Wasteland, so the way to find a cure from the baby's natural immunity to mutation will probably be a long, arduous, possibly unreached goal." Why can't I tell the Brotherhood of Steel about the Pitt? They'd certainly want to help find a mutation cure, and they've got knowledgeable scribes who can help keep the process going, while at the same time, some Knights and Paladins can act as guards. I figure the least I can do for little Marie is give her a future where she won't grow up in a slowly dying city still desperately trying to rebuild using the one advanced tool they have (The Steelmill) before it becomes completely abandoned.
  • They have in the past — there's a paladin you can meet (forget his name) who tells you that he was essentially a kid saved from the Pitt by the Brotherhood years before — but It's pretty clearly established that the Brotherhood of Steel at present has too much on it's plate, between super-mutants, the return of the Enclave and the schism with the Outcasts. Even if they wanted to, they probably couldn't spare the resources at present.
  • It should be noted that Ashur was a former Initiate of the Brotherhood of Steel who was left behind, while the paladin (Kodiak) was one of the unmutated youths brought back from the same campaign, known as the Scourge. The entire point of the Scourge was to eradicate the mutated troggs (it didn't take), and then Elder Lyons abandoned it when he realized it was a fruitless effort. Hence, why Ashur doesn't care much for the Brotherhood's help even if they were available (the Enclave is implied to have been a non-issue at that time). By the time of Fallout 3, however, the Brotherhood is too entrenched in their fight with Super Mutants to be able to help out and most likely wouldn't be able to do much to help out the Pitt for either Wehrner or Ashur.
  • But that was before a radiation/mutation immune baby was born. No matter how the Brotherhood is faring, just that bit of information alone should be enough for them to at least send a scribe or two up north to check it out. Especially after Broken Steel, where the Enclave is dying a slow death, the Brotherhood is recovering all sorts of tech from their ruins, and new initiates are likely going to have more time to train and thus, not be redshirts.
  • Just eat the baby and let 'em all rot. Yep.
  • I don't get the mass confusion here. You have a choice between letting one (adorable baby) girl live happily with Mr. and Mrs. Overlord, or liberating hundreds, possibly thousands of slaves and saving hundreds of lives. Ashur is a man who puts slaves in a radioactive hole and make them duke it out for his amusement, and I took pleaure in reducing him to a fine red paste. Werhner's a mega-asshole, to be sure, and its clear that the baby will not be very happy, seeing the metal capsule-thing she was put in, but it's kind of hard to feel bad when you walk outside, see former slaves revel in their freedom, and being able to say "I did that." Like Abraham Lincoln.
  • You are only seeing one-half of the story. While you see the liberation of slaves, you do not see the hell that they are being freed into, as the Trogg disease once again begins to take over (as told in the background for the Pitt). Sandra and Ashur were capable of producing a cure, at the cost of the freedom of many slaves and the lives of a few of them, as it minimized bloodshed, risk, and put the whole of the Pitt on the track to redevelopment. It's also implied that Midea and Werhner are incapable of keeping the Pitt from tearing itself apart, let alone have the skill or equipment needed to replicate a proper cure for the Trogg disease, so it's much more likely that those thousands of people you free will end up dying or suffering a Fate Worse than Death. Midea says as much as you talk to her if you side with the Slaves after the main quest is over, and implies that Werhner's way is no better than Ashur's.
    Midea: I don't know how Ashur kept these people from tearing one another apart.
  • They aren't being prevented from leaving, unless Werhner has a deathwish, and Midea seems to have some idea of what she's doing, seeing the metal pod thing that the baby was in. As for minimizing the bloodshed, the hole that you fought in were pretty bloody and seemed to be a somewhat-regular occurance.
  • Listen to her again, she doesn't really have a clue what she's doing. The metal crib is the same one Sandra had, but look around the room, and compare it to what Sandra was working with in her lab. Not much of a comparison. Sure, the former slaves could leave. It's either a radioactive city where they have shelter and food, even if it is just slop, plus a working steel mill with which they can build with, or they could go back to the Crapsack World of places like the Capital Wasteland, where they don't always have food or the resources to survive, and have to deal with super mutants and other monstrous creatures instead of trogs. But then, if they leave, they just carry the Troglodyte Degeneration Congagion with them. And while bloody, the Hole is voluntary, the Jerkass slavers do not force you or any of the others to fight each other to the death.
  • I thought she stole that metal crib from Sandra's lab, although your other points are valid. It shouldn't be too difficult to reclaim uptown (i.e turn the floodlights back on) and get that labratory in the Haven back. I assumed she simply just snuck into the lab and stole the crib and whatver else she may need. Megoton seems rather friendly, and if a eleven-year-old malnourished boy can get from Greyditch to Rivet City, it probably wouldn't be too hard for the slaves to get to a settlement, provided they aren't part of that 20%
  • That's the unfortunate part that also makes it a Headscratcher - we can assume most anything we want, but without evidence, it's just guesswork. Maybe Midea took Sandra's lab equipment, maybe she didn't. We're just going on what we have evidence for, and that's Midea and Werhner trying to lead the slaves from the old Slave quarters, rather than more well-defended and stocked Slavers' area, which is not secured. Those other things have their own set of issues. For instance, Bryan Wilks isn't just some random malnourished kid, he's the nephew of Rivet City's innkeeper, and as blood relations to someone established in that community, he may get a free pass. Megaton is trying to minimize the number of settlers who come in - they have a rather large empty house that's not in use at all, for instance, and is then only given to the Lone Wanderer as a reward, as opposed to say, opening it up and using it as a second common house.
  • I was thinking more along the lines of that only 20% of the population was infected, and that was from mostly prolonged exposure to the Pitt radiation. If they simply escaped the Pitt and hacked en existence in the Wastleland, not too hard considering everyone there are at least somewhat competent with the Auto Axe, and the wastelend is at hospitable enough to NPCs so that Bryan could walk from Greyditch to Rivet City. In fact, staying in the Pitt would be the worst thing they could do since it is revealed that the reason the babies born there all have a hundred percent Trog rate (except one) is because they were statying in the Pitt
  • Everyone in the Pitt is infected, but only 20% will turn into mutated Troggs. For many of them, the Pitt is their home and their chance at life. For everyone else, it's possible they may recover if they leave, but again, the Wasteland is not a hospitable place (even if Fallout 3 fails at making that clear - see the last entry on this page). It's why it's the Wasteland and why people keep trying to move into Rivet City and those other places. Bryan Wilks makes it to Rivet City on his own because children are invulnerablel in Fallout 3. Adults who try to trek across the wasteland have to fend for themselves or try to get help - as Sticky and Cherry demonstrate when you escort them across the wastes.
  • Hey, is there any particular reason why Ashur needs to be in charge while working on the cure? Wouldn't he get a lot more work done in an isolated underground lab with an explosive collar around his neck while the former slaves hold a Constitutional Convention over the still-cooling body of Werhner?
  • What bugged me was the absence of an option to use the outcomes of certain other quests to create a better ending. For good-Karma types: "I happen to be well-acquainted with the brilliant biologist Dr. Li, who's been looking for a challenge ever since she spearheaded the effort to de-radiate the entire Potomac watershed's water. She's got far better facilities for replicating your daughter's immunity, plus Rivet City would be a lot nicer place for her to grow up than this festering tumor of a city. No offense." For evil-Karma types: "Why use these mutation-prone slaves? Kill them off or promote them to overseers in place of these psycho raider-types. I know a Dr. Zimmer up in the Commonwealth who can supply you with androids. Less than one in a thousand even understand the concept of running away, and all of 'em are immune to trog-transformation."

The morality of killing alien workers

• "Don't kill the Alien workers, they are harmless!". Except they are working on a space ship that's doing horrific genetic/mutating tests on humans and are you know... abducting people. Killing them gives you bad karma.
  • Agreed. They are aboard a hostile military vessel, they show every indication of being part of the normal crew(they wear uniforms) and they are actively trying to aid in your capture(setting off alarms) and they're not showing any indication of trying to surrender, hence they would be classified as active enemy combatant by the Geneva Conventions and you would be free to shoot at them as long as they don't try to surrender.
  • The Alien Captain wears black. The Alien Workers wear red. The Aliens with guns wear white. Otherwise, the uniform is identical. Just like on Star Trek or our own earth navies. The guide is a kid with a very basic idea of what is harmless and what isn't.
  • Personally, someone is bugged by the fact that killing unarmed people who can't fight back gives them bad karma. Is it so hard to grasp that shooting helpless people who can't fight back is wrong?
  • Well, if the game didn't register them as hostile (meaning you can't wait/rest in their vicinity until they're dead), then the alien workers wouldn't be a problem. This game generally makes it irritating when you're trying to fast travel or sleep in a bed to restore your health/limbs and some annoying creature is in a locked room nearby that you aren't able to access and are thus unable to blow their brains out. Especially when that enemy is actually one of the game's many indestructible children. In Oblivion, you could at least fast travel when enemies were nearby as long as they weren't actually attacking you, but here, the game makes all hostiles a nuisance just by existing.
  • Remember, some people like to play as an utter bastard. That doesn't mean they actually advocate killing unarmed, defenseless people IRL.
  • What really bugs me about this is that your penalized for killing the alien workers, but not the Encalve Scientists, despite the fact that they basically fulfill the same role (cowering and running away from the player hoping the guards will take care of you). Hell, the Enclave scientists even drop fingers which basically gives you positive karma
  • I remember in Brotherhood of Steel there was a scientist or two who actually tried to attack me on sight instead of running away.
  • I simply took the view that any alien who didn't need to be killed was one more I could come back for, pin against the wall and give a "I'm the new boss" speech to their faces. "Clean this place up, fix what's broken, and do what I say. Got that? Good." If you wanna run a captured alien spaceship, it's nice to leave alive at least some beings who know how the heck to keep it working.
  • There is a small girl on the ship. You found out not ten minutes ago what the do to their test subjects (hint: it has something to do with probes). The girl may be forgiving, but I had to kill every alien that moved to cure the emotional scarring.
  • Even worse is when you find the audio log of the small girl's sister...who among other things says "You're giving me a Giddyup Buttercup?"...after you've found a test chamber with an obviously-tampered-with Buttercup and several dead people. The implications drove me into a white-hot rage.

Ashur vs. Wernher

• Maybe I'm imagining it, but why is there this implicit assumption by many fans that Ashur is preferable to Wernher? Yes, the latter is a selfish asshole, but at least he won't be employing an army of some of the worst raider scum to kidnap innocent people and force them to work in conditions that could charitably be called Hell on Earth. Sure, Ashur says that he's going to eventually free the slaves once there's a cure, but that's a pipe dream at best and God only knows how many innocent people would be killed between now and then.
  • We've been through this discussion before earlier on this page. The options basically boil down to this:
  • Side with Ashur; revolt is put down, and slaves continue to live in oppression. But there is still the hope of a cure and the Pitt eventually becoming a thriving settlement.
  • Side with Wernher; Revolt succeeds, slaves are free. But you leave the Baby with people who are almost certainly going to mistreat it. And it's pretty much outright stated that Wernher sucks at his job as leader of the Pitt, and it's only a matter of time before it collapses upon itself, meaning the cure, the revolt, and each and every person who has died up till' this point has all been for nothing.
  • Overall, both the choices are morally ambiguous, but at least with Ashur we're given the faintest of hopes that in the end, all this would've really made a difference.
  • But here's another factor. The baby was being experimented on by her own parents. Even though they treat her with loving care, they're still going to be drawing blood out of her for most of her life for tests.
  • Better her parents, who genuinely care about their daughters health and well-being, than people who regard her as the means to extract the cure and nothing else.
  • What everyone forgets is that the slaves AREN'T free if you side with Wehrner. He says "oh, yeah, we're totally freeing them, it just takes time". Wehrner still pulls an Arbeit Macht Frei, except he clearly wants power, whereas Ashur seems to genuinely want to move beyond this and Make America Great. Two assholes, but one is nicer
  • Added to the fact that Wehrner only became concerned with freeing the slaves after his original coup failed. He's likely done some terrible things when part of the raiders. Running something as complex as The Pitt is difficult and you get the feeling that with Wehrner in charge it's only going to end up being a Full-Circle Revolution. Slavery is abhorrent, yes, but Wehrner's idea of freedom might not be the same idea that the slaves have. What did bother me is that when returning to Midea after siding with Ashur, I couldn't learn the location of Wehrner without threatening Midea's life.
  • Regarding the baby. Midea made it explicitly clear that she aimed to treat Marie like her own daughter. Wehrner may be an unrepentant asshole, but he's not the one in charge of Marie's upbringing. On top of that, it's made clear that the experiments are working, even if they are a bit slower than when Ashur was conducting them. Honestly, aside from wanting to bitch-slap Wehrner a bit in the end, I thought the choice was pretty abundantly clear.
  • On top of all that, Ashur's just more affable than Wehrner. And, just like in reality, people sometimes pick the evil yet charismatic guy over the well-intentioned but overly abrasive one.

Lasering Ontario

• Okay, in the Mothership Zeta DLC, you're able to use the Death Ray to shoot a beam straight to Earth. According to Word of God, you'd be shooting straight at Ontario, Canada. Sheesh, first Canada is annexed by the US in the backstory, and we get to ZAP A CITY, potentially killing thousands! Why are we not gifted with a low karma rating? Was this a Take That! by the Devs? (Like they had a bad experience in Ontario, so they let the player destroy it.)
  • A few things: a) it was nuked 200 years ago, so I doubt it's very populous there. b) ground zero was closer to Algonquin Provincial Park, which was never that populous to begin with. c) it had to hit somewhere, and Canada seemed convenient. d) something of that devastation and consequence to occur in such an offhand and unremarked on fashion, I refuse to believe it.
  • For all we know, Ontario was a trog-ridden, super mutant behemoth breeding ground. Maybe frying it saved lives.
  • Or it may have spent 200 years reviving itself - struggling against all odds - aspiring! Building a thriving, peaceful community where democracy and culture were slowly flickering back to life after their near-extinction. Where men, women, ghouls, wendigos all lived in amity and worked together to heal the broken Earth. We'll never know now, will we, Mr. 'I Pushes De Button'?!
  • Considering how most of Canada was frozen wilderness to begin with, I think a utopia is the complete opposite I'd expect Ontario to be after the Great War. It's probably all frozen, radioactive wastelands with only a few people (and some very dangerous mutated creatures, I'd wager) living anywhere in that particular area. The only post-war Canadian settlement we ever learn about is Ronto, and that was only mentioned once in The Pitt.
  • Bad karma in FO 3 is awarded for deliberately doing something bad. The LW is fiddling with alien technology while in the process of a prison break. Firing the superlaser could easily be an honest accident, if one heck of an "oops" moment.
  • See Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds for this sort of hilarity.

The Pitt

• Was anybody else bugged by the fact there was only two options for The Pitt DLC? Now, I know the devs can't think of absolutely every option to put in, but two seemed to be common sense options: why was I not able to listen to Ashur's side of the story, leave without the baby, go to Midea, get the info on Werhner's location, talk to Werhner, and hear his whole plan, and then decide? Or maybe see if you can get Ashur and Werhner to work together? I didn't like that your only options were to kidnap a baby from a scientist's lab where they're working toward a cure, haul it through dangerous environments to an even more dangerous environment to people with no medical or scientific experience, and then leave the one hope of a cure in their hands, or, to ignore the baby, and head over to Midea, convince her/kill her to get Werhner's location, and then kill Werhner. Having that extra option of being able to learn each side's whole plan would have been nice.
  • If I'd figured out that the 'free the slaves' quest would eventually entail kidnapping an infant, I'd have just left the Pitt after getting my gear and freedom back. The whole thing ended up being a chilling refresher that even the best intentions can have very unexpected consequences, and even 'just' causes have a dark side. Quite honestly, in any future playthroughs of FO3, I will probably just leave that DLC disabled.
  • I was also pissed about that. I wanted to save the slaves (otherwise my planned massacre of Paradise Falls' slavers would be pretty hypocritical), but couldn't bring myself to kidnap a baby that was going to be used for the same purpose (by more skilled people who also happen to be her loving parents) anyway. So I ended up pissing off the slaves. Then, when 6 of them decide to corner me with steel axes, I find out that killing them while they're eviscerating me reduces my karma (however, standing over that irradiated caged hole in the mill and luring them to attack you allows you to deal with that problem with no karma loss). I finally decided that if being a good guy got me into this mess being an evil prick would get me out, and started blasting. After it was all done, I went back to Midea to see what she had to say, realized she's a bitch, and liquified her with my Plasma Rifle (her complaining basically amounted to saying I should've kidnapped the baby for "the greater good", and people trying to justify bad things that way is one of my Berserk Buttons). I know it was supposed to be Grey-and-Grey Morality with no clear right answer (help the well-meaning slave boss or the psychopathic freedom fighter), but, if nothing else, at least let me kill the assholes trying to remove my intestines without being considered a bad guy.

The Astronaut Suit in Mothership Zeta

• Has anybody else noticed that the Astronaut Suit in Mothership Zeta appears to have fingerless gloves?
  • That'd be the Pip-Boy glove. It doesn't address the problem of an unsealed spacesuit, but it's not the fault of the suit itself.
  • There are mods available to make the pip boy into a hand-held device so that it doesnt automatically remove the gloves of your player's left hand anymore. It's just a technical problem in the game mechanics.

Aqua Cura

• Here's a little thing that bugs me: why is it so bad of Griffon to sell irradiated water to his fellow Ghouls as medicine. Are the Ghouls not healed by rads?
  • Listen to his speeches about what Aqua Cura can do for five minutes. Seriously. Pure snake oil salesman material, just ghoul-specific. Simple healing is one thing; he was making absolutely outrageous claims to the crowd. Sham cure-alls are a dirty trick in normal times, much less after a nuclear apocalypse, when everyday life is not unlike a powered-armor-boot in the backside. That's just plain cruelty in the name of making a buck.
  • First part of that is that it's just plain lying that the stuff is Aqua Cura, rather than the dirty old water he actually was hocking. Some folks don't take kindly to being lied to. Second, Ghouls are healed by rads, but at the same time, more rads push them closer and closer to becoming Feral ghouls. Look no further than the clinic at the back of Underworld, the doctor there says as much. More exposure to radiation means pushing that ghoul closer to feral status.
  • Seeing how Ghouls over in the West Cost mainly live in a place called Glowtown and you meet a very nice Glowing One in Vegas I don't thinkj rads make them feral. But yeah I don't think they would enjoy paying for something they can just get anywhere.
  • Mind you, "ferocious post-necrotic dystrophy" is more Fallout 3 just screwing up with the rest of the games' lore. It's only really with Fallout 3 that Feral Ghouls are created through "excess radiation".
  • And Broken Steel, featuring the Aqua Cura, is Fallout 3 DLC. In other words it's in Fallout 3's universe, where it can be assumed that what's stated in 3 supersedes what was established in prior games. So... Yeah. For all we know it could be a regional quirk, some differing mutation along the lines of 3's Super Mutants have different origins from their predecessors.
  • Or a simple error on the part of the doctor. He has a lot of experience repairing battle wounds and such, but that doesn't make him a radiologist (and since all the pre-War medical texts assume massive radiation is invariably lethal, he's not likely to have sources that tell him better.)
  • He's clearly guessing a little. It's also mentioned that social isolation produces ferals and Jason Bright is a non-feral glowing one (you also meet a non-hostile glowing one in 3), so it's not as simple as radiation = feral. There is some evidence it contributes however, so still not a good idea.

Pitt is actually Black And White Morality

• I actually don't think that the Pitt campaign was Grey-and-Gray Morality because they didn't go too far. Now if it was either kill the girl and help slaves or don't and side with slavers, then it would be. But nope, the girl will be just fine, Medea won't put her into harm's way. The girl didn't know her parents, so she won't suffer.
  • This was covered above, but neither Wernher or Midea care for the child. It's been made pretty clear that Midea would look after the child poorly, as she's rather busy herself, on top of taking care of the child of her former tormentors. It's not in a nurturing way that the baby's real mother would. Midea calls her a little brat and asks you to get toys to get her so she can work on the cure. Remember, to Midea, Marie is just a means to an end after so much suffering, and the child of the people who have abused her and her people for years.
  • You're reading an awful lot into what amounts to about three lines of vague dialogue. Sandra, Marie's mother, isn't even a nice person or particularly nurturing towards Marie when she isn't hostile towards you. She gets a whole new brand of crazy if you do cause her to become hostile. Ashur is the only one that ever shows any actual concern towards Marie beyond using her as a cure. This is the only instance Ashur ever really shows a non-evil, self indulgent side to himself.
  • You may have missed a minor difference in Sandra's reactions based on your actions. Your first encounter with Sandra and Marie decides how Sandra reacts to you from then on. If you pick up Marie and get Sandra pissed off at you, she will remain angry with you even if you decide to return the child and side with Ashur. Sandra will never trust you ever again, basically. If you don't pick up Marie during this first encounter and simply turn around and head off to betray Wehrner, Sandra will remain quite friendly and supportive of the Lone Wanderer after the events of the Pitt's story, showing that she dotes on little Marie when you bring her toys.
  • Not threatening to evicerate you is not the same thing as being friendly and supportive. She never actually dotes on Marie beyond offering the exact same quest and performing almost line for line the same as Midea. Ashur does show an actual parental interest towards Marie when questioned, further reinforced if you listen to the messages he leaves for her. Sandra talks about Ashur and the cure.
  • Again, Sandra is a Mama Bear when it comes to Marie. If you think she's cold to you, remember she's surrounded by nothing but raiders and slavers who she would prefer to keep at arm's length from her child. You don't exactly see any of the other slavers even remotely close to Sandra's lab or stopping by to play with Marie, do you? - no, they're down the hall, guarding Ashur and Sandra's quarters and office. The fact that the Lone Wanderer is allowed as close as he is really says something. Sandra at least gives the Lone Wanderer the benefit of the doubt at first, and if that initial trust is broken, bam, she turns on you and goes into full Mama Bear mode. She's overprotective of her little one, not simply because she's the possibility for a cure, but that she's actually a living child in the god-forsaken hellhole that is the Pitt. As far as she's concerned, the Lone Wanderer might be as big a monster as the other slavers that Ashur employs. She says so herself, the situation isn't ideal, but at least Marie is safe, where Sandra can do her research without worrying about Marie's health and safety.
    Sandra: Ashur and I would never risk her health, and if that means it takes longer to develop a full cure... well, then everyone else can wait.
  • Please remember that Ashur and Sandra didn't go into their relationship with the intent of creating a child who would become a cure. Marie is more or less what they describe as a "happy accident". Sandra genuinely loves Ashur and is there in the Pitt to help, they had a child in spite of the issues of those stricken with TCD, such as mutation or infertility. She genuinely cares for Marie, even if she doesn't show it directly in front of the Lone Wanderer. If you don't think so, what does Sandra have to gain out of being a cold, merciless bitch about a cure for a city she probably doesn't come from or care about? Notice that Sandra doesn't display any of the deformations everyone else in the Pitt possesses, so no, she's probably not from the Pitt. She came to help. She doesn't have to live inside the city limits to do her research, but there she and her child are safe. If she weren't in place she wanted to be, what does she stand to gain? She loves Ashur, for all of his flaws and contradictions. Her actions and dialogue don't suggest the cold, heartless monster that you describe. She never talks about being "Queen" of the Pitt or anything like that. She just talks about Ashur, Marie, and her research.
  • That said, that's part of why the Pitt is Grey-and-Gray Morality and not Black and White. On one hand, you've got Sandra who is a genuinely loving and caring mother, whose only real problem it that she tolerates the wide variety of abuse going on around her for the sake of raising her child and finding a cure. That does not make her a bad person. On the other, you have Midea, who is sympathetic in her plight, but she's not a good mother figure, nor does her limited resources or attitude make her the right person to be researching a cure on a child she does not care for. She's not a bad person either.
  • Of course, this is all pretty subjective. I feel rather justified in saying anyone involved in continuing a slave-owning culture, passively or otherwise, is a bad person.
  • That's assuming that slavery is inherently such an evil and reprehensible thing that anyone who even lives with a slaver without actively trying to free the slaves is bad, and that nothing good can ever come from slavery no matter what. As Ashur explains, the whole reason for the slavery in the first place is to try and turn the Pitt into a new industrial power and become a center for industry in the post-apocalyptic world, with the hopes that the slaves can be freed when their work is done. The reason it's Grey-and-Gray Morality is because there IS no 100% evil or 100% good faction: the slaver wants to use his slaves to improve society and plans to free them when he can, while Wernher has no love for the slaves he claims to be helping and only wants to overthrow Ashur in revenge and Midea admits to having little to no knowledge of how to actually control the former slaves and sees the baby as nothing more than a tool for her goal. Both sides have a noble goal, with one engaging in what could be classified as "evil" behavior to complete it and the other being cold toward those they claim to represent and having no idea how to actually run things without the slave driver. Both sides want to cure the disease that plagues the Pitt, with one side having true love for the child (namely because it's their own daughter) while the other views the infant as a means to an end.

What happened to all the Alaskan Oil?

• The purpose of reclaiming Anchorage Alaska from the Chinese was to make sure that one of the last locations on Earth where oil could be found was still in American hands and to of course prevent the invasion from moving any farther. As proven by the Anchorage VR Simulation and historical data logs found in the Fallout series the American Army succeeded and drove the Chinese out of Alaska. During Fallout 2 the Enclave claim their oil rig off the coast of California is the last source of oil on Earth. How is that possible if the oil from Alaska is still there untouched by either the pre-war Chinese or pre-war Americans? Has no one honestly gone to Alaska to attain what is a treasure trove of energy left over from the pre-war era?
  • There's no guarantee that Alaska had much oil left after the Anchorage Reclamation. China could very well have dried up the oil and held onto it for further study before being driven back. We simply don't know what had happened. If we're to believe Fallout 3, anyway, many uses of oil have disappeared and been replaced with nuclear power.
  • When playing Operation: Anchorage, one should remember that there are many hints (and even some outright statements) throughout the game that General Chase manipulated the simulation to support his own thoughts on the war. That said, as the person above me states: there's no guarantee that there's any oil left, or even that the oil fields were untouched by the bombing. Even if there was, who's going to go get it? The state of Canada is unknown (outside of possibly vaporizing Ontario in Mothership Zeta), so the only government we know that's closest to Alaska is the NCR. They haven't even expanded fully into Oregon, let alone trek into Canada. It'll be a long, very painful adventure through an unknown wasteland that was already mostly frozen and empty except for wild animals before the war. For all we know, it could be MORE frozen wasteland that's filled with even WORSE wild animals due to the radiation.

Companions Not Coming With You

• (Disclaimer: I'm a newbie to the Fallout Series) It makes sense in Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, with the former having the Outcasts only wanting the Lone Wanderer since (s)he's the one with the PipBoy, and the latter since only two (You and Wehner) can go. I never learned why they couldn't come with you in Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.
  • There's also the issue Operation Anchorage much like Tranquility Lane only has one lounger. Your companion would have to sit in the waiting room. Without mods you don't really have anyone the Outcasts would want to have coffee with while you dick around in the machine. You're a Slave in the Pitt. But for Point Lookout our friendly ferryman wants to take one customer at a time. At the end of the DLC you find out just why. If you had a companion things would be different. As for Mothership Zeta. The Transport Beam can only beam up one person at a time?
  • Because the swamp-folk would discover to their horror that Fawkes is even more overpowered than they are.

Why did Ashur need slaves, anyway?

• Ashur seemed to have two main goals in the Pitt: 1) Create a cure for all mutations caused by radiation and 2) To rebuild the city as a beacon of hope and technology. What I don't understand is how Ashur felt justified in ordering the abduction and enslavement of thousands of people long before there was a cure ready. I may have missed something, but it didn't appear that he had even tried to create a cure before beginning his regime. If he had created a cure, people would have flocked to him, and the city would be able to grow without forced labor, as the people born there would no longer die or be reduced to trogs before being able to have children of their own.
  • He didn't know a cure was even possible until long after his regime began. The objective was always the steel mill, and since the Pitt is such a shithole that nobody would live there willingly he had to use slave labour. The possibility of a cure to trog disease was an unexpected bonus.

Why travel to Point Lookout takes a month?

I mean, in real life it's not that far.