Fallout 3: The Pitt review

This Article Was Originally Published on March 27.

In the‚ beginning, Bethesda Softworks took gamers on an exciting adventure through the Nuclear Wastelands of Washington DC in Fallout 3. ‚ Next, Bethesda took patrons back in time to witness the liberation of Alaska from Chinese Communists in the Fallout 3 downloadable content pack Operation: Anchorage.

Now, the company that brought you these two exciting bits of content is now taking you‚ on an adventure in…

Pittsburgh?

Yes, Pittsburgh. ‚ Though it seems like an odd idea, The Pitt seemed to have the potential to be the most interesting and entertaining DLC for Fallout 3. ‚ The only question was: would it reach that potential?

The Pitt puts the Lone Wanderer in the middle of a skirmish between the large network of Slavers and their large slave population. ‚ From there, players are posed with morally ambiguous decisions while encountering numerous new characters, weapons (including the hyped AutoAxe) and enemies.

After downloading The Pitt, players will shortly find a message pop up in their HUD stating that there is a distress call being broadcasted on the radio. ‚ Soon after reading this message, a quest will be added as well as a marker designating the location where the message is being broadcasted.

At the broadcast station, you find a man named Werhner who has been ambushed by Slavers. Once you help him, he explains the message he broadcasted across the Wasteland’s airwaves. In short, Werhner says that he needs your assistance to help free the slaves (or “workers” as the leaders of The Pitt would say) and to remove the evil monarchy running what’s left of the war torn city.

The first step in the plan, as Werhner explains, is to, not surprisingly, enter The Pitt. To do this, you must look like a slave. This means that you must wear slave clothes. You also cannot have any of your weapons, armor or anything of value on you when you try and get into The Pitt. If you do try and smuggle your items into The Pitt, a less-than-charming Slaver name Mex takes all of your items (which you will eventually be able to recover later in the quest).

Once you actually get into The Pitt, you are told to meet with a slave named Midea. Midea, who is noticeably cleaner and more polite than many of the other NPC you will encounter in The Pitt, plays the role of a sort of leader and representative of the slaves. Once you tell her that you are the one who is helping Werhner, she tells you to work in the Steelyard. There, she explains, you will be able to blend in with the other slaves while also staying out of sight of the Slavers. However, she fails to tell you (well, initially anyway) that working in the Steelyard is actually the most dangerous job in The Pitt, putting the Lone Wanderer in the middle of a breeding ground of the Trogs, a demented once-human‚ life-form‚ looking to attack you at any moment.

From there, you slowly work your way up the slave/Slaver food chain, gaining more power and access around The Pitt as you go. How you use this power, however, is entirely up to you.

The Pitt is brilliant in it’s writing and the morally grey choices that it presents (including taking a page out of‚ Amalia Tabata’s book giving players a choice to kidnap a child). The DLC, unlike many that I’ve encountered in the past, did not seem forced into the overall storyline nor did it seem like it was made just for Bethesda to get some extra revenue. ‚ The attention to detail with the character models was superb. ‚ The slaves looked convincingly affected by the harsh working conditions and heavy radiation. ‚ The dialogue was also excellent.

In short, the Pitt had purpose and was fun at the same time. However, The Pitt had its shortcomings as well.

The first release of The Pitt, as you might have heard, was a bit of a disaster. Customers of version 1.0 reported terrible glitches and lagging within the game. Also, some users even had their entire saved game file corrupted, causing some completely lose upwards of 40 hours of work.

I, luckily, waited until Bethesda (who, to their credit, quickly took off and replaced the bad version) posted a new and improved version of The Pitt on Xbox Live. But, when I downloaded the DLC, I was still disappointed with how The Pitt ran.

The game was virtually glitch-free after the update. ‚ I was very satisfied with how well Bethesda cleaned up The Pitt in a relatively short time. ‚ Sure, it would have been nice if it worked correctly the first time, but I’d take a delayed-but-working game over a never-going-to-be-fixed glitchfest‚ any day.

However, beyond the quality of the game’s programming, some of the quests within The Pitt were flawed. Within The Pitt’s main quest, players will find themselves running back and forth between areas that were quite distant from each other to have very short conversations with other characters.

The Pitt, though flawed, still makes for a decent DLC. I’d say that this DLC beats Operation: Anchorage hands down. ‚ The Pitt will last for as many hours as it’s users want it to. With the decent number of side missions and moderately complex main quest, this DLC will last you somewhere between 3-8 hours. If you’ve got an Xbox 360, a copy of Fallout 3 and a spare $9.99, The Pitt will be a worthy investment.