Fallout 3 is the defintiive open world game without a car. I remember seeing trailers and E3 for it back in 2006 and thinking how interesting the concept was and how there was nothing like it at the time a huge open world FPS with rpg elements wasnt that common back then
I've been playing Fallout 3 on and off ever since 2008, i'm not sure if I finished it back then, I think i did, but I mostly just wandered around and got immersed in the atmosphere
And years later in 2021, I got the GOTY version on steam and installed it again and what did I find? did the memory hold up?
Well, easily clocking in 35 hours of game time in only 2 weeks i can easily say its just as immersive now as it was back then. I can easily find myself starting the game up, only to look at the clock and suddenly 8 hours of passed where I just roam around discovering all the locations and exploring.
I approached my playthrough this time in a different way. I ignored the main quest, and instead tried to find as many locations and fully clear them as possible. on your compass you have these little blank triangles, that means its a location you haven't been to before. I would just walk around finding all of these for hours on end, simply because the atmosphere and enviormental story telling is so entertaining.
This game actulaly does a better job telling stories via the enviorment than it does by its characters. Every location you come across has dozens and dozens of manually placed objects to look at / loot and all of them are put there intellectually to allow the player to get a clue of the history of the location and piece together what could have happened there. you sort of feel like a detective piecing together all the items to figure out what kind of 'crime scene' a given location is, anything from teddy bears, baby carriages, liquor bottles all over the place, drugs, 'strange meat' in some basement fridge (cannibalism), random shacks with skeletons and beds in them, finding crazed notes of people who go insane from isolation or audio logs from a mans descent into loneliness and madness , then eventually coming across him far down in some deep eerie cave worshipping some creepy altar in total insanity surrounded by ghouls. really atmospheric and easy to get lost in. Thats the biggest strength of the game.
You find yourself in so many different situations where you can make a choices where it starts to get meta-ethical and forces you to question the nature of morality / right and wrong. is it OK to be a cannibal in a nuclear wasteland for survival? should you kill them for being that way? should you poison the water supply to prevent further mutations to preserve 'pure humanity' or allow it to progress? should you disarm a nuke in megaton or allow it to explode? should you just kill everyone you come across, as theres no longer any authority and might makes right? when returning to your vault 101, should you allow them to escape or keep them locked inside boring monotonous safety forever? there is a town called 'republic of dave' where they have a phony 'democracy' where there is only one person that runs for president. should you help other candidates enter and win the election or keep up the charade?
like coming across a slave camp and getting a quest to put slave collars rigged with a bomb on people and force them into slavery, only to then find that they also enslave children, then getting another quest to either free the children or further get into the slave trade and get into child slavery...wtf? how did they get away with shit like this? The game is so bleak and mature that it helps fend off the feeling that youre just playing 'a stupid video game', because a lot of the themes are so dark and depressing it feels like entering another world - but then on the flip side you have this overly cheery 1950s optimism looming around the wasteland and it feels like a sort of 'cope' with how grim and hopeless this nuclear reality is for them. so its things like this that help balance out the negative with some humorous positive. and it all comes together in some unique and interesting world that you cant help but want to explore more of. Theres an achievement for finding 100 locations and that was first and foremost one of my main goals to unlock.
the graphics still hold up and the draw distance can cast some amazing scenes of total destruction and armageddon in contrast and juxtaposition to actually pretty locations as well.
besides finding all the locations I also made sure to do All side quests and try to get most achievements. theres a side quest to collect 30 rare bottles of soda that was really fun because it further gave reason for me to explore randomly to come across these glowing rare bottles, I actually found them all naturally without having to look any up it felt awesome.
I would actually say the side quests are better than the main quest.
The RPG mechanics are interesting, the perks are really fun and can change the game drastically, you can plan for the future what perks you will get and you can make a good variety of different character builds, but it seems like there will always be a best build (probably Small guns)
I found lockpicking to be a lot more useful than hacking, and the hacking minigame sucks and isnt fun to do and I found that hacking isnt that useful but lock picking is.
I found lockpicking to be a lot more useful than hacking, and the hacking minigame sucks and isnt fun to do and I found that hacking isnt that useful but lock picking is.
The item condition mechanic is engaging and a good way to keep you on your toes looking for guns to repair your own with and it adds a bit of depth to al the inventory looting. I really enjoyed trying to find as many guns / unique variants as possible and finding all the different stats they do and trying to collect as many unique armors as i can , even just to store them at my house. you can go into third person and see how your character looks so its entertaining to sometimes dress him in cool clothes.
If I had complaints it would be
- The difficulty. on default 'normal' mode the game is fking PISS easy. I never once struggled or had any challenge or anything of that sort. About quarter way through the game I just stopped wearing armor all together and ran around naked simply because you run way faster and i barely took any damage anyway. I always had thousands of bullets, hundreds of health items, hundreds of buffs etc. Nowhere in the entire game did I face any challenge. The entire main quest is brainlessly easy as well as all of the side quests. There is one random optional area in the game called deathcalw sanctuary and 'ole olney' which are just deathclaw infested locations and these were the most challenging in the game, but still pretty trivial when I have so many resources and can just quick save / quick load. ACtually the only time I had to quick load is when my companion dies , as I dont think ive ever died a single time in the entire game.
This makes me want to eventually do another playthrough on 'Very Hard' difficulty, but I read it just makes everything tedious and just makes the fights take longer, not actually more challenging.
- The main questline is kind of weak. The actual story is pretty cool about a son leaving the safety of his vault to find his father to purify the water source for humanity something like that. I dont mind the story, but the actual main quests themselves are pretty tame and boring.
This is where the lack of difficulty really hurts the game.
Many of the main quessts barely have that much combat instead you have NPC fighting along side you and you dont even need to do anything half the time, just follow people. That, or you walk to some location and fight 5-10 monsters find an object and return.
A lot of the main quest revolves around fighting Super mutants over and over, at a certain point i just started to run past them all because I was already max level and they were just filler. And then the other half of the main quest are just areas where you walk around talking to NPC's without any combat or challenge (tranquliity lane, last few quests, etc..)
The last 2 or 3 quests are actual bullshit you dont even do anything you just talk/follow a few NPC , watch them kill all the enemies, then the game ends. lol.
The main story doesnt really have that many memorable areas either, instead I found the side quests is where ALL of the memorable areas in this game come from.
Almost every single side quest is entertaining and memorable. Theres an eerie cannibal quest where this seemingly nice town of optimistic people, but upon further exploration you find out they have human corpses in their basement and they are cannibals, so youre faced with morality choices what to do.
Another quest 'Oasis' is really unique about a cult of people who worship a mutanted human-tree in a really remote location of the map that is actually full of trees and forest, something not seen in the wasteland. This quest is really hard to find and I bet most people didnt even find it because its so remote.
Another quest has a tower full of prestegious elitist humans who hate ghouls (just humans that are victims of radiation exposure from the bombs) and they dont want to allow any ghouls into their hotel tower (a sort of social commentary on racism or something) and you can choose to let the ghouls take over the tower and kill them all, or convince the ghouls to stay out, or side with the humans etc.
things like that I found really entertaining a lot more than the main quest and i'm glad I did all the side quests. I had to look up the location of a few of them, but I found 90% of them naturally via exploration.
The gunplay and controls are unmistakeable as a bethesda game. the meme is true 'oblivion with guns' but it obviously is a bit more than that. you have your inventory (pip boy) and VATS which need no explaination at this point. I found myslf barely using VATS but instead opening my inventory a lot to switch guns or give myself buffs and things like that, because once again there wasnt much challenge.
You can bind items to a hotkey so i just bound the medkit and I had so many that I could just chug medkits anytime I took damage . Its not hard to make money and buy all the medkits you see so i did that as well.
Another big thing that makes the game interesting is the random encounters you get just by roaming the wasteland. there are countless interesting sights and sounds to find and weird situations you find yourself in. Theres a crazy preaching guy in an alleyway who put bombs all around him and he just sits there all day preaching about madness, you can tell a wastelander to run in and watch them all explode. Theres an NPC called 'Drifter' who sits up in an impossible to reach location with a sniper rifle just watching over his turf, if you manage to loot his body somehow he has a unique rifle and a note about 'oasis' .. things like that are all over the place that really make exploration fresh and exciting. Pretty much every item in the game can be picked up and put in your inventory so it becomes really interesting looking at everything in the enviorment and seeing if its something worth grabbing.
At the end of the day all I know is that I can easily sit down and play fallout 3 for hours on end without even realizing, i cant say that about many games. its weaknesses (lack difficulty and main quests) can be forgiven because the immersion and worldbuilding / enviormental story telling are so interesting, as well as the combat is pretty entertaining and feels fun even if its not challenging, the gore is viseral and there is a decent variety of enemies and NPC's, items to find.
By the way, despite popular belief , you can actually STILL get achievements on PC through Games for windows live (GFWL) via an online account, or even via your xbox live account. all you need to do is use any other GFWL game CD key and it will work. I found a lot of enjoyment through trying to get all the achievements, and even just seeing/hearing the notification pop as I finished quests or triggered them.
Going to finish all the DLC now.
8/10
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Broken Steel DLC
This DLC is 3 main missions long with 3 optional side missions
If you dont have this DLC activated, then the game ends and you cant play past the ending or explore more. If you activate this DLC, you wakeup in a room and continue the storyline with the brotherhood of steel, so naturally it happens that you would play through this DLC First.
So out of the 3 main missions, two of them are pretty forgettable. The first one you follow the huge robot that kills everything for you, then it breaks down and you go inside a building, kill some enemies and thats it. Pretty weak.
The second mission, you explore an undergroudn metro station full of really strong ghouls. By really strong i mean REALLY strong. The game FINALLY has some challenge, but its kind of bullshit challenge. These ghouls mechanics are realy uncertain and they seem glitchy but its not. They spin out of control with a 500x speed animation that just looks broken, and sometimes they become invincible to damage (?) and theyre basically just bullet sponges. I was glad to finally see some challenge, but these guys were almost more annoying to deal with than anything. After you do that its pretty much over, theres some interesting items you can collect about lore and things like that but the actual metro location of the quest isnt anything amazing.
Then the third mission is where everything happens. It turns into some rediculous macho army man shooter where you single handedly infilltrate the enclave army / air base and kill hundreds of their soldiers. At first you go through a really cool hard location 'ole olney' but i had already mostly cleared it, u go through the sewers, find some ghouls that were hiding out thats a cool interaction. then you eventually wind up inside the military air base and fight your way past dozens of turrets and dozens of guys with rocket launchers
then you arrive into their huge mobile ship headquarters where its room after room of heavily armored soldiers, im talking like 100-200 guys. this is pretty fun but it turns into a mindless romp of gunning down guy after guy. theres some cool interactions like releasing the death claws on them, or looting all the different items and exploring the ship but ultimately the gunplay isnt really suitable for this many enemies on screen at once.
then you get to the end where you can decide to blow up the ship or blow up The brotherHood of steel which I thought was a really cool choice. IF U blow up the brotherhood of steel u can get a really good magnum reward, but u miss out on 3 side quests so i didnt do that.
AFter that the DLC techincally ends quietly, theres no ending or anything. Theres 3 side quests that involve the water supply and its mostly just involves really forgettable stuff like going to X and talking to X about water. One of them you go to a cult like church, go inside, talk to someone, Quest over. another one you kill 4 bandits, get in a knife fight with a bandit leader (kinda fun) then its over. The last one is a comical 'snake oil salesmen' type guy peddling his water to the locals, and you findout where hes getting it from, return to him and do some speech options - quest over.
I thiought the DLC was about a 7/10 . i liked that it had more challenge and that over the top action packed last mission was atleast a funny change of pace.
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Operation Anchorage DLC
This DLC starts when you investigate an outcast brotherhood group that need you to go inside a simulation chamber to achieve something for them. The simulation you then enter is of a winter battleground landscape of chinese army VS american army.
The way this DLC is setup is in such a way that the mechanics are completely different to base game. It operates more like a modern FPS game and it kind of strips away the RPG focus for example:
- It takes away all your items at start and forces you to use specific items and limited ammo. You can no longer loot ANYTHING and instead it operates on a kind of 'checkpoint' system where the only way to get health or ammo is at the next station, normally if the entire base game was like this it wouldnt be very interesting, but as a side DLC to change up the mechanics this is very refreshing. It forces you to play very carefully and strategically as you cant just spam health items and have thousands of bullets. I really liked the challenge and being forced to play in a different way.
There is usually some NPC following you around like a team mate and he really does help out. Sometimes id be really low on health and my npc would save the day and it did feel like valuable team work. It even introduces kind of a whole new map but its not much and its pretty linear, but its still cool. The enviorment is all snowy and youre fighting chinese soldiers and the setting is really cool and interesting. Theres bombs going off and youre crawling around trenches and giving squad mates orders and stuff , its not something youd expect from fallout. Its clearly inspired by call of duty and modern shooters of the time and its pretty corny and cheeky but I enjoyed it.
There are some interesting enemies like invisible sniper guys that hide in the corners or hide behind objects and try to ambush you and its really exciting and different and can create some really tense moments. You basically start at this allied headquarters you can pick your gun loadout and then you go around the map blowing up various enemy outposts. Its nonstop action combat without hardly any RPG mechanics. At the end you can even convince the antagonist to commit suicide in surrender. Theres some really great rewards for completing it like some unique armor and a gauss rifle too. For a short 2 hour long addon DLC I thought it was really fun!
8/10
The Pitt starts with a you meeting a guy and him taking you far away via a railcart into some sort of raider/slave camp. Then you get to the gate of the camp and tell the guards that you want to take an 'employment opportunity' only to find you being kidnapped and turned into a slave yourself
The premise is pretty interesting, and it takes you to a whole nother different map. Everyone you met is some extremely rude and hostile raider/evil person that says really hilarious remarks everytime you talk to them. Everyone hates you and treats you like shit always telling you to "Fuck off" and that youre nothing to them. Everywhere you look has some people slaving over hard labour and being exausted and hating life. its really immmersive and the location is extremely atmospheric.
It's a steelmill where raiders are in power and forcing people to work for them and youre one of them.
They take all your items and you have nothing. You start off doing odd jobs like being shoved into the outside to collect steel ingots being chased by this new monster that looks really scary but ultimately isnt much of a threat.
For all the atmosphere and immersion the DLC has it has kind of a lack of content I found. There is only 3 quests.
The first quest as i said, you just collect 10 steel bars and kill maybe 10 monsters. You find an assault rifle, and its pretty weird that youre apparently a slave but youre allowed to walk around the camp with an assault rifle on your back lol?
Second quest you are shoved into a gladiator style 'arena' where youre forced to prove yourself. After you kill all the guys in the arena you prove yourself and you no longer become a slave? Then you get all your gear back.
Then you meet the guy in charge and find out he has a child that for some reason has the cure to end slavery (what)
So you go and meet his scientist wife and her baby and you have a choice to either steal the baby (cure) and free the slaves, or join the slavers.
I naturally chose to steel the baby because it was the most interesting choice, at which point the entire camp becomes hostile and the DLC starts to get full of action
From this point on you just kill 100 raiders in a row while carrying a baby back to the first guy you met. Then once you do that you free the slaves and the DLC ENds
Im gonna be honest the writing and story here is kind of retarded I dont really get it or folloed very close. the baby has the cure for slavery for some science reason? I dont know its kind of bullshit. But the choice was pretty funny.
So this is where the dlc 'ends' but it ends pretty awkwardly. It isnt clear that its ended or anything. You kill all the raiders and free the slaves and the guy is just like "ok thanks" and thats basically it. You walk around and can talk to people and theres a few tiny things you can still do like collect steel ingots for unique loot rewards or bring toys to the baby. But other than that theres no actual 'ok its over now' It ends in a weird awkward way and I wasnt sure what to do. You realize you just have to retrace your steps and leave the way you came in, which still has some straggler raiders lying around, you kill them then escape back to the main map. DLC over.
well I thought the atmosphere/premise/immersion was really great and memorable and I really enjoyed the abusive and hostile attitude of all the raiders but in the content department it fell a bit short. At this point in the game i was so fking overpowered that I had a precise gatling laser with 4000 shots and one hit every enemy so ZERO challenge, which makes me wish they never gave me all my items back to prevent it being so easy. But I think the premise is so memorable that it holds up. Some of the item rewards are pretty cool like the new silenced assault rifle and the slave owners power armor etc..
8/10
The premise is pretty interesting, and it takes you to a whole nother different map. Everyone you met is some extremely rude and hostile raider/evil person that says really hilarious remarks everytime you talk to them. Everyone hates you and treats you like shit always telling you to "Fuck off" and that youre nothing to them. Everywhere you look has some people slaving over hard labour and being exausted and hating life. its really immmersive and the location is extremely atmospheric.
It's a steelmill where raiders are in power and forcing people to work for them and youre one of them.
They take all your items and you have nothing. You start off doing odd jobs like being shoved into the outside to collect steel ingots being chased by this new monster that looks really scary but ultimately isnt much of a threat.
For all the atmosphere and immersion the DLC has it has kind of a lack of content I found. There is only 3 quests.
The first quest as i said, you just collect 10 steel bars and kill maybe 10 monsters. You find an assault rifle, and its pretty weird that youre apparently a slave but youre allowed to walk around the camp with an assault rifle on your back lol?
Second quest you are shoved into a gladiator style 'arena' where youre forced to prove yourself. After you kill all the guys in the arena you prove yourself and you no longer become a slave? Then you get all your gear back.
Then you meet the guy in charge and find out he has a child that for some reason has the cure to end slavery (what)
So you go and meet his scientist wife and her baby and you have a choice to either steal the baby (cure) and free the slaves, or join the slavers.
I naturally chose to steel the baby because it was the most interesting choice, at which point the entire camp becomes hostile and the DLC starts to get full of action
From this point on you just kill 100 raiders in a row while carrying a baby back to the first guy you met. Then once you do that you free the slaves and the DLC ENds
Im gonna be honest the writing and story here is kind of retarded I dont really get it or folloed very close. the baby has the cure for slavery for some science reason? I dont know its kind of bullshit. But the choice was pretty funny.
So this is where the dlc 'ends' but it ends pretty awkwardly. It isnt clear that its ended or anything. You kill all the raiders and free the slaves and the guy is just like "ok thanks" and thats basically it. You walk around and can talk to people and theres a few tiny things you can still do like collect steel ingots for unique loot rewards or bring toys to the baby. But other than that theres no actual 'ok its over now' It ends in a weird awkward way and I wasnt sure what to do. You realize you just have to retrace your steps and leave the way you came in, which still has some straggler raiders lying around, you kill them then escape back to the main map. DLC over.
well I thought the atmosphere/premise/immersion was really great and memorable and I really enjoyed the abusive and hostile attitude of all the raiders but in the content department it fell a bit short. At this point in the game i was so fking overpowered that I had a precise gatling laser with 4000 shots and one hit every enemy so ZERO challenge, which makes me wish they never gave me all my items back to prevent it being so easy. But I think the premise is so memorable that it holds up. Some of the item rewards are pretty cool like the new silenced assault rifle and the slave owners power armor etc..
8/10
Point Lookout DLC
Probably my favorite DLC so far because the location is so cool. You get on a boat to go to a creepy foggy coastal island and it opens up and gives you a big open world map to explore, much more so than the other dlc's
In this DLC you can actually free roam and explore locations slowly just like the main game, I never got that sense from the other DLC's. Your first introduction is being met with crazy hillbilly looking guys in the fog shooting at you with double barrel shotguns, then you go inside a mansion where a ghoul guy needs your help defending his entire mansion from deranged religious tribal people. Really good setup. So in between all this you can explore this big foggy creepy island, coming across side quests like discovering a mission from a chinese secret spy where you go all around the map collecting mission briefing tape logs telling you what to do, swimming underwater exploding submarines and going into millitary camps etc.. the writing is really enjoyable and this series of missions is probably better than anything in the main game.
Theres 10 quests all together 5 main, 5 side. I completed all of them in 1 sitting it was that interesting and entertaining. Just exploring the map and coming across all the lore, seeing the new enemies and items was really fun. In between hillbilly swamps and creepy old mansions youll find mostly abandoned towns remenesicent of Chernoybl or something, hotel rooms full of lore , and just by exploring the map youll come across side quests. Simple things like collecting items to make moonshine, some guy hosting an underground arena where you have to survive waves of ghouls etc..
The main quest writing is pretty crazy involving insane religious cult that eats drugged up plants all day, some brain in a jar that controls them, and a 200 year old ghoul that has a rivalry with the brain in the jar. I choose to help the brain in the jar, but then it turns out you just kill them both. At that point the main quest was over, and it wasnt really that obvious. So I just walked around, completed the side quests, then left the island.
Its my faovrite DLC just on atmosphere and location alone. The graphics and world building was really cool on this one. If I had one complaint its that they didnt take my items away, so once again I was super overpowered and nothing was much of a challenge, i prefer in these DLC when they strip my items and force me to be weak.. but oh well.
9/10
In this DLC you can actually free roam and explore locations slowly just like the main game, I never got that sense from the other DLC's. Your first introduction is being met with crazy hillbilly looking guys in the fog shooting at you with double barrel shotguns, then you go inside a mansion where a ghoul guy needs your help defending his entire mansion from deranged religious tribal people. Really good setup. So in between all this you can explore this big foggy creepy island, coming across side quests like discovering a mission from a chinese secret spy where you go all around the map collecting mission briefing tape logs telling you what to do, swimming underwater exploding submarines and going into millitary camps etc.. the writing is really enjoyable and this series of missions is probably better than anything in the main game.
Theres 10 quests all together 5 main, 5 side. I completed all of them in 1 sitting it was that interesting and entertaining. Just exploring the map and coming across all the lore, seeing the new enemies and items was really fun. In between hillbilly swamps and creepy old mansions youll find mostly abandoned towns remenesicent of Chernoybl or something, hotel rooms full of lore , and just by exploring the map youll come across side quests. Simple things like collecting items to make moonshine, some guy hosting an underground arena where you have to survive waves of ghouls etc..
The main quest writing is pretty crazy involving insane religious cult that eats drugged up plants all day, some brain in a jar that controls them, and a 200 year old ghoul that has a rivalry with the brain in the jar. I choose to help the brain in the jar, but then it turns out you just kill them both. At that point the main quest was over, and it wasnt really that obvious. So I just walked around, completed the side quests, then left the island.
Its my faovrite DLC just on atmosphere and location alone. The graphics and world building was really cool on this one. If I had one complaint its that they didnt take my items away, so once again I was super overpowered and nothing was much of a challenge, i prefer in these DLC when they strip my items and force me to be weak.. but oh well.
9/10
Mothership Zeta
For this DLC you discover a crashed UFO and then your screen flashes and you get warped up into a spaceship taken prisoner. Theres another woman there and she helps you escape by staging a fight that makes the aliens open your cell. From there you explore an extremely generic metallic spaceship enviorment killing the same little looking alien guy over and over. In the first 60 seconds it gives you the best weapon in the DLC/Game the alien disentegrator. it has 100 bullets single fire, and kills everything in a few hits. You never run out of ammo for it. You just use this boring generic laser gun for the entire DLC killing the same 2-3 variants of enemies in the same bland, metallic square box rooms. There is hardly any choices to make, you come across 4 different NPC and none of them have anything to offer or any relevance other than being wacky novelties. Theres an annoying stupid kid that follows you around being witty and silly and its all just annoying.
Theres almost no point to explore as barely anything can be looted. Nothing in the enviorment makes sense and the level design is pretty awful making you run around in circles over and over because you missed one random obscure looking 'switch' . Its pretty bad. So after you just go around exploding these weird stupid looking structures you come across these enemies called 'abominations' which look pretty cool and do this weird pointing thing at you, but theyre a pushover. Mostly because the weapon it gives you is so overpowered it eliminates any notion of challenge.
Eventually you go up to the cockpit, kill the capatain, and go into this stupid 'showdown' with another alien ship where you push buttons to fire a cannon at it. Then its over. Once again it isnt obvious its over, the npc's just kind of go "Yay, you did it" "by the way you can leave in X room" and then I had to walk around for 10 mins trying to find the exit. Then, if you come back later, all the NPC's are gone. They all had unique items that you only have one chance to get, and the only way to get them is to kill them. So if you dont purposefully kill those allied NPC's you basically miss out on the only interesting items in the DLC. Lol.
To recap:
Bad exploration, barely any loot, generic tedious 1 gun gameplay, barely any enemies variation, bad level design, boring flavorless npc's, no choices.
Definitely the worst DLC. I play fallout for post apocalyptic wasteland survival looting and exploration, not to walk around some generic metal box startrek linear spaceship with no loot or exploration. Fortunately, its the shortest DLC, I beat it in one short sitting, only has 3 main quests. no side quests.
4/10
Theres almost no point to explore as barely anything can be looted. Nothing in the enviorment makes sense and the level design is pretty awful making you run around in circles over and over because you missed one random obscure looking 'switch' . Its pretty bad. So after you just go around exploding these weird stupid looking structures you come across these enemies called 'abominations' which look pretty cool and do this weird pointing thing at you, but theyre a pushover. Mostly because the weapon it gives you is so overpowered it eliminates any notion of challenge.
Eventually you go up to the cockpit, kill the capatain, and go into this stupid 'showdown' with another alien ship where you push buttons to fire a cannon at it. Then its over. Once again it isnt obvious its over, the npc's just kind of go "Yay, you did it" "by the way you can leave in X room" and then I had to walk around for 10 mins trying to find the exit. Then, if you come back later, all the NPC's are gone. They all had unique items that you only have one chance to get, and the only way to get them is to kill them. So if you dont purposefully kill those allied NPC's you basically miss out on the only interesting items in the DLC. Lol.
To recap:
Bad exploration, barely any loot, generic tedious 1 gun gameplay, barely any enemies variation, bad level design, boring flavorless npc's, no choices.
Definitely the worst DLC. I play fallout for post apocalyptic wasteland survival looting and exploration, not to walk around some generic metal box startrek linear spaceship with no loot or exploration. Fortunately, its the shortest DLC, I beat it in one short sitting, only has 3 main quests. no side quests.
4/10