In Progress Let's Play: Fallout 3 DLCs (3/5) MOTHERSHIP ZETA!

[Brother None]

No perk for picking up the piece of your brain?! WHAT A GYP!

 

[lightbane]

Uuugh... The writing... IT HURTS!!!
At least, for once it makes sense for these cultists to speak and act like they had severe brain damage... Because they do

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

No perk for picking up the piece of your brain?!

No, but there was supposed to be

Uuugh... The writing... IT HURTS!!!

I still can't believe that it was awarded somewhere.

This trash would be of no concern if it actually didn't make ambitious projects unprofitable in today society that favors wishes of a hivemind of a toddler. I hope that Wasteland 2 was a milestone in the process of emancipation of lesser designers that weren't absorbed by a horrific abomination like EA.

 

[sea]

What the fuck is with this quest design? I mean the hallucination sequence is cool and all, but god dammit, we did all that shit to... get past a metal gate? You can't climb the wall? Use explosives or something? You can't even call the tribals out on their bullshit ritual, god dammit. Forced stupidity is the worst thing ever.

Also holy shit, those NPC faces look awful. Did they spend like all of 5 seconds on those characters or what?

The worst thing is that Point Lookout actually has some okay exploration and nice atmosphere. But ugh, I'd forgotten how terrible the writing and story part of it are.

 

[abnaxus]

There's actually a decent sidequest where you follow in the footsteps of a Chinese spy, but it's ruined by the quest marker.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

There's actually a decent sidequest where you follow in the footsteps of a Chinese spy, but it's ruined by the quest marker.

I'm considering LPing this quest, and maybe the one with Necronomicon rip-off, but to be honest, I don't know if I can handle this DLC any longer.

If I'll do, it will be a small update, and probably coming after what I've planned for tomorrow to finally wrap this main quest up.

Thanks for comments!

 

[TheEntitledOne]

So you don't use a mod for more humane faces, you are a true hero.

I remember liking the mod, but wasn't it unbalanced as fuck with the bulletproff hillbillies.

 

[anus_pounder]

Bethesda. That is all.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Just as I've feared, the stupidity overwhelmed me. I know that's not really an excuse, and I apologize for the collosal break between updates, but I'm dead serious when I say that my brain literally hurts me from this stupidity. Anyway, this update is the last one in which I'll wrap Point Lookout up. After that, I'll LP Mothership Zeta later, but I have no idea if I'll handle it soon enough. Sorry again, and enjoy...

UPDATE #4.

Those idiots let me in with open arms. I have the location of their leader.

I wouldn't consider being forced into ultimatum that is undertaking debilitating ritual, both by them and this fucking game, to be a "letting in with open arms", but anyway.

And? You didn't go track him down and grill him for information?

Off to the grotto to find Jackson.

I have no clue how Nadine did find this entrance.
Anyway, if you thought that the main quest was moronic earlier, this is the moment where shit hits the fan.

:facepalm:

I may be the man who leads our physical affairs, but I cannot claim true wisdom. I take my orders from a higher master!

Whether it be how to explore higher planes, or the decision to remove the disruptive ghoul, all wisdom comes from the Transcendent Master.

Although his mind has moved beyond the need for flesh, his consciousness still returns here to guide our people. I merely interpret his wishes.

:sigh:

Now then, perhaps you can be more useful than that simpering spiritualist and his tribe of idiots.

What the hell are you?

Much more elegant than shambling on as some rotting corpse for all eternity, don't you agree?

How did you come to lead this tribe?

Regardless, I trust you can be more effective than he has been. I need your help on an important task.

There's a troublesome ghoul who lives in Calvert Mansion. I need him destroyed, and his jamming device neutralized, immediately.

What have you got against the ghoul?

He has a jammer that limits my projection range to this pathetic cave. Remove that, and I can extend my reach so much further...

Killing Desmond would be a nice plus, but I'm sure we can get around to that later.

What do you know about Desmond?

Were it not for his interference, I would still have a body. Still, its absence has only honed my brilliance, so perhaps I owe him my thanks.

I have to go.

Let's see, should we side with annoying Ghoul or even more annoying disembodied brain? The tyranny of choices.

And how the hell does he know that? As far as I'm concerned, if he had any means to monitor it, he would've known sooner.

.

So, who is this brain guy, anyway?

Members of the Calvert family were influential all over the world. They practically owned a deed to the US government.

In their best days, there were no less than three Calvert family senators, seven members of the house, and two governors.

So SINISTER, malicious, old RIVAL!

You know this guy? incline What's going on here?

Just in case you didn't figure out he was talking about his brain, get it? Head, disembodied brain, !!

Also,

Also, as words alone cannot describe it, here is the voice of the Professor Calvert (starts from around 1:30):



It pretty much makes up for the most annoying antagonist I've EVER met, but we'll get to that later.

So, now you want me to do something else, right?

Maybe you should watch your tone, old man.

Or what? You think I haven't been shot before? Think that you, over the thousands who have tried, can take me down?

Even if we wanted to do that, he's essential.

You'd best wise the hell up and play along. I'll get what I want, and you'll get rich, and then we can go about our separate goddamn ways.

The LOGIC of Emil.

But without those buggers to do things for him, he can't do much for himself.

So, we cut off his ability to talk to 'em, and he'll need to try harder. Maybe then I can find the squishy little worm and finish him off for good!

I have the perfect device to jam up his little talkbox. All you need to do is take it to the highest point on the shore and install it.

And that would be the ferris wheel in Pilgrim's Bay.

Mission compl-

To be honest, with this quality of plot, it was very predictable.

Gee, I don't know, really. But seriously, this Freki dog was shredded like aforementioned Tony Montana like five times earlier due to being essential only so he could say this scripted line right here?

I know where he is. He overplayed his hand this time. You and me are going to walk in there and end this.

I'm really tired of being a pawn in this game, Desmond!

The lighthouse. He's got a lab under there, the little fuck. Right under my nose the whole time!

I found it when he boosted his signal to try to get through the jamming, when he sent those Tribals to kill my poor pups...

He's down there, hiding behind robots and machines, sucking life! Pathetic! He dies now!

:GASP!:

And without my comments; partially because they are needless, and partially because I'm at loss of words; in all its glory:

Here, we are faced with the second of total of two choices in this DLC:

1) We kill Desmond:

2) We kill Professor Calvert A.K.A. The worst and dumbest antagonist I've ever seen. (We have to do it in both endings, anyway)

When asked about what he will do next;

Alas, Desmond is grateful and, like promised, we're rich.

...

That's all.

I'm not sure I'm mentally capable right now to form a cohesive verdict based on what I've shown in those four updates, but I can't believe that it was highly rated. I can't believe it scored more than 2/10, or, by video gaming journalism criteria, its equivalent of 7/10. The worldscape is bland, locations are few; especially when compared to overwhelming Big MT or even Zion Canyon from New Vegas DLCs, equipment is unoriginal and subpar to almost everything past level 5, there is relatively little to do (there are like 2 bigger quests and a few of FedEx/unmarked ones, and the writing is, well...

Also,



How cool is that?

 

[lightbane]

Please remind me why the hell Bethesda received "Best writing" awards...

(Also, you accidentally posted the same update twice)

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Wow, if you're having problems with the plot and writting of this DLC... Buy a new broaian in advance for when you play MZ.

Protip: Consider MZ a big joke, don't try to understand any of the cannonkiller implications or you will pay it with your sanity.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

TheEntitledOne: Please tell me it's at least laughably funny.

lightbane: Because Emil Pagliarulo had no competition? Also, fix'd.

 

[dextermorgan]

Goodness me, that was truly awful.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

TheEntitledOne: Please tell me it's at least laughably funny.

lightbane: Because Emil Pagliarulo had no competition? Also, fix'd.

I guess it can be kinda funny if you take it as a giant joke.
Most of the game is, escape yor cell-->PEW PEW -->meet the other humans (samurai, cowboy...) -->PEW PEW--> Explore --> PEW PEW --> pick some holodiscks (one of them has some serious lorerape shit on hit) -->PEW PEW --> incredibly anticlimatic space battle.

 

[Brother None]

Isn't Point Lookout generally considered the best of the Fallout 3 DLC? Not by Fallout fans, who seem to prefer the Pitt if they like anything, but by Fallout 3 fans

 

[Esquilax]

I thought Point Lookout was really bad, I got so pissed off at the ending because the overall premise didn't seem so bad initially. This is what I hate about Bethesda games (even if overall I like them, such as Skyrim), especially Fallout 3: they take a decent premise and an idea that's difficult to fuck up, and they fuck it up spectacularly.

The idea behind Point Lookout was pretty cool, I think. A forgotten rural area rife with secrets of the Old World in which two centuries-old chessmasters plot against each other in a Cold War style struggle using the locals as proxies. How can you not love a concept like that? But then when you get down to brass tacks with how on-rails and predictable everything is, how everyone acts like an idiot to advance the plot, and the disappointing ending where nothing you do matters, it just makes me very frustrated.

I actually kinda liked Desmond at times, if only because he had the same voice as the chain-smoking Dark Elves in Morrowind (was the same guy in Skyrim?). Glad they had the guy back.

 

[sea]

As Esquilax says, the premise is actually pretty good... but I can't believe the writing and characters are just so fucking sloppy. I realize DLCs are produced very quickly and cheaply, but it's like they didn't even bother editing most of the text or even stopping to think "does this make sense?"

All I can say is, if you thought Point Lookout was bad... you've got another thing coming in Mothership Zeta.

Isn't Point Lookout generally considered the best of the Fallout 3 DLC? Not by Fallout fans, who seem to prefer the Pitt if they like anything, but by Fallout 3 fans

Yes. Despite the horrendous writing, it has some decent exploration and locations. You have to remember that it was the first Fallout 3 DLC to have a fully new land mass to wander around with a completely different atmosphere, which is what the fans wanted from the start. Most people enjoyed Fallout 3 for the exploration aspect and the (at the time) At the time it was the best (maybe tied with Broken Steel due to its other gameplay enhancements), but comparing Bethesda to Obsidian really isn't fair in my mind - we know Obsidian are capable of much, much more in terms of writing.

As I understand it as well, the Bethesda DLC teams are much smaller, only a handful of people, while Obsidian allocated significantly more to each one, which probably explains the fact that they're bigger and better overall.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

I actually kinda liked Desmond at times, if only because he had the same voice as the chain-smoking Dark Elves in Morrowind (was the same guy in Skyrim?). Glad they had the guy back.

My mind is blown I didn't notice that earlier, but looking it up, he also voiced Haskill in Shivering Isles and many NPCs in Fallout 3 as well.

Dunno about vanilla Skyrim, but he also voices

Spoiler

Jiub

in Dawnguard.

Yes. Despite the horrendous writing, it has some decent exploration and locations. You have to remember that it was the first Fallout 3 DLC to have a fully new land mass to wander around with a completely different atmosphere, which is what the fans wanted from the start.

Idk, after New Vegas/Old World Blues, Fallout 3/Point Lookout is just so... devoid of locations and places of interest. At least for me, the density of map markers leaves much to be desired; not all of them have to be full-fledged dungeons, New Vegas fared well with markers like "Crashed Highwayman" or "Cap Counterfeit Shack" that didn't jeopardize the Wasteland feel, yet still made the areas between the "bigger milestones" more distinct and interesting. I don't know how much this shows in this LP, but I may show one or two side quests that'll tackle it better before I'll lost myself in majestic world of Mothership Zeta.

All I can say is, if you thought Point Lookout was bad... you've got another thing coming in Mothership Zeta.

The foreshadowing creeps me out. I'll begin to dabble with the dark forces later today or tomorrow to see what this fuss is all about.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Everybody, a teaser:

 

[Esquilax]

Good stuff, bro. Hey, maybe we should bump this into the next page? GeeZee, it might be a good idea to chop the LP into blocks within the post and place them within spoiler tags. It makes things a bit easier to navigate through, particularly since your updates have a shitload of pictures (not that I wouldn't want it any other way, I just think it would make things a bit cleaner).

 

[Brother None]

Mothership Zeta man. I...I just don't know.

You're kind of saving "best" for last? Fallout fans seem to mind the Pit and Broken Steel least of all the DLC. They certainly can't be worse than space samurai.

 

[lightbane]

Anyone with minimal japanese knowledge to check if these lines are genuine? I'm (morbidly) curious...

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Anyone with minimal japanese knowledge to check if these lines are genuine? I'm (morbidly) curious...

I wouldn't be surprised if it was some crap they did using machine translation, or at least is modern moonspeak.

Also the guy seems to be a Oda retainer, maybe he met Rance?

Edit: Apparently it means some bullshit like ''I lost my sword, What a disgrace!''

https://www.google.es/search?q=Ken+...s=org.mozilla:es-ES:official&client=firefox-a

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Defy hostile alien abductors and fight your way off of the massive Mothership Zeta, orbiting Earth miles above the Capital Wasteland. Mothership Zeta takes Fallout 3 in an entirely new direction – outer space. Meet new characters and join with them in a desperate bid to escape the aliens’ clutches. To do so, you’ll wield powerful new weapons, like the alien atomizer, alien disintegrator, and drone cannon, and deck yourself out in brand new outfits, like the Gemini-Era spacesuit and even samurai armor.

That's all I've got.


UPDATE #1.

I'll keep this one in spoiler window, tell me if you like it more or less that way; then I'll see about the rest of them.

Spoiler

Like all DLCs, it begins with picking up the signal on the Pip-Boy after loading the game with it. It leads us to a crashed alien ship.

It's actually a location from vanilla Fallout 3 (which was a nod to a random encounter in Fallout 1), where we could pick up an Alien Blaster and ammo for it scattered around, as shown here. Unfortunately, we can't do it right now, because of DLC scripts that kick in.

Meet Alien. It's the cannon fodder of this DLC's countless combat filler sequences with the stereotypical alien appearance and incomprehensible language of high-pitched squeaks like "oi hai" "nya nya nya".

The experiment conducted on us is of no consequence, nor it is explained anywhere.

This has to be a bad dream...

Crazy, ain't it? I thought I'd seen some shit out there in the Wastes, but nothin' like this.

Yeah, lulzy shit.

Not a whole lot of good news goin' around right now. If you're lucky, they'll leave you alone for a while. If not...

Well, then it's been nice chatting with you.

Who are you, and why are you in here with me?

You've got it all wrong, kid. You're in here with me. This is my little slice of heaven, not yours.

...not a good time for jokes, I guess.

Look, I don't know why they put you in here with me. Maybe it's another experiment. Not like I can ask them to find out.

But since you asked, name's Somah. Beyond that, I'm thinkin' not much matters if we're gonna stay stuck in here.

What do they want with us?

Sometimes they bring 'em back... Sometimes they don't. Either way, I ain't keen to find out what they're doing.

Our hilariously generic dude didn't notice it from this angle here, but even after reloading it...

...the game presumes I've seen shit I didn't.

I don't know where they're taking him, and I'm not interested in staying here long enough to find out.

So how do we get out of here?

Well' there ain't no easy way out. Trust me, I've looked. (sigh -GeeZee) Can't even find anything to pry open, see what's blocking the doorway.

I'm thinkin' they did us a favor, putting us together in here like this. And I say we use it to our advantage.

I'm not looking for a sidekick, okay? I just want to get out of here.

So that's what we do. We throw a few punches, make it look real, and then jump 'em when they come in to break it up.

You really think this will work?

I think it's worth a try. What's the worst that could happen? Nothing changes, only we've got a few more bruises. Big deal. Let's give it a shot.

Awww. But here's the kicker:

How do I know I can trust you? What if you try to kill me?

Seriously? The writer is obviously an idiot to even think about including such option in the first place, but building upon it by bringing reason and explanations resulting in what he probably considered a smart dialogue make him...

: We're proud of you, son. :

Right.

Yeah, you brought perfect reason to this piece of shit. Yes, we agree and give onto you.

Why the hell did she even my agreement on staging this? Why did we kill them in two punches. I know those are tiny little details, but for fucksake, the whole game is compiled of this. Why do people praise the fuck out of Bethesda or BioWare? What the hell happened with humanity?

As a consequence of being the most ineffective prison in the whole galaxy, nobody's going to notice that shit until we'll be blowing things up elsewhere.

Some prisoners.

Around the ship, there are "controls" that give us recordings of abducted humans. Apparently, Mothership Zeta has been picking up humans from around the world since the 17th Century, but we'll get to that soon enough. They are the mandatory "collect 'em all" of the DLC.

Fascinating stuff. Among the logs, we recognize Somah's voice...

...but we can't say shit about it. Can't say I'm surprised.

Deep shit. The enviroments are so bland that I can't tell apart the screnshots from their miniatures in Photobucket folders. (I hope I won't be forced to upgrade to premium anytime soon)

I'm SURE she won't annoy the fuck out of us.

Pushing a button brings up the "core" of some sort.

Apparently, pressing buttons make the "core" explode.

But... shouldn't the self-destruct system supposed to be... how even...

Sure, there's red alert on the Zeta, but we were forced to chose to freed the little damsel in distress .

You should wait here. It's too dangerous for the little girl.

How did you do that?

There's wires and stuff inside the wall there. A while ago I learned which ones to put together to make the doors work.

There's all kinds of stuff in the walls, but I guess you're too big to see. But that's okay, I can get to it just fine.

How do you know so much about this place?

She also says something that she doesn't have a family anymore, and that she lost her sister on the Zeta, but since it's not a BioWare game, I'll ignore it.

Do you know where we're going?

Sure!

That's where the guy in charge is. I've only seen him once or twice, but he's extra mean.

I guess you'll probably have to kill him or something, right?

All in due time, child, all in due time.


END OF UPDATE #1. I've run out of screens from my limited upload, but I'll have more for the next update tomorrow or so.

COMING UP NEXT: Shooting shit! Little girls sabotaging said shit with explosions behind enemy lines! Genuine cowboys and samurais slaying shit! And overall majestic-ness! Stay tuned for the next update!

 

[sea]

www.minus.com

Free image hosting, unlimited storage. Enjoy.

Seriously? The writer is obviously an idiot to even think about including such option in the first place, but building upon it by bringing reason and explanations resulting in what he probably considered a smart dialogue make him...

Well to be fair, the player would have to be a colossal fucking moron to actually pick the "what if you're a traitor?!" option in the first place. It's kind of out of character that she gives such a long-winded explanation though, should have just said "hey, you're a dumbass, it's this or we die here."