I don't like the descriptor "self-obsessed" to describe art.

Both because I think the mere act of creating art requires a little bit of benign self-obsession, and because it's often used by luddites to shout down art they perceive as 'pretentious' or somesuch nonsense.

With that in mind, Fallout 3 has a moderate problem with being self-obsessed.

It is a game that mostly consists of hallway shooting galleries, quests where the moral choices are "basic decency" and "laugh in a child's face after tricking him into putting on a bomb collar", and doesn't really possess much in the way of clever jokes beyond pop culture references and human suffering- hey wait

It's juvenile, to put it briefly.

But between the constant invocation of the Bible, the main story rapidly becoming about some grand purpose, your birth and childhood being the introduction, Three Dog endlessly praising a good/neutral player for being the singular hero that'll save the day, and thousands of other little tidbits, it's clear as day that the writers have an overinflated sense of how profound they think this is.

Before we continue, I think it's prudent that I go back in time for a little bit, and talk about both myself and the game at launch.

I'm a very old Fallout fan. So old in fact that I can't even talk about the sites I visited in any depth; they're all still around and their history entirely public - it'd be tantamount to doxxing. My opinions on the series are coloured by about 17 years of discontent and relative loathing for Bethesda Fallout as a creative force.

Fallout 3 dropped in October 2008 - exact date is beyond me - and it was much beloved by everyone except me and my fellow embittered old fans. At first this discontent was merely "they changed it!" but for me, at least, it's only grown due to far more valid complaints.

There is, however, one complaint that Fallout 3 fans and haters alike had back in the day.

See, it's profoundly difficult to stumble upon the base version of Fallout 3 these days. Microsoft sell the GOTY edition for cheaper than the basegame on Xbox, and on Steam it's the only option available to buy. If you purchase Fallout 3, there's a 99% chance it's the whole package.

From the game's release until it's 1st anniversary, Broken Steel did not exist. Without it, the game's main story simply ended. This seems inoffensive on the surface and when spoken so plainly the idea of it being contentious must seem ludicrous.
The catch here is that Fallout 3's story is very short. If one decides to dabble in it, they can easily reach the end in a couple hours potentially by accident. This in itself often poses a problem, as it's entirely possible to be locked into that ~endgame state~ and corresponding building just by chasing the main story as a diversion.
It's the story itself that's the draw here, though. Fallout 3's writers were obsessed with how grandiose, spiritual and hashtag epic the story was, so it ends with either you sacrificing yourself to turn on a water purifier or making someone else do it as the token evil option.

If you use social media a decent amount and are either in or adjacent to game circles, you might've seen the companion reactions to being asked to go into the Purifier. They're bad, and the radiation-immune companions give the most asspull reactions possible.

About a month or two after Fallout 3's release, Bethesda announced a trio of DLCs: Operation Anchorage, The Pitt and Broken Steel.
Broken Steel drew a lot of curiosity pre-release for one simple reason: A promise of being able to play past the ending.
It's somewhat "common knowledge" that this was Bethesda violently backtracking and while we'll never know the truth, I personally make it a point to remind people that Fallout 3's DLCs were planned before release and the development only wrapped the same month it released.

Broken Steel, for me, is a bit of a morbid curiosity. I would love to know more about it and I'm eternally sad that the developers at Bethesda are so culturally and creatively exsanginuated, for it makes finding out their influences/objectives/desires so much harder compared to, say, New Vegas characters.

To break it down for you: I don't know what the fuck Bethesda were thinking with this DLC.

Sure, Fallout 3's base ending is terrible. It's incredibly overdramatic for the game it's in, utterly defies and resists any attempts to interrogate it, reeks of Great Man Theory, and railroads the player in an already railroad-y game.
But when you swing for the fences and hit manure, the most noble thing you can do is commit. I have respect for plenty of creatives who make something terrible, stand their ground and go "Fuck you. This is what I wanted to make." It's why I take few potshots at indie projects and millions at Bioware.
Broken Steel's greatest sin is its existence: It's a backtrack. It's Bethesda flinching. It's a wordless apology. Cowardice in megabyte form. Doesn't matter if it was a planned move or a reactive one, because it simply is, and that's the worst part. There is simply no winning here: If it was planned, then surprise! Bethesda don't really care about the products they make and will cynical lobotomize them to sell DLC. If it wasn't planned, then within a month of release they hastily scrabbled to lobotomize their game so they could scramble to regain the mild amount of goodwill they lost.

...But you know what? Even if we ignore that it's ideological wafer, or that I'm an ornery old Fallout fan who's distrusted people with Enclave avatars since before my nieces and nephews were born, Broken Steel is just... bad on a design level.

For starters, it adds three new enemies to the Wasteland: Feral Ghoul Reavers, Super Mutant Behemoths, and Albino Radscorpions. These are... Remodelled and higher level variants of the three most common enemy types in the Wasteland. They have significantly higher health pools (the largest behind Behemoths) and get a passive +35 to their damage output that bypasses all of your armor. Besides this they're not very engaging to fight. You either kill them fast or they kill you fast. Riveting.

The 'main story' of the DLC is horrifically grim even by the standards of Fallout 3's own main story. Having given up all pretense of even telling a story, the player is shoved into a military campaign against the Enclave which moooooooooostly just manifests as more hallway shooter segments and another lackluster, somewhat cringe section with Liberty Prime. If you've not visited Old Olney yet, the second main quest awkwardly pushes you there to collect the associated loot. After that, another shooter segment that's even easier than the ones from past DLCs because it's 80% open fields - and the game hands you an absurdly powerful weapon that uses ammo so plentiful even casual players can amass thousands. Bang bang bang, make a 'moral choice' (nuke the Enclave or the BoS) and off you go.

That's... Basically it? Besides some inconsequential side quests, some loot that's mediocre for how late it appears, and the level cap increase, Broken Steel really isn't all that substantial despite the implications of its name.

Maybe the real Broken Steel was the antipathy we made along the way.

aka "the enclave continuing to get their shit kicked in"

Tesla Cannon is fun and op as shit but that's about it. Another 1-2 hours of things for you to shoot topped off by another meaningless decision that makes no impact on your actual forced status as a hero in the game. I'll always find it amusing tho that the only reason this DLC exists is because fo3's launch ending was just THAT massively disliked by people lol. I can't imagine how much shit BGS would've gotten if they tried making people pay for a better ending nowadays LMAO.

A series of linear, mediocre dungeon crawls that don't even bother to use new assets until the final mission.

The draw here seems to be raising the game's level cap, but I'm not sure why this is considered a benefit. The original release felt well balanced around levels 1-20 with the understanding that once you reach max level your run should be ending fairly soon. Extending that up to 30 just exposes how broken and nearly unkillable a level 20 player character is. Just having more of something isn't necessarily a good thing.

The game tries to compensate by adding some new enemies to the leveled lists. These are three reskins of existing enemies with stupidly bloated healthpools since this is the only way to ensure they have even a chance of getting an attack off against a player with access to Grim Reaper's Sprint. Only the broken gear from this and the other DLCs makes fighting them tolerable, but I still try to avoid it if I can.

Also likes to throw so many enclave soldiers firing energy weapons at you that it caused my game to crash for the first time this run lol