I think I'd genuinely rather play Fallout Shelter. I saw some people say that Fallout 2 plays sexual assault for laughs but I never really felt that way. This game? On the third mission a raider woman has a slave that very comedically talks about how his "little tribal" had "things done to it" and now it has a rash and smells. This game also toes the line between portraying this chapter of the Brotherhood as fascists and portraying them as the "tough but fair" heroes of the wasteland. It just made me uncomfortable with its writing really. But beyond that, the gameplay just suuuucks. It's SO boring. Fallout has a decent combat system but it has always been carried by its many different ways to tackle a situation. This game eliminates that and puts the focus completely on this janky ass combat. I'm talking somehow MORE jank than Fallout 1 and 2. It's horrific really. I tried really hard to give it a chance but, just, no. Just no. This still has my favorite power armor design though.

No! Bad Bethesda! No glorifying slavery! Bad! No! sprays with spray bottle No!

This DLC very much tries to pull a twist on you by revealing that gasp the cure you need to steal from the slavers is the slave leaders BABY. Oh no! And also, the slave leader doesn't even view his slaves as slaves! They're his "workers"! And he's an ex-brotherhood member just trying to make up for what his people did in the Pitt all that time ago! Listen, he HAD to force everyone to do the work under slavery. It was their only chance at making the Pitt hospitable! Uh huh. Sure. And then the rebels have you summon the Trogs so all the slavers can get eaten and the story really acts like that is a super bad thing to do. Oh yeah, sure, totally a worse thing than SLAVERY. I miss Fallout 2.

"Look, no matter what sweet-sounding words you use to cover the stink, it's still slavery." - The Chosen One, Fallout 2

I think I'm one of the few people that doesn't like this game for reasons completely unrelated to Hbomerguy. Listen, I love the man but that video is kind of... ehhhhh? I also don't hate Bethesda, like, at all! I actually enjoyed Skyrim, Fallout 4 and even Fallout 76. Fallout 3 has a lot of really good elements but its how all of these good elements connect that it drops the ball. The main story has some intriguing elements that simply end up having very unsatisfying conclusions. As my playthrough went on, I realized you could really just throw that onto the entire game. The game teases you with an interesting idea only for it to kind of just... fizzle out. Quest rewards are almost always shit. Unique weapons are really just slightly better or worse versions of the one its based on. The karma system seems really reactive until you realize its so sensitive that you will ping pong from being good to evil to good again 24/7. Megaton has this cool sheriff guy but also this dickhead Moriarity so you think, "Oh so I get to solve this problem!" Nope! You go to Paradise Falls, a place full of slavers, and for some reason freeing the slaves from the slave camp left me confused as to how it works. These are things I never even thought about while playing later Fallout titles like New Vegas. Meanwhile, while Fallout 1 and 2 could leave me confused, it was always because I wasn't thinking outside the box enough. In Fallout 3, I'd get confused only to look it up and find out its because there is just nothing in the box. The box was fake. Three Dog is the best radio station host in Fallout though and you know its true.

I still stand by this DLC being perfect. By taking away your gear, it forces you to rely completely on your build. Yeah, sure, it can be pretty brutal. This is also a game that lets you save at any time. "Oh no, this radio killed me! I have to go all the way back to... the quicksave I did right before I entered the area with the radio." Frankly, the DLC was actually a lot easier than I remembered. You are encouraged to completely avoid the ghost people via stealth or simply running and that works really fucking well. That being said, you still have to be careful. There are traps everywhere. If you have light step this will be pretty much negated, but without it you really do need to be cautious. This creates a balance of wanting to get out of this hostile environment full of ghost people while also needing to slow down. If you want to genocide the ghost people because you're just a bloodthirsty little gremlin, its really not at all hard to just hack their limbs off with a knife or bring Dog with you so he can eat them. The environment is hauntingly beautiful. Definitely my favorite location in all of Fallout EVER. I love that everything connects to the idea of old world ghosts. The ghost people, holograms, graffiti, left behind supply stashes, traps, your classic computer terminal and holotape journals. And the characters. Oh my goodness GRACIOUS. Dog and God are genius. Dean Domino is genius. Christine is genius. Father Elijah is genius. All of these characters are equally as interesting. When I first played this, leaving the Sierra Madre and hearing Vera's goodbye actually made me tear up. The message of letting go of the past and starting anew isn't just a beautiful message in it's own right. It's also a perfect one for Fallout. Forget the past. Forget the Sierra Madre. Go out into that wasteland and build something new. Begin again.