Fallout 3 – The Pitt DLC Running Impressions

I’ll be the first to say that Operation Anchorage was a bit of a letdown as far as downloadable content is concerned. It took the player out of the world of Fallout 3 and placed them inside what was essentially a stripped down first person shooter with the ability to pause time and target specific body parts. There was no real inventory management, no looting of corpses, no real branching story paths that test the morality of the player, hardly anything that made up the core of Fallout 3 was present in the meat of Operation Anchorage.

That’s why going into The Pitt, I decided to keep my expectations low because once again they were taking you outside of the main Wasteland of Fallout 3, taking away your weapons and items that you worked so hard for, and placing you into an entirely new environment.

It really wouldn’t have mattered whether my expectations were high or low though because The Pitt still would have far surpassed either of them. Take notes people, because this is how you do downloadable content for video games.

As I said before, The Pitt actually takes the player out of the Capital Wasteland and throws them into a ravaged and decaying portrayal of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You are taken there by a man named Wernher who pleads for your assistance in helping him obtain a cure for the radiation sickness that afflicts everyone who lives in The Pitt. The cure is being held by a man named Ashur who is considered to be Lord of the Pitt, as he rules over the people with an iron fist, forcing them into labor and making them fight in arena battles for a chance to be able to upgrade their status from slave to raider.

Things are not as simple as just marching in to The Pitt and blowing up raiders left and right though. Upon entry to the Downtown area, all of your gear is taken away from you and you are forced to blend in to life as a slave. Eventually you’ll be able to gain an audience with Ashur himself and will be faced with the tough decision of whether you want to do what you came here to do and steal the cure, or whether you think that the status quo should be kept. Without going into spoilers, let’s just say that the decision is much less black and white than you might expect.

In terms of content that you are able to take back to the actual game of Fallout 3, there is a whole slew of new weapons and armor (including the unique Auto-Axe and Infiltrator), three new perks and a machine called an Ammo Press that will let you take outdated or unneeded ammo and turn it into ammo that you actually use. While the Auto-Axe, Infiltrator and Ammo Press can be obtained over the course of completing the main quest for The Pitt, if you want the really good stuff that The Pitt has to offer, you’ll have to find the 100 Steel Ingots that are placed all throughout the massive Steelyard area. A task made difficult by the fact that the Steelyard is literally crawling with a new enemy known as the Trog. These speedy and sneaky mutated beasts are incredibly adept at sneaking up on you and clawing away at your face when you least expect them. Traveling around the Steelyard is definitely one of the most tense experience to be found throughout the entirity of Fallout 3.

Overall, The Pitt is definitely worth the admission price of ten bucks. You get about 4 hours of gameplay with a main quest that is one of the best that Fallout 3 has to offer, a new location that you can visit even after completing the quest and the challenge of finding and collecting all 100 Steel Ingots for even cooler rewards.