Looking Back: Fallout 3 and its DLC

In their new “Looking Back: Fallout 3 and its DLC” feature, Geek.com provides us with mini-reviews for the game’s first four DLC addons. Their take on Operation: Anchorage:

Operation Anchorage was the game’s first DLC, having been released on Januar 27, 2009. In it you enter a virtual reality world in order to fight back the Chinese army as they invade frigid Alaska. You do this in order to help a gang of rogue Brotherhood members access a weapons cache in their vault. Of course, they offer you a fair share of the weapons, which brings some cool new kit into the game.

In the context of the game Operation Anchorage is interesting for a few reasons. It takes you back to a part of the Fallout 3 story where the Chinese army invaded the US (which is why you find Chinese assault rifles throughout the game), so it was great to see the designers following up on their own storyline. It also returns you to a simulation, though one that is both more realistic and larger in scale than your trip to Tranquility Lane. This mechanic has some interesting implications, the foremost being a completely new scenario: you leave the post-apocalytics world of Washington, DC and become a US army soldier, with all that such a change entails. Of course, you lose your gear and get outfitted with Army-issue weaponry, including the new (and very cool) Gauss rifle. The virtual reality setting means there are other changes as well, most notably that you cannot pick up gear off of dead soldiers (their bodies just disappear), the world is much more linear (areas where you might want to wander are cordoned off), and ammo/health are replenished at unlimited recharge stations.

Overall, this DLC was fun enough to play though, but ended up being the weakest of the bunch thanks to its linearity and boring setting. With a playtime of about three hours, it’s an interesting change of pace but not something I wanted to play through again. The ending loads you up with more gear than you could ever carry, which is fun in a shopping-spree sense but bothersome if you don’t like to leave any good gear behind.