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| Closing the book on Fallout 3...heading to Steel City... |
The Capital Wasteland…all that remains of Washington, D.C.
in the echo of atomic fire that rained down from the skies like the hammer of
God Himself. Now, two centuries after
the fact, there are terrible mutations. Vicious beasts. Man killing man for only scraps of food and
shelter…slavers criss-crossing the Wastes to shackle their brothers in
Slavery. Great powers that seek to
reshape the whole of the world in their image, whether those within it like it
or not. Definitely sounds like the worst
place on Earth, right?
Not quite…
Far to the north of the Capital Wasteland lies the
Pitt. Pittsburgh was not a city touched
by the bombs dropping on America, though anyone who catches sight of the place
may see that as more of a curse than a blessing. Meeting the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio
rivers, Pittsburgh was flooded with radiation that would affect the citizens of
the city for the centuries to come. In
the twenty years before Fallout 3
takes place, our dear friends at the Brotherhood of Steel spearheaded a campaign
through the city, wiping out the original Raiders there in a bloody event known
as “the Scourge”.
One member of the Brotherhood, however, remained after a
terrible accident wherein the Brotherhood left him for dead. Ashur became Lord of the Pitt - even worshiped as a God by some - and began building an
army of Raiders as he sought a cure for the Pitt’s inhabitants…and created a
regime that may soon be overthrown by his disgruntled people.
The story picks up with a new player (or a reloaded player)
getting a distress signal from a man named Wernher, who will claim to want the
player character’s help in retrieving a cure for the disease plaguing the
citizens of the Pitt. To do that,
however, the player must bring themselves into slavery…and work their way
up. From working in the Steelyards, to
fighting in the Hole – the Pitt’s gladiatorial arena – for a place among Ashur’s
Raiders, to coming face to face with the truth behind the entire mess.
Really, I can credit The
Pitt for its atmosphere, its unique weaponry, and its brand new addition to
the Fallout bestiary, but it really shines through in one respect: moral choice.
This isn’t like Fable, where
your choices are either all good or all bad, either. You really
have a dilemma and can feel some actual weight hanging on to your choice. And, in the end, you can’t ever really be sure
if you made the right choice. Or even if
there is a right choice. But, I’ll get to that more later.
As I said, good atmosphere.
The Pitt really does feel like
a terrible place under oppression where no one has hope. The city is a broken, sundered shell of the
great city that Pittsburgh used to be. Even
Ashur’s speech to the inhabitants of the Pitt at the very beginning seems
almost as though it’s supposed to be taken ironically (though it is certainly
not his intention, as we find out). He
speaks of how they are the envy of so many other factions out in the Wasteland…though
not even his own people are ones you could tell it by. It feels hopeless, terrible, and it’s very
jarring to see if you’ve really played around in the Capital Wasteland. Just the knowledge that, if a place like the
Pitt can exist, what other places in
the world could have gotten even worse?
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| The Next Phase of Human Evolution? |
But, as per Wernher’s plan, you have to rise through the
ranks and earn the trust of Ashur. This
is easier said than does, as it requires you to move through the Steelyards
gathering Ingots, and it is here that you will meet the nasty pest that plagues
the Pitt: The Trogs. They are the final result of the disease that
has the entire Pitt crippled in fear.
Humans, regressed to only the basest of instincts and become like their
Neanderthal ancestors. The people fear
that they will become such creatures…provided that the Pitt doesn’t kill them
first.
Nasty little things that look like skinned humans, you can
pretty much just take them out with a few shots or – for those of you with some
love of gore in your heart, you can try out a new, unique form of weapon that The Pitt offers you.
The Auto-Axe (and two unique variations on it) offer you all
the power of a chainsaw but SUPER
CHARGED!!! Just press and hold the
attack trigger as you face your target and watch them be eviscerated in a
wonderfully over the top gory mess! The
Auto-Axe is a great weapon, largely because any living thing that gets caught
in it is pretty screwed from the moment that motor goes “vroom vroom”. The Trogs in particular go down pretty easily
when you put them to it, and the skills you acquire with it in the Steelyards
will be useful once you qualify for the second phase of your time in the Pitt.
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| Wanna be a walking tornado of gore? Look no further! |
Once you collect ten Steel ingots, your player qualifies to
enter “the Hole” (no, not that
one or these),
an arena where you must fight in order to survive. This is good stuff, harkening back to some of
the original Fallout’s influences –
such as Escape from New York and Mad Max.
So, in order to get Beyond Thunderdome, the player has to compete in
some matches. The first few against
fellow slaves, then against two famed gladiators in a 2 on 1 fight, and finally
the Champion of the Hole. A bonus to
these, of course, is that the player is allowed to loot their fallen enemies
after fights (unlike the Arena fights in Oblivion). Pro tip for anyone specializing in Unarmed,
you can pick up a Deathclaw Gauntlet here early on if you manage to win.
But after becoming the Champion of the Hole (it’s as dirty
as it sounds), you get all the equipment you lost in your enslavement and can
head into Haven, the headquarters of Ashur and be inducted into his gang. When you meet Ashur, he’s definitely not a
bad guy. Far from it, he’s very warm and
welcome and very dedicated to trying to find a cure for his people. Much like Elder Lyons back south, Ashur wants
to help people. He is even distasteful
of the idea of slavery, but has given in to it in order to build up his forces. He got married, had a child by his wife…
His child, named Marie, who is completely immune to the
mutations of the Pitt.
And herein, we have the moral dilemma I spoke of. This is a child, barely a year old, and she is the "cure" that Wernher spoke of. You can talk with her parents, and learn that
while they haven’t developed a cure yet, they are very hopeful. But there’s nothing definite yet…something
that Wernher won’t listen to, should you choose not to take the child to him.
But that’s where I think this DLC really shines and I think represents some
good theming within the Fallout
universe.
In the end, the Pitt poses – at least to my mind- a simple question: What is better? Hope or freedom?
There is no guarantee that a cure can be developed from Marie
that much is made clear to us. But
Sandra, her mother, remains hopeful as the research is proving positive. It’s even said that Marie is their little
miracle, their hope for the future of the Pitt.
Would she be the same thing in the hands of Wernher and his cohorts? If
Wernher were given that child and Ashur killed, his regime broken, would the
Pitt be better off for it? Make no mistake, Ashur’s system is rather
deplorable, but he makes clear that he has no intention of letting it continue
on.
So, do the people of the Pitt suffer a little while longer,
whilst Ashur and Sandra attempt to synthesize a cure? Or do they rebel, take
back their freedom…and almost assuredly destroy that hope?
We don’t get an answer in game, of course. The player is made a lieutenant of either
Ashur or Wernher (depending on who ends up in charge when the smoke clears),
gets access to a handy little ammo press that turns scrap metal into pretty
much any ammunition you’d want, Ashur’s power armor (not too bad, very gritty
and beat up, and thus indicative of where it has been for the past two
decades), and can come and go as they please from the Pitt. But, in the end, the fate of so many people
rests in the hands of the Lone Wanderer. Both sides come with a price, but just which is the lesser of two evils?
Hope or freedom? And I think, in a way, it’s reflective of
the whole of Fallout. The world is a crapsack one, the glass half
full at best (and even that is a
stretch), and there are so few things that are good in it. Is the world so
jaded that even hope is something that people in such a situation would cast
away for freedom of self? On the other side of the coin, is it right to enslave
people by hold the bright lure of such hope before them?
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| Dawn over a city of free...or slaves? |
It’s a question that only we can answer…for better or for
worse.
The Pitt is available from Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios and is available for download for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
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