Fallout 3, Mothership Zeta DLC Review
August 4, 2009 - There I was, minding my own business, searching for scraps among the wastes. I received a radio signal that sounded like garbled speech, it was undecipherable.
Straining to hear the message I checked my Pip-Boy and noticed a new co-ordinate, I decided to investigate. After trekking across the capitol wasteland I found a weird looking spacecraft. As I began digging around for information and supplies I began floating upwards, surrounded by a strange light. Then darkness.
Upon awakening on Mothership Zeta you are confined in a cell with a strange woman. It’s quite clear you’re being held prisoner and after watching another human being taken away in a cranes claw, you know it’s time to escape and find your gear. Stripped to your underwear, your newly found comrade suggests an escape plan and then it’s time to get out.
Once you’re out of your cell, it’s clear “you ain’t in Kansas anymore” Aliens are charging you and swinging electric batons. Now you’re able to explore the ship and you’ve found your gear, you happen upon a little girl who knows the ship like the back of her hand. She aids you in escaping and along your journey you will find plenty of other new side characters, each of which is an interesting addition. This is mainly due to the fact that they are all from different periods in time and have been frozen in stasis.
Along with these new characters your ride through space is a relatively mundane affair. As with most things in the Fallout universe everything just feels like re-skinned versions of enemies from the wastes. The aliens, whilst looking very ‘alien’ they are no different to raiders or enclave troops.
The same principle can be added to the environments, although you know that you’re on an alien ship, you’d never guess. Among the endless winding corridors there are only a few moments where you can see that you’re hovering above the Earth, so most of the times you just feel like you’re wandering cleaner versions of bases on Earth. There are one or two standout moments which really pull you away from Earth, which I won’t spoil.
Alongside the repetitive corridor traipsing, there is a number of mindless fetch quest style missions to be completed. These are relatively simple and each one feels as if no thought was put in to it, just a voice in your ear ordering you to ‘go here, do that’ and after some of the quests experienced on Earth, you do feel slightly short changed. After a time, the feeling of excitement from being in space wears off and everything starts to feel like a chore.
While the plot leaves you empty, nuances in the environment are great. From jets of steam, neon lights flashing, strange alien foods to keep you alive, experiment chambers and of course the alien weaponry. Unfortunately although each of these looks great, they are all pretty useless in terms of interactivity. This can even be applied to the guns. Each DLC pack for Fallout 3 has brought great new weapons to your arsenal and after the hype of the alien blaster that could already be found, there was some excitement to what would be found in Zeta.
Whilst wandering around the mothership both of the guns are pretty useless and other guns from DLC packs can often achieve one shot kills on the aliens. Back on Earth however, these guns are deadly, not very helpful if you’ve already finished every other part of content.
Most of the issues I have with this DLC are cosmetic, the action is as good as ever and there are some genuinely entertaining moments to be had. An example of which would be random buttons that teleport radscorpions and other wildlife on board just so the aliens can test their weaponry.
Another would be freeing a cowboy from stasis and communicating with him and using him as back up. All in all, mothership Zeta was a great idea in principle, but it feels rushed in practice.
With Mothership Zeta being the last of the ‘announced’ DLC from Bethesda, it’s a shame the Fallout 3 experience ends on a low note.
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