Fallout 3: The Pitt

must have for steel city residents

The dust has settled, the bugs have been ironed out (or at least swept under the carpet)- now is the time to experience Fallout 3: The Pitt. In case you've been living in a cave for the past year (which coincidentally is the starting point of the franchise), Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic RPG with its most recent expansion taking place in our very own steel city. The extra content (about 4 hours of game-play) can be downloaded for $9.99, or 800 Microsoft points, for those willing to traverse the cumbersome "Games for Windows Live" marketplace.

Fallout 3: The Pitt begins the way most of our days begin in present time. We dress in slave clothes and push a hand cart through the Fort Pit Tunnel. Well at least with the hand cart there isn't any traffic. The city has been overrun by raiders who now operate a slave trade to keep the city running and populated in the face of a dire radiation plague. The plague is slowly turning people into feral ghouls called "Trogs", and the slaves are hoping to start an uprising using the cure for the plague as leverage. The first ten minutes of the game are worth the ten bucks alone, as you traverse a devastated yellow bridge, covered with land mines, wild dogs, and snipers ready to pick off anyone who approaches the looming city. Creepy doesn't begin to describe the feeling you get when looking at the charred husk of a 40 story building and saying, "Oh, that's where I pick my girlfriend up from work." The waters of the Monongahela still run beneath the bridge, but even glancing over the edge will expose you to high levels of radiation.

Of course the game finds a reason to take away any items you enter the city with, but the setback really helps establish some of the elements that make the Fallout 3 series great, namely- scavenging and swindling. There comes a point in every Fallout game where you've got the power armor, the laser rifle, and enough skill points to turn your enemies into cowering buffoons; whenever I hit this mark my interest in doing quests begins to wain, as my only reason is mechanically advancing the storyline, not because I actually need anything from the quest-giver. Being stripped of everything allows moments of strategy or diplomacy to feel more important.

The story unfolds in a non-linear fashion, whose highlights include pit-fighting, dicing trogs with the new melee weapon, the "Auto-Axe" (a chainsaw built from old car parts), and a disturbing back story involving an old steel mill and the "dangers of replacing humans with machines." The Pitt has been praised for the morally gray choices facing your character, and indeed, the story is the highlight of the experience. Not only do these ambiguous choices make the game feel more true to life, but they enhance the feeling of isolation experienced by the wasteland wanderer. If I was able to carve out a happy little niche in every city I visited, I might not feel the importance of finishing the story, or continuing to explore the wasteland. The cornerstone of the franchise has always been that the wanderer does not belong to the outside world; but after living and fighting in it's harsh conditions, the hero is unable to return to the cloistered home from which he set out. When I left Pittsburgh in Fallout 3 I was somewhat jaded, and despite being able to return to the city any time I wanted, I felt a desire to distance myself from the things I had done with what I thought were the city's best interests in mind.

Anyone with an X-box 360 or a PC capable of running the game should pick up this expansion, if for no other reason than seeking out Pittsburgh's famous landmarks rendered in a truly decrepit and broken world. The compelling story and amusing new weaponry will simply be icing in the cake, or fries on the salad if you like.