Remember Fallout 3's Awful Ending? The Remaster Might Not Include It
A whole new generation of Fallout fans is going to experience Fallout 3 and New Vegas when the remasters drop. Bethesda has confirmed that both of these classics are getting glossy re-releases, and if they’re anything like Oblivion Remastered, they’ll come packaged with all of their respective DLC.
However, for Fallout 3, that has major implications for the story’s ending. That is because Fallout 3’s original ending is only accessible if you don’t have the Broken Steel DLC installed - something that will presumably be impossible in Fallout 3 Remastered.
Will Bethesda Find A Way To Preserve Fallout 3’s Launch-Day Ending?
For those of you out of the loop, I will give you a fairly spoilery rundown of what this is all about.
During the last main story quest in Fallout 3, you are tasked with activating Project Purity, which will provide clean drinking water to the Capital Wasteland. However, the console you need to get to is in a chamber full of radiation, so going in there is a suicide mission.
From this point, it’s clear you have to send someone in there. Your choices are:
- Go in there and turn it on yourself
- Tell a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, Sarah Lyons, to go in
- Ask one of your optional companions - three of which are completely immune to radiation - to go in your place
Now, it seems like there is an obvious answer here, right? Sure, RPGs are for roleplaying, but I think most of us will be roleplaying someone who thinks that asking someone who is immune to radiation to go into an irradiated room for a few seconds is the best outcome.
Bethesda clearly saw this coming, because every optional companion actually has a response for being asked to go into the chamber for you. And in the base game, all of them said no. Yes, all of them.
Infamously, Fawkes - a Super Mutant - would only turn you down because it is your “destiny” to go in there and die for no reason. “I would not rob you of that,” he says as he worms his way out of a mild inconvenience that would save the wasteland and the lives of two people right in front of him.
Players hated this, as it felt like we were arbitrarily railroaded into a decision Bethesda wanted us to make. Worse yet, it felt like we were punished for coming up with a better idea - an idea that the devs clearly knew we’d have, as they went to the effort of having the companions refuse to go and do it for us.
In response, Bethesda completely changed this ending after launch. The Broken Steel DLC made it possible to keep playing after the credits rolled, and made it so radiation-proof companions wouldn’t refuse to stand in a room for a few seconds and activate Project Purity. But this is only with Broken Steel - as I can attest to when I played for the first time in 2015, you still get the crummy original ending if you don’t have the DLC.
That brings us back to Fallout 3 Remastered. This will almost definitely come with all of the DLC packaged together as default, making it part of the base game. If so, there might not be any way to uninstall Broken Steel - which would presumably make that original ending completely inaccessible in Fallout 3 Remastered.
I am sure no one will miss it, but it is odd to think that such a huge part of Fallout 3 will be completely absent from its remaster. I suppose it could be tweaked so that we have to pass a speech check with the likes of Fawkes and Charon to get them to activate Project Purity, so it’s still there in some form. But we’re yet to see how many changes they are willing to make to this new release.
In any case, we’re still waiting to get our first look at Fallout 3 Remastered. We have no idea when it will be with us, only that it is in the works.
Fallout 3 Like Follow Followed Action RPG Systems Released October 28, 2008 ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs Developer(s) Bethesda Game Studios Publisher(s) Bethesda Softworks Engine Gamebryo Franchise FalloutWHERE TO PLAY
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