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Fallout 3 DLC and Games For Windows Live Woes
A reader writes with news that the Operation Anchorage downloadable content for Fallout 3 has been released. Rock, Paper, Shotgun details the extensive difficulties encountered by users of Games for Windows Live while trying to locate and install the new content. This is the first in a series of three DLC releases, and they are exclusive to the PC and Xbox 360. The last, Broken Steel, will allow players to continue within the game once the main story is finished. Unfortunately, Bethesda apparently doesn't plan to patch that ability into the PS3 version.
According to one of the comments in linked article, the manager for Games for windows has been recently fired.
Im glad to see someone taking the fallout for such a mess!
Sorry, Ill go back to my corner now.
Make sure that hidden files are shown in Windows Explorer, check the settings! Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Xlive\DLC Vista: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive\DLC Copy the files to: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3\Data (change the drive letter if necessary) You have to use the launcher to select the mod: click on "DATA FILES" and check the box next to Anchorage.esm.
Firefox 3.1 decided to post HTML formatted even if I chose Plain Old Text, so here it goes, again... Make sure that hidden files are shown in Windows Explorer, check the settings! Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Xlive\DLC Vista: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive\DLC Copy the files to: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3\Data (change the drive letter if necessary) You have to use the launcher to select the mod: click on "DATA FILES" and check the box next to Anchorage.esm.
What I don't understand about all the end-game whining is that the first 2 Fallout games had an ending, too. It should come as no surprise this one ends. Although, I don't agree with you that's it's a well composed ending.
I'm starting to be a bit tired of all the "games for windows", "rockstar whatever club", "funny happy spend-five-minutes-filling-info superfun club".
It's starting to ressemble the forced trailers in movies, the "don't copy or I kill you" warnings, and all the other crap that only pushes people more and more towards downloading movies and cracking games.
The school of thought based on countering the flaw "people won't like it" with "fuck'em they'll buy anyway" must die, now that "they won't necessarily buy".
Maybe your character was literally vaporized. Mine chickened out, thank you very much.
And no, it's not ridiculous. What's ridiculous is that there is a radiation filled chamber, there's a guy who is immune to the radiation standing next to you, but he refuses to do the deed. My hope is that the DLC will fix that little problem, thus enabling you to continue on your way without also being a douche.
I'm starting to be a bit tired of all the "games for windows", "rockstar whatever club", "funny happy spend-five-minutes-filling-info superfun club".
Absolutely. This kind of bullshit, combined with aggressive DRM, is turning the first twenty, thirty, or more minutes of 'gaming' on the PC into an experience equivalent to filing tax returns.
All the top dogs in the industry are barking on about piracy being their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is that if you take the FUN out of an entertainment product, it fails, utterly, in its most crucial objective. The clue is in the word entertainment.
You can remove enjoyment from a product in a number of ways: directly, by making mediocre games or by forcing you to jump through hoops before you can play them... but also indirectly: by acting like such an asshole that nobody can relax long enough to get into your game.
Seriously... if you went out to the local bowling alley, and the guy on the desk said 'You're a fucking thief, and a liar, and we'll be watching you. Here's your shoes and have fun!' ... I would not be having fun at the bowling alley.
Even on the off chance that I didn't leave immediately, I'd spend eight frames thinking 'What a fucking asshole' instead of getting into the bowling.
If you have DRM that makes my purchase into a rental, you don't get my money. That's a given. But there's a bigger problem than that:
I no longer care enough to pirate most of these games. They're the work of assholes.
If they can't be bothered fixing obvious bugs in the original game, why would I want to add further complications and bugs on top of that?
... and then they built the supercollider.
DLC Fallout 3 Operation Anchorage
http://www.mininova.org/get/2226613
What I don't understand about all the end-game whining is that the first 2 Fallout games had an ending, too.
Actually, the 1st and 2nd fallout game allow you to keep playing after finishing the main quest rolling the credits, etc. They did warn that somethings may behave unexpectedly. However, fallout3 is just a great big voice over, then credits screen, then back to the main menu. Thus the fuss about the end game. HTH
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Despite such obvious bugs, many people loved the Fallout 3 and would gladly pay for more.
This is like Linux or DRM-free games or non-Internet Explorer browsers, etc - enough people don't care that many companies can go on just fine ignoring those markets.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
IIRC, it was possible to continue after the end of Fallout 2.
Although, I don't agree with you that's it's a well composed ending.
'So, whoever goes in there gets a lethal dose of radiation, eh? Hey, Fawkes, job for you... what do you mean no, you were happy enough to get the GECK out for me... My fucking destiny? RAGE...'
Next play through, I swear, I switch on the incinerators in Fawkes' cell.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Seriously... if you went out to the local bowling alley, and the guy on the desk said 'You're a fucking thief, and a liar, and we'll be watching you. Here's your shoes and have fun!' ... I would not be having fun at the bowling alley.
The guy at the desk also have to tell you to wait 20-30 mins, even though all the lanes are free, because that's how long it takes to fire up a lane.
Seriously... if you went out to the local bowling alley, and the guy on the desk said 'You're a fucking thief, and a liar, and we'll be watching you. Here's your shoes and have fun!' ... I would not be having fun at the bowling alley.
The guy at the desk also have to tell you to wait 20-30 mins, even though all the lanes are free, because that's how long it takes to fire up a lane.
And then he says 'Yeah, we're just rigging security cameras to make sure you don't play more than ten frames, or get any redos, or let a friend share your go... (whispers) or bring their own shoes. We know you're a fucking cheat, and a liar, see. This is for your own good. If we didn't spend millions on our high tech security system, and pass the cost directly on to our customers, whilst simultaneously alienating them, and disenfranchising them from the whole bowling experience... well... if we didn't do that we might go out of business.'
This is not about Windows Live! and not Fallout 3, but still somewhat on topic.
All the games I had for the Amiga 500 were, of course, pirated (I did not even know you could actually BUY games). Then I switched to PC and started to buy my first games (Tie Fighter was the first one, I think).
For years the I played a lot of pirated games and some bought ones (as my money allowed; you could say noone lost anything since I could not afford more than I had already bought).
Then came the time of 10Mbit-Ethernet-LAN Parties and basically everything I had was "for free" but as years went, I started to get less and less copied music, movies, and games. Up to the point where I for over half a decade only had bought and no copied games. I was happy with that but then came DRM.
I bought Mass Effect, even if it caused some pain in my stomach, I also bought Fallout 3, which I felt a bit bad about. Each time I thought "Why am I supporting it". I would have bought GTA 4 quite some time ago... but the DRM and other crap scared me away.
Now, after nearly a decade of "basically no pirating" and some five years of "virtually no pirating at all" I'm back at the point where I really consider just downloading some cracked version of GTA 4.
Great achievement, large publishers. It's a bit like I'm 12 again and sit in front of my Amiga, asking myself why anyone could even think of spending the saved pocket money on games... it's not that I could not find other industries which will gladly take *the amount of cash I have available to spend on fun-stuff*.
Last games I tried on my computer - Civilization which brought with it some sort of DRM that has screwed up my computer since. Sins of a Solar Empire that wouldn't update or register for me, I get through to customer service and they tell me I need to do the Stardock thing, no thanks. Plenty of games I've wanted to buy but DRM and being treated like a criminal - no thanks and screw you guys too.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I'll wait for them to release all 3 DLC modules on a single disc that I can pick up for 10-20 bucks. I realize it means I won't get to play them for another year, but that also means that the numerous bugs and problems people have been encountering should be ironed out. I thoroughly enjoyed the original game, and I still fire it up every few days to run around and discover new things, but taking a break from it for a while isn't such a bad thing...
This guy's the limit!
However, fallout3 is just a great big voice over, then credits screen, then back to the main menu.
Actually, it's a string of 6 or 7 short voiceovers. That's how they can have a thousand different endings (or whatever it is). I've read through a bunch of forums and comments about the ending, and for some reason a lot of people don't seem to get that. I personally thought it was fairly poorly done since each little segment has a musical swell. Doing that once or twice is fine, but after 4 or 5 it gets really old and makes it feel very unnatural. Too many swells negates the effect, IMHO.
This guy's the limit!
The problem with Fallout 3's ending was that it was short and stupid.
Close your eyes if you don't want to read a spoilers
The first bit of stupidity is how you die (if you go in). Recognizing that I was about to jump into some heavy duty radiation I dutifully jumped into my rad suit, popped some radaway and rad X, and pumped up on rad resistance. I walked in and watched the old Geiger counter slowly tick up. Awesome. I can stick around here for a good 5 min before anything really bad happens... I hit the button... and the game tells me that I am dead.
WTF.
The other problem is that the story is surprisingly short and narrow. Fallout 3 isn't as "big" as Fallout 1 or 2, but that is ok. The problem is that the story makes it artificially short. In the original Fallout games, the story would lead you to most major locals. You could explore on your own, but you could trust the story to lead you to the highlights. You didn't have to stick around and do all that there was to do, but you knew it was there. In Fallout 3 no such thing happened. The story basically takes you to two towns and a couple of glorified dungeons. If you follow the story you miss out on a massive hunk of content.
The story never gives you much of a chance to breathe and enjoy the world. In the original Fallouts, getting dumped into a town clueless was a pretty common occurrence. You often took breaks from the story because you had to. In Fallout 3, the story is "urgent" and you feel compelled keep up with it. If you do this, you will burn through the thin and shallow story quickly.
Finally, the story sucked. The world wasn't half bad. I personally thought that it felt "emptier" (and not in a good way) than the originals. Characters said less, the world was less complex, the factions more dull, the personalities more transparent, etc. Other than being pretty, the world was shallow. The story made it worse. The story was extremely shallow. You get a taste of what it might be in the opening scenes... but it falls flat on its face.
It is probably unfair to compare, but I know that my response to "winning" the original Fallout was profound. To this day, I still have an emotional response to the song they play as you walk away from the vault with Dogmeat. I can safely say that Fallout was the first game where the ending made me really feel anything and swallow hard a few times. The ending to Fallout 3? Eh. I was annoyed that the game declared me dead despite being basically invulnerable to radiation and annoyed that the game ended with me seeing only a fraction of the world.
I am not trashing on Fallout 3... it is great for what it is. I had a good time and I am glad I played, it is just that Fallout 3 is no Fallout.
I have the Xbox 360 version and on Tuesday I bought the first DLC. I then spent nearly two hours trying to find the stupid thing because what I read online said to go west from the factory when in fact I only needed to go a short distance south. Had I not read that, I would have probably found it on my own in five or ten minutes.
That said, I've been more than happy with both the original game and the expansion. I don't feel that the expansion does the game justice as it's too linear and doesn't quite have the same feel, but I feel like they pull it off because it's a simulation of something else so it still fits. I've had the game lockup a few times and I've gotten stuck three times. The last time I was stuck happened within the expansion and it was when I cut the corner on a walkway and stepped off the beaten path. My character could turn around but could not jump nor move in any direction. I reloaded from my last save and all was fine. I've learned when playing Fallout 3 you need to save early and often and I do just that.
I realize from reading a lot of material concerning the game that there is literally a shitload of bugs in this game but I wonder if that has anything to do with the sheer size of the game. I've never played anything else that allows you so much freedom. Games like HL2 are nice and long but very linear. It has to be easier to test a linear game. In Fallout you have so many options, so many ways you can do things. Do you follow the guidebook and do things in order or do you just wander all over the place? And is there even really an order to it at all? You have so many sidequests and encounters that a huge number of variables need to be considered when testing the game.
Honestly I think the game rocks. It's immensely fun to play and I've logged close to 40 hours in game thus far. Are there bugs and problems? Sure. But don't you find that in nearly every game these days? Can Bethesda really be expected to find every single bug? They worked on this for years. It's massive. At some point they need to turn a profit to stay in business. How many testers and how many hours would it take to test every possible scenario? To do so would be crazy. They test most of it and hope they get all of the major bugs.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Uh, no, they don't. Apparently, you didn't read through enough. They PROMISED that the game would have this, like Fallout 1 and 2 did, so maybe that's where you're getting confused. But when the game actually came out, nope!
I'd get your preferred method of killing ready then...
Just to see what happened, I did it with a ton of rad-aways and rad-x's.
I keeled over with 0 rads in my system at full health.
Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't need to be registered to play. Just update. It's also DRM free. The registration/regular updates are the benefit to purchasing.
And if Civilization screwed up your machine, why are you blaming Sins of a Solar Empire / Stardock?
Fallout 2 had, at minimum, 2 voiceovers for pretty much every town you visited. New Reno definitely had more. So, quick calculation in my head... maybe 25-30 potential bits of voice over for the ending?
Way more than F3's--what, 4 or 5?
Of course, it helps that F1 and F2 had more than 3 towns.
Actually, the 1st didn't allow you to keep playing after finishing the main quest ... or, well, if you were quick on the trigger, you might be able to play on for a 1/2 minute.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
I didn't even try that hard to protect myself, and I was taking on less radiation that I'd get from standing in a puddle.
Add in the ridiculous, "I'm going to kill you and myself to stop you from forcing me to turn on the machine that I was about to turn on!" scene earlier in the game (which jarred me so far out of the story that I never really got back in) and you've got a big steaming pile of fail. If it had 1/2 as much other stuff to do as F1 and F2--especially stuff that felt important--it might not matter, but it doesn't, so it does.
That's interesting, because the ending I got has some pretty big differences from the 5 other endings I watched on YouTube. If there are 2 or 3 options for each of those 6 or 7 segments (which it certainly appears there are), then it easily gets up to over a thousand endings.
This guy's the limit!
Fallout 3 is on Steam, why isn't the DLC on it?
If I paid for the PS3 version of Fallout 3 only to find out I'm not going to get the same treatment as those who own it on PC or 360, I'd be suing the living shit out of Bethesda for anti-competitive practices and bait-and-switch. Note that the *MICROSOFT* systems get the Broken Steel DLC the *SONY* system will not.
This is BULLSHIT.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't have a 360, so it would have had to be PS3 or PC for me.
Sounds like they focused mostly on the 360 version to the detriment of the other platforms. I never played the old Fallouts, so no big loss for me!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Are we going to see full massive expanions, or just these three pieces of DLC? I love Fallout, but I'm thinking of waiting to see if they release a Game of the Year edition like Morrowind and Oblivion.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
At the end of Fallout 3 your character is literally vaporized,
No (s)he isn't? (S)he's just presumed dead.
It looked to me like I had melted into a puddle; as if I had been hit by a plasma rifle.
So many possibilities wasted; ghoulification for one.
I am a diehard PC gamer, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I now read reviews first and foremost to find out what manner of fucktard-inspired DRM and compulsory tracking/on-line registration is involved. I also return games which contain these things but do not say that they do on the box (e.g. I recently returned Company of Heroes because if it detects an Internet connection it phones home to Relic to let them know you're playing... no, not ok).
I only wish reviewers included specific and exhaustive details of the DRM and on-line 'features' of every game they reviewed. It is more important than whether they give it an 8.0 or an 8.5.
If you haven't already, check out Good Old Games: DRM-free PC classics, re-released with XP and Vista compatibility.
Read Pynchon.
Now that's perseverance and dedication to completing the mission!! :-) *absolutely no offense intended*
And yes, I agree that something as simple as posting a comment on /. can be trying on occasion.
Oh yes, and many thanks for the info!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I now read reviews first and foremost to find out what manner of fucktard-inspired DRM and compulsory tracking/on-line registration is involved.
I only wish reviewers included specific and exhaustive details of the DRM and on-line 'features' of every game they reviewed.
Along those lines, here's something I've been wondering about lately. With all the bitching that people do about DRM on PC games (and I've done my share of it, too), why isn't there some kind of site that lets you search for a game, and it'll tell you what kind of DRM/copy protection/other crap is included with it?
Before I buy games, I want to know if they have version x.y of SecuROM or StarForce or just require a SN be entered or a disc check or have a code wheel or make you look up the fourteenth word of the third paragraph of the twenty-ninth page of appendix H of the manual or install a keylogger that reports all your credit card data back to EA or whatever other crap might come along with it. I'd also like to be able to easily find out if a game doesn't have those things, like stuff from Stardock, and if there's a crack or patch to remove it (or preferably not install it in the first place) for ones that do, whether through GameCopyWorld or the developers, or maybe the Greatest Hits version doesn't include it in the first place. Not links to cracks or torrents of the games or even reviews or anything, just a quick and easy way to find out whether the publisher is evil or not.
Basically, it seems obvious to me that something like this should/would exist and be useful to a lot of people, judging by a lot of comments I see on here, but if it does, I can't find it, and if it doesn't, I'm not sure why. I would say I'd do it myself, but I don't have enough of the relevant data to start anything useful, and I don't trust my rather rusty web fu to do it right myself at the moment...
Anyone? Bueller?
Thanks!
... and then I restored from my last saved game, and went off exploring the rest of the world instead of beginning the final mission of the game. At 20+ hours of additional questing, I still simply have that one final mission to do to end the game whenever I decide to do so.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I did the same. It is different though when you slam into the ending full stop and have to back out know the game is "done". If they are going to settle for a bad story, the least they could have done was spread it around. Of course, another issue is that the level cap makes exploration far less rewarding. When you are sitting there with all the weapons, level capped off, and more money than you can spend, the only thing left to explore are the sights and sounds. While Fallout 3 has a lot of fun little niches, it also has a lot of places where it looks like they were going to add something and yanked it half out and half done. The entire northern section of the map is filled with areas where 'something' is happening, but you can murder everyone there (you never get an option to talk) and not find a single document explaining WTF is going on.
Fallout 3 is a good game for what it is, I just hope that they take some lessons from it... and for the love of god, I hope that they hire someone who can write next time. The fact that that Fallout world is awesome an interesting saved this game from its wafer thin poorly written plot.
This site has a good list of securom games - not sure about other forms of DRM though.
Read Pynchon.
Thanks. That's a useful start, and it's interesting to see who uses it on how many games. EA is apparently the worst, to no one's surprise. The link to this page on there is good, too, which includes a bunch of StarForce and SafeDisc stuff, among other things.
The level cap seemed designed for those who play through the main plot directly.
If you explore at all, you'll hit the level cap way too soon. I miss the old D&D days where leveling up took a long time, but kids these days ... :-)
Anyway, I just looked at the trophies for doing your 'career' as each good, bad and neutral characters as an excuse to start over and explore the places I hadn't gone the first time.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)