Fallout 3 expansion packs - game-breaking?

[Istanbul]

So, I just got Game of the Year edition for Fallout 3, loaded up the expansions, and started playing. Birthed myself out of Vault 101, went to Megaton, disarmed the bomb, got through Super Duper Mart. Y'know, the very beginning content. Got me to about level 5 or so.

So, just on a lark, I decided to do the Anchorage mission. I wander on down, get shoved into the simulation, clean house. Wasn't even particularly difficult. (Got killed once because I got sloppy, whoops, my bad.)

I enter the vault, start grabbing gear. (They DID say to take whatever I wanted.) They all turn on me, I blow them away, grab all their loot. Now I'm level 7, wandering around with DR 45 armor and an amazing helmet, a Gauss rifle, a minigun, scads of ammo, power armor all day long for when I want it...I'm basically armed to the teeth. I can walk up and *punch* bad guys to death if I really feel like it.

I guess my question is...is this normal? It feels like a fair portion of the game's challenge got sucked out of it, and I'm basically trying to catch up to the point where the enemies will put up a fight again. Did I do this content too soon? Is it just badly-designed? Anyone with some perspective on what's really happened would be quite welcome.

 

[voetballeeuw]

I don't think so. I played through Anchorage to get the Chinese Stealth Armor and the sword (I had a Stealth/melee character). I think you just started it to early. You can always up the difficulty if you want more of a challenge.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

It is very easy to turn Fallout 3 into proper EZ-mode if you know what you are doing. If you use Broken Steel, you can have some problems around level 15 when the Feral Ghoul Reavers and Super Mutant Overlords start appearing, but that's a quickly passed phase. The deal with Fo3 is the same as with Oblivion, namely the level scaling that keeps enemies at your level.

 

[Danceofmasks]

The only thing that really breaks the game is the chinese stealth suit.
Everything else is nice, but isn't particularly ridiculous.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Yeah, Anchorage is usually my first stop out of the womb in Fallout 3.

Free power armor training, best sniper rifle, and the Chinese Stealth Armor, my pride and joy.

Broken Steel's Tesla Cannon can be just as bad.

 

[Istanbul]

So, if I'm reading this thread right:

1. Fallout 3 gets easy fast, but the Anchorage quest makes it super-fast.
2. I should crank up the difficulty.
3. The Pitt or Mothership Zeta should provide a boost in difficulty as well.

Sound about right?

 

[mr_pants66]

i did the same thing and it got un-fun very fast so i started over but this time i beat the game then i did the DLC pack missions (an i upped the difficulty) it was better after that

 

[Netrigan]

Same is true of Vegas if you play Casual, since by the time you hit the strip you'll have at least one game breaking companion. Hardcore mode will at least force you to pay attention to them at the expense of having to fiddle with your inventory every five minutes (that got way too tedious for me). And since they don't steal XP, it becomes second nature to let them do the fighting.

And now that you have GOTY installed, be prepared for that to happen in Fallout 3. Your companions level with you so they become insanely tough. Don't get XP from their kills, so you have to be quick if you want to level up. Great when you hit the level cap and fighting people is pointless.

 

[Spark Ignition]

fallout 3 isnt a difficult game. If you're even the slightest bit careful you can accumulate loads of weapons and ammo without anyone turning a blind eye, recruit some extremely powerful companions and run around the wasteland resolving everything with a shotgun. On Very Hard Mode. So I tend to roleplay it a bit to make it more challenging and thus interesting, deliberately goofing up and losing supplies/pissing off companions at critical moments.
God Vault 87, by myself in leather armour, trying to sneak past super mutant overlords (cheers Broken Steel!) was one of the scariest most tense sections of any game I've played recently! But it needed some help.

So I dunno what my point is here... self-sabotage leads to challenging gameplay?