Last update, we were given the choice between helping the slaves bargain, by stealing the cure for a disease that is epidemic in the Pitt, for their freedom, or helping Ashur and the raiders stop their rebellion and taking out their leader, Wernher.
Of course, Wernher completely failed to mention to us that the cure in question, is a baby.
Instead of giving the baby to the ill-equipped slaves, who are probably not very knowledgeable in that particular area of science is probably a bad idea, so we decide to help Ashur.
Our goal now is talk to to Midea to find Wernher. For some reason, Wernher finally has chosen now to actually show his face.
We walk out the door, and you can already hear the chaos that's going on. Raiders are fighting with the slaves, who are all armed with auto-axes.
How the fuck did the slaves manage to hide all these weapons underneath the raiders nose, and mobilize in the time it took us to enter and leave Haven? The guards must be blind.
We avoid killing the slaves because we're playing a good character and not only are we trying to stay in character, you get bad karma for defending yourself against the people armed with chainsaws trying to kill you.
I know the game has only been out for a couple of weeks, tops, but I'm already getting bad flashbacks about the last level of Human Revolution when playing this part. That final part of the game was a pain in the ass on a pacifist playthrough. (I wasn't on a pacifist playthrough, but I wasn't playing a shoot everyone in sight playthrough, either.)
The raiders can take the slaves pretty easy, as well, the raiders are armed with guns that can gun down the slaves before they can even get into range with their wimpy, broken auto-axes.
You know, this all could have been avoided if the raiders and slaves were a bit more sensible.
An impressive battle at the very least. Uptown is a bit weird in it's layout but it's a cool idea I suppose.
Now it's time to confront Midea and ask her about Wernher's location.
"You're not the first to win their freedom and forget where they came from."
I didn't come from here though, you idiot.
"Did you know the cure is actually a baby?"
"Of course I knew, you dolt. I also knew it's the only chance we had of finding a cure and ransoming our freedom."
I hate how the PC can't call them out on this, and tell them that by endangering the kid, they're endangering their only chance for a cure and by extension, their only chance for freedom.
"If they ever find a cure, do you think they'll share it with us? Of course not. Why waste medicine on people you'll just work to death, anyway?"
"If you want to live, you'll tell me where Wernher is hiding."
"[SUCCESS] Fine, if it'll get you out of the way, go check under the blast furnace in the steelyard. Look for a rooftop door in the southwest. It's got a blue light, you can't miss it. But Wernher will put you in your place."
"Your riot isn't going to change anything. Except getting the slaves killed..."
"They'd rather die for freedom than die working for the raiders."
Forget this then, we know Wernher's location and we can find him now. Note that for some strange reason, if you have the Child at Heart perk, you can convince Midea to see the error of her ways. Why is it Child at Heart? I have no idea, presumably it has to do with the baby, but isn't Child at Heart only meant to work on kids in the game? Is it implying that Midea has the mental capacity of a 9 year old?
That might be true actually.
Some of the slaves are still working though... Odd.
There's still some gunned down slaves at the outside of the Mill, so something went on over here.
As soon as you walk through the door, a dozen slaves rush at you with auto-axes. Fighting them would be pretty easy, but would take a huge chunk out of our karma and be rather out of character for Lily, so instead we just run to the door to the Steelyard.
The raiders are actually pretty outnumbered here. Let's not stick around.
The raider behind the desk is probably shitting his pants.
They chase us out of the Mill, I wonder if they follow us to the Steelyard...
Nope, they don't. Phew. No more pacifism by running past enemies in this game at least. That's what sucks about pacifism playthroughs in many RPG's most of the time you just have to run away and hope not to get killed in the process. Deus Ex and Human Revolution both give you useful non-lethal combat options which is nice, except for Human Revolution's aforementioned "Oh god I'm out of P.E.P.S. ammo and I have to run away from enemies now" final level.
Still plenty of trogs in the Steelyard, even though we cleared it out on a previous update. These things really aren't much of a threat at all though, more of a minor nuisance.
Wernher's hideout is right by an area we already passed, so it should be easy getting there.
Oops. So much for pacifism.
Not shown: Me running all the way back here from the entrance of the Mill, because killing the guard makes Wernher instantly hostile for some stupid reason.
Wernher has a makeshift lab set up in here, but the place doesn't look at that clean and well suited for experiments.
"...Wait. Where's the cure? Did you lose it? Where is that little bastard?"
"Your plans are over, Wernher. Ashur knows everything."
"And you just went along with, did you? To hell with everyone else but you, huh? Here, I thought that you of all people would understand that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to make a difference."
That's what I'm doing right now. These conversations piss me off, as you don't get many dialogue options at all to justify why you did this, and the game just gives you "I'm not kidnapping a kid" rather than "It's for the greater good, etc."
"But you're just a coward, afraid of making a choice. Afraid of changing the world!"
"[Speech, 57%] One chance, Wernher. Leave now, and never come back."
"[SUCCESS] Sure, fine. Obviously, you've joined with Ashur and I think you've got a bright future as a lackey. You really do."
I'd rather be Ashur's lackey than
your lackey.
"But you know what? Fuck this city, and fuck the raiders, fuck the slaves, and fuck you too, fucker. I'm gone."
How eloquent. Here is where the whole grey morality thing of The Pitt falls apart. Wernher really is just an asshole trying to use the slaves as an excuse to gain power over the Pitt for himself. If you leave him in charge, the slaves are still slaves. Slaves without food (unless you count trog meat) or protection, who will probably be wiped out by a random group of raiders walking by. I don't think they have the proper scientific knowledge of to get the cure from the baby either. The slaves aren't even very sympathetic either. Helping Wernher and the slaves effectively kills everyone, not just the raiders.
Yet somehow, after that, killing Wernher gives bad karma.
Fuck this game.
It's so hard to resist shooting Wernher in the back, but that's not something our character would do. We're a lawful good "only shoot when necessary" right?
One has to wonder if the wasteland would be a better place without people like Wernher though and if he's still around, there's nothing stopping him from pulling this shit again.
So this is their lab. Not impressive, and in the middle of a polluted Steelyard.
There's one more thing to check out in the Steelyard before returning to Ashur for our reward. The power plant. Why not? This DLC is short enough as it is.
The slave attacks us on the way out. I shoot her, and she runs off.
It's still counts if she isn't dead! :V
The power plant is the only other location we have left to visit. (Except for the underground but that's only accessible if we help Wernher anyways.)
To the surprise of no one, the power plant is somewhat irradiated. One would wonder why the entire Steelyard area isn't at least somewhat irradiated, but I digress.
We encounter some wildmen getting chased down and eaten by trogs. Again, the trogs are scripted to take them down in one hit, but trogs are really not scary at all, unless they surprise you.
Guess they had to use them a ton though, considering they're the only new enemy in this DLC.
You know, if they ever decided to clear out the Steelyard, they could maybe get the power plant back up in running again...?
Hope you like trogs, because you have to fight a ton of them in this place.
You can hear some trogs eating a corpse upstairs. The idea is that this place was inhabited by the wildmen up until you came in. Or at least that's the only explanation why there's some beds in here and a ton of freshly dead corpses.
Coming up is an interesting bit of environmental storytelling and one of the few interesting terminal entries in this game.
You find a skeleton of a man, who obviously committed suicide and a computer terminal nearby with some entries with some details of what happened at the power plant.
It's an interesting read. [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Supply_plant_terminal_entries#Tom_McMullin.27s_entries]
I mean, it's not on level of the Survivalist Journals from Honest Hearts by any means, but I still particularly liked them.
On an upper floor, you can find the aforementioned bed with a unique auto-axe by the name of the "Man-Opener". It's even glitcher than the normal auto-axe and that's saying something.
That's it for the power plant. There's a bit more if you do Wernher's side of the quest, but since we haven't, there isn't much else for us here. Nice area though, I guess.
We encounter a wildman outside the building.
Still love that VATS.
We head further down the train tracks in the Steelyard but we get attacked by a large group of trogs along the way. Past them is a good stash of ingots.
We could go down their if we helped Wernher or killed him and took the key, but alas, we did not.
Not pictured: Me walking all the way back to the Mill.
Raiders are still having trouble with the slaves. Going to walk away and hope no one notices us...
Quick jump cut to Haven. I did not realize you could quick travel in The Pitt until now. Huh. Well, you learn something new every day.
Ashur patiently waits for our return.
"The Pitt has a bright future ahead of it, and so do you."
"What do you mean about the city's future?"
"Now that Marie's back, we have a chance at curing the disease that's been ravaging The Pitt since the bombs. Without it killing our kids, we can grow like a real city. No more bringing in slaves. No more forced labor. Things can get better. It's taken me a lot of work to rebuild this city. With your help, it's finally going to have a chance."
"What's going to become of the workers?"
"Right now, nothing. Until we can reproduce a treatment from Marie, they'll have to keep working. Otherwise, this city falls apart. But once we do have a cure, things will be different. We won't need to kidnap people for our city. We'll be able to grow naturally. Until then, this is the way it has to be. It's just what has to be done."
"So, how about my reward?"
"You've keep the city in one piece and put a stop to Wernher's plans. Yeah, I guess you've earned one. As a full citizen of The Pitt, you'll have full access to the ammo press in the Mill. It's how I keep my soldiers well armed, so make good use of it."
If we helped Wernher, we'd pretty much get the same rewards, plus Ashur's armor. You get the armor anyway for getting 100 ingots in the Steelyard though.
"And I think Sandra's made some progress with the cure. So here's a little something to help with radiation."
"So, what do I do now?"
"That's up to you. We'll keep working on the cure and keep the city running. You're free to come and go as you like. Of course, you can help out at the mill by collecting metal from the Steelyard. It'd help lighten the load on the workers. And if you want to work on Sandra's good side, you can always bring her toys for Marie. It's a little thing, but it'd make a difference."
I think the most important thing for Ashur to do is hire a less psychotic staff but that's just me.
"Where did you get that powered armor?"
"This thing? It's a relic from my time with the Brotherhood of Steel, decades ago. It's been through so much that they'd hardly recognize it as one of theirs. A little like me, come to think of it."
"Do you ever miss the Brotherhood of Steel?"
"Not in the slightest. During the Scourge, we looted The Pitt and left the rest of it to rot. I was just a dumb convert who got stuck here afterwards. See, beneath it all, the Brotherhood's just lazy. It's easier to loot a dying city than the work to bring it back to life, so that's what they did."
That's what everyone in the Captial Wasteland is doing.
"They're so obsessed with the technology of the past, they don't care what needs to be done for today and tomorrow. It takes real work to rebuild and run a city. But there isn't a machine to do it for them, so the Brotherhood ain't interested. Good riddance."
"I have to go now."
"You're always welcome in The Pitt."
Oh fuck you game. A lot more people would have died if we helped the slaves, that's all I have left to say on the matter. The game pretty much comes out and says "You bastard" here, which is something it loves doing by the way. (Three Dog's/The Games reaction to you killing Roy in the Tenpenny Tower quest or the evil ending voiceover stick out the most.)
So much for moral ambiguity. Say bye to Ashur, this is probably the last we'll see of him. Too bad he isn't a companion or something.
And now, we finally leave The Pitt. What do I think of the DLC overall?
I think it's pretty obvious that Bethesda was trying to do an actually interesting ambiguous choice here. It is much better than the main game which is pretty much black and white with few exceptions and even those exceptions end up being infuriatingly stupid.
It's just that there are way too many problems with helping the slaves in this scenario. Wernher is an asshole who'd probably keep things the exact same way, except for him being the head honcho instead of Ashur. The slaves are hardly able to survive out here as it is, and their only source of food and protection is gone. Even if the slaves did not die right after yanking control from the raiders, there is a good possibility that the cure they want will never be created.
Now, if the choice for the slaves was to return back to the wasteland or if Wernher was less of an asshole, then I think we'd be getting somewhere.
The Pitt also kind of highlights some of major problems with the main game as well. Limited dialogue options that usually make your character look like a dolt and some rather weird scripting issues that will probably change on repeat playthroughs. The level design is actually pretty nice, I think all the locations in The Pitt are pretty interesting.
The weapons are okay I guess. The Auto-Axe is cool, but so buggy that it's hardly worth using, and the Infiltrator is pretty much just a silenced and scoped assault rifle.
The armor on the other hand, is pretty cool. There's a few more variants of the raider armors, and Ashur's power armor is awesome. Not worth going on a fetch quest for 100 ingots though. (Only applies to Ashur's ending.)
Here's the kicker though: The Pitt is incredibly short. This playthrough of The Pitt took me maybe 90 minutes, if you were being more through in finding all the ingots and such, you could get more time out of it, but isn't that saying something when they're trying to drag out an already short DLC with a prolonged fetch quest?
Packaged in with the GOTY edition, sure I think The Pitt is a great addition to the game but buying it on it's own is certainly not worth it.
The somewhat improved writing does give me a little bit of hope though. Maybe Bethesda will learn it's lessons from The Pitt and actually improve their storytelling for the next Fallout ga- Oh wait, Mothership Zeta came after this DLC, didn't it?
Nevermind.
We're home. Somehow, I missed the Capital Wasteland.
