Fallout 3

The Pitt has finally arrived, taking you through the journey of a slave in the nuclear remains of Pittsburgh. Along the way you’ll encounter new characters, enemies, and acquire new weapons and armor.

To start off you’ll need to listen to the new distress signal that can be heard across the Wasteland, starting your journey to The Pitt. You’ll meet up with an escaped slave, Wernher, who tells you how to gain access to the Pittsburgh ruins. Once there you’ll almost immediately have to make some choices, most of them changing how things play out later on.

The new area is aptly named, since the place is essentially a hellhole. Crossing the bridge to get into The Pitt sets the tone for what’s to come ahead, as it’s covered with blown up cars, rubble, and frag mines, while corpses are dangling above you. Entering into the city, not only are you greeted by slave raiders, but there’s a disease that has plagued the city which catches up with everyone within a few years turning people into Trog’s - monsters who are ready to tear the flesh off of anyone. You’re set off to find a cure for Wernher’s friends, who no doubt probably already have the disease.

Aesthetically, The Pitt isn’t very appealing as everything is in ruins, but it is graphically impressive. The graphical style stays the same as it did in the Wasteland and won’t be as pretty or colorful as in Operation Anchorage, the previous expansion. The Pitt is a dark and gloomy place with haze and smoke filling the sky. You’ll see dead slaves around the city as well as chopped up corpses hanging from hooks or in bloody piles. You’ll talk to other slaves and raiders who have gross battle wounds and almost glowing eyes, likely due from the disease setting in. It makes for a very unsettling feeling as you’re forced to do some uncomfortable things to progress in the story.

The Pitt is finished once you complete three major quests, taking 2-4 hours max. You’d think since the setting is in Pittsburgh there would be a lot of areas to explore, but this is not the case. There is a very small Downtown area and an uneventful Uptown area. The biggest area to explore is the Steelyard, where you can access a few buildings and collect ingots which you can then trade-in for armor and weapons.

This expansion fits perfectly into Fallout 3, more so than Operation: Anchorage, and gives you some very interesting weapons and armor to try out like the auto axe - a chainsaw with four blades spinning at the end. It’s a little hard to justify the $10 purchase price with only the few hours of gameplay, but the content that is featured is well done and fits so well into Fallout 3 that it’s worth checking out.