DLC Details

• Main Title: Fallout 3
• DLC Title: Mothership Zeta
• Released (UK): 03/08/2009
• Current Price: 800 MS Points (~$10 US)
• Estimated Length: 5 hours

My Impressions

Mothership Zeta is the fifth and for now final piece of downloadable content for Fallout 3, and in terms of the story is probably the best of the five, though Broken Steel remains the best value for money. Mothership Zeta has you abducted by aliens and experimented upon, and you then have to work out how to escape from the ship, and are initially limited to your fists and cellmate for help, though you do quickly get your equipment back.

Given the nature of the DLC once you reach the “abduction site” which you are told about in the standard DLC radio message fashion there is no turning back, and as with the Operation Anchorage DLC once you start the mission you cant leave until its end. That being said once I started playing the DLC I did not want to stop and I especially appreciated the ending which I was unspoilt about having not seen any screenshots.

If there has been a weakness to previous DLC it has been that the “monsters” were too similar to those in the main game, thankfully that is not the case here, though there are only 4 types of Alien to fight. Another minor flaw is that the “Mothership” does not look or feel that alien or like a spaceship for most of the DLC, though there are a couple of notable exceptions to this.

There are three more slightly significant flaws to the DLC however. The first is that unless you have alot of bottlecaps on you when abducted you may have a hard time getting armour repaired, and while the NPC repairs everything to 100%, you cant barter with anyone to get bottlecaps as I found to my cost when my T-51b Powerarmour was trashed. Weapon repair is not a problem as you will probably be using the alien weaponry which is abundant and there is also a new item which adds 25% “health” to whatever weapon you are using.

The second flaw is that the aliens motivation is never adequately explained though it can be guessed at, if you collect most of the audio logs. The final flaw is that one of the latter missions is to disable a weapon on the alien ship, right at the end of the game though you end up using the weapon despite you having disabled it! without any explanation as to why it is now working.

These moans aside however Mothership Zeta is yet another must buy piece of DLC for Fallout 3.

My Recommendation

Buy

Mothership Zeta is another quality piece of DLC for Fallout 3, whose only real fault is that parts of the otherwise excellent plot could have done with clarifying or tightening up.

Screenshots