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Kotaku brings the Goods on Fallout 3's Broken Steel

Broken Steel, the third downloadable episode for the PC and Xbox 360 version of Fallout 3, will raise the game's level cap to 30 and remove the games ending on May 5, Bethesda announced this week.

Broken Steel will sell for 800 points and will include an entire new area outside of Fallout 3's wasteland based on Andrews Air Force Base. The new DLC will also include more weapons, enemies and perks, including one that can bring back your dog when he's killed.

Broken Steel is the third of the three downloadable episodes Bethesda has been talking about for Fallout 3. The new content kicks off at the end of the game, changing away the original title ends and extending it perpetually. Once Broken Steel is downloaded Fallout 3 has no ending, Hines said.

"Broken steel doesn't have an ending," he said. "There are no more endings, we got the message."

The game also slightly tweaks the moments leading up to the ending, adding the ability to send one of several of your companions to complete the final task of the game, instead of doing it yourself.

The new content starts about two weeks after the events of Fallout 3's main quest, opening up in the Capital Wasteland by Project Purity, which is now up and running.

"Broken Steel takes into account what you did in Fallout 3 and what the world is like now," Hines said.

In Broken Steel the battle between the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave still rages and you are tasked with discovering and helping to build a Tesla Canon, a new, more powerful weapon for the Brotherhood.

As with the original Fallout 3 storyline, there are also a number of side quests in Broken Steel, most of which have to do with escorting freshly processed clean water across the wasteland and protecting it from raiders.

"You can get a number of different quests from a scribe, which has nothing to do with the main story," Hines said. "It adds some free-form miscellaneous quests you can do in the game."

The main quest sends you to an old power plat to find the parts for the Tesla Canon.

The new area is packed with new enemies, including a super mutant overlord, a feral ghoul reaver and an Enclave hellfire trooper; new weapons, like the Tesla Canon and a projectile flame thrower; new achievements and even new perks. Hines only detailed one of the perks though, called Puppies! If you pick the Puppies! Perk when Dogmeat dies he gets reincarnated automatically as a puppy, which you can go to certain areas to add back to your group.

The new pack also raises the level cap from 20 to 30 and greatly increases the enemy difficulty level.

"Enemies are a lot tougher," Hines said. "You start seeing new enemies at level 18.

"Advancement from 20 to 30 takes a ton of experience points."

Completing the main quest in Broken Steel will also require a bit of puzzle solving, Hines said. After you've get all of the parts for the new weapon, you take it trough the Presidential Metro Line to pull off an attack on the Enclave base.

One you cear out the Presidential Metro Line you get to make your way to Adams Airforce Base where you will be given new orders, Hines said.

"Adams Air Force Base is a new world space," he said. "You sort of leave the Wastelands and go to Adams Air Force Base, it's a pretty big space."

Hines says that the main quest for Broken Steel is a bit longer than The Pitt downloadable content, coming in at about four to five hours of gameplay, and that it also adds a bunch of sidequests which each take 30 minutes to an hour to complete.

The side quests, he said, have you going all over the world and give you a chance to see how it's changed since the end of the original Fallout 3.

The one thing that Broken Steel won't beef up are the collectibles, Hines said.

credit: kotaku.com and brian crecente

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