Fallout 3/Headscratchers/Archive 1

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killing slaves
One thing bugs me about The Head of State Quest and trying to do it from the "Help The Slavers" perspective. They're trying to bust the Temple of Union because of all the escaped slaves it is helping and because they think the legend of Abraham Lincoln will just give the slaves something to rally around. Fine and dandy. But why in the name of Jefferson Davis do they order you to not kill the escaped slaves once you find them but to wait for them to get there only to watch THEM gun down the slaves. Why? They have sufficient arms and soldiers to recapture the escaped slaves easily and it just seems to make no sense for them to go killing product.
 * They told you not to kill them so they could have the pleasure themselves. This is pretty much confirmed in that Leroy gives you 100 caps if he gets to kill Hannibal
 * Escaped slaves have already proven themselves to be independent and brave. Those are the type of people who start revolts. Probably best to kill them.
 * Probably, except that given the technology the slavers have access to (a.k.a. the explode-your-head radio collars) it's not like they can't make the attempt to recapture the escapees long enough to make an example of them to any other would-be escapees. Historically, escaped/rebellious slaves were usually captured alive so they could be executed in view of a crowd so the other slaves would see what happened to those who fought back.
 * Possibly the fact that the slaves had organized as much as they had would have been the deciding point; it's likely that the slaves still in possession of owners (or at Paradise Falls) don't know much, if anything, about this new Railroad. The idea of something can be just as threatening as the reality, and killing the ex-slaves before a crowd would have just made martyrs of them - Better to wipe out the Temple of the Union before word spreads. Can't have the chattel getting funny ideas about hope and freedom.

Karma
The Karma system in general bugs me on several points.

See the above entry regarding the Roy Phillips/Tenpenny Tower quest and how the "good" option entails you indirectly aiding and abetting the slaughter of a large number of innocents. Even after you find out that Roy killed all the non-bigots in Tenpenny Tower, killing him results in bad karma.
 * I ironically described this quest like this in my Fallout 3 War Journal on his blog - "So basically, the moral of this quest is that we cannot achieve equality through communication and understanding - but have to blow up The Man (Tenpenny), kill the corrupt lawmen who follow his orders and kick the rich out of their homes and into the street to live like mangy dogs."
 * This is a certain level of realism here... which has already been covered in the Tenpenny Towers section above, so I won't just parrot it back.
 * Well not only that but if you kill Roy after he slaughters everyone you don't take a karma hit. The only good karma option is to try and find a peaceful solution. It doesn't work out in the end but that is the only thing a good person would do do of the given options. Obviously killing everyone is evil, and killing the ghouls for being ghouls is evil.
 * If I recall correctly, simply killing Roy after getting the good karma option but before he can kill anybody (preferably as he is moving in) will not hit your karma, and will stop the Tenpenny Tower resident massacre from happening, while still making Three Dog praise you.


 * Fridge Logic: FO3's morality system isn't based on Objective right and wrong, because that obviously doesn't exist. Instead, it is based on what Three Dog and the general public thinks of what you did. Think about it. You don't get a karma penalty from stealing from slavers, or killing fleeing raiders, or sneak-killing Enclave Soldiers/Raiders/Slavers that did nothing to you. Why don't you get a karma penalty for it it? Why do you get a penalty for cannibalism, or convincing Moira that her dream is too dangerous to complete, or enslaving an attacker with the Mesmetron? There can only be one answer: this system of right and wrong is not your own. The Tenpenny Tower quest was a test. If you did what you thought was right and ignored the Karma penalty, you passed. If you did what the game told you to do then you lose.
 * Now all someone needs to do is make a game that gives you a big ol' What the Hell, Hero? epilogue based on this theory. "Why did you do what other people thought was right when you knew they didn't have all the facts available? Why didn't you make your own choices?"
 * Actually you DO get Karma Penalty from stealing from anyone. Even evil people.
 * No you don't. Kill everyone in Paradise Falls, all of the items that are marked as stealing don't actually give karma penalties when taken.
 * This is the best justification for the karma grading I've seen. The Karma point doling system kept on bugging me because my intent was to play a duplicitous bastard, which meant I'd go about manipulating someone by telling them what they wanted to hear fully intending to exploit their good graces... only to be told by the game that I was a swell guy. Thinking of it as a marker for what it looks like and not the actual intent behind the actions makes it much less wallbangery.

Consider Colin Moriarty - the crime boss of Megaton. He keeps a ghoul slave as a bartender. He's reportedly forced several women (Nova being the most recent, Silver being a recent escapee) into prostitution and virtual slavery. If you hack his computer, you find out that he's been spying on the whole town and is blackmailing half of it. Your reward for ridding the world of this scumbag? Bad Karma!
 * But he's also the main backing of the town, which is why Sheriff Simms lets him stay around; you think that a Regulator like him wouldn't run Moriarty out if he didn't have a great reason not to? Besides which, the Saloon functions as a hub for the city; a lot of people would be upset if it got shut down, and I'm sure Megaton's got its seedy element as well. Call Moriarty a necessary evil, if you will.
 * Except - after you do kill him - life goes on in the town, except Nova stops whoring and takes over running the pub/inn herself. So there's really no evidence that killing Moriarty has any negative consequences on Megaton at all. It certainly makes things better for Nova and Gob.
 * Killing someone for being a bad person isn't necessarily a positive action. He's not a murderer, he's just a fucking prick.
 * Hey, I'm just going by the game-text and the strategy guide here: The player never sees the 'long-term' effect of Nova replacing Moriarty, since certain things in the game simply don't change throughout the playthrough as it might 'in real life.' If we're looking at things from a purely in-game view, it's hinted Moriarty had dealings with a lot of bad guys, particularly the Slavers and no few Raiders I'm sure; do you think they'll deal with Nova, or she'd stoop to deal with them? For all we know, it's Moriarty's influence that's keeping Megaton in one piece, since for all that there are walls I'm sure a determined group could get inside and wipe the place out. Again, I'm just saying that if it were true that killing Moriarty would have no negative side-effects, Sheriff Simms would have done it long ago, if not one of the others; Moriarty doesn't seem too well-liked.
 * While Moriarty is an asshole, killing him is an act of unprovoked aggression. It tends to cause bad karma when you just randomly gun people down. Being a dick isn't a capital offense, and blackmail isn't that serious of a crime, especially with people like Jericho. Moriarty's notes imply that he's doing that as much as a self-defense option, and isn't actively blackmailing people with that knowledge.
 * Technically, though, it's also an act of unprovoked aggression every time you explode a Raider's head by sniping them from the shadows while they just quietly meander around; and if you play anything like me, you did that a lot. Sure, the red cursor and the HUD tell you that they're a hostile Raider, but in the context of the game world, these things do not exist. Unless the Pip-Boy can actually read minds.
 * If they weren't surrounded by flayed corpses and and severed body parts, I might agree.
 * Also, if they didn't try to shoot you on sight for passing through.
 * Also that raiders are Exclusively Evil and no matter how much of a badass you are, how evil you are, or how much better armed you are, they always attack you no matter what. They're basically Feral Ghouls with weapons. Your Pip-Boy is genre savvy enough to identify them as being both Raiders and threats to you despite you not knowing anything but what they look like.
 * The MOST broken example of this game's karma system? If you kill Millicent Wellington while she is murdering her cheating husband and his mistress, you get bad karma.
 * WMG: The writer for that's wife/husband cheated on him/her.

Consider Doctor Lesko - the scientist in Greyditch whose experiments created a dangerous breed of mutant ant - even by the standards of the Capitol Wasteland! He kills the entire population of Greyditch, save for one very scared boy and is entirely ambivalent when you bring this fact up to him, saying that he cannot care for the child as his work must continue... after you clean up his mess. Your reward for giving this amoral egghead the bullet to the brain he sorely deserves? Bad Karma!
 * Intent has a lot to do with this: Lesko's aims were good, and killing everyone wasn't his intention. The only reason he wasn't dead is because he was conducting his experiment from a thick-walled steel bunker in the tunnels, which similarly meant that he wouldn't be getting out to warn anyone. As to him not taking care of Bryan, given the man's social skills, isn't that a good thing? Killing him nets bad karma because a) his intentions were good and b) he's still trying to fix things. Your karma has only to do with the actions you directly cause, which is why you get good karma for negotiating the Tenpenny truce despite it leading to a massacre of the humans by the ghouls (which you probably shouldn't consider a good thing).
 * Except his trying to correct the problem was less about correcting his mistakes and more about saving his own ass. Until you fight through the ants to get to him he's effectively trapped underground. He could have gone and set up his device to pacify the ants himself but was too scared to make the attempt. Granting that he's a scientist and not a fighter, someone who was truly concerned about the damage he was doing would make the attempt, though he might die trying rather than sit around waiting to starve to death while wallowing in his own cowardice. And even after you solve the problem with the ants, he's more concerned about his work than the damage he did. His response to the idea of caring for the boy is more Doctor Venture than Doctor Quest, if you know what I mean.
 * Hey, I'm not arguing that Lesko's a saint; like I said, it was for the best Bryan went to live with Vera. What I'm saying is that A) All scientists in the game (except, apparently, your dad) are more concerned with their work than people; just look at Dr. Li and her team when you try to recruit their help! And B) all scientists in the game (again, except apparently your dad) are shit at fighting, so even if Lesko tried to neutralize the ants he'd just be dead and there'd be no-one to tell anyone else how to handle it. Also, note that after you help him it's entirely possible for Lesko to retreat to the surface and move; the fact that he stays and attempts to reverse the process means that, at the least, he wants to undo what he's done. Lesko's behavior isn't out of place for a scientist in the game, and if you should be getting good karma for shooting Lesko then you should get good karma for shooting Dr. Li since she prevented the bettering of the entire Wasteland. Saying that someone should 'die trying' is the P.O.V. of one who has protagonist stats and the ability to load from their last save.
 * "someone who was truly concerned about the damage he was doing would make the attempt, though he might die trying rather than sit around waiting to starve to death while wallowing in his own cowardice." That's idiotic. Lesko is an unarmed scientist with no combat training against giant firebreathing killer ants. All he would succeed at doing is getting himself burned alive. All evidence is that Lesko is a "big picture" thinker - he is patient and thinks of things in the long-term. Sacrificing himself on a suicidal, ill-advised attempt to get to the computer would be pointless, especially as he's the only one who knows how to operate it and he's performing (in his eyes) long-term important research that can eliminate another danger of the wasteland.

A more minor character, but still noteworthy, is Anna Holt. If you encounter her in Raven Rock you'll discover that she willingly betrayed Project Purity to the Enclave. Even then she's completely unapologetic about it and if you call her out for stabbing James and Dr. Li in the back, she'll just shrug and say "sorry you feel that way". If you kill her though, you get negative karma. This is despite the fact that killing any other Enclave scientists results in no karma change.

Braun's motives

 * Why did Braun want everyone in vault 112 dead? He orders you to kill everyone, which, for lack of a better term Ruins his Fun. Wasn't the whole point that he was getting his kicks from emotional and mental torture and then erasing their memories to start over again? So if you do exactly as he says, you still end up with him trapped inside the simulation completely alone for however many centuries it takes for the vault power to go out.
 * I just finished this quest and in it, I killed Mabel Henderson twice: Once via "creative death" and then as the Pint Size Slasher. Apparently, he just really hates the residents of Vault 112 a lot.
 * If you kill their selves in the simulation they apparently go to sleep or something after having felt the pain like it was their own bodies. However Braun can just go to his console and reset them so they live again with or without the memory of having died as he chooses. So it's emotional, mental and "physical" without worrying about killing them unless you activate the special army program that truely kills anyone that dies but can't work on the guy in charge due to safeties.
 * Eerily familiar—Do Braun's actions seem like those of certain types of gamers to anyone else?
 * Hmm, excellent point. A subtle Take That, Audience! aimed at the sadistic sort of player who, for instance, locks 'virtual people' inside a small room and sets them on fire, laughing as they die before resetting and doing something equally heinous?

Plasma weapons

 * Why is it, that the Brotherhood of Steel talks about how the Enclave developed plasma weapons, when every pre-War military bot had a plasma pistol attached. (Completely ignoring that in every previous Fallout title the Brotherhood has had plasma weapons.)
 * Possibly they meant 'the Enclave has developed a way to make plasma weapons!' It's implied that most of the Brotherhood's tech is scavenged, likely from pre-War caches; grabbing weapons from armories is a lot different from being able to make them yourself.
 * Plus, look at them. They're held together with paper clips and duct tape, and made from spare parts. They look like they were made at radioshack! If they were prewar, I bet they'd at least have a smooth plastic cover over the technical bits.

Stanislaus Braun

 * Tranquility Lane. Why exactly does Braun let you go? You killed off all his subjects and condemned him to a Fate Worse Than Death yet his response is something in the lines of 'You asshole, now I have to spend the eternity in here all alone! Anyway, the dog is your father, and I'm gonna let both of you go instead of keeping you as my test subjects.'
 * Braun released the PC and his/her Dad for two reasons. 1) Activating the fail-safe meant that Braun could no longer control them, so there's no point in having them stay and it's likely that Braun couldn't have made them stay if he'd wanted to, so better to just send them off and pretend that you're not completely powerless. 2) Now that the player has accessed the computer itself, he/she might have been able to take control and put Braun through Hell in return, so again it's better to just get them out before they think of it.
 * He has no power anymore. He says so himself.
 * Except if you punch "Betty" after making the door appear, your real body will still get blown up in retaliation. Clearly he does retain some power.
 * Thats probably just a developer oversight
 * Braun should be HAPPY that you're attacking and trying to kill him, you know, save him from Hell through boredom and all that

Nuka-Cola Challenge
The whole Nuka Cola Challenge quest and the distasteful/hypocritical karma system coming into play again.

Sierra is a hyperactive bimbo - possibly due to the long-term effects of her Nuka Cola addiction. She hires you to track down 30 bottles of Nuka Cola Quantum - an even more addictive AND radioactive version of the same soda. Ronald - a mercenary Jayne Cobb-type and Sierra's only neighbor - offers to pay you for the soda so he can give it to Sierra. Why? Well, despite feeling that she's nutty as a fruitcake, he does want to sleep with her and thinks he can use the soda to buy his way into Sierra's bed.


 * Encouraging Sierra's addiction and further endangering her health by giving her the highly-addictive and dangerous soda? Good Karma!
 * And make no mistake, Nuka-Cola -IS- addictive. You can even ask This guy from the first game about his addiction. Sierra would probably kill to be in Dugan's place.
 * Nuka Cola QUANTUM, on the other hand, is caffeine, plus RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES. But still, just down a few Rad-Aways after a binge and you'd be a-okay.
 * Killing Ronald, who freely admits that he is protecting Sierra purely in the hopes of getting laid someday? Doesn't affect your karma AT ALL!
 * Giving Ronald the soda nets you bad karma, even though - after he gives Sierra the soda - she still doesn't understand what he wants and mistakes his advances as a marriage proposal.
 * Convincing Ronald to go get the quantums so he can fuck both you AND Sierra (if you're a female character) results in NO Karmic consequence. Even though he gets himself killed in the process because he's a fucking moron.
 * Granting that Ronald is a total sleaze for thinking that he can get Sierra to whore herself out for glowing soda, he does have ethics enough not to force himself on her (they are the only two people in town - there's no lawmen to stop him) or to take Sierra on a trip to Paradise Falls to get one of those "special friendship necklaces". So helping him out, while sleazy, doesn't seem to be any less sleazy than helping Angela Stanley in setting up her marriage trap for Diego - a quest that gives you Good Karma for using the exact same means (i.e. acquiring a chemical substance) to accomplish the exact same ends (i.e. getting a someone into bed)!
 * The game doesn't always net you Good Karma for what we think would be good actions, nor do they always net you Bad Karma for bad ones. They get you good or bad karma depending on how the person you're dealing with sees your actions... and Sierra really wanted those Quantums.
 * Or it's just the good ol' Double Standard rearing its ugly head.
 * Even if Nuka Cola isn't dangerous, this should not get you positive karma. It's not like you're handing out medicine to a terminally ill person, you are selling soda to some idiot in the middle of nowhere. I'm sorry, but by this logic I should get positive karma every time I sell anything to anyone.
 * It grants you evil karma because of the eventual outcome. If you give Sierra the Nuka-Cola, she'll continue to (unwittingly) tease Ronald, and Ronald will continue to protect her becuase he has no interest in "plowing" a corpse. If you give Ronald the Nuka-Cola, he'll get into her pants, then bugger off, and Sierra will die because she's a junkie who doesn't have the foggiest idea of how to use a weapon.
 * Uh, no. Giving Ronald the Nuka-Cola Quantum has no such effect, as Sierra still won't have a clue what Ronald wants, and he never gets into her pants. Ever.

Lucas Simms

 * One little nitpick...why is Lucas Simms still kinda cold to you even after you disarm the bomb AND save him from getting shot in the back by Burke? You'd think he would greet you more cheerily after that.
 * I assumed it was just him emulating the cowboys he'd based himself on: Think Clint Eastwood and John Wayne were the cheerful types in their movies?
 * I don't know if I'd call him cold. When he sees me with "Hey, friend!" now. Also says "Mighty fine thing you did for this town."

Enclave not using its orbital nukes

 * When you get to the computer in the Mobile Base in Broken Steel, they have preset targets that they could choose and all the missiles would head there without any chance to change them. How come when you show up in the base none of the scientists were smart enough to run up to the control panel and dedicate all missiles to attacking the Citadel?
 * I think it is much more strange that they are targeting their own freaking Mobile Base! Why would anyone willingly point their super powerful weapon towards themselves?
 * I'm pretty sure the launch terminal hinted, if not explicitly stated that targeting the Mobile base was a defense measure. It was pretty much a self-destruct mechanism to keep the base from falling into enemy hand. Ironic really, considering how the whole affair ends.
 * Plus you need a reference point to base the positions of thing off of. No GPS system anymore, after all. And a reference point outside of their HEAVILY fortified and manned battle machine could be taken down as easily as the rest of their outposts.
 * No GPS, but they have orbital missile launching satellites? A global positioning system uses satellites to pinpoint positions, and there's several satellite relay towers still active and working, which the Kill Sat uses as well.
 * Why Enclave hasn't bombed Citadel you ask? How about because Citadel is the frikking Pentagon? As in one of the most important structures of US military? Something like that Enclave might want intact if they were to rebuild America.
 * Here's what really bugs me about this. Who better to know what is hidden under the Pentagon other than the Enclave? There's no real excuse for the Enclave not knowing or wanting Liberty Prime. They know the Brotherhood is there at the Pentagon, but noone in the Enclave thinks that they might mobilize a pre-War weapon like that? If they had wanted to take the Pentagon, they probably could have sooner, rather than putting their chips in on the fricking water purifier and taking on their most direct threat in the Capital Wasteland. To the Enclave, the Brotherhood are deserters and traitors, they wouldn't have the slightest bit of hesitation to kill them. So, why don't the Enclave attack the Pentagon or destroy it to prevent the Enclave's enemies from getting their hands on what is "US Government Property"?
 * It was made very clear the Enclave wanted the Pentagon back in their hands according to the Broadcasts. Whether they wanted something there or just wanted it for symbolic purposes is unclear. They might have indeed wanted Liberty Prime. They had no reason to believe the Brotherhood could get him up and running when the guys who built him never could. Especially since in their mind the Brotherhood is technologically inferior to them (Brotherhood relies on salvaged pre war tech, Enclave produces their own new model stuff). And by the time Liberty was suddenly launched at the Purifier it was too late to order a strike on him then. But the next time he was deployed they were ready for him. As to why they never used the orbital strike before Liberty Prime started deploying, well they probably felt it was an unecessery use of their resources when again, Enclave's soldier's had brand new superior equipment.
 * Listen to the broadcasts again, they never say that they wanted the Pentagon back, they don't even imply it, and certainly have done nothing in the last 40 years to do so. The only broadcast that even mentions it talks about how annoyed Eden is with making the Brotherhood of Steel making the Pentagon their "personal clubhouse." And please remember, the Enclave had encountered the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 2, remember? They know fully well that the Brotherhood is capable of restoring quite a bit of technology - including highly advanced yet "antiquated" technology. Seeing as Liberty Prime is antiquated because he's pre-War, he counts. There's no adequate explanation, especially -after- losing the Purifier. The Enclave had two full weeks between losing the Purifier and the start of Broken Steel, further exemplified in the situation where if the Lone Wanderer does not destroy Raven Rock, Liberty Prime destroys Raven Rock, and is otherwise stomping the Enclave into the ground. In the Broadcasts, they know exactly where the Brotherhood is, and set up forcefields and fortifications a hundred yards from the Citadel's front door to protect the Purifier. What explanation is there for not countering such an obvious threat? Which is more likely? That the Enclave is suddenly with defective memory to not know where to attack the nerve center of their biggest threat, as well as continue to allow that threat to continue to occupy "the most important military installation in the nation"? Or is it more likely the Enclave have simply been Flanderized to the point of being there strictly for plot convenience?
 * A possible explanation for why the Enclave isn't using their orbital nukes would be that the nukes are just getting in orbit. If you notice the quest, you see that there are 5 different targets (Megaton, Rivet City and Project Purity are the other three). If you try to go for one of the other three targets, you get a message that you can't target them because the orbit isn't right. Let's make the assumption that unless the orbital nuke is in the right place, it can't target anything, and that everyone were busy defending the base. This means that nobody were there to target the Citadel, or possibly, that the Citadel coordinates were already punched in, but the LW arrives at the right time to change it - and boom goes the Enclave base.

Enslaving others

 * The enslaving mechanic seems pretty dumb to me. You mez someone, slip a collar on them, take their stuff... and then tell them to trek through the wastelands towards Paradise Falls, HOPING that they get there alive. Why can't you escort them? Why WOULDN'T you escort them? Would it have been that hard to make them temporary followers until you get them to Paradise Falls?
 * Well, escorting an unhappy slave would realistically have some downsides. Just off the top of my head, they could - like most of your companions do by accident - shout and give away your position if you are a stealth fighter. Basically, they have no reason - other than their fear of dying being greater than fear of a fate worse than death - NOT to be a burden on you as you escort them back to Paradise Falls.
 * Actually, you CAN escort them. You can run after anyone you enslave and while it's usually a bit tricky since they run full tilt and probably aren't weighed down as much as you, they come to a dead stop any time they encounter an monster or run the other way. In fact, if you're using the mods that allow you to enslave nearly anyone, this is the only way to ensure most of your "recruits" make it to Paradise Falls safely.
 * Of course if you're not there, they always make it safely but if you ARE there, the chance of their death increases exponentially.
 * Enemies only seem to spawn when the player character is present, meaning you put a 'recruit' in more peril by following them than you would by either fast-travelling to Paradise Falls (which seems to teleport them straight there) or waiting/sleeping a few hours (giving them time to travel there alone). This is how Moira travels through the DC ruins without dying instantly if you blow up Megaton and don't escort her, and also the safest way to complete the Head of State quest if you decide to escort the escaped slaves to the Lincoln Memorial.
 * What aggravates me most and makes enslaving mostly a waste of time, is that aside from the 4 VIP targets and generic raiders pretty much nobody can be enslaved. All those people wandering around settlements who don't give quests, run stores, and don't even get names are for some reason immune.
 * Not true, I made it my personal mission to enslave as much of the wasteland as possible, and it is certainly possible to enslave quite a lot of random NPCs in Rivet City or Megaton. The trick is to Save Scum, because there seems to be a random chance that they'll be enslaved vs. going hostile vs. Head Asplode. Leave (or hide in the Megaton women's restroom) for 3 days and all is forgiven. Tenpenny Tower, Bigtown, and Canterbury Commons do seem to be immune, though. And mezzing anyone in the Temple of the Union makes everyone else permanently hostile (which makes sense).

Tranquility Lane

 * The Tranquility Lane quest really bugs me. I can get why your father makes a bee-line back to project Purity, but I don't get why a SCIENTIST who admits to being rubbish in a fight would then brave the wastes UNARMED looking for this Braun character (could he at least have made a little money and hired a mercenary? As it is he seems crazy at best and suicidal at worst). Then once you get to Vault 112, in an ominous situation that screams "lotus eater machine," (the vault even lacks just about EVERY basic necessity you can think of) your only option is to fall for it and fall into Braun's simulation.
 * Lack of other option, and did not think too hard about the consequences. That's Dad greatest speciality. He was obviously over-exited, I mean, he was going to have a chat with Braun, the fallout-world equivalent of Einstein, the guy with the magic brain that solve the impossible.
 * I had that gut feeling about getting into the tranquility pod. So why isn't there another option? Getting into that thing just screams, "It's a trap!", complete with Ackbar voice. But no, I follow the quest directions, and get poofed into Happy 50s Land. And then lose karma for punching some kid because I can't figure out where the failsafe, to the point where I used an online guide so I wouldn't lose more karma. Honestly, matching the sounds of the random objects with a little girl's whistling or the zone music? What if I don't have speaks? What if I'm deaf? Maybe I'm Q Qing about the difficulty, but that was by far the hardest part of the game, even moreso then wandering around Vault 101 aimlessly as a noob who didn't know that there was directions on your map.
 * I loved that part of the game myself, I thought it was rather great puzzle. Hell, I figured it out on my first run through. It isn't all that hard really. Select an object, hear the noise. Just keeping trying until you find the right order.
 * You do realize what the tune to get out of Tranquility Lane was, right? The recurring tune in the background music? That you can hear "Betty" humming if you listen? Took me 2 minutes.

Destruction of Enclave Mobie Base
The Brotherhood of Steel, an organization dedicated to the preservation of technology, is happy with you for -blowing up- the Mobile Crawler, rather than, say, capturing it for the BOS. Even with the Capital Wasteland BOS being more interested in protecting the innocent, that massive base would surely be useful, and it wouldn't have been too hard to occupy it either, since the Lone Wanderer cleared the whole thing out on his own. Just another missed opportunity.
 * Elder Lyons says flat-out that they "barely have the manpower to keep the Citadel fortified." The Bo S simply cannot crew a fortress of that size, period. That leaves them with exactly two options: destroy it or clear it out and leave. And Option #2 is stupid with a capital S.
 * I think this is one of those cases of their "resources being stretched thin," if you will. Granted, the Mobile Crawler is good tech, but they prolly don't have the manpower to operate the damn thing and protect it, as well as protect the Citadel. Further, a full-out attack by BoS would probably give the Enclave incentive to orbital strike the Citadel, which, even if the squad or division manages to the secure the Crawler, would result in a very Pyrrhic victory, leaving them vulnerable to ultimate annihilation.
 * And this is sci-fi. What giant, unstoppable death machine doesn't have a convenient self destruct they can set off once the Brotherhood is all inside?

Enclave Radio
Throughout the course of the game, several wastelanders suggest that the Enclave broadcasts are nothing more than old pre-war broadcasts on a loop. I never understood why that was presented as being a sane thing to say. Whimsical claims of growing up in rural Kentucky aside, the fact that Eden makes specific reference to Super Mutants, ghouls, and BOTH sects of the Brotherhood of Steel rather than, say, encouraging survivors not to get in the National Guard's way or make sure to punch any Chinese spies they see makes it difficult to suspend disbelief.
 * Pretty much the only way it can make sense is that they don't own radios and only have heard bits of the broadcast.
 * Or the signal is not being received too clearly. Those transistors, while they have lasted pretty long, have gotten a bit old.
 * The wrecked bus' radio in the intro movie still uses a vacuum tube. I found that hugely impressive for 200 years after the apocalypse
 * Or it just makes them feel a little uncomfortable, hence they don't listen to it. That's why I don't.
 * I didn't even know that it mentioned super mutants. I took one listen and decided. "You know, I prefer Three Dog"
 * Speaking of Enclave Radio, why does it play "Dixie"? Isn't that kind of un-American?
 * Even though Dixie is associated with the Confederacy, it is also now a cultural symbol for the heritage of the South (D.C., Maryland, Virginia are all considered part of the 'south' or Dixieland, afterall) and meaning, part of American culture. It can controversial, but for many, it's as American as "Yankee Doodle".
 * The Enclave also aren't that "American" themselves seeing as they are Nazi's
 * But they see themselves as American, which is what matters in this case. Of course, as said above, Dixie is an American tune. Also... "Nazis"? Literally, or figuratively? Technically there's no United States left, unless you ask the Enclave, so no-one's got a US birth certificate or anything, but...
 * Presumably figuratively, but here's the thing: the Enclave is pretty darn American as defined by the America that was just before the bombs fell - the Enclave is an exaggeration of what already was a fairly fascistoid, xenophobic organisation, namely the US government (democratic governments generally don't have military officials decide to mass-arrest protestors so they can 'serve their country' by being experimented on).

Lack of Science options
Is anyone else disappointed in the lack of options the Science skill gives you? I mean, it's cool the ones they do have, like how you can yell at Lesko for cutting corners and the like, but it just seems with my 10INT and 100Science and Official SCIENCE! Labcoat, I should be able to just slap him, yell "You're doing it wrong!" and just fix the problem with the ants.
 * Same with the Pitt. "Trogg disease? Pff, move over. Fixed."
 * Having an IQ of 300 won't let you magically solve any science related problem. To do that kind of stuff, even the brightest mind need time, a well furnished lab (hard enough to find in the wasteland) and competent help.
 * Bethesda want you to fuck up the ant's shit. Not resolving the situation with SCIENCE! but taking a gun into the place and killing everything in sight.
 * Imagine your character announcing everything he's doing with the words- "with SCIENCE!" and you feel much better about it.
 * Fallout 3 was simply not written with any believable science, and it shows with the lack of science options. There's some bits about superscience sprinkled here and there, but the game, as a whole, ignores even technology available in the 50s and going with a SCIENCE! answer from a comic book. Project Purity being one outstanding example - it's a glorified water filter, but only works with the magic of a GECK (treated as a mini-Genesis device). There's all kinds of scientific issues with that, from more realistic alternatives to the entire thought process around the execution of the Project. It's Rule of Cool at it's finest, be damned what would actually make sense!

Androids
The android and the Institute in Fallout 3, that's what bugs me. Seriously, what was up with that? Apparently it's an extremely high-tech place capable of building fully humanoid robots (that can even conquer Uncanny Valley) which are so intelligent they may decide to escape and assume a new, human, identity. Apparently these escapes happen SO OFTEN, they merit the existence of "an underground network to help escaping androids". The Institute just sounds like the fanciest place in the world this side of Raven Rock, plus it's part of a state/entity called the Commonwealth. So why doesn't it actually appear in the game? When I came upon the quest, I thought it was a lead on the game's real villains. But - nada. It's not even mentioned by anyone beyond that one quest. Rather than leveraging this potentially interesting story idea, Bethesda decided to just recycle the Fallout 2 villains (actually all the "big" Fallout 1/2 factions except the NCR). The Commonwealth is not even being considered for DLC. I'd call it a Red Herring, but it doesn't seem to be deliberate.
 * I agree wholeheartedly. So much more could have been done with the Institute, but in the course of 3 DLC packs (and an upcoming two more) there is no evidence that we will ever come in contact with them again. Humanoid androids was such an interesting concept, with so much storyline potential, that I had been assuming we would encounter at least one more in the course of the entire game. Then again, in the interest of actually addressing the issue of why we don't come into contact with the Institute. The Capital Wasteland has nothing useful to offer a place as advanced as they apparently are. At least they can give the Pitt slaves. They have very little to gain from further contact, and their attitude suggests they would hardly do it for their health. Incidentally, I like to think that the implication is that the Commonwealth is post-Massachusetts, and the Institute is an ultra-secured MIT.
 * Given that the Commonwealth apparently has the organisation to form a government (implied by the fact it has a name), and the money to burn on what appears to be an actual scientific institution (rather than some bright kids salvaging technology and awarding themselves doctorates like presumably Lesko), it's probably just not very interesting as a gameplay location. Fallout isn't really about paying your taxes and living a comfortable life of scholarship in a functioning, well-managed state.
 * I assumed that the Commonwealth referred to a group from the UK. This does raise the issue of crossing the Atlantic and all of that, but think about how many questions it answers! You can decide for yourself if this sounds like a good reason not have it in the DLC, but I think it is.
 * Several NPCs involved in the Replicated Man quest indicate that the Commonwealth is somewhere North, on the East Coast. While it doesn't necessarily rule out some kind of UK-originated team, it's more likely that they'd have integrated into American groups by now, maybe centered around the fortified MIT suggested above. Only because crossing the Atlantic seems outright impossible at the moment, and the Fallout series as a whole is focused on the post-War USA rather than anywhere outside those borders.
 * The Institute is indeed MIT and The Commonwealth is post-war Massachusetts. This is mostly just by process of elimination because there are only 4 states in the USA that are "commonwealths", and Massachusetts is the only one in the Northeast part of the country. And yes, I was also annoyed that The Commonwealth wasn't more fleshed out but given that a sequel (aside from New Vegas) is inevitable, I have a feeling Bethesda wanted to save that idea for a full game instead of just a DLC pack.
 * Well, there is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania...but yeah, I assumed it was MIT as well.
 * Eh, guys, have you heard about a little book called "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?" and a movie loosely based upon it? Called "Blade Runner"?
 * Yeah. So? Are you saying that it Just Bugs You that the scientist tried to hire you rather than Harrison Ford and his flying car? Although implementing lifelike android strippers might placate those who claim Fallout needs sexual content again...
 * Maybe they're a Sequel Hook that will show up in Fallout 4 assuming it's going to take place in the East Cost.
 * Wild Mass Guessing. There's no information on Fallout 4 whatsoever at this time.

Pitt slaves
Why aren't the Pitt slaves collared? True, they'd then put one on YOU in the quest, but they'd also take it off later. Besides, in this one's opinion having one of those equipped would be kind of amusing, or at least a new something to think about before you open fire on that guard. Also, how do you get away with never having to do any sort of work in the Pitt?
 * As I recall, you are quickly ordered to gather leftover ingots for exactly this reason, and immediately afterwards get chosen to fight in the Hole. It does seem awfully convenient that you're the only slave poking around on his own, though.
 * The fact that they weren't collared bugged me because it stood out. It's rather obviously different, and my guess is that's specifically so they don't have to put it on you, even though they could easily have done so and just had Ashur remove it...hell, having a "disable all collars" part of the quest would have been a way to lengthen it a little. Win-win.
 * If I remember correctly, during the course of The Pitt you find out that Trogs only stay out of Up/Downtown because the lights are on. That's all the "collar" that Ashur needs, in my opinion. If the slaves start getting out of line, all he would have to do is order the slavers to safety and shut off the lights.
 * Plus the only way out of the Pitt is the single bridge over a river so irradiated it's instant death. A bridge completely covered in land mines. A bridge overlooked by at least 3 sniper perches. And then you have to pass through a camp of raiders loyal to Ashur. Then navigate a maze of more than 200 miles of underground tunnels so complicated that Wehrner said you'd never make it through without his guidance. Where are they going to go?
 * If you play through supporting Ashur  Collaring the slaves with explosives  . What really bugged me about the Pit was the way it acted morally gray.
 * I was unhappy with both of the apparent choices. But there is a middle choice that I took. Not ideal, but it left me feeling better. You steal the baby. Talk to Sandra, tell her she won't shoot you with the baby. She agrees but says her snipers will take you down. This proves to be optimistic on her part. Don't harm her. She won't attack you without provocation though she draws her sidearm. Exit the building. Kill every raider in uptown. Kill every raider in the Mill. Talk to Midea. Express disappointment at kidnapping baby. Meet Wernher. Give him the baby. Go whoa dude, you didn't tell me there was a baby involved. Listen to him call you a pansy. Listen to second part of his plan. Object to loosing the trogs. Tell him you're going to go make up with Ashur. Pass speech check to convince him to leave without violence. Retrieve baby. Return baby. Listen to Sandra call you an asshole. Talk to Ashur. Listen to Ashur go wtf man, you killed all my dudes, and the slaves revolted, and you kidnapped my baby, but you know what? fuck it, we're still bros. Ask him to free the slaves. Listen to him say no, but will do in the future. THE END. I liked this because I had a hard time siding with slavers against slaves. But I also had a hard time killing the only scientist with a legitimate shot at finding the cure. So I thought it taught Ashur a valuable object lesson about the cost of oppression, leaving the slaves in a better bargaining position. Kind of Magna Carta meets Chinese Assault Rifle. And to RP it out, I can always come back in a couple years to make my point again if need be.
 * Let's not forget that Ashur has also got in his employ, a gang of total and complete psychopaths who raid other communities for food. The Pitt is a pirate state and even Ashur calls them "slaves" when he's talking to you in private. Given he's got Amon Goethe style people running his camps, shooting at the slaves for fun and death-matches, Ashur is just a self-justifying asshole. There's a better option than both of them. Say "I am the New Lord of the Pitt" and keep Werner as just your stooge.
 * It's wonderful that people are objecting to the questionable morals of the rulers of the Pitt, but consider another nation whom kept slaves, offered the slaves a chance to earn their citizenship through combat, had a strong militaristic rule at the beginning of its history, and became one of the most powerful nations of the world at that time in the face of overwhelming numbers of barbarian tribes at the edges of their lands. Despite everyone saying he's "bad", at the point of time the Fallout universe is in Ashur's emulating the Roman empire is an effective way to build a nation out of nothing.
 * Welcome to New Vegas. Say hi to the Legion for me.

Point Lookout enemies being tougher than Enclave and Bo S
Point lookout. I know it's supposed to be played after Broken Steel. I know it's clearly advertised as "bloody motherfucking" hard. But come on, tribals, with hunting rifles, that wreck apart a level 30 lone wanderer with a T51-b in perfect condition? Seriously, unleash two or three of those guys on Raven Rock, they will be more efficient than Liberty Prime. Add another group of three or four, they will clean the goddamn capital wasteland. That's why there is no Deathclaws, no Super Mutants, no Enclave and no Radscorpions in Point Lookout, the tribals and swampfolks with their .32 rifles, their axes and their two hundred years old double-barreled shotgun rip them apart. So what's the deal? Is Point Lookout located straight on the Hellmouth? Is there a mysterious component in the air that power armor paperthin? Those are friggin tribals who barely wear clothes and friggin inbreed, radioactive, mentaly retarded farmers, for God's sake. They shouldn't be able to even shoot straight, let alone shoot you hard enough to put a dent in your hardened skin.
 * This really burned my biscuits. Unless they're a combat vet, the average redneck has never been up against anything more dangerous than a wounded puma or maybe a bear. While you might have to shoot a couple that were even dumber than their companions, the demonstration of the kind of firepower the Lone Wanderer and Co. could unleash would send the survivors running back to their cabins with soiled underwear. They run and hide from highway cops with revolvers ...an obviously dangerous person packing military-grade hardware? They wouldn't do jack unless you did something truly outrageous.
 * The Swampfolk aren't average rednecks. They used to be average before the war, but over the multiple generations since, they've degenerated due to a combination of factors: radiation, New Plague, and perhaps also they inbred for way more generations than is healthy. Now, they're only a couple of rungs above an average Vault 87 Super Mutant in terms of intelligence and sanity. That combined with being fiercely territorial means they're hostile to almost all outsiders (I say almost because they do trade with a few non-Swampfolk like Madame Panada).
 * Fake Difficulty at its finest: Tribals and Swampfolk inexplicably get 35 points of unresistable damage per hit.
 * Agreed, it's annoying. Somehow, after defeating the power armored, energy weapon toting army, having freakin' swampfolk be that dangerous is ticking me off. Makes me wonder how ludicrous Mothership Zeta is going to be.
 * Full of alien tropes but not full of fail. Someone must have taken a cluebat to the game devs in the meantime.
 * It's just psycho and yao gai meat on all the time. Considering they're radiationless thanks to their punga heavy diet, (and no nukes hitting the area) it makes sense for them to be stronger than the radiation poisoned, cancerous wastelanders.
 * At the very last, Mothership Zeta's level of difficulty will be justified, by you know, alien tech. The one, basic alien handgun you find in each game is always the Infinity+1 Sword. It makes me shudder to imagine the alien's big guns and equivalent to power armor.
 * Not that strange, actually. Considering you can easily one-shot most Enclave soldiers in their power armor with a simple hunting rifle and maxed Small Guns stats, and that rednecks and hicks are traditionally very good shots....
 * Oh, thank god, that was supposed to be hard. My only ragequit in any part of this game was those stupid goddamn tribals.
 * What annoyed me, who stopped the main quest before going to Vault 112 and completed all of Point Lookout before returning to the Capital Wasteland, was how a Tribal in leather scraps could take 4 or 5 .44 MAGNUM rounds to the head before dying when a Super Mutant drops from a single headshot!
 * Not to be sarcastic, but I actually am going so far as to claim A Wizard Did It, or something like that. In Point Lookout, you have the option of retrieving a Tome of Eldritch Lore from the swampfolk, and either destroying it, or giving it to an evil old man. Said book is tied to an evil obelisk in the basement of the Dunwich building. While the secret machinations of an eldritch demon doesn't exactly mesh well with the rest of the universe, it could explain why these freaks are so tough.

West Coast factions moving to the East Coast
It just bugs me how Bethesda took factions and characters from the west coast games and transplanted them to the other side of the continent with no explanation. The Enclave, maybe, have a reason to be sentimental about their nations' capital, but the Brotherhood of Steel and Super Mutants don't belong.
 * One of the quests involves Harold from the previous two games on the east coast, for no apparent reason other than a Shout-Out.
 * That part's justified. Go back and watch the ending to Fallout 2.
 * Granted, it would be nice if they had put a bit more effort into creating or expanding upon new factions (such as the Commonwealth, discussed above) but, in terms of the story, they give reasonable justifications for both the BoS and Super Mutants. The Super Mutants were created with FEV in Vault 87 (not unreasonable, given that similar FEV experiments created the original Super Mutants and Vault-Tec may have had competing research teams or variations on the same experiment in different locations). The Brotherhood of Steel also have valid reasons for coming to DC - it was a major city which likely held significant technologies. Given that they found the Pentagon and Liberty Prime, the excursion seems to have paid off.
 * I feel it made perfect sense for Vault 87 to be set up the way it was because the entire Vault system was just a massive series of experiments by the Enclave who were doing stuff with FEV to begin with, way before the war. Also it makes sense that not all of the Enclave was wiped out in Fallout 2, since I'm sure some of them ran for it once the oil rig's core started to go. Also there's backstory that has one of the deceased citizens of Greyditch being a former Enclave member who escaped from Navarro and Colonel Autumn's father being a survivor of the oil rig, so it's not entirely implausible. Besides, you can't ever really expect a Shadow Government to go away after just one setback.
 * The Brotherhood has the perfect reason to be there. They are scavenging for weapons and books. DC has the Library of Congress and the Pentagon. The Pentagon might not have the weapons on hand, but it may well have the logistical manifests to tell you where to look next.
 * Not really, for one thing the last expedition they sent failed and dissappeared completely. This was a larger, better equipped force with vehicles, as well. Sending one chapter even further makes no sense.
 * The other issue is that the Brotherhood of Steel is the group that came from the military bunkers. They should already have all this information. The notion that anything of value was left in Washington DC after the evacuation is ludicrous. There is a reason why all the government and military vaults (prior to Fallout 3's hand waves) were on the west coast as far from Washington DC as possible. It is the most obvious target and was obliterated completely and utterly in the bombing, just like New York. Bethesda chose to disregard that.
 * Clearly you've never seen any classic science-fiction movie where the crumbling remains - or even surprisingly-intact remains - of Important Buildings survive both the ravages of time and direct nuclear/laser strikes. All the Fallout games, especially 3, runs on the sort of sci-fi implausibility that makes it fun to play, and within the universe those rules create search teams make sense. It's likely they had pre-War records indicating important sites and caches whose recovery would have made a trek worth it, and it panned out: They're recovering everything from Pre-War Books (preserving knowledge, culture, and history) to a flippin' huge giant war-machine that chucks nukes at their foes. The Brotherhood presence is also what allowed Project Purity to get started, kept the DC area from being completely overrun, and helped get the basin purified (and distribute the purified water). So within the universe, yeah, they had reason to go out there, and it paid off.

Fawkes acting like a brute
Fawkes. For a 'civilized' super mutant, he really likes to whip out that gatling laser and go, "AHAHAHAHAHAHA! WHY DON'T YOU PUT UP A REAL FIGHT? THIS IS TOO EASY. HAHAHA!" Yeah. I suppose he's not that different from his brothers. And why doesn't anyone shoot him on sight? I'm pretty sure after I met him, he wouldn't come along with me because of that reason. Of course, I did already have a companion at the time, but still.
 * Fawkes' issues are actually explained/handwaved. One of his random comments are about him being amazed at how people tolerate him so easily because the trust the player, and another makes him almost break down in how he sometimes has to struggle against his primal side. A few of his other quotes relate to Zen Buddhism, so it's not a far stretch to say he is "meditating" to keep himself from going batshit like the other Super Mutants.
 * Really his dialogue is just regular recycled super mutie dialogue during combat. Everything he says is something normal muties say.
 * Not wanting to sound picky but Fawkes is female...
 * Actually, no he's not. Word of God has confirmed this.

Moriarty and Tenpenny
Was anyone else bemused/enraged by the fact that there's a guy with an extremely strong Irish accent in the middle of the Wasteland? I mean, even if his father was Irish, from Ireland, and he wasn't introduced to any other people in the first 14 years of his life, he still wouldn't be carrying around that kind of brogue fifteen or more years later. There simply isn't enough people to develop a regional accent. And let's not forget, he is only Irish in the same way actor Guy Pearce is from Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.
 * He could have emigrated to the area from a group of Irish survivors.
 * A lot of evidence supports the theory that only America survived World War OSHI- in the Vaults. Europe fell into the Resource Wars, so strong doubts are there to say Ireland survived.
 * It's highly doubtful that any of the other countries still exist in name. However, there are still other people around the world, Moriaty's father came from Ireland and Tenpenny came from England.
 * Or he just fakes it, to stand out a bit more. More plausible than him actually sounding like that.
 * Actually, if he hails from Ireland, that all would make sense. Granted, he'd pick up some "Americanisms", but many people do not completely lose their accent over life if they grow up somewhere else. Also it's not about "not enough people to develop an accent", which is a false premise anyway, actually the less people in a given community, the more likely they'd be to adapt new language patterns (because of less inertia). It's about the old accent still existing and there's no reason to change to some standard English (or American) afterwards.

Slave collars
Why use an explosive neck collar on the slaves? That kind of ruins the merchandise. Wouldn't an exploding foot bracelet do the trick? Or an arm bracelet? I'm sure that the slavers probably just pulled this stuff out of a bunker somewhere, but if you only cripple a leg, then with a wooden replacement or hook-hand you could at least sell the merchandise at a reduced cost. Hell, explosive underwear would do the trick...
 * Explosives on the arms or legs are easier to tamper with, as you can actually see what you're doing.
 * You'd be slightly more willing to risk having your leg explode than your neck explode, and having more injured merchandise brings less money than mostly unharmed merchandise with a few dead examples.
 * And they bought them off the Commonwealth for specifically that purpose. They used them on androids up there.
 * Where's the proof that they came from the Commonwealth?
 * New Vegas shows they were used in Big MT to control the chinese in the lab's death camp wouldn't be too shocking the Commonwealth which seems to be another Think Tank had the same.
 * Again, where's the proof in Fallout 3? New Vegas was not written by the same people as Fallout 3 was.
 * IIRC, Grouse says they come from the commonwealth when he explains them to you.
 * No, he does not. Grouse only tells you how the slave collars work and how to use them. He never says anything about where they come from. You can only ask him about the Mesmotron, which he says they found in an old military base.

Purpose of Mothership Zeta aliens

 * Before anyone ask, no, as far as I know, we never learn what the aliens were really up to in Mothership Zeta. But it's a Cliché Storm, so their goal was probably fairly classic.
 * Elliot does have several Cliché Storm theories, none of them are really infirmed or confirmed. For all we know, he may have been right about everything, or wrong about everything.
 * The presence of the abominations seems to hint at experiments to create Super Soldier. For what usage is anyone guess.
 * I still don't get the purpose of the aliens modding the Buttercups. It would have made some sense in normal times; then they could have been used as robotic sleeper agents.
 * Collecting humans to use as museum exhibits, with a few as test subjects. Since every attempted probe ended in the alien's death
 * In one of the audio logs, it's hinted that the aliens may have caused the war in 2077. Since their ship is in massive disrepair, they keep coming back (Toshiro is from the early Tokugawa shogunate), and they have those half-bred abominations, it may be that they are scavenging anything they can to fight some other enemy. Perhaps the second mothership wasn't an ally, but a rival faction? WMG
 * In one of the audio logs, it's hinted that the aliens may have caused the war in 2077. Since their ship is in massive disrepair, they keep coming back (Toshiro is from the early Tokugawa shogunate), and they have those half-bred abominations, it may be that they are scavenging anything they can to fight some other enemy. Perhaps the second mothership wasn't an ally, but a rival faction? WMG


 * No, I don't understand either how we manage to use the Death Ray we sabotaged ten minutes earlier.
 * An alternate generator, maybe, but it's not handwaved or justified in any way.
 * Actually I've been mulling over this for quite a while, and I think I've got an answer.. two completely different settings for said Death Ray the generators in the Death Ray Control area only handled Ship-To-Planet use, while an unknown set of generators in an unseen part of the ship handled Ship-To-Ship use.
 * I think you've got it. Modern warships have different, isolated weapons systems for different kinds of targets, both for efficiency and to hopefully prevent everything being knocked out by one lucky shot.
 * I can think of an explanation or two as to why no weapon on the mothership is as powerful as the vanilla's Alien Blaster, but that's about it.
 * An older model not issued anymore because it's too expensive and hard to maintain, using expensive ammo, eventually replaced by more reliable and cheaper weaponry (do take note that said cheaper weaponry is still very powerful by the wastelands or even the Enclave standards, with the Destabilizer, even if only at prototype stage, probably being by very far the strongest energy weapon ever seen in a Fallout, barring the easter egged alien blaster)
 * Or a service weapon vs a security weapon. The blaster was on a probe to a hostile planet. The guns on the ship were like cop weapons, just to control prisoners. Hence most of them use shock batons.
 * Sally continuously creep the hell out of me, acting as Alien's Newt while somehow possessing fairly advanced knowledge about the ship and its innards, acting very detached with thing like "Yeah, dad, ma and sis are dead, so is the world I was living in, now to the next air vent I can crawl in". Until the very last second of the adventure, I was continuously expecting for her to go One-Winged Angel, backstab me, reveal a plan of some sort, and then act as final boss. Somehow, it never happen. I'm still thinking about putting her in the Creepy Child trope however, but as I write those lines, I wonder if Mary Sue wouldn't be more appropriate.
 * I completely agree if not One-Winged Angel I expected SOME sort of Face Heel Turn from her. she just had that sort of thing written all over her!. Also Toshiro bugs me he seems to serve no purpose other than Rule of Cool
 * I have to add Sally mentions her parents are dead but her Sister is alive in stasis somewhere yet we never find her
 * The point of Mothership Zeta is that Aliens have been here since the 1800s to collect as many human specimens since every single attempt to enter Earth was a failure by the Aliens. After the Earth gotten nuked, it was one last collection period to see how many humans they can take back to their homeworld to be Human Popsicle exhibits as a sign of our brutish ineptude

Mr. Burke and his magic pistol

 * How is it that after I pickpocketed the gun of Mr. Burke.. He was still able to pull one out of nowhere in Megaton?
 * Obviously that was the decoy gun.
 * As mentioned above, under the Pitt category, scripted events suck. Next time you're doing the Vault 101 tutorial, kill the guards in the Atrium, and watch in awe as Tom and Mary Holden run towards you, then inexplicably drop dead.
 * On a related note, go talk to Mr. Lopez on his suicide perch and offer to push him. But offer to push him with your back to the ledge, facing him. He ragdolls backwards and dies before he hits the ground. The ground he's STANDING ON.
 * Heart-attack?
 * Aliens.

Cleaning the dirty, dirty Wasteland
My thing is about cleanliness. Take a look around Rivet City, Megaton, the Citadel, or any other half-civilized area. Despite the fact that of all the places I can think of have been continually lived in for the past twenty-five years, no one has tried to tidy the place up. Just after you exit the stairwell during your first time in Rivet City, you see a room filled with rubble, dust and a multitude of skewed file cabinets. In all the time people have walked past this room over and over and over, no one thought to take a broom to it. You've even got a bunch of uptight scientists in the lab that like to run a tight ship. Not one person in the near two hundred years of settlement on that ship has been a perfectionist, or even a little anal. Or even had a couple hours free time and wanted to help out the place. This bugs me, as does this: I have a Grimy/Dirty Pre-War Whatever. I have Purified Water. I even have a couple boxes of Abraxo Cleaner. How can I not make this Spotless, or at least clean? It's as if everybody lost any real sense of initiative after the bombs fell.
 * Part of this is at least handwaved in Rivet City. One of the inhabitants has the job of cleaning the place up. If you comment that she hasn't been doing a very good job, she just says "you should have seen it before".
 * Most water is radioactive, and not exactly ideal for cleaning. The purified water is too precious as drinking water to be wasted as a cleaning supply. I imagine after they have fixed the purifier, they'll begin cleaning up.
 * The world ending (really just taking a hit and losing most of civilization but it still feels the same) is enough of a downer to destroy most people's initiative I'd say. Also no one needed that room and everyone probably has their hands full trying to do offscreen stuff related to survival.
 * There's an added problem: Fallout 2 has already shown that towns can actually be clean and reliable. Electricity was running in goddamn New Reno, New California Republic, San Francisco, Vault City, even fucking Gecko. Shady Sands was cleaner than nearly every human settlement in the Capital Wasteland, and that was only three generations after the bombs fell.
 * It's the game code. The same code that makes paper and rubble show up everywhere is at work. In mothership zeta, ON the mothership, wasteland garbage builds up for no reason, and builds up more every time you enter the engineering core. It's trying to randomly place paper and garbage about the wasteland so that it's not always in the same place. It ends up just making everything look dirty.
 * Actually that's because the survivors on the ship are bringing whatever scrap and junk they can find back to the engineering core.
 * California may have gotten out of the nuclear war better off than the Capital Wasteland, which may explain why they recovered so much faster. DC was probably hit hard by the nukes. And while towns like Megaton and Rivet City aren't exactly neat and clean, they are orderly, have an active police/defense force, and working electricity and water.
 * Canonically, the opposite happened. The West Coast was hit a lot harder than the East Coast. I believe there's a few comments to the effect in FO3, just can't recall where.
 * The West Coast may have on average been hit harder, if you compare the entire western seaboard to the entire eastern seaboard, but the Chinese would have had to be nuts to not hit DC harder than any other metropolitan area.
 * You found the Cleaning bobblehead. Your Cleaning skill has been permanantly raised by 10 points!

Inability to share Alien tech with D.C. Wasteland factions
Mothership Zeta brought up more questions to the already bizarrely-worked Fallout 3 cannon. Hell, EVERY DLC for Fallout 3 has done that. How is it that someone walking up in Winterized T-51b Power Armor holding a one-of-a-kind energy weapon sniper rifle gets the same moderate shout-fest from that Lyons chick when they meat the for the first time on the way to GNR? Or how you can get the "go bang some rocks together" comment from random Outcasts? SPEAKING of Outcasts, if you don a suit of their Power Armor AFTER completing Operation Anchorage, they'll say "Dude, where's the rest of your squad?" or something along those lines. And to take this further, despite being able to leave Mothership Zeta with roughly 50 pounds worth of ALIEN LASER PISTOLS if don't drop the excess you CANNOT take them to Fort Independence for the Outcast Tech Collection mini-quest for some serious brownie points with the Outcasts? Another thing to wonder about is how the hell nobody in the wasteland SAW the other alien ship that you fought of with the SUPPOSED to have been DISABLED Death Ray FREAKING EXPLODE. And why doesn't anyone mention the signal Werhner broadcasts, or even the Wasteland-spanning Recon Craft Theta beacon (provided you HAVE Mothership Zeta) at all? Three Dog, with all his reality-defying information-gathering skills, can't even mention these things despite being able to find out about the player character going to town on Paradise Falls by putting some well-deserved bullets through the skulls of Slavers or the antics they got into in Canterburry Commons! And don't even get me started on the Vertibird the Brotherhood of Steel loots from Adams Airforce Base right before you make the orbital satelite blow the damn thing to hell! After you leave the Citadel then come back minutes later, it's freaking GONE. I mean seriously, what the hell?!
 * This. Being left with a lone soldier and a smart-aleck for a 'crew' and in command of an alien battleship that I could do NOTHING with sent me running for the nearest modding site.
 * The thing about Lyons and the such is another example of the downsides of voice acted dialog replacing text. Rather than being able to modify the dialogs based on your accomplishments, the developers have to record lines of dialog for every single possibility and they just don't have the time/money or even bother. That and I think that that the Brotherhood simply don't want to acknowledge that player can upstage them without need for their fancy-schmancy power armor.
 * Well, I have an answer for two of those. As far as the alien ship battle goes, it can be assumed that the ship battle didn't take place directly above the Capital Wasteland. And as for the Vertibird, well, it's probably just in storage somewhere. You don't really think that everything you see is everything there is to see, right?
 * The wasteland spanning beacon and other signals might not be detectable to anything less advanced than the Pipboy-3000 the Lone Wanderer has, which is probably better than normal radios or Three-Dogs salvaged setup.
 * And if you watch the wreckage of the ship you blew up fall to earth, it's pretty tiny. And the outcasts won't take the Mothership weapons because it's new content. (they will take the blaster though, if you've used up all the ammo. Because it's from the original game.) Game developers never go back and change old stuff.
 * Yes, they do, and Bethesda has done it. If you start Shivering Isles and then go back to Cyrodiil and do Sheogorath's quest, you get different dialog from Sheogorath (or Haskill if you've beaten the expansion). No, that's just plain lazy.
 * Bethesda will do it, albeit, only to incorporate new quests for the new expansion. Haskill and Sheogorath are changed so that they can incorporate the Shivering Isles questlines. In Fallout 3's case, they changed the original ending of the game, see the entries at top of this page, to incorporate Broken Steel. One of the very first things the player does in the expansion is tell Elder Lyons that Vault 87 is the birthplace of the Super Mutants, yet nothing is done to change Vault 87, since no quests were written for it.
 * WRT to Mothership Zeta, you're in orbit. No one can see you shoot down another ship, and it obviously didn't fall on DC. The only think they could have seen was the original ship being recovered, and even then only if they were standing in the middle of nowhere, which normal people do not do.
 * You can see the Space Shuttle go by overhead when it's in orbit. That mothership you shot down? A lot bigger. You would at least see a couple of fast moving, surprisingly large stars from the ground. Then that explosion? One of those fast moving stars would appear to become significantly larger, it may even look bright red, and then disappear after some time. Granted you wouldn't clearly see they're space ships without a telescope, but people would see something very unusual in the sky, and they would say something about it. It likely is over the Capital Wasteland, though, because it tractors up Recon Craft Theta and appears to be station-keeping in an off-equator geostationary orbit (when you see the planet below, it isn't spinning).
 * Nice analysis.
 * So... after you shoot down the opposing mothership, or perhaps before, doesn't matter. Some time on Mothership Zeta, you get to shoot the Death Ray into the earth. You hit some part of Canada... and the shockwave looks to be really big. Like, bigger-than-Alaska-big. No way the people in the Capital Wasteland didn't feel that, when the Tsar Bomba in 1958 was felt in, like, Denmark.
 * You can hand in the vanilla alien blaster to the outcasts, as well as the ammunition for it in exchange for some rewards.
 * And exactly nothing else. You can load up yourself and your followers with enough xeno-weaponry to outfit a regiment, but they won't take it. The same faction that will give you ammunition or medical supplies for a sensor module won't even look at any of the other alien firearms.

Talon Company and Raiders
Talon Company. What kind of ASSHOLE do you have to be to put a hit out on someone just for being too nice? I could understand if you only encountered them when you actually cross someone important and wealthy, (by disarming the bomb in Megaton, for instance) but no. You'll get the same result even if all you do is hand out purified water to people dying of thirst, which leads me to believe that someone out there is just determined to keep the wasteland miserable, like some kind of all-seeing Care Bears villain. The Exclusively Evil nature of Raiders bugs me. In fact, just the fact that the game capitalises the word "Raider" bugs me. I can easily accept that after a nuclear holocaust, a lot of people would abandon their morals (if they had any to begin with) and turn to violence in order to survive. Makes sense. However, the fluff text, along with the aforementioned capitalisation suggests that every single one of these people are part of some monolithic organization, and that ALL of them, down to the last man, are actually crazy sadists who enjoy spreading misery, rather than just doing whatever it takes to survive. That's a little hard to swallow. You Mezz an Raider put a collar on him/her the end the convo then retalk to them the raider will say they were just confused before and get the collar off they dont want to be a slave. Have an high enough science {and a savescum this game loves to fuck up if you do this} He/she thanks you and then goes about their business as an friendly npc. technically you can use this method to create a colony {check out masterpug{randomnumbersinthisparenthesis}'s settlement guide}. the raiders will drink soda eat food sleep and generally be ok guys and if you happened to strip them and put new clothes on them you could concievably turn them into your own vault group {Naughty nightwear confirmed to work so vault outfits should work as well. unlike giving cherry low dam resistance clothes or reverse pickpocketing low dam resistance onto npc's}
 * That would be Littleton & Associates, who you turn ears into if you take the Contract Killer perk. The game doesn't state it outright, but its pretty clear Littleton is the one hiring Talon Company to kill you if you have good karma - especially since the opposite end of the spectrum has Regulators hunting you if you're evil, who collect fingers from you with the Lawbringer perk.
 * Yes, actually. Littleton (or was it Littlehorn?) is basically the aforementioned care bears villain. He gives you a BONUS for being evil. Like if you bring in some ears and your karma is low enough he basically goes "FUCK YOU'RE EVIL! HAVE SOME MONEY FOR BEING SO EVIL! HOORAY EVIL!"
 * Perhaps it's bad for competition. If you get all these Johnny Niceguys running around, soon there may not be much work for the Talon Company.
 * It could just as easily be the Slavers. Remember, if you're the kind of guy running around giving water to the downtrodden and having Three Dog sing your praises over the radio, then word will spread. That's exactly the kind of Gordon Freeman-esque legend the Slavers can't have inspiring their captives, that's why they are so big on eradicating the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
 * Enclave members probably also use them as a third party "wasteland disposal unit", in need of warm bodies to eliminate the mutie without risking themselves. They pay the Littleton guy in tech in exchange for providing bounties for killing mutant scum (aka wastelanders and ghouls.)
 * The wasteland gets to people, I assume. Somewhere along the lines, they just thought "fuck it, let's raise hell" and began their lives as sadists above the law.
 * Are you trying to suggest that there wouldn't be any hateful, violent psychopaths after the apparent end of the world?
 * I think that some of the raiders are just feral humans (who come running at you with a stick when you are a walking tank), others are just serial killers who are sticking the hooks through people, and finally there are just the anarchistic assholes looking out for themselves.

Morality of The Pitt DLC
The entire Pitt campaign just left a bad taste in my mouth. I understand what they were going for; not every quest should have an obvious "good" solution and an obvious "evil" solution. However, I think they took it too far, and ultimately it was designed so that you ended up feeling like a bastard no matter what you did. Let heroes be heroes, damn it. That doesn't mean handing their good ending to them on a silver platter; by all means, make them work for it; but at least have the option be there. Why can't I convince Ashur that it's in everyone's best interests, including his own, for him to not treat the slaves like crap? Why can't I smack Werhner upside the head for manipulating me and treating a baby like an object? Why can't I be sympathetic when I'm explaining myself to Sandra rather than acting like a friggin' terrorist? There is a difference between "creating a morally ambiguous choice" and "creating a choice and only giving the player morally ambiguous options". "Midea: "I don't know how Ashur kept these people from tearing one another apart.""
 * I think you sort of missed the point of the whole campaign - it should leave a bad taste in your mouth. All three Fallout games had far too many Obvious Good Solutions and Obvious Evil Solutions, and it was high time that either solution in the games actually made you hate yourself a little bit no matter what option you chose. According to Word of God, the only reason  was because they knew they'd catch hell for it.
 * Which is fine, but the issue was with the execution, not the concept. Creating a truly morally ambiguous choice is tough because there is almost always a "right" thing to do in any given situation, even if it's hard to find sometimes. In this case, it would have been persuading Ashur to ease up on the slaves to prevent a revolt. Aside from the horrible treatment they're receiving, they have every reason to continue working for him; security and regular meals are about the best anyone can hope for in the wasteland. That, and they'll be helping him develop a cure for their disease. It'd work nicely for everyone. But no. You can't even attempt to do that, not because it isn't feasible, but because the developers want you to hate yourself. So they only give you options that will make you hate yourself.
 * I think your naive implication that there is almost always a "right thing to do" in a situation is diametrically opposed to the facts that The Pitt is trying to show you. Your argument that Ashur can be persuaded to 'ease up' on the slaves wouldn't work: 'easing up' on the slaves mean less productivity and more escapees, further slowing down the rebuilding of the City and the development of a Cure. Don't forget, the slaves know where the Cure comes from, and still doesn't care.
 * I don't think that's the case. Sure, it's possible that easing up on the slaves will make them become lazy, but the boost in morale from effectively no longer being slaves could well counterbalance that, not to mention the increase in physical health from no longer being smacked around all the time. I also don't see why there'd be more escapees. Again, the whole reason they want to escape in the first place is the way they're being treated; otherwise, working a steady job in exchange for food, shelter, safety and a cure for your disease is a pretty sweet deal as far as the wasteland goes. Also, you know what'd really slow down productivity? A revolt that gets half the slavers killed and almost all of the slaves killed. Especially when backed by a very competent and very dangerous Wasteland wanderer who just stormed the Arena without breaking a sweat and to whom you just gave back all his super-advanced equipment.
 * What do you expect Ashur to do? Ask his overseers to be nice to the slaves? His overseers, who are a bunch of raiders, who have no respect for the lives and well-being of others, who have lived and worked in a place where violence is Inherent in the System for decades? He may be the undisputed leader of the Pitt, he may be charismatic, he may be strong, but he's still just one man. He can't monitor his men 24/7, he has to make sure that all operations of the Pitt, from steel production, hunting, scavenging, and defense are running smoothly, and then there's his family and ever-important daughter to take into account. And easing up on the slaves so soon after they just tried to stage a revolt? Out of the question. And even if things go in the way you would like them to, there's still a lot of dog shooting going on, as just about every single one of the slaves is someone who was forcibly yanked out of whatever place they were originally living in (it's implied some people from the Capital Wasteland get shipped to the Pitt) to live in this cesspool where most everyone comes down with TDC, one in five mutate into an inhuman Troglodyte, and the only way to get any sustenance is to effectively commit cannibalism. Ideal life, indeed.
 * I personally think siding with Ashur is ultimately the better option. Yes, he's a bit of a tyrant, but in the end he's a more or less decent guy trying to improve life in his city for his people and his family, and genuinely intends to use the cure when he's able to. Wernher, on the other hand, is a selfish Jerkass who is ultimately in it for himself and sees the cure as little more then a bargaining chip. Plus, siding with Wernher means Yeah, Ashur isn't the nicest guy, but he's miles ahead of Wernher.
 * Or you could side with Werhner, and at the end assume Ashur's dark throne as Lord of the Pitt, making Werhner your stooge. After all, you did singlehandedly ensure the success of the rebellion.
 * I think the best option is the one that's not available: destroy the mill, and remove every last reason anyone would want anything to do with the Pitt and let the place die out afterward. Instead, he'll just have to settle with siding with Wernher, and hope that under his weak leadership and lack of any sort of army, the whole place will eventually just collapse in on itself, with the mill becoming forgotten in the years to come.
 * How is destroying the mill or letting it become forgotten good for ANYONE? That's almost spitting in the face in the point of the series; the survival of humanity and them getting back on their feet (of course, how the player decides to do this is always up to them). Why sabotage that effort?
 * I was unhappy with both of the apparent choices. But there is a middle choice that I took. Not ideal, but it left me feeling better. You steal the baby. Talk to Sandra, tell her she won't shoot you with the baby. She agrees but says her snipers will take you down. This proves to be optimistic on her part. Don't harm her. She won't attack you without provocation though she draws her sidearm. Exit the building. Kill every raider in uptown. Kill every raider in the Mill. Talk to Midea. Express disappointment at kidnapping baby. Meet Wernher. Give him the baby. Go whoa dude, you didn't tell me there was a baby involved. Listen to him call you a pansy. Listen to second part of his plan. Object to loosing the trogs. Tell him you're going to go make up with Ashur. Pass speech check to convince him to leave without violence. Retrieve baby. Return baby. Listen to Sandra call you an asshole. Talk to Ashur. Listen to Ashur go wtf man, you killed all my dudes, and the slaves revolted, and you kidnapped my baby, but you know what? fuck it, we're still bros. Ask him to free the slaves. Listen to him say no, but will do in the future. THE END. I liked this because I had a hard time siding with slavers against slaves. But I also had a hard time killing the only scientist with a legitimate shot at finding the cure. So I thought it taught Ashur a valuable object lesson about the cost of oppression, leaving the slaves in a better bargaining position. Kind of Magna Carta meets Chinese Assault Rifle. And to RP it out, I can always come back in a couple years to make my point again if need be.
 * I want to know why, if I side with Wermher and the slave, there's no option to offer to get outside help. Instead it's "orphan a baby girl, leave her with slaves who will not care for her like her own parents did and who probably have less combined medical and biological knowledge then any one doctor in the Capital Wasteland, so the way to find a cure from the baby's natural immunity to mutation will probably be a long, arduous, possibly unreached goal." Why can't I tell the Brotherhood of Steel about the Pitt? They'd certainly want to help find a mutation cure, and they've got knowledgeable scribes who can help keep the process going, while at the same time, some Knights and Paladins can act as guards. I figure the least I can do for little Marie is give her a future where she won't grow up in a slowly dying city still desperately trying to rebuild using the one advanced tool they have (The Steelmill) before it becomes completely abandoned.
 * They have in the past—there's a paladin you can meet (forget his name) who tells you that he was essentially a kid saved from the Pitt by the Brotherhood years before—but It's pretty clearly established that the Brotherhood of Steel at present has too much on it's plate, between super-mutants, the return of the Enclave and the schism with the Outcasts. Even if they wanted to, they probably couldn't spare the resources at present.
 * It should be noted that Ashur was a former Initiate of the Brotherhood of Steel who was left behind, while the paladin (Kodiak) was one of the unmutated youths brought back from the same campaign, known as the Scourge. The entire point of the Scourge was to eradicate the mutated troggs (it didn't take), and then Elder Lyons abandoned it when he realized it was a fruitless effort. Hence, why Ashur doesn't care much for the Brotherhood's help even if they were available (the Enclave is implied to have been a non-issue at that time). By the time of Fallout 3, however, the Brotherhood is too entrenched in their fight with Super Mutants to be able to help out and most likely wouldn't be able to do much to help out the Pitt for either Wehrner or Ashur.
 * But that was before a radiation/mutation immune baby was born. No matter how he Brotherhood is fairing, just that bit of information alone should be enough for them to at least send a scribe or two up north to check it out. Especially after Broken Steel, where the Enclave is dying a slow death, the Brotherhood is recovering all sorts of tech from their ruins, and new initiates are likely going to have more time to train and thus, not be redshirts.
 * Just eat the baby and let 'em all rot. Yep.
 * I don't get the mass confusion here. You have a choice between letting one (adorable baby) girl live happily with Mr. and Mrs. Overlord, or liberating hundreds, possibly thousands of slaves and saving hundreds of lives. Ashur is a man who puts slaves in a radioactive hole and make them duke it out for his amusement, and I took pleaure in reducing him to a fine red paste. Werhner's a mega-asshole, to be sure, and its clear that the baby will not be very happy, seeing the metal capsule-thing she was put in, but it's kind of hard to feel bad when you walk outside, see former slaves revel in their freedom, and being able to say "I did that." Like Abraham Lincoln.
 * You are only seeing one-half of the story. While you see the liberation of slaves, you do not see the hell that they are being freed into, as the Trogg disease once again begins to take over (as told in the background for the Pitt). Sandra and Ashur were capable of producing a cure, at the cost of the freedom of many slaves and the lives of a few of them, as it minimized bloodshed, risk, and put the whole of the Pitt on the track to redevelopment. It's also implied that Midea and Werhner are incapable of keeping the Pitt from tearing itself apart, let alone have the skill or equipment needed to replicate a proper cure for the Trogg disease, so it's much more likely that those thousands of people you free will end up dying or suffering a Fate Worse Than Death. Midea says as much as you talk to her if you side with the Slaves after the main quest is over, and implies that Werhner's way is no better than Ashur's.


 * They aren't being prevented from leaving, unless Werhner has a deathwish, and Midea seems to have some idea of what she's doing, seeing the metal pod thing that the baby was in. As for minimizing the bloodshed, the hole that you fought in were pretty bloody and seemed to be a somewhat-regular occurance.
 * Listen to her again, she doesn't really have a clue what she's doing. The metal crib is same one Sandra had, but look around the room, and compare it to what Sandra was working with in her lab. Not much of a comparison. Sure, the former slaves could leave. It's either a radioactive city where they have shelter and food, even if it is just slop, plus a working steel mill with which they can build with, or they could go back to the Crapsack World of places like the Capital Wasteland, where they don't always have food or the resources to survive, and have to deal with super mutants and other monstrous creatures instead of trogs. But then, if they leave, they just carry the Troglodyte Degeneration Congagion with them. And while bloody, the Hole is voluntary, the Jerkass slavers do not force you or any of the others to fight each other to the death.
 * I thought she stole that metal crib from Sandra's lab, although your other points are valid. It shouldn't be too difficult to reclaim uptown (i.e turn the floodlights back on) and get that labratory in the Haven back. I assumed she simply just snuck into the lab and stole the crib and whatver else she may need. Megoton seems rather friendly, and if a eleven-year-old malnourished boy can get from Greyditch to Rivet City, it probably wouldn't be too hard for the slaves to get to a settlement, provided they aren't part of that 20%
 * That's the unfortunate part that also makes it a Headscratcher - we can assume most anything we want, but without evidence, it's just guesswork. Maybe Midea took Sandra's lab equipment, maybe she didn't. We're just going on what we have evidence for, and that's Midea and Werhner trying to lead the slaves from the old Slave quarters, rather than more well-defended and stocked Slavers' area, which is not secured. Those other things have their own set of issues. For instance, Bryan Wilks isn't just some random malnourished kid, he's the nephew of Rivet City's innkeeper, and as blood relations to someone established in that community, he may get a free pass. Megaton is trying to minimize the number of settlers who come in - they have a rather large empty house that's not in use at all, for instance, and is then only given to the Lone Wanderer as a reward, as opposed to say, opening it up and using it as a second common house.
 * I was thinking more along the lines of that only 20% of the population was infected, and that was from mostly prolonged exposure to the Pitt radiation. If they simply escaped the Pitt and hacked en existence in the Wastleland, not too hard considering everyone there are at least somewhat competent with the Auto Axe, and the wastelend is at hospitable enough to NPCs so that Bryan could walk from Greyditch to Rivet City. In fact, staying in the Pitt would be the worst thing they could do since it is revealed that the reason the babies born there all have a hundred percent Trog rate (except one) is because they were statying in the Pitt
 * Everyone in the Pitt is infected, but only 20% will turn into mutated Troggs. For many of them, the Pitt is their home and their chance at life. For everyone else, it's possible they may recover if they leave, but again, the Wasteland is not a hospitable place (even if Fallout 3 fails at making that clear - see the last entry on this page). It's why it's the Wasteland and why people keep trying to move into Rivet City and those other places. Bryan Wilks makes it to Rivet City on his own because children are invulnerablel in Fallout 3. However, Adults who try to trek across the wasteland have to fend for themselves or try and get help - as Sticky and Cherry demonstrate when you escort them across the wastes.
 * Hey, is there any particular reason why Ashur needs to be in charge while working on the cure? Wouldn't he get a lot more work done in an isolated underground lab with an explosive collar around his neck while the former slaves hold a Constitutional Convention over the still-cooling body of Werhner?

Sibley
If Sibley was so against the Outcasts sharing Anchorage's spoils with you, why does he wait until after you've unlocked an armory full og Infinity Plus One equipment to launch his revolt?
 * It was my conclusion that any promises made would be instantly revoked in case of success and the Lone Wanderer thrown out on his/her keister. But when it becomes clear that the leader does actually intend to keep his word, Sibley goes into WT Freakout-mode.
 * I get the impression that Sibley didn't know about the whole "let the local have first refusal" part of the deal, or assumed that his leader would just kill you after you did the task. That, and the fact that he knew he needed your help to get all of it.
 * Remember, the Outcasts needed your pipboy to unlock the armory; so if you were willing to go through the quite-possibly-lethal simulation to unlock it for them, Sibley's alright with that. Sibley just wanteda ll the toys you unlocked for him.

Outcasts
Brotherhood Outcasts, GODDAMN they annoy me. Sure, the Wasteland is cruel, crappy place and almost of avatar of death and despair, but that doesn't give you the rights of being a total a-holes and politic to shoot first and ask then. No wonder that they got kicked out!
 * You're confusing the Outcasts with Talon Company. The Brotherhood Outcasts have a policy of looting all the good tech and analysing it, and they do treat others as impaired, but they are sure as hell not "shoot first, ask questions later" people. Also, the Outcasts left of their own accord; they weren't exiled.
 * Brotherhood outcasts never start hostile to you when you see them but they ARE fucking assholes. The game can't even decide if they're evil or not. I happened upon 2 outcast guys and an Outcast aligned robobrain walking around near Vault 101. I kill them and their robobrain. I take a negative karma hit. But what do I find on their bodies? FINGERS, which are only dropped by evil characters.
 * Maybe they got them the same way you did, looting a body...
 * Given the way the game works, it seems unlikely. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to loot any fingers they'd have grabbed: You have to land the killing blow yourself, which is why you don't get Fingers if someone/something else kills an evil character (like a follower). I've never been attacked by an Outcast without starting it, but about level nineteen I realized I had no real reason not to kill them for being dicks to me after I helped them fend off an Enclave attack. Pretty much the only not-good thing I've done in the game, too.

Vault-Tec PA

 * In the beginning, you can hear the Vault PA system say that the surface of the Earth won't be habitable for at least three more centuries. Yet there are a large number of organizations and towns living on the surface and all are doing perfectly fine. Eh?
 * Two words: Overseer's Propaganda.
 * That probably has more to do with how long the Vaul Tec people planned on keeping 101 sealed for experimental purposes than it does with dangerous radiation levels.
 * And it's not like the kindly, honest, benevolent, generous, truthful, loving, and reasonable Overseer would * gasp* lie to the denizens of the Vault and modify the PA recording to keep anyone from wanting to leave. Never!
 * There was no need for the Overseer to modify anything; the reason why he's so obsessive to keep the Vault sealed is because the Vault Tec's secret information about the Vault Experiment tells him that this is what he needs to do.

Wastelanders being to repair alien tech

 * How exactly is it that any person in the Wasteland (except you) with knowledge of Repair is somehow magically able to repair ALIEN WEAPONS or indeed any sort of unique, super special, one-of-a-kind item, when it's implied it's otherwise done by scrapping another similar weapon or armor to get spare parts for the one you want to repair? Just bugs me.
 * Treat it like an energy weapon. Apparently, all repairmen in the wasteland have the jury rigging perk.

Confessor Cromwell

 * Confessor Cromwell stands in ankle-deep irradiated water right next to an atomic bomb all day in Megaton. How (and don't say "game files make him immune to radiation") does he not either drop dead or turn into a freakin' Ghoul?
 * The Power of Faith, or possibly lead-lined boots and pants.
 * The radiation mutated him in a way that made him immune to radiation. Or maybe he's an android, or a ghoul wearing someone else's skin.
 * Game files make him... impervious... to radiation.
 * Cromwell is likely either resistant due to constant exposure (like the player can become, due to exposure on Moira's quests) or takes constant doses of RAD-X and Radaway.
 * Standing in the same water to help Moira with her radiation exposure research nets you a Rad Resistance perk (OK, so does any other kind of exposure, but that's the closest source). Maybe he's developed even more resistance?
 * He's just a few steps away from Doc Church's. He removes all Rads "quick and easy" for 100 Caps. Obviously that's where his church donations go...

Sleeping in "owned" beds"

 * You can be the biggest badass in the Wastelands, enslave children, murder civilians for little to no reason, deploy a virus that will kill 99%+ of the populace of the capital wasteland, steal anything you want, cleanse entire cities of all life... but you can't sleep in an "owned" bed. That's just too evil. Even if your character has no way of knowing that it's an owned bed. Seriously, what? I understand there might be gameplay balance reasons to discourage sleeping in dungeons, but you can fix that by making sleeping out in the wild risk a random encounter where you're caught flat-footed. Also, in related news, why can I carry five suits of power armor but not a sleeping bag or bedroll?
 * Sleeping in an "owned" bed means that at some point, the owner of the bed is going to come along and kick you out. Also, all the NPCs have scripts that include them sleeping, so this is likely also a programming decision to prevent you from screwing up the game script.
 * So how can I not sleep in a previously-owned bed after the owner accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving?
 * Because to do this Bethseda would have to create hard associations between a specific owned object and a specific NPC. It's far easier to code objects that are "owned", and simply have any nearby NPC try to murder you and/or confiscate the material if they catch you stealing it. They then imply that any owned item will have it's "owner" nearby to give the one response to theft in the game. Thus, an object that is "owned" will never become "unowned" because the object never recognized an "owner" in the first place.
 * ^ Hey Poster above that's a good theory and all and Imma let you finish but how do you explain why I watched C.J. Young walk out of her families room and into flak and shrapnels bedroom and take a nap. unless there's a side story there Bethesda neglected to share.
 * That's exactly what he just explained. "Owned" stuff is not owned by anyone in particular, it's just "owned"; i.e., designated for NPC use only.

Where are the squirrels

 * Not sure if this applies to the other games, so putting this here. How exactly are squirrel stew and squirrel on a stick common food items? The non-packaged nature of the items implies that they're fresh- but the lack of living trees means squirrels should be long gone, and you don't encounter any, either!
 * It's a reference to the previous Fallouts. Iguana-on-stick was a food found throughout those games, even though you never saw the iguanas. Lampshaded by several characters, until you find out that it's not iguana. Probably changed to squirrels because iguanas are typically found in desert environments.

Science error

 * Scientific Plot Hole: The simple facts of nuclear radiation. The main thing is that water cannot physically absorb radiation, just sediment. Clean the water with charcoal or something, who cares about the FEV!
 * It also doesn't create acid spitting mutated monsters and wacky bartending zombies. But the game doesn't work with real world science, it works with SCIENCE!
 * The problem here is that the Fallout Universe only works with SCIENCE! in regards to futuristic technologies relative to the 1950s, it's rather well grounded in practical science that existed up to and before that time. It's only in Fallout 3 that they just abandon existing science and go straight for SCIENCE! In this case, a facility similar to a modern water treatment plant (which have existed since the 1890s, using the same exact principles they do now, and have been widespread since the 1920s) would be just as capable of doing what the Purifier does, and wouldn't require a GECK or 20 years of inaction.
 * About the item "blood pack;" you are aware that even if properly preserved, y'know, refrigerated in gigantic, specially built units, you get AT MOST 10 years out of blood that isn't inside a body and not 200? And this is ignoring the way it's used in game, you don't see the Wanderer carrying around a drip do you? Does s/he just drink it? If so, how could learning about cannibalism make it any more helpful to do so ARRRGH!
 * The sound effect when said packs are 'used' does indeed sound like drinking. I really, really don't want to know...
 * ^ sorry poster above but yes it's drunk. In the blood ties quest you can actually talk the leader into teaching you how to truly appreciate drinking blood. before this vampire perk bloodpack = like 1 point of health after vampire perk = a lot more.

Caps as currency in Fallout 3

 * Why the hell are caps the currency in DC? It made sense in the first game because they were backed by the merchants and somewhat rare. But 3 didn't give an explanation, and they're pretty abundant, seeing as the plant is right there. Bethesda pulling a You Fail Economics Forever just for nostalgia?
 * In short: light, small, counterfeit-proof, durable, uncommon, and shiny.
 * Caps actually make for effective currency. They can't be easily duplicated, they're easy to carry, and they're rare enough that they can be used as currency while still being plentiful enough that everyone can use them; just because the factory is there it doesn't mean that the caps are so prevalent as to cause inflation, especially considering there's so few at the factory when you go visit it. As long as the merchants in the region are willing to accept them as currency and as a basis for value, then they'd be easily accepted; there's a reason why the merchants in the first game were willing to accept them as currency. The use of caps probably developed like actual currency originally developed, simply as a means to facilitate trade.
 * For a more direct plot rationale, I imagine the Brotherhood brought the idea with them when they arrived from the west. With the Brotherhood offering caps for guns and books, the rest of the Capital Wasteland probably just took the idea and ran with it.
 * This brings up a serious loophole. I mean, surely there is a place where the Nuka-Cola Bottle caps are manufactured. If some lucky wastelander managed to get to the factory, and it wasn't severely damaged, he could recover thousands of pre-made caps. Hell, if he managed to get the factory working again, he's have access to unlimited caps.
 * Those are some pretty gigantic "ifs" for the average wastelander.
 * New Vegas deals with that very idea, on a sidequest where you have to shut down a production line of new Caps.

Vault Dweller's Combat Skill

 * Why is it that someone who spent their whole life growing in a vault and going through typical high school training can easily gun down trained security staff, ruthless wasteland raiders and super mutants with ease?
 * To be fair, Vault security specifically are also dealing with a huge invasion of mutated cockroaches and trying to restore order to the entire Vault after a major breach in security as well as you; it's perhaps fair to say they're a little distracted and you're taking advantage of that. And while a high-school level-education might not necessarily prepare one for automatic survival in a post-nuclear apocalypse, one could also handwave this as being down to strategy and tactics—most raiders and super-mutants tend to operate in a manner that suggests savagery and bloodlust, whereas you can operate in a more tactful and strategic fashion. And ultimately we have to consider Willing Suspension of Disbelief and Acceptable Breaks From Reality in a meta-sense, since let's face it, it wouldn't be much of a game if all you did was escape the vault and then get eaten by a bear or unceremoniously tortured and killed by a psychotic raider.
 * On the other hand, the case is made that Fallout 3 is entirely too easy because of this sort of thinking towards empowering the Lowest Common Denominator. Some feel that anyone could stumble along the storyline, making horrifically bad decisions and still be able to "beat" the game with the "best ending" because the game was designed without taking into account many of the decisions made along the way.

Wanting to stay in Vault 101

 * Who and what army is going to stop me from living in Vault 101 again? Seriously, my dad just got killed. Why can I go "fuck you wasteland", and convince Amata that my place is back with her in the vault where I grew up? That'd make for one hell of a Take a Third Option ending. I didn't kill your father both times I had the chance, and stopped the rebellion in your favour, with no violence, but you'll throw me out? I only killed like one guy (you know, the one who was about to shoot you) from the vault all up. I can even advise the people who seem so intent on leaving the vault (pro-tip, go to Megaton first). Oh, and here are thousands of caps, a dozen alien blasters, some armour and all the guns you'll ever need to protect yourself. Once my dad died, the only thing I gave a crap about was Amata, and being unceremoniously thrown out made me think of the rest of the game as a chore to get through just to say I'd completed it.
 * But Thou Must! save the wasteland
 * If you tell Amata to keep the gun when she wakes you up, ... And you still get the gun in the end. I do that all the time in my 'good' playthroughs.
 * I think you've forgotten that about half the population of Vault 101 still hates you. I mean, really hates you. They think you're just about the worst threat to the Vault's safety ever.
 * So effing what? They can hate me until their eyes cross, I have enough firepower to depopulate the entire bloody Vault and still make it back to Megaton in time for afternoon tea with Wadsworth. There should at least be the option to say "I'm coming back in, through the melted remains of the Vault door and over your dead bodies if necessary."
 * I think you're forgetting that, by this point, the Wanderer is a heavily armed and armoured wasteland killing machine, while the residents of Vault 101 don't even have access to weapons. If you've managed to subvert the Overseer and restore order, just who the Hell is going to challenge you - and even if they do, what stops you from simply gunning them all down?
 * Well, nothing is stopping you. If you kill both Amata and the overseer then all chaos breaks loose and the vault is left open forever and you can visit it whenever you want. It's just that there wont be anyone there anymore or any reason to stay there.
 * The thing that bugs me is that you have to leave forever. So Amata says you can't stay right now because things are so tense in the vault that it nearly sparked outright slaughter. Okay, I can understand that, Amata's a smart girl who actually cares about everyone in the vault and wants things to settle down as soon as possible. That's cool. But there's no mention of keeping in touch with Amata to keep her updated about how things are in the Wasteland, finding trustworthy people to trade with them, coming back in a few years, nothing. For god's sake, you're her childhood friend and a really important asset to the vault, but you're basically kicked out on your ass and never allowed back. Thanks, Amata.
 * Actually, if listen to Amata carefully she basically is much more reasonable Generation Xerox of her father. On your escape from the Vault her response to your offer to come with you is I Choose to Stay, citing her responsibility to everyone else. After the second time, she's absolutely right about how everyone in the Vault wouldn't calm down with you around, which, given when Dad left resulted in a radroach invasion and a ton of Vault dwellers dead (which you and he got blamed for by proxy), there is no way in hell they would overcome being an Ungrateful Bastard on a collective level after all the crap they've gone through, especially considering how, with the exception of yourself and Dad, they themselves are gunshy of the outside world, and since she understands that, she tells you, albeit in a somewhat nicer way, to GTFO because she had to make a hard choice between the Vault 101 community surviving without devolving into anarchy because of the presnece of an outside influence, or keeping things relatively intact with you removed, and she chose the many over the few.
 * This becomes ridiculous, actually, in that you really didn't have anything to do with James' escape, and that you shouldn't be held responsible when you were acting in self-defense, and now you're back to try and help because you are -not- your father, you're your own person. For instance, Daniel Agincourt is a rude bastard to you as well for a completely different reason, yet he wises up when he realizes that you aren't James and you're trying to help him instead. And if you choose to make Amata leader of the Vault after you leave, you can encounter Susie Mack who will inform you that the vault is doing quite well, and now she is out exploring and will eventually go back home. You know, as an outside influence.

The morality of killing alien workers
"Don't kill the Alien workers, they are harmless!". Except they are working on a space ship that's doing horrific genetic/mutating tests on humans and are you know... abducting people. Killing them gives you bad karma.
 * Agreed. They are aboard a hostile military vessel, they show every indication of being part of the normal crew(they wear uniforms) and they are actively trying to aid in your capture(setting off alarms) and they're not showing any indication of trying to surrender, hence they would be classified as active enemy combatant by the Geneva Conventions and you would be free to shoot at them as long as they don't try to surrender.
 * The Alien Captain wears black. The Alien Workers wear red. The Aliens with guns wear white. Otherwise, the uniform is identical. Just like on Star Trek or our own earth navies. The guide is a kid with a very basic idea of what is harmless and what isn't.
 * Personally, It Just Bugs Me that someone is bugged by the fact that killing unarmed people who can't fight back gives them bad karma. I mean, by Santa Christ, is it so hard to grasp that shooting helpless people who can't fight back is wrong?
 * Remember, some people like to play as a Complete Monster. That doesn't mean they actually advocate killing unarmed, defenseless people IRL.
 * What really bugs me about this is that your penalized for killing the alien workers, but not the Encalve Scientists, despite the fact that they basically fulfill the same role (cowering and running away from the player hoping the guards will take care of you). Hell, the Enclave scientists even drop fingers which basically gives you positive karma
 * Of course, I remember in Brotherhood of Steel there was a scientist or two who actually tried to attack me on sight instead of running away.
 * I simply took the view that any alien who didn't need to be killed was one more I could come back for, pin against the wall and give a "I'm the new boss" speech to their faces. "Clean this place up, fix what's broken, and do what I say. Got that? Good." If you wanna run a captured alien spaceship, it's nice to leave alive at least some beings who know how the heck to keep it working.
 * There is a small girl on the ship. You found out not ten minutes ago what the do to their test subjects (hint: it has something to do with probes). The girl may be forgiving, but I had to kill every alien that moved to cure the emotional scarring.

Overabundance of skeletons

 * What's up with the skeletons littered all over the place? It makes sense in the Wasteland, camps filled with psychotic raiders, or abandoned Vaults. Not like there's a cleaning crew there. But Rivet City, Megaton, Arefu, and all of the other (relatively) civilized settlements never seem to have bothered to give all of the dead proper graves. Even Andale, which poses as a pristine pre-War suburban town and keeps its gory Dark Secret firmly locked in the cellars and basements, has a skeleton just laying there in the bathtub.
 * I don't recall seeing skeletons lying around Rivet City and Megaton. And are you actually expecting the people of Andale to actually give a damn about a skeleton lying in a bathtub if they don't give a damn about the living already?
 * For all we know, the more civilized people do attempt to bury the dead when they come across them. But then, it's a nuclear wasteland with savage monsters, feral radiated ghouls and humans who have been reduced to being complete sadistic monsters wandering freely around. Bound to be a lot of bodies rack up, and you can't take care of them all. Plus, some of them could be left out as a warning of frontier justice—i.e. 'don't mess with us or this'll be you' sort of thing.

Unenthusiastic PC

 * There is a serious lack of enthusiasm in many of the dialog options that the player can use. For example, when Three Dog is telling you where the replacement dish is to be found, your only options are "Anything to find my father.", "I can't do that right now.", or "OMG SUPERMUTANTS NO WAI IM SCARED!" Where the heck is the "Hell yeah, I love killing super mutants!" option?
 * ...Developers can't think of anything?
 * The developers are like this DM.
 * Perhaps it might help if we briefly look at it from the character's point of view for a moment. Imagine you're the player-character—as in, actually the player-character. Whether you've decided to be The Messiah, a Complete Monster or a True Neutral, you're still a nineteen-year-old who's up until relatively recently lived in relative comfort, who's suddenly been thrust out into the big bad world—which is particularly big and bad because of all the radioactive monsters who want to kill you out there. You probably don't enjoy fighting these radioactive monsters much. By the time you find Three-Dog, you just want to find your dad. That's the only thing you want right now. And this guy knows exactly where your dad was headed, but when you finally get to see him he quite happily informs you that he has no intention of telling you a single goddamn thing until you wade into an area swarming with these big, heavily armoured vicious green mutated sadists who would make the Frankenstein's monster crap himself with fear to do him a favour. Now, the player could be thinking "Alright! Chance to fuck up some super mutants! WOOOT!"—but then the player is probably sitting on a comfy couch in a nice warm house in a world which isn't an irradiated wasteland crawling with monsters, so his / her opinion probably doesn't matter for shit here. The character, on the other hand, is most likely thinking something along the lines of "Three-Dog, you fucking asshole." And why wouldn't s/he? Considering that most of your interactions with the people in the Wasteland before this and after are with people, roughly 80% of whom are complete assholes, who's first instinct when you ask them for help—or even when you just happen to come across them—is "hey, buddy, what are you gonna do for me?!". Often expressed as rudely as possible. And which often involves the player-character getting themselves in very dangerous situations for them. Yeah. Not that hard for me to see why the player-character probably isn't likely to be very thrilled about these missions. Although it helps that they do become a lot more interesting if you imagine them being said as as sarcastically as possible at times.

Player's status as Bo S Paladin

 * Minor one for Fallout 3: once you're officially a Knight of the Brotherhood, why don't more dialogue options reflect this? Just a simple "I'm Knight (PC Name) from the Brotherhood and I'm here because..."?
 * ...An Honorary member. Which basically translates to 'a member in name only'. Fank wank answer: The Lone Wanderer doesn't mention it to avoid drawing unwanted attention to himself and possible enemies attacking him/her (Note that in one of the few instances in which you can mention your membership in the BoS, the person you're talking to, along with all his teammates, turn hostile on you).
 * No, you're an official member by Broken Steel. Elder Lyons says so when you agree to help pursue the Enclave. Some of the unnamed Brotherhood NPCs do refer to you as 'Sir Knight' when passing them by.
 * Well then he/she is probably doing it to avoid attracting unwanted attention to himself.
 * Hell, Lyons makes you a member of the Brotherhood whether you agree to help or not. It felt distressingly similar to being conscripted to me, especially when Paladin Tristan starts barking out "That is an order!" when you refuse objectives later on.
 * Which might also explain why she / he avoids mentioning it; a bit of resentment at being essentially press-ganged.

Ashur vs. Wernher

 * Maybe I'm imagining it, but why is there this implicit assumption by many fans that Ashur is preferable to Wernher? Yes, the latter is a selfish asshole, but at least he won't be employing an army of some of the worst raider scum to kidnap innocent people and force them to work in conditions that could charitably be called Hell on Earth. Sure, Ashur says that he's going to eventually free the slaves once there's a cure, but that's a pipe dream at best and God only knows how many innocent people would be killed between now and then.
 * We've been through this discussion before earlier on this page. The options basically boil down to this:
 * Side with Ashur; revolt is put down, and slaves continue to live in oppression. But there is still the hope of a cure and the Pitt eventually becoming a thriving settlement.
 * Side with Wernher; Revolt succeeds, slaves are free. But you leave the  with people who are almost certainly going to mistreat it. And it's pretty much outright stated that Wernher sucks at his job as leader of the Pitt, and it's only a matter of time before it collapses upon itself, meaning the cure, the revolt, and each and every person who has died up till' this point has all been for nothing.
 * Overall, both the choices are morally ambiguous, but at least with Ashur we're given the faintest of hopes that in the end, all this would've really made a difference.
 * What everyone forgets is that the slaves AREN'T free if you side with Wehrner. He says "oh, yeah, we're totally freeing them, it just takes time". Wehrner still pulls an Arbeit Macht Frei, except he clearly wants power, whereas Ashur seems to genuinely want to move beyond this and Make America Great. Two assholes, but one is nicer
 * Regarding the baby. Midea made it explicitly clear that she aimed to treat Marie like her own daughter. Wehrner may be an unrepentant asshole, but he's not the one in charge of Marie's upbringing. On top of that, it's made clear that the experiments are working, even if they are a bit slower than when Ashur was conducting them. Honestly, aside from wanting to bitch-slap Wehrner a bit in the end, I thought the choice was pretty abundantly clear.
 * What everyone forgets is that the slaves AREN'T free if you side with Wehrner. He says "oh, yeah, we're totally freeing them, it just takes time". Wehrner still pulls an Arbeit Macht Frei, except he clearly wants power, whereas Ashur seems to genuinely want to move beyond this and Make America Great. Two assholes, but one is nicer
 * Regarding the baby. Midea made it explicitly clear that she aimed to treat Marie like her own daughter. Wehrner may be an unrepentant asshole, but he's not the one in charge of Marie's upbringing. On top of that, it's made clear that the experiments are working, even if they are a bit slower than when Ashur was conducting them. Honestly, aside from wanting to bitch-slap Wehrner a bit in the end, I thought the choice was pretty abundantly clear.

Camera mistake

 * A minor case of Did Not Do the Research: Early in Fallout 3 when Jonas takes a picture of you and dad, he holds the camera up to his face as if looking through a viewfinder. The cameras in the game are all Twin Lens Reflex-type cameras, which have a ground glass viewfinder built into the top of the camera. Someone using a camera like that properly would hold the camera at chest level and crane their neck to look down into the viewfinder. It could, on the other hand, be a case of Reality Is Unrealistic, as TLR cameras are uncommon and most players would expect all cameras to have a viewfinder like an SLR.
 * That camera was probably made in the 2070s, not the 1970s. Chances are pretty good its internal workings aren't actually the same as what its outside would indicate.

Unremovable Pip-Boy 3000

 * Anyone else bugged by the fact that, even though you're told you cannot remove your Pip Boy, you somehow are able to tuck your sleeves inside it whenever you change outfits?
 * Well, they probably lied to you. It is, in fact, possible to remove the pipboy with the right equipment. In New Vegas, you're given an extra pipboy from the doc that saves you from the introduction.

Sympathy for the Enclave

 * How the hell are the Enclave "much more sympathetic" in 3? They're the exact same racist, genocidal, pseudo Nazis they were in 2!
 * I guess maybe its because
 * That and because there is Autumn, who actually vetoed Eden's attempt to  to the point of open revolt. Are they still assholes? Absolutely. But they aren't comically evil ones, and with enough head-twisting it isn't that hard to recognize that they ultimately are Knights Templars.
 * Except that Autumn is the only thing separating him from Eden. He is still just as much of a racist fascist as the rest of the Enclave. And he doesn't want to simply activate the purifier, he wants to control it, as he who controls the water supply controls the Wasteland, and nothing Autumn says or does indicate he would be a good ruler, whereas everything he does indicates he would be an oppressive, iron fisted, despotic tyrant.
 * Two things makes them more sympathetic than in Fallout 2: they, or at least  are less genocidal, and the Brotherhood of Steel is more bigoted than the New California Republic. That doesn't make them good, or even anywhere close to Knights Templar.
 * If you're talking about the Brotherhood branch we see in 3, they're way less bigoted than just about every other faction, including the Outcasts and definitely counting the Enclave. Also, the human portion of the Enclave is equally genocidal: Note that field teams have orders to round up Wastelanders for genescanning and to "take care" of the irradiated, which is pretty much everyone not in a Vault. Presumably the 'unfit' would be used in experiments, as can be seen with dissected Wastelanders and in the Enclave labs; the orders (found in field-team terminals) add that they should 'incinerate' the extras, and Soldiers in those groups carry Flamers. They also seem to consider all ghouls as ferals and shoot accordingly.
 * At least some people are probably being influenced by New Vegas, where the Enclave Remnants are portrayed in an almost wholly sympathetic light; one of them admits that the leadership went too far, but adds that most of the Enclave were good people. (Which may well be true, but doesn't make what the Enclave as a whole did any less heinous.) Plus it has Arcade, whose former Enclave citizenship seems to have elicited plenty of sympathy for a group that essentially no longer exists in F:NV (and thus looks much better by comparison).

Lasering Ontario

 * Okay, in the Mothership Zeta DLC, you're  According to Word of God, you'd be shooting straight at Ontario, Canada. Sheesh, first Canada is annexed by the US in the backstory, and we get to ZAP A CITY, potentially killing thousands! Why are we not gifted with a low karma rating? Was this a Take That by the Devs? (Like they had a bad experience in Ontario, so they let the player destroy it.)
 * A few things: a) it was nuked 200 years ago, so I doubt it's very populous there. b) ground zero was closer to Algonquin Provincial Park, which was never that populous to begin with. c) it had to hit somewhere, and Canada seemed convenient. d) something of that devastation and consequence to occur in such an offhand and unremarked on fashion, I refuse to believe it.
 * For all we know, Ontario was a trog-ridden, super mutant behemoth breeding ground. Maybe frying it saved lives.
 * Bad karma in FO3 is awarded for deliberately doing something bad. The LW is fiddling with alien technology while in the process of a prison break. Firing the superlaser could easily be an honest accident, if one heck of an "oops" moment.

Accents in Vault 101

 * In what world would any nationality retain their accents living in small, cloistered area for hundreds of years? It's not big or diverse enough for people to retain particular accents. That probably should have been one of the first things to be phased out. Either the smallest demographic would sound like the largest, or a new accent would spring up.
 * Some of them—particularly those belonging to people with some sort of power, influence, or access to Pre-War tech and recordings—could simply be affectations for whatever reason.
 * As someone in another question mentioned, small populations actually increase the odds of accents and different dialects, because there's not many other people around to cause inertia in language.

Positive Karma for killing evil characters

 * OK, the karma for killing evil characters bugs me: It makes perfect sense to get positive karma from killing really, really evil people that the wasteland is better off without (Eulogy Jones and Mr.Burke, for example), but other cases don't make a lot less sense, mostly because you get negative karma for killing someone else who does basically the same thing. Compare 2 other evil characters you get good karma for killing: Allistar Tenpenny and Azukhral (the corrupt ghoul bar owner), to their counterparts: Roy Phillips and Colin Moriarty:
 * Moriarty: Just like Azukhral, he is a sleazy business man who keeps a psuedo-slave, blackmails his customers, and sends the player character to try to kill an innocent woman. Yet you get negative karma for killing him and positive karma for killing Azukhral. The only difference between them is that Moriarty is arguably worse, as he forces women into prostitution and treats his workers horribly (Gob:"Moriarty has been beating me harder than usual lately...").
 * Roy: This has already been talked about enough, but I'd like to point out that Tenpenny didn't actually seem like that bad a guy. Sure, he wanted Megaton nuked and kept the ghouls out his tower, but at least he wanted Megaton evacuated first (which Burke ignored), and he can be quite easily convinced to let the ghouls in. In fact, if you convince his tenants to let the ghouls in, he'll actually give you 500 caps, implying that he was never really racist at all and just wanted his residents to be convinced first. Roy, on the other hand, will massacre dozens of innocent people even after being let in peacefully.
 * I was always bugged by the fact that you would lose Karma for stealing from evil characters yet would gain Karma for killing them. Talk about Moral Dissonance.
 * You don't lose karma for stealing from evil characters. Take every item in paradise falls, or take the key off Ahzukrals body and take everything in the Ninth Circle supply cooler. You wont lose karma, even though taking the items are marked red, as if your stealing.

The Pitt

 * Was anybody else bugged by the fact there was only two options for The Pitt DLC? Now, I know the devs can't think of absolutely every option to put in, but two seemed to be common sense options: why was I not able to listen to Ashur's side of the story, leave without the baby, go to Midea, get the info on Werhner's location, talk to Werhner, and hear his whole plan, and then decide? Or maybe see if you can get Ashur and Werhner to work together? I didn't like that your only options were to kidnap a baby from a scientist's lab where they're working toward a cure, haul it through dangerous environments to an even more dangerous environment to people with no medical or scientific experience, and then leave the one hope of a cure in their hands, or, to ignore the baby, and head over to Midea, convince her/kill her to get Werhner's location, and then kill Werhner. Having that extra option of being able to learn each side's whole plan would have been nice.
 * If I'd figured out that the 'free the slaves' quest would eventually entail baby-napping, I'd have just left the Pitt after getting my gear and freedom back. The whole thing ended up being a chilling refresher that even the best intentions can have very unexpected consequences, and even 'just' causes have a dark side. Quite honestly, in any future playthroughs of FO3, I will probably just leave that DLC disabled.
 * I was also pissed about that. I wanted to save the slaves (otherwise my planned massacre of Paradise Falls' slavers would be pretty hypocritical), but couldn't bring myself to kidnap a baby that was going to be used for the same purpose (by more skilled people who also happen to be her loving parents) anyway. So I ended up pissing off the slaves. Then, when 6 of them decide to corner me with steel axes, I find out that killing them while they're evicerating me reduces my karma (however, standing over that irradiated caged hole in the mill and luring them to attack you allows you to deal with that problem with no karma loss). I finally decided that if being a good guy got me into this mess being an evil prick would get me out, and started blasting. After it was all done, I went back to Midea to see what she had to say, realized she's a bitch, and liquified her with my Plasma Rifle (her complaining basically amounted to saying I should've kidnapped the baby for "the greater good", and people trying to justify bad things that way is one of my Berzerk Buttons). I know it was supposed to be Grey and Grey Morality with no clear right answer (help the well-meaning slave boss or the psychopathic freedom fighter), but, if nothing else, at least let me kill the assholes trying to remove my intestines without being considered a bad guy.

Tenpenny Tower Security

 * One thing really bugs me about the Tenpenny Tower quest, in particular the security force headed by Chief Gustavo: Why are these guys do goddamn useless? Seriously, I can name 3 things right off the bat that happened that they could've easily prevented but didn't: One, the murder of Susan Lancaster and Edgar Wellington II. They were both murdered by Millicent, who made no attempt to be discreet at all. She just shoots them right in front of the guards, and they dont even blink. Even after she's committed the murders, she just casually strolls out of the tower and security don't even try to stop her. They even open the gate for her. Two, how are they so stupid they let Roy, Micheal, and Bessie, 3 radioactive, untrained, poorly equiped ghouls with no armor whatsoever massacre everyone at Tenpenny Tower in the "peaceful ending"? Did Roy let feral ghouls do the dirty work? If so, did the guards just not notice a hateful ghoul walking into the door that can unlock the only thing that keeps the ferals out?
 * Yes, Roy kills them all by setting loose a scourge of feral ghouls from the locked door in the basement. I imagine he manages to access it the same way the player can if you decide to personally help him in this scheme.

Wasteland Economy and Jobs

 * From megaton to Rivet city their are plenty of people wandering around without any apparent source of income and those who have jobs, who is paying them? There is also the fact that places like Rivet city market would depend out of towners to bring in items and caps, yet you never see any. I can buy that some places have a tax to pay for things like the sheriff and the water plant (megaton) but other things remain unexplained.
 * Megaton and Rivet City are both one-upped by Tenpenny Tower, filled with the rich elite of society who have gained their station by means of saying that they are. They're just rich because they live in the town of rich people, with no more explanation than that. It seems to be a failing of Bethesda's of late, to not even bother to pretend there's a working economy. How do people find enough to eat? Why, in a supposed scavanger society, has nobody ever looted anything? What remotely skills do even half the people in these towns have?
 * A good many places wouldn't be looted simply because they're too dangerous for most wastelanders for one reason or another. We see some traveling salesmen, like the ones that visit Canterbury Common and whom you can pay to get better inventory. Water caravans are also seen if you have Broken Steel installed. But the economy on an individual- and community-level still leaves a lot to be desired.

Giving Harold a reason
If you complete Oasis by applying the linament to make Harold grow faster, why can you only tell him you did it to keep the Treeminders happy? Why can't I tell him "Yeah, you're gonna live much longer in that same spot stuck there, but you'll grow a lot faster and be a huge asset to the Capital Wasteland." I figure if I can convince him being stuck as a tree for the sake of a nature tribe is enough of a reason to keep his will to live, bringing foliage back to the entire Capital Wasteland should be an even better one.
 * You're giving him a purpose in life now. When you tell him he's going to make lots of people happy, he finds solace and accepts his destiny.
 * Not everyone's a big-picture thinker, and he seems fond of the Treeminders even as he's exasperated by them, especially Yew. "You're helping the Wasteland!" isn't as personal as "These people who worship and tend to you will have nowhere to go when you die."
 * I personally wanted to say "Oh I'd have been happy to kill you and get the endurance bonus destroying your heart granted since i set my special to have 9 in charisma strength and intelligence by lowering other stats however the thought of making Yew cry was unbearable I'll slaughter the wastes sell children into slavery and blow up a town but when Yew cries I truly hate myself"

The Super Mutants
The Super Mutants in general in this game bug me. I can buy that the Enclave was experimenting with the FEW somewhere other than California, but where are all these Super Mutants coming from? Hundreds of them are slaughtered by The Brotherhood Of Steel weekly, but apparently they just keep coming. I know they kidnap people and turn them into mutants, but there is absolutely no way there should be enough people to replenish an army this large. On a similar note, where did they get their weapons? Maybe they scavenged the first hunting rifles and grenades from Vault 87, but how are they keeping hundreds of mutants supplied? There is no way that all those miniguns were just lying around the wastes. Finally, how the hell are they so organized? They are organized enough to occupy D.C., plan assaults, obtain weapons, and bring more people back to make more mutants, but they don't seem to have any kind of leader. Where is their Master? Why didn't the Enclave disable the FEV while they were kidnapping me in Vault 87? I would've thought that that would have been the Enclave's first priority.
 * Bethesda rehashed the main antagonists of both Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 and jammed both into the game. However, they also made some pretty big changes to the lore which made it so neither group could plausibly function or serve as a legitimate threat without essentially unlimited manpower at their disposal. As compared to FO 1 and FO 2, where both groups were able to pose a significant threat despite being fairly small groups.
 * They Flanderized both groups, so neither is competent enough to legitimately perform their role in the plot. For example, a lot of Super Mutants in Fallout 1 are very dumb, the ones that aren't dumb are easily some of the smartest, most articulate characters in the series.
 * The actual tools required to do the real plans (which were far more ambitious than the Fallout 3 groups being content with just the Capital Wasteland) were explicitly destroyed in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 were destroyed and made unquestionably canon. This made it virtually impossible even with generous retcons to allow Bethesda to make those plans functional. Project Purity was basically a plot device so the Enclave plan could work without years of planning and infrastructure development.
 * That did absolutely nothing to answer the question and mostly consisted of you just bitching about the plot.
 * The headscratchers were issues caused by someone trying to logically think out the logistics behind the two groups. If you played the older games, these questions were answered. For example, in Fallout 1, the Super Mutant leaders were two of the most intelligent characters in the game and they took over two major installations, both of which contained large quantities of weapons and technology. Bethesda pretty much ignored all that and by not fully developing the groups leads to a lot of very basic questions being unanswered. The actions and equipment are identical to the generic encounters with both groups in the first games, but all of the characters and locations that made their actions possible do not exist and aren't really replaced outside vague allusions and handwaves.


 * The ones in the Core Region (West) are from the Mariposa Military Base. The ones in the Capital Wasteland (East) are from Vault 87. They are two different, unrelated types of Super Mutants, using different versions of the FEV virus.

Lack of competent fighters
We are told time and time again about how dangerous various wasteland perils are (raiders, Super Mutants, Talon Company etc.). And yet, on encountering these enemies, we find they are terrible fighters. A 19 year old, who has spent their whole life underground, encountering nothing more ferocious than giant cockroaches, can still defeat the worst the Wasteland has to offer. Apparently, raiders enjoy nothing better than murder and torture, but, for people who like killing so much, they aren't great at it. After wiping out various "bases" of raiders, I am forced to assume the various bodies chained up are their fallen comrades. And are squads of power armor clad soldiers really necessary to take on super mutants? It seems to me that some of the knights at GNR could have done the job of Lyon's Pride. But the worst example of this is Talon Company. We are told to expect a "fight to the death". However, 3 of them can't defeat one 19 year old for 1000 caps! I suppose you could say the same about the Regulators, but come on! At least the mercs have armor!
 * The Wanderer has three humongous advantages over anyone else: quick-load/quick-save AKA 'two-button time machine', the complete lack of any physical needs besides healing damage (no hunger/thirst/fatigue effects), and controls that don't scale to basically anything. Most people would get pwned something awful if the playing field were suddenly leveled to something even remotely resembling a fair fight.
 * After a few levels ups and associated perks it becomes clear the lone wander can't be human. If you assume the player is superhuman and everyone else is human (and weakened by disease and malnutrition) then it makes a lot more sense, they aren't a real threat to you, but still a danger to others.
 * Even in Fallout 3, Super Mutants aren't all powerful entities on that level. You are fully capable of slaughtering them quite easily, even with fairly low combat skills and weak weapons.
 * Enemies don't have access to the almighty Quick Save button. This 19 year old is beating them because if the wanderer loses, the game resets until they win.
 * It's not an in universe issue, it's a "Bethesda wants to make the player feel like the ultimate badass" issue. In the older games, you could still be one hit killed by many mooks, even with maxed damage resistance and the best armor in the game. They didn't even have to be adept fighters with much combat training. Anyone with a decent burst fire gun and a bit of luck could kill pretty much anything.
 * I personally like the aspect that the LW turns out to be the ultimate badass, but that's just my opinion. I ubelieve that the LW's advantage can be explained by a couple of factors. 1) Good genes (read: mutations): It can, through perks, become clear that the LW has some pretty beneficial mutations compared to pure-strain humans. 2) Growing up in a vault could easily have been helpful, as the LW has grown up on a healthy diet and such. 3) It's implied that the LW was commonly in fights with the Tunnel Snakes, as well as practicing with his BB Gun rather often. That would explain the gun skills. That's my two cents.
 * Virtually none of the perks are mutations and most of the ones that technically are are pretty much worthless ones.
 * Vault Dwellers are not that well fed, they are eating highly processed, heavily rationed food.
 * There is a huge difference between a couple of fist fights and shooting a BB gun and actual combat training. Brotherhood of Steel members slated to become Knights effectively spend their entire lives training with just about the best equipment available. Wondering out of a vault with some BB gun practice should not be comparable.

Why kill Jonas?
Imagine you are the Vault 101 Overseer. Your doctor escapes. What is the first thing you do? Do you kill the only other person in the Vault with any medical knowledge? Congratulations! You, apparently, are suitable to be responsible for people's lives! The Vault has adequate holding facilities (Mr. Brotch is imprisoned in Trouble on the Homefront), so why not stick him in there until you need him, or execute him if you find out he helped James escape or something. If you must kill him, try to find a better replacement than an old robot.
 * I don't remember it ever being implied that the Overseer is exactly sane. Going off the information in the game, he had the guy before him (who allowed James enter the vault) killed so as to keep Vault 101 isolationist, so it can be assumed that he's not exactly fond of the idea of letting people know the outside world isn't as horrible as he has lead them to believe (it really says something when the real Capitol Wasteland is actually better than what the Overseer said it was). It's not too hard to believe he'd start offing people the second someone left the vault, and he probably assumed Jonas was in on James' plan.
 * Plus I kinda thought Jonas's death was just due to a botched attempt at torture. The Overseer wanted information, so he got the chief of security to extract it from Jonas, he just got a bit overzealous and killed him during the attempt.
 * Debatable. When confronted about it during "Trouble on the Homefront," he'll say something along the lines of how he didn't kill Jonas...he merely ordered Chief Hannon to do it. (Oddly, this conflicts with (IIRC) Officer Gomez's account of the story which has Officer Mack beating Jonas. Amata might've said that, haven't played the game in a while, but I'm absolutely certain that somebody said it was Officer Mack.)
 * There is a peripheral, easily overlooked comment on one of the holotapes that does offer a slight explanation. Jonas apparently did figure out the Vault had been opened already and that James was not from there. Mentioning it to the Overseer or Chief Hannon might be enough incentive to kill him to keep the secret. The timeline of this is incredibly awkward. Jonas should have been old enough to know the vault was opened and James was from outside the Vault, but the holotape saying he figured it does require Jonas didn't know, implying that he is younger than he seems to be given how old he looks during the birthday party.

The Astronaut Suit in Mothership Zeta

 * Has anybody else noticed that the Astronaut Suit in Mothership Zeta appears to have fingerless gloves?
 * That'd be the Pip-Boy glove. It doesn't address the problem of an unsealed spacesuit, but it's not the fault of the suit itself.
 * There are mods available to make the pip boy into a hand-held device so that it doesnt automatically remove the gloves of your player's left hand anymore. It's just a technical problem in the game mechanics.

GNR Radio
Three Dog mentions that he does not know what a disc is, meaning records are not used at GNR. However, in the Fallout universe, recording technology never seems to have moved past records. So what else could he possibly be using?
 * Holodiscs, which are basically all-purpose audio tape. Terms like "Disc Jockey" continue to be used despite discs not being used for the same reason floppy discs are still the universal symbol on computers for "save", though no one using them anymore. He is the jockey of discs, he has no idea what the title means, but that's his job.

Durga Still Charges the LW After Becoming a Knight
Why does Durga still treat you like you're not in the Brotherhood? The LW is probably the only one paying her for repair jobs and supplies. I was expecting maybe a small amount of assorted ammo and some bare-bones repairs for free every few days, and anything beyond that you'd have to trade for it, but nope. It stumps me that you seem to be a knight in name only in some places while Elder Lyons, Sarah Lyons, Paladin Tristian and assorted characters make it clear that you're a full-fledged knight of the Brotherhood.
 * She just doesn't like you? Not everyone is going to bow down and kiss LW's ass, much as the LW may like.
 * What's with the hostility? I'm not asking for an ass kissing, I'm saying the player should be treated like a Brotherhood member just like everybody else. They obviously don't pay for their equipment since Durga specifies that you have to pay her.
 * I'm not being hostile, friend. I'm just saying that maybe Durga doesn't like the LW. Why? Who knows.

Dirty Foreigners

 * How on earth are there so many characters not from the USA in a world where there is no reliable form of travel? There are at least three characters I can name off the top of my head who have no plausible reason to be there, Dukov, Moriarty, and Alistair Tenpenny and only one even has a handwave about being there.
 * Because its a Bethesda game. Of all the things they handwaved, changed or never bothered to explain, a couple of foreigners is far from the worst. Harold and the Brotherhood of Steel are much more egregious examples than Dukov, Moriarty and Alistair. There is no confirmation of how bad other countries were hit, so it is at least plausible they have a much higher seafaring capacity. It is entirely possible that part of the east coast is occupied and they are strays from those settlements.
 * No reliable form of travel just means they used an unreliable form of travel; there are still a few ways you can cross an ocean if you look hard enough. For example, see the PMV Valdez of Fallout 2.

Fallout?

 * Why do so many people on TV Tropes (and the net in general) insist on calling this game 'Fallout'? And no, that's not me making a Fan Dumb remark implying I think Fallout 3 isn't a real Fallout game. What I'm genuinely wondering is why people start examples limited to Fallout 3 and New Vegas with 'In Fallout...' (or 'In the Fallout games...') when those tropes don't apply to the first game or the entire series. Is the big 3 not enough of a hint that there were games in the series before Fallout 3? (Though how many there were depends on who you ask)
 * Part of it is the Fleeting Demographic Rule in effect, where a large number of players who did not play the original two games make up the current fanbase. Be it Bethesda fanboys or dedicated console gamers who don't play on PC/Mac or younger players who were born after 1998, for many, Fallout 3 is the only Fallout they've played. It had been almost ten years between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, after all. Many of the older fans have moved on.
 * Or even just older gamers who'd never played a Fallout game and heard a lot of good things about number 3... we're not a society of completionists, and FO3's the one that's had the critical acclaim drizzled all over its naked body in recent years. In exactly the same way that many GTA players probably haven't played the top-view ones. loads of people arrive at franchises late, particularly when a certain title generates a lot more hype than its predecessors, and the new format becomes the immediate connotation of the franchise. It's not unusual.
 * While we're at it, why do people here seem to be unaware that Fallout 3 has its own page? I've seen at least a dozen trope pages that specify Fallout 3, but link to Fallout 1.
 * The Fallout page used to have Fallout 3 listed on the same page. Those trope pages are likely old entries that haven't been updated. Please update those trope pages if you find as such.

Electricity

 * Where is all the electricity coming from? The previous infrastructure is probably completely decimated or at least inactive after 200 years, so people are either repairing it or making their own generators. The larger settlements like Megaton and Rivet City can probably be handwaved through SCIENCE! and having some sort of small (nuclear?) power supply somewhere, but where is a smaller settlement like Arefu getting its power? There doesn't seem to be any sort of place for a power generator, and there were no wires coming into the settlement either. Further, the fact that every building in the DC ruins has power makes even less sense. The Brotherhood could have supplied power to some of the locations, but what about the building abandoned save for Super Mutants and Raiders? Neither group is likely to have the materials and know how.
 * It's possible that some of it is just smaller air/wind generators that are still up and running, simply because no-one ever bothered to deactivate them. Perhaps they're getting it out of a generator operating underneath the earth in some underground river? Besides, it's not like the settlements here are massive cities where everything you do requires tons of power. At most, there are a couple of lights, you could probably use a handcrank generator or something for that amount of energy. And it's not out of the question to say that the world developed some kind of fusion reactor between our time and 2077, that thing could probably have generated massive amounts of power, enough to keep a city or two going for the 2 centuries it's been since the great war.
 * The problem with this is that it doesn't mesh well with the image of devastation and post-apocalypse that Bethesda wanted to create in Fallout 3. Nuclear weapons and EMP disrupt existing electrical grids and generators, even if much of Washington had through so much Ragnarok Proofing, there's an unbelievable amount of working electricity and working computers that are just lying around. In Fallout 3, there are computers and electrical grids which should have burned out decades ago that are still "on" after two hundred years of complete neglect. Old Olney Powerworks, for instance, is still fully 'active' after 200 years. As it's been said before, it would make sense maybe 20 years after the Great War that some of this stuff is still working, but after 200, that's just beyond believable.
 * The notes on the computer terminal from the female ghoul scientist in one of the Sat Com towers makes an off-hand remark about "there's still power down there if you know where to look", strongly implying an underground electrical network that is still operational. WMG, but if power is on a distributed, decentralized network like the Internet is in our world, the working generators could be hundreds of miles away and still supply a few streetlights and terminals in DC. New Vegas demonstrates that the Hoover Dam is still running 200 years later, supplying the strip with power without having to use overhead lines; there's no reason to believe Niagara Falls isn't performing the same feat on the East Coast.
 * That is a lot of Wild Mass Guessing with a fair bit of Did Not Do Research. Just so you know, Hoover Dam was -not- operating for 200 years after the War. The Strip was not powered on at all. Mr. House and the Lucky 38 were getting by for many decades on emergency power from the small generators he has in the basement. Hoover Dam was knocked out and dormant after the War and was repaired by the NCR only a couple years before the events of New Vegas start - and even then, not all the generators are operational.
 * An underground electric grid in DC surviving the bombs is a fairly plausible explanation. After all, EMP can't travel more than a few feet through solid ground, and considering this is DC it may have been shielded as well. Whatever source is supplying power (probably one or more nuclear or fusion plants) must still be running. After all, if the backpack mini-generator in a suit of T-51b armor can be loaded with enough fuel to last 1,000 years, I don't see why the same thing couldn't be done on a larger scale to power a city.
 * There's no question that an underground electrical grid exists. The question is where the power is coming from and why aren't more people "plugged in" if power is still plentiful? If there's a reliable underground power grid, then what is the purpose of these above-ground power stations? Fuel is one thing, maintenance and proper working order is another. It's been over two hundred years, afterall, andequipment need maintenance, but yet Olney Powerworks is still active and at what seems to be full capacity without any interior maintenance (the robots don't go that far into the building). Nuclear powered cars run rampant around the Capital Wasteland, yet no one has pulled them apart for fuel or parts and just let them sit out where they can explode at a moment's notice.
 * Not sure what you mean by "why aren't more people plugged in?", as the aforementioned ghoul scientist mentioned the "power down there" as being the reason why she was able to restore power to the pre-war Satcom Array tower, which would obviously have an already-existing connection to the pre-war grid. Those above-ground stations are pretty clearly transformer substations, not generator plants. While the game doesn't go into detail on the underground power sources, based on the Fallout setting it's probably safe to assume that it's automated and self-maintaining. (After all, this was a society afflicted with constant Red Scare and nuclear war paranoia. Doesn't it make sense that they would take steps to ensure that the U.S. capital could continue to function post-attack?) As for the cars, I doubt that the average wastelander has the technological know-how to dismantle a decrepit, non-functioning nuclear car for usable parts.
 * The question again is why aren't more people plugged in with access to electricity if Electricity has so much Ragnarok Proofing, or why isn't there more progress in reclaiming the wasteland if a simple utility like electricity is so prevalent. We even have derelict power stations just lying around. "Power is everything." As it's been shown a few times, even within Fallout 3's story - Power is a major commodity necessary for operating everything from simple machines to large scale utilities, so the question is also "if electricity is so easy to automate, why aren't other utilities such as water" - which, as explained elsewhere on this page, simple utilities can purify water to acceptable levels, and such facilities are controlled by the government as well, and would be quite necessary for the survival of the United States government in a Red Scare war scenario. Electricity can vastly improve the quality of life for many wastelanders, but many are simply reduced to using it for lights or the occasional radio. Another question would be the prevalence of electricity, but not telephones or other common "underground" utilities (which are electrically powered and a necessary utility... like power). Electricity is all you need to charge up some of the old pre-war cars or power up a water distillery (which is infinitely more practical than the Purifier), yet the groups who have access to the electricity, don't use it for sensible purposes (Brotherhood of Steel stands out in this - they have a huge crane for lifting Liberty Prime which is presumably electrically powered - yet don't share this power, or use it to charge up anything else. It's hard to think of the conditions as bad when random building still have power to operate computers or whatever, or that a museum is still functioning properly 200 years after the fact. The problem that makes this a Headscratcher is that, because of the sheer lack of information we have, any attempt to answer quickly becomes Wild Mass Guessing.
 * The thing is, lack of electricity is not what's prohibiting the Capital Wasteland denizens from making more social progress. It's the Super Mutants. Sarah Lyons explicitly tells you that the constant mutant attacks for decades have been what's keeping civilization in DC back. Like I said, those derelict power stations are ruined transformers substations, they wouldn't help people generate electricity. Besides, many things in the Capital Wasteland (both pre-war and post-war) are powered by smaller generators, which you can see scattered all throughout the game. Many wastelanders don't have access to the pre-war grid because they have no connection (I doubt it's as simple as digging up an old power line and "plugging in"); in fact, a lot of wastelanders are nomadic. The majority of pre-war cars are deteriorated well beyond simply "charging them up", but there are exceptions that do get used—for instance, in Broken Steel the Brotherhood has restored military trucks. You mention that the US government would also need to have their own Ragnarok-Proofed clean water systems. Well, they do—in Raven Rock (it's stated that Raven Rock pumps it's water up from wells deep underground, and that it has a Vault-style purifier). And the Enclave aren't exactly keen on sharing it. You're right, the electricity thing isn't explained fully in the game, but then again, there is some precedent—for example, the Den in Fallout 2 has working pre-war streetlights, but you don't see a generator anywhere.
 * It's not at all difficult to get plugged in, as Fallout 3 demonstrates. James, for instance, runs a small generator inside the Jefferson Memorial to power a computer so he can do some tests before running off to Vault 112. When you come back and turn Project Purity on, all you do is switch out a couple fuses in a fusebox and suddenly the entire facility has power. Where did that power come from? Never answered, but it seems to imply that there's electricity still running through the main power grid, just like how the satellite towers gets their power. Just about everywhere else you encounter a generator, it's for a single independent system, like a turret, a door, or for some lights in a tunnel somewhere. As for everything else: Number one, many of the people who live in towns found throughout the Capital Wasteland are -not- nomadic - the fact that they have permanent settlements means that they do not, or no longer wander. Manya in Megaton, for instance, has lived inside those corrugated shacks of Megaton her whole life, only to leave as part of her old caravan business. Number two, the world in Fallout 2 has quite a lot of electricity available with their sources - while the Den and New Reno don't really show where they get their electricity, most others like Vault City, Gecko, Broken Hills, San Francisco, the Oil Rig and NCR do have a stated electrical source. Number three, while Raven Rock has its own water system, other important facilities, such as the Pentagon (the Citadel) do not. Which is curious, since Raven Rock is intended to be the back-up for the Pentagon. The logic is pretty contradictory if you believe that Washington is Ragnarok Proofed with reinforced concrete, but only one basic utility (electrical power) in which to survive the impending nuclear Apocalypse. If the assertion that it is to keep the American Government going on after a nuclear event, it would not do well against basic logic concerning even fresh water.
 * There is still electricity running through the main power grid. Not everywhere, but there is still power available in many places if you have a connection. We established this already. Also, generators do power quite a lot of things. There are small ones that can only power doors or computers, but several buildings have large generators that are clearly meant to be powering the buildings. To continue, I wasn't saying that all wastelanders were nomadic—merely that there is a sizable nomadic population (specifically, all the unnamed Wastelanders and Scavengers that can be found wandering around the wastes). Number two, yes, places in Fallout and Fallout 2 get power from other sources because they don't have a functioning power grid. But not all is explained: besides the Den and New Reno, where does Junktown and the Hub get the electricity to power their lights and signs? I didn't see any generators. Regardless of the answer, the fact remains that, unlike the Core Region, the Capital Wasteland does have a surviving power grid. There's plenty of evidence for it. Number three, you're right, the Pentagon doesn't have water systems while Raven Rock does. That's because, after the Great War, the policy was for the Enclave in DC to immediately transfer many of the Pentagon's functions to Raven Rock (I'm pretty sure this is the protocol in real life as well), and keep it maintained with a skeleton crew while the US President and top brass maintained central command and control of the Enclave at the Poseidon Oil Rig. I doubt that the Enclave took steps to ensure that all water in DC could be quickly purified, considering that they already had a supply and they care more about themselves than the US population. The electric grid wouldn't be damaged too badly since it's underground—like I said earlier, EMP can't travel more than a few feet through solid earth. I'm not 100% certain that the grid was reinforced (that may have been an error on my part), but it's still possible. My point is that the Enclave made sure that they would survive and be able to continue operations, not that DC itself is completely equipped to counteract the effects of nuclear attack. Even if there were pre-war water purification systems in place, I have my doubts that they would be as large as Project Purity, which is intended to purify the Potomac River and provide a large outlet of fresh water so that the wasteland can start to be brought back from the dead.
 * Again, the HEADSCRATCHER is that there is no given source of power for the Capital Wasteland's power grid. The issues with Fallout 1 and 2's Den and others should be going to the Fallout Headscratchers page - though I will say that the assumption is that the street lights in those areas are electric - there's no evidence that they are (they could be gas-powered for all we know). Furthermore, if, at the first sign of trouble, the Pentagon "goes to a skeleton crew and control goes to Raven Rock," why continue to maintain the Pentagon as the primary nerve center of the military? Especially considering the Cheyenne Mountain Facility's noted purpose at the height of the Cold War as a "dug-in" facility which was comfortably capable of continuing operations after an event. Water purification for survival usage doesn't need to be as big as Project Purity, they simply would be necessary for the continual operation of strategically important government facilities in the case of a national emergency or a nuclear event. In fact, the President had moved to the Oil Rig months before the Great War in order to plan out the on-going war. The real questions start to come up after this. Some people have made the case that the buildings in DC are still standing because they are reinforced concrete and have gone Ragnarok Proofing, yet these buildings do not have the redundant failsafe systems such as their own generators or water/air purification systems necessary for operations after an event. As you say, the power grid is still functional because they may or may not have been built that way to survive a nuclear event. If the power grid is still providing electricity, why not other basic facilities like water? EMP might effect electrical grids, I don't recall it ever having an effect on water pipes.
 * The Vaults establish that they had developed practical geothermal power by the time of the Great War. Perhaps it's a distributed system of small geothermal wells (whatever that means)? Of course this would lead into a second headscratcher: between nuclear-powered vehicles and geothermal-powered urban areas... why were they fighting over oil?
 * It's implied that only America was able to convert to electric and nuclear-powered cars, the rest of the world was pretty much still addicted to oil. America had the last bit of oil in the world in the Fallout universe, controlled by the Pre-War Enclave at the Poseidon Oil Rig (see Fallout 2), and even that had been tapped out after the end. There's little evidence that China actually invaded for control of that oil, but it's the most likely theory. The headscratcher here is why didn't the US sell the technology to convert nuclear material into a fuel source?

Aqua Cura

 * Here's a little thing that bugs me: why is it so bad of Griffon to sell irradiated water to his fellow Ghouls as medicine. Are the Ghouls not healed by rads?
 * First part of that is that it's just plain lying that the stuff is Aqua Cura, rather than the dirty old water he actually was hocking. Some folks don't take kindly to being lied to. Second, Ghouls are healed by rads, but at the same time, more rads push them closer and closer to becoming Feral ghouls. Look no further than the clinic at the back of Underworld, the doctor there says as much. More exposure to radiation means pushing that ghoul closer to feral status.
 * Seeing how Ghouls over in the West Cost mainly live in a place called Glowtown and you meet a very nice Glowing One in Vegas I don't thinkj rads make them feral. But yeah I don't think they would enjoy paying for something they can just get anywhere.
 * Mind you, "ferocious post-necrotic dystrophy" is more Fallout 3 just screwing up with the rest of the games' lore. It's only really with Fallout 3 that Feral Ghouls are created through "excess radiation".
 * And Broken Steel, featuring the Aqua Cura, is Fallout 3 DLC. In other words it's in Fallout 3's universe, where it can be assumed that what's stated in 3 supersedes what was established in prior games. So... Yeah. For all we know it could be a regional quirk, some differing mutation along the lines of 3's Super Mutants have different origins from their predecessors.

Pitt is actually Black and White Morality
"Sandra: Ashur and I would never risk her health, and if that means it takes longer to develop a full cure... well, then everyone else can wait."
 * I actually don't think that the Pitt campaign was Grey and Gray Morality because they didn't go too far. Now if it was either kill the girl and help slaves or don't and side with slavers, then it would be. But nope, the girl will be just fine, Medea won't put her into harm's way. The girl didn't know her parents, so she won't suffer.
 * This was covered above, but neither Wernher or Midea care for the child. It's been made pretty clear that Midea would look after the child poorly, as she's rather busy herself, on top of taking care of the child of her former tormentors. It's not in a nurturing way that the baby's real mother would. Midea calls her a little brat and asks you to get toys to get her so she can work on the cure. Remember, to Midea, Marie is just a means to an end after so much suffering, and the child of the people who have abused her and her people for years.
 * You're reading an awful lot into what amounts to about three lines of vague dialogue. Sandra, Marie's mother, isn't even a nice person or particularly nurturing towards Marie when she isn't hostile towards you. She gets a whole new brand of crazy if you do cause her to become hostile. Ashur is the only one that ever shows any actual concern towards Marie beyond using her as a cure. This is the only instance Ashur ever really shows a non-evil, self indulgent side to himself.
 * You may have missed a minor difference in Sandra's reactions based on your actions. Your first encounter with Sandra and Marie decides how Sandra reacts to you from then on. If you pick up Marie and get Sandra pissed off at you, she will remain angry with you even if you decide to return the child and side with Ashur. Sandra will never trust you ever again, basically. If you don't pick up Marie during this first encounter and simply turn around and head off to betray Wehrner, Sandra will remain quite friendly and supportive of the Lone Wanderer after the events of the Pitt's story, showing that she dotes on little Marie when you bring her toys.
 * Not threatening to evicerate you is not the same thing as being friendly and supportive. She never actually dotes on Marie beyond offering the exact same quest and performing almost line for line the same as Midea. Ashur does show an actual parental interest towards Marie when questioned, further reinforced if you listen to the messages he leaves for her. Sandra talks about Ashur and the cure.
 * Again, Sandra is a Mama Bear when it comes to Marie. If you think she's cold to you, remember she's surrounded by nothing but raiders and slavers who she would prefer to keep at arm's length from her child. You don't exactly see any of the other slavers even remotely close to Sandra's lab or stopping by to play with Marie, do you? - no, they're down the hall, guarding Ashur and Sandra's quarters and office. The fact that the Lone Wanderer is allowed as close as he is really says something. Sandra at least gives the Lone Wanderer the benefit of the doubt at first, and if that initial trust is broken, bam, she turns on you and goes into full Mama Bear mode. She's overprotective of her little one, not simply because she's the possibility for a cure, but that she's actually a living child in the god-forsaken hellhole that is the Pitt. As far as she's concerned, the Lone Wanderer might be as big a monster as the other slavers that Ashur employs. She says so herself, the situation isn't ideal, but at least Marie is safe, where Sandra can do her research without worrying about Marie's health and safety.


 * Please remember that Ashur and Sandra didn't go into their relationship with the intent of creating a child who would become a cure. Marie is more or less what they describe as a "happy accident". Sandra genuinely loves Ashur and is there in the Pitt to help, they had a child in spite of the issues of those stricken with TCD, such as mutation or infertility. She genuinely cares for Marie, even if she doesn't show it directly in front of the Lone Wanderer. If you don't think so, what does Sandra have to gain out of being a cold, merciless bitch about a cure for a city she probably doesn't come from or care about? Notice that Sandra doesn't display any of the deformations everyone else in the Pitt possesses, so no, she's probably not from the Pitt. She came to help. She doesn't have to live inside the city limits to do her research, but there she and her child are safe. If she weren't in place she wanted to be, what does she stand to gain? She loves Ashur, for all of his flaws and contradictions. There's no other motive, the personality is wrong for a cold heartless Complete Monster that you describe. She never talks about being "Queen" of the Pitt or anything like that. She just talks about Ashur, Marie, and her research.
 * That said, that's part of why the Pitt is Grey and Gray Morality and not Black and White. On one hand, you've got Sandra who is a genuinely loving and caring mother, whose only real problem it that she tolerates the wide variety of abuse going on around her for the sake of raising her child and finding a cure. That does not make her a bad person. On the other, you have Midea, who is sympathetic in her plight, but she's not a good mother figure, nor does her limited resources or attitude make her the right person to be researching a cure on a child she does not care for. She's not a bad person either.

Hacking the Purifier

 * Throughout the game, you regularly hack into computer systems that have passwords of up to ten letters. So why is the technologically-superior Enclave stumped by the three-digit numerical code required to access the Purifier? Hook up a computer and hack into the thing!
 * Considering how James went out, it's likely the Enclave thinks the thing is booby-trapped. The consequences are a bit more severe than "if you can't hack terminal X, you won't be able to open door Y and get plasma rifle Z."
 * Try giving Autumn a false code once you've been captured, the guy on the other side of the conversation says "we've lost another one." Pretty good bet to say it's booby-trapped somehow.
 * The above. Plus, recall that the Brotherhood is involved: They were guarding the Project originally and are now sheltering the Scientists who worked on it, plus they have a much greater hold on the DC area than the Enclave does. It's possible the Enclave doesn't want to risk getting locked out of the system or having it melt down in response to failed hacking, and they don't think they have the time to proceed carefully because the Brotherhood could manage to storm the place any minute.

Enclave Field Report: Non-Feral Feral Ghouls?
Has anyone else seen this? I encountered the Enclave camp on the way to Vault 92 and the terminal mentions A) 'Recruiting' Wastelanders for genescans with Purified Water, B) Flaming the detained if they got too many, and C) the report above, where an Enclave soldier kills two "ferals" and the fourth follows him docilely back. The truck has two Wastelanders and Purified Water, confirming that part of the report; one of the Enclave soldiers carries a Flamer, so that's part two. Is there an explanation for the non-aggressive Feral Ghoul? None of the Enclave members had the Ghoul Mask or anything; I thought they just assume all ghouls are feral, but they don't mention this one talking (which I assume he would have done had he been a non-feral, Underworld-type ghoul) and when you check the body it shows up as a Feral Ghoul (as its appearance would indicate).
 * Ghouls are mutants. The notion that one mutated in such a way that it wasn't aggressive really isn't that odd a concept.
 * Delving into WMG territory but since becoming a feral is apparently a gradual process...maybe this ghoul just wasn't all the way there yet. Or maybe he was...mentally handicapped even before ghoulification. It would've been interesting to encounter non-hostile ferals in-game though...

The noisy city

 * Why is Rivet City so noisy? The city isn't sinking so it can't be pumps. Water purification and fusion power systems wouldn't make that much noise. So why is there a constant background din?
 * Even perfectly stable houses built with brick and wood make inexplicable noise every now and then. Rivet City is several giant hunks of metal bolted together so that they float, moored in a river. On top of that, it's very old, has gone for decades without maintenance and been split in half. All those bits rubbing against each other are going to creak, particularly just after sunrise and just after nightfall as the metal heats, expands, then cools and contracts.
 * Not to mention the Mirelurks outside bumping against it.
 * Have you ever been in a house with a tin roof? As metal heats it expands and as it cools contracts. This change in size causes the metal to exert forces against itself, which tends to make it pop and tick. Rivet City is a very large tin roof, figuratively speaking.

Does Fallout 3 Still Matter?

 * The fan verdict on Fallout 3 is very divided, to say the least, and this is especially contrasted with New Vegas. With the fact that the setting of New Vegas is so far away from the West Coast and both settings can go on without impacting (or depending on who you ask, 'ruining') the other, does Fallout 3 matter anymore? With their attentions turned back to the West Coast, a lot of gamers are content to literally pretend Fallout 3 and its events never happened, and it's very easy to do so. So how do the developers feel? Besides for the backstory behind ED-E, does Fallout 3's events have any relevancy or impact in the greater Fallout lore at all? Is the Capital Wasteland flourishing while the events of NV occur? Will we ever hear from the East Coast (or any of the factions in it) again? Will they visit the aftereffect of the Lone Wanderers adventurers, whether directly, or indirectly through dialogue and hints? Presumably Fallout 3 had a 'canon' outcome like the other Fallout games before it, likely being the 'good' ending where Project Purity was activated without a hitch and the Bo S and the Citadel become the major power players in the Capital Wasteland. Will we ever see or hear of them again?
 * The stance Obsidian took is that yes, Fallout 3 happened, either in totality or in Broad Strokes. The Capital Wasteland is so far away that it doesn't particular matter what events are important to the West Coast. Many elements of Fallout 3 found their way back into New Vegas, and Obsidian went so far as to bring more detail as to why certain things are different, and little details are added to bridge the gap between the original Fallout lore and Bethesda's contribution. For instance, there is a sidequest about why the East coast Enclave uses a different plasma rifle than the West Coast through the Q-35 Matter Modulator, the predecessor to the East Coast Plasma Rifle. Essentially, Obsidian tried to clean up as much of what Fallout 3 got wrong through some creative and logical RetCons as they could get away with, so that Fallout 3 as a whole can fit into the lore without a Continuity Snarl.
 * Probably going to need to wait for Fallout 4 to happen to really know for sure. Even if Fallout 3's continuity was absolutely perfect, it is still located too far away to really matter much in New Vegas.

Vault 87 access

 * How do the super mutants get out? There are three possible ways 1) The main door, which is sealed shut by a nuclear blast 2)The back door which is sealed shut by a forgotten password 3) Murder pass, which is sealed shut by the kids of little lamp light. I can buy the enclave threatening the kids to get though murder pass or the back door, but the super mutants would have killed all the kids if they could get though this way.
 * The simple answer is Offscreen Teleportation, and as with most things in Fallout 3, justified mostly with A Wizard Did It.
 * They use the front door. Being much stronger than humans, they could very well open it by brute force. As for why it's closed and [INACCESSIBLE] in-game, that's because the dev team didn't build anything behind it.
 * Mind you, this &#91;INACCESSIBLE&#93; door is just a simple metal door like those found on the front of shacks or the entrances leading to other Vaults, not the heavier doors found elsewhere, let alone a big massive Vault door (which is left open and leads to nothingness) which is only accessible by way of yet another [INACCESSIBLE] door. There's no real justification for the door to be closed or for the entrance exterior not to be connected to the interior, except that the Devs wanted to prevent sequence breaking. So, it really does become A Wizard Did It all over again.

Radiation from food

 * Everyone having to eat food that is full of radiation makes no damn sense. Not food being irradiated, nor people willing to eat it, that's fine. It's a numbers game of radiation build up. Assuming that you need two items of food a day, each having 2 Rads from eating it, as well as being lucky enough to have purified water to drink, you accumulate 4 rads per day. In the fallout universe, 1000 rads is the 'lethal' level, although any sane individual wouldn't want to have minor radiation sickness, which is at 200 rads. For the lethal level to reach, it would be 8 months worth of consumption, and for the minor poisoning it is just under two months. RadAway costs 20 caps, give or take, and with the highest Medicine skill possible will remove 150 rads a dose. Now, anyone with two caps to rub together could chip in for a pack or two and then make do with themselves, and the really high rollers can pay a doctor to just cleanly remove all rads. And while RadAway isn't exactly a resource that you can piss away (well, except for the side effects of the medacine, but I digress), dialogue from Julia Farkas from New Vegas implies that they can reproduce or replicate the stuff with enough sample material. The main point of my complaint is the beggers and poor people, and the fact that they have survived. Food costs around about 4-5 caps for the basic stuff, so assuming they eat twice a day and someone just gives them their pure water thats 8-10 caps a day, 240-300 caps a month in food. If they cure minor radiation poisoning when it happens, then they have to purchase 400-500 caps worth of food, in addition to scavenging caps for the RadAway, running up at just under a cap a day put aside to pay for two bags. I'm discluding those who punch rats and rad roaches to death and eating their meat, since that is either subsistance hunting or the begining of a hunting career. But they are beggers and such for a reason, quite likely chems are gonna drain their resources as well, requiring them to scavenge more. Seeing the logistics of it makes not an impossibile thing to overcome, but raises some questions.
 * Maybe people don't last very long once they become beggars.
 * Also, your theory requires that they eat 2 food items a day, which is probably something only reasonably wealthy people can afford to do. I'd say any beggar who gets 2 or 3 meals a week is doing pretty good. Something else that you didn't account for was thieves and pickpockets. Just because you never see people stealing stuff doesn't mean they don't. Large amounts of supply theft is probably why stealing is a big enough crime to get you shot. Plus, even if most beggars don't steal their food the ones in large settlements are often implied to survive (at least partially) on handouts. The Lone Wanderer himself can walk into Canterberry Commons in a suit with over 1000 caps to his name and Joe will still give him a freebie. (Yeah, its a measly bottle of dirty water, but still...)
 * Then again, this assumption presumes that living conditions in the Capital Wasteland are actually bad (Fallout 3 has a habit of not being able to show the Wasteland as being as desperate situation as it is made to sound like). Those beggars outside of the settlements are asking for clean water, not because they're sick with radiation, but because they are sick of drinking irradiated water. Mind you, they don't ask for food, Rad-X or Rad-Away to keep them going or flush out their system so that they can keep going, but just for clean water. Just because we don't see them eating well doesn't mean that they don't.

Tin Cans
Why is it that I can find hundreds, nay, THOUSANDS of opened tin cans throughout the wasteland, and yet not a single can opener?
 * You can open a tin can with a knife. There are lots of those around.
 * Historically, this used to be your only option. There was a 45-year gap between the time that tin cans and tin can openers were invented.

Radiation Duration

 * I was having a discussion with my father who worked with Strategic Air Command and he told me that Fallout 3's depiction of there still being radiation everywhere is fairly realistic. He said that radiation was expected during the Cold War to last at least a thousand years if a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States was ever to happen, or at least that is what his Military training taught him. However most accounts I have heard say that the United States would largely be radiation free 200 years after a nuclear war. How do we know one way or the other if we have never experienced nuclear war? What is the more accurate figure?
 * We know much more about how radiation works because of the extensive testing over the years, as well as from more recent nuclear events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That Other Wiki has a great article on it here. Fancy that, it's even called Fallout. Simply put, radiation from nuclear bombs has a shorter half-life and will dissipate in that time. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt in ten years after the bombs and have long since been non-radioactive. Chernobyl and Pripyat, both areas which are still quite radioactive, have quite a bit of wildlife growing there only 20 years afterwards, despite being highly dangerous for humans.
 * Realistically Fallout 3 should look like one big forest of trees spanning the Wasteland as plants are quite capable of absorbing radiation. My father told me that during the Manhattan Project various experiments were conducted with radiation and one of the curious tales that my grandfather experienced was of a tree that was exposed to radiation and it started glowing green in the stereotypical fashion seen in fiction. To this day that tree is still glowing as my father can attest. Direct radiation from the nuclear material is going to last longer than fallout from a nuclear bomb. I was however rather surprised to hear in his opinion that fallout from a nuclear war would last that long, my understanding was that only the nuclear material itself has a half-life that long. I'll try to show my dad that those Cold War predictions of the fallout duration were a little off, thanks.
 * There are some variables to it, like how much of the fissionable material is used up in the nuclear explosion. The bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, for instance, only used about 10% of the nuclear material as the rest was scattered to the winds and into the atmosphere. Later weapons are a bit more efficient, but if we're to believe Fallout 3, they are not very far along as bombs go.

What happened to all the Alaskan Oil?

 * The purpose of reclaiming Anchorage Alaska from the Chinese was to make sure that one of the last locations on Earth where oil could be found was still in American hands and to of course prevent the invasion from moving any farther. As proven by the Anchorage VR Simulation and historical data logs found in the Fallout series the American Army succeeded and drove the Chinese out of Alaska. During Fallout 2 the Enclave claim their oil rig off the coast of California is the last source of oil on Earth. How is that possible if the oil from Alaska is still there untouched by either the pre-war Chinese or pre-war Americans? Has no one honestly gone to Alaska to attain what is a treasure trove of energy left over from the pre-war era?
 * There's no guarantee that Alaska had much oil left after the Anchorage Reclamation. China could very well have dried up the oil and held onto it for further study before being driven back. We simply don't know what had happened. If we're to believe Fallout 3, anyway, many uses of oil have disappeared and been replaced with nuclear power.

What is with the money?

 * Stacks of pre-war money are worth a fair bit in caps, more than most random pre-war tools or appliances, a lot of which are worth precisely nothing. Erm... why? The prewar tools and appliances all still meet the same basic needs, whereas isn't the pre-war money just scraps of not-valid-currency-anywhere low-quality cloth at this point?
 * It probably has to do with the historical value of the money, it reminds the citizens of the Wasteland that they used to have a powerful and worthy nation that their ancestors were a part of and gives them hope of what they could one day be again. Besides they probably keep the money so that they know how to model their money when they one day recover from the war and create a Government and a system of commerce they can say, "How should the money look? Well we have a sample from the pre-war era, maybe our money should look like it."