Opinion// Fallout 3: The DLC - Mothership Zeta

The Mothership has landed. Mothership Zeta is the latest and last of the Fallout 3 dowloadable content packs to spin out the number of hours and pounds gamers can spend roaming the post-nuked wastes of America in 2277.

Geeks have strange perceptions of fiction; tamper with a pre-rationalised concept at your peril, for there is nothing so incisive and scornful as a nerd in what the rest of humanity would call 'suspension of disbelief'.

Geeks believe. They need to: they have no God except rationality and no place of worship other than their darkened rooms. The most iconic of Geek fictions, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, have centuries if not millennia of pre-narrative; scientific reasoning, languages, history, which have essentially no bearing upon what noobs would see as ‘the point’. To geeks, they are sacred, immersive tomes giving worth to what others see purely as entertainment – the saps.

The Wasteland has aliens. This comes as no surprise to some players who found little hints hidden in Fallout 3 before Mothership Zeta was announced, but the majority of gamers may feel that this is stretching things a little too far. Fallout 3 has received some of the highest overall reviews in recent memory and has managed to make ugliness beautiful, the apocalypse fun and free-roaming consistently interesting. But the sceptical nature of gamers has been sent into orbit over the new DLC, Mothership Zeta.

Aliens? Aliens!? Is it not enough to have a post-apocalyptic, morally ambivalent RPG with companions, alternate realities, zombies (yes, ferals are zombies in all but name and shambling), mutants, and a complex back-story full of political intrigue and conflict both on a local and global scale? We now have to have aliens? It’s as if the hidden skulls on Halo had been given their own Joey-style spin-off. Will it be as successful?

This is the last instalment of DLC for Fallout 3 and my hopes were that it would go out with a bang. The main story line of the base game seemed to flitter out in a puff of montage. The previous DLCs have varied from forgettable (Broken Steel) to extraordinarily good (Point Lookout). Surely this, the final frontier in every sense, will be the one that has me weeping into my pad, leaping for joy or laughing recklessly at the futility of man’s attempts to conquer the world, nay, the universe? I want this.

At this point I and many others have devoted solid days of our lives to this game. I’ve seen my character grow up, get a house, a dog, a butler, friends, a life; become brave, strong, morally ambiguous and, mostly, greedy. I’ve done more to help her grow up than I have myself, yet I have to see her final moments played out with a complete lack of sentimentality? That dog won’t hunt, mon signor.