The Fallout 3 DLC has definitely demonstrated that Bethesda learned from the Elder Scrolls Oblivion experience. There’s been absolutely no Horse Armor parallel, and while the first releases – The Pitt for example – were a bit anemic on content the last two releases – Broken Steel and Point Lookout have been excellent. Well today we got official word that the 5th and final downloadable content add on for Fallout 3 will arrive on August 3rd, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and on Windows Live for PC at a cost of 800 MS points.

The last release – titled Mothership Zeta will add some new weapons to the game as well as new alien adversaries. Those unfamiliar with the previous games in the series may not realize that Aliens and Fallout go way back – including a mention and random crash site location in the first game and a ray gun that make obliterating enemies that much more fun.

I’ve included the full details as well as some newly released screen shots after the jump.

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Fallout 3 is one of those games I can’t stay away from too long.. like Oblivion before it I seem to find myself wandering the DC Metro Wasteland listening to Three Dog’s howl whenever my game review plate thins out a bit. So far Bethesda is keeping up its usual excellent job of supporting their games in the post release cycle with expansions and new content. While the nightmare of Horse Armor may never be forgotten, the content for Fallout 3, including the Broken Steel add-on which removed the games original ending and raised the character level cap, is going a long way toward expanding the game in different ways while not really diluting the core experience of its scripted story.

The latest expansion, Point Lookout, concerns a rural Maryland area in the post apocalyptic world and invites the players to uncover a smaller scale story surrounding some swamp dwellers, cultists and even a steamboat. While the overview for the expansion sounds a bit “Call of Cthulhu” like, another licensed world Bethesda has played around with in the past, one of the most striking thing is the encroachment of more plants and trees into the Fallout 3 setting. Joel Burgess and Nathan Purkeypile, the add-on’s Lead Designer and Lead Artist respectively detailed the evolution of the Point Lookout concept in a recent blog post on the official Fallout website.

With Point Lookout, one of our primary goals was not to create just a quest, but a whole new region for players to explore. Straight away we knew that we wanted to focus on what we felt was one of the great strengths of Fallout 3 –a world too full of stories and surprises, ripe for exploration and adventure.  For us, the world is a main character, and choosing our location was intrinsically tied to the tone of the content.

We knew what kind of geographical features we wanted to showcase, and began scouting real-world locations. We stumbled across the perfect place: Point Lookout, MD. This rural location is situated on the southern tip of Maryland where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The coastal lowland offered the setting that we wanted, and the area has a rich history that we were able to pull inspiration from. The founders of Maryland landed here, a Civil War camp held over 50,000 confederate prisoners, and the Point Lookout Lighthouse is purported to be one of the most haunted places in Maryland.  All this just down the Potomac River, which runs through the Capital Wasteland.

I’ve included some of the recently released screenshots and frankly while Broken Steel might have been about expanding the ending of the game, Point Lookout seems to promise an interesting side trek with some content aside from generic feral ghouls and armored Enclave drones.

You can check out the shots after the jump.

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Been playing Fallout 3 on your PS3 and wishing you could get your hands on the DLC? Well, wish no more.

Bethesda announced today that they are bringing all the current and upcoming Fallout 3 DLC to the PS3. Operation Anchorage is slated to hit the PlayStation Store sometime in June, with The Pitt and Broken Steel following along at 4-6 week intervals.

In addition to the existing DLC, PS3 owners can look forward to the two new DLC packs that were announced as well. First up is Point Lookout, a massive swampland full of new quests. Point Lookout is scheduled to hit XBox Live and Games for Windows Live in June, and on the Playstation Store after the first three DLC packs are available.

More DLC information, as well as a retail Fallout 3 announcement, after the break

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Gamesindustry.biz recently conducted an interview with gaming industry vet and managing director of Bethesda Europe, Sean Brennan. The interview, a first of many, discusses their (Zenimax/Bethesda’s) notable success in marketing Fallout 3 in the UK. While bragging about how awesome Fallout 3 did, Sean also took liberty at poking fun at some (at the time) competing EA titles that did not fair as well in that region.

Sean also unveiled Zenimax/Bethesda’s diabolical plan to dig its tendrils deep within the remaining European territories with assurances of eventual world domination… and, oh yeah, assurances that “we’re still going to focus on what we’re doing best, which is 360, PS3 and PC, triple-A products aimed at a more mature market place” (Although, Sean hinted that Wii titles were not out of question).

The most exciting part of the interview was Sean’s teasing us with news of Splash Damage’s next title:

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Today is the release of the highly anticipated third DLC add on for Bethesda’s Fallout 3. Turns out that early reports from the Fallout 3 forums show that the mistakes made during the recent launch of The Pitt DLC may not have been corrected after all. It seems that at least some members of the Fallout 3 community are reporting problems with the PC version of the content through the Windows Live download store. Reportedly the developers at Bethesda are already on the case with possible issues including a glut of downloads causing server issues and other unconfirmed issues. Best bet might be to hold off on downloading the add-on for a few days to let them work out the kinks.

This is a rough time for the guys in Maryland and it seems they can’t catch a break with the Fallout downloads but oddly these sorts of issues didn’t really creep up during the Oblivion expansions so we’ve seen that the Bethesda of the past can handle digital releases.

Fans of Fallout 3, like myself, have been anxiously waiting for this update to the core game. Unlike the previous two releases – Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, Broken Steel is meant to remove the hard story-based ending of the original Fallout 3 and adds new continued quests featuring the Brotherhood of Steel, new weapons, a new level cap increase, new perks and achievements as well.

Update: Apparently this seems to be an issue with Games for Windows Live!’s DRM functions though there are now sporadic reports of 360 owners experiencing a different Broken Steel issue. Bethesda won’t catch a break even if it is a Microsoft issue.. after its their game on the front line of this and The Pitt left a bad taste in many people’s mouths.

You can watch the Fallout 3: Broken Steel trailer after the jump.
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Now that G.E.C.K. has been out a while, No Mutants Allowed has issued an update of its growing inventory of Fallout 3 mods. The biggest changes are to the popular The Fallout 3 Compendium mod which has had a huge update to v 0.6.0.2. The Item Description mod also continues to go and is up to v 1.15.

There are also several new mods in the NMA Fallout 3 stable:

• Medicine And Edibles Revamped – changes drug effects and addictions to suit the originals more closely
• Unique Zhu-Rong v418 Pistol – retextures and modifies a unique weapon
• Obedient Dogmeat mod – modifies interfacing with Dogmeat and makes him a lot smarter

New mods are also available on Fallout 3 Nexus. For all the details visit the NMA Fallout 3 forum.

The PS3 is getting a Fallout 3 patch which adds trophy support. Update (v1.10) also fixes a number of troublesome issues like problems with Friend Notification. Fallout 3 will prompt you to download the update the next time you log on. It’s only 24MB so it shouldn’t take too much time out of your gaming schedule.

The update is only approved for the English language version of Fallout 3 in the U.K. and U.S. but Bethesda expects additional language patches to be ready to go soon. Updates for the PC and Xbox 360 are also on their way.

Fallout 3 modders rejoice for your tool set has arrived. Bethesda has released the Garden of Eden Creation Kit which will make it a lot easier for less experienced modders to create new content for Fallout 3 PC.

There are a couple of other instructional videos and a G.E.C.K. wiki to get you started. Just stop in to the Bethesda Blog for the rest of the videos on how to use G.E.C.K..

If you’re ready to try your hand at modding Fallout 3, head over to FileFront proper to download the Garden of Eden Creation Kit for yourself.

“Operation: Anchorage”, the first downloadable content for Fallout 3 will be making its way to the Xbox 360 in January and the four to five hours of gameplay it contains will cost gamers 800 Microsoft Points ($10.00).

Gamers playing the DLC will participate in the liberation of Anchorage from the Chinese Red Army via a virtual reality simulator and focuses mainly on combat and stealth. The new content will include interactive Strike Teams for you to command and new achievements, armor, a covert ops perk and weapons.

The second DLC pack coming in February is titled “The Pitt” which will be set in Pittsburgh, where the inhabitants have escaped the nuclear annihilation prevalent throughout the game. However, the city is not in pristine shape, because the water is radioactive and it has had a strong effect on those that inhabit the areas near it.

Lastly, the third DLC pack coming in March, “Broken Steel”, not only allow players to continue exploring the wasteland after completion, but it will also increase the level cap and add new perks and monsters.

No exact dates were given as to when any of the content will arrive, but as soon as we get some concrete release dates we will be sure to let you know.

(Thanks Shacknews)

Electronic Arts is being targeted by another class-action law suit over the DRM included with Spore, SecuROM. This time, California resident Alex McQuown is hoping to use Spore to take down SecuROM once and for all.

The grievances listed in Alex McQuown’s class-action suit against EA are much the same as the other suits with three big differences. His lawyers at Finkelstein Thompson claim that SecuROM damages computers costing consumer time and money to repair the havoc caused by its installation. The suit also asserts that EA has needlessly caused its customers grief. The figures prove that piracy of games that carry SecuROM has risen dramatically. The biggest difference in McQuown’s suit is that he invites every U.S. citizen that has purchased an EA product with SecuROM to join the class.
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