One thing I really liked about Operation Anchorage is the RP implications. It honestly makes the game a little bit more believable if you do operation anchorage soon after leaving the vault. You go from being a 19 year old who lived in a vault to someone who just completed a pre war training sim. It makes more sense that you would be able to mow down hordes of Enclave after something like that.

One of my friends once told me how when he was a kid/pre-teen, he played a ton of Fallout 3 then dropped it at one point only to come back a few months later. He reloaded his last save and spawned in the middle of a snowy mountain area. He said he had never been more confused in his life. Completely forgot about what happened earlier with the Outcast

Also, I remember there being cut terminals from this DLC where the programmers making the simulation were complaining how off the rails the program had gotten with the general whop was there to give oversight/authenticity insisting they change things constantly. They complained how they kept having the redo the general's character model in the game because his jacket wasn't right and how the Chimera tank you fight in the simulation is revisionist bullshit.

Lol this is basically the DLC you do to get power armour training way early bypassing having to talk to the brotherhood

I may be incorrect but if I recall correctly, the radio signal was sent on a closed signal meant for other outcasts, the signal was not meant to be picked up by outsiders but the pip boy was able to access it.

These are all pretty good ideas, but the Outcasts can't be brought back for Fallout 5 because they already made an appearance in Fallout 4... as the East Coast BoS. In one of the few genuinely interesting things Bethesda has managed to do with the faction, they seem to have implied that, after the war with the Enclave and the death of Sarah Lyons, the snotty little brat you saw in Fallout 3 became some kind of quasi-fascist ubermensch who kills Deathclaws with his bare hands and wants to exterminate all mutants and ghouls, just like the Enclave did, but stops short at literally genociding everyone in the wasteland. So he reconnects with the West Coast Brotherhood after Lyons' death, officially becomes Elder, and at some point in-between these two events, reintegrates the Outcasts back into the Brotherhood and gives them preferential treatment over Lyons' group. So, the Brotherhood representing the thesis, the Enclave representing the antithesis, and the Fallout 4 BoS being the result of their synthesis. I guess the Hegelian Dialects Man with a brain tumor was right after all. Funny, that.

Technically Fallout Tactics had snowy environments first. Speaking of the Outcasts, Triangle City put out a video on the cut content for them, and there was a planned extensive quest about getting them and the rest of the Brotherhood to unite over protecting and studying alien technology, although honestly I'm glad it got cut cause it sounded pretty bad and would've likely had worse writing. Although I'm curious how this affected the development of the DLCs. Gameplay-wise, I replayed Operation Anchorage during a playthrough while I was also replaying Half-Life 2: EP2, and was surprised at how Valve did a better job at integrating a mini-open world into a linear campaign by having a large map with landmarks and multiple ways around for the player to memorize and learn how to quickly get around for the objectives, rather than just forcing a bad Call of Duty campaign into an engine barely capable for it.

I would play Operation anchorage every time I played 3, not because I like the dlc mind you. I just loved the fact you can get the best armour in the game (except for hellfire which is arguable) straight out the gate

The best way to save this DLC would be to split up the resources so half the resources are spent on the simulation and vault, and the other half on an Outcasts Questline in the mainworld that allows the Outcasts and Brotherhood of Steel to ally against the greater threat of the Enclave. Basically Broken Steel 0.5 and restoring cut content and fleshing out the faction.

If I remember correctly, there was supposed to be a quest/questline to broker peace between the BoS and BoS outcasts, based on what's left over from what got cut during development, it seemed to center around evidence that aliens were a thing (using the terminal in the Citadel that talks about the crash site and maybe the actual crash site in the game) and using that evidence to convince the Outcasts to ally themselves with the BoS. I'm pretty sure TriangeCity talked about it in this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ipagZc-e27_TqYU.html

The viggest reason I hate Anchorage is the way it portrays Alaska. Not the gameplay, style, or really anything else. Just the fact it made Alaska look dumb. Thats a sin I _cannot_ forgive.

I liked it myself. I wish there were mods where people took the assets and made a larger and longer quest and area since the simulation was general chase lying and going crazy but a mod that shows the campaign more with larger battle and more quests and stuff to do. I still like the dlc though but it would be cool to see a mod like that.

Your idea for a reworked Anchorage is great! I'd love to see it as a mod someday, or really any overhaul/rewrite for Fo3.

dude in the lore they were calling for help for other members of the outcast to come and help theoretically since if you are wearing their power armour they accept you with open arms.

Would have rather seen a war between BoS and Outcasts than BoS and Enclave or beat the game with outcast instead of BoS

13:09 or flip it. since the outcasts are only motivated by tech they get it in their head that if they go out of their way to be a good 2 shoes who protects everyone with the idea being that increases their odds of getting tech. all the while the Lyons Pride soldier being only motivated by protecting real human life so only the party causing them to take more cold hearted decisions because its all a game. and use that to explore their factions ideas by having both do the exact opposite

Recently found your channel, watched through most of your vids. very impressive work. Entertaining and well spoken. Keep up the good work boss!

Last time i played through it, the outcasts went hostile after we opened the room with all the gear. They killed all killed each other too it was weird

Excellent video on the DLC. The fact that The Outcasts didn't pull the player out of the simulation and to test the player what they have learned really makes the DLC dull. It would have cool if as the player progressed in the simulation you would see different areas of Alaska during the battle.

Looks like it im literally the only one who likes operation Anchorage and Mothership Zeta, i never get bored of them, all dlcs are fun as hell.

5:00 this entire idea could only exist in a universe where a time traveler had traveled in time, told bethesda of the attitude of the fans 10+ years after the game's release and then told them about this idea. How the hell could they "comment on the direction of the series" when the comment coule have only been made by some with hindsight

I think its a fun little dlc with nice rewards. But it could of been SO GOOD

5:54 I do, in fact, love the robot guy

The Brotherhood outcast were my favorite part of Fallout 3...I wish you could join them and they had a full quest line...

I actually love this DLC. I just did two full playthroughs of Fallout 3 since 2014 and I still love it as much but I can admit it definitely missed some marks that New Vegas made up for.

"Do any of you smell burning toast" is fucking *gold*

To be honest I completely agree with all the points made, like imagine how cool it would be if you could have an actual civil war between bos and bos outcasts, because that would've been nice like they could have gone SO many directions maybe like you mentioned based on decisions; you could find peace between them. The dlc really did have so much potential it's sad to see it got so wasted. And with how many factions are in 76 i doubt we'll be seeing the outcasts anymore than in fallout 3.

The only reason I kinda like this DLC and don't completely write it off altogether on playthroughs is because it gives a pretty decent reason as to how a 19 year old Vault Dweller that's only ever fired a BB gun somehow ends up a mutant slaughtering, Enclave butchering killing machine. It actually kinds makes sense with Anchorage since it's a literal military sim that probably provided a lot of real combat training. That's about it though, I really couldn't give less of a shit about it besides that

I remember playing speedrunning over to this DLC immediatly after leaving the vault back in the Xbox 360 days, using exploits to get a bunch of gear that was normally unobtainable in the simulation, skipping most the DLC via glitches to get out of bounds, and using another exploit involving the random Dave corpse to keep all of said unobtainable items outside the simulation. Good times.

I always played operation anchorage first for this reason and for the Gary 23 glitch so I need not worry about ammo, because bullets go around where you’re aiming lol

imagine if they had a low int character just completely believing that it was real

I just got through playing it, I liked it, though it was dragging towards the end, and I don't see much replayability except for a stealth run, which could be interesting

I feel like the goody two shoes brotherhood should of been the outcasts and the main guest has you dealing with the "asshole" brotherhood

I realize it just now since you made good points why it could have been great: "Almost". No, it was a mile away for being great. It's like saying bread is almost a great sandwich. No. there's missing a lot of ingreditiens, altough the groundwork is there for a good food. But I'm just nitpicking. Ignore me

Ahh yes the simulation DLC almost everyone dashes to for Power Armor training, stealth armor, Winterized Power Armor and Gauss Rifle. I remember speed dashing this one just for that early game.

Anchorage sucked, it had good rewards for completing it but oh my god making Fallout 3 into an FPS was a bad idea.

The storyline you propose here did eventually get done -- in fallout 76, as the steel dawn and steel reign expansions.

There was a huge mothership zeta crew mod for fallout 3 that I think I saw people still making mods for so it must be somewhat functional, might be a cool mod to review

3:11 that republic of Dave comment genuinely had me struggling to breathe

One random idea I had that expands on the dialogue that involves telling the AI that it’s an AI is being able to rewrite the code of the simulation so you’d be able to skip parts of the dlc or even rewriting the characters in the simulation to provide audio logs of the development of the simulation that would be read out in the AI’s voice or even just rewriting the AI so become different, like maybe a stealth character could rewrite an AI to have the Chinese stealth suit or something, that might’ve been cool imo but Ik it’s a little advanced for just a simple DLC

Episode A friend of mine made a mod for operation Anchorage for Tale of two wastelands and it basically enhances the mod And when I'm playing that it made me kind of realize something that the idea is that she added could have been the basics for the original mod. Hear me out obviously when we start we wake up and it seems like we jumped out of the airplane and we still have our gear which is a pistol and a damn knife. Okay okay realistically paratroopers are trained to at least carry more gear when they're jumping out of a plane that just seems unrealistic that we don't airdrop some supplies down to where we might land. I would really like some kind of opening cut scene or a pre seen loaded with you actually in the airplane and maybe one of your commanders says that they'll drop some supplies nearby but you can only jump out with the minimal gear. And we can have the character move around the airplane talking to the soldiers and maybe we can even have a reference to one of the soldiers having one of the prototype gauss rifles. Then we can kind of continue with the cliff section of the game I would really like this part to be changed because maybe when we go into some of the bunkers they aren't all you know caved in because this is a simulation of pre-america. So maybe we could have some of these sections opened up and we could explore More into the base because these could be like supply or storage rooms that have supplies that we could kind of find I would have liked the health markers to be moved inside these so-called supply rooms. And there could have been more holotapes explaining the daily things done at this area because to me the clips are basically a military base now I know that they were overrun but there should be more evidence that people lived up here you know worked up here I don't like to think every soldier got across this area by going across the dam walkways LOL. And also this could have been a great time for them to expand on the weaponry that could have been used not just the vanilla fallout weapons we could have actually got new weapons maybe even more Chinese like weapons since this was an invasion. I don't mind how the level went but also when we got to the companions it was a piss poor attempt that I think the future New Vegas companion system. Maybe instead of having the people spawn in like a computer game there could be people we could go around and talk to in the camp and hire them to follow us and remove the ability for them to die so that when we go back to the camp we can exchange a soldier that way there would be a soldier who was a sniper a soldier who was a grenator a soldier who had an assault rifle I just understand that this is a simulation but I would have loved a little bit more realism. And the levels like they could have expanded the map a little bit more add more City Life to the area like when we get ready to go to the minefield maybe instead of just walking across the minefield maybe we have to walk through a ruined City you know and look at pre-war Anchorage before we head to the mining base because there's almost no mention of a city because we are in Anchorage but I'm like where is the goddamn City. I would have loved the section of the mod to include a walkthrough through pre-war Anchorage and maybe we had to have like some kind of firefight there or rescue hostages or maybe we get into a vertibird and fly around or fly to our next destination you know. And I also would have wished that there were more things or challenges we could do inside the simulation to get more rewards like maybe a few more perks we could get from doing the simulation. When I think about this I just really would love the rewards for doing this to be expanded upon more then basically a dungeon raid. My friend's mom expands on a lot of this but a person can only do so much when it comes to the DLC mods if you ask me

I will admit this is basically an entirely different beast but I'm replaying O:A through TTW with a bunch of other mods that improve the general feel of combat and it's hella fun.

The Chinese Stealth suit will always be my favorite armor from Fallout 3!

Dude you deserve more views for these great reviews, these are excellent.

Babe wake up new ramblelime video

While I totally agree with your opinion on Fallout 3's combat, I know that some people love both 3 and NV (and even 4) because they can spam VATS and feel like the terminator essentially. So, it depends on the person I guess.

I'm surprised you missed out on mentioning that one of the rewards for completing the DLC is a basically indestructible set of some of the best power armor in the game and the training to use it. And you can do this at level 1.

Im a sucker for infiltration missions and snowy levels, so to get a combo of those in a fallout game made me overlook a lot of glaring faults, and stll does, i love Anchorage and the 007/Metal Gear feeling it has, especially at the start.

Honestly, I’m just a big fan of the Gary glitch, to be able to get invincible armor that not only looks badass, But has decent armor stats, and if you mess around, you will get invincible weapons and a near endless amount of specific ammo, only reason why I do it lol

Funny enough there was most to be more outcast story and was originally gonna be a option to try and fix stuff

I think the outcasts could have used some more fleshing out

Operation Anchorage was always my favourite DLC, i wish fallout did more like it. Mainly just liked the setting and the prewar lore.

Or, low effort, had unlimited ammo and a 1up system instead of health pickups. "Why don't I have to resupply, General?" "You'll be supplied enough ammo for your duty, soldier. Just run forward and unload on some Chinese!" "Why is there respawns? Wouldn't that mean I'd die in combat?" "Don't worry, once you've completed your training, those won't be important." "Isn't this simulation my training?" "Yes it is. Get to it, soldier!" (Turns out the facility was for rapid training of cannon fodder.)

one of my fav of your videos

Cool video, very funny and very interesting. Keep doing the good work

I feel ya with this DLC, (though I always play it first for the lvls and equipment admittedly). More or less for me, they could have just made major one change to the DLC to make it a good game, making Sargent Montgomery controlled by one of the outcasts in the VR sim. Like, they get the pip-boy off the gary clone and one goes in with you to help, and ya get a lot of backstory of the outcasts, brotherhood, and how the military played a big part in that. It didn't even have to be new lore, just rehash what we knew from FO1 and FO2 (maybe even tactics).

It's not just a parody of that but of corridor shooters, that's why it was so braindead I think despite the sheen of tactical options. But as such the simulation part could've been a bit shorter and the outcasts more fleshed out like you said, otherwise I would go in the other direction and make it more challenging as well as improve the tactical aspect to at least the level of something like Mechwarrior 2. I mean the teammates can't even follow the instruction to wait, and sometimes just either suddenly run ahead or lag behind the player during a segment.

Personally I loved operation Anchorage because it was a glimpse at the Sino-American war, even if it was muddied in propaganda. Honestly I hope this DLC gets remade in FO4’s engine.

The outcasts & colonel autumn's enclave faction were criminally underutilized. They could've at least given a gradient of good/evil with instead of a tacked on genocide button. I wish so badly that they'd actually given the choice between a good but ineffective Lyons, a good & powerful option that was only for a small group in the outcasts, an authoritarian heavily stratified enclave that takes in wastelanders (albeit as second class citizens with severely fewer rights) & actually intends to make a functional state out of the wastes...or the lol random evil option ig

Unrelated to the video but sorta related I think the enclave have good writing if you exclude Eden and include autumn instead. Going into his lore a bit he had SO MUCH POTENTIAL. He believes the enclave shouldn’t outright murder the wasteland. But believed if your not with him your against him. I wish they expanded on him with the end justifies the means by joining his part of the enclave, I like the enclave as much as I do cause Bethesda never expands upon them as modders do (America rising 2 is currently the best tbh.)

Operation Anchorage is tthe best Call of Duty I've ever played. + the chinese stealth armor and shocksword are OP together

I always found Mothership Zeta pretty fun with fun characters, even if the premise was too silly for me to roleplay in it.

Meanwhile, I love Operation: Anchorage. It's actually my favorite Fallout 3 DLC. I guess that makes me weird.

Great vid!

The DLC is for early OP gear and Power Armour training As soon as you get Gun 100, the DLC is do able

9:04 Alright you've acknowledged its existence so you know what you have to do now. God help you.

Video is months old, but Fallout Tactics had a few snowy areas in it. 8:20

The bit with Jingwei was silly but it's not unheard of for military leaders of various nations to "fall on their sword" rather than be captured. I would go a bit further with the parody aspects in F3, though, and point out what a meme the Chinese agitprop radio signal or ghoulified Chinese soldiers hanging out in a food processing plant was. The Point Lookout subplot with the Reds actually, ostensibly going ahead with killing one of their own agents after completing a "vital mission", these are all things that exist in context rather than as "biased propaganda" by Pre-War America and show that both sides of the Great War were pretty awful in their own ways. The argument can be made that the very events dramatized in this DLC put the onus on the PRC since they decided to invade US territory first and then wanted to play the part of being set upon when they were confronted by troops in power armor and a losing fight on their own shores.

What’s your opinion on fallout 3, 4 and 76

The potential of the conflict with the outcasts is something 76's expansion tried to retread. Did better with it, though not perfect. Mostly because lasting player choice and consequence cant really exist in an mmo world without huge timed events a la Sea of Thieves.

I think this DLC is good if you want Power Armour Training early in the game

cool video! nice job with this recommendation, youtube

Jing Wei didn't even do it right so he dies without honor or dignity. Seppuku requires 2 people, the one taking their own life and someone to decapitate them.

pfft i love zeta and op anchorage

I enjoyed Anchorage well enough not my favorite but passable

Gary 23 makes operation anchorage bonkers broken and easily the most profitable dlc. Provided you’re comfortable with exploits. Too much of fallout 3 was wasted potential but it’ll never take away the love I have for it. Operation anchorage and the Pitt were my personal favourites.

I kinda like the dlcs

I like your shit my guy

at least its not unbearably long like mothership zeta

I liked operation Anchorage and mothership zeta

I agree that The Outcasts plot points and story impact was entirely underutilized... among other factions, characters, and game mechanics. But beyond any wasteland plot-pionts the facility, the simulator, and the simulation itself was flat out dissapointing. From the start the facility is supposed to be dedicated to taking existing VR technology and iterating on it, and to make the ultimate realistic VR training simulation capable of taking any raw recruit and molding them into not only a full fledged Soldier(Marine in this case) but a combat hardened Veteran in a record breaking fraction of the time it usually takes. Granted the idea is also that the General mucks it up with his overbearing sense of patriotism, nationalism, and exeptionalism; but by and large the primary porpose of the project was flash training soldiers. With that in mind this DLC did Not keep to its own parameters, there was not even a basic training mantage AKA a tutorial. All there was to this DLC was follow distress call, find rude people, save rude people, rude people ask for help, fight other rude people, complete objectives while fighting other rude people, congratulations you can now loot powerfull mid game weapons and a suit of Power Armor that you can now obligatorily use, save Less rude people from traitorous rude people, have fun with the rest of the game!😁👍 What they should have done at the very least is put us through Marine Corpse Bootcamp The Abriged Version: CQC training to unlock half of the various taketown moves in the game, a tutorial for all the different pre-war military weapons/weapon types in the game, and a "Training" section where we go through Power Armor Training I.E. walking/running/jumping/going through the fore mentioned CQC/weapon training again learning the other half of the list of takedown moves in the game, in the old T-45 Suit. There really should have been an intermission like he said, I think to treat injuries we recieved during "Boot Camp" caused by the sim-pod in similar vein to The Matrix would be best and gives us a chance to interact with the outcasts. Then we go back and get "deployed" to Alaska to take part in Opperation Anchorage, jump out of the plane to parachute in at night, maybe have a title card play on the way down maybe not. Keep most of the curent mission content just tweek it a bit to be more in line with something an overbearing gung-ho General would make some eggheads build, like more blood/gore/needless gunfire and explosions. There should have been a break in the action for us to get to put on the new Power armor in-sim before moving on to the three objectives before sieging the Chinese Generals main base, maybe even another intermission. Also Each tutorial should have a point system for how well we do, with a percentage of said points being converted into receiving stat-points related to those tutorials as well as XP gain, as well as during the actual missions scores on how many enemy units we and our companions k*ll, the time it takes us to complete each mission, how many allied units lost, ammunition waist, and how many objectives we complete contributing to your score and XP gains at the end of the simulation all of which should bump you up 5 to 10 levels. These scores should also be compiled for the sim pod to give you a recommendation of what military rank you should be assigned, private being the lowest score(possibly with something funny being said about where you should be posted) and the highest being Sergeant-Major with a recommendation to be made a Commissioned Officer, which could be used for dialogue options the rest of the game. After that incentive to help the leader and scribe fight off the traitors and survive could be a questline leading to interacting with the The Outcasts AND The Brotherhood.

Op anch was great with FNV:TTW, with B42 and JAM

Love your takes, you should review New Vegas DLCs as well, Lonesome Road and Dead Money deserve more recognition

3:30 No problem, always love critiquing F3 😊

oddly very fond of it

The DLC should've gone the opposite direction of a comedic satire like you want. Instead focus on an actual extremely realistic military training Sim. It could be such an interesting look into fallout pre war lore and what soldiers in fallout were expected to do

I mean personally Anchorage was fine to me. It design was just a simple thought of playing an inworld video game. It's basically the in world version of CoD. I went in with that mindset and found the whole thing funny and kinda campy. It's bad because it's ment to be bad.

I like mothership zeta...mostly because I like aliens...but it definitely could have been done better

The outcasts are already in modern fallout, they took over the BOS in fallout 4.

Play Outer Wilds: Echoes of The Eye...just do it.

are you a game developer?

The Brotherhood and Outcasts really should have been flip-floped, with Lyons' group being the Outcasts that struck out in their own wanting to do good for the people of the waststes instead of hunkering down in the Citadel. At the end you either have to chose the old school brother hood or Lyons group to help you in your fight against the Enclave, or have them put aside their differences and re-unite or at least cooperate temporarly. A pure Lyons run requires a heist of Liberty Prime. If you give the Old School Brotherhood (aka FO3 Outcasts) the Virus vile at the end they don't put it in the water supply but do research on it to weaponize it against mutants in the post credits.

i very much hope that betheda gives us new vegas 2 so we can get a new fallout game before a decade from now, and a decade and a half since their last dissapointing itteration

I like it

i feel if people would have bothered making quest mods for fallout 3 we would have had a one focusing on the outcasts and lyon's brotherhood making up somehow. instead we get fallout 4 where the outcasts take over and turn the brotherhood into the enclave. and people wonder why i don't consider the eastcoast fallouts canon.

I don’t think it was

This is great & I think your thoughts on this DLC are too! My mind turns to the flaws in the base games' design. By combining Rivet City, Megaton, Tenpenny Tower, & Paradise Falls we'd get a class-conscious main hub that can put further pressure on the Pentagon Brotherhood, with the main quest revolving around the Brotherhood splitting because one half is apathetic & just wants tec from local city while the other feels obligated to finally fight systemic exploitation & improve peoples lives! Slavery, prostitution, Talon mercenaries, wasteland scavengers, raiders, beggars; all living in the lower district of Megaton Crater. Engineers, business owners, studying scientists, Talon officers, & other specialist; all living in the Rivet City Hull. Retired Slavers, Bandits, Talon Officers, & the brightest scientists; all living in the Broken Bow above all. No need for Enclave; just have F3 be about American "personal responsibility" (to work together, supporting each other & building a brighter future or give into apathetic craven greed to kill us all). In the heart of the city, down in lowest slum, a living Oldworld Atomic Bown is found. Factions now fight to exploit it; will you help them repeat the Great War or build a bright future? You know, Sociological Storytelling.

OK this is a extremely off topic but I'm desperate and need help. Basically NV Bouties 2 and The Inheritance are both broken for me every time I install them. Yknow, "the content of is invalid." Apparently according to the one or 2 other people talking about it its deleted Navmeshes. I've asked around but Noone can tell me how to fix. You've played the Somguyseries a year ago. Did you ever encounter this problem and what did you do about it?

I liked operation anchorage

Maybe the simulation ran for 200 years over and over and the AI became self-aware. The American and Chinese soldiers stopped fighting each other and starting working together to undermine the real world. The AIs cooperating could be a lesson for the two Brotherhood factions about their own squabbling.