So I just finished playing the Mothership Zeta DLC. I will say that I definitely had fun playing the DLC, but unfortunately, the whole thing left me feeling unsatisfied and gave off the impression of a wasted opportunity.
First off, I do not mind the concept of a lengthy DLC centered around aliens in a Fallout game - while the idea is certainly rather bizarre, personally I see something rather fascinating in the way Bethesda went about executing it. This is probably thanks to the atmosphere of the entire thing and the fact that I am simply in love with the visuals as a whole - the ship, the aliens, the weapons, the gadgets... it all makes me wish that there was a whole game out there that actually centered around the 50s-60s depiction of aliens, since there's something incredibly charming about it.
As the gameplay goes, the DLC fares okay. It's essentially a long dungeon crawl with you mowing down armies of aliens, occasionally with the help of a few companion characters exclusive to this DLC. Your whole task boils down to trying to escape from the ship - by blasting your way towards several generators that need destroying, and finding the right path in the somewhat labyrinthine design of the ship. Not much to write home about story-wise, basically. In terms of items, there isn't a whole lot of items to be found (I think there's like, what, ONE new weapon per every weapon type?), but the ones we get are pretty decent, so I don't mind it that much.
Let's talk about the wasted opportunity I mentioned, though. There's one major problem with this DLC that heavily undermines the game's so-called RPG status. Namely, at no point you are given the option to talk with the aliens or try to cooperate with them. They're all just cannon fodder that you are supposed to shoot on sight, no questions asked. It's rather disappointing, because how much cooler would it be if the aliens tried to coerce you into joining them, and you had the option of being a dick and betraying your human comrades? But nope, giving the player meaningful choices and developing your villains beyond "it's hostile and experiments on people, kill it" is a no-no.
There's also your companions, which aren't given much depth. Compared to what we got in New Vegas, they all fall rather flat, maybe with the exception of the medic guy. The samurai is the biggest disappointment, because despite the creators putting a lot of effort into making him very accurate and giving him a unique appearance and a genuine japanese voiceover, he's barely even present in this DLC. I mean seriously? No chance to develop him with some kind of translation device or something? Such wasted potential...
So this is Mothership Zeta. A pretty straightforward and kinda mindless dungeon crawler, with amazing visuals and decent gameplay of shooting down aliens, and definitely enjoyable if you don't mind the simplicity, but deeply disappointing in terms of depth and roleplaying elements.
Mothership Zeta - Pretty decent, but could be so much better
So I just finished playing the Mothership Zeta DLC. I will say that I definitely had fun playing the DLC, but unfortunately, the whole thing left me feeling unsatisfied and gave off the impression of a wasted opportunity.
First off, I do not mind the concept of a lengthy DLC centered around aliens in a Fallout game - while the idea is certainly rather bizarre, personally I see something rather fascinating in the way Bethesda went about executing it. This is probably thanks to the atmosphere of the entire thing and the fact that I am simply in love with the visuals as a whole - the ship, the aliens, the weapons, the gadgets... it all makes me wish that there was a whole game out there that actually centered around the 50s-60s depiction of aliens, since there's something incredibly charming about it.
As the gameplay goes, the DLC fares okay. It's essentially a long dungeon crawl with you mowing down armies of aliens, occasionally with the help of a few companion characters exclusive to this DLC. Your whole task boils down to trying to escape from the ship - by blasting your way towards several generators that need destroying, and finding the right path in the somewhat labyrinthine design of the ship. Not much to write home about story-wise, basically. In terms of items, there isn't a whole lot of items to be found (I think there's like, what, ONE new weapon per every weapon type?), but the ones we get are pretty decent, so I don't mind it that much.
Let's talk about the wasted opportunity I mentioned, though. There's one major problem with this DLC that heavily undermines the game's so-called RPG status. Namely, at no point you are given the option to talk with the aliens or try to cooperate with them. They're all just cannon fodder that you are supposed to shoot on sight, no questions asked. It's rather disappointing, because how much cooler would it be if the aliens tried to coerce you into joining them, and you had the option of being a dick and betraying your human comrades? But nope, giving the player meaningful choices and developing your villains beyond "it's hostile and experiments on people, kill it" is a no-no.
There's also your companions, which aren't given much depth. Compared to what we got in New Vegas, they all fall rather flat, maybe with the exception of the medic guy. The samurai is the biggest disappointment, because despite the creators putting a lot of effort into making him very accurate and giving him a unique appearance and a genuine japanese voiceover, he's barely even present in this DLC. I mean seriously? No chance to develop him with some kind of translation device or something? Such wasted potential...
So this is Mothership Zeta. A pretty straightforward and kinda mindless dungeon crawler, with amazing visuals and decent gameplay of shooting down aliens, and definitely enjoyable if you don't mind the simplicity, but deeply disappointing in terms of depth and roleplaying elements.