Four Things You'll Never Get Arrested for in The Pitt
An alternate version of Pennsylvania's crown jewel is a criminal paradise.
4/1/2009 5:43 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 3
Pittsburgh. Even under the brown, post-apocalyptic skies in
Fallout 3, it's a working-class town. In real life the 'Burgh is home to a population proud of its identity as a hard-working steel city. In
The Pitt, it has been broken and barely rebuilt by an iron-fisted leader who drives slaves to work the mills.
"Blade Runner" much?
The fake Pitt seems like a totalitarian hellhole at first, but it turns out to be a lot more forgiving than the real thing. You can get away with a lot in this devastated outpost, and four crimes are recommended for any traveler who happens to emerge from the tunnel connecting Pennsylvania to the DC wasteland.
First things first: Yes, there were problems with the DLC on Xbox Live, and a few issues persist. The initial corrupted download has long since been replaced, but there are a few bugs left. One character (the Pitt's leader, Ashur) got stuck on repeating dialogue bugs in two spots when I played through the expansion. Nothing crippling (I had to reload from the autosave once), but the problem is worth noting for the time being.
Loitering
OK, I'm lying right off -- you can get arrested for loitering in your first half-hour in
The Pitt. But that's the whole point. Recruited by a shady dude named Werhner, your task is to infiltrate the settlement to find the closely-guarded cure for a degenerative radiation sickness. The easiest way to do that is to dress as a slave and be taken in as a returning escapee. You can try to shoot your way in, but that won't go well. Being "reclaimed" is the best route.
Fallout 3 expansion or Milan Fashion Week press photo? Tough to tell.
But first, spend a few minutes hanging around the outer shell of Pittsburgh. The bridge into the city is one of
Fallout 3's most impressive sights, especially if you climb up to the top and check out the darkly panoramic view. The burnt city is uncomfortably glorious. Swimming under the bridge is really off-limits, though -- the high rad levels in the river water will dissolve your skin in seconds.
Once inside, linger in the steel mill, where massive buckets of molten metal are carried overhead and slaves stoke great furnaces to refine scrap metal into the stuff of society. (That is, guns and ammo.) And for a real good time, check out The Hole, where you'll fight Thunderdome-style against a few rounds of the Pitt's best and brutal-est. It's the little details, really, that make a town feel like home.
