Aliens Invade Fallout 3 in Mothership Zeta Expansion

IDG News Service — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:31:29 -0400

It looks like Xbox 360 and Windows gamers will finally get to tango with the ephemerally transient, aka the extra-terrestrial, aka Mothership Zeta, the latest expansion for Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3. In it, you'll detect an unintelligible signal of alien origin coming from a crashed UFO. Is it a distress call or a trap? You'll find out after boarding a massive alien flying saucer orbiting Earth miles above the Capital Wasteland.

Okay, I'll bite. So can we pilot the spaceship?

Probably not (can we ever?) but you will get to meet new characters, i.e. fellow abductees, and plot your very own Great Escape, in what could turn out to be one part Fire in the Sky meets two parts The A-Team.

Great, lovely, but what about the toys?

Alien Atomizer, check. Drone Cannon, check. Alien Disintegrator and Gemini-Era Spacesuit, check and check. No explanation what any of them do, check-with-sigh. Oh, and "even Samurai Armor," whatever that means. Maybe something to do with Tom Cruise, i.e. Scientology's Xenu meets The Last Samurai's Nathan Algren?

Stuff you'll fight: Aliens, robot drones, probably other characters (I'm betting the usual one or two nasty wicked human collaborators), "their own horrible experiments" (meaning the aliens' presumably Franken-fooling with humans) and of course, "your way to the bridge of the ship" in order to secure your escape.

But what about the Alien Blaster? You know, the one in the original Fallout? Where you found a crashed UFO and two alien bodies, one with the blaster and another with a fuzzy picture of Elvis?

The expansion should be available August 3rd and will cost 800 Microsoft Points, or $10.

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