Summary

• Fallout 3's first-person perspective and open world defined modern games in the series, but its controversial ending disappoints many players.
• The game's narrative follows the Lone Wanderer on a quest to purify irradiated water, facing off against the Enclave and making a difficult choice.
• Broken Steel DLC changes the final choice, allowing companions to activate the purifier, but also nullifies player's self-sacrifice decision.

Fallout 3 is an especially important game in the franchise's history, being the first entry to make the jump to the first-person perspective and open world that now defines the series' modern games — and, unfortunately, its ending is also one of the series' most controversial. The first Fallout game to come out after the classic isometric entries, Fallout and Fallout 2, Fallout 3 has largely defined how later entries like Fallout 4 and Fallout: New Vegas would look and play, but for many players, the game's narrative, and especially its ending, is a mixed bag.

Taking place in and around the post-apocalyptic remains of Washington D.C., Fallout 3 stars the "Lone Wanderer" as its main protagonist and playable character. A Vault Dweller who's forced to leave their home of Vault 101 in search of their missing father, the Lone Wanderer journeys across the Capital Wasteland and eventually becomes involved in a conflict involving Project Purity, an initiative started by their parents to purify the wasteland's irradiated water. Along the way, they come into conflict with the Enclave, a villainous faction returning from Fallout 2, and ally with the Brotherhood of Steel.

How Fallout 3 Ends

Fallout 3 Ends With An Easy Battle And A Difficult Choice

After spending most of the main questline contending with the Enclave and figuring out the exact nature of their father's work on Project Purity, the Lone Wanderer takes part in a final battle between the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel at the Jefferson Memorial, which holds the Project's water purifier. Leading up to this point, players would already have come into conflict with Colonel Autumn and President John Henry Eden, the two main leaders of the Enclave, and discovered that Eden is, in fact, a sentient supercomputer posing as a person.

Depending on player dialogue choices, John Henry Eden can either be convinced to self-destruct both himself and the Enclave's main headquarters or simply be left alive. Either way, he doesn't factor heavily into the ending, but he gives the Lone Wanderer a modified FEV, which can be used to contaminate the wasteland's water, making it lethal to humans not from a Vault or the Enclave.

Most of the final quest, "Take It Back!" sees the player fighting through Enclave forces to reach the purifier and prevent it from falling under the Enclave's control. In this effort, the Lone Wanderer is aided by the Brotherhood of Steel, especially by Sarah Lyons, the daughter of the faction's leader, and Liberty Prime, a giant robot under the Brotherhood's control. After fighting their way inside the Jefferson Memorial, however, Colonel Autumn confronts them and serves as the game's final challenge before the ending choices can be made.

Depending on dialogue choices, players can decide to try to talk Autumn down and let him walk away, which requires succeeding on a number of difficult speech checks, or simply attack him right away. If Autumn is convinced to stand down, he walks out of the Memorial and isn't seen again. If he's attacked, or if the player fails any speech checks to make him stand down, the player must kill him and his men to proceed to the purifier, where they are presented with the game's final choice.

Approaching the purifier's controls, the player is informed that the device has taken heavy damage from the battle and will self-destruct if not started as soon as possible, but also that the control room has been flooded with lethal levels of radiation. In the base game of Fallout 3, this gives the player a three-way decision — sacrifice the player character, convince Lyons to sacrifice herself, or make no decision and let the purifer explode. Making any of these choices, or choosing to add Eden's FEV to the water, will affect the game's ending slides.

The Broken Steel DLC Changes Fallout 3's Ending

Broken Steel Changes The Final Choice But Not Necessarily For The Better

For many players, the ending of Fallout 3 is controversial, especially as the game has multiple companions who are immune to radiation and can be present at the purifier but will refuse to step into the control room to activate it for vague and unsatisfying reasons. A later DLC, Broken Steel, rectified this issue, allowing players to send Fawkes, Charon, or Sergeant RL-3 into the chamber instead of the player character or Lyons. At the same time, however, Broken Steel also continues Fallout 3's story past the ending — meaning that the Lone Wanderer survives regardless of their decision.

Fallout 3's ending slides have only minor variations depending on the final choice — the slides and narration will vary based on whether the player has good, neutral, or bad Karma, which character is sacrificed at the purifier, and whether the player chooses to contaminate the water.

Broken Steel has the Lone Wanderer waking up after the final battle, even if they chose self-sacrifice, and assisting the Brotherhood in fighting the remnants of the Enclave in the Capital Wasteland. Throughout the DLC's quests, players get the opportunity to see how their final choices panned out, with choices like contaminating the water with Eden's FEV or destroying Megaton having some level of impact on the world and characters.

For the most part, however, Broken Steel serves as a post-game epilogue and is controversial in its own right. The DLC walks back the base game's decision to force players to make a tangible sacrifice for the ending and nullifies the choice to self-sacrifice. Moreover, while the option to make the logical choice and send in a radiation-immune companion is made available, the game's ending slides still onish the player character for not self-sacrificing (likely as a consequence of reusing the dialogue for Lyons' sacrifice slide).

Fallout 3's ending is likely the most controversial part of what is still a generally well-received game. From somewhat lackluster confrontations with the Enclave's leaders to major plot holes in the final choice, the ending can sour the rest of the experience for some players, and the changes made by the Broken Steel DLC can't fully rectify those problems. While Fallout 3 has cemented itself as a classic Bethesda RPG, it runs into some unfortunate stumbles right at the very end.