Fallout 3 (Bethesda)

Fallout 3 is 2008's award-winning post-apocalyptic corpse-lootin' dungeon crawler. It is the first Fallout game to move away from the Diablo-like style, and went into full 3D and gave the option for first-person view.

The game's dedicated mod kit, G.E.C.K., can be used to easily view much of the unimplemented content documented here.

Prerelease Info Notes Unused NPCs and CrittersThey survived the apocalypse, but not the axe. Unused ItemsSome trinkets you won't find when picking through the rubble. Unused NotesSamples of Bethesda's Pulitzer-caliber writing which never made it into the game. Unused MapsThe Capital Wasteland's forgotten locales, buried under the refuse of dummied code.

Downloadable Content#

Operation: AnchorageAn FPS game-within-a-game set in the frozen north! The PittThe Lone Wanderer lonely wanders into a hairy situation. Welcome to The Pitt. Broken SteelThe wasteland adventure continues until the player gets tired of it. Point LookoutCommit homicide in the scenic festering swamps of Point Lookout State Park. Mothership ZetaThe aliens have returned and this time, they're canon!

Unused Graphics#

Pip-Boy Images#

World Objects#

There's an entire set of unused wasteland rocks in the game's files. The same rocks can be seen in the intro slides and early screenshots. In the Fallout 3 Official Game Guide: Pre-War Edition, Lead Artist Istvan Pely recounted how this first set of rocks Bethesda created was judged to be "too smoothly organic and... friendly?" and "it was important that they looked angular and rough". The cave rocks in the released game still use these meshes as a base, just with a darker texture.

Interface#

There's a cut stealth indicator in the game files that depicted a more gradual measure of how hidden the player was using a circle that shrank or grew in size. It was replaced in favor of the less ambiguous [HIDDEN]/[CAUTION]/[DANGER] system for retail.

Unused Quests#

MQ10 Infiltration (14e90)#

Unused stage of the main quest between "The American Dream" and "Take It Back!". This was presumably the original explanation for how Liberty Prime's power issues were resolved. Several Citadel terminal entries refer to an Accelerated Vector Fusion module that Liberty Prime needs to function and one entry says that Doctor Li had been working on the technology in her lab in Rivet City. Likely this is the MacGuffin the player would have been tasked with retrieving in Infiltration. In retail the player can ask Doctor Li about her lab; she responds with "Our work on portable fusion power and hydroponics are coming along quite nicely, if not quite according to schedule." This is despite the fact the laboratory is entirely devoted to hydroponics and there's evidently no sign of any fusion power research. Curiously, concept art for Rivet City does depict what looks like a large spherical reactor. There's an unused exterior deck at the stern of Rivet City with a large hangar door which can be activated to no effect (except a loud creaking sound) which is possibly related to this quest.

During development, there was also a quest in which the Enclave would attack Rivet City, and the player character would be tasked with escorting the inhabitants to the Citadel (see the Prerelease page for more). However, team lead Todd Howard decided it was just too big. It's likely the quest was named Infiltration because the player would be sneaking past Enclave forces occupying the city. Originally, according to the Official Game Guide Pre-War Collectors Edition the Enclave seized the aircraft carrier so they could reactivate its weapons and put to sea for the climactic battle, and the player would pilot Liberty Prime to fight it. While this idea was cut evidence of it remains. The 2005 developer map situates Rivet City facing north-south nearer to the Jefferson Memorial and these two cells are still labelled as being a former location in the GECK editor. If you disable water there's a gap in the riverbed rocks that very closely matches the hull of an early blockout of Rivet City, had it been docked there. This early Rivet City was much more seaworthy, not being beached and cracked in half. The ReferenceID for the broken bow cell in the editor is also much newer than the rest of Rivet City's interiors. Horace Pinkerton still talks about "defense systems or making this ship float again" which is implausible with the state of the ship in the retail game, but suggests as a veteran of the mysterious pre-War Naval Research Institute he may helped the Enclave get the ship online in an older draft of the story.

Relevant terminal entries in the Citadel:

General Chase,


I'm sorry, but you're being completely unrealistic. There is simply no way the robot will be combat ready in three months.


The chassis is complete, all weapons systems are online, and the voice module has been programmed as requested. But power consumption is still our primary concern, and neither doctors Honeywell nor Park have yet found an acceptable solution.


We had hoped to sub-contract Vault-Tec, and utilize the talents of Doctor Braun. But apparently he's gone into seclusion, working on one of their own projects, and they couldn't reach him at this point if they wanted to. So that's out.


I'll give it to you straight, General -- this is the biggest robot the world has ever seen, and we just haven't been able to find a power source small enough, and powerful enough, to get the damn thing running with all its systems online.


In three months we might be able to guarantee the robot can walk into downtown Anchorage, but all of his weapons systems will be OFFLINE.


Maybe he can just step on the Red Chinese?


Doctor Stanley Bloomfeld
Project Lead

I'm tired of trying to re-route power like some kind of snot-nosed Initiate.


I don't care what kind of drain it puts on the Scribes' ability to research and maintain the weapons and armor -- I'm proceeding with the AVF experiments.


If I can successfully create an Accelerated Vector Fusion module (similar to the technology I saw Doctor Li working with all those years ago), we'll have our first real chance of getting the robot fully operational.


Maybe then the Western Elders will realize our worth.

Unfortunately, the Accelerated Vector Fusion (AVF) experiments haven't gone as planned.


Bowditch suffered 2nd degree burns, and at one point we accidentally channeled so much power to the robot's head laser, it discharged and nearly killed Elder Lyons.


He was not pleased.

MQ12 Last Rites (14e92)#

Unused stage of the main quest set after "Take It Back!". It has no objectives remaining in code. Most likely it is the basis of the Broken Steel DLC.

MS03 Wasteland Survival Guide (14e96)#

Unused stages of the optional quest, where the player would print something at Hubris Comics, but not required for the quest.

Lea appears to be a previous name for Moira Brown, as can be identified by Script notes for her dialogue lines.

MS07#

Name unknown. From cut dialogue topics, it can be interpreted that the quest's premise was teaming up with Sarah Lyons and the Brotherhood Outcasts to recover an unusual artifact in an effort to unify the two Brotherhood of Steel factions. The Fort Independence laboratory still has an NPC marker for MS07 linked to two AI packages for a cut NPC named Specialist Aberdeen* (Specialist is the Outcast equivalent of a Brotherhood Scribe). Likely, the artifact would have been brought to Fort Independence for study. Potential outcomes included the Outcasts and Elder Lyons' Brotherhood reuniting or a betrayal. There would have been a Galaxy News Radio report on the player's exploits once the quest was completed. The Outcasts have a fairly minimal role in retail Fallout 3 and this quest would have given the faction and their conflict with the Brotherhood a lot more depth. The player could have been rewarded with some sort of training from the Outcasts, and the player also had the option to take the item for themselves. There was also the potential of the player getting the item beforehand. It seems the "artifact" and the "item" were distinct from each other.

It's plausible the quest would have revolved around recovering technology of alien origin:

• There's an unused object, possibly the "artifact", named ms07disk with a strange serrated center unlike any data storage device seen before or since in the Fallout universe.
• The Citadel archive terminal with a report on a UFO encounter is referenced (MS07CitadelArchiveTerminalREF).
• Two cut signs linked to the quest, "Bureau of Special Affairs" and "Center for Extra-Typical Research", suggest clandestine government efforts to investigate the extraterrestrial, very much like something from The X-Files.
• In retail Fallout 3 the player can trade alien power cells and even the alien blaster with the Outcasts and there are alien power cells in their lab armoury.
• The Fallout 3: Official Game Guide Game of the Year Edition faction profile on the Outcasts further supports this theory:

"In their eyes, they are the true Brotherhood of Steel, carrying on the mission of the main West Coast contingent. They proudly wear the name "Outcast"; anything to further dissociation them from Lyons. It's also important to note that the Brotherhood's concentration on acquiring advanced technology means they have their obsessions—including the procurement of alien weapons from anywhere in the Capital Wasteland, including possible crashed U.F.O. and pre-war government installations."

Speculating, it seems unlikely the player would be incentivised to betray the quest givers to keep... a data(?) disk for themselves. The themes of alien technology, and the presence of alien power cells in Fort Independence and the Official Game Guide note on "alien weapons", suggest the alien blaster might have been at the center of the quest. This would present a dilemma to the player of having to forgo a powerful unique weapon for the greater good of reconciling the two Brotherhood factions. The scenario could have been the player being granted access to the Citadel archive terminal by the Brotherhood after meeting with the Outcasts, finds the secret pre-War laboratory where extraterrestial technology was researched, retrieves the alien data disk for analysis in Fort Independence, and from there gets the location of the downed UFO with alien blaster.

Specialist Aberdeen has left no other traces except for AI packages; one more lab marker not tied explicitly to MS07 and packages for eating, sleeping, and using the bathroom(!) in the upper level of Fort Independence. Interestingly, even though research personnel are mentioned in terminal entries in the Fort Independence lab no Outcast Specialists were actually encountered in retail Fallout 3 until Operation: Anchorage was released.

The Outcasts introduction sequence is a leftover from MS07: the teleport marker that Protector Casdin uses to appear after the raider assault is repelled when the player first visits Fort Independence has the "MS07" prefix and as does dialogue from the named Outcasts present. There's also an unused marker named MS07IndependenceEntryMarker on the road approaching Ford Independence.

In the Citadel archives, there's a copy of the MS07 linked terminal in what looks like a messy attempt by Bethesda to scrub any unused MS07 leftovers from the game. Both use the same base terminal, both are enabled in-game and occupy the same coordinates, but the copy is much newer. Looking at the three entries shared by both terminals (UFO report, molerat research, brainwashing), the UFO note has a different name format (CitPalandineNote versus CitadelArchiveMissionNOTE, CitadelArchiveBrainstormNOTE) and was created immediately after the duplicate terminal (B75F6 and B75F7), while the other two entries are older (7E17A and 7E17B), created not long after the original MS07 terminal (777AB). So in summary, after Bethesda cut MS07 they went out of their way to change the entry on a crashed UFO. What the entry originally said can only be guessed. Maybe a report on the recovery of alien technology and where it was taken to?

The strange radio signal (Recon Craft Theta Beacon) broadcasting from the Alien crash site in the northeast of the map has more to it than meets the eye: the three audio files are named qst_alienradio_01.wav, qst_alienradio_02.wav, and qst_alienradio_03.wav and are located in /sound/fx/qst/alienradio. /qst/ is reserved for audio used in named, marked quests only. Furthermore, the crash site is marked as a side quest location on an internal map used by the game's developers. The only obvious candidate is MS07, implying that the player would have visited the downed UFO as part of the quest.

Unused, blank dialogue topics associated with MS07:

Several conversations that made their way to retail about the Brotherhood-Outcasts split are remnants of MS07, for example Elder Lyons and Protector Casdin's dialogue on the subject. Scribe Bowditch in the Citadel has dialogue linked to MS07 that could have been the starting point for the quest:

There's a generic Galaxy News Radio report that raises the question of Brotherhood-Outcasts reconciliation. Other GNR segments of this type present a conflict/dilemma as a prelude to a quest. It seems likely this report was tied to MS07:

This segment has an additional bit of scripting that ensures it never plays.

Alien Oddities

An interview1 with Bethesda developer Jeff Gardiner in the run-up to the release of the Mothership Zeta DLC might (indirectly) give some insight into what motivated Bethesda to tie a giant alien conspiracy to such a crucial quest:

"We thought it would be a very unique environment to explore, a far cry from the dust ravaged wastes of DC. The lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, and I are interested in Alien conspiracy theory... There's a lot of information to sift through on the internet, while neither of us is quite sure what to believe it makes for interesting coffee conversation."

Fallout 1, in a small way, planted the idea that the pre-War US government secretly exploited captured alien technology. It's clear that MS07 was supposed to run with the theme in a bigger way, but Bethesda hesitated and cut the storyline, only uncut remnants being the alien power cells at Fort Bannister and Game Guide lore tidbits. Mothership Zeta returned to this worldbuilding and in subsequent Fallout entries Bethesda seemed more willing to entertain aliens having a more prominent role.

The Prima Official Game Guide insists a second Alien Blaster (with "deceased Alien Captive") can be found in the Fort Bannister impact crater, under the overturned army truck. In retail there are only Alien Power Cells at this location. It could be an oversight, but the info persisted through several editions of the Guide and was even referenced in the Aliens faction profile from the Game of the Year Edition. There are other examples of cut or changed content finding its way into the Game Guide e.g. makeshift gas masks at Vault 106.

Some Fallout 3 concept art seems to depict the exploitation of stranded aliens by human scientists. Also, Adam Adamowicz's concept art for aliens comes in two flavours; spacesuit-wearing and armed (having evidently just crashed landed on Earth) or cowed and naked. This idea of a live alien pilot enemy would be reused directly in Fallout 4 and of course there are plenty of aliens to fight in Mothership Zeta. Interestingly, all the pilot concepts have a bulky energy weapon fused with their arm; perhaps at this early stage the player would rip it off like the drone cannon from Mothership Zeta. The undressed aliens look like prisoners, one has surgical sutures and an ankle tag, possibly captives of the US government before the war.

The amount of alien concept artwork drawn during Fallout 3's development is striking. Early pieces have Adamowicz's signature and the year '05 while art of the crashed UFO was uploaded to Flickr in late 2007.

The Original MS10#

It can be seen from FormIDs that all marked side quests were added at the same time and sequentially matching their internal name e.g. MS01 first, then MS02 and so on. The exception is MS07, which was deleted, and MS10 (Oasis) which was added much later. MS10 should used the FormID 00014E9D placing it between MS09 and MS11 but it was deleted at some point in development and later replaced with the new, retail quest named MS10. Now, we know from the 2005 dev map that Oasis was originally intended to be part of the main quest (see the Prerelease page). It would make sense that once Oasis was spun off into a side quest it took place the of the original MS10, which was then deleted. It's unfortunately unknown what the lost MS10 quest was about and all traces were seemingly deleted. On the dev map the (mostly removed) town of Calverton adjacent to Evergeen Mills has the beige/green marker used for marked side quests; making it a strong candidate for hosting a cut quest.

Throwing Skill#

Throwing is a skill from Fallout 1 and 2, which in 3 was consolidated into the Explosives skill to simplify gameplay. There are Pip-Boy images in the game's texture file which reveal that it was planned to return at some point before ultimately being cut.

The image intended for use as its skill icon was later used in Fallout: New Vegas for the Heave Ho! perk.

The cut skill's description is still present in the game files:

The higher your Throwing skill, the more likely you are to hurl a thrown weapon like a rock, Molotov cocktail or grenade exactly where you want to.   

Surgery#

Originally, the player would have fixed damaged or crippled limbs within a surgery minigame instead of just applying Stimpaks through the Pip-Boy. There are still a number of assets tied to this cut game mechanic in the game files.

GURPS#

In a curious coincidence Bethesda used the GURPS tabletop role-playing game system to prototype Fallout 3 during early development. There's an old script for handling minor quests called FreeFormDCQuestSCRIPT with the following note at the start:

; =========================================================;
;                               ;
; group of vars used for GURPs conversion functions             ;
;                                   ;
                                                                ;
short pcskill       ; store player score (attribute or skill);
short gurp      ; store gurp-converted score (18 scale) ;   
short dice      ; stores our random 3d6 dice roll   ;
short critFail      ; return var for critical failures  ;
short critSuccess   ; return var for critical successes ;
;                               ;
;=========================================================;

Maybe there were at one time skill checks beside speech like the classic Fallout titles? The references to critical failure and critical successes are intriguing too.

Unused Game Effects#

The following effects can be applied to actors by using the cios command, followed by the associated Form ID. I.E. cios 0005B141

Actor Effects#

Atomization#

Internally called NukeCritEffect with an effect name of Atomization. Using the command "cios 0005B141" on an actor will allow the effect to be applied, showing the actor slowly dissolving into a green flurry of particles. This effect, along with Gooification and Disintegration, will not display properly if "Transparency Multisampling" is enabled, instead causing the actor to be rendered as semi-transparent. Form ID: 0005B141

• Better Rivet City Prices: Related to the quest 'Wasteland Survival Guide'. Increases barter by 15, regardless of location. 6f592
• EMP Disable: Has the effect of a Pulse grenade on susceptible targets. The weapons in-game use the EMP object effect, which is effectively the same thing. 5b148
• Kamikaze: A trait from Fallout 1 and 2. 3 doesn't have traits, so it would have been a perk instead. Increases AP by 10 and reduces DR by 20. 94ec3
• Live Giver: There are effects for unused second and third ranks for this perk. Rank 2: 31d8a Rank 3: 31d8b
• Poison: Called "DeathClawPoison" internally. Deathclaws cannot inflict poison. 6b20e
• Rad Poisoning: Called "NukalurkAttack" internally. 9ade8
• RL3 Survive: Increased DR by 10, three stages. 7d4f2
• Stealth Shield: Called "EnclaveInfiltratorStealth" internally. Runs a stealth boy script on the actor. 7d412

There are also unused effects for all the bobbleheads, which do the same thing as the items' scripts.

Base Effects#

Some of these unused effects show different item bonuses than what is actually used in the game. From the GECK Wiki, "A Base Effect is a fundamental "magic effect" in Fallout 3 that defines a particular way of modifying the player's stats or starting a script whenever the player consumes an Ingestible (food item, drug, or chemical) or is affected by an Actor Effect ("ability") or Object Effect ("enchantment")."

• 31034 Ant Vision (calls a script which was to be activated after consuming Ant Nectar)
• 9fb00 Attack Health
• 2bfdd Cripple Be Gone Effect
• 963d2 Cure Addiction
• 15176 Damage Chest (the only "damage body part" effects which are used are damage legs, by the Dart Gun)
• 15174 Damage Left Arm
• 15178 Damage Radiation Resistance
• 15171 Damage Right Arm
• 60c17 Flamer Burn
• bd475 Flamer Smoke Effect
• 0014c Frost Damage
• 62693 Generic Debug Effect
• aae52 Glowing One Rad B Self Effect
• 8c031 Glowing One Rad Burst
• abcf2 (no name) (Gooification Effect Shader)
• 6697b Increased Agility - Jet
• 66983 Increased Agility - Psycho
• 66ec3 Increased Damage Resistance - Med-X
• 60c50 Increased Endurance - Med-X
• 6697f Increased Perception - Jet
• 66973 Increased Strength - Jet
• 60c4f Increased Strength - Med-X
• 1b17b Increased Confidence
• 31d7a Increased Speed Multiplier
• 66977 Reduce Charisma (Mentat Addiction)
• 5a33d Reduce Charisma (Psycho Addiction)
• 5a33f Reduce Charisma (Buffout Addiction)
• 66979 Reduce Intelligence (Psycho Addiction)
• 66984 Reduce Intelligence - Psycho+ (Psycho+ doesn't appear in item form)
• 35f08 Reduced Action Points
• 35f07 Reduced Carry Weight
• 43906 Reduced Health
• 32de7 Reduced Luck
• 77787 Reduced Poison Resistance
• 34aa1 Reduced Radiation Resistance
• 0014a Script Effect
• 0014d Shock Damage

Object Effects#

These serve as "enchantments" endowed on the player through equipment.

• a874c Armor Damage: DR -5
• 71b8a Barter Outfit: Barter +5
• 3d339 Dunce Cap: Intelligence -1. Cut headgear?
• 3d337 Football Helmet: Unarmed +5. Another cut headgear.
• c2522 Jumpsuit: Perception +2
• 71b89 Merchant Clothing: Speech +5
• c7c4c Metal Armor: Sneak +5, Agility -1
• 71b8c Officer's Uniform: Speech +5
• c1938 Radiation Burst: Rads +5
• 71b8d Slasher Mask: Melee damage +10

Unused Dialogue#

Dad saves Dr Li#

Watch on YouTubeOriginally, during the confrontation with the Enclave during 'The Waters of Life', instead of Colonel Autumn being locked in with Dad as soon as the player returns to the Jefferson Rotunda, they would witness a scene in which Dad tries to get Li out of the Purifier's Main Chamber, and consequently saves her life.

Hidden Todd Howard Dialogue#

Hidden amongst Liam Neeson's voice files for Dad are a few placeholder lines recorded by Todd Howard.

Placeholder Liberty Prime Dialogue#

Simply some placeholder lines of dialogue for Liberty Prime.

Placeholder Mr. Handy Dialogue#

A one-off placeholder line named "demomrhandyinsul[t]" can be found in Fallout 3's game files, sounding a lot like an American trying his best to fake a polished English accent. The exact line ("If I may be so bold, the blue in the vault suit contrasts brilliantly with your eyes!") was noted in a preview of Fallout 3's E3 2007 demo.2

Radio Tenpenny#

Alistair Tenpenny's dialogue files contain the remnants of a cut radio station.

Regional Differences#

The Japanese version had some cuts to avoid getting banned:

• The Fat Man weapon was renamed to the Nuka Launcher, due to the original name having been named after the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
• Mr. Burke was removed from the game, disabling the option to nuke Megaton in "The Power of the Atom". This was done because of the taboo regarding nuclear weapons, especially those used by the protagonist, in Japanese media. It's still possible to complete the quest by disarming the nuke.
  • Despite this, Burke has audio files fully dubbed.
• Human decapitations are disabled. Ghoul and monster decapitations are unchanged.

Revisional Differences#

1.0.0.15#

The first patch released for the PC version, released within a week of the North American and European launch dates.

• Fixed occasional crashes when exiting the game or using Alt-F4 to exit.
• Fixed crashes when using Alt-Tab while Binks or credits were playing.
• The game now restarts properly after title updates finish installing.

1.1.0.35#

Released in December 15, 2008 for the PlayStation 3 and in January 13, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and PC versions.

New features#

• Trophy support for PlayStation 3.
• The V.A.T.S. and Pip-Boy can now be remapped to other buttons/keys.

1.4.0.6#

Released in March 2, 2009, for PC and Xbox 360 via Games for Windows Live and Xbox Live. On March 3rd, it could be downloaded from the official site.

New features#

• Achievements for The Pitt added.
• Support for multiple DLCs (Gamers in Asia can now play Operation: Anchorage, unlike before).
• On Xbox 360, environment mapping and specular lighting was updated to match the PC and PS3 visuals.

1.5#

Released in April 19, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and on April 28, 2009 for PC. It updated the game to version 1.5.0.23 for Xbox 360 and version 1.5.0.22 for PC.

New features#

• New achievements for Broken Steel

Bug fixes#

• Fixed issue with V.A.T.S. calculations not appearing properly for perks (PC)
• Fixed crash related to altered references between master files
• LOD objects render properly when loaded from DLC worldspaces
• Fixed issue with companion NPCs not loading into cells immediately after player
• Fixed the issue with the door in Vault 87 where Colonel Autumn came through.
• Fixed glitch where Fawkes and Charon could be in your party at the same time. This could have been fixed in 1.4. (Xbox 360, two cases)
• Fixed a cosmetic bug that caused all the DLCs to vanish from the "Downloads" menu (Xbox 360).
• New bugs were introduced.

1.6#

Released in June 22, 2009 for PC and on September 17, 2009 for PS3. It updates Fallout 3 to version 1.6.0.3 (PC) or 1.6.1 (PS3).

PC#

New features

• New achievements for Point Lookout

Bug fixes#

• Fixed the problems v1.5 had with incorrectly loading new objects from esp. [Unlisted]
• Fixed the problems v1.5 had with saving with new objects from esp loaded. [Unlisted]

PS3#

New features#

• New Trophies for all DLCs
• Adds "Downloads" option to the main menu

Bug Fixes

• Optimized memory with multiple master files

1.7.0.3#

Released in July 26, 2009 for PC only.

New features#

• New achievements for Mothership Zeta
• Endgame content patch for Broken Steel

1.7.0.4#

Released on October 21st, 2021 for the Steam and GOG releases on PC.

This patch is identical to the previous patch, with the sole exception that all Games for Windows Live components are removed and the EXE is recompiled.

As the EXE was recompiled, support for FOSE was broken, and any mods relying on it were made non-functional.

References#