After the 1980s TV comedy Sledge Hammer! ended its first season by killing off its cast in an massive bomb blast, the second-season première laughed off the cliffhanger with a title card explaining that new episodes would take place “five years before that nuclear explosion.” Fallout 3: Broken Steel opens with a different slugline—“TWO WEEKS LATER”—but it’s the same sleight-of-hand. Forget that (spoiler alert!) your character gets nuked with a bone-melting flash of radiation at the end of the original game. According to Broken Steel, the Lone Wanderer isn’t dead at all, just tired. Those who want to play more Fallout 3 won’t question that.
Broken Steel’s revisionist narrative does so little to expand the world of the Capital Wasteland that it shows what a complete work Fallout 3 was in the first place. After deflating the finality of the original ending, Broken Steel is unsure what to do next, beyond sending you on a few entertaining but hollow missions to snuff out the remnants of the para-military Enclave. Thankfully, the expansion’s B-story is more thoughtful, as it plunges into the chaos and profiteering that result when a limited supply of clean water starts flowing into the Wasteland.