I finished off the main quest in Fallout 3 today. But that doesn’t mean the game is complete. Spoilers ahoy:

I first headed to Little Lamplight, just to get the Wazer Wifle (seriously), a unique variant of the laser rifle that is extremely awesome. Then, resuming the main quest, I did some odd tasks for my dad in the Jefferson Memorial to reduce the flooding and get the mainframe running. But, then the Enclave showed up and tried to take over. My dad sacrificed himself, and me and the rest of the scientists fled through some tunnels to The Enclave.

I then detoured back into Vault 101 to help with a distress call I received from there, managing to find a diplomatic solution to the rebellion there. And then, to show how grateful they were, they kicked me out…

Oh well, back at the Citadel I picked up a paladin follower and set out for Vault 87, accessed through Little Lamplight. There I found a friendly super mutant named Fawkes, who helped me get the GECK module after rescuing him, but then I was captured by The Enclave. I battled my way out of their Raven Rock headquarters, causing their computer/president to self-destruct along the way, and got my followers back and headed to the Citadel again.

This was pretty much the point of no return, as next was an assault on the purifier plant, starting off with an impressive set piece with a laser-eyebeam-shooting, Commie-taunting giant robot, and then a fairly straightforward firefight through the plant. And then the game ended in the rather disappointing way everyone’s so mad about.

It took me just short of 53 hours to finish the main quest, but there’s still plenty to do in the Fallout 3 world. There’s at least 8 quests I know of from the achievement listing that I haven’t done yet, and of the 150 map markers I’ve only found 90 or so, and didn’t even fully explore a bunch of those.

I think I’m going to set it aside for now and wait for more DLC packs before picking it up again. At some point I’m also going to have to try an evil run, but I’ll leave that far enough in the future that I can have plenty of mods available, too.