That probably wouldn't be too hard to do, but one of the design principles of this mod is that it's up to the player to decide what really happened:
"Was the whole ordeal a vivid hallucination induced by a bad dream, a stash of Jet, a heat stroke, or a missing chunk of your brain?
Did you bring back any souvenirs, weapons, or trinkets with you to prove any of it really happened?
You decide."
By afflicting the player with a chem status effect as you describe, I worry it would remove some of the ambiguity and lean into the "bad trip" explanation. Maybe you could simulate this by taking some Jet while on board the ship, haha
Just want to add my thanks. This is a mod "after my own heart" in regards to my thoughts on MSZ aliens not matching at all being in a post-apocalyptic game (this isn't X-Com for Chrissake!).
In all my play-throughs up until now after finishing the last MSZ quest (rushing through the whole gawwdamm thing as fast as possible) and being transported back to the wasteland I'd open the console, click on the Alien Homing Beacon, and type MarkForDelete, hit [enter] and then go on my merry way, fully satisfied that MSZ was gone forever
Your mod does that much more eloquently. Thank you very much
I'm glad you enjoyed my mod, thank you for the kind words. It's been many years now so I'm not 100% sure, but I have a feeling that I once did the same thing and used MarkForDelete on the Alien Homing Beacon. Or maybe I just imagined doing it and that's what led to the creation of this mod, haha.
I most certainly wouldn't write it off as the worst DLC like some people do. That title is a battle between either The Pitt or Operation Anchorage. Now someone might ask why I didn't like them, especially the Pitt, and the answer is the size. I expected OA to be this action-driven full-on Call of Duty type of campaign and what I got was barely the equivalent of a couple missions from a CoD campaign with an ending that is so half-assed it's not even funny. As for the Pitt, I expected it to be at the very least half the size of Washington DC and what I got where the equivalent of a few sectioned off areas from DC coupled with a cliche story and poor rewards, probably the best part about this one was the ammo bench. Back to Mothership Zeta, it was just what I had expected it to be if not a bit more, it was bigger and felt proper. I don't really understand why anyone would be so salty about it to go as far as to install a mod that somehow forms a delusional view that the events never happened, this type of stuff actually fits Fallout more than some of you may think, not only because it fits the wacky style but also because aliens and UFOs started rising to popularity around that era.
"I don't really understand why anyone would be so salty about it to go as far as to install a mod"
It's because games are a form of artwork, like music, literature, and paintings. Whether or not a piece of art is "good" or "bad" is entirely subjective and therefore boils down to personal opinion and preference. People who don't like Zeta may enjoy this mod, but people that love Zeta will find this mod useless. We may not understand why other people have the opinions they do, but we can still respect them and their freedom of choice.
I personally like the MZ dlc. More fun if using the Robco mod. I think it actually fits in with the lore as well. The UFO hype did actually start around this era in human history, so there is the "fit." Also, being able to go back to MZ is a must if you're using the MZ All Access Pass mod and happened to leave behind some items, due to weight carry limitations. Those lazer rifles fetch a heafty price on the wasteland market. The ship being back breaks immersion imo, as it was tractor beamed back up to the mother ship. Just sayin...so, no thanks.
The ship being back doesn't break immersion because the player can come up with a multitude of reasons for it being there, including -
1) The DLC never actually happened; it was a hallucination caused by missing a chunk of their own brain. The fact that the ship is still crashed proves to the player that they were not abducted. This relies on the player not bringing anything they picked up in Zeta back to the Wasteland.
2) The crashed ship was released from theMmothership bay at the same time the homing beacon was launched; the ship still had the coordinates of the crash site programmed in, so that's why everything including the player ends up back at that exact spot.
3) The player sits in the crashed ship while the Mothership uses the tractor beam in reverse to deposit it safely down to Earth.
4) The crashed ship was never tractored up in the first place, and the one seen during Zeta was a different crashed ship.
How does "no return" make MZ less bad ? I didn't like it either, and not being able to return doesn't seem to help.
What might help is something to end the quest without even going up there. That would help with mods which require MZ just because they use some resources from it. People might want to use such mods without having quest activated.
With this mod, players can still play through the MZ content, for achievements or the experience or whatever. But when they're done, they now can believably write it off as "it didn't actually happen". This mod helps immensely with that from an in-universe perspective, as it removes the teleportation beacon and restores the cool crashed UFO to the Wasteland.
"I like to think of it as a bad dream/hallucination the player-character has. You know, like people in real life that claim to have been abducted and have highly detailed stories about them." - Reddit user GandyRiles
Although some people may wish to just skip MZ completely, I'm not a fan of mods that allow a player bypass game content...I think console commands are available if a player wishes to accomplish that.
Perhaps someone else is going to do it then. I have talked to two of MZC fans and they said there is a savegame from the end of MZ circulating around. One of them even asked me to do it, because I did it for other DLC's. However, I like neither MZ nor MZC, so I have no incentive to do it. But, apparently, there is some interest..
I could do it, but, when author has no personal motivation, mod doesn't come out right. That is my experience, at least.
It's relatively simple to disable the MZ mission. Locate the first primary DLC quest "Not Of This World" (DLC05MZ1) and toggle off "Start Game Enabled". That should do it, since the quest script handles the initial "abduction" teleport. Can be done in the GECK or FO3Edit, probably easier and safer using FO3Edit. Backup your Zeta.esm file first or export the change as an esp plugin. Easy peasy.
If for some reason one wanted the MZ DLC marked as completed without playing through the mission, that's a little harder but not much. It's probably sufficient to mark DLC05MZ1, DLC05MZ2 and DLC05MZ3 quests as completed and set some of the values under the quest DLC05Post, which handles end-of-mission stuff like enabling of the permanent Earth-to-MZ teleporter beacon.
I was thinking more "immersive". Like some sort of device at the site with menu. Like "You have found a strange device, what are you going to do with it ?". One option would be to activate the teleporter and the other short circuit it so it gets destroyed beyond repair and quest fails.
MZ holds the key explanation how the war started. As far as I remember, there is a terminal with note about an officer being abducted by aliens. The officer knew the launch codes. The consequence is post nuclear wasteland which could hardly be considered a result of bad dream.
I never believed the whole "aliens started the Great War" thing. Even though the abducted officer in the audio log had the codes...it doesn't prove that the aliens actually went and used them for anything. It also destroys the entire "war never changes" premise of Fallout to concretely blame it all on aliens. I think the log was supposed to tease players with the possibility of it.
Anyway, seemed to me that the aliens had their own, far more sinister plans for invasion - plans that involved a certain army of robot horses.
If it helps with your head canon it's heavily implied in the Fallout Bible (yes that's a thing) that the Enclave orchestrated the events that lead up to the great war, so they could sweep in and take over the United States. Unfortunately for them not only did vast quantities of people survive the war, but the FEV was released into the world twisting and mutating the landscape.
Fallout 3 still draws heavily from the Fallout Bible, written by Chris Avellone, because he was actually on the Fallout 3 team as a writer at a certain point. It doesn't matter if it is or is not truly canon, because in all honestly as far as the original Fallout and Fallout 2 are concerned, Fallout 3 isn't truly canon, either. It draws more from the Fallout Bible and Fallout: Warfare than anything that Black Isle ever wrote.
I think this is a good idea. MZ would have suited FO3 if it had been included as part of a Wild Wasteland-type perk, but IMO it doesn't suit the rest of the game. Being able to roleplay it as a hallucination is a nice alternative.
The only thing this mod does is to remove the temptetion of activating the beacon once you have finished the DLC, whether a player likes the MZ expansion or not (personally i loved it).i love sci-fi and in a way i was the intruder, stalking the ship inhabitants and killing them, like the movie Alien, they took the egg in their ship and got into trouble, same scenario here, took in aliens from this planet (Earth) and look what's happened to them, ending with a bit of Star Trek , big spaceships battle, or Star Wars, what have you. More to the point though, for those that didn't like this DLC , once finishing it, you just don't have to return to it , whether the marker is removed or not is irrelevant because it sucks you in ONLY the first time, any other time you have to manually activate it.Just don't activate it if you find yourself around there again. for those of us that liked it, we have downloaded the - Key to Mothership Zeta - mod , so we can go back whenever the heck we please
The mod does more than that. It restores the crashed UFO to the Capital Wasteland after MZ is complete. The alternate version also adds some neat little exhibits to to Rivet City's museum. Most important to me is the fact that the mod allows players to roleplay a different game experience by having MZ be a one-time event.
There are many players that aren't satisfied with the mentality of "just ignore it if you don't want to use it". That's why mods exist that remove fast travel! I didn't want to settle for just not activating the beacon - I wanted it gone, and my classic Fallout 3 crashed UFO back exactly as I found it all those years ago.
As a sci-fi fan I'm really glad that you enjoyed Mothership Zeta so much and I wish you a nice day as well!
Though mildly entertaining on the first-play through, I agree that Mothership Zeta is over-the-top and too far outside the lore. Rumors of abductions, a crashed alien vessel, alien bodies held in a secret government faclity, strange prototype weapon programs based on some very odd artifacts-- all good stuff when held at a whispered distance, friendly to the period associated with the dawn of the atomic age. But MZ was too much. And too darned linear. Anchorage is my least favorite FO3 DLC (even more linear! ), but MZ isn't far ahead of it. It's a good idea to disable returns to the MZ spacecraft, but personally I simply ignore MZ, keeping it installed only for mod compatibility.
Yeah, I always liked the alien stuff under a veil of mystery and conspiracy - even the exploding craft/Firelance random event was really cool to me - but MZ is too much for me to believe. Anchorage was linear, but I appreciated the fact that they made it a simulation, and included some Terminal entries with the base workers complaining that General Chase had made the simulation to be "unrealistic" and over-the-top.
Imagine how bad the Anchorage DLC would've been if the Outcasts said they needed you to hop on a Vertibird and fly to Alaska because the U.S. Government is actually still alive and kicking, and you're the only one who can help them defeat the Commie Menace! Actually, even that doesn't feel as bad as Mothership Zeta to me...haha
> base workers complaining that General Chase had made the simulation to be "unrealistic" and over-the-top.
Yeah, Bethesda lampshaded Anchorage a bit with that stuff, hee.
> Imagine how bad the Anchorage DLC would've been if the Outcasts said they needed you to hop on a Vertibird and fly to Alaska...
I could see a BoS mission to Alaska, ostensibly to recover some fancy lost tech. But I'd have replied, "I remember how well that went when you fellas asked me to fly with out west with you and I ended up crawling out of a crash in Alton Il. Nope, forget it."
33 comments
By afflicting the player with a chem status effect as you describe, I worry it would remove some of the ambiguity and lean into the "bad trip" explanation. Maybe you could simulate this by taking some Jet while on board the ship, haha
In all my play-throughs up until now after finishing the last MSZ quest (rushing through the whole gawwdamm thing as fast as possible) and being transported back to the wasteland I'd open the console, click on the Alien Homing Beacon, and type MarkForDelete, hit [enter] and then go on my merry way, fully satisfied that MSZ was gone forever
Your mod does that much more eloquently. Thank you very much
It's because games are a form of artwork, like music, literature, and paintings. Whether or not a piece of art is "good" or "bad" is entirely subjective and therefore boils down to personal opinion and preference. People who don't like Zeta may enjoy this mod, but people that love Zeta will find this mod useless. We may not understand why other people have the opinions they do, but we can still respect them and their freedom of choice.
Thanks for making it though, as an alternative.
1) The DLC never actually happened; it was a hallucination caused by missing a chunk of their own brain. The fact that the ship is still crashed proves to the player that they were not abducted. This relies on the player not bringing anything they picked up in Zeta back to the Wasteland.
2) The crashed ship was released from theMmothership bay at the same time the homing beacon was launched; the ship still had the coordinates of the crash site programmed in, so that's why everything including the player ends up back at that exact spot.
3) The player sits in the crashed ship while the Mothership uses the tractor beam in reverse to deposit it safely down to Earth.
4) The crashed ship was never tractored up in the first place, and the one seen during Zeta was a different crashed ship.
etc...
What might help is something to end the quest without even going up there. That would help with mods which require MZ just because they use some resources from it. People might want to use such mods without having quest activated.
"I like to think of it as a bad dream/hallucination the player-character has. You know, like people in real life that claim to have been abducted and have highly detailed stories about them." - Reddit user GandyRiles
Although some people may wish to just skip MZ completely, I'm not a fan of mods that allow a player bypass game content...I think console commands are available if a player wishes to accomplish that.
I could do it, but, when author has no personal motivation, mod doesn't come out right. That is my experience, at least.
If for some reason one wanted the MZ DLC marked as completed without playing through the mission, that's a little harder but not much. It's probably sufficient to mark DLC05MZ1, DLC05MZ2 and DLC05MZ3 quests as completed and set some of the values under the quest DLC05Post, which handles end-of-mission stuff like enabling of the permanent Earth-to-MZ teleporter beacon.
MZ holds the key explanation how the war started. As far as I remember, there is a terminal with note about an officer being abducted by aliens. The officer knew the launch codes. The consequence is post nuclear wasteland which could hardly be considered a result of bad dream.
Anyway, seemed to me that the aliens had their own, far more sinister plans for invasion - plans that involved a certain army of robot horses.
More to the point though, for those that didn't like this DLC , once finishing it, you just don't have to return to it , whether the marker is removed or not is irrelevant because it sucks you in ONLY the first time, any other time you have to manually activate it.Just don't activate it if you find yourself around there again. for those of us that liked it, we have downloaded the - Key to Mothership Zeta - mod , so we can go back whenever the heck we please
Have a nice day !
There are many players that aren't satisfied with the mentality of "just ignore it if you don't want to use it". That's why mods exist that remove fast travel! I didn't want to settle for just not activating the beacon - I wanted it gone, and my classic Fallout 3 crashed UFO back exactly as I found it all those years ago.
As a sci-fi fan I'm really glad that you enjoyed Mothership Zeta so much and I wish you a nice day as well!
Imagine how bad the Anchorage DLC would've been if the Outcasts said they needed you to hop on a Vertibird and fly to Alaska because the U.S. Government is actually still alive and kicking, and you're the only one who can help them defeat the Commie Menace! Actually, even that doesn't feel as bad as Mothership Zeta to me...haha
Yeah, Bethesda lampshaded Anchorage a bit with that stuff, hee.
> Imagine how bad the Anchorage DLC would've been if the Outcasts said they needed you to hop on a Vertibird and fly to Alaska...
I could see a BoS mission to Alaska, ostensibly to recover some fancy lost tech. But I'd have replied, "I remember how well that went when you fellas asked me to fly with out west with you and I ended up crawling out of a crash in Alton Il. Nope, forget it."