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Point Lookout opens up a massive new area of the Wasteland – a, dark, murky swampland along the coast of Maryland. So hop on the ferry to the seaside town of Point Lookout, for the most mysterious and open-ended Fallout 3 DLC adventure yet.— Official description

Point Lookout is the fourth add-on for Fallout 3, developed and published by Bethesda Softworks.

Release and availability[]

Point Lookout was initially released exclusively as downloadable content on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live on June 23, 2009. It was made available for PlayStation Store on October 8, 2009. For Xbox 360, download codes for Xbox Live are also available in retail.

For PC and Xbox 360, Point Lookout is available as a disc version as part of the second Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack, released on August 25, 2009. The pack also includes Broken Steel.

Like all add-ons, Point Lookout is included in the Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, released on October 13, 2009 for all platforms.

For Steam users, Point Lookout, along with all the other Fallout 3 add-ons, is available, released on July 16, 2010.

Development[]

Development of Point Lookout started with developers Joel Burgess and Nathan Purkeypile, lead designer and lead artist on the add-on respectively, being asked to come up with a list of pitches for a new add-on. Although Purkeypile originally wanted to utilize the idea of a crashed space station, a swamp area was what resonated with the rest of the team the most. Purkeypile, who is from the rural Pacific Northwest, and Burgess, who is from the American South, converged their points of heritage to draw inspiration for Point Lookout. At this point, pre-production was ramping up at Bethesda Game Studios for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which meant that the team working on Point Lookout was initially quite small.[1] As development progressed, the Point Lookout team grew to include more developers, which led to the creation of side quests such as The Dark Heart of Blackhall, which was derived from the idea of expanding on themes of Dunwich horror. Although Burgess and Purkeypile were the add-on's leads, they found a strong team of designers to work with over time, such as (but not limited to) Fred Zeleny and Erik J. Caponi, the latter of whom worked on the quests for the main storyline.[2]

Ultimately, Point Lookout had an exceptionally short development period of four months.[3] This led to some content being cut due to time constraints. According to Purkeypile, the design of Point Lookout was a more direct process of design going straight to implementation.[4] The only piece of concept art created for the add-on was for the swampfolk enemies, which was itself done by an outsourcing firm. Bethesda Game Studios, which at the time had a very small concept art team, was more focused on Skyrim art at this point. Other new objects for the add-on, such as trees, were largely based on online reference images.[5]

Although Point Lookout is based on the real-world Point Lookout State Park, it is not an exact recreation. The team chose Point Lookout due to its geographic "point" (the peninsula shape of the region), as well as its unique name. The geography of the real-world Point Lookout was modified for the game to suit the team's needs.[6]

Overview[]

Fallout-3-point-lookout-pc-005

Point Lookout

Point Lookout takes place in the Fallout equivalent of Point Lookout State Park, a new swampland area with new quests and enemies. Point Lookout in the Fallout setting has a landscape between one-sixth and one-fifth the size of the Capital Wasteland where "the bombs didn't actually fall, but the world has left it behind".

Like all add-ons (except for Broken Steel), Point Lookout is playable at any time during the main storyline; the player could travel there immediately after exiting Vault 101 -- although this is not recommended, as it is also substantially tougher than the other add-on quests and also requires a large cap investment. Once the content is loaded, you receive a message on-screen that initially starts the quest The Local Flavor. As with previous add-ons, the main quest line is said to add about three to four hours' worth of game time.

When you first arrive at Point Lookout, your permanent followers will not accompany you. If you have temporary followers in your party, however, instead of proceeding straight from the boat to discover Pilgrim's Landing, you travel to any other marked location (e.g. Disaster relief camps) on the map and then fast travel back to the riverboat, you will be standing in front of the boat and be reunited with your temporary followers. This may prove helpful against the powerful attacks and high health of tribals or the swamp folks.

Unlike other add-ons, the player doesn't need to complete the main quest in order to travel back to the Capital Wasteland. Provided they can pay the ticket cost, the Duchess Gambit will travel back and forth anytime. It takes a month (30 days) of game time to travel to Point Lookout.

Characters[]

Creatures[]

Items[]

Armor and clothing[]

Weapons[]

Other items[]

Locations[]

Perks[]

Name Level req Other requirements Ranks Description Code
Ghoul Ecology - Read Plik's journal in the coastal grotto 1 +5 damage against ghouls.1 xx00D1FE
Punga Power! - Complete Walking with Spirits 1 Boosts radiation recovery from eating punga fruits. xx011096
Superior Defender - Complete The Local Flavor 1 +5 damage and +10 armor when standing still. xx00D1FA

1While intended to only work on ghouls, as stated, this perk actually affects all damage done by the character.

Cut perks[]

These perks were cut from the final game, and can only be obtained on the PC version using console commands.

Name Description Code
Mirelurk Ecology +5 damage to mirelurks. xx00FC2E
Gray Matters 25% less damage from attacks to your head. xx00D1FD
Swing for the Fences +10 damage with Melee Weapons. xx00D1FB

Quests and achievements[]

Main quests[]

Name Location(s) Given by Reward Achievement points Trophy Quest ID Image
The Local Flavor Riverboat Landing
Duchess Gambit
Calvert Mansion
Notification Superior Defender perk 20 Gamerscore Silver xx005846 The Local Flavor
Walking with Spirits Ark & Dove Cathedral
Sacred bog entrance
Desmond 300 XP
Punga Power! perk
20 Gamerscore Silver xx005847 Walking with Spirits
Hearing Voices Ark & Dove Cathedral
Calvert Mansion
Sea cave
Desmond 300 XP - - xx005848
Thought Control Calvert Mansion
Boardwalk
Desmond 300 XP - - xx005849
A Meeting of the Minds Calvert Mansion
Point Lookout Lighthouse
Desmond Microwave emitter 20 Gamerscore Gold xx00584A
xx00584B
A Meeting of the Minds

Side quests[]

Name Location(s) Given by Reward Quest ID
A Spoonful of Whiskey Marguerite's shack Marguerite

300 - 500 Caps

and 6 bottles of Moonshine

xx003F70
An Antique Land USS Ozymandias (Point Lookout) Bysshe Company terminal 50 XP
Expedition supplies
xx002F18
Plik's Safari Coastal grotto (Point Lookout) Plik 100 XP
The Dismemberer
xx009B5E
The Dark Heart of Blackhall Blackhall Manor Obadiah Blackhall 1000 caps or Good Karma xx002F47
The Velvet Curtain Homestead Motel (Point Lookout) Terminal in room 1D or in the Administration office in Turtledove Detention Camp

Backwater rifle
A large amount of ammunition and weapons

xx00436E

Unmarked quests[]

Name Location(s) Given by Reward Repeatable
Tailing the Tomboy Riverboat Landing
Ark & Dove Cathedral
Catherine 10 Refined punga fruits and 300 caps no

Other achievements[]

Name Requirement Achievement points Trophy Image
Bog Walker Discover all locations within Point Lookout 40 Gamerscore Silver Bog Walker

Bugs[]

Gallery[]

Videos[]

References[]

  1. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (10:05)
    Kenneth Vigue: "So, take us back to 2008, 2009. How did Point Lookout come about as far as an idea and concept for DLC?"
    Nathan Purkeypile: "What I remember is that we had like this whole list of pitches, 'cause we knew it was gonna be me and Joel, but... what the specific DLC was was sort of up in the air. So we just listed a whole bunch of ideas to see what Todd and everybody else would actually bite on. And this was the idea that resonated with them the most. So, y'know, it was many years later that I got my crashed space station. That was originally, when I pitched it, was back then."
    Kenneth Vigue: "Ah, the crashed space station from Fallout 76, you mean?"
    Nathan Purkeypile: "Yep."
    Joel Burgess: "Yeah, I mean, Point Lookout was a bit of an idea gumbo. Because it - so Point Lookout wasn't like some other DLCs, where we had been thinking and dreaming about it for months or years, right? My memory of this is we were post-launch on Fallout 3 and we had our slate of DLCs. And Skyrim was actually in pre-production at that stage. And I don't remember the details, but I had some beef, right? I had some axe to grind with something to do with how Skyrim was going super early on. So I went into the studio head's office expecting to kind of sit down like, 'we need a serious talk about...' And he's like, 'oh, hey, I was just about to call you and I think we should do another DLC on schedule, what would you and Purkey wanna do?' [laughter] And it's like the Skyrim beef never came up again."
    Nathan Purkeypile: "Placated."
    Joel Burgess: "I think it was like a Wednesday, right? And he's like, 'y'know what, come back on Friday and pitch.' So I turned around and went right back to Purkey's desk and we sat down and just started going like 'well, what do we wanna do?' I am kind of a bilineage from the South, and Purkey's from the Northwest. But we're both pretty familiar with..."
    Nathan Purkeypile: "The deep, deep woods, that's where I'm from. Yeah."
    Joel Burgess: "[laughter] Yeah, yeah. We're both familiar with life outside of the city, let's say that."
    Kenneth Vigue: "Row faster, I hear banjos!"
    Joel Burgess: "[laughter] Yeah. So, we just sort of started laying out this Venn diagram of things we really thought were interesting. And like, the big task with DLC, right, is how do you take something that players will have spent dozens or hundreds of hours in and find a way to make that fresh without making a whole new game. So that's really what drove a lot of it, right, is like we had constraints that we were really interested in and we had ideas that we were really interested in. And those two gear heads sort of hit each other and Point Lookout came out."
  2. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (13:00)
    Kenneth Vigue: "What about some of the particular quests that you started putting out, how did that process come about? So when you put together the Blackhall quest, Plik... was that from that initial pitch that you both kind of picked around, or did you develop the quests as you went along?"
    Joel Burgess: "I think Blackhall and all that stuff kind of came as we went. Y'know, obviously to say that Point Lookout is Purkey and I would be a gross injustice against the team, right? So as we started working with more folks and it became more clear who the Point Lookout team was that we could collaborate with, a lot of the quests shook out of... y'know, I think it was Fred in there who we were working with on the quest side. So we had some ideas, like we knew that we wanted to revisit the Dunwich horror. We had some various points of interests that we were interested in. Nate and I are very world-first people. So we kind of knew points of interests and locations that we were excited about. And then like we're working with Fred in there on quests and story stuff to try and weave those into like, the mansion and the boardwalk and the internment camp, and all these things sort of started to shake out of that creative process. [...] The central storyline I think really was like, maybe a 70-30 split? With us like being the 30% influence onto I think it was Erik that did the main story for Point Lookout."
    Nathan Purkeypile: "Yeah, we were just kind of guiding it, I would say."
  3. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (14:30)
    Kenneth Vigue: "How long did it take you to develop?"
    Nathan Purkeypile: "It was like four months, I think, right? [...] I mean, at that point, the tools are mature and I'm pretty sure we had literally no code support, in fact. So you just have this code base that you've been working with for a long time. So we got pretty good at making stuff fast. So we made stuff fast."
  4. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (16:02)
    Kenneth Vigue: "The early concepts and drafts that you had, how much did it differ? Because in that short a window, four months, there's probably not a lot of stuff that... y'know, you end up cancelling or changing around too much I would imagine, unless you did it early on."
    Nathan Purkeypile: "No, I feel like it was pretty direct and it's more of just like, where it steers to end up being like that questline not necessarily knowing what it is, and it becomes something. But it wasn't like there was this whole other thing, like 'that didn't work, cut it.' Frankly we didn't have time for that. so you just kind of have to march forward and finish it and ship it."
  5. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (17:29)
    Kenneth Vigue: "Did you have concept art or did you just really start diving and start building? Or is it just y'know, you two on napkins at Denny's at 2 a.m.?"
    Nathan Purkeypile: "Yeah, the only concept art that we had was for the swampfolk 'cause that one was getting outsourced. And the concepts even were from an outsourcing firm. All that bandwidth was on Skyrim. For the world itself though, like the look of the trees, I just found a cool picture of trees and most of the other things are like that, we found cool-looking things online as sort of reference touch points and extrapolated from there."
  6. Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (1:07:02)
    Nathan Purkeypile: "And this reminds that, y'know, 76 gets a lot of credit for being pretty accurate to West Virginia and stuff. But the coverage we got on Point Lookout, there's one of like a local newspaper there that we saw about how it's very not accurate. [laughter] 'Cause it is in no way representative of that region, even the actual geography is not accurate. We modified it to suit our needs. We mostly thought that the name was cool and the general pointy shape of that peninsula was cool."
Point Lookout
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