Todd Howard says Fallout 3's ending surprised the team, Broken Steel fixed it

Senior Bethesda staff reflected in a GameInformer feature on Fallout 3's launch and the game's abrupt ending. At release, finishing the main quest rolled the credits and the game simply stopped, which led many players to avoid the final mission "Take it Back." Todd Howard said the team expected an ending like the earlier Fallout games.

"The one thing that we did, we ended up changing in Fallout 3, we were like, 'Well, like the other Fallouts, it has to end,'" he recalled. He added that fans hated that choice: "People hated it! They expected, like, 'Why would the game end?! The [Elder Scrolls] don’t end!'" Bethesda's answer arrived with the first expansion, Broken Steel, roughly six months after launch.

If you activate the purifier, the player character wakes up two weeks later instead of dying — a straightforward narrative fix that allowed players to keep exploring the Wasteland.

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