I think I may have broken the quest chain - glitch?

[Moriarty]

Spoiler warning: I'm talking specifics about some quests in the main story in this post.

So in my first runthrough (which ended up taking me over a year in real life, kept getting sidetracked on other things), I didn't read any guides and I studiously avoided doing what I assumed was the "main quest" line because I wanted to level as much as possible before finishing the game.

So in the course of my wandering around with no real goal other than to find side quests, I ended up getting my game into an interesting state. Since you can skip quests in the main line, and since I didn't know which quests were in the main line, I now am in the position of having both Waters of Life and The American Dream in my quest log. My progress on the second is to the point where I have to enter the Citadel. But, since I haven't finished Waters of Life, I don't have access to the Citadel - I haven't gone through the scripted portion where they drop the big door or whatever. But, I can't finish Waters of Life, because James is stuck behind the sealed off chamber doors, presumably getting put there as part of preparing the scene for Take it Back and/or the rest of The American Dream (and/or bugged out, since I believe he's supposed to be dead by the time you do The American Dream). Thus, he isn't available to give me the fuses I need to finish up the repairs.

So I've started over - primarily because I wanted to play evil this time, get the room in Tenpenny instead of Megaton, etc, and pick up various quest trophies I missed (when I first started, there were no trophies in Fallout 3, they were added after the fact so several of the first quests I did with runthrough 1 didn't count). I kept the original save file for my "locked" game though, in case anyone had a suggestion.

Failing that - as a warning to others - be aware of the actual main quest line and don't get too out of order or bad things will happen

[OldSnoova]

Well, as you said, the person you spoke of is long dead by the time "American Dream" begins and before you can get into the Citadel. I really have no idea how you got those two quests going at the same time without getting into Picking Up The Trail, lol.

I'm sure you know most of this, but I'm trying to mentally work my way to solving your issue: Dr. Li (from Rivet City) has a short part in the main quest where, once you escort her through Taft Tunnels, you'll end up at the Citadel. She'll convince the guard to open the gate. That'll get you into the Citadel where you, probably, can wrap up both "Waters of Life" and start "Take It Back"... right? If that doesn't work... yeah, sounds like your game is pretty gimped.

[dz06lt]

yeah you can basically skip VERY far into the story if you explore certain locations early. Really there is no warning you just have to be careful when you are at certain places

[Terminator]

Originally Posted by dz06lt

yeah you can basically skip VERY far into the story if you explore certain locations early. Really there is no warning you just have to be careful when you are at certain places

I made that mistake on the Xbox 360 version and missed out on the Scientific Pursuits Achievements so for my PS3 run through, I'm being ultra careful and saving like it's going out of fashion.

[Cobretti]

Originally Posted by Terminator

I made that mistake on the Xbox 360 version and missed out on the Scientific Pursuits Achievements so for my PS3 run through, I'm being ultra careful and saving like it's going out of fashion.

Yeah, I also missed out Scientific Pursuits -trophy (and Strictly Business, since I just killed ALL the slavers + some lv.8 trophies). I have 96% of the trophies done...

Guess I have to start over to get those remaining trophies. We'll see...

[BigMike656565]

Originally Posted by Moriarty

Spoiler warning: I'm talking specifics about some quests in the main story in this post.

So in my first runthrough (which ended up taking me over a year in real life, kept getting sidetracked on other things), I didn't read any guides and I studiously avoided doing what I assumed was the "main quest" line because I wanted to level as much as possible before finishing the game.

So in the course of my wandering around with no real goal other than to find side quests, I ended up getting my game into an interesting state. Since you can skip quests in the main line, and since I didn't know which quests were in the main line, I now am in the position of having both Waters of Life and The American Dream in my quest log. My progress on the second is to the point where I have to enter the Citadel. But, since I haven't finished Waters of Life, I don't have access to the Citadel - I haven't gone through the scripted portion where they drop the big door or whatever. But, I can't finish Waters of Life, because James is stuck behind the sealed off chamber doors, presumably getting put there as part of preparing the scene for Take it Back and/or the rest of The American Dream (and/or bugged out, since I believe he's supposed to be dead by the time you do The American Dream). Thus, he isn't available to give me the fuses I need to finish up the repairs.

So I've started over - primarily because I wanted to play evil this time, get the room in Tenpenny instead of Megaton, etc, and pick up various quest trophies I missed (when I first started, there were no trophies in Fallout 3, they were added after the fact so several of the first quests I did with runthrough 1 didn't count). I kept the original save file for my "locked" game though, in case anyone had a suggestion.

Failing that - as a warning to others - be aware of the actual main quest line and don't get too out of order or bad things will happen

How on earth did you get American Dream active at the same time as Waters of Life? I mean there's a few main quests in between the two. The only things I can think of are maybe you wandered around and found Raven Rock and that somehow activated that quest, though I'm not sure how that would work. Either that or I've heard if you skip some of the main quests the game will be glitchy and with all your exploring that might have been what happened.