Paving the Way



Paving the Way is a Fallout 3 quest that is added to the game by the Operation: Anchorage add-on.

Detailed walkthrough
The quest will automatically begin after the completion of The Guns of Anchorage.

Listen to General Chase's briefing
General Chase congratulates you on your success. You are promoted and put in charge of your own Strike Team (formerly led by the now deceased Patterson). The General explains that 3 tasks have to be completed before the assault on the Chinese headquarters, a refinery, can begin. You have to destroy the fuel tanks at the enemy Chimera Armor Depot, clear a Listening Post of all Chinese presence, and disable "their damn Pulse Field". According to Chase, you should not try to disable the Pulse Field before you have completed the other assignments.

Chase then refers you to your intelligence officer for this mission, Lieutenant Morgan, for the details.

Talk to Lieutenant Morgan
Lieutenant Morgan can be found in the same tent sitting at a computer. He can provide more detailed information on the targets, as well as why they need to be taken out. Morgan also explains that you can get equipment by selecting it at the terminal and bringing the resulting requisition holotape to the Quartermaster (you can change your choice once by speaking to him).

Talk to Sergeant Montgomery
Now, in the U.S. Army field headquarters, talk to Sergeant Montgomery to make him leader of your team. You relay all orders for your team through him, although this is basically limited to telling them where to wait and whether to attack.

Don't forget to visit the Quartermaster and get your equipment. If you pass a Speech check, he gives you a scoped Gauss rifle and ammunition on top of the equipment package you have selected. There is a glitch where you can get all different types of weaponry. Simply choose your weapon from the computer, then collect it, drop it, then choose a different class, collect it, drop it, repeat until you've got all of them, then pick it all back up. You may have to drop your ammunition too.

You can then choose which target to attack first: the Chimera depot or the listening post. Tell the Sergeant what you are going to do first, and then go to the area yourself.

When leaving the camp, the path on the left leads to the Chimera depot, the path on the right leads to the listening post and the path in the middle leads to the Pulse Field and Chinese Compound (which are going to be your objectives in the final simulation quest, Operation: Anchorage!). Alternatively, simply follow Montgomery and your team.

Destroy the fuel tanks in the Chimera Depot
The path to the fuel depot is fairly linear. Starting at H.Q., take a left. You'll notice one of your friends in arms executing four Chinese prisoners. Take a quick look at the curved sand bag structure in front of him, and you'll find a Chinese commando hat you can pick up and wear next to a static pack of cigarettes. Approach Ice Camp, and fight your way through Chinese soldiers and spider drones until you reach the depot. Once there, dispose of the enemy soldiers and any Chimera tanks. This will be easier if you chose the Heavy Assault pack, with its missile launcher, but frag grenades will work just as well. Rig the fuel tanks and enjoy the fireworks. After both of them are destroyed, you are teleported back to the U.S. Army Field Headquarters.

Secure the Chinese Listening Post
On the way to the Chinese listening post, you have to pass through an area of abandoned mines and houses which is heavily infested with Crimson Dragoons, Chinese snipers, regular troops, and a new breed of troop, the Chinese launcher. Launchers are regular Chinese troops with missile launchers and health similar to the Inferno Units. Simply follow the path and keep killing those reds until you reach the listening post. Sometimes before you enter the post, if you order a Mister Gutsy through Sgt. Montgomery, it will turn around and hover back up the path you came. You'll have to plumb every nook and cranny to get all the troops, which include more Dragoons and Chinese technicians. The techies are weaker than regular soldiers, and will nervously continue to work when you approach. Be careful. If one of the techs reach a HAM radio, they'll request reinforcements, a squadron of Dragoons that attack as you hit the roof. You are teleported back to the camp when they are all killed.

Once both objectives have been completed, this quest ends, and Operation: Anchorage! begins.

Rewards

 * 100 XP

Intel suitcases
4 of the 10 Intel suitcases required for gaining the Covert Ops perk can be found during this mission, 2 on the way and at the Chimera fuel depot as well as 2 on the way to or at the listening post. Please refer to the main article for their locations.

Behind the scenes

 * Upon returning to the camp after completing the first objective, you encounter an American war correspondent who asks a couple of soldiers to pose for a photograph. Their pose is identical to the one displayed by the Anchorage Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the reporter remarks that the photo is great and that "maybe some day someone might make a statue out of it". This is a reference to The Iwo Jima War Memorial.

Bugs

 * During the final part of this quest when you infiltrate and secure the Listening Post, Sergeant Montgomery can get stuck in a loop and you'll be forced to save and reload. Doing so will cause Morgan to run over and initiate the dialogue for the the quest to complete. If you have not killed the two cloaked snipers on the roof of the Listening Post, you may not be experiencing a bug.
 * After clearing all enemies in the Listening Post, you can get stuck at the end of the mission and it will not complete. If no enemies were on the outpost balcony prior to clearing the post, wait for at least one hour, then two new enemies should spawn there, after dispatching them you should complete the quest.
 * It is possible for the Quartermaster to give you the scoped Gauss rifle but nothing else from your equipment package after you've passed the speech check. This will, if you don't manually ask for the equipment, not remove the Requisition Holo from your inventory. It'll still be there after leaving the simulation and, because it's a quest item, it won't be removable without the use of console commands.

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