Fallout: New Vegas DLC

[Mr. Analog]

It was announced yesterday and I missed it but I'm hep today:

Three new DLC packs coming our way soon:

Honest Hearts (May 17th) - Set in Zion National Park Utah, your Caravan gets Shanghaied and you have to find your way back to the Mojave meeting various tribes as you go.

Old World Blues (July 19th) - You are captured and forced to participate in a twisted science experiment (no bonuses for characters named "Chell")

Lonesome Road (September 20th) - Finally you get to meet the mysterious "Courier Six" (big time allusion to these events in the existing game and current DLC: "Dead Money")

So! I know where at least $30 and several hours are going in the next three months heh!!

[Mr. Analog]

Honest Hearts Trailer

Looks like we'll be encountering The Burned Man, Joshua Graham.

New weapons:

• .45 Auto pistol
• .45 Auto submachine gun
• Arr?t! (unique Assault Rifle)
• Fire bomb
• Graham's handgun (unique sidearm, likely a .45)
• War club
• Yao Guai gauntlet

[Mr. Analog]

Just about an hour into the new DLC and it ended.

Turns out there is a major glitch that bugs the start, if you accidentally shoot a certain NPC or if the NPC dies (falls off the rickety bridge, etc) you'll wander with only one marked direction that leads you to a DLC-ending encounter.

[Mr. Analog]

Okay, last night I was able to juggle it so that I don't draw aggro on the one NPC you need to talk to actually go through the quests, it's actually quite fun, the new map is really beautiful. It's all badlands, rivers, waterfalls... once in a while it rains!

It's pretty spectacular looking.

The Zion National Park setting is pretty nice and the patches of civilization are all very tribal which is refreshing (and leads to some entertaining conversations about "civilization").

I'm quite happy with the treatment of the Burned Man, he certainly lives up to the image Caesars Legion suggests and turned out to be a lot more 3 dimensional than I thought Obsidian would make him.

In fact, all the NPCs I've interacted with so far have been really well thought out and the voice actors sure brought the characters to life.

One element I was happy to see a return of was logical reasoning behind pre-war locations (old campsites, National Park buildings, touristy areas, etc) the natives consider these areas "taboo" and won't get close to them, which explains how stuff could sit relatively untouched for 200 years. This is directly referenced to shut people up, in Fallout 3 it was heavily implied that it was only recently that the DC area had low enough radiation to travel through and then Super Mutants had moved in (which is why so much stuff was left alone).

One thing that kinda bugged me about F:NV was they still tried to set up little tableaus here and there in the wasteland that just woudn't stand the test of time given how highly trafficked most of the areas were.

[Mr. Analog]

Old World Blues review coming soon, but long story short; best DLC for Fallout: New Vegas so far.

[Mr. Analog]

Lonesome Road trailer:
http://youtu.be/KICszQNDUOA

So the next DLC pack for Fallout: New Vegas takes the Courier on a journey to find Ulysses in the Divide, a place ravaged by earthquakes and storms, for a final confrontation.

For those who maybe haven't played the DLC, Ulysses was the Courier who refused to take the Platinum Chip (and so your character was chosen). Enigmatic, he seems to be obsessed with the Courier and the Old World.

In the ending to Dead Money we discover that there is to be a legendary battle between Ulysses and the Courier.

In Lonesome Hearts we discover that even legendary characters like The Burned Man are in awe of him.

In Old World Blues we discover that Ulysses has some kind of big sweeping plan for the world and that the Divide was created by a Big MT meteorological experiment gone awry, Ulysses is quite curious about this and there is allusion that he may be one of the survivors of this cataclysm.

The trailer sparks even more mystery as we see that the Divide appears to be a destroyed city that hosts at least one ICBM launch site and (Old World) patriotically themed weapons.

[Mr. Analog]

Just finished Lonesome Road... whew!

If you ever wondered what the Courier's backstory was? Why ED-E was important and how it got to the Mojave? Or ANY of the pre-history leading up to the first battle at Hoover Dam (also, if you want to blow up nuclear warheads with a laser pointer) then THIS is the DLC for you.

It's pretty hardcore though, there were many times I was down to just a sliver of health and had to crawl away and hide in my sneaky suit that injects me with medicine.