Let's Play New Vegas - Old World Blues

[CappenVarra]

Yay!

You may note that the game is now just openly using Perception in the place of Intelligence. Which is fine. I am fine with this. Note my utter calm and lack of psychotic raGe. I mean, fuck it, why not? Let's have Agility checks for Charisma, Energy Weapons checks for Speech, Spellcraft for Unarmed, the lion lying down with the lamb, rains of frogs, cats with three heads. This is the end times.

So it's come to this. I plug myself into a virtual reality game so that my avatar can lecture its own brain on how much it enjoys the senses that aren't present in the game and which it doesn't possess, and one of the deepest and unfalsifiable of human-to-human relationships which it cannot ever experience. Once this LP's over, I'm going to go live in a fucking tree for a year, and plait my beard with sea-shells and write a song about Mother Earth and how modern culture makes us lose touch with reality, all while taking an obscene amount of hallucinogenic drugs.

Somebody sounds direly in need of beer therapy

 

[anus_pounder]

I have a secret shame to admit, combined with the ending music, OWB's (and most importantly, Dead Money's) ending slides bring a tear to my eye. And I don't mean that in a - 'so hilariously bad I laughed myself to tears' way. '...Its letting go' narrated by the cast of DM always makes me kind of weird inside.

 

[Kz3r0]

grotsnik, your LP is great, but this DLC is a disgrace in its utter idiocy.

 

[lightbane]

That's just... So... BAD... Truly Bethesda level's bad writing (perhaps worse). No wonder that even RK, who has played Mass Erect 20 times, did not want to lp these DLCs.

 

[grotsnik]

Somebody sounds direly in need of beer therapy

Expert advice, will follow (tho it's port and wine till New Year, really) Could tell you were a medical man

I have a secret shame to admit, combined with the ending music, OWB's (and most importantly, Dead Money's) ending slides bring a tear to my eye. And I don't mean that in a - 'so hilariously bad I laughed myself to tears' way. '...Its letting go' narrated by the cast of DM always makes me kind of weird inside.

I actually had a sort of Rake Joke reaction to the It's Letting Go bit, to be honest. Five dramatic repetitions of the same line just felt like twice too many to me. DM ending slides are damn good, though.

this DLC is a disgrace in its utter idiocy.

Part of me wants to stick up for the charm of its B-movie nonsense, which I don't think came across well here at all. But at the same time, playing it in quick succession after Dead Money, and especially encountering the deadly serious Ulysses/Christine conversation in the middle of it (which I didn't actually find last time around), you do realise just how out of completely whack it is with the other DLC. Probably didn't help that I got so sick of typing out the bad puns, malapropisms and constant fucking robot-sex jokes that I've ignored/edited out more than half of them. With some of that shit, I just can't even tell how it's trying to be funny. 'O' says 'O' instead of 'Oh'! What the hell's the point of that?

So...yeah, I dunno. Doing this LP's soured me on it quite a bit, I think. Pity, I remember having a lot of fun with it the first time through.

 

[metzger]

That's just... So... BAD... Truly Bethesda level's bad writing (perhaps worse). No wonder that even RK, who has played Mass Erect 20 times, did not want to lp these DLCs.

You don't realize, that he's pretending to be Mobius, do you? And Mobius always speaks like that. It's silly, yes, but intentionally, comically silly. Well, I guess, LP just doesn't have enough Mobius' quotes, so you don't recognize his manner of speech in these lines.

 

[lightbane]

That's part of the problem, I don't find these idiotic lines "comical", what's worse for me is that you need an astronomically high skill score to use any of these lines...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yeah. Being intentionally silly doesn't automatically make you clever.

 

[Crooked Bee]

You're all old fags. Old World Blues is awesome, probably my favourite of all the DLC for New Vegas.

Awesome LP, grotsnik-sensei!

 

[grotsnik]

Fuck Me, The Site's Back Up And It's Weird-Looking And Shit And It Has Following And Likes And Let's Play Lonesome Road Shall We?

All-righty, then. If you’ve just joined us/need a refresher after the Codex’s death and symbolic resurrection into something strange and new and a little shitty-looking, the Courier is finally ready to investigate the stories of another Courier, a man by the name of Ulysses, who appears to be just as invested in his job as our hero, spending his days wandering the Wasteland intoning shit about how we had a serious impact on his life, and he’s going to lead us to a place called ‘The Divide’ and give us a message.

Technically, couriers are meant to deliver messages to you at home, not make you come to them. But fuck it, maybe we were out and he left us a note.

As an odd aside, the wiki claims that this final DLC’s name is based not just on the song ‘Lonesome Road’, but also on the famous stanza from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which apparently caused Shelley to swoon in terror and helped inspire his wife’s novel Frankenstein.

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

Ulysses plays the part of the “frightful fiend,” the Courier's secret past with the Dividecorresponds with “And having once turned round walks on,” and the Lonesome Roaditself is homonymous.

I’m going to call bullshit on this one, since the stanza is about the weary horror of the Mariner, coming to accept that he will be forever shadowed by the supernatural horrors he’s unleashed, and that he’ll never see dry land again. There’s a kind of crude parallel there (especially given the connotations of Ulysses’ name with another legendarily cursed sailor) but it doesn’t follow; Ulysses isn’t monstrous or frightening, he’s another one of MCA’s sympathetic, only semi-threatening antagonists, and the player’s trying to find him, not being followed by him. Hell, if anything, in at least one sense the Courier’s the frightful fiend Ulysses can’t shake off.

And so the Courier emerges out into a canyon strewn with untouched wreckage - blinking blood-red lights beneath a churning sky.

In BN's interview, Avellone noted that 'Damnation Alley', the Roger Zelazny novel set in an apocalyptic America, in which a band of heroes have to get through forty miles of very, very bad road in an armoured vehicle, was an influence on Lonesome Road. Looking at the art design of the Divide, you kind of get the impression someone was also thieving from the nifty-looking poster for the unredeemable movie adaptation (which, interestingly enough, was 20th Century Fox's big sci-fi blockbuster the same year as they brought out a probable flop by the name of Star Wars)

The canyon side is sheer; the Courier skirts close to the edge, finding refuge in a nearby bunker.

Inside, the power appears to be off. But we do find something of interest:

Huh, an ED-E bot.

What was that sound you played? Some kind of memory glitch?

(Noises)

(Science) Probably just some old data floating around in your memory. Nothing to worry about.

The glitch occurs again - and we hear a male voice.

This is Dr Whitley - we've boosted signal gain and enlarged the overflow buffer system. That should ensure 100% connectivity and control. ED-E, whenever you're ready...

The audio log cuts out; how curious. It's almost as if someone deliberately designed this robot to provide backstory exposition at arbitrary intervals during the course of the adventure.

Close to our new pal, we find this; a Commissary terminal, this DLC's official Method Of Shoehorning Merchants Into An Adventure Outside Civilisation Where, Logically, There Should Be No Merchants. ED-E can activate them by zapping them, giving us a chance to sell loot and pick up a few mods for LR's unique weapons.

Close to the main power switches, we find another ED-E - this one destroyed. Each one of these we find (there's five in total) gives the little bot an extra feature, which can be accessed via conversations...this one, for instance, lets him repair a single weapon fully every 24 hours.

Restoring the power opens up a nearby window, revealing...uh-oh.

Skirting carefully around the rocket, we move downwards through the silo; the closer we get to the exit, the more corpses we stumble across. Some of them appear to be NCR troopers, skinless and flayed.

There are a few automatic security bots still guarding the way out - luckily, with a little hacking, they can be reprogrammed to fight one another.

You know how some people insist on dragging the conversation around to whatever they want to talk about, no matter how unrelated it is to the subject at hand? Yeah, that's Ulysses for you. 'Chocolate ice-cream. Just like NCR - melting away, cannot last, flavour without valuable nutrition'.

Heard tales of you walking the Mojave, giving the two-headed Bear strength. Giving hollow men like Kimball, like Crocker, half the life Hanlon had.

We are the Hollow Men. Alas!

Aside from a few minor sidequests, our Courier hasn't really engaged with the NCR at all (in fact, in a horrifying indictment of the absurd Level 50 cap with all DLC, he's gone from level 16 to level 35 without completing much of the vanilla game. Oh, and even more awful - he now has the full 100 points in Energy Weapons, Science, Speech, Medicine, Guns, and Repair. On the plus side, this apparently means enemies will have a hilariously inflated HP metre.)

Now...let's test that strength. That 'conviction'.

Their flag speaks to their spirit. They're split like any two-headed animal, trying to go in different directions, ending up nowhere. In the Mojave, that'll only get you sand between your fingers - or between your grave.

Who are you?

I'm a courier...Courier Six. Like you...and not like you, in all the ways that matter. Spent too many years looking for you...now, letting you come to me. Thought carrying that Chip would kill you...no, you got lives in you, hard to kill. Storms, bullets, sand and wind, yet still you walk. For now.

You may recall that in vanilla New Vegas, when questioning the Primm delivery service about the Platinum Chip, that the fateful package was originally meant to be carried by 'Courier Six', who refused to take the job when he learnt that we were in town.

(Perception) We've never spoken before - I'd remember your voice.

Words aren't the only ways Couriers meet...sometimes it's the paths we walk. But no...we've never spoken before now. I've been to your home, the place you keep returning to...may not be the place you were born, was the place you gave life to, same thing. People forget couriers can keep communities alive...till the day they're gone, and their breath catches in their throat.

Ulysses. That's your name.

Not my given name, close enough. Took it from history, found it in a book. It's an Old World name. Ulysses lived a long time ago, long before the Old World set fire to itself. He made a mark without being a myth. Had to fight during a time when his world had two flags, and he had to make them one.

Ulysses. Not the myth. You're honouring history, not stories.

History, yes. Ulysses led his side to victory, turned two flags into one. That's when he lost - when the fighting was done, the sickness took hold. Lesson there, if history's to be believed. One you should heed.

Pontificating prosperous ass.

(Speech) You brought me here to talk. If you wanted to kill me, you'd have waited until I came for the Chip.

No...no, I couldn't. And I'm thinking you can't kill me either. If you did, you'd answer for it, just as I would. Let the land do the killing for you, that's one of the things you taught me. Killing's personal - so's vows, promises. Last bit's more important to me than the first.

Thank Christ, a speech option sums up my reaction to all of this perfectly.

You're not making any sense.

What kind of world would this be if Courier killed Courier? You've got enough distance ahead of you - save your breath for the road, don't waste it on words.

So you refused to take the Chip - what, to set me up to die?

We all have death following us, only a question of how close. You dodged it - for a time. You're good at it, talent for it. With that Chip weighing you down, a burden, lets death move faster without me pulling the trigger. Weigh you down long enough to let death catch up to you...but you survived.

There was death in that package, and while the Chip is important to Old World ghosts...no, you are more dangerous than that Chip could ever be. Maybe why you found each other, little piece of the Old World, speaking to you, waiting for you to wake something else up with it.

If you wanted me dead, why did you wait?

If I wanted you dead, we would have met sooner. Not sure that's the way this ends.

Now, it could be that by this point, you're thinking Ulysses' feelings towards the player appear somewhat confused. And, to be fair, he's clearly being presented as an extraordinarily confused human being. But this MCA snippet from the Gamebanshee interview, which caused me veritably to rage, does point towards what I think's part of the serious problem with the character:

Ulysses is a nemesis - a foil and a sounding board, yes. Also, for want of a better definition, he's designed to ego-stroke the player - he's clearly one of the legendary figures in the DLC, and the fact that he's so focused on your player character to the absence of almost everything else in the world is intended to make the player feel important, feel cool, and get the sense that they matter.

The trouble with Ulysses' relationship with the player, I reckon, is that it seems to have been conjured up first and foremost as a narrative function and an artificial attempt to 'ego-stroke the player'- writing from the outside, not from within, which is how you end up with shit like Bioware's writers contorting plot, character, lore and plausibility in order to fit in one more shocking betrayal-twist or Morally Grey Binary Choice.

Hell, Ravel and Kreia could be said to serve the same cynical purpose in-game, obsessing about the PC in order to make the player feel like they matter. But their reasons for obsessing about the PC are, nevertheless, logical and even key to their characters and their own plans. Ulysses' reasons for obsessing about the PC...aren't. In fact, they're weak as hell.

America sleeps ahead of you, its nightmares filled with quakes, storms. You'll need to find your own path.

The landscape, for this first main area in particular, is well realised as a genuinely apocalyptic experience. Our hero will scramble over the piled-up concrete wreckage of roads, clamber up into the Stalingrad-esque skeletons of buildings to find safe, sheltered berths or sniper positions, loot in the dust of ages, and encounter savage monsters who have made their own homes in this harsh wasteland...you can tell they were trying to create an emptier, more desolate space.

Of course, since this is a high-level DLC, looting constantly turns up top-drawer ammo, missiles and weaponry, and all of the monsters are either a) armed with overpowered heavy weapons, b) Deathclaws, or c) Monsters That Are More Irritating Than Deathclaws. At least there's no level 20 gnolls, I s'pose.

These ruins are inhabited primarily by Marked Men - NCR troops, Legionnaires and Raiders, who've stumbled into the Divide and lost themselves to the radiation - becoming skinless, flayed ghouls.

Codes for a locked armoury can be found in a nearby school. Getting in nets us Riot Gear, which has been modelled pretty blatantly to satisfy players who moaned 'Why can't I look like the Ranger in the main menu?'

To the east, we find a compulsory weapon - the Laser Detonator. Let's test it out.

See that red-topped nuclear warhead, which for totally convincing reasons is standing unexploded in the middle of the street?

See that challenge? Christ, that makes me angry. You see, unexploded warheads can be found all over the Divide for said convincing reasons. Some of them block our way; others can be used to damage enemies. Others are just there. And the game challenges us to blow them all up, sometimes for no reason but the lulz.

And in an instant the hero grimly setting out across the wastes for a date with destiny is transformed into Shithead McDouche, lulzing about randomly blowing up Megaton or collecting bobbleheads for no fucking reason. I don't care if it's meant to reflect the zany, motiveless sociopathy of the video-game character, that's some Fallout 3 shit right there.

Finally - an overpass. Ducking inside, the Courier prepares himself for whatever might be lurking in the depths...

NEXT TIME:
Oh, it's reskinned Spore Carriers made to look like little scaly devils. And they spawn right behind you in groups of three and knock you down. Fuckadiddledoo.

 

[grotsnik]

...dammit, how do you edit thread titles on this thing? Anyone know?

 

[CappenVarra]

You know how some people insist on dragging the conversation around to whatever they want to talk about, no matter how unrelated it is to the subject at hand? Yeah, that's Ulysses for you. 'Chocolate ice-cream. Just like NCR - melting away, cannot last, flavour without valuable nutrition'.

Spot on

Coleridge and Zelazny are lovely inspirations to aspire to, but convincing anyone this achieves that would obviously require passing a high-level Speech check. Wait, MCA, is that what you did? :disappoint:

Not to mention the sheer F3 levels of idiocy of Hey, there's a nuclear warhead blocking your way, why don't you detonate it and walk across the spot 30 seconds later?

 

[CappenVarra]

...dammit, how do you edit thread titles on this thing? Anyone know?

Hm, try asking in http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/forums-are-up.67985/.

According to http://xenforo.com/community/threads/changing-post-title.12413/, it's not really supported:

Sorry for bumping an old thread, so, a normal user can not edit his own thread title -only- ?! It's either he has to be a moderator or giving the permission to manage thread (edit, move, etc.) ? How disturbing. Personally It happens often for me to edit my title in others boards to put a better title, or fixing typos. There is really no solution ?

Also note that links from your sig are now broken... Maybe ask DU or Taluntain do they plan to implement an URL rewriter from old format to new, or just update them yourself...

/technobabble

 

[PlanHex]

What's with the small black text beneath the MCA quote?
This forum is teh suck

 

[grotsnik]

Ohhh, yeah. Fuckin' new formatting system/copy-pasted text. 's fixed, anyway, thanks for pointing it out.

 

[grotsnik]

So, Josh Sawyer's made a comprehensive-looking tweak mod which only works with all four of the story DLC installed, which would've been neat to have used when I started out on this LP; amongst other things, it lowers the level cap to 35, lowers the rate of experience gain, and claims to drastically reduce the number of stimpaks in-game, replacing most of them with worn-out versions that only replace a little health.

Can't imagine why he'd want to do that. Anyway, full power to him.

And so the Courier ventures into the abandoned underpass, filled with the skeletons of cars and lorries. Here, for the first time, he considers the problems that plagued his more civilised ancestors, such as 'congestion charges', 'road rage' and 'trying to unwrap and eat mints while driving, then dropping them beneath the clutch'.

Suddenly, ED-E lights up again. The same memory glitch - and we hear Dr Whitley's voice.

'All experiments will be carried out with the test subject fully active, to reduce iteration time.' It's barbaric! I've explained this to the Colonel - just because the Eyebots don't have true AI doesn't mean they're just machines.

I guess results are all that matter around here. Forget things like 'ethical procedure' and 'humane treatment'. I'm starting to have serious misgivings about leadership around here. At least I've got you to talk to, eh, ED-E?

I can't believe they'd approve that. I've met enough robots to know they're more than just machines.

(Beeping)

The kindly Courier sheds a tear, conveniently forgetting about all of the countless, mindless robots he's cheerfully blown up, shot, disintegrated, reprogrammed, disabled, and tied to railway tracks. Apparently it's not unethical if you get a perk for it.

These ED-E conversations appear at various chokepoints, usually the 'safe-zone' beginnings and ends of levels, throughout the DLC (we get a few with Ulysses in the same sorts of places). They do have a bearing on the plot later on, but I get the feeling they're there at least in part to break up the action and make it feel less like a largely linear dungeon crawl. Problem is...well, aside from the whole conceit, they're oddly, childishly written (well, aside from the final reveal, the story's not the most complex and engaging companion history ever anyway - it's a fucking flying robot buddy). ED-E will broadcast a major event from its history, we'll get to respond with, 'Oh, no, ED-E, you poor thing!' or 'Shut it, robot, or I'll break you down into component parts', ED-E will beep at us, and we'll tell it we'd better be moving on.

Hey, look! Some local wildlife! Hey, there, little fella!

'Hulking Tunneler'. That's a funny name. I'd have called you 'Wuvvly-Cuddly Tunneler' - ooh, and he's got friends!

So these are the Tunnelers. Nasty little bastards that can hit you very hard, and travel in groups; they pop out of holes at unexpected moments and even scuttle around on rooftops. The main pain is the Hulking Tunneler, which knocks you over while its buddies rapidly kill you.

Of course, even when he's not around, since they tend to come up fast, often from behind you, and always with their mates backing them up, most encounters with them end up being that phenomenon unique to melee combat in fast-paced action FPSes; Flailing Wildly At Shit Moving Too Fast And Too Close For You To Aim At See While The Screen Does That Distracting Blurry 'You're Being Hit' Thing And You Get Continually Knocked Backwards.

Yeah, that's the one.

After about a level of this thoroughly enjoyable combat, we emerge out - back onto the overpass.

And since this is the start of a new area, presumably this means-

There's a lesson here, in the Divide. Old World history about paving and intentions could teach the Republic a thing or two - if they listened.

Oh, for fuck's sake. What lesson? Come on, Ulysses, you've got all these lessons you keep referring to. What lesson do you mean? Are you going to explain it to us, or just carry on being irritatingly oblique? Come on. In front of the whole fucking class, explain what lesson you mean.

You got a better way?

Yes. And any Courier could tell you the same, see it everywhere. The Bear's too busy carving up the Mojave with roads, borders, knives, and how things should be to see how it is. They're stretched thin, can't protect their frontlines, their towns, think paper's power, radio's control - all of it, useless.

THAT'S ABOUT MANPOWER AND AVAILABLE INFRASTRUCTURE AND YOU STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN YOUR SOLUTION TO THEIR PROBLEM. WHERE THE FUCK'S YOUR LESSON, ULYSSES? WHERE'S THE LESSON AT? HUH? ULYSSES? LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! THAT'S ALL I WANNA KNOW!

No matter now. Bear couldn't hold the Divide. You and that machine are all that remains of NCR here. Rest fell to radiation, fire...and burrow below.

You mean those creatures in the underpass?

Tunnelers. Predators that make their own roads beneath the ground here. Divide broke their sky, showed them the world above - and the scent of new prey. Be a slower death for the Mojave than bombs and fire...but they'll come for its people where they least expect...from below.

They'll start emerging throughout the Mojave in time, might be years. Probably less. They breed fast, hunt in groups, more than enough to bring down the strongest. Seen them tear apart Deathclaws...Deathclaw might get some, but the rest will swarm it, tear it apart, like Denver hounds.

It's okay, by the time Fallout 4 rolls around they'll be much weaker. ZING!

The Explorer choice is a nice touch. Man, I wish there could be more perk options in dialogue.

Denver was a planned location for Van Buren, otherwise 'Dogtown', where the Legion bred their hounds. Ulysses will refer to a few more of these over the course of LR, including Fort Abandon.

Mojave and the Divide aren't the only places I've walked. Walked the East, too, before the Bull came. Then...much like the Mojave before the Bear...tribes, towns, clutching to life. Bull did a better job.

Dear God, that was remarkably close to being lucid.

But you...you were the only one willing to make the journey to and from here...a hard road. Kept the Divide alive, through seasons, storms...

I've walked a lot of hard roads, Mojave and before. Doesn't mean anything.

It was you walking that road that kept the Divide alive. It grew from what you did. Settlers...camps...filling that Old World city. Could've breathed new life into the Mojave, bridging east, west. Like Hoover Dam, not Old World, something you made. Road was a supply line.

NCR saw the worth in that road you made. Staked a claim, whether it was wanted there or not. And where the Bear clings to life, the Legion comes bearing messages...some brought by blade, others by Couriers. You knew what was coming, sure as I know what's coming for you.

This time you carry the burden. Walk west into the sun, and keep walking until it dies. There - I'll be waiting.

So Ulysses is saying that years before Benny put a bullet in the Courier's head, the Courier was making deliveries to and from this desolate place, keeping a settlement alive in the process. Which the Courier remembers (vaguely) but we, the player, are learning for the first time.

KOTOR2 also did this trick of filling in our character's past during the present-day narrative, giving us new information which is old news to our PC, but it did it at intervals, from several characters' perspectives, it had flashback scenes, and it even allowed us to 'remember' a few minor details like the Exile's lightsabre to keep the player invested in their character's history. Here it comes out of nowhere, and we're not given enough time or information to get to grips with it.

Anyway, here's some shots of the art design of Fallout 3 through a yellow filter genuinely cool, rather wonderfully desolate-looking overpass environs.

Smashing.

I missed him, annoyingly, but you can spot Ulysses watching the Courier from a position on top of that skyscraper (he's meant to appear elsewhere in the DLC, though I'm damned if I've seen him); after a few seconds, he turns and strolls away. It's effectively eerie, though presumably the game won't let you kill him.

Venturing up along the side of the wreckage, we find his abandoned hideout - including a holotape. Five of these can be found scattered around the Divide, filling in various parts of his backstory, which gives the writing a chance to play around. Apparently Ulysses persuaded the White Legs to attack New Canaan - and the braids they wear are an illiterate, ill-conceived attempt to mimic his own 'tribal' dreadlocks.

Seeing a Deathclaw ahead on the road, the Courier decides to try out his new weapon - a rocket launcher by the name of 'Red Glare'.

Smile, you son of a-

...that was less effective than I'd anticipated.

Uh-oh.

One moderately painful mauling later, the Courier is startled by another burst of moderately painful exposition from ED-E.

Yes, sir, I understand that we need the Duraframe assets for Hellfire armour, but...no, sir. I understand, sir. I'll tell the team to start disassembling the ED series prototypes right away.

ED-E, you little rascal. Were you eavesdropping again? I think those videos were a bad influence on you. How much of that did you hear?

Hmm...didn't Dr Grant say she'd upgraded your navigational systems? I think I may have an idea...

In order to prevent the horrible Johnny-5 flashbacks that are searing through his brain, the Courier plays Ulysses' tape as he continues to explore. It's talking about New Canaan.

White Legs, they were born for war, they run to it, hungry for battle, yet their hunger is to be a part of history...something more. Like the Legion. As always, brought them a message from Caesar.

If New Canaan burns, Caesar might see them. Might. Even the chance was a lie. To honour Caesar, destroy the history of New Canaan, and the way they carry it - in their generations and their family. Caesar respects such strength, I told them. That - that was truth, even if strength wasn't the word. Obedience.

You must be willing to kill anyone - children, mothers, the weak, elders...if these New Canaanites value the generations, then that is what you must kill.

No need for bombs when hate will do. I asked the White Legs to destroy a people with ancestry, going back thousands of years - another death of history, lost to time. The New Canaanites supplied medicine, food, traded with others. Civilisation, a hand from the past, not history...

...but maybe a past deeper, farther than that to a place where this...God really exists.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Ahead, the Marked Men guard what appears to be a military base entrance. They're no match for us.

A missile silo. But the door's locked. We'll have to figure out for ourselves some sort of intuitive way of getting it op...oh, no, wait, it tells us.

So in order to open a door, I have to...set off a nuclear missile. Right.

So...

Oh!

Er...

Fuck!

Typical shoddy American manufacturing. Is that China, nuclear missile? Are you even now raining down upon the rice-fields and opium dens and Apple warehouses of the Dragon? I don't fucking think so.

ED-E, who is apparently the world's biggest attention whore, immediately attempts to upstage the nearby nuclear explosion by having another memory glitch.

I've uploaded destination co-ordinates for our outpost in Navarro into your system. I want you to go to the Enclave there, okay?

Do you understand me? It's going to be a long, long journey, my little friend. You'll have to fly very far and very fast. Can you do that? I know you can. Be careful out there, ED-E. Maybe I'll see you again some day.

Oh, what a shocking and compelling turn of eve-I DON'T CARE, ED-E, I JUST HAD TO BLOW UP THE MOTHERFUCKING SKY TO GET A DOOR OPEN! DID YOU NOT JUST SEE THAT SHIT?

(Beeping)

As we try to open the door, the game gives us another warning.

Why would I want to do that, game? Why?

As we step into the irradiated elevator (why?) we find ourselves assaulted by a steady stream of Tunnelers clambering over the sides of the shaft and jumping down onto the elevator floor, because this is Time Crisis 2, apparently.

Fortunately, we gain the tactical advantage over them by cunningly standing in the corner.

And, at the bottom, we discover what appear to be...old subway tunnels.

I...I know this place. As if from some distant memory, some...repressed memory. Something I've tried to forget...

Yes. You know it, Courier. You can't escape history. The art assets of Fallout 3, recycled. Because that's all this game is, after all. An expansion to Fallout 3.

Three...Three Dog?

That's right. I'm here on behalf of our good friends at Bethesda. We're all...a little worried about what we've been hearing about this shady 'Avellone' character and his plans to nuke the setting, you see. Obviously, any DLC storylines Obsidian wanted to include had to be approved by our top team of highly talented lore experts...but we're beginning to think he may have overstepped his bounds.

(Intelligence) So you're here to fight Todd's battles for him. Er...with your voice.

We have such plans for Fallout 4, Courier. Oh, you'd love them. We've got our voice-actors to record conditional dialogue that depends upon your skills. So guards will endlessly repeat lines like 'I SEE YOU ARE TALENTED AT REPAIRING THINGS' and 'SO, YOU LIKE ENERGY WEAPONS, EH?' And can you say...'dragons return to Earth'?

I...I will not listen to you. MCA knows what he's doing.

Does he, Courier? Oh, Sawyer and his Obsidian thugs tried his best to mess around with our glorious Fallout 3 - adding in all those stat checks, including factions, multiple quest outcomes, a little invention and thoughtfulness where it mattered...and, yes Avellone tried to show us up with more of his 'story' bullshit in these downloadable contents. Chaos theory! Multiple character motivations! But in the end, Courier...you're playing Bethesda's Fallout 3. The combat's still complete toss, there's pointless trash loot everywhere and there are 'fans' on the Nexus creating fucking bizarre porn mods because they see the game not as a game, a respectable setting, or a story, but as a serviceable alternate reality which they can turn into their own freakish personalised fetish playground. This is what Fallout is now. No amount of faffing about with RPG elements can alter that.

They're...they're doing the best they can with a bad job, and a lot of it's totally laudable. If Van Buren had-

Van Buren would have gone down the same path, Courier, and you know it. Those ridiculous twats in Fallout 3 who thought they were vampires? Same idea was going to appear in Van Buren. Face it, Courier. You, and NMA, and the rest...you're all so obsessed with how things should be that you can't see how it is.

You need to let go, stop trying to meddle with MY setting...and let the franchise march on without you. Stop the missiles, Courier; save the setting...and perhaps we'll let Obsidian do another expansion again some day. Hang on - someone wants to talk to you.

Courier? Courier, is...is that you?

He's there, Tim. Why don't you tell him what you told me, just now?

(Bluff) Courier, I...you need to go to the end of the Divide and stop Chris from blowing up the setting. I've thought about it, long and hard, and it's in safe hands with Bethesda. Why, Three Dog's been telling me just now how in Fallout 4, you can become the President of the NCR and the new Emperor of the Legion, and nobody will even ca-

Courier, don't come - it's a trap! It's a trap, Courier! You - mmmppph! Mmmmph!

Tim? TIM!

...Sorry, Tim had to go. He has some valuable lessons to learn about, ah, staying on message.

Listen, you monster, if you harm a hair on his head-

The end of the Divide, Courier. And if you want to see Tim alive, ever again...you'll tell Avellone to stand down. Save the life of your friend and surrender the Fallout setting to us, once and for all, or nuke your precious setting...and watch as the franchise perishes, along with the developers who loved it once and who could, perhaps, continue to work on it long into the future.

Hey, it's almost like one of those difficult consequence-laden choices we've been hearing so much about. We, er, we never really got the hang of those.

...Three Dog out.

Oh, I'll come all right. And there, Three Dog, in the mists of the Divide, beneath the crumbling, re-used Fallout 3 art assets...we'll have an ending to things, you and I.

 

[Black2]

And the award for the most pretentious fag in the history of video games goes to...

 

[lightbane]

That Ulysses guy seems quite Prosperian. Given the chance, I suggest you to kill him as hard as you can.

 

[Kz3r0]

Glad that you survived ITZ grotsnik.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Glad to see this updated!

 

[Brother None]

Good stuff man.

If not for Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road would be the worst of the DLC. The setting and atmosphere really are great. But a linear shooter with an ill-defined pretentious boss at the end? Yegh. Only DLC I ended up reviewing.

It's funny to see OWB get so much shit here. I guess it doesn't come across well in an LP. It's by far the best DLC New Vegas had, though I know some prefer Dead Money.

 

[CappenVarra]

Ah, the "literate" aspect of the DLC even includes Yeats; too bad that

in the end, Courier...you're playing Bethesda's Fallout 3. The combat's still complete toss, there's pointless trash loot everywhere and there are 'fans' on the Nexus creating fucking bizarre porn mods because they see the game not as a game, a respectable setting, or a story, but as a serviceable alternate reality which they can turn into their own freakish personalised fetish playground. This is what Fallout is now. No amount of faffing about with RPG elements can alter that.

:D

 

[Comte]

Good stuff man.

If not for Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road would be the worst of the DLC. The setting and atmosphere really are great. But a linear shooter with an ill-defined pretentious boss at the end? Yegh. Only DLC I ended up reviewing.

It's funny to see OWB get so much shit here. I guess it doesn't come across well in an LP. It's by far the best DLC New Vegas had, though I know some prefer Dead Money.

I think OWB overdid the over the top LOLZ stuff. The fingers looking like penises joke went on for too long just one example of the LOLZ to be had in OWB.

 

[Surf Solar]

Does he, Courier? Oh, Sawyer and his Obsidian thugs tried his best to mess around with our glorious Fallout 3 - adding in all those stat checks, including factions, multiple quest outcomes, a little invention and thoughtfulness where it mattered...and, yes Avellone tried to show us up with more of his 'story' bullshit in these downloadable contents. Chaos theory! Multiple character motivations! But in the end, Courier...you're playing Bethesda's Fallout 3. The combat's still complete toss, there's pointless trash loot everywhere and there are 'fans' on the Nexus creating fucking bizarre porn mods because they see the game not as a game, a respectable setting, or a story, but as a serviceable alternate reality which they can turn into their own freakish personalised fetish playground. This is what Fallout is now. No amount of faffing about with RPG elements can alter that.

That is some golden stuff man. :D

And, well, to me Lonesome Road is the best DLC, shortly followed with Dead Money. I dunno, I like that Ulysses fella, even though he has his shortcomings.. The other 2 DLC are barely worth mentioning imo.

 

[Brother None]

I think OWB overdid the over the top LOLZ stuff. The fingers looking like penises joke went on for too long just one example of the LOLZ to be had in OWB.

Sure, people keep citing the penis jokes, and they annoyed me too, but they don't go on *that* long. The writing is definitely the most uneven part of the DLC, but a lot of what makes it work in atmosphere and the fact that it just offers so much more content than any other DLC is not shown well in a LP.