Honest Hearts was a big letdown

[Brennan]

The only dlc I like so far (haven't done lonesome road yet but I'm not expecting much) is OWB. HH and Dead money were extremely linear and came across like I was playing an arcade game, not an rpg. The only saving grace of HH was the survivalists armor and rifle. I found the story and questlines boring. I hated being stuck there till I finished my peas - I mean completed the questline, so I eventually just killed everything i saw till it all failed and then left. No loss. Then I played Dead money... :down:

 

If F4 takes place in the 'Murican southwest, I'll give it a miss. One more cowboy hat & sasparilly and by gum I'll puke. :sick:

[bruse]

I loved HH myself. Typically it's the first DLC I'll do on any playthrough, and mostly when I get in Zion I'll set about and explore before doing the quests. The scenery is fantastic, and the story isn't bad - even though the quests are somewhat simplistic.

 

The overall setting is quite somber; the survivalist's journals and what you see while exploring, in general. In the main world - New Vegas - the immediate aftermath of the nuclear holocaust is mostly "cleaned up" because so long has passed, but the Sorrows have left things mostly preserved and untouched. The main characters - both Daniel and Graham - are well written, too, in my opinion. Considering the New Caananites are religious folk which send out missionaries, Joshua's heavy reliance on religion makes sense (even though my Courier berates him for it), because it is a large part of what enables him to cope and live with himself after Hoover Dam.

 

I'll invariably fight the White Legs; now while the option of leaving the Sorrows out of it does not exist, it adds to the "dilemma" of the story, and besides, a "courier vs the world" assault isn't very plausible. I use custom gun/damage realism mods which makes a bunch of machinegun-totting tribals far more dangerous, so it's more believeable that you do need all the help you can possibly get.

 

It's one of the better DLCs. I enjoyed OWB in a way, too. Dead Money I've recently obtained and it's not exactly my cup of tea (and I don't see myself replaying it), didn't try Lonesome Road yet (also recently obtained, mainly because some mods require Dead Money and Lonesome Road).

Edited October 16, 2013 by bruse

[Relios]

I liked Honest Hearts, it introduced a significant area, a significant character (Joshua Graham, voiced by that badass Keith Szarabajka), plus it looked into the whole tribal aspect in the series with attention we havent seen since Fallout 2. It's definitely worth it, in my honest opinion.

[KittenFromRussia]

zion was one of the best DLC in my opinion, it made more sense. old world blues was kinda goofy and funny (evil toaster), and dead money gave me a splitting headache while i was trying to find those speaker. the bullet-proof speakers can resist an infinite number of nukes.

[ArgusMercenarySCCT]

I loved all the DLCs to be honest, my favorites being Lonesome Road and Dead Money. Both tried to do something that regular Fallout rarely does which is using the element of survival. You can't shoot your way out in Dead Money, well you can but you won't have enough bullets, stimpaks or health to do so every time. Lonesome Road does this too, but in a smaller scale, not with a limitation on ammo but more with throwing really tough enemies at you, I think the Deathclaws over there are also stronger than the New Vegas Deathclaws, not sure about that though.

 

Both had amazing stories as well, Elijah and Ulyssess were great characters and antagonists.

[Fistandilius]

I don't think any of the DLC's were great, but HH was definitely the most boring and shortest, IMO.

 

I keep hearing people say how great the scenery is, but I got tired of literally seeing red after about 5 minutes in there. There is no contrast at all with the rock texturing in the entire area and it takes a long time to navigate. It's redeeming grace is it's such an easy area that going the long way around doesn't really hurt you the way it would like in Dead Money or BMT.

 

I liked the new pistol until I got out of HH and found out it was pretty much useless in the Divide.

 

Also, while I'm not offended by the religion, I'd really honestly rather not have religion in my video games unless it's purely fictional. I'm a firm believer that religion and politics are better off kept to yourself, so I sure as hell don't want to see them in my video games.

 

The opening scene was quite a let down as well as they introduce you to a bunch of semi-interesting characters with a decent amount of dialogue and then proceed to remove them from the game immediately. Way to draw me in, Obsidian.

 

I'm not even sure the place could be improved with modding without totally changing the landscape to get rid of some of those mountains.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Fistandilius

[Sakev]

I quite liked HH, especially compared to DM.

[MarchUntoTorment]

My personal order of DLCs, best to worst (HERE BE SPOILERS) -

 

 

 

1. Dead Money - amazing storyline, very welcome difficulty curve, some truly scary moments and a very nicely-done 'horror genre' feel to it. An amazing cast of very vivid and real-feeling characters, especially Christine (who I got incredibly attached to - she's probably one of the two or three characters I've ever become genuinely emotionally attached to in a video game). God and Dog had a really nice ending, and I actually found Dean Domino very likeable up until I found out what he'd done with Vera and Sinclair (and I forgave him after his ending when it's explained that he felt oddly sad when he learnt what'd happened). My only real complaint was Christine's voice - I vastly preferred the voice you hear from her in Old World Blues' audio logs.

 

2. Lonesome Road - a bit of a split here between this and Old World Blues, but this comes out on top for three reasons. Firstly, it has the single most inspiring landscape I've ever seen in a game (my jaw dropped the first time I saw the Divide), and secondly, the difficulty curve was very welcome - I love facing enemies who can pose a practical threat to a fully-power-armoured, high-tech Courier. The third reason is simple - Ulysses. I sympathised with him on so many levels, and in the end, I chose to live on his legacy and nuke both NCR and Legion. Not to mention, his backstory in Old World Blues means that I now ship him with Christine (nobody ever said she exclusively liked girls, after all). The best way to summarise my second (and current) New Vegas character is 'Ulysses in power armour'.

 

3. Old World Blues - the first DLC I played, and it had a very distinct and well-done feel. The gameplay was top-notch, with every battle approached perfectly, the final battle felt far more inspiring than the game's other boss fights (OH s*** GIANT SCORPION). The cast of characters was vivid, and it has by far the funniest moments in the game (I think the crown there goes to that scene with the Courier's brain). However, it felt a little too easy in some sections, the X-8 gameplay was frustrating as hell and it was very dependent upon a high Science and Medicine skill to do anything really worthwhile.

 

4. Honest Hearts - not a lot to like here, I found, except the Survivalist's story. Exploring Zion tended to be a quite a bit of fun, especially the bits with the Survivalist, but the main questline didn't really do much for me and I found myself mostly preoccupied with sidequests and exploration, which were much more fun to me. The heavy religion seemed really a bit too evangelical for my taste, to be honest - I'm fine with religion of all forms, but I dislike preachiness about anything and everything, and Honest Hearts was getting dangerously close to that zone. Also, Joshua Graham was just a little too strong, and the fact that he was significantly more powerful than a fully-power-armoured level-40 Courier armed with top-of-the-line weaponry just broke my willing suspension of disbelief (and for Fallout to do so requires really quite a lot of skill). I think that the reason why Ulysses, despite having much the same thing, didn't is because he was the ultimate Arc Villain of the DLCs, and had been built up as a major threat through every DLC.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2014 by MarchUntoTorment