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[George_Chickens]

Unpopular Opinion: New Vegas' DLCs sucked. The main quests of FO3's DLCs gave me a genuine sense (excluding OA and BS which were 'lolcoolstuff') of exploration and mystery, and the worlds felt very atmospheric and fun, which is weird when you consider the main world's shoddy design. Honest Hearts was buggy as all hell and had a very boring main questline, Old World Blues was primarily a fetch quest, Dead Money was a good concept that I feel needed more time in the oven, and Lonesome Road was a samey battle against monsters with extra zeroes in their stats, that just doesn't feel like it affects the game at all, when it should. Wouldn't the NCR or Legion DEFINITELY be chatting about the spoilers that were just bestowed upon them?

My personal peeve, especially, is when a quest that feels like it should be at least a dialogue changing event, just isn't mentioned again by anybody or anything.

[itisnotlogical]

I didn't think Honest Hearts was that bad but otherwise I agree, the NV DLC is really lame. I thought the DLCs were going to form this cool continuous side-story related to the main game, especially since Dead Money (the first released) had achievements for hearing dialogue that hinted at future DLC events.

Instead the DLC just explores parts of the Fallout universe that I really don't give a shit about, like tribals and wacky science. I really just wanted more of the base game's story and aesthetic. Dead Money had the best ideas as you said, but was absolutely infuriating to play and the story felt unfinished.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is it me, or is Christine very obviously Veronica's old girlfriend from before the BoS came to the Mojave? Never mentioned again AFAIK.

[Neonivek]

Unpopular Opinion: New Vegas' DLCs sucked.

I dunno... other than people who praise New Vegas in all aspects because it isn't Fallout 3 and forget the negative aspects.

I think most people agree that a few of the New Vegas DLCs were horrible (OHH GAWD Honest Hearts)... at least 2 of the 4 you can get most people to say was bad... and frankly IMO only one was ever really good, but it was a complete tonal shift.

All of them being bad I guess isn't a popular opinion... but it isn't that far out there.

Then again the people who blindly pamper New Vegas are the loudest group... so... I can see the "Unpopular opinion alert"

[Darkmere]

The only good thing about honest hearts was Joshua Graham and some of the scenery. It felt refreshing to see a little After the End that wasn't another gritty urban wasteland or squatter shack towns.

I really enjoyed most of dead money, except Dog, really. It gave me a twitch of nostalgia for BioShock, with all the little bits you could find poking around that gave you the history of the whole place. I honestly thought the idea of a dead husk of the hotel constantly replaying the last pleading message of a dead woman forever was eerie as hell. And yes, she's veronica's girlfriend. I want to say there's a set of conditions that let you mention that, but Christine says she's had to move on (and if you know about the Circle of Steel, it makes sense why she wouldn't want Veronica to leave and find her).

Old World Blues was by far my favorite. Huge, open playground with all kinds of mad science and shit. It fits in fallout perfectly, though one or two of the areas might have been slightly overtuned.

Lonesome Road was... it felt like a patch to try and fix what they wanted to do with Ulysses originally but had to cut. I really wish U. had been able to stay in the main game, it would have been completely different in tone if that were the case.

[itisnotlogical]

Dead Money was the best aesthetically but made me so angry to actually try and play. Bear traps every ten seconds, all the companions are worthless besides Dog, hunting for speakers, all of that was so annoying and just made me not even care. The scarcity and survival aspects made the first half of the DLC a savescum festival, then totally disappeared by the last half.

Joshua Graham seemed like he was going to be deep, but then he starts quoting menacing Bible verses at you in that gravelly voice and I couldn't take him seriously any more.

I liked Daniel, because normally pacifism is 100% the best option always in terms of karma, but siding with Daniel just results in the loss and eventual destruction of Zion, the White Legs die off anyway, and Joshua never gets redeemed. I thought that was really cool and gave Honest Hearts a bit of moral difficulty beyond "dump all your points in Speech and pick the best ending out of the menu." Daniel pleading with you not to fight the White Legs was honestly pretty heart-breaking.

I haven't beaten Old World Blues, but they really lay it on thick and heavy with the WACKY 50s SCIENCE! theme. The more they labor it and try to make it work with the wannabe GLaDOS scientists and beating on every painfully unfunny joke for minutes at a time, the less funny and interesting it becomes. Don't get me wrong, Fallout has implausible science, but no more than any other sci-fi setting. It was rarely directly played for laughs, and if it was it was almost certainly better than OWB's take on it.

[Neonivek]

Well the point of Old World Blues is sort of seeing beyond it.

They do lay it on thick though... maybe too much so.

[Darkmere]

Okay, the ending of OWB has something important to understand the whole thing. I'm going to spoil it in case you want to go back and finish it later, but here's the deal:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mobius, O, Dala, and Klein were part of some military think tank that were supposed to be in charge of finishing the war in the best possible shape, and failing that figure out a plan to rebuild. The war happened in two days, which skipped over all their plans entirely and made the rebuilding part their primary goal. They used the experimental brain in a jar technology in a desperate move to not lose their research.

Over time, the technology began to fail, and the three you meet in the main lab started to grow psychotic, creating horrible shit like the cazadors and stalkers out of boredom and brain damage.

Mobius saw what was going on and messed with their systems, wiping their memories and filling in corny 50's era sci-fi stuff to keep them busy "fighting" him instead of doing further damage to the world outside.

When you actually meet Mobius, he's a genuinely nice person, but his machinery is breaking down without the assistance of the other docs to fix it, and he's going deranged from guilt at basically lobotomizing his only friends.

Basically all of them are suffering brain damage and slowly dying, while the SUPER SCIENCE bit is a stopgap created by a movie buff to protect what's left of the world from Big Mountain.

[Shadowlord]

I'd say that NV was great, but personally I have never played any of the DLC. (I finished the game before they released the DLC, and it's not the sort of game where you can continue after winning, so...)

[Neonivek]

Honestly I got stuck in Honest Hearts

Not because it is hard... but because it is SOOO bad... I can't stand it.

[Mech#4]

From my watching of the dlc for New Vegas my opinion is:

Old World Blues: Probably the best. I liked the characters and the ending story as outlined by Darkmere. As a contained narrative it worked well.

Dead Money: I liked the story for this one, though the mechanics and combat seemed very frustrating. The radios and exploding collar with caustic air set a good "you are trapped" theme but hindered the desire to explore much.

Honest Hearts: I think this one, though it had a nice story, tried to fit too much plot and morals into a story that was too short. I remember watching it and being surprised that it was over so quickly.

Lonesome Road: It did a great job of exploring the devastated landscape and explaining, through Ulysses, what happened. Though I think it fell afoul of failing to get the player to care. It's hard to write backstory for the player character if the player doesn't actually experience it firsthand.

[itisnotlogical]

Spoiled myself. I'll hold judgment until I see the end of OWB for myself, but I'm leery of plots where information that is only revealed at the end is supposed to retroactively make the rest of the story interesting. But then, I haven't beaten it, so I'll see when I get there.

I feel like if Honest Hearts was any longer it would have gotten way too preachy. It was exactly the right length to say what it was trying to say. It didn't overstay its welcome with the tired old pacifism vs. self-defense debate, it just gave you some interesting characters with a compelling case for each side, then let you choose what to do with that. Any longer would have just been drawing out the ending(s) that you almost certainly know are coming as soon as the dilemma is introduced. Less is more and all that.

[Persus13]

-snip-

This would probably be my ranking as well. I liked most of the DLC except Lonesome Road mainly because they were something different and fresh coming from the main game, and I'll probably replay most of them next time I revisit New Vegas.

[Darkmere]

While we're on the topic, I think it's a real shame what all had to get cut from the Legion part of the game.

Spoiler: spoilered for length (click to show/hide)

From what I've heard there was actually supposed to be a fully formed Legion side of the game, where going with them had more of a full-fledged plotline than the skeleton it does now. You can see the remains of this in stuff like the Camp McCarran plot that gives you many options based on which faction you're working for and your rep with all the others.

Ulysses was originally supposed to be in the main game as a counterpart to the PC. He was a potential follower who had seen something of the way things were back east, and fully believed the Legion was the way to go as far as stability and the general well-being of humanity in a long term sense.

The whole point of the Legion, originally, was that there were tradeoffs to be made for genuine stability, and that those tradeoffs resulted in a darker shade of gray for some people. As it stands, Raul and a couple of traders at the Fort are the only one who try to tell you how things really are deeper in Legion territory - there are no raiders, no gangs, no thugs. Trading is safe and people don't starve.

There's even a dark read-between-the-lines bit, but even the slaves they take prisoner get medical examinations (the context of this is different in the final game, I'll get there in a minute), which is a lot more than the addicts in Freeside can hope for give how strained even the most well-intentioned Followers are.

So that was the original question, do you pick the pragmatic Legion that is brutal but stable and take Caesar at his word that the future can be better? Do you opt for stasis and side with House to create an independent technopia in a metaphorical snowglobe? Do you side with the NCR, who despite good intentions is already falling prey to the same decadence that led to the fall of the Old World? Or tell the world to screw off and have things your way, with a free and independent Vegas?

Instead lots of that didn't make it because, from what I've heard, the publisher cut game development months ahead of schedule so we're left with them evil babykillin' woman-rapin' hypocrit meanies and the option to be a "greater good" bad guy. Yay.

[Neonivek]

It doesn't help that it feels like the developers weren't talking to eachother...

since if the Legion was meant to be complex and not cartoon evil it REALLY doesn't show.

[Persus13]

There are hints at it. The trader guy just inside the Legion camp is the example that comes to mind. But as Darkmere was saying, a lot of that complexity never made it into the game.