An Evaluation of Fallout New Vegas' DLC

new Vegas DLC has always been regarded as DLC done right its arrival came at a time when the world of video games were starting to push towards the dreaded idea that DLC could be anything from a handful of cosmetics to a very minor addition to the game which cost a couple bucks and made you scratch your head as to why you bought it new Vegas instead embraced that older tradition of expansions adding solid chunks of gameplay stories and new areas to a degree that most regard as essential to the gameplay experience I mentioned this before but I myself only played dead money which seems to be regarded as extremely hit or miss depending on who you ask at the time the idea of DLC was beginning to sour for me and I really didn't have the drive to revisit a game when so many others were arriving on the scene I mean in 2011 there was a bevy of games that caught my interest games like Dark Souls Dead Space 2 portal 2 LA noire Deus Ex and The Witcher 2 all had me distracted and leaving New Vegas on the shelf for a long time after but I think after all this time it's long overdue for me to take a look at these expansions to a game I've praised repeatedly at this point after doing a lot of searching around and hearing you guys out in the comments most people seem to point to the idea that you always do Lonesome Road last old world blues second to last and then there's a toss-up between honest hearts and dead money for first and second that said I think I'll just hit them in the order of their release as that seems to be what the majority thinks before we jump in there was something I complained about in the last video that a lot of you have given your input on my movement speed I have eight agility which doesn't affect movement speed at all but apparently my power armor is what's holding me back from the Usain Bolt levels of speed so I decided to do a little test [Music] a snooze [Music] god damn it's hard to argue with results like that I mean holy [ __ ] that blistering pace right there is actually way way too quick for me I think I'd have trouble controlling my sonic the hedghog levels of speed if I continued unchained like this so I'm gonna keep the power armor on done and one last thing before we get into it between the Honest Hearts and old world blues segments of this video will be a spot for my sponsor if you have any interest in crunchyroll premium at all it helps me out tremendously if you check them out with my link crunchyroll.com slash salt anyways we'll get to that thanks you'll need a cage alright so the Sierra Madre this is the location or rather the goal of the Dead Money DLC checking out the abandoned brotherhood bunker has you stumbling into two rooms the first one contains some kind of vending machine which recycles junk like cigarette packs and turns them at the sierra madre chips the chips can be redeemed for different food items from the looks of it the other room contains a radio some beds and unconsciousness as you pass out you're informed of what exactly the sierra madre was it was to be a grand casino set to open right around the time the bombs fell apparently now it's a desolate death filled area that draws treasure hunters to it but no one has infiltrated its walls at least not yet when you wake up you're greeted by father Elijah's face projected atop a phone he's the Brotherhood elder who reportedly went insane after ordering his men to hold the Helios one power plan against certain death that the NCR was sure to bring upon them he kindly informed you that you are now the proud owner of the latest model of explosive caller a brotherhood of steel favorite he then lets you know that your head is in danger if you don't follow his orders and round up three other prisoners to infiltrate the sierra madre but the real kicker here is that if any of them die everyone dies this news is immediately followed by the fact that just an average radio speaker that's broad testing can cause my color to blow up and that the red clouds surrounding the area is toxic and lethal to most life and that the inhabitants here are mutated into monsters which can't be killed only incapacitated and that there are security holograms which are indestructible beyond switching off their transmitters and all of my gear is gone because the security systems have stripped it from me this DLC sounds like it would be better off with me just walking into a room and getting stabbed to death instead my first Ally that I'm to recruit is dog dog is referred to as loyal with or without his collar a super mutant who will listen to me as long as he isn't hungry further investigation via eavesdropping on dog through the nearby radio signal tells me that he is in fact hungry and that he hopes that the voice doesn't come back which probably means that he says schizophrenic nightkin so crawling through this hazy red hell has me feeling a desire which I actually haven't felt much of in this game looting every single thing including junk knowing how the vending machines work and the fact that I have no way to defend or heal myself does wonders in changing my perspective on looting during this loop fest a shambling green-eyed corpse centers around one of the former residents who is now immortal to some degree I have to say this doesn't even feel like a fallout game at this point but I'm really enjoying it more than I thought I would for now after sneaking by this immortal inhabitant I make it to the police station where an alarm is sounding constantly inside is the aforementioned dog who's trapped in a cage when I investigate the building to try to free him I'm directed by a voice to retrieve a tape and bring it back up to dog upon playing the tape to him his constantly hungry and saddened demeanor shifts to that of the voice which directed me to the tape dogs alternate persona is known as God he appears to be the exact opposite of dog as his name suggests intelligent clever and calculating God has locked himself in this cage as he felt dogs starting to take over from the hunger when dog is fed and satisfied God comes out and assesses the situation when God starts to become hungry dog comes out and listens to everything that Elijah tells him actively trying to earn Elijah affection and looking for his next meal chatting with God gleans a lot of information that Elijah found this place and started forcibly recruiting people to do his work and get into the casino that God has been hoping that Elijah would be the one to awaken him so that he could speak with him that dog has a voracious appetite that has caused him to accidentally eat an explosive collar off of someone's neck when he was feeding and that the so-called ghosts around the area can only be killed off by being hacked into pieces disintegrated or eaten and that they get distracted easily by the holograms God seems to have no interest in talking to you specifically but he does want Elijah I'm guessing to try to free himself from this explosive in his stomach the way that the two switch personalities is at a command which God has pre-recorded on the tape that he had you retrieve on the other hand to switch back to dog I simply have to play Elijah's voice on my pip-boy well God has no intention of coming with you to which you can respond to by simply playing Elijah's voice so that dog doesn't eat you and then telling dog about the key which God hid around his neck I considered this route but I think I'd rather have God on my side like a good Christian boy so I convinced God to come with me as is and he tumultuously agrees for now giving me a stealth bonus and the light step perk this is where the DLC starts to sour a bit so you build up this tense atmosphere of creepy nearly invincible ghoulish ghosts you take away my weapons and make me really want to start sneaking everywhere and then you give me a partner who charges a ghost no matter what completely obliterating any sort of intensity to navigating this area and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't know this would happen my initial instinct was to just send God back to the fountain but I decided it would be fun to listen to him if he accompanied me if the idiot swallowed his collar Oh just got away then the idiots hunger screws it up their taste like copper or old world gold their taste like copper that pip-boy that bit boy maybe hope that pit boy maybe help tear it off your arm the idiot swallowed his collar wear it on my neck that pit boy maybe he'll tear it off your arm wear it on my neck I also figured that wild dog might mow down enemies God would be more stealthy seeing as his [ __ ] perk gives you a bonus to sneak in light step but nope first thing that he does is just blast past me like a homing missile into the nearest ghost and so now I'm like oh gee whiz I wonder if I should use a melee weapon because I'm afraid that other ghosts might hear a gun firing and will get swarmed mind you I have 20 points and melee weapons and a hundred points and guns these things [ __ ] crumpled when I beat the [ __ ] out of them with a lead pipe I am now playing a lesser version of Bioshock so eventually we loudly Drudge our way through the hazy red town disarming traps and all that when we make it to our next ally it turns out to be Dean Domino who you hear singing on the radio often he seems very clever and careful having you sit down in a shaped explosive charge in commanding you to help him get into the sierra madre since I already have God with me he runs off to the fountain and it's off to find the final collared ally I just wish God would stop saying the same lines over and over and over again I mean he says them so frequently that he interrupts his own dialogue mirrors tell me my name when needed and I have a name for you Dean himself has a disappointing absence of unique dialogue don't get me wrong the guy has plenty to tell you in an aggressively sarcastic tone but the stuff that he does tell you is stuff that you know already the cloud is bad ghost people bad vending machines good Sierra Madres for greedy people all that kind of stuff he makes a particular point to repeat that the ghost people are savage monsters that shouldn't be [ __ ] with but the reality of the situation is that for the courier they're just kind of pests at any rate to the next caller this is Christine she was locked up in a malfunctioning auto dock with her vocal cords cut rendering her mute through a series of advanced Naruto hand gestures you convey to her that your collars are linked and she uses universal sign language to tell you all right fam I'll meet you at the fountain she also comes back an interpretive dance as a signal which relates to you that her caller frequency actually dampens the radio signals which can blow your collars up so long as you're within range of each other talking to Christine more at the fountain reveals that she used to be a Brotherhood scribe and that she was separated from her female lover by Elijah I only mentioned that it was a female because Veronica told me a somewhat similar story which makes me think that this is maybe her long-lost lover I also figure out that her vocal cord wounds were a result of the auto doc repeatedly operating over and over and she mimes back that she was knocked out and shoved in there and that she refuses to use another one to repair her wounds because she's scared of auto docks now unfortunately this whole situation is pretty Marv by the amount of reading that you have to do because her model certainly isn't pantomiming any of the actions that the script is telling you about it wouldn't be as big of an issue if the longer blocks of text didn't go quicker than I'd like and it makes even less sense when the shorter blocks of text takes so long that I click them away a lot of the time it just doesn't seem like it would be overly hard to have her perform these actions but we're talking about the finest 2010 technology that Bethesda had to offer obsidian at the time which was honestly closer to subpart 2007 technology really then again these ghost people hop around like they're from a different game completely so I think the tech was there oh well after all this you talked to Elijah who commands you to position everyone to trigger the gala event which marks the opening of the casino as he explains it the event was supposed to be the only thing which caused the sierra madre to open its doors and as such needed a team of people to begin speaking with God after this reveals that dog used to be under the command of the master from Fallout 1 he would obey without question and it hurt God to see Doug being ordered to hurt and kill people in him just doing it without hesitation he's upset with Elijah because Elijah's orders were the first commands which Dawg listened to since then God wants Dawg to be free to be able to live without following orders and hurting others which is surprisingly sad for someone who keeps muttering about wanting to rip the pip-boy off my body weirdly enough God says that he wants to trigger the event so that Elijah comes out but then refuses to do so telling you to have Dawg obey instead I mean I guess dogs the one who has the strength to do what needs to be done but it's kind of weird that God outright refuses to do the thing that Elijah will appear for I don't know what's more interesting here is that Doug mentions that the gala event has been triggered once already and that Elijah disappeared at the time makes me think that he's probably already in the casino after guiding dog over to the switches that he needs to pull and having God come out to do so I returned back to Dean who corroborates my idea that Elijah is in fact trapped within the sierra madre seeing as the gala event runs off the casinos power it also causes the security system to diminish when it's going off this would give some people enough time to slip into the casino but would also lock them in once the power was restored back to full Dean also mentions that he feels like anyone could take his place in this particular endeavor and that his role won't be particularly unique by any means to me it sounds like he'll be a distraction of sorts seeing as the area he's to go to is packed with ghost people fortunately for me dog taught me earlier how to permanently kill off the ghost people which only further reduces their laughable threat to zero despite them being made out to be these unstoppable boogie men we go backstage we avoid the locals after getting to the end goal here Dene is to start up the speaker system as part of the gala which he adamantly declines stating that swarms of ghost people would be on him immediately I tell him that I'll get some Holograms going for him because after all if he dies I die Howard Dean's wacky adventure concludes after I switch on to Graham's and scoot off to Christine well Christine doesn't have much to say so we head straight to where she needs to be which has her putting her technical knowledge to the test at the switching station for someone who can't talk her personality is actually pretty cute a lot like Veronica's her area makes use of the delayed explosions perk as radios are constantly popping up and trying to blow your head clean off your body it wraps up the design aspect of the three separate objectives pretty well as Dean's area has more gas than traps and ghosts and dogs area has more traps and ghosts than gas and radios I'm not crazy about the area design but I guess I wouldn't say it's bad either after you get everyone in place here to climb the bell tower to kick off the gala the way to the bell tower is well it's like everywhere else in this place ghosts radios bear traps out the ass it's pretty wearying at this point as the inspiration to this place has gotten pretty excessive don't get me wrong lots of cool ideas and premise are here but it just gets old after a while the only thing that's really keeping me occupied at this stage is getting into the Sierra Madre I guess something more interesting to note is the fact that even back when this thing was set to open a grand heist was in the works by some of the maintenance workers which is a nice touch apparently even back in the day greed was a big driving factor with the Madre so anyways I get to the top and kick this whole thing off and the entire place starts swarming with ghost people I'm pretty low on ammo at this so I have to duck a few of them before shooting my way out when I make it to the casino I get knocked out again when I awaken Elijah speaks to me and tells me that I need to shut down the security protocols and get the casino functioning as if it were open to do this I have to sneak by these security holograms resetting their patrols and eventually disabling them a terminal in the back tells me about an incident where an elderly woman started climbing the rafters and [ __ ] around which gives me a hint as to where one of these hologram projectors are after shutting them both down I'm able to freely move around the casino except that my companions are located on separate floors their collars are interfering with the different mechanisms which fully allowed the casino to open and the so-called prize is located in the basement of the sierra madre so elijah directs me to either reset their collars or kill them he heavily recommends the latter as their quote unquote of no use anymore I don't think that's what I'm gonna do here well the first companion is dog slash God again he's going through a bit of a psychotic break as dog is trying to burn the casino down hopefully killing himself in the process God on the other hand is trying to stop him and protect him trying to explain how he's always tried to protect him dog is fed up with being controlled and would rather die than continue living this way when I actually get to him and I get spotted dog strikes a match causing the now opened gas valves to ignite and kill us both if I can get to him and talk to him first instead God attempts to get Doug to kill me so that he can't be controlled anymore weirdly enough for everything that God has said the dog while you were listening in before God seems pretty content with his death here if it means burning Elijah with him it's kind of a 180 on that whole sentiment from before but all right through some speech checks I'm able to help dog and God see each other and allow their personalities to merge into a new being thankfully not named goo goo des or dog odd or something the newly whole personality thanks me even though he's forgotten me and where he is he's unsure of what's happening but he knows that I've helped him somehow and now focuses on how weary his body is from the extended torture which was inflicted onto it by dog in an effort to shut out his more intelligent side that was really cool I actually like this outcome a lot the unfortunate part that follows is the fact that ghosts have now broken into the casino because lord knows that nothing makes what you're experiencing in a videogame 200% more interesting than [ __ ] zombies so next up is Dean Domino he's locked up in the backstage surrounded by security holograms who aren't too friendly I'm to sneak around take out the radios grab a holotape of one of Dean's performances and then play it to deactivate the security midway through I find a blackmail tape of Dean urging the girl whose hologram has appeared everywhere around here to continue with their plan in a pretty hostile way after catching up with Dean the whole picture is painted by Hema Veera is the girl's name who's been mentioned quite a lot around here because apparently Sinclair the guy who built this place built it for her he was madly and raptured by her and built the entire area as a monument to his love for her Dean was the one who introduced them and got her to basically wrap Sinclair around her little finger the entire purpose was to rob the casino blind and then make off like the bandits that they were you see Dean Domino is a complete and utter [ __ ] a rotten person to his core the entire reason that he wanted to destroy everything that Sinclair was everything that he built was because Sinclair always had a positive attitude he felt that no matter what happened to him he could always rebuild and make things good again Dean took that as sinclair being incredibly self-absorbed and egotistical to a degree which made him feel like he was better than everyone else around him but most importantly like he was better than Dean though I obviously haven't met Sinclair the irony here is that Dean is easily one of the most self-important people in the game on top of this Dean admits that he was the one who dragged Christine's body away and put her into the auto dock to sever her vocal chords just so that when she eventually recovered she would sound exactly like Veera did you see when this place was built for Veera her voice was the key which could access all of the important bits of the sierra madre including its vault below after spending some time with sinclair Veera felt like he was too nice of a guy to go through with this heist which incurred the wrath of Dean to a point of blackmailing her with footage of her getting high on Kem's as a Hollywood actress obviously the bombs falling thwarted the whole plan until Elijah and I came along and Dean decided that either piecing together Vera's voice with various old footage or using Christine would work to continue the heist where it left off if Dean decided to get confrontational I probably would have blown his head off at this point but as it stands he gave me the key and I decided to leave him be I don't know why the devs decided to put this loud popping audio filter on Elijah's voice but sweet [ __ ] it hurts my ears at full volume what a shitty decision it's not like it's immersive or anything well Christine's voice has recovered in the form of beerus at this point as she talks to you over the intercom for the first time upon reaching her floor informing you of the hologram security's presence around the area well it isn't normal security it's a recording of Vera's last moments sealed away after the bombs fell and it is [ __ ] creepy I'm telling you seeing some [ __ ] guard hologram throwing its hands up like it's having an aneurysm is absolutely nothing compared to listening to this girl plead for a life falling you around calling you Sinclair good God eventually I do activate a terminal to stop the Vera Grahams from attacking me and find Christine now that she can talk it's a lot easier to have a full conversation she explains that she's been tracking Elijah for a while now that he went nuts at one point and began committing horrible crimes across the wasteland one of which was tramping her inside an old medical facility and performing experiments on her until she couldn't read or write anymore she can still do math but everything else seems to be out she also alludes to another DLC character that I have very minimal knowledge of which she describes as a courier who rescued her interestingly enough she doesn't actually seem upset when I inform her what Dean did to her stating that she's done much worse for lesser reasons cold-blooded man I retrieved the key from her and now it's finally time to confront Elijah after maneuvering through the area's final set of radios and Holograms I reached the vault where a message to Veera from sinclair awaits on the terminal front and center turns out that Veera told sinclair about the heist which Dean put her up to which sinclair already knew about ahead of time anyways he knew that she didn't love him the same way that he loved her but he's still persevered and created a place to protect her from the bombs unfortunately she didn't figure out how to access the vault for safety not that it really would have mattered seeing his help never arrived anyways it's a pretty sad story but very human shortly after Elijah shows up on the intercom and tells you not to move any further and that the vaults riches were his in his alone just as Christine predicted the dialog with Elijah is pretty interesting for one he gives you [ __ ] for mindlessly following what your pip-boy tells you to do which is hilariously meta because going back to something like morrowind with no compass markers is a very hard adaptation for me personally after playing so many hours of more modern games but then old Elijah goes off the deep end after this raving about spreading the cloud of death over all of the mojave killing everyone with ghost people and Holograms until only he's alive what the [ __ ] I get that he's supposed to have lost his mind but how does he go from we need to make the Brotherhood the strongest to kill everyone except for me what a shitty generic motivation then he goes what I really wanted from this place was the weapons and security plus the holograms are like the greatest weapon ever dude just wind went up and look at it go except you can just shoot the projector and the thing will ye its last ha so I'm not sure it's as powerful as he's hoping for then he talks about using the madres vending machines to start a new nation after decimating the mojave this is a little more interesting of a motive but he also mentions that the colors are what will keep people in line that by fitting everyone with explosive collars he can start a civilization where everyone cooperates he explains that he more or less learned how to control basic human greed as the first sets of people that he made go through this process kept killing each other despite the collars being around their necks so he linked them all to make them cooperate instead which okay so you say you cracked human greed by linking colors sure now you want to start a nation with the same idea how humans apparently will kill each other if they aren't linked but if you linked every [ __ ] person in a nation then one person's death would be death of the whole nation even if you did it in cells of like I don't know 10 people who are linked all it takes is one [ __ ] from another cell to pop off ten people in one shot none of this makes sense it's honestly like the devs went hey look at all this cool [ __ ] that we put into this DLC now make all of it part of his motivation anyways I talked Elijah into coming down after he threatens to leave me here until he can test the vault security measures by sending people in here until he's absolutely sure that I won't be useful anymore from here I can face him in combat or I can just hoof it out of the vault locking him inside of it I opted for the latter leaving him to his fate the end reel plays out showing that dog went on to wander while occasionally thanking the courier despite not really knowing what he did Dean left the madre to try to pilfer new vegas casinos instead which is odd because i was under the impression that the guy wanted to rob the sierra madre mostly because sinclair was the one who built it not simply because it was a casino I mean Dean Domino was super rich and famous just it makes no sense it's like they forgot their own motivation for this guy and then finally Christine decided to stay behind and become the warden of the sierra madre protecting it from outsiders and eventually becoming akin to a god among the ghost people which is super badass a lot of the ending dialog makes mention of the divide which i know is another dlc area i guess it's kind of neat that it previews what you'll run into out there but I'd honestly rather have no preview into other DLCs it's just my personal preference of someone who likes to go into these things totally blind what sucks is that I can't tell Veronica about Christine at all but I can tell her about Elijah she watches the message that Elijah left her and basically sums it up as a goodbye also apparently he taught her how to fight better - what a strange message well goodbye forever also Oh yours a boxing lesson huh what's really cool about this whole thing is the amount of endings that there are to this one DLC you've got the standard stuff but then you've got the trap for Dean it's interesting because there's two messages on this terminal right and one of them is his personal accounts which was the trap for Dean that was suppose lucky man but the other one is a message to veera basically saying hey don't read my personal accounts because that's a trap that's going to lock Dean in don't read them you're kind of taken a 50/50 shot of Dean opening up the first one and actually reading through it or just going straight for the personal accounts and then the other ending happens if my reputation with the NCR is low enough in this one I get to conquer the Mojave alongside Elijah with his made-up fantasy land Star Wars [ __ ] even if I don't really agree with the endings it is a nice touch to have them there personally I thought I would dislike dead money and while it isn't my favorite it isn't that bad either I got pretty bored with the Red Cloud area of town and it's back and forth fetch quests but I had a lot of fun with a casino itself I think the big bad ghost enemies are laughable especially when you can just kill them later and I always found the holograms to be more intimidating and the thing about dead money is that it's set up to be a pretty brutal challenge they strip you down make you start over and then they kind of give you everything that you need to win anyways and I'm not saying that they needed to make it some ridiculous struggle but I'd say after the first 15 to 20 minutes I was pretty well off on equipment I mean [ __ ] I think I printed like 40 stimpacks with the madre chips and wound up using maybe ten of them I like the character is especially dog all of the story elements were pretty damn fun from Dean and his pettiness leading him to [ __ ] up Christine's voice to Christine's staying behind and becoming this goddess among the dead to God trying his best to help his other half what I didn't like was unfortunately the main payoff for the entire thing Elijah's motivations and plants I get that he went crazy but I feel like just going oh he's [ __ ] nuts now is kind of a cop-out instead of writing a story that actually makes me consider joining him or at least understanding it man I will say that it was kind of amusing hearing him rapidly sprint through the five stages of grief afterwards over the radio signal though the callers were a mistake why would I kill you after all you've done after all we've done together make your own army but either way let's carry on to the next installment Honest Hearts so honest heart steaks up north in Utah you're told about the Happy Trails caravan company organizing an expedition up there by the silkiest smoothest 11:59 p.m. voice in the whole game Jed Masterson you may actually recognize his voice as the entire local population in gta5 huh I do believe you could play no stone don't even speak English anymore his radio message tells you that they're looking for people who know what they're doing Caravan guards prospectors and couriers for some reason plus whoever has a pip-boy someone they're especially looking for honestly all they really needed to say was that they needed someone who's been shot in the head and lived for this to suit me any more than it already does well when you arrived at the cave up north Jed fills you in a little more about the upcoming excursion into Utah he says the goal is to reach Sian and New Canaan with bonus pay for doing both but the kicker here is that he tells you not to mention Joshua Graham at all Graham was Caesar's right-hand man from what I know before he failed it's something crucial and was set on fire and left to die his name was stripped from their history and he was only referred to as the burned man from then onwards Jed tells you that his name scares the [ __ ] out of the tribals around the Utah area and that it makes everyone at New Canaan uncomfortable Jed then tells you that their route to Salt Lake City got cut off and that the people of New Canaan stem from some old religious group knowing anything about religions in Utah I place my money on Mormonism air Jed doesn't know about it himself and as an action set foot in the area beyond the outskirts which explains why you wanted access to a pip-boy so badly for navigation the final thing that he mentions is that Utah is completely untamed packed with roving gangs of Raiders tribals and warlords hell even Arizona under Caesar is safer he does state that we'll try to avoid all that but I'm guessing that won't last long beyond Jett Masterson is uninspired Caravan guard number one and her sidekick fantastic - you looking for trouble bud I got plenty to spare you want to know what I do but anything I [ __ ] want I'm a [ __ ] storm of death once I got jumped by three death jaws they're like death claws but bigger teeth I grew a third nut that glows in the dark yeah Ricky's here because he has a Pip Boy and it doesn't even function so I get the option to boot him out of the caravan or make him carry my [ __ ] I think I'll opt for the latter it might be fun having this psycho fueled spud around last thing to worry about is unfortunately my weight limit just like real life apparently you need to have under 100 weight to go on the expedition so my big heavy armor plans are once again foiled if only this poor guy knew just how quickly I moved without it he's gonna rue the day that I make it to New Canaan in two seconds flat all right enough of the preamble here's some different preamble instead so Joshua Graham was a new Canaanite he was said to be the most ruthless and sadistic member of caesar's legion one who easily asserted his dominance among the legions ranks the rest of New Canaan was a pretty tough group who looked down for one another and didn't mind trading with others so long as they treated them fairly which is why they were ashamed and nervous at the mention of Graham well ol Josh got his cheeks beat at the first battle of hoover dam and caesar decided to make an example of him by covering him in pitch lighting him on fire and throwing him off the Grand Canyon this [ __ ] somehow lived supposedly carrying on as the burned man and roaming his home in Utah since after that caesar's done his best to erase Grahams name and his new moniker from history which is pretty sweet foreshadowing from the devs and a pretty telling weakness about Caesar for someone who's this ruthless for to be spoken of aloud actually makes him look like he's afraid of Grandma I like that I also really like the look of Zion it's one of the best things about DLC in these games the experimentation of new settings anyways you know how I took all that time talking to these guys and getting to know them and learning their backgrounds yeah they're [ __ ] dead these members of the white legs tribe come out and just dome them all and I return the favor something tells me the difficulty of this DLC is a bit toned down from Dead Money seeing as actually one shot them no matter where I hit them poor Ricky dude ain't even carried my stuff yet I also feel like this DLC is moving quick seeing as resident Native American follows-chalk pops out right away and goes yeehaw come speak to Joshua Graham yeah I did this guy's companion perk allows me to Far Cry 3 my way up to beacons and reveal part of the map which is cool I guess I mean I never use it but still it's cool so truck fills you in on what's been going on around here he talks about the big Horner's getting pissed because some one of their young is missing he discusses how he's not yet a full-fledged Scout but most importantly he tells you about Graham and Caesar basically Graham found the dead horse tribe when he was still with Caesar and he's now a part of it after his defeat in his return he was a changed man and decided to lead the dead horse tribe away from the Legion to become their own entity well the white legs came down from the Salt Lake area and just rolled over New Canaan which again fits into the theme of everything you know about this DLC changing at a rapid pace at any rate let's head out hope you don't mind getting wet I know this sounds really silly but my mind was blown when the weather changed to rain without any mods maybe I'm just easily impressed I don't know I just really love rain and video games man so we make it to the dead horses who greet me by sending this goofball out to wave ecstatically and then run back into the cave when I make it in this girl speaks German at me and then directs me to the back of the cave to meet Joshua Graham he immediately gives me the fallout welcome by sending me out on a fetch quest for pre-war stuff he also keeps checking his stock of pistols repeatedly it's a cool animation to CNA 2010 to 2011 Bethesda published game but it loses its shine when you realize that he's not picking up a new gun from a pile every time Graham also fills you in a little more about what happened here but doesn't get into a lot of specifics so we'll skip talking about that for now what he does tell you is that there are four tribes that live here one of which consists of only him and a man named Daniel who was around when New Canaan fell to the white legs Graham won't talk about himself beyond the fact that he's very religious at least not until I help out Daniel but first I actually have some side quests to do in this DLC after communicating with the locals here in the dead horse tribe yeah hi boot holy hi hi nice me out here yo EJ sure she Mila yeah big on it I swing out to try to take care of this big Horner issue is there a particular reason why everything's a radioactive green out here weird anyways the Bighorn request is pretty short and cute you find this little fella out here and you give him some banana yucca to follow you a few times and then cart them back to their mom then it's off to search for pre-war parts this has me scavenging some parts from a school bus full of dead kiddos an old lodge a general store and a ranger station it's funny to watch Casa doors have these obviously flying capabilities but then being restricted to one plane of movement after this it's off to Daniel with all my cool supplies Daniel is more or less the leader of the sorrows and Graham is the leader of the dead horses when I get to sorrows territory a lady greets me by chasing me through their camp and lets me know how I'm welcome and how English is a holy language to them and lots of other dull and boring info I'm not trying to be purposefully dismissive here I just don't have a lot of interest in this particular set of factions at least not yet I do really like the landscape though it's definitely one of the prettier parts of a Fallout game that I've traversed when I finally do meet Daniel he gives me that same kind of God is good save all people everyone is innocent and can be saved kind of warm and stuff he tells me that he's base a pacifist for the most part until white legs attack directly then he'll defend the sorrows he believes that attacking the white legs and fighting back will only lead to the sorrows being a more warlike tribe instead of them maintaining their innocence he also explains that Caesar is the one prodding the white legs to eliminate all of the new Canaanites I imagine despite Joshua Graham good God if you wanted to be this efficient with your destruction of someone why wouldn't you just slit the guys throat or something I mean sure no one would expect a non-fire guy tossed into a canyon to survive but it seems more likely than a bullet to the head I'll wait anyways Daniel wants to get the sorrows out of the lodge and further east where it's too wild for the white legs to pursue them my part in this is locating a map of an area further east known as the Grand Staircase in addition to this I get some more side quests which involve me dealing with some white legs camps and taking out some yaoguai I'm to take the lady from before waking cloud with me on this endeavor her perk decreases the perception of white legs which is actually pretty unique in that it doesn't simply give me a stealth increase on my way out Graham drops the sickest biblical lyrics that Utah has to offer which basically translate to Daniel's a little [ __ ] trying to flee from this place we should go [ __ ] up the white legs and keep Zion for ourselves instead righteous I'll deal with that later I got big mutated bears to blast after collapsing the cave I go to smoke the white leg camps there's also a pacifist route here which has me taking their war totems instead waking cloud tells me that if something happens to their totems they believe that the war excursion is doomed to fail and that they'll retreat for now flag captured before I go for the map of the Grand Staircase I want to pay a visit to the shaman here who can teach me how to stick my hand into a deceased bears claw and use it like a boxing glove hola outsider welcome child of omens why do you talk like that this guy wants me to take drugs kill a bear yeah burn down Paris punch orphans wait what drink tea is strong tea with wisdom strong ways of them spirit you see a bear you go to okay fine ghost of she lay ghost to rest this your quest a bear here Hagen gift to remind you of vision well that was a journey after grabbing the map of the grand staircase there's really only a handful of side quests to complete before the final mission takes place this really only entails some talking to your two companions and the two new Canaanites really nothing extraordinarily unique by any stretch of the imagination what is interesting is the background information which Graham finally gives me although he doesn't explain the emotions he felt or the reasons for what he did he does explain that he was a translator who went with Caesar before he was Caesar into the Grand Canyon to interact with the nearby tribes the rest of stuff that I covered in the last video but Joshua basically says that he trekked for three months after being burned all the way back to New Canaan where everyone accepted him again which is odd considering what Jed told me earlier about not mentioning him then again he never set foot in there apparently I don't know he also tells you that while he thinks higher of the NCR then Caesar obviously does he still believes that they're a very flawed group that values money and personal gain more than giving to those in need grandma's will briefly likens house to the Legion in the manner of how he dealt with nearby tribes and mentions both the divided and the big empty as places which the NCR had to deal with in order to get reinforcements and supplies to the first battle of hoover dam i'm pretty excited to get to those because i've got to be honest here i'm not a fan of honest hearts probably even less so than dead money don't get me wrong the area is beautiful like i mentioned before but the story is very boring i was hoping that joshua graham would be some kind of super interesting character who was out here trying to rebuild himself to maybe somehow get back at caesar or something along those lines maybe that was just to anime to hope for but honestly the guy was lit on fire and thrown down a canyon and then he lived the anime levels were already stacked from the start and then on top of that the biggest conflict here is the decision of siding with daniel and evacuating the valley or siding with graham and not being a [ __ ] about this whole ordeal you've got two entire tribes a courier who's proven himself ridiculously capable and a man who used to lead the legions men and you're gonna run away from what's essentially paradise to hide in some overgrown woods it makes no sense and then on top of that this guy's all self-righteous about following God and protecting people's innocence while doing [ __ ] like hiding the fact that waking clouds husband is dead because he doesn't want her to be less effective [ __ ] is unbelievable and I see no reason to side with Daniel at all so the grand finale for Joshua's side goes like this sneak attack sneak attack sneak attack falling rock sneak attack kill the war chief I mean it was fallout combat there's not much more to be said about it you can choose to spare this salt upon wounds guy if you want but I had to prove I was the better salt so I gave him the old one-two buckle my shoe and that's it man the ending slideshow plays out and tells you how the two tribes United and killed off the white legs eventually becoming more militaristic in nature this killed Daniel inside and he went back home with regrets for the rest of his life I'd almost feel bad for him if we were in a normal world but I honestly don't know how he's managed to survive this long with such a light-hearted view of the reality that he's in maintaining innocence is what gets people killed in the wasteland just look at vault 3 it's the reason I didn't send chalk out to the Mojave to explore but either way Graham continued on with his guidance of the tribes settling differences in crushing their enemies he no longer felt gratification in the act but he felt like he was doing the right thing for the right people which no I don't know I just wish they had fleshed out Joshua Graham a little more hell I wish they would have fleshed out honest hearts more in general he was just very straightforward which isn't a bad thing by itself but then when you combine it with the story of this mean tribe is picking on these two other tribes do we run or do we fight I just I don't think that's good enough I started this dlc by hearing about this interesting new land with this trading hub of religious people and these vicious tribals who are pestering them that sounds pretty damn interesting but then when I arrived it's like JK those people that were supposed to be badasses at defending themselves died to this tribal ambush apparently they had never thought to try to catch them by surprise maybe they were lining up in a row in a field and marching at each other with muskets before this even then I was thinking I'd at least get to go to New Canaan it's just absurd to set me up with all of this intricate world building and background information and then just sweep the story's legs out from underneath it the best part about this DLC was easily the environment but it really wasn't enough for me to care more than a little about it alright let's talk about crunchy roll so crunchy roll is a site that's been around for a long ass time now and for good reason if you're one of those people who need to catch an episode of an anime right as it comes out then crunchyroll premium is going to be your best friend these dudes work to get their episodes out as soon as one hour after they bared in Japan via simulcast and all of it comes in my favorite flavor had free HD 1080p I grew up with a lot of older stuff but was still kind of leery of some of the newer stuff until about eight years ago when I gave it a shot and to my surprise I found myself binging a ton of titles for months on end one of my favorites of all time is hunter hunter which I initially was kind of lukewarm about he has this almost generic kind of kid-friendly vibe to it at first like nothing particularly enthralling is going to happen but then it really opens up to these ideas that I never would have thought of myself it encompasses a lot of what anime is to me as an art medium and it tells its story masterfully it's kind of hard to talk about an anime without spoiling it but I strongly encourage you to check it out if you haven't already if you want to help me out use my link to get crunchyroll premium ad free for 14 days sign up at crunchyroll.com slash salt or click the link in the description you can watch on pretty much any device that you can think of and it helps out the channel without you having to spend a dime that's crunchyroll.com slash salt thanks guys all right old world blues time I've spent so much time in this video out of heavy armor that I'm kind of thinking about just dropping my Brotherhood armor anyways but I really do like that +1 strength that's on it I guess it's not the end of the world if I drop it but whatever so old world blues begins with you stumbling upon a crashed satellite which activates around midnight when you wait until then it projects a beam of light displaying a big fat eyeball moving around on an empty billboard across from the satellite when you examine it you walk out in a mothership Zeta fashion not quite as gravity Beamish but kind of along those lines the slideshow that you're given explains to you that a bunch of 21st century scientists convened at a place called Big Mountain back in the day with their tasks being to solve the world's problems many leaps forward in technology were made but the world seemed too geared towards war so they decided to start focusing on what they could do to help the planet in that regard instead well the bombs eventually fell and all the scientists for the most part died off with their experiments going dark with the rest of the earth big mountain or big empty as it's known now lies supposedly dormant I wake up feeling heavier with surgical scars all over my body and a patient gown on my only objective is probably my favorite objective that I've ever received find out where the hell I am well I'm in some kind of kitchen area with a little robot named muggy all of the machines here seem to be missing some kind of personality tape so that's unique but apparently I haven't seen anything yet as I stumble into the hands down weirdest [ __ ] encounter I've ever had in one of these games these guys are robots with brains and they refer to me as a lobotomy constantly going on about how they remove my brain and how they're surprised I could understand them I guess my brain has been replaced by Tesla coils and I'm in some kind of pacification field that makes it so that I can't draw my weapon or feel hostile in any sort of way yeah I imagine being able to do start destroying [ __ ] here what kind of ruin the DLC at some point this other Robo brain person starts yammering over the monitor about how they're going to be over running this lab called the think tank with Robo scorpions and I'm just doing my best to keep up with all this wacky nonsense but I like it so far I got a hand it to the Obsidian these are all certainly unique DLC areas also these guys replace my spine and heart giving me further benefits here I was worried about my plus one strength modifier asking you shall receive apparently these new perks in the form of a new body are reminding me a lot of the old man's War series by John Scalzi great series of books if you haven't read them yeah so my brain is now in the hands of the nutjob who phoned in earlier dr. Mobius I guess that's one of my main objectives now as they want my help to stop him and get my brain back judging by the way they remarked on his message being always the same I'd wager Mobius is either dead or having some kind of trouble and his message has been repeating to these idiots ever since then these guys want me to grab a bunch of Technology for them since I have legs and hands and all that cool [ __ ] also I can't leave because apparently the field outside will shut me off and I'll be transported back to the place where I started but most importantly these guys do not stop [ __ ] talking [Music] this is as long as a Metal Gear Solid cutscene dude eventually they do stop though and I'm free to start exploring the big empty properly this place at first glance is nothing special it seems to be a research base filled with metal pipes and stone structures with little patches of blue fake grass but then you start stumbling upon the enemies you got the standard night stalkers but then you got these robot dogs who bark sonic waves at you you got lobotomize who look like psychotic prison escapees you got these weird skeleton things that are wearing these ridiculous Martian spacesuits they're all pretty neat and they keep me occupied on my job from one facility to the next the first facility that I wind up hitting houses three pieces of armor which forms some kind of futuristic stealth suit the pieces are all right there at the start but you get the option to go further in for some testing and upgrading how can I resist the tests themselves are the same run over and over but with some added variables which makes them a bit dull by the third or so iteration but the rewards are so worth it by the end of this training I've got a suit with +25 sneek plus one agility plus one perception and plus 20% attack speed I was attacked by dr. Eggman's dumbass robotic Tonka truck scorpions partway through but it was actually more amusing than intimidating as it's supposed to be these guys did a really good job of taking that cheesy Mystery Science Theater type of movie and adapting it to fallout and I'm having a lot of fun so far well the amusement continues as I hit the next couple of facilities to retrieve the stuff these guys want the big satellite dish is nothing special and ends with more fisher-price scorpions popping out to try to zap me then the next facility teaches me how Robo dogs the walking skeleton suits and the Robo brains are made [Music] alive for the first time ever what is this strange new world around me what is it bold in store for a dreamer such as myself most of these facilities have various background information on the scientists who sent me on this mission and what they were up to when they were still presumably human and it's all pretty interesting and nonsensical [ __ ] that ramps up into Fisto levels of light-hearted comedy but really there isn't actually a ton of content here in terms of meaningful questing what obsidian did here was create a big sand box filled with ridiculous things to explore find and interact with if I had a mind to just crush the main quest of this DLC without talking to any of the robot scientists or doing any other exploring I'd be done with this within an hour I'd wager but if you do want to extend your visit to the big empty much of it is laced with searching around for these little personality chips which turn your living area into pee-wee's Playhouse you've got the book chute which annihilates books and sounds oddly like Jerry Seinfeld has proved that introducing outside thoughts confuses the brain you got a jukebox which can upgrade your zappy gun with different sound waves you got the robot named monkey who only wants mugs to clean you got to separate light switches which enhance some of your abilities if you bask in their glow you got an auto dock which can reset your build one time change your appearance heal you and give you some really cool implants you got the the seed cloner sweet merciful [ __ ] you got the sink sink which is it's just it's just got water you can refill your bottles there too and finally you've got an average toaster I am online once again a toaster is just a death ray with a smaller power supply I am the scourge of all small appliances I'm [ __ ] live for this you want some weapon schematics I can show you some [ __ ] weapon schematics you want a superheated power fist again this constant upgrading of the sink probably doubles the amount of time you'll be spending on the old world blues DLC but the singular goal of restoring all of these psychotic robots in the sink actually as you covering and exploring most of the big empty for yourself quite a bit of it points you towards the adventures of Elijah and Christine Elijah was out here doing his crazy guy research and found a concentration camp full of Chinese prisoner ghouls from the war the soldiers here used explosive collars to keep their prisoners in line which is where Elijah got the idea from he also mentions the other courier a few times so I'll be meeting later Andy thinks he's being watched as he saw the glint of a sniper rifle scope on the distance judging by Christine's armor lying here I'd imagine she was the one who was tracking him at the time personally I enjoyed seeing the different experiments happening in this loony bin with my personal favorite enemies being these [ __ ] crazy-looking securitrons and roaming corpse suits these things came into existence because these geniuses here thought it would be a good idea to design autonomous suits that conform to human bodies in a way to help soldiers who are injured still fight and/or flee the battlefield when it was found out that they still worked on dead people it was actually marketed as a feature which is morbidly funny speaking of enemies though the difficulty of these foes are pretty brutal and there's a lot of them I honestly don't know if I would have made it through this without dying if I hadn't switched over to energy weapons because these robots and night stalkers are no joke anyways let's start getting to these scientists they all have their own side quests and personalities and they're all pretty eccentric in their own ways dr. Boreas is a loud scientist who talks like he's announcing a movie trailer at all times he apparently has some issues with his past particularly with high school as he's taken all of the jealousy he felt during that time towards the popular kids and used that rage to experiment on all sorts of he's almost certainly a textbook case of a psychopath as he describes not only the fact that he created Cazadores and night stalkers but that the scientists used to just unleash experiments on small and unsuspecting American towns just to see what would happen he does have a bit of a character arc when he starts to feel a deep sense of regret for turning his own dog into an experiment specimen and starts to regret being in big empty at all which kind of made me feel sad a little I don't like dr. Boris dr. aid on the other hand well he speaks in robco sound frequencies I think it's kind of hard to parse exactly what he's saying but my character seems to understand him the more he interacts with eight he seems to be the scientist who was involved in experimenting with sound as he was the mind behind the sound gun which I've been using to destroy force fields around the area he's happy you've gotten it functioning with a full capacity but he was also the one who got it started yeah that's uh it's a little weird meanwhile dr. dalla is extraordinarily weird she's got a very underlying sexual need to explore the human body and not even in like a insert my rod into her air ducts kind of way but more like a I breathing heavily and kafka thing that gets her fired up she's the expert on Lambada mites and human behavior along with the head mineralogist she also tells you about the other courier who came around and was looking for a specific career stating that the conversation was erased as it was deemed too dangerous to continue to possess the memory of she's terrified of dr. Mobius as the rest of these guys are for the most part and tells you to ask dr. Rowe about the other visitors and the attack that one of them launched on big empty well the perpetrator behind the attack was none other than Elijah who escaped the think tank in seconds destroyed dr. eight stalking capabilities rewired dr. Rose controlled the train system crashed all the trains experimenting on the ghoul prisoners with bomb collars destroyed all of the robot security that was sent after him and then escaped holy [ __ ] Elijah was a badass a lunatic but definitely a badass one anyways dr. o doctor zero as he wants to be called is probably my favorite of these roving idiots talking him through his name as you pointing out the very obvious solution of putting a slash through his name to differentiate between the confusion that these guys have over his name and what he actually wants to be called his specialty is robotics are rather breaking robotics pretend I broke one of the monitors dr. o is probably the only robot who doesn't seem outright terrified at the idea of dr. Mobius and is more jealous of him and his robo scorpions than anything else all right finally we have the head honcho dr. Klein he tries to elaborate more on the courier who visited but doesn't remember what the conversation entailed only that the courier probably left with knowledge that he shouldn't have left with client also seems a little scared of Mobius but regards him as more of a dick who doesn't know as much as he does which couldn't be further from the truth as every little scrap of information that Klein gives you points to the fact that Mobius probably came up with every single useful thing that's happened here he was behind the talking robot personalities which literally room the lobotomize and the fences to keep everyone without a brain from escaping which surround the perimeter of big MT judging by the way Klein lies about everything it's a good assumption that mobius got fed up with these morons and left rather than being kicked out like Klein suggests after I get Klein to stop babbling about all of this nonsense he starts babbling instead about the parts that he had me find which he seems to have had no plans for so I get to suggest some things to get him started and he takes all the credit I can see why Mobius left now so my mission is to go kick mobius has asked for these guys even though I'm more inclined to join him at this rate well the big stupid Robo scorpion I'm confronted with actually gives me an opportunity to start dumping all the grenades I've been stocking into it which is nice this actually felt like the closest thing to a boss fight I've had in this game honestly and the sheer amount of stimpaks and radaway i've accumulated comes into effect any more encounters like this and I'm actually going to need to start buying these things again so Mobius is yeah he's [ __ ] completely nuts too but he's smart I love Mentats delicious and smarty he's basically been pulling the strings on these other guys at the think tank for quite some time because at some point he realized that while they were smart they were also dangerous and that is true all of the [ __ ] that I've seen here and the things that they've created which even now roamed the wasteland and destroyed people's lives is staggering so Mobius took it upon himself to reprogram their brains in their robotic shells and have been running their behavior on a loop to keep them from [ __ ] everything up outside of big empties walls he knew that they would eventually figure out what was going on if he didn't distract them so he railed a line of psycho and sent a pre-recorded message to their base about destroying them and set it to replay over and over all while threatening them with the idea that his Robo scorpions could somehow SAP and devour their intelligence oh I was probably tripping hard on psycho when I sent that to work myself up to it not usually violent except when I am out when I arrived I threw a wrench into the entire loop because they had been reprogrammed to think that only big MT existed and I was proof of another world outside of theirs because of my bullet wounds in my brain the auto doc which normally lobotomized humans with no extra frills somehow managed to lobotomize me and fill my head with the fully functioning replacement instead of dooming me to wander the wasteland as a vegetable Mobius knew that it would only be a matter of time before the think tank figured out how to reverse engineer this process which would allow them to transplant their own brains into a human body and then escape big MT so in Mobius is last broadcast he subliminally planted in their minds the tools necessary to sustain a life while a brain was being planted back into a human skull so that they couldn't use that technology for themselves unfortunately there was a bit of an oversight as they wanted me to retrieve the blueprints to build these said technology as well that means my plan is a total failure at any rate after I'm done talking to Mobius I have a discussion with my brain you know I've had some amused chuckle throughout this whole DLC maybe a few smiles but it was right after this conversation with my brain where I had to convince it to come back with me to flush itself back into the vents of the think tank and infiltrate the ducts while I go in and kick some robot ass and I spin around and my [ __ ] stealth suit asks me do you like me I just [ __ ] lost it the sheer absurdity of this entire DLC is just joke after joke after joke and for a while I kind of went through it with a wry smile it's good this DLC is good it's not great it's not an amazing work of art it's not some revelatory shining example of conflict among two strong groups of well written characters it's dumb and goofy and probably about as perfect as you could expect something of its nature to be and hey I actually did enjoy talking to mobius and figuring out why all of this area is the way that it is you can't ask for much more than that when all is said and done I can retrieve my heart and spine with even more perks over my synthetic versions I'll be it with some caveats and confront Klein my three avenues consist of talking him into thinking that I am dr. Mobius convincing him to confer with his colleagues who all side with me after I've helped them out or fighting the think tank the first two options in the exact same way with the exact same speech given by Kline but I like the idea of all the other scientists taking my side here after all is said and done the slideshow for the DLC plays describing every bit of robotic personality I interacted with and telling of the big empty becoming the place that it was designed to be an area meant to spread helpful science across the wasteland well besides all the Robo dogs and Robo brains that were released afterwards also I forgot my brain I don't have much more to say about this DLC that I haven't already except that I enjoyed it thoroughly it was fun it was very unique and I didn't think that anything like it was going to come out of this game I guess that's just me doubling down on the uniqueness thing whatever let's finish this thing so the start of Lonesome Road doesn't give me some preamble type slideshow like the other DLCs have I simply walk into this hellscape of post-apocalyptic magnitude this brings me to a long abandoned packed with dead Scouts and see our soldiers robot security and Eddie in the last video I mentioned that Eddie doesn't really have much of a background story well he starts to develop one now as I release his counterpart into the world to help me get through this bunker a scientist by the name of dr. Whitley was working on Eddie upgrading him to give him access to crack encrypted data and stuff like that the Eddie here is a lot more animated than his mojave counterpart giving off excited sad angry and even embarrassed beeping at your questions and statements at one point he plays back a log of another Enclave doctor hurting him under the orders of Colonel autumn to enhance his navigation capabilities the bunker is also occasionally graffiti'd with different messages to a courier I'm assuming the one who's been mentioned repeatedly at this point while that curiosity is answered as soon as I leave the bunker as the courier ulysses begins to speak to me through Eddie his voice is powerful and intimidating and his message is muddled he tells you that he's been tracking you for a while before eventually deciding to wait for you to come to him he was the one that was supposed to retrieve the platinum chip but instead put that burden on you in the hopes that it would kill you for some reason he says that I'm more dangerous than any of the other threats in the mojave which is actually the first time I've been given a credit like that honestly it's kind of refreshing what's weird is that he sent my assumed death up before I ever made any impact on the mojave so there's either something happening with my past or something that he knows that I don't the mystery is enough to immediately inflect a tone on this dlc which none of the others have even come close to Dead Money had something happening to you something tangible honest hearts had a story to tell involving someone with an interesting background story that you could find out yourself before starting the dlc and the group's the person surrounded himself with old world blues had this kind of intrigue though with a lot lighter tone obviously Lonesome Road it's like the devs were pushing this idea in your face of this is it it's the first DLC where you aren't trapped you can walk away at any time you want it's up to you if you want the answers that a divided Harbor in the cryptic nature of Ulysses and what he wants is unparalleled in terms of these DLCs I stated that his message is muddled because he claims that he doesn't want you dead personally that he has no interest in killing you but that he does want the environment that I found myself in to kill me in his stead he tells you that he took up the name ulysses from the Civil War general ulysses s grant who fought to unite the two flags of the Union and the Confederacy under one banner and he claims that while house is a dangerous person who would see the entire mojave turned into new vegas that his perceived power is nothing but lights he instead seems to give you credit as having power enough to be dangerous interesting ulysses goes on to explain how the divide has claimed the lives of many and crn legion soldiers turning them into more than ghouls that the radiation here is extraordinary due to the nukes that were housed here underground and to get to him I need to find the trigger for these underground nukes and dispose of them so it's often to this absolutely decimated tract of land which immediately starts pinging my Geiger counter with radiation warnings it's not that bad though especially with radix I also encounter a couple of marked men right off the bat which opened fire on me they're the same flavor of ghoulish men that I encountered in the bunker and seemed to have their faculties intact enough to operate weaponry their armor reflect either NCR or Legion and just their existence is almost profound and that they're basically dead men walking there are two banners now United in death much like Ulysses seems to preach about navigation of this scrap is actually probably the most pleasing that it's ever been as there doesn't seem to be a ton of boundaries at first glance it looks like you might have to take some weird abstract route to get to where you need to be but for some reason despite all of my conditioning by these games to teach me that jumping at weird angles will only push me out of bounds in some odd developer map I still always try it out anyways and this time I'm actually rewarded for climbing up junk into new areas don't get me wrong there is definitely a fair amount of non descript on climb above grey walls but the other parts I can traverse are pretty cool additionally the way to proceed is taking this detonator and setting off nuclear warheads to clear the way which is very flashy and very Bethesda yes I know it's developed by Obsidian don't worry I'm aware I didn't change my mind suddenly but it's also very stupid I mean I'm like 50 yards away from this thing and it explodes like Pearl Harbor and I'm just unharmed and then there's hardly any additional radiation either I mean there's a little bit you just kind of rips you out of the immersion a bit especially when there's places like the outside of little lamplight slash vol 87 and fallout 3 that had so much radiation that you couldn't even remotely move through it without death although that may be a testament to how over-the-top a Thesz des tends to go with the radiated areas compared to obsidian who seems to want you to have a fighting chance most of the time what I want to know though is how Ulysses made it this far did he truck these warheads over to [ __ ] with me and hope I die did he have some kind of underground passage did he do something inhuman like crawl under things or climb over the top of things I know it's minor but I very much feel like yep this sure is a video game right now either way pressing forward through the town has you listening to some other logs from Eddy and one of them it's revealed that this cruel scientist from before got an approval from the enclave higher-ups to pride at the AI bots while they were still fully aware so that they could feel all the pain while the upgrades were performed Whitley is pissed about this and starts questioning his place in the Enclave meanwhile I've got these weird tunneler enemies that pop out of the ground and seem intimidating at first due to the implication that I should use flares or flash bangs to ward them off but then I remember that this is a fallout game and I just blast them when I make it back to the other side Ulysses contacts me again to talk philosophy here's the problem I'm having he keeps going on and on and on about siding with house how if I side with him I have no future and neither does society how bad house is how house domesticated the tribes and has them under his control I killed house I killed him forever ago I've killed him on every single save file where's the option for that because all I'm getting is the option to go no house has great future plans it's like they wrote a storyline that he follows one possibility from the main four choices of the vanilla game well whenever I guess Ulysses continues to fill you in about the divide he speaks pretty vaguely so I may have some of this wrong but it sounds like he wandered all over the place meeting different factions of the like at one point he told caesar's legion about hoover dam which caused caesar to move in on it one thing led to another and the warheads here in the area were set off and the area became the divide cutting off the NCR supply line I'm definitely intrigued although I do have a lot of questions ulysses also notes that the underground tunnels are likely moving in on the mojave now that the divide is opened up and freed them from their underground homes the things that make me most intrigued are getting to know Ulysses and why he's like this and getting to know my own character unfortunately Ulysses speaks almost in tongues to you about this topic he goes on and on about how I'm walking towards my home that I was the one who taught him that home is a frame of mine not a birthplace that walking the roads I've walked before is my home I think Jesus if this was any sort of real-life situation I'd be like [ __ ] this crazy dude I'm out but he goes on to say that the road that I used to walk was a supply line to the east from a post war town that was also known as the divide it appeared to be an average post-apocalyptic town that grew and grew into something greater as I delivered messages on the road to and from its borders something that could have been a fresh start for Humanity and then it got destroyed when the warheads went off I'm unsure about a lot of this stuff at the moment obviously it's intentional my character reacts with the confusion also I guess it kind of helps that he was shot in the head I imagine it's hard to remember a lot of stuff before that bit I do like the part where he claims that as soon as the NCR found out about the supply line they claimed it for themselves like they do with everything else that much I can understand for sure meanwhile in The Adventures of boy robot and science man the Enclave had ordered AI bots to be scrapped for hellfire armor at this point whitley decided to send Eddie off with a message instead of obeying that order in its entirety also Eddie has recordings of Enclave personnel boning which is neat for someone who acts all Christian about listening in on those tapes my character sure didn't have any qualms about telling dr8 back in big MT about duct taping the edges of a cram can down and going to town on it something more serious to note is that Ulysses seems to regard Eddie with a lot of disdain even though he acts like he doesn't when he's questioned I'm guessing that Eddie may have played a role into setting off the nuke seeing as I glimpsed another I bot scanning one that was in the bunker at the beginning and I just set off a nuke well at least I got experience for it after this lies a stretch of absolute insanity with enough experience to gain me another level which tells me that there probably aren't many SciQuest to this dlc if any Ulysses contacts me again after I make it through going on about the existence of this place being my fault turns out between this talk in the last I still haven't the foggiest idea as to what the actual [ __ ] he's talking about he tells me that I delivered a package that set this whole train in motion but before he gets into any actual detail Ulysses tells you that his tribe actually fell and was absorbed into the Legion which may have made him a legion soldier at one point he saw me as I went from area to area in the West and eventually I came back to the divide with a package that set the bombs off when that happened all of the other machines around the divide which laid dormant woke up and began reconstructing themselves because of this Ulysses was saved by a medical bot which saw him wearing clothing with an American flag on it a symbol that made him an American citizen in their eyes they patched ulysses up and he got to work pursuing you he sees you as a harbinger of death that you're claimed ignorance only brings destruction he thinks that even if you don't know what will happen you still do things which is honestly extraordinarily meta because that's what a lot of fallout is you see a button you push it you get a quest from someone you do it you don't always know what the button does you don't always know what the person's true motive is you just do things he makes the claim that even now your pursuit of what will happen if I do this drives you me setting off that nuke a few moments ago was proof enough of that in his eyes though I will argue that he was the one who sent me on this particular path so as I see it he's responsible for that last bit but that's just it he makes a point I still do it because he wanted me to seek him out despite having every opportunity to leave so to try to sum this up to the best of my knowledge basically I built this place up with my career talents Ulysses followed me marching under the commands of Caesar at this point Ulysses knew that he wasn't a Legionnaire at heart Caesar hadn't ordered that no courier should be harmed because many of them were part of the Legion and had great importance within it so I was followed by Ulysses instead where he stumbled onto the divide the flag that he found at war the one that was painted all over the place also surrounded the divide and was integrated into every part of it what us he saw was a town that was strong that was built to outlast the Legion and the NCR he saw a new beginning and just as I built the town up I destroyed it in one fell swoop this changed Ulysses into someone who knew that just one person was all it took to destroy a nation Ulysses then speculates that I may have been a legion agent the destruction that I caused here wreaked of Legion tactics yet I did it from afar like NCR he believes that if I was part of the Legion then the NCR's tactics were in my lexicon and that they may have influenced me to a point where I no longer was truly a Legionnaire it's all speculation obviously but the idea is brought up here are very compelling from a story perspective I mean before this I was as much of a blank slate as a blank slate could be there's a lot of merit to that idea especially given the previous games and all of the other Fallout games before this you were something you were a resident of a vault whose water chip broke you were a vault dweller whose dad went missing you were a tribal who was trained to be the tribes champion in New Vegas you're simply a courier who got shot yes there's more to it than that but you didn't start with a lengthy story like you did in previous games with this dlc your blank slate begins to conform into something new i almost have all of the pieces here all that's left is to find ulysses on my journey to get to him Eddie plays little snippets of information from his data logged memories how Whitley caught him watching old episodes of Ralphie the robots a vault-tec children's show in which a little kid stops a mean general from getting to his robot and sends the robot flying away as far and as fast as it can go how dr. Whitley basically did the same thing with Eddie how Eddie got shot up by some Raiders at one point while he was playing his radio on the way to Navarro how a family found him and patched him up and he continued flying onward well when I get to a certain stretch of this journey I'm contacted by Ulysses who says that Eddie is carrying something important something that can destroy as much as I've destroyed he then overrides Eddie to command him to come to Ulysses as I'm now close enough for him to assume direct control I may have destroyed Ulysses idea of all that was good in this world but this son of a [ __ ] just took my cute robot buddy it's personal now well this gigantic maze of broken wreckage and marched soldiers stand between me and Ulysses it takes a while to ascend to detonate nukes and to sneak my way up there but when I finally do reach Ulysses hideout I find Eddie encased in a tube I can't free him of course but I soon find the elevator leading to something called the temple with a warning message that cautions me to make sure that I'm good to go before taking on Ulysses I'm honestly surprised this wasn't more of a maze to get through although I do respect the devs let me get straight to the point after climbing through all that rubble I remember that one time 25 seconds ago where I said I can't free Eddie I can't free him of course but I soon find the elevator leading to something called the temple well the game tells me hey idiot you get a perk for being alone and [ __ ] so good day yeah apparently I had to check the terminal again after the turrets biffed it so the big showdown comes to a standstill when I go through a few speech checks and not in a manner where Ulysses simply runs off I admit my mistakes yet Ulysse still seems determined to send a nuke off to bomb the last great supply line between the NCR and the mojave his hope is that the NCR will be defeated by the legion and the legion will destroy itself when it hits the coast being someone whose tribe was absorbed into slavery by the legion his knowledge leads him to believe that the legion won't last and I honestly agree as much as I praise the legions ruthless efficiency when compared to the NCR in the last video I also believe that they will self-destruct as soon as Caesar dies he's a one of a kind leader and him always having all the answers and the directions for all of the tribals that he's absorbed into his mighty Legion is a boon for only as long as he is alive he bases the entire infrastructure of the Legion on ancient Rome which historically fell and even if he believes the beneficial fusion of identities will happen when he fells the NCR I don't think it'll be enough to maintain his realm but either way Ulysses has been inspired by the courier's actions whether intentional or not the courier has shown him that even Ulysses as a single person can wipe the slate clean as Elijah once claimed Ulysses journey through these DLCs has been ever marching towards self-discovery and a genesis of something new something to reset society again and raise one last flag in the hopes that a burgeoning society will be better than the NCR's future the legions future the Brotherhood's future any future the NCR enlisted me to deliver a package one that would destroy the divide and the supply line which the Legion had taken from them this package destroyed the NCR zone men Caesars men and the town which Ulysses had so much faith in now Ulysses was trying to do the same thing to me in the hopes that the result would bring a new divide into the world one that would flourish or die under one flag after this only one flag will remain over the mojave let that one fly or destroy itself good god that took a lot of rewatching to fully piece together but I think I got it and here at the end of the world I reasoned with courier six I tell him that I built a society before and that I can do it again with Vegas and that he can join me on this endeavor this causes him to relent but also to tell you that he intentionally arranged it so that March soldiers would flood the base in the event that he couldn't kill me and so now it's the two of us against these Call of Duty Nazi zombies for one last firefight after we clear them out I get one last decision to make either stop the nukes aim them at the NCR aim them at the legion or aim them at both truthfully I think I would stop them there's a lot of Merit to Ulysses points about me having the capabilities to build up a nation and I do think that I could do that with Vegas intact but I also think that this is a great ending for the game and as a salute to new Vegas and the great entertainment that it's provided me I'm gonna nuke it all the ending is satisfying even as a Planet of the Apes reference with the Wild Wasteland trait I like it a lot though I expected the game to just kind of end with this option like fallout 3 did before it got DLC I guess it makes more sense to let the player keep playing but it's kind of weird seeing the outpost statue still fully intact when I travel over there despite it being blown to [ __ ] in the slideshow at the end of all of this I can confidently say that new vegas DLC is something else it isn't all perfect and has quite a few flaws but Lonesome Road alone helps tie the whole game together in a way that I didn't think it would it's about the best I could have hoped for honestly I think Dead Money is a fine DLC that gets repetitive and kind of cannibalizes its own tense atmosphere by giving you way more than you'll ever need but the characters are good and interesting even if Elijah's plan is ridiculous in nature Honest Hearts was easily the weakest DLC plopping you in the middle of a beautiful environment but ultimately falling flat with its shallow plot and subpar character development old world blues is truly unique in that it's almost as if the DLC was constructed around a [ __ ] post but a well-crafted [ __ ] post I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would and it would have been half as good if it weren't for the charming and funny characters it brings to the table and Lonesome Road is New Vegas at its prime the Deb's knew exactly what they wanted it to be and it shows it doesn't have side quests and it doesn't need them the world building around you're nameless character breeds a new appreciation for much of the games previous quests as little things that I didn't care about as much begin to fuse together and take out new importance and meaning I can't tell you if the next entry in the series lived up to these additions in an already great game I didn't play any of the DLC after I lost interest in fallout 4 but I can guess with 99% certainty that they didn't as much as I hope that Bethesda will come up with a game that breaches even the boundaries of the amount of interest and fun that I had in New Vegas I just don't see it happening as things have been going but hey you never know thanks for watching I got to say that as much fun as I had with this game I'm glad this series is over it gets tough breaking down every little thing without missing really obvious stuff er overlooking the importance of some things but I did have a lot of fun and I'd love to get around to exploring obsidians other works eventually just not for a while anyways I have a twitch where I pretend to stream I have a Twitter where I sometimes manage to string a few words together I have a discord where people only talk about the most important topics and I have a patreon and that's it I have a good one [Music]

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 3,930,966

Keywords: Fallout, New Vegas, Fallout New Vegas, FNV, DLC, Expansions, Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Elijah, Christine, Dog, God, Dean Domino, Sierra Madre, Ghost people, Holograms, The cloud, Joshua Graham, Caesar, Dead Horses, Sorrows, New Canaan, White Legs, Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, Utah, Jed Masterson, Klein, Doctor, Dala, Zero, Mobius, Borous, Think Tank, Sink, Muggy, House, Ulysses, Big Empty, Big MT, The Divide, Zion, NCR, The Legion, Marked Men, ED-E, Sinclair, Vera

Id: oAjMrO01eFQ

Length: 86min 42sec (5202 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020