Fallout: New Vegas + DLC Review (Xbox 360/PS3)

Downloadable Content Pack: “Lonesome Road”

In your travels through the Mohave Wasteland, you heard stories, stories that began as myths but eventually drew you in, compelled you to find them and make them real. You were told of the mad priest Elijah and his hunt for old world secrets; and he eventually kidnapped you and used you in his plot to capture the Sierra Madre Casino. You heard of Caesar’s legate, Joshua Graham, who was set aflame and cast away but who still roamed the wastes as the enigmatic Burned Man; and you found him in Zion National Park attempting to redeem himself for his past sins. You heard of strange labs and bizarre sciences hidden in the Big Empty; and you found Big MT and the wonders it held.

But there was one story more elusive than the rest, one story that bound all myths together, that connected the Sierra Madre, Zion and Big Mountain, one story that touched yours as far back as Primm: back before you met Mr. House or the Legion, back before you found the Strip, back when the NCR was just becoming known to you, back when the name Powder Ganger was something you actually cared about. There was one mystery you carried with you throughout the whole game and every expansion, one final story that needed to be told: that of the other courier. And now at the end of a long and lonesome road, nestled deep in the Divide, in the Grand Flippin’ Canyon, you two at last meet.

His name is Ulysses and he hates your guts. But in a philosophical kind of way.

Shame, that. Because nobody else in the Divide has anything much to say to you. Or skin. They don't have much of that either.

As a level, “Lonesome Road” is about as basic as it gets. You start at Point A, Ulysses is at Point B and in between is six different kinds of death. It’s similar, I suppose, to “Operation: Anchorage,” in that it’s a straight linear affair, all combat and little in the way of RPG-styled character interaction. But “Operation: Anchorage” pinned all its hopes on its environments, you know those craptacular rehashes of the stock DC textures repainted to look all “wintry,” and focused everything around a tedious blowhard of a military officer that did nothing but scream objectives at you. Clearly not successful.

“Lonesome Road” though is far more dependant on its understated and surprisingly cathartic narrative, which itself is dependant on Ulysses. He is the only character in the entire level. And by being so, he allows the narrative to center everything on the history, relationship and destiny of you two and you two alone. You’re both painted as mirrors of each other in a way. Your Courier is now formally established as having come originally from out west in NCR territory, which is to say from the environments and cities you as the player explored in Fallout and Fallout 2, while Ulysses emerged from Legion territory in the yet untrespassed southwest. And now you meet in the Divide (how very symbolic) to settle old scores.

Yet while “Lonesome Road” could easily have degenerated into a standard, boring revenge plot, it’s elevated by the characterization of Ulysses, who acts as a powerful hub around which all DLC packs are shown to be circling. The great thing about Ulysses is his almost detached, analytical view of the world. He seems to hold life as a series of learning experiences. When acting as a scout for Caesar – who, remember, built his Legion by annexing a series of small, scarcely literate tribes that had never beheld anything as massive or ruthless as his phalanx before – he was the first to discover the New California Republic: the first force, the first symbol that could rival Caesar; and while such a thing could reasonably disillusion him, he regards it now as evidence of the necessity of poles and of the conflict that balances extremes.

And while Ulysses clearly begrudges the Courier for what the Courier stole from him in the past (I won’t say what that is), he doesn’t hate you per se, but seems instead to hate what that event taught him. And in the end, his revenge isn’t just killing the Courier, it’s showing the Courier what he learned and how he intends to apply those teachings.

Of course, this isn’t perfect. The ultimate revelation about how the Courier accidentally shaped the history of the Divide fails to achieve any personal resonance for the same reason the opening cutscene to the base game fails to engender a mad quest for vengeance against Benny: it happens to a Courier we didn’t create, to a protagonist whose experiences are outside our own, to a character with an established history that acts completely against the Create-a-Character model of videogame storytelling that exists to expressly allow the player to determine everything about their role in the story. Had this been planned ahead and had some innocuous sidequest in Good Springs or somewhere led to these – or similar – consequences, then we’d be talking. But as it is, I can’t say I feel responsible for the Divide or for Ulysses because – you know – I’m not and it’s hard to ignore how contrived this is.

The final confrontation with Ulysses is basically just okay. There’s nothing inventive about the fight. The developers didn’t get creative: no stages or gimmicks or game-changing new paradigms. They just maxed out his stats and proceeded to let him rape you to death. The diplomatic option does suck though. Ulysses is WAY too easy to talk down and the skirmish that replaces the duel is pathetic at best.

And upon finally meeting Ulysses, he says the last thing you ever want a guy with 10/10 strength and 10/10 endurance and 10/10 agility and 10/10 luck to say: "You got a perty mouth."

Still, “Lonesome Road” succeeds not because its climax lived up to the hype built across the other DLC packs, but because it is itself structured so that that doesn’t matter. As you traverse the Divide and as Ulysses talks to you, maintaining his presence and foisting his philosophy, he brings up issues that connect all the packs – from the themes of obsession in “Dead Money” to the idea of dangerous and best-forgotten secrets in “Old World Blues” to the beliefs in redemption and forgiveness occasionally mentioned in passing in “Honest Hearts” – and in a surprising twist rebolsters your resolve for the finale of the base game.

Because, remember, while I and many of us reloaded an old save file from a character with whom I’ve already beat the game to work through the DLC (and so tend to think of them as taking place afterward), all of these levels are technically set before the final battle at the Hoover Dam. “Lonesome Road” remembers that and so it not only concludes the thematic subplots of the DLC packs, but also acts as the last internal struggle of the Courier, the last move past his self-doubts or concerns, and so teaches him the last lesson he needs to learn before his fate is met. In the end, “Lonesome Road” is about personal responsibility, about owning up to one’s mistakes – however unintentional – and about how even the smallest actions of one man can change the world. And it’s with that knowledge that you and the Courier now enter the final fray to change the world again, uniting the Mohave under one of three flags or custom embroidering your own (but in a badass kind of way).

Leapin' Lizards!

Ultimately, Fallout: New Vegas’ episodic approach to DLC was a bold move — particularly in an open-world game — and remarkably successful and cohesive, especially once you take into account that they had to consider that not everyone is going to buy every pack or necessarily play them in the right order. And while individually, some are lacking (“Honest Hearts”); when taken together they add such a great range of genres and themes and ideas to the New Vegas experience, but not in ways that feel like slapdash lesser sequels or cut content, but as legitimate supplements that add texture and drama and horror and comedy and a much more personal, emotional level to the main story. And though they came later, though they take place outside the Mohave, they – more than any other DLC – belong to their game, to New Vegas, and to the ever-enriching world of Fallout.