Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Released

Dhruin

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The last story-based DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Lonesome Road, has been released and is available from Steam and the respective console stores (PS3 is delayed for a few hours) for $9.99 or the equivalent:
In Lonesome Road you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of Fallout: New Vegas. Ulysses promises the answer as to why he didn’t take the job,but only if you make one last journey into the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. It's up to you whether you take the job or not.
The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned. Is finding answers to your own past worth the risk? Bring all your gear, all your weapons, but leave your companions behind...this is one road you must walk alone.
Chris Avellone has penned a dev diary on the subject, which you can read at Bethsoft. A sample:
Lonesome Road is an artery twisting west out of the Mojave into one of the most dangerous places in the wasteland. The level design complements this - it's like no other road we've constructed for a game before. Bring what weapons you want, what faction allegiances you want, and if the end of the road doesn't beckon you, you can turn away at any time, return to the Mojave... until you're ready to face your past. We're not going to strip your gear or lock you in place. Come and go as you please if history matters to you.
When setting out, the goal was to deliver a Zelazny-style Damnation Alley experience in the Fallout universe (if you haven't read Damnation Alley, I highly recommend it, and recommended the same with our DLC team). Marvel did a more recent take on it with Old Man Logan, and that was a great spin on Damnation Alley as well.
In short, the idea for this last DLC would be the player would be contracted to travel one of the most dangerous roads in the wasteland, the goal a linear one - head for the setting sun, starting at point A, and try to survive to reach point B. In an original draft, we tried to think what payment would work for accepting such a job and what you would carry, when it occurred to us that the player may simply want to satisfy their curiosity about the past and who's been hunting you all this time. So we left it at that.
Chris goes on to describe the Road and Ulysses - well worth a read.
More information.
 
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Yay on his confirmation that they did not retcon amnesia into your character's background. I suppose they found that rumor to be goofy enough that Chris did not consider it a spoiler even to deny it.
 
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That there is the mark of a good designer, someone who isn't afraid to recommend a kind of obscure literary work or a comic/graphic-novel. A liberal arts guy who doesn't underestimate his audience.
 
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Bought it but still haven't played Old World Blues. Probably going to wait for the new guns next week and then play all of it at once.
 
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Bought it but still haven't played Old World Blues. Probably going to wait for the new guns next week and then play all of it at once.

I would suggest picking up a bottle of ibuprofen too. It's not frustratingly hard or anything, but the level design may give you a bit of a headache. Lots of walking on oddly angled twisting surfaces which the engine has never made feel right and it was giving me a migraine.
 
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Been playing all day, sacrificing everything else I was supposed to do. I second the comment on level design. It definitely pushed my brain hard.
 
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Yay on his confirmation that they did not retcon amnesia into your character's background.

I just finished it and they definitely saddled you up with a history, ignorance of which could only be explained by bullet-to-the-head amnesia.
 
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I just finished it and they definitely saddled you up with a history, ignorance of which could only be explained by bullet-to-the-head amnesia.

No they didn't and that was part of the problem. You already know your character is a courier.

You already knew you were a courier; the dialog in the DLC hammers you in the head with the fact that this was just one of many packages you would have delivered during your career. Ulysses even points out that he doesn't expect you would have or could have suspected there was anything unusual about it. He also explains that he didn't know your personally and if you go through enough of the dialog he even states that he doesn't particularly blame you. So no they don't saddle you with a history besides the fact that you are a courier. The problem is this makes Ulysses interest in you retarded.
 
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Except he also says you were the only courier who used to go to the divide, that through your delivering of messages you kept the divide connected to the rest of the world and alive, that you went there more than once when no other courier would thus making the divide your town, possibly your home. And then he says you delivered a package that caused the big badaboom.

I saw no dialog line that let me flat out deny it, only a few that said that maybe i didn't remember it too well. Had he said that the courier went to the divide only *once* it could make sense that the courier wouldn't remember that location or package in particular.
But if he also says that you're the one who used to go to the divide when all the other couriers refused then the only non-amnesiac explanation for us not knowing anything about the divide is that ulysses has the wrong guy. Which isn't far fetched considering he comes across as burned out druggie(unintentionally?), however at no point do we get a line to flat out deny that it was us.

What we do get is a shitload of dialog lines where we say "maybe, wouldn't remember" and also a ton of dialog lines where we express our ignorance about the divide or our trips there or the delivery.

I don't have a problem with amnesia, it would have been a reasonable explanation for a courier who seemed ignorant of the world he lived in after getting shot in the head. However as far as shoe-horning some relevance into a player character's premanesiac deeds go, this has to be one of the worst examples. Makes Revan's plot twist look like a masterpiece.
 
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Ah alright pretty sure I had to make a tone of attribute and skill checks for all the dialog options I went through - which was pretty much all the ones which weren't mutually exclusive.
 
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