Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts

2026-10-03
After the build-up of The Burned Man, Joshua Graham lives up to the hype. All grim-voiced biblical speeches and seething hatred bubbling up under a pile of bandages. The problem is he and the Survivalist--the actual best character, and someone you only learn about if you meticulously comb the landscape for computers with log entries--are the only characters that feel like they had a soul breathed into them. Your Sorrows companion, What's-her-face, has 4 lines of dialogue and her quest is "Is my husband ok?" > "Find out about her husband." > "Tell her about her husband." Riveting.

The core problem I see with all these DLCs is that they're all good ideas that only made it as far as a sketch. Absolutely we should explore Utah's Martian beauty replete with Mormons and some indigenous tribal vibes. But vibes are all we get.

Take Zion: it's a beautiful rendition, but that's all it is. As a place to actually play, it's a pain in the ass. Nonstop rocky pockets blocking progress. My target is 2 feet away but actually I have to walk all the way around the back of this mountain and find the one walkway up. So I can engage in the excellent gameplay of Shoot Person In Face that makes up the entirety of this expansion.

And that's not even me segueing into complaining about there not being enough peaceful options. I like blowing the heads off savages with my colorful sack of rifles. A 5.56 for you in the white face-paint, a 50 cal for you with the metal backpack and sword that's on fire, and a 45/70 for your dusty ass.

Hell, they even give us the peaceful option through Daniel. Which I actually find to be the funniest whiff in the game. Daniel demands you spare the actual gang of rampaging murderers and take the good guys and flee. And then if you listen to the wide-brimmed-hat cunt and take the Peaceful Option, in the ending he says "I'm not sure if I did the right thing," the clarion call of the spineless. The plan sounds shit on paper and the one guy who sold it to you is like "Whoops!" after it’s done. I don't even know if that was meant to be a morally gray "tough decision" or if you're genuinely meant to be clowned on for siding with a 10th dan of the Limp-Dicked Cuck arts.

I've only been to Zion once on a coast-to-coast motorcycle ride of the US. I'd like to go back, though maybe this time I keep both wheels on pavement. Figures the only version I'd have visited twice is the shitty digital one.