New Vegas DLCs Mini-series part 2. This isn't the image I really wanted to use for this post, but the others were problematic, and this one is somewhat related, as Honest Hearts introduced the Giant Cazadors.... cause ya know, the normal ones weren't horrible enough. Fuck you Dr. Borous.
Okay then, so the idea for this DLC is that your pip boy picks up a broadcast of a caravan leader from a company looking to hire another person for their caravan trip north into Zion in Utah. Though I will say the fact his broadcast mentions that he wants specifically a courier with a pip boy is just kinda a little bit totally fucking screaming "HEY PLAYER!!! YEAH YOU! COME DO THIS SHIT!! IT'S TOTALLY FOR YOU! DO IT! DO IT NOW!!" But aside from that the premise makes sense. They know their path is dangerous, and in fact them wanting someone with a pip boy makes sense cause the pip boy has all kinds of maps of areas. So you go into Zion and very promptly your whole caravan is slaughtered. You then meet up with "the burned man" and he explains that before he will help you leave you must gather some items and help him and his tribe and a man named Daniel who has his own tribe out in their conflict with the white legs, a rival clan. At the end of the DLC you have the option of either fighting back against the white legs and letting Daniel's tribe stay in Zion, or helping Daniel and his tribe flee from Zion before the white legs kill them.
So I feel the main draw here is that Zion looks really quite nice, and also quite different from the Mojave. I mean nothing against the designers but the Mojave does all look pretty much the same, dry, dusty, flat. And in fairness, that is what that area of the world looks like. I've been to vegas, I've seen the surrounding area. It is dry, dusty, and flat. And it's fine there's nothing wrong with having fairly samey environments but it can bit a touch dull after a while. So when you're maybe level 20 or so and have spent a fair bit of time wandering the Mojave, it might be nice to take a little while and head up to Utah for some different scenery. Aside from that there's not a lot of draw here. I found myself much less interested in exploring this place that I was in exploring the Old World Blues DLC area. And I feel like that's because aside from the different scenery, it still feels pretty much like the Mojave. It's nice to look at, but personally both of the times I played trough it I did the quests and then had my fill of the place and wasn't terribly interested in exploring. So I went to get the unique Survivalist's rifle, and was on my way.
I said above that this DLC still feels more or less like the Mojave. And I feel like this is something of a downside. Whereas Old World Blues, has the strange personalities of the think tank and the whole deal with your organs and Dead Money takes you to Sierra Madre with a very focused goal and new challenges, Honest Hearts doesn't really have that anything to make if feel special. Were you to swap the landscape this could just be anywhere in the Mojave. Not that there's anything wrong with the Mojave. The core game is brilliant or I'd never have bought the DLC. But I do feel that Honest Hearts lacks its own sort of personality like the other DLCs have.
And I feel like that's sort of all there is to say on the matter. It looks pretty, there are a few quests to do, there's plenty of caves to go spelunking in, there is a challenge to find six hidden caches of gear (though seven exist if you count the location with his body and rifle) from the survivalist as well as some admittedly interesting journal logs of how he survived the bombs falling and lived in Zion for many years. But I wasn't terribly interested in doing most of this. As I said earlier, the main point of this DLC for me is that it looks nice.
Gameplay: 6.5 out of 10
Story: 7 out of 10
Visuals: 8.5 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 pretty vistas out of 10
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