Did Anybody Like The Fact That All NV DLCs Were Somewhat Connected?

[TheKingofVault14]

Out of all the Bethesda Era Fallout Games, New Vegas is the only one out of the three to have it's DLCs connected in some shape or form. The fact that there's an ongoing, overarching storyline in the background throughout the first three DLCS, only for it to conclude in the final DLC. IMO, I think this made the journey through these DLCs(especially if you play them in the order of their initial releases) all the more special & climactic. Oh and another thing, all the characters, factions, their motives, locations, & events that occurred. Were all accumulated due to the actions of one man, his vengeance, & YOU! Courier Six, the one he's been looking for the whole time.

Such a great example of a chain reaction, it's insane when you really think about it!


So yeah, what do you guys think? Do you think it was cool for Obsidian do this?(Unlike the Fallout 3 or 4 where all the DLCs were completely separate, basically anthologies.) Or was it a stupid concept to begin with?





Also, here's to 13 years & beyond for the Anniversary of Fallout New Vegas!!!

 

[Norzan]

A shame that the end result was a kind of a meh character. I mean, Ulysses's journey was far more interesting than himself, which kind of sucks.

Honestly Ulysses would have been much better served as the Legion companion in the base game.

 

[Eumesmopo]

View attachment 27803

Out of all the Bethesda Era Fallout Games, New Vegas is the only one out of the three to have it's DLCs connected in some shape or form. The fact that there's an ongoing, overarching storyline in the background throughout the first three DLCS, only for it to conclude in the final DLC. IMO, I think this made the journey through these DLCs(especially if you play them in the order of their initial releases) all the more special & climactic. Oh and another thing, all the characters, factions, their motives, locations, & events that occurred. Were all accumulated due to the actions of one man, his vengeance, & YOU! Courier Six, the one he's been looking for the whole time.

Such a great example of a chain reaction, it's insane when you really think about it!


So yeah, what do you guys think? Do you think it was cool for Obsidian do this?(Unlike the Fallout 3 or 4 where all the DLCs were completely separate, basically anthologies.) Or was it a stupid concept to begin with?





Also, here's to 13 years & beyond for the Anniversary of Fallout New Vegas!!!

My boy Ulysses is low key one of the most important and integral characters on the New Vegas story (maybe second only to Caesar and the Courier).

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

A shame that the end result was a kind of a meh character. I mean, Ulysses's journey was far more interesting than himself, which kind of sucks.

Honestly Ulysses would have been much better served as the Legion companion in the base game.

I may have told you about this idea I had for Ulysses if it had been possible to implement it.
Basically Ulysses would become available as a companion character in the main game, being located at the Wolfhorn Ranch. Alternatively the player would keep running into Ulysses at certain points of the main campaign similar to Victor. The idea would be that Ulysses would be observing the player and the decisions he or she would make for certain locations and which groups and factions they would support, these would all factor into Ulysses' decisions on his own objective.
At the end of the second battle of Hoover Dam, rather than the game ending after the battle, Ulysses through ED-E would talk to the player, telling the player that he was the courier first chosen to carry the platinum chip until he saw that the player was next in line for the job and because of that declined the job (same reasons as mentioned in Lonesome Road).
Now that the second battle of Hoover Dam is over and the player has survived the battle, Ulysses calls the player to come to the Divide (which would now be unlocked) where Ulysses will be waiting for him or her and where the player must defend the decisions they made on who to help and support as otherwise Ulysses will wipe the slate clean.
Basically Lonesome Road would be the real ending of FNV and the player must finish it in order to see the epilogue screens.

Some of the problems with my idea is that it would require Ulysses to be made into an un-killable character, something I would rather not resort to. Ulysses would have to be retro actively inserted into the campaign, he would not be available as a companion during the second battle of Hoover Dam. ED-E would either have to be the player's companion during the battle, or would have to just show up so that Ulysses could talk through it. ED-E would have to be a companion that joins the player when they go to the Divide, the original ED-E actually carrying the detonator needed to launch the Divide's ICBMs.

One issue I could see with the idea is that people would not like it that they can not play the DLC until after they have finished the main campaign.

Technically this would also really be so difficult to pull off that it would have to be planned in advance.


To the OP's question;

So yeah, what do you guys think? Do you think it was cool for Obsidian do this?(Unlike the Fallout 3 or 4 where all the DLCs were completely separate, basically anthologies.) Or was it a stupid concept to begin with?

Yes, I really liked that the DLCs were interconnected and told a separate storyline that ran through the other storylines. And like you mentioned, it works really well when the player plays the DLCs in the order of the release.
I have some criticisms on the DLC's content itself but not this idea of interconnected-ness.
If anything it only made me feel how utterly random the DLCs by Bethesda were for Fallout 3 and 4 and how little to no connection they had with the main campaign. They have actually made me develop somewhat of a dislike for DLC as I would much rather have more content added to the base game and its campaign instead.

 

[Norzan]

@The Dutch Ghost
Honestly, all the game had to do was have Caesar tell Ulysses to aid the Courier in the Legion missions but Caesar would secretly tell Ulysses to have his eye on the player and make sure the Courier would carry out the missions.

From research apparently he was cut from the main game because the amount of dialogue he had was somehow even larger than Cassie's and Cassie has the most amount of dialogue in the game for a companion. Since the game was being rushed, they cut their losses and just removed Ulysses from the main game, which is honestly the biggest wasted opportunity in the game.

I do wonder what the DLCs would be like if Ulysses was a companion in the main game. I assume the first three would be same sans all the Ulysses stuff in the background. Maybe we could have gotten an actual good final DLC instead of just an okay one.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

@Norzan,
It is indeed disappointing that so much ended up being cut in FNV due to development time limitations including Ulysses as the Legion is really underdeveloped though I like to think that the DLCs did help build up the mystique surrounding him, though the eventual confrontation didn't turn out to be as exciting.

I do wonder what the DLCs would be like if Ulysses was a companion in the main game. I assume the first three would be same sans all the Ulysses stuff in the background. Maybe we could have gotten an actual good final DLC instead of just an okay one.

I do hope the Divide would still have made it in because as a setting I still really find it very cool, way more than the destroyed landscape environments in Fallout 3 and 4, this place really looks like it was hit by a force of mass destruction. As for the plot, I honestly can not give you an answer on that one. I already wrote here how I would like to have done it.

 

[laclongquan]

Weirdly enough Honest Hearts doesnt have much connection to 3 other DLCs. I guess that's one reason people dont like that as much.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Weirdly enough Honest Hearts doesnt have much connection to 3 other DLCs. I guess that's one reason people dont like that as much.

There is a connection between Ulysses and the White Legs but this only mentioned in Lonesome Road but never brought up in Honest Hearts itself.

 

[Eumesmopo]

Weirdly enough Honest Hearts doesnt have much connection to 3 other DLCs. I guess that's one reason people dont like that as much.

The reason I don't like Honest Hearts is because I don't like getting railroaded into supporting a faction that sucks and is constantly insulting me and calling me a gentile and other names for no fucking reason. I mean, I don't even like actual jews, imagine having to tolerate those chinese ripoffs. I know you have the option to just kill everyone and leave, but it would be nice to have a pathway for siding with the white-legs and having a confrontation with Joshua, it would be more consistent story-wise for legion roleplayers. There's also something to be said about how silly the premise of americans just starting to speak gobbledygook and having child-like levels of retardation and naivety because some bombs fell. Only Old World Blues was less realistic and serious, but at least it was tongue-in-cheek and funny.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

There's also something to be said about how silly the premise of americans just starting to speak gobbledygook and having child-like levels of retardation and naivety because some bombs fell.

It’s actually less realistic that most people still speak in the same dialect we do after 200 years, coupled with the complete collapse of civilization.

 

[Eumesmopo]

It’s actually less realistic that most people still speak in the same dialect we do after 200 years, coupled with the complete collapse of civilization.

You're not going to go from English to literal random gibberish in 200 years. You wouldn't even see that much change over thousands of years. The Western Roman Empire fell in the 6th century and people who speak the successor languages of Latin all share a massive amount of their lexicon and grammar. Anyone who speaks Spanish or Portuguese can roughly understand a good deal of what is said in languages like French and Italian. Avelone's thought process on that one was just "native americans are retarded and thus speak like morons, hence if society collapses we are all going to degenerate and speak like morons as well". It was an almost Bethesda-tier lapse of stupidity to be honest.

EDIT: *5th century

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

You're not going to go from English to literal random gibberish in 200 years. You wouldn't even see that much change over thousands of years. The Western Roman Empire fell in the 6th century and people who speak the successor languages of Latin all share a massive amount of their lexicon and grammar. Anyone who speaks Spanish or Portuguese can roughly understand a good deal of what is said in languages like French and Italian. Avelone's thought process on that one was just "native americans are retarded and thus speak like morons, hence if society collapses we are all going to degenerate and speak like morons as well". It was an almost Bethesda-tier lapse of stupidity to be honest.

EDIT: *5th century

I thought Honest Hearts was mostly Sawyer’s idea. But anyway, I think the explanation that a pidgin language formed from stranded tourists after the war, filtered through the brains of feral children and given a century or two to evolve makes enough sense to me. It might not be “realistic” but I think that the war reducing some groups of people to Stone Age societies fits thematically within the Fallout universe. Maybe I just like Fallout 2 too much…

 

[Eumesmopo]

I thought Honest Hearts was mostly Sawyer’s idea. But anyway, I think the explanation that a pidgin language formed from stranded tourists after the war, filtered through the brains of feral children and given a century or two to evolve makes enough sense to me. It might not be “realistic” but I think that the war reducing some groups of people to Stone Age societies fits thematically within the Fallout universe. Maybe I just like Fallout 2 too much…

I don't know who exactly is the writer to be honest, I thought Avellone did the writing for all of the DLC but I checked the fandom wiki article on Honest Hearts and it doesn't say who the writer/designer was. And yeah sure, overall the tribal thing isn't novel to the franchise (Altough the mish-mashing of random phonemes to make up fake languages is. All of the F2 tribals spoke English, if I remember correctly). I love Fallout 2, the humor and satire stuff in it is hilarious, but it has a lot of stuff that shouldn't be taken too seriously lorewise.

 

[laclongquan]

You're not going to go from English to literal random gibberish in 200 years etc and etc...

Sounds to me you dont like Honest Hearts in general principle. Just because~

You dont even like the Kill Them All option, which just said it all~

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Sounds to me you dont like Honest Hearts in general principle. Just because~

You dont even like the Kill Them All option, which just said it all~

I do think disliking Honest Heart because of its content such as the posters' feelings on how the tribals are written are not unsound. And Sawyer did miss out on adding a Legion Player solution, one in which the player could perhaps have been used by Caesar as an assassin to find and eliminate the Burned Man with the help from the White Legs. I actually do not find that a bad idea, I just don't know yet how that could have been integrated into the main campaign before the player actual meets Caesar. After meeting him the player could have been asked by Caesar or one of his lieutenants to carry out a 'favor' for Caesar.

Hmm, maybe something like this.
After receiving the radio message from Happy Trails, looking for an extra man for the expedition who is in possession of a Pipboy the player runs into a stranger on their way to the meeting site. The stranger, a Legionnaire in disguise, asks the player if he would be interested in doing a side job when he heads North with the Happy Trails caravan. The stranger works for a party interested in finding and eliminating a man named Joshua Graham who is in the area Happy Trails will be heading, the stranger's employers however want the player to be discreet, no one may know of the player's mission.

Should the player recognize the stranger as a Legionnaire and be on the side of the Legion, the player has the option to greet the Legionnaire in the Legion's way. The stranger immediately apologizes for not recognizing the player as an ally of the Legion and one of Caesar's agents. Instead of disguising his request or offer of a job, he informs the player that Caesar needs someone loyal to the Legion to go North and eliminate 'a loose end' as a favor to Caesar himself; find and eliminate Joshua Graham. Should the player succeed Caesar will look favorably on the player.
He also informs the player about the White Legs in the area and their mission to eliminate the survivors of the Mormons. The White Legs should make useful allies and disposable fodder for the player's mission. The player may use them as the player sees fit, the Legion has no further use for the White Legs after they have done their job.

After the player has eliminated Joshua Graham and the tribes opposing the Legion the player would meet up with the stranger at the rest stop near Hoover Dam, handing the stranger the evidence that Joshua Graham is dead. The stranger gives the player his/her reward and informs them that this matter is now closed and that the player will not speak further of it.

 

[laclongquan]

We are not discussing your or his ideas here. Ideas are cheap, Execution is Expensive~

We are discussing his dislike for no good reason "just because".

Obviously, anyone has his right to dislike anything just because. Just dont expect us to like your dislike just because it's your dislike without presenting a believable reason.

 

[Morgan_]

He said he disliked it because there isn't a legion rp option and it feels like the dlc is just preaching at you.

We are not discussing your or his ideas here. Ideas are cheap, Execution is Expensive~

What do we do here other than discuss ideas? It's a discussion forum.

. siding with the white-legs and having a confrontation with Joshua

[Everyone hated that]
[You are now villified]

 

[william dempsey]

Dis cushion is for interior decorators that do up the cribs inda ghetto. " Do you like dis cushion ?" ........ " No I like the velvet one with the blingy bits "