GameBanshee reviews Old World Blues

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Brother None

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GameBanshee offers a meaty two-page review on the New Vegas Old World Blues DLC. No score but the reviewer is impressed even though he also warns against the tone not working for everyone.<blockquote>There is a unique wrinkle in Old World Blues, however, and it's something I absolutely need to bring up, something which goes beyond the focus of this review, and concerns the Fallout franchise as a whole. Going back to Fallout 2, there's been a division in the series' fanbase over what tone is best suited to the games. Many maintain that the original Fallout's self-seriousness, commitment to canon, and consistent atmosphere marks it as the better game, while plenty others enjoy Fallout 2's tendency towards absurdity, humour, pop-culture tie-ins, and generally more upbeat attitude. Personally, I'm a little bit on the fence - Fallout 2's humour and inconsistency got on my nerves, but I do prefer its more diverse and significantly larger world, not to mention plenty of other gameplay improvements. I fully understand both perspectives on the matter, and why it has to some degree split the fanbase in two.

Why do I bring this up? Well, one of New Vegas' most-praised points by the original fanbase was the return to the franchise's roots, casting off much of the absurdity that crept into Fallout 2 and more so into Fallout 3. With that in mind, it's worth saying it straight out: Old World Blues is just plain ridiculous. It's silly, it's hilarious, and often winks at the fourth wall. It grabs hold of those 1950s underpinnings the original series had, and inflates them to the point where Old World Blues feels about as tongue-in-cheek as a game can be. And this, really, is the deciding point on whether you should pick up Old World Blues, because right from the moment you start it, it doesn't let up. As good as it is, I have no problem telling some players that they simply might not like it, because of how close to heart they hold Fallout and how strongly-conceived a vision they may have of it. </blockquote>
 
I'm starting to believe I'm the only one who didn't find Old World Blues particularly funny. :? Aside from that I'd say I mostly agree with the review.
 
It wasn't really fall out (see what I did there?) of your chair funny, but there were a few parts that made me chuckle.
 
That's a shame. I don't mind humour but from what I've been reading Old World Blues seems really out there. Guess I'll have to play it and see for myself.
 
The framing of OWB inside the franchise is interesting. I haven't played it (own it since I've been gifted all the DLC, but haven't played any of them), but I think if there's any spot where you can be more open to explore the more non-serious 50s parody angle of Fallout, it's in the segregated self-contained stories of DLC.
 
I've had a lot of fun with it so far, and I actually find it to be the most fun of all the DLCs I've played. Sure it is absurd and over-the-top, but I'd be lying to myself if I tried to say those elements weren't there in some form in even Fallout.
 
I loved OWB, but I liked FO2 better than FO1.

DLC is really the contemporary equivalent of an FO random encounter though, and I think Avellone and Sawyer deserve props for recognizing and using that fact. Each of the DLC packs has a different tone, different themes, etc, etc. Avellone described them as Short Stories, whereas the core game might be a novel. Like the old Random encounters, they're breathers from the main game's grittier, more down to earth tone. There's some content in the core game that serves the same purpose (Vault 11, for instance, or the Legend of the Star) but ultimately what all of this content has in common is that it's self-contained and distant.

It's a much better means of recapturing the effect of the old random encounter,s I think, than FO3's actual random encounters, or FONV's Wild Wasteland.
 
I was surprised OWB had Wild Wasteland encouters because it was essentially Wild Wasteland the DLC.

Much like DemonNick I prefered Fallout 2 to 1 so it may explain my taste for the more wackier side of Fallout.
However OWB does go some way to explain why it is so crazy and why the things there happen in a realistic(ish) context.
The thing that annoyed me about Fallout 3 wacky was that it lacked rhyme or reason which OWB manages to avoid, not perfectly but enough to make it feel tangible to the game world.
 
And it explained some things about the main game itself. I wanted to ice the person who created the Nightstalkers and those f*cking Cazadores on the spot. Sterile? Oh no these damn things are most definitely not.
 
I found Old World Blues to be extremely funny but I also think it's a bit polarizing in itself.

There's quite a lot of backstory in Old World Blues, many references and such. A lot of the writing and story is actually very clever. But it's a bit hard to take things seriously because of the extremely silly tone of the DLC as a whole. It's clear that Dead Money, Old World Blues and Dead Money are all quite connected (Honest Hearts not so much). But I think it felt a bit hard to take it to heart when Dead Money was essentially a very grim experience and... well, when Old World Blues references stuff in Dead Money it's just a bit strange and two-faced in a way.

I think it's quite brilliant on its own actually but the extreme humor makes it hard to take the connections to other parts of Fallout seriously. Which is a bit of a shame because there are quite a lot of them.
 
I think the humor actually works in the opposite way.

It keeps the audience from reaching Angst Apathy.

If Old World Blues was played in a completely serious manner, it'd essentially be the bleakest, most disturbing thing ever and turn off anyone who's not all that interested in feeling bad.
 
generalissimofurioso said:
I think the humor actually works in the opposite way.

It keeps the audience from reaching Angst Apathy.

If Old World Blues was played in a completely serious manner, it'd essentially be the bleakest, most disturbing thing ever and turn off anyone who's not all that interested in feeling bad.
Click to expand...

I'd have been much more interested in such a thing and I don't like "feeling bad". :? Fallout 1 was very bleak (although sprinkled with a few bits of black humour - not over the top - therefore ok) and people loved it aswell.
 
Never said it was a bad thing.

But remember the uproar over Tenpenny Towers in Fallout 3?

A good chunk of people like post-apocalyptic environments because of the lawlessness rather than the bleakness.

To me, Old World Blue was a bit like Slaughterhouse-Five, you know, because I went looking for the backstory and found out all of the horrible things in Big MT.
 
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