So many topics, so little time to discuss them. It's been about a week since I last put something up so I figured now was as good of a time as any.
I have been back nose deep into Fallout: New Vegas and its DLC for the last couple of weeks, loving it. When the game was first released I burned through the story, doing several side quests but never really exploring like I did in Fallout 3. The Capitol Wasteland just felt so interesting to me compared to the Mojave, the ruined landmarks, the subtle differences of said landmarks from their real-life counterparts and even the outrageous misuse of the Brotherhood of Steel. But looking back on the whole thing it was the DLC packs that kept me playing for such a long period of time.
The original DLC, Anchorage, was a wash, it wasn't even Fallout. It had no real exploration and a run and gun follow-orders plot that felt alien to the Fallout style of play. But they improved, offering new areas to be explored and more loots to be discovered. Each new installment had a unique style and flair that was instantly recognizable. Returning from The Pitt or Point Lookout had you looking like a foreigner when you re-entered the capitol. Instead of feeling like 'The Vault Kid' the boxed game painted you as, you began to look and feel like a seasoned adventurer, the kind of guy or girl who had experience getting things done. As a role playing game it changed the dynamics of the experience without really changing a thing. You had weapons nobody else in town had, you were strange and unique and really stood out as the hero.
Bethesda while creating new content for their already enormous game made their original offering better. I'm not entirely sure it was intentional and if you're playing on the PC mods can easily offer the same experience but they did it. Fallout 3 as a package with its DLCs is remarkably better than the sum of its parts.
But that's the past, lets get back to the now.
I'm not going to lie, personally I think Old World Blues looks like the most promising Fallout DLC yet.
When I was in high school I had the pleasure of playing Fallout 2 and yet I'm ashamed to admit I've never found the time to play the original. My memories of Fallout 2 are hazy but I remember it being jam-packed with pop culture references and being downright zany at times. If we just ignore all the crappy in-between titles like that one on Xbox, FO:3 was like a modern re-imagining of Fallout in the same vein as a film re-imagining. The concept was the same, as were some of the factions and characters for nostalgia's sake, but it was a completely different monster. Fallout 2 never really took itself seriously. It was full of sex and drugs, the violence was laughably over-the-top and the game constantly poked fun at itself. Fallout 3 on the other hand took itself quite seriously, instead of making fun of celebrities it hired them as voice actors. Instead of painting a post-apocalyptic USA in a sort of ironic 'lets all keep repeating the same mistakes' sort of way Bethesda chose to go state-of-nature on us. I'm not going to try and argue which is the better approach, obviously both camps have their supporters.
Back to Old World Blues, remember at the time of writing this it hasn't been released I have no idea what it will really be like. OWB looks to be like an attempt to recapture some of that old school Fallout feel. Something that I think newcomers to the franchise will find different at first but lead them to ultimately experience what earned Fallout so many fans in the first place. I'm not going to speculate on content, more on it in the future once i get to play it.
Cheers,
Gibbo
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