Surf Solar
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Since I wanted to do a review for some other page of Honest Hearts, I today played through it again (was the 3rd time). And what can I say, as much as I always defend Obsidians take on Fallout and the DLC, this one I really don't like, not in the slightest.
This is really sad, since the DLC actually begins very promising. The little nod towards the "new generation gamer!11" at the start of the caravan run was, even though too obvious, quite funny. The buildup, what the caravan leader had to tell you about the Zion Park was very good too. Then, you arrive in the park after some pretty uninspiring slideshow (compared to the previous Dead Money Intro) and the obvious trope gets repeated, your caravan gets slaughtered (except of the player ofcourse!) and you must find your way out of the battle!!!
While you meet Follows Chalk you learn a bit about the wildlife and such. His character was a bit too cliche aswell, but it delivered, I didn't raise a brow while listening to his dialog. It all builds up nicely, you have some scripted scene where a Yao-Guai eats a gecko and your companion drops a line about it. Nice! While you travel to the destination Follows Chalk points you, you notice there are quite a lot of locations to explore (via his perk if you stand high on the cliffs). Nice - thinks the player - there's gonna be a shitload of stuff to discover here! Unfortunately, there isn't. All that's there to find on the numerous location markers is either nothing, random loot you already seen a thousand times in the Mojave Wasteland, or the small but very very good diaries of the Survivalist.
Speaking of the latter, this was actually the only redeeming fact which stood out on top of all the other things in this DLC for me. The Survivalist's story was very well written, nicely tied into the Fallout universe giving some unique perspective of many events in the Canon and even connected to some stuff which was happening in the Mojave Wastelands past. In short - this was really good. I liked the fact that the game gave me sympathies towards some person you never actually meet. But, couldn't I just read all those text messages on, let's say, the Fallout Wikia? I wish I did, since all the other stuff in the DLC was a letdown for me.
There was no music whatsoever. Nothing. I already noticed that when I walked over the first wooden bridge, thought "oh well I bet it's intentional, it gets better eventually". No, it didn't. All music used was very random, chosen out of a pool of the Mojave ones, which have done a good job into seeminglessly connecting each place. I am someone who really enjoys music and atmosphere in the game, doing such a lazy job on the audio department is just a no-go, especially when you know that this is a thing which doesn't take so long, especially when all the assets are already done. This was also a perfect occassion they could've used the Arroyo track from Fallout 2. Ofcourse they didn't. It was just lazy, given the fact that it can be done very quick, even in a "publisher is sitting on our neck" way.
There were no soundeffects used for various occasions, even when, again, the assets were there and all it would take is to place them in the respective contexts. There was this new rain feauture, which looked almost like a joke thanks to no soundeffects and far better working community mods. It is not rocket science to record very good and varying rain sounds. If even I can do that on a decent basis as an amateur, then you gotta expect some better stuff from Obsidian Entertaiment? But there was none. I would've even said "ok..." if there were just enviromental sounds, like wind, water flowing and so on, like the very same company did it very good in previous games. What they delivered in HH? None.
The "quests" were a joke. Collect this, go there, come back. Kill them, because we are lazy, take this mine, shoot this guy, come back. I get that they want to encourage me as the player to explore the area, but what is there to explore other than the aforementionend Survivalists caches? Nothing, but empty scenery.
Navigating up and down was a nightmare, even when they learned some new tricks or two to set cliff blockers, it was still incredibly boring to navigate through all those rather dull and alien looking cliffs.
The characters all pissed me off. We all knew that Graham won't reach the expections we all when we've read the Van Buren docs, that's a given. But seeing such a dull and uninspired character was really rage inducing, the same goes for Daniel. They both looked nothing else for me than to deliverers for 2 different variables, in the most obvious way. All this talk about religion and the bible put even Fallout 3 to a shame in comparison. Was that really neccesary? The premise of the DLC - how "innocence" can be handled in certain situations - could've lived perfectly fine without religious nutjobs and bible quotes in every second dialogue note. As an agnostic, it felt very irritating.
To boil it down, the quests were uninspiring and pretty much ended after 2-3 hours at best (not to mention that one of the endings was bugged and I couldnt end the game on different savegames) and they want me to "explore" the scenery. But what is there to "explore"?
I honestly don't want to troll, I really like Mr. Sawyer and the rest of the Obsidian team and would always defend them with rational arguments, but this DLC feels not much better than any other DLC in Fallout 3, for example. Am I really the only one here who thinks this?
This is really sad, since the DLC actually begins very promising. The little nod towards the "new generation gamer!11" at the start of the caravan run was, even though too obvious, quite funny. The buildup, what the caravan leader had to tell you about the Zion Park was very good too. Then, you arrive in the park after some pretty uninspiring slideshow (compared to the previous Dead Money Intro) and the obvious trope gets repeated, your caravan gets slaughtered (except of the player ofcourse!) and you must find your way out of the battle!!!
While you meet Follows Chalk you learn a bit about the wildlife and such. His character was a bit too cliche aswell, but it delivered, I didn't raise a brow while listening to his dialog. It all builds up nicely, you have some scripted scene where a Yao-Guai eats a gecko and your companion drops a line about it. Nice! While you travel to the destination Follows Chalk points you, you notice there are quite a lot of locations to explore (via his perk if you stand high on the cliffs). Nice - thinks the player - there's gonna be a shitload of stuff to discover here! Unfortunately, there isn't. All that's there to find on the numerous location markers is either nothing, random loot you already seen a thousand times in the Mojave Wasteland, or the small but very very good diaries of the Survivalist.
Speaking of the latter, this was actually the only redeeming fact which stood out on top of all the other things in this DLC for me. The Survivalist's story was very well written, nicely tied into the Fallout universe giving some unique perspective of many events in the Canon and even connected to some stuff which was happening in the Mojave Wastelands past. In short - this was really good. I liked the fact that the game gave me sympathies towards some person you never actually meet. But, couldn't I just read all those text messages on, let's say, the Fallout Wikia? I wish I did, since all the other stuff in the DLC was a letdown for me.
There was no music whatsoever. Nothing. I already noticed that when I walked over the first wooden bridge, thought "oh well I bet it's intentional, it gets better eventually". No, it didn't. All music used was very random, chosen out of a pool of the Mojave ones, which have done a good job into seeminglessly connecting each place. I am someone who really enjoys music and atmosphere in the game, doing such a lazy job on the audio department is just a no-go, especially when you know that this is a thing which doesn't take so long, especially when all the assets are already done. This was also a perfect occassion they could've used the Arroyo track from Fallout 2. Ofcourse they didn't. It was just lazy, given the fact that it can be done very quick, even in a "publisher is sitting on our neck" way.
There were no soundeffects used for various occasions, even when, again, the assets were there and all it would take is to place them in the respective contexts. There was this new rain feauture, which looked almost like a joke thanks to no soundeffects and far better working community mods. It is not rocket science to record very good and varying rain sounds. If even I can do that on a decent basis as an amateur, then you gotta expect some better stuff from Obsidian Entertaiment? But there was none. I would've even said "ok..." if there were just enviromental sounds, like wind, water flowing and so on, like the very same company did it very good in previous games. What they delivered in HH? None.
The "quests" were a joke. Collect this, go there, come back. Kill them, because we are lazy, take this mine, shoot this guy, come back. I get that they want to encourage me as the player to explore the area, but what is there to explore other than the aforementionend Survivalists caches? Nothing, but empty scenery.
Navigating up and down was a nightmare, even when they learned some new tricks or two to set cliff blockers, it was still incredibly boring to navigate through all those rather dull and alien looking cliffs.
The characters all pissed me off. We all knew that Graham won't reach the expections we all when we've read the Van Buren docs, that's a given. But seeing such a dull and uninspired character was really rage inducing, the same goes for Daniel. They both looked nothing else for me than to deliverers for 2 different variables, in the most obvious way. All this talk about religion and the bible put even Fallout 3 to a shame in comparison. Was that really neccesary? The premise of the DLC - how "innocence" can be handled in certain situations - could've lived perfectly fine without religious nutjobs and bible quotes in every second dialogue note. As an agnostic, it felt very irritating.
To boil it down, the quests were uninspiring and pretty much ended after 2-3 hours at best (not to mention that one of the endings was bugged and I couldnt end the game on different savegames) and they want me to "explore" the scenery. But what is there to "explore"?
I honestly don't want to troll, I really like Mr. Sawyer and the rest of the Obsidian team and would always defend them with rational arguments, but this DLC feels not much better than any other DLC in Fallout 3, for example. Am I really the only one here who thinks this?
