Knights of the Cardboard Castle

As expected, the last of the Fallout: New Vegas DLC falls some way short of the quality of Old World Blues. As its name indicates, this one is a very linear combat romp down the eponymous road of the title. As such I went through it very quickly as there is little reason to backtrack over the territory to complete quests or explore for the heck of it.

• Story-wise, this DLC is supposed to fill the gaps of the player character, the Courier’s, personal history and his relationship with Ulysses, who could have been Courier Six, but chose not to be. Unfortunately I found all this exposition to be unbelievable and frankly boring. It’s so jarring that the Courier supposedly has all this back story but is completely unaware of any of it at the beginning of the game.

• What makes it worse is that Ulysses is such a silly character, so completely serious, prone to dramatic language and bombastic speeches, all of which adds up to nothing of substance. It’s pure pattern-matching using the trigger phrases of nationalism and symbology. Pretentious and frankly boring. Unfortunately he’s also one of only two characters with speaking roles in this DLC and the other one is a robot who communicates mainly using whoops and beeps like R2-D2.

• The novel mechanic of Lonesome Road is that it’s set in an area littered with unexploded pre-war nuclear warheads. Early on you get a laser detonator device that allows you to set off these warheads, so get ready for some pretty fireworks and dramatic earthquakes. Many of these detonations are actually required because the warheads block the only path through an area and it is cool how the landscape buckles and breaks when they go off. All scripted of course, but still nice. It can be cool when you manage set these off when there are enemies near them but otherwise they’re just another kind of locked door in your way.
• The combat is pretty decent. Some of the scripted encounters can be brutal and seem designed to punish players who rely exclusively on long-range sniping (like me). Sniping weapons have great single shot damage at extreme ranges but poor overall DPS but what happens when you need to fight a lot of enemies in a very confined area? Better hope you brought a heavy machinegun along as a backup too.
• The special equipment here reflect the DLC’s theme as well, being heavy assault weapons. The signature weapon is the Red Glare, which is a rocket launcher with a respectable rate of fire. My character doesn’t have the Explosives skill however so I couldn’t use it. Fortunately for a Guns user like me, there’s also the Shoulder-Mounted Machine Gun which saved me in some of those tight situations. ED-E gets some serious boosts in this DLC too. Poor Rex, now no one will ever choose him.
• You do get to launch a nuclear missile (or more than one!) at the Mojave Desert at the end of the game. This unlocks a new area in the Mojave itself, which is kind of cool. Still kind of ridiculous that everyone else in Mojave acts as if nothing had happened.

Ultimately this DLC is a let-down. With no exploration to speak of and a terribly linear main quest, it’s only saving grace is that it offers more combat to those who can’t get enough of it. For my part, I was actually glad to get out of the Divide and get on with finishing the much more interesting main plot.