Old World Blues

You know, it's interesting how and why someone who has taken a break from blogging decides to come back. For me, traditionally, it requires a certain level of intellectual (or, more frequently, emotional) reserves, and often, some external impetus, something I feel a need to share, and tonight, at 2.36a, here I am at the keyboard, about to do just that.

Please understand this won't be particularly pithy (I expect), not terribly insightful (I imagine), and possibly less coherent as time ticks by and my body wonders why I don't love it anymore. This is going to be...well, a little bit of a game review, but any of you reading this likely know how my brain works, so you know that it likely will wander from the topic soon enough.

I just finished the third DLC (downloadable content, referring to the distribution method for an expansion) for Fallout: New Vegas, called Old World Blues. OWB has been around for a couple years now, but this is my first go at it. I want to talk about it because it is an excellent example of storytelling and game-crafting done terribly, beautifully right.

Your hosts when beginning Old World Blues.

In classic form, when you leave the Mojave to start the DLC, you awaken with no idea of your geographical location, and no idea where...well, certain things have gone off to. It takes little time to meet your hosts, and you are turned loose in a new sandbox absolutely filled with cool locations and a lot of humor. OWB is an homage to pulp-scifi movies of the '50s and '60s, and it takes a lot of those wonderful tropes and runs with them. 

Okay, so this isn;t really going to be a review. Lots of those out there already. Onward, then.

OWB is, hands down, the best expansion for a game I have ever seen. If it was a game on its own, it would be fun, but (of course) far too short. As it is, I still spent something like 20 hours in the Big MT, and didn't do probably half of what there was to do. It is a sandbox, completely open for you to explore in any order and direction you wish, it has an explanation why you cannot leave (greater than "It's a really fucking long way home and you're too lazy to go back right now," like so many), and it has many layers of clearly-defined goals that you can pursue as you wish. 

The personalities are fantastic and painted in caricature, and that is necessary in the interactive environment of a game, else the hordes of people you meet just blend into the same boring shades of grey. Not fifty of them, don't get excited, sheesh. The things you can do are varied and interesting, the humor is campy, but there is also this very serious undercurrent, a message the Big MT (say it aloud and you'll sound just like you're from New Vegas!) is trying to teach your character, but also trying to teach you. It ties into a much larger story that encompasses the entirety of New Vegas, its DLCs and, truth be had, the Fallout universe itself.

While the Mojave can often seem rather impersonal, the Big MT (and truthfully, Dead Money and Lonesome Road, too, and not coincidentally those are the DLCs most closely associated with OWB) is deeply, almost disturbingly personal. I developed attachments to the personalities and locations of the Big MT far more than I expected, especially as none of them travel with you or do the companion thing, exactly. There was a sense that I--my courier, my wasteland wanderer--was important, and that is a feeling that is often missing in any game without feeling heavy-handed ("We are telling you that you are important! Prophecies have been spoken! You are destined!" Blah blah fucking blah boring). You tease this knowledge out of the DLC, you piece it together bit by bit, slowly growing a larger view of what is going on in the world and how...if not yet why...you are so critical. It is subtle, and it is a thing of wonder.

Ultimately, the thing that tells me OWB is fantastic is how I felt when I finally had the chance to return to the Mojave...and when I got there, I was sad. Sure, I can go back to the Big MT whenever I want, and many of the friends I made there will be waiting for me (and all of the enemies I left in peace, too), but the Mojave seems so...foreign to me now, and I already find myself longing for the bizarre retro pop-sci unreality of the Big MT. OWB will always be a chapter I play whenever I play Fallout: New Vegas,  because in all the Mojave, I finally found a place where I could say, "My god, I'm home."

5/5, if you're wondering.