The Burned Man Walks! (New Vegas DLCs)

[Panzersharkcat]

Screen shot is in the link.

Today we’re excited to shed light on New Vegas’ upcoming game add-ons: Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road.

As a bonus, we’ve got the first officially released screenshot for Honest Hearts. This DLC will be out on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC in two weeks (May 17th), and users should now be able to grab the proper game update to play the content.

Read the press release below and stay tuned for more information on all three add-ons.

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS REVEALS DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT PLANS FOR FALLOUT®: NEW VEGAS™

Three Additional Add-on Packs Releasing in Coming Months
for Xbox 360, PlayStation®3 system and Windows PCs

May 3, 2011 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced three downloadable content packs will be released in the coming months for Fallout®: New Vegas™. The three packs will be released simultaneously for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Windows-based PCs.

Honest Hearts™, Old World Blues™ and Lonesome Road™ will further expand upon Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.

Available on May 17, Honest Hearts takes you on an expedition to the unspoiled wilderness of Utah’s Zion National Park. Things go horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a tribal raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave, you become embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. The decisions you make will determine the fate of Zion.

In Old World Blues, releasing in June, you will discover how some of the Mojave’s mutated monsters came to be when you unwittingly become a lab rat in a science experiment gone awry. You’ll need to scour the Pre-War research centers of the Big Empty in search of technology to turn the tables on your kidnappers or join forces with them against an even greater threat.

Lonesome Road, available in July, brings the courier’s story full circle when you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of New Vegas. In his transmission, Ulysses promises the answer as to why, but only if you take one last job –a job that leads you into the depths of the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned.

Reviews of Fallout: New Vegas have called the game as “an utterly essential purchase” (MSN UK) and as “addictively, rambunctiously fun” (Entertainment Weekly). The Associated Press awarded it a 4 out of 4 stars and said “Bottom Line: It’s a Blast”, while GameSpy gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars and called Fallout: New Vegas “one of the best games of the year.”

All downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas will be available for download on Xbox LIVE® for 800 Microsoft Points, the PlayStation®Network for $9.99, and both Steam and Direct2Drive for $9.99.

Published by Bethesda Softworks and developed at Obsidian Entertainment, Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, and Fallout: New Vegas have been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas, including the game’s downloadable content, please visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Speculation that Joshua Graham is alive and that Ulysses, the cut companion, is coming back is correct. Hopefully, Lonesome Road fills in details about the Courier and Ulysses. I'm guessing that they were both survivors of Vault 11.

[Vanas]

[He] did not think of the Courier again until the battle at the Divide reached his ears. The battle between the two couriers, beneath the torn skies and the Old World flag... each bearing a message for the other.

Looking forward to exploring the Big Mt. and the Lonesome Road. Not so interested in the Burning Man, but I'm sure the DLC will have it's moments. Dead Money was fun if rather limited, hopefully these'll be be bigger and better.

[Vympel]

It may be that though Ulysses is introduced in this DLC, this 'battle' won't come until another one.

[Panzersharkcat]

@ Vanas - Oh, I'm rather fascinated by the Burned Man. This is a guy who scares the shit out of Caesar, after all. It helps that he was supposed to be a companion in Van Buren.

@ Vympel - I think it's going to be like in Dead Money, where he's only mentioned. He doesn't contact you directly until Lonesome Road comes out.

[Vanas]

Yeah, the battle between the couriers is Lonesome Road. Makes me think that these ones will be a lead into it. Obviously he's had a large part to play in how you ended up in Goodsprings graveyard. It'll be nice to say 'hi'.

[Agent Fisher]

As long as these DLCs don't strip me of my guns and gear and then toss me to the fucking wolves with guns that aren't worth a fuck, or dangle a huge reward in my face and then go, uh uh, greed is bad for you! FUCK THAT! I've slaughtered entire fucking towns because of greed. I'm robbing a fucking casino vault, I wanna get fucking paid!

[Panzersharkcat]

From the description, I think you get to keep your weapons in Honest Hearts. It's just that the rest of your caravan got wiped out. Old World Blues is going to be like what happens in Mothership Zeta, where you get your stuff back near the beginning. I think you get to keep your weapons in Lonesome Road, too. This is just speculation, though. I just know that I will be kind of annoyed if I get my gear swiped in every single DLC. It wouldn't be that different from the DLCs in Fallout 3, though, if that was the case. You only keep your gear in two of them, Point Lookout and Broken Steel, and, as mentioned earlier, you get your stuff back early on in Mothership Zeta.

[Lagmonster]

I actually felt like the "we take your shit" feature was handled sensibly in all of the FO3 DLC. Mothership Zeta compensated by giving you ray guns early enough. The Pitt made sense from a story perspective. As did Operation: Anchorage which, again, compensated by giving you substantial gear at the start.

I admit that I liked the *idea* of Dead Money, but the execution of the concept just took Credibility out back, shot it, and pissed on its corpse. There were a lot of really good ideas there; I like to imagine that there was one fairly creative person on the team pitching story and event ideas to the developers, who didn't really know how to translate it into mechanics a player could use.

[PeZook]

I would've actually preferred if the game didn't throw gear at your face in The Pitt, and that you would have to think and scrounge much more as a lowly slave. As it was, you got an assault rifle during first 2 minutes of play, making the smuggled weapon (knife or .38) completely pointless.

[Lagmonster]

I actually didn't have problems with the early game in the Pitt, it was at the late game where I didn't see how any reasonable bandit society could NOT see me as an incredible threat and have a sniper poke holes in me from a great and well-armoured distance. Everything about their setup would have worked, except for the fact that I was He-Man or Jesus or something:

"Okay, so, you're just like every other one of these cloth-wearing, soil-covered scumbag slaves. Go out there and fetch some steel ingots. The place is lightly defended by naked, unarmed primitives and it's a treasure trove of weapons, armor, and ammunition. This means that when you inevitably come back weighted to the ground with guns and armor, I will act surprised and compensate you with ever greater money, guns, and armor, which as a slavemaster I do not ever expect you to use against me."

[PeZook]

Yeah, exactly. They shoved gear at you and then acted as if you were just another random slave. The construction of the DLC should have empathized that poking your head out too much would get it chopped off. That could've been done very simply...by not shovelling weapons at you

[Panzersharkcat]

Somehow, nobody was suspicious about the Tesla armor and plasma rifles, either. What I really hated about the Pitt, though, was that if you killed the guys in the front, you'd get beaten up by some lowly raiders who you should be able to kill with ease.

I hope you can cut off Joshua Graham's head and present it to Caesar.

[TC Pilot]

I actually felt like the "we take your shit" feature was handled sensibly in all of the FO3 DLC. Mothership Zeta compensated by giving you ray guns early enough. The Pitt made sense from a story perspective. As did Operation: Anchorage which, again, compensated by giving you substantial gear at the start.

The problem people had (and me included) is that The Pitt's early portion didn't take into account the character's context. You could be level 20 and suited in a full set of Brotherhood power armor, and yet still be taken down by four emaciated raiders with lead pipes. That has a way of really straining someone's suspension of disbelief. It should have been fairly simple to level the raiders along with the player, so that by a high enough level you might be knocked around by goons suited up in some tribal power armor or something.

[White Haven]

Gas the PC, drop him/her into a pit trap (Hah hah, Pitt trap!), script a use of an EMP grenade if the player is wearing powered armor...that's just lazy writing, through and through.

[Lagmonster]

More restrictive than bad, actually. They got the 'you get screwed, wake up with nothing' idea better with Dead Money. In The Pitt, don't forget, you actually had a whole pre-quest to find a slave loincloth and put it on. The idea was that you were trying to stealth your way in pretending to be a slave, not kicking in the front door with a laser minigun.

The problem was that their intentions for the DLC and the reality of the freedom afforded players in FO3 went head-to-head; if it had been me, I would have simply re-written The Pitt so that if you try to storm the front gate rather than do what the guy says with the loincloth slave thing, they just seal the place up with some huge door or detonate some emergency defense explosives on the bridge, and you have no choice but to fail the whole mission because you couldn't follow orders.

[Panzersharkcat]

The Honest Hearts trailer is out.

EDIT: If this screen shot is any indication, I think you get to keep your gear.

[SirNitram]

You do keep your gear, and you can return to Zion after you d o the main quests. It appears there'll be .45 caliburs(Pistol and SMG. .45 SMG? That sounds.. Very nasty.), a unique rifle.. LOOKS like a service rifle.. Yao Gui are gonna be back, along with, apparently, a new breed of gecko.

In Old World Blues, there's apparently a chance to respec, and/or cap your level at 30(Or current, if higher).

[Ypoknons]

Downloaded and started. Spoiler

a little underwhelmed so far. The introduction starts off talking about Graham this Graham that, then you meet him soon enough and he's like hey, let's help you get home. Ok........