Walking an apparently lonesome road in the post-apocalypse

So this is it. The conclusion. 'The Lonesome Road'. You're going to have to walk this path alone. Except when you don't because you're being accompanied by a hovering murder-machine of a robot for most of the journey. But except for that it's just you and a ton of monsters waiting for you to put foot to ass and figure out the mysteries of your past. Except when it isn't because the main antagonist of this DLC, Ulysses, will be communicating fairly frequently with you via your robot companion. So really the DLC title is lying to us about this being a lonesome anything. That said in this DLC the writers are doing their damnedest to try and wrap up as many lose threads left over from the character creation as they possibly can and bless their hearts because as already discussed in part 1 the fact that the game goes halfway between a blank slate and a predefined background it makes that task nearly impossible. So fairly early in the main game the non-player character (NPC) who, apparently, initially gave you the job that nearly got you killed mentions that someone else (Ulysses) was supposed to get the job instead but when he saw your name (whatever you chose to name your character) next on the list he backed out and let you take the job thus setting in motion the events of the game. 'Lonesome Road' seeks to explain the rationale behind Ulysses' decision and also fill in a bit more of your character's background.

So the fourth and final 'New Vegas' DLC starts off with you traveling to The Divide, a series of canyons and collapsed highways, to “meet your destiny” or something of that sort when you finally get to Ulysses. Throughout most of this journey Ulysses will, as mentioned above, be talking to the player fairly often (and without spoiling much of anything) about how the devastation seen the region is somehow your fault. This, in my opinion, gets fairly tedious fairly quickly. That said ***ALERT*** your answers to his questions and whether or not you find all of his journal entries (scattered throughout the region) has a significant impact on the endgame of the DLC so pay attention to these otherwise fairly dull conversations. Longtime readers (just kidding there aren't any) may remember how in the 'Old World Blues' article I mentioned how it was nice to have a villain that deviated a bit from the stiff stock types and actually brought a bit of levity to their destruction well Ulysses is totally not like that at all. He is, like the player character, a courier and unless the definition of that job has drastically changed its description in the future then he has an awfully high opinion of himself and a lot of resources at his disposal for someone whose, unless I really missed something, previous job was delivering packages. Basically imagine a FedEx employee with a messiah complex and you should have a pretty good idea of Ulysses' personality. So that's kind of meh especially given the frequency with which you have to sit through his philosophical rantings.

That said other than Ulysses the DLC is actually quit nice. A nearly linear narrative with just enough in the way of rewards for diverting off the main path and a very interesting environment. The Divide is also (and I realize that enemies scale with player level) one of the most challenging areas in the game even if the player character is a walking tank as nasty enemies have a habit of spawning in groups close enough to the player to make picking them all off before they reach you impractical/impossible. That's actually a good thing. After the cake walk that was 'Honest Hearts' it's nice to actually be moderately challenged. Also worth noting is that the region unique equipment for 'The Lonesome Road' is, after the toys found in 'Old World Blues', probably some of the best equipment in the game which is always nice (except for the rocket launcher, that thing can't hit anything).

Overall I would say that the various flavors of 'New Vegas' DLC added something to the overall experience (except 'Honest Hearts') and that while certainly not the best of the bunch that 'The Lonesome Road' did as much as it could to wrap up the questions surrounding your characters origins and that while that may sometime end up being incongruous with the character you've been playing it's probably as good as it's going to get. Check back next week for how to break the game.