New Vegas had the best DLC

Lets do it again 

A video game has to end at some point. No matter how fun the adventure, how sprawling the world, there has to come a point at which the breadth of creation comes short against the endless desire to explore, because nothing can last forever. At least not in a vacuum. However, we're not always ready to part with the words we love, playing the characters we love and traipsing around a world that we love. And thus these feelings necessitate the call for DLC in our industry. In this post monetisation reactionary world, there has come several cries to do away with all forms of monetisation, from Loot boxes to DLC, but I could not disagree more with that latter sentiment. Because even though sometimes DLC is indeed main game content exorcised in order to be sold on the side of the game, (such as the case was with Mass Effect 3's story-pivotal 'From Ashes' DLC) at other times they have served as great additional adventures that effortlessly take advantage of their status and position to tell a story that they couldn't have if they were just attachments onto the base package. And to champion this, I present 'Fallout: New Vegas'.

'Fallout: New Vegas' cobbled itself together in record time from the remnants of Fallout 3 in order to wow and awe the newly minted 3D Fallout fanbase with an actual branching narrative of differing perspectives and factions where you could define the side you stood for and carve your own path through the story, in ways that Fallout 3 largely lacked. (I mean sure, you could surprise-decide to destroy the Brotherhood at the end of Fallout 3's Broken Steel: but literally why would you do that? There's no logical path to take you there unless you're roleplaying an actual dissociative psychopath.)  It was an elegant thing of checks and balances, answer and response questlines and various independent reputation systems, which chronicled our unique journey through these scorched Mojave wastes. Unfortunately, such a tightly bound narrative made it near impossible to really add anything onto that base game in the form of DLC.

So Obsidian could have gone for totally unrelated side adventures who's sole draw was exploring new lands for a bit, similar to how Fallout 3 acted, and whilst it may have looked like that's exactly what they did initially, those who partook soon discovered that Obsidian were actually planning something far more impressive with New Vegas's DLC suite. Dead Money was the smoking gun. Launching less than 2 months after the drop of the New Vegas main game, Dead Money presented a Spanish-themed resort unlike anything we'd seen from Fallout before, and locked us in a deathly stealth-tipped gauntlet against a deadly cloud, monstrous ghosts and duplicitous teammates. Narratively, the story picked up on a minor mentioned character from the base game and elaborated fully on their fate, not affecting the wider world of the Mojave but still growing upon what New Vegas had established. But it was that ending which stuck with us.

Just when you've reached the climax of your heist, entered into the Sierra Madre and breached it's secrets; the game begins to hint at something more during the last conversations you have with your team. Christine and Elijah hint at their journeys before the Sierra Madre, specifically mentioning never before heard of places like the Big Empty and the storms of The Divide. Each reference would come with a challenge point awarded by the game, ominously called 'Things to Come!'. And just to seal the deal, when you completed the DLC and were rewarded with the customary Fallout 'where are they now?' slideshow, two of the companions reflect on their time with the courier and how they never thought of them again until "(They) heard the legends of the Divide. The Divide, where two messengers, two couriers, fought beneath an ancient flag, at the edge of the world." Now if that's not a cliff-hanger, I don't know what is!

Speculation erupted as to what this could mean, what future adventures this could be referring to, and thanks to the modular nature of DLC, much like a TV show, the community was bought together in the anticipation of trying to decode the clues for where we were going next. With just a few teases, this DLC had established a new continuing narrative, with an endpoint, to fester in the minds of players and take on a life of its own! This narrative didn't have to interact with the war over the Dam, because it hinted at something separate and just as interesting, a personal quest wherein the player themselves is being hunted across DLCs for a reason they don't yet know. What a tool for speculation! For theory crafting! And a way to make us salivate at the mouth for each slowly unpacking snippet of lore thrown our way in the DLCs to come, just so that we could figure out what this Divide even was!

And then we got Honest Hearts, my least favourite of the DLCs. Honest Hearts was a fairly expedient and self contained little story, touching on another briefly mentioned character from the wider world, but not really expanding on the whole 'Battle at the Divide' plot. I mean, there was a 'blink and you'll miss it' mention of some courier working under Caesar's Legion, and I think this might have been the first time it's officially stated that Courier is looking for another courier, presumably you. But we already knew the end goal was going to be us battling under an old world flag at the Divide, nothing new was really granted to us with these lore snippets. Joshua Graham proved a memorable enough character to justify playing the DLC, but it cooled off the burning passion that a lot of fans held for this mystery.

Only to have ourselves puffed up by the bellows during Old World Blues. Some of the silliest content that Fallout has ever enjoyed, Old World Blues took us to a technological crater which housed the various experiments of neurotic super-scientists with their morality dials turned right the way down to zero. Dog brains operating robot guns, disturbing hybrid animal monstrosities, a miniature replica Securitron robot purposefully afflicted with a neurotic obsession for mugs; the creativity of Obsidian really come out for a lot of this insanity. And they did not play it subtle with feeding the wider narrative either. The path carved by Elijah and Cristine is all over this Big MT, as is the influence of this mysterious courier, now officially given the name: Ulysses. (I think I recall that name having been datamined previously, because fans were that obsessed with this whole saga, but this was when we learnt about him officially.)

All of these pieces came together to be the setup for the collision at the end of the final DLC 'The Lonesome Road' and as far as grassroots advertising campaigns go, this was easily one of the most hyped DLC releases I've ever been on the hype train for. In all honesty, Lonesome Road could have been a complete trainwreck and we would have eaten it up. In actuality it ended up being an atypical Fallout experience, similar more to a Half-Life 2 level pack in sections, with quite the subversion of expectations at it's end. At least for me. I was surprised. And did it live up to the 3 DLCs of hype? Well I suppose that is up to you're own tastes, but the journey is what made this count, not the destination. And so I'd argue that for concept, planning and execution; Fallout New Vegas had the best DLC.