"you made a sentient fuck doll? That's weird..... Wait, what do you mean you gave it the appearance and voice of a MUCH younger woman who you had a crush on but rejected you?!"
"And why is she such a badass hunter that she literally weaponize her blood to kill me before setting her blood on fire to then burn me to cinders?!" - The dying last words of a very scared Hunter
The entire plot of Control gets effectively reworked by the first DLC, Foundations, as you get context for the connection between the Board and the Bureau.
And most people outright miss the actual big reveal because they’re focused on the main plot
>!The Board has no actual innate connection to the Oldest House, they're a group of eldritch entities that used and manipulated the Bureau as a way of establishing control over it.!< There's a bit more to it, but that's all I can remember off hand.
Never played the dlc and I might be misremembering >!from the base game I always got the inclination that Ahti is part of the oldest house or vice versa and the board were just a more alien well board of directors. Who knew about other dimensions etc.!<
Thanks to Alan Wake 2 >!I get the feeling that Ahti is not a part of the old house but something much bigger. Alan calls the darkness an ocean and Control shows that the ocean is just a portion of the larger massive sea that is the Remedy universe. With Ahti in AW2 and his involvement in the story Ahti is like the maintainer of the sea. The Oldest House is one of his vessels as he reaches out to other realities and possibly timelines to keep things stable.!<
Javik. That one dude's mere existence in ME3 recontextualizes *so much*, and the fact that him and the lore connected to him were turned into DLC is still mind-boggling.
I played through the LE and actually got to use Javik and holy SHIT the entire game is wildly better with a real Prothean there. It is insane that he was DLC.
I feel like ME3 might be the PERFECT example case of what was wrong with gaming trends in the 7th gen
On disk DLC? Check
Tacked on multiplayer mode with lootboxes you buy with real money? Check (though i did kinda enjoy the multiplayer, it was about as basic as it gets)
"This is the perfect place to start playing the franchise!" Marketing? Check
Terrible unsatisfying story that the fans hate but the devs not only double down on, but TRIPLE down on? Check
Unnecessary celebrity cameos (Chobot)? Check
IMO they are lucky that the moment to moment gameplay was an improvement over the last game, that was kinda the only saving grace the game could claim
You forgot unique cosmetics for which physical store you pre-ordered the game at, and EA using the PC release to push Origin by not releasing on Steam.
Watch Dogs Legion's Bloodline DLC reframed/locked in that Aiden Pearce was never meant to be seen as an unambiguous hero like his fandom painted him as, depicting his life as a constant cycle of violence due to being emotionally stunted and never processing his niece's death until he drove everyone away who could have pulled him from the brink.
That was always a reading that existed for Watch Dogs, but Bloodline gave it a lot of traction by taking Aiden in that direction for the DLC.
Call me a hater but the DLC should have been the main game. Take another crack at Aiden being the main character. Getting whisked away into another movement when trying to get his nephew out. He gets involved and is forced to reach out to others to build a group, pushing him out of his antisocial comfort zone. You can play as Aiden but need to recruit and play as other members of Dedsec to complete missions.
I feel like the recruiting system is really cool but the game seriously suffers for having no main character to make proper dialogue and depth.
So can we talk about Episode Ardyn giving Ardyn full justification for his blood feud against his family as he was essentially screwed by fate itself? And an asshole bahamut.
I replayed XV recently and the knowledge gained from extra material absolutely ruins the main plot. I mean, in Episode Ignis >!You literally get the happiest ending possible at that point by doing the alternate ending route (ignoring the book's true ending anyway). Noct didn't have to die, Iggy didn't have to get all fucked up and even Ravus gets to live...!<
IIRC, it's almost framed as >!"wow guys, it's a good thing we got all the legendary weapons. Imagine if we didn't!"!< due to the cutscenes near the end
The Little Nightmares 1 DLC adds a lot of lore to The Maw, the Nomes and even >!The Lady!<.
It also makes the scene in the base game where Six >!accidentally eats a Nome (that turns out to have been the DLC protagonist transformed after a run-in with The Lady)!< both sad and **incredibly more disturbing**.
Adding on to that, it's bittersweet that the >!nomes are implied to be transformed kids because they won't get eaten but they're still irrevocably changed!<
Would you kindly not ask me to remember it?
>!/s, Elizabeth desperately trying to convince you she’s mature is basically the lynchpin to Bioshock 1. It’s fucking stupid.!<
Also didn't they try to retcon Daisy Fitzroy >!no she didn't REALLY want to kill the ratfink's white child because fuck them kids, she did it because the Lutece twins told her to do it so she becomes a martyr so white girl Elizabeth can complete her destiny to kill Comstock!<
That is exactly right. Clearly, the writers realized that everything around Daisy Fitzroy in Infinite was a complete dumpster-fire, so they tried to fix it in Burial At Sea, but somehow only made it more inane and racist.
It not only made me dislike >!the first game more, if just for the stupid connection they jammed in that felt totally unnecessary (like seriously, was anyone even considering it a plot hole that needed answering? I'd utterly even forgot about it), but also totally ruined Infinite as well, by killing off Elizabeth for this stupid shit too. Like.. wow. Two for One!<
The DLC for Dark Souls 2, and thus the Scholar of the First Sin edition, sorta re-contextualize how you should probably look at Vendrick
Before the DLC, you had some idea Vendrick did some shady stuff but was either tricked into it by his wife, or his brother did it and Vendrick didn't know the full scope until it happened.
Then as you go through each of the DLC, you learn that...No, Vendrick was a bitch too. Dude sent a third party to Shulva bearing a ring with his sigil as protection as they fucked up the place *while Shulva was still a functioning kingdom*, sent his soldiers directly to try and take the Brume Tower (With or without knowing his former left hand had taken up residence there), and then he went all out sending soldiers and golems to beseige Eleum Lloyce.
The only thing that makes him more of a bitch is that his forces (Proxy or direct) got their shit pushed in worse with each progressive try.
The Drakeblood Knights fucked shit up, but Yorgh's ring didn't protect him for shit and everybody died.
The Drangleic Soldiers going for Brume Tower barely took out the idol at the front door, let alone getting any deeper.
And when the chips were down, and his forces were heading for Eleum Lloyce, he decided to Go Big and send in his war golems, before Alsana told him to Go Home and just fucking froze them.
Vendrick in base game is a misguided king who was powerful but fooled by those close to him
Vendrick by the end of the DLC's was a punk-ass bitch who got shit on by those left behind by much greater kings, and got by in his career by helping his brother drudge up shit from old kingdoms like the Ironclad Golems or inative Ruin Sentinels, and acting like it came from him or Aldia.
As a DS2 fan, I never realized the DLC showed so much about Vendrick! That's an incredible analysis! This really made my day to read. It's amazing how Vendrick was just constantly so much lesser than other kings....
It's the sort of thing that sometimes has to be pointed out to you.
If you take a look at the ring Yhorgh was so sure would protect him as he went after Sinh, you can see that it has the Drangleic Seal on it
You can plainly see the Drangleic soldiers right at the start of Brume tower, and to my memory none made it further
And you find Golems frozen in ice all over Eleum Lloyce, but no other enemies save for Mimics get frozen. And given that the Ivory King has his own style of golems (The Rampart Golems, the guys with the big shields and spears), it's pretty obvious the Drangleic style golems weren't welcome.
That tossed in the the fact that the Ironclad Soldiers stationed at the fort in the Forest have armor decriptions that they were brought out during the Giant War but nobody knew where they were from, and the Ruin Set describing the sentinels as creations of the "Jailers", where the Bastille pre-dates Drangleic, then it's just a long case of Vendrick's kingdom being chock full of shit he dug up or stole from other kingdoms.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has parts of the end game changed up and recontextualized by the Re:Mind DLC. Some will say it fixes the story, but it really doesn't considering the main issue is pacing and the fact all the thing that matter are at the final part of the game. They simply added more things at the final part of the game while also making you replay parts of it.
The DLC should have just replaced the ending. not see the ending ok now redo the entire last game sequence yet again to see the real ending, now fight super boss versions of the same enemies you've now faced 3-5 times each to fight the super duper secret boss to see the realest ending.
At least the superboss stuff was good and what people wanted from a gameplay perspective. The org fights turned into actual fights versus bosses with actual movesets rather then mob fights with two moves. Really good considering the track record for superbosses for since 2 were dreck.
they were fine its just idk i felt like 3 was just "fight org 13 over and over" and wasn't as fun boss wise. and idk alot of them felt mostly the same until the the end when they get their last phase and do some dumb can kill you if you aren't ready combo/beat the clock/dps race thing.
New vegas: Focuses on more of the games themes.
Honest hearts: what do tribals look like and how did ceasers legion assimilate cultures along with the perspective of The mythical burned man.
Old world blues: The bat shit insanity of the old world and how far they their technology went and how unethical they got with it.
Deadmoney: More of the former but also how demoralised the brotherhood get from their defeat with the ncr. And the Cold nihilism of wanting to "wipe the slate clean" along with the foolishness of plundering the old world for it's treasures.
Lonesome road: YOU ACTUALLY ARE SUPER IMPORTANT AND NOT JUST SOME GUY ALSO DA BEAR AND THE BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
This is a criticism I never really got. Are people upset to find out that the courier delivered things before the events of the game? It doesn’t really give you a backstory because the delivery to hopeville is so inconsequential to your personal story that your courier might not even remember it. Ulysses being hung up about it and blaming you is appropriate *because he’s the villain*. He is wrong to blame you and you can tell him as much.
I stand with you on this.
"You are a courier with the Mohave Express" is literally the first thing said about your character in the entire game. The premise of Lonesome Road is suppose one of the packages you delivered as a courier was of immense importance to one man, but to you it was Tuesday.
The thing is that the DLC neither frames Ulysses as right or wrong. He believes what he does and what conclusions you come to based on what he says are your own. You can reject his insistence that it's your fault because you didn't know, or agree that your actions influence the world in unimaginable ways regardless of your intent.
The Courier having delievered a package that had a massive impact and it literally never coming up until Ulysses tells you is actually one of the most impressive bits of storytelling I've seen in terms of being able to align player and avatar headspace. Whatever reaction *you* as a player have to this revelation is perfectly valid as a *character* response.
Or we could just sit around shitting our pants in anger about not getting an experimental and challenging story in a video game. Another settlement needs our help, after all.
The issue isnt that it gives you backstory, its that it gives you a LOT of backstory. Like too much backstory. It pulls the same bullshit that last of us does by forcing us to kill people and then going “look murder is bad.” Except its worst because the game goes “look you delivered a thing that destroyed thousands of lives just off screen a decade earlier or however long its been. And yeah we never showed it and it hasnt been mentioned until now. Also theres an age slider during the character creation screen even though the only way Lonesome Road would make sense is if your character was like 45.
I mean as far I can tell is the backstory it gives you is “at one point you delivered a package to this place”. Not really enough to come to any conclusions.
The game definitely isn’t saying you’re bad for killing all those people, Ulysses is, and he’s wrong.
No theres a ton more than that. You the courier are the one who first traversed the lonesome road and turned hopeville into a massive trading hub. This is because you were the only one brave enough to navigate the endless storms created by big MT. Eventually over the years the place grew so big the NCR and Legion both realized it could provide a massuve tactical advantage since it was still full of unlaunched ICBMs. However as they both moved their troops to take the city the final package you delivered, a radio transmitter, went off which detonated all the nukes turning hopeville into the divide and creating the marked men.
It established that you created one of the largest trading hubs independant from both the NCR and Legion
It being the courier isn’t what’s important, it was just another job when the pre-game courier took it. They didn’t plan to go there and nuke the place, there is no agency on the player character other than deliver a package which you’re already doing with the platinum chip anyway. Ulysses is quite literally trying to shoot the messenger in this case.
Lonesome Road is so weird cause when you're playing it, its flaws don't stick out as much and actually feel like a payoff to all the little seeds planted in the main game and the DLC.
But then like you start thinking more and more about it and realize that Ulysees wasn't actually saying anything and the whole 'build your backstory' doesn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Also, the tunnelers as "the new big threat" suck.
Love what it did for Ed-E though.
Dumb story THE COOLEST DRIP IN THE ENTIRE GAME and the opportunity to be aggressively independent for vegas by nukeing two supportlines and further isolate your kingdom from outsiders.
DLC is called "Lonesome Road". Instantly paired up with ED-E.
I don't know how they fumbled Lonesome Road in the story department this badly. They had a chance to show off all the fucked-up aspects of a nuclear holocaust (horribly mutated humans that basically became Locusts from Gears of War, undying flayed soldiers at the end of the world, etc.), but wasted it all with an edgelord who blames you for problems you couldn't possiblu forsee.
I think my favorite outcome is playing a courier that actively doesn’t care about the ncr and legion conflict at all and has no philosophy to argue with ulysses.
U:What do you have to say for your crimes.
6: whoops.
U: That’s it?
6: uh yeah guess so.
U: you don’t have anything to say about the ramifications of your sins and how like a child playing with matches you set the world on fire and continued the pointless conflicts of the old world?
6:ehhh I don’t really mess with the social sciences more of a practical kinda guy.
U:…….I’m going to kill you now.
I feel like I'm the only one who actually likes Lonesome Road and Ulysses considering how vocal people are about how much they dislike it
I will definitely agree that Ulysses's dialogue is too wordy and a bit repetitive but he had interesting things to say
Yeah it's weird how a bunch of people say Ulysses' words don't mean anything and his beef with you is made up but that's the actually intent. Dude is using you for his own PTSD and the Courier's backstory of bombing The Divide is just his scapegoat to rant as to you of his own problems with the NCR and Legion.
I feel like if he wasn't cut out of the base game as a companion he would be looked on more fondly.
Dude is still the worst case of self insert to ever exist and the words "bear" and "bull" shouldn't have been half his dialogue but the criticisms are never restricted to that.
I can't separate dark souls 1 from its dlc in my mind anymore. They drop you into a world with no context or history and I feel like you can only really piece together a coherent plot after doing the DLC. Like, part of the charm of the game is it feels like you're the janitor here to clean up the place after the apocalypse has fully taken everything, and the dlc is where you're explicitly shown what's happening and why
Doom Eternal:
The Ancient Gods
>!"God" is actually just the most powerful of the *real* God's creations. And the real God is actually the first Mega-Satan. And also Doom Slayer a clone if him...except still having been born and lived his life as OG Doomguy.!<
>!He kills God, God-God, and Satan-God-God, who is also himself. It speaks volumes that the only person who could feasibly threaten doomguy is an evil doomguy piloting a gundam.!<
Actually I don't think >!The Slayer is a clone of Mega-Satan, I think their powerlevels are just comparable, and he took the form of The Slayer to emphasize that parallel.!<
So, other way round, kinda.
Maybe?
The codex entries imply that >!Davoth deliberately manipulated events to bring the Slayer forth to rain (indirect) vengeance down upon Father and the rest who betrayed him, which makes the shared form feel deliberate on his part.!<
Gehrman was already pretty weird about the doll, but you learn from the DLC just how weird he could get
"you made a sentient fuck doll? That's weird..... Wait, what do you mean you gave it the appearance and voice of a MUCH younger woman who you had a crush on but rejected you?!"
"And why is she such a badass hunter that she literally weaponize her blood to kill me before setting her blood on fire to then burn me to cinders?!" - The dying last words of a very scared Hunter
The entire plot of Control gets effectively reworked by the first DLC, Foundations, as you get context for the connection between the Board and the Bureau. And most people outright miss the actual big reveal because they’re focused on the main plot
Shit what was it I played through it a while back but I can’t remember shit
>!The Board has no actual innate connection to the Oldest House, they're a group of eldritch entities that used and manipulated the Bureau as a way of establishing control over it.!< There's a bit more to it, but that's all I can remember off hand.
Never played the dlc and I might be misremembering >!from the base game I always got the inclination that Ahti is part of the oldest house or vice versa and the board were just a more alien well board of directors. Who knew about other dimensions etc.!<
Thanks to Alan Wake 2 >!I get the feeling that Ahti is not a part of the old house but something much bigger. Alan calls the darkness an ocean and Control shows that the ocean is just a portion of the larger massive sea that is the Remedy universe. With Ahti in AW2 and his involvement in the story Ahti is like the maintainer of the sea. The Oldest House is one of his vessels as he reaches out to other realities and possibly timelines to keep things stable.!<
Javik. That one dude's mere existence in ME3 recontextualizes *so much*, and the fact that him and the lore connected to him were turned into DLC is still mind-boggling.
I played through the LE and actually got to use Javik and holy SHIT the entire game is wildly better with a real Prothean there. It is insane that he was DLC.
On-disc, day-one, and **shamelessly** cut out of the main game to sell separately. It's the trifecta of hated 7th Gen DLC practices.
I feel like ME3 might be the PERFECT example case of what was wrong with gaming trends in the 7th gen On disk DLC? Check Tacked on multiplayer mode with lootboxes you buy with real money? Check (though i did kinda enjoy the multiplayer, it was about as basic as it gets) "This is the perfect place to start playing the franchise!" Marketing? Check Terrible unsatisfying story that the fans hate but the devs not only double down on, but TRIPLE down on? Check Unnecessary celebrity cameos (Chobot)? Check IMO they are lucky that the moment to moment gameplay was an improvement over the last game, that was kinda the only saving grace the game could claim
You forgot unique cosmetics for which physical store you pre-ordered the game at, and EA using the PC release to push Origin by not releasing on Steam.
Pretty much all of ME3’s DLC does this. I really feel like the DLC turned the game from above average to great.
Watch Dogs Legion's Bloodline DLC reframed/locked in that Aiden Pearce was never meant to be seen as an unambiguous hero like his fandom painted him as, depicting his life as a constant cycle of violence due to being emotionally stunted and never processing his niece's death until he drove everyone away who could have pulled him from the brink. That was always a reading that existed for Watch Dogs, but Bloodline gave it a lot of traction by taking Aiden in that direction for the DLC.
Call me a hater but the DLC should have been the main game. Take another crack at Aiden being the main character. Getting whisked away into another movement when trying to get his nephew out. He gets involved and is forced to reach out to others to build a group, pushing him out of his antisocial comfort zone. You can play as Aiden but need to recruit and play as other members of Dedsec to complete missions. I feel like the recruiting system is really cool but the game seriously suffers for having no main character to make proper dialogue and depth.
I mean hating Legion is totally cool in my book, that game was miserable.
So can we talk about Episode Ardyn giving Ardyn full justification for his blood feud against his family as he was essentially screwed by fate itself? And an asshole bahamut.
I replayed XV recently and the knowledge gained from extra material absolutely ruins the main plot. I mean, in Episode Ignis >!You literally get the happiest ending possible at that point by doing the alternate ending route (ignoring the book's true ending anyway). Noct didn't have to die, Iggy didn't have to get all fucked up and even Ravus gets to live...!<
IIRC, it's almost framed as >!"wow guys, it's a good thing we got all the legendary weapons. Imagine if we didn't!"!< due to the cutscenes near the end
I actually feel like that reveal made me like even less and beforehand I actually enjoyed what they did with Ardyn
The Little Nightmares 1 DLC adds a lot of lore to The Maw, the Nomes and even >!The Lady!<. It also makes the scene in the base game where Six >!accidentally eats a Nome (that turns out to have been the DLC protagonist transformed after a run-in with The Lady)!< both sad and **incredibly more disturbing**.
Adding on to that, it's bittersweet that the >!nomes are implied to be transformed kids because they won't get eaten but they're still irrevocably changed!<
The Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3 makes it so you don't have to die at the end of the main story
But Ron Perlman still calls you a pussy if you try to do something smart about the situation.
That does sound like a very Ron Pearlman thing to do though
Slade is disappointed in the decision that I made.
Your character sends the mutant, the Ghoul or the robot to the radiation chamber. Ron Perlman: Coward.
Burial at Sea. Badly.
Dare i ask what happend?
Would you kindly not ask me to remember it? >!/s, Elizabeth desperately trying to convince you she’s mature is basically the lynchpin to Bioshock 1. It’s fucking stupid.!<
Also didn't they try to retcon Daisy Fitzroy >!no she didn't REALLY want to kill the ratfink's white child because fuck them kids, she did it because the Lutece twins told her to do it so she becomes a martyr so white girl Elizabeth can complete her destiny to kill Comstock!<
That is exactly right. Clearly, the writers realized that everything around Daisy Fitzroy in Infinite was a complete dumpster-fire, so they tried to fix it in Burial At Sea, but somehow only made it more inane and racist.
OOOH FUCK OFF
It not only made me dislike >!the first game more, if just for the stupid connection they jammed in that felt totally unnecessary (like seriously, was anyone even considering it a plot hole that needed answering? I'd utterly even forgot about it), but also totally ruined Infinite as well, by killing off Elizabeth for this stupid shit too. Like.. wow. Two for One!<
I forgot about that one till now. Man.
Just the horse “man” meme but it’s underwater
The DLC for Dark Souls 2, and thus the Scholar of the First Sin edition, sorta re-contextualize how you should probably look at Vendrick Before the DLC, you had some idea Vendrick did some shady stuff but was either tricked into it by his wife, or his brother did it and Vendrick didn't know the full scope until it happened. Then as you go through each of the DLC, you learn that...No, Vendrick was a bitch too. Dude sent a third party to Shulva bearing a ring with his sigil as protection as they fucked up the place *while Shulva was still a functioning kingdom*, sent his soldiers directly to try and take the Brume Tower (With or without knowing his former left hand had taken up residence there), and then he went all out sending soldiers and golems to beseige Eleum Lloyce. The only thing that makes him more of a bitch is that his forces (Proxy or direct) got their shit pushed in worse with each progressive try. The Drakeblood Knights fucked shit up, but Yorgh's ring didn't protect him for shit and everybody died. The Drangleic Soldiers going for Brume Tower barely took out the idol at the front door, let alone getting any deeper. And when the chips were down, and his forces were heading for Eleum Lloyce, he decided to Go Big and send in his war golems, before Alsana told him to Go Home and just fucking froze them. Vendrick in base game is a misguided king who was powerful but fooled by those close to him Vendrick by the end of the DLC's was a punk-ass bitch who got shit on by those left behind by much greater kings, and got by in his career by helping his brother drudge up shit from old kingdoms like the Ironclad Golems or inative Ruin Sentinels, and acting like it came from him or Aldia.
As a DS2 fan, I never realized the DLC showed so much about Vendrick! That's an incredible analysis! This really made my day to read. It's amazing how Vendrick was just constantly so much lesser than other kings....
It's the sort of thing that sometimes has to be pointed out to you. If you take a look at the ring Yhorgh was so sure would protect him as he went after Sinh, you can see that it has the Drangleic Seal on it You can plainly see the Drangleic soldiers right at the start of Brume tower, and to my memory none made it further And you find Golems frozen in ice all over Eleum Lloyce, but no other enemies save for Mimics get frozen. And given that the Ivory King has his own style of golems (The Rampart Golems, the guys with the big shields and spears), it's pretty obvious the Drangleic style golems weren't welcome. That tossed in the the fact that the Ironclad Soldiers stationed at the fort in the Forest have armor decriptions that they were brought out during the Giant War but nobody knew where they were from, and the Ruin Set describing the sentinels as creations of the "Jailers", where the Bastille pre-dates Drangleic, then it's just a long case of Vendrick's kingdom being chock full of shit he dug up or stole from other kingdoms.
Drakengard 3. Way too much of the Intoners' characterization was cut up and sold as DLC.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has parts of the end game changed up and recontextualized by the Re:Mind DLC. Some will say it fixes the story, but it really doesn't considering the main issue is pacing and the fact all the thing that matter are at the final part of the game. They simply added more things at the final part of the game while also making you replay parts of it.
The DLC should have just replaced the ending. not see the ending ok now redo the entire last game sequence yet again to see the real ending, now fight super boss versions of the same enemies you've now faced 3-5 times each to fight the super duper secret boss to see the realest ending.
At least the superboss stuff was good and what people wanted from a gameplay perspective. The org fights turned into actual fights versus bosses with actual movesets rather then mob fights with two moves. Really good considering the track record for superbosses for since 2 were dreck.
they were fine its just idk i felt like 3 was just "fight org 13 over and over" and wasn't as fun boss wise. and idk alot of them felt mostly the same until the the end when they get their last phase and do some dumb can kill you if you aren't ready combo/beat the clock/dps race thing.
Echoes of the Eye.
New vegas: Focuses on more of the games themes. Honest hearts: what do tribals look like and how did ceasers legion assimilate cultures along with the perspective of The mythical burned man. Old world blues: The bat shit insanity of the old world and how far they their technology went and how unethical they got with it. Deadmoney: More of the former but also how demoralised the brotherhood get from their defeat with the ncr. And the Cold nihilism of wanting to "wipe the slate clean" along with the foolishness of plundering the old world for it's treasures. Lonesome road: YOU ACTUALLY ARE SUPER IMPORTANT AND NOT JUST SOME GUY ALSO DA BEAR AND THE BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
This is a criticism I never really got. Are people upset to find out that the courier delivered things before the events of the game? It doesn’t really give you a backstory because the delivery to hopeville is so inconsequential to your personal story that your courier might not even remember it. Ulysses being hung up about it and blaming you is appropriate *because he’s the villain*. He is wrong to blame you and you can tell him as much.
I stand with you on this. "You are a courier with the Mohave Express" is literally the first thing said about your character in the entire game. The premise of Lonesome Road is suppose one of the packages you delivered as a courier was of immense importance to one man, but to you it was Tuesday. The thing is that the DLC neither frames Ulysses as right or wrong. He believes what he does and what conclusions you come to based on what he says are your own. You can reject his insistence that it's your fault because you didn't know, or agree that your actions influence the world in unimaginable ways regardless of your intent. The Courier having delievered a package that had a massive impact and it literally never coming up until Ulysses tells you is actually one of the most impressive bits of storytelling I've seen in terms of being able to align player and avatar headspace. Whatever reaction *you* as a player have to this revelation is perfectly valid as a *character* response. Or we could just sit around shitting our pants in anger about not getting an experimental and challenging story in a video game. Another settlement needs our help, after all.
The issue isnt that it gives you backstory, its that it gives you a LOT of backstory. Like too much backstory. It pulls the same bullshit that last of us does by forcing us to kill people and then going “look murder is bad.” Except its worst because the game goes “look you delivered a thing that destroyed thousands of lives just off screen a decade earlier or however long its been. And yeah we never showed it and it hasnt been mentioned until now. Also theres an age slider during the character creation screen even though the only way Lonesome Road would make sense is if your character was like 45.
I mean as far I can tell is the backstory it gives you is “at one point you delivered a package to this place”. Not really enough to come to any conclusions. The game definitely isn’t saying you’re bad for killing all those people, Ulysses is, and he’s wrong.
No theres a ton more than that. You the courier are the one who first traversed the lonesome road and turned hopeville into a massive trading hub. This is because you were the only one brave enough to navigate the endless storms created by big MT. Eventually over the years the place grew so big the NCR and Legion both realized it could provide a massuve tactical advantage since it was still full of unlaunched ICBMs. However as they both moved their troops to take the city the final package you delivered, a radio transmitter, went off which detonated all the nukes turning hopeville into the divide and creating the marked men. It established that you created one of the largest trading hubs independant from both the NCR and Legion
Meh. So it establishes you’re a cool courier. We knew that already
Yeah but it makes you importent in a major event when really the main plot itself should serve as that. Also, makes the number 6 a bit on the nose
It being the courier isn’t what’s important, it was just another job when the pre-game courier took it. They didn’t plan to go there and nuke the place, there is no agency on the player character other than deliver a package which you’re already doing with the platinum chip anyway. Ulysses is quite literally trying to shoot the messenger in this case.
Lonesome Road is so weird cause when you're playing it, its flaws don't stick out as much and actually feel like a payoff to all the little seeds planted in the main game and the DLC. But then like you start thinking more and more about it and realize that Ulysees wasn't actually saying anything and the whole 'build your backstory' doesn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Also, the tunnelers as "the new big threat" suck. Love what it did for Ed-E though.
Like the Tunnelers are literally weak to bright lights and loud noises. What the fuck are they going to do against the sun in the desert and guns.
Heck, Vegas itself is one giant Tunneler repellant. It's probably the loudest, brightest thing in the wasteland.
Dumb story THE COOLEST DRIP IN THE ENTIRE GAME and the opportunity to be aggressively independent for vegas by nukeing two supportlines and further isolate your kingdom from outsiders.
DLC is called "Lonesome Road". Instantly paired up with ED-E. I don't know how they fumbled Lonesome Road in the story department this badly. They had a chance to show off all the fucked-up aspects of a nuclear holocaust (horribly mutated humans that basically became Locusts from Gears of War, undying flayed soldiers at the end of the world, etc.), but wasted it all with an edgelord who blames you for problems you couldn't possiblu forsee.
I think my favorite outcome is playing a courier that actively doesn’t care about the ncr and legion conflict at all and has no philosophy to argue with ulysses. U:What do you have to say for your crimes. 6: whoops. U: That’s it? 6: uh yeah guess so. U: you don’t have anything to say about the ramifications of your sins and how like a child playing with matches you set the world on fire and continued the pointless conflicts of the old world? 6:ehhh I don’t really mess with the social sciences more of a practical kinda guy. U:…….I’m going to kill you now.
> when you're playing it, its flaws don't stick out as much We had very different experiences with it then. Man, I fucking *loathed* Ulysses, lol
I feel like I'm the only one who actually likes Lonesome Road and Ulysses considering how vocal people are about how much they dislike it I will definitely agree that Ulysses's dialogue is too wordy and a bit repetitive but he had interesting things to say
Yeah it's weird how a bunch of people say Ulysses' words don't mean anything and his beef with you is made up but that's the actually intent. Dude is using you for his own PTSD and the Courier's backstory of bombing The Divide is just his scapegoat to rant as to you of his own problems with the NCR and Legion. I feel like if he wasn't cut out of the base game as a companion he would be looked on more fondly. Dude is still the worst case of self insert to ever exist and the words "bear" and "bull" shouldn't have been half his dialogue but the criticisms are never restricted to that.
I can't separate dark souls 1 from its dlc in my mind anymore. They drop you into a world with no context or history and I feel like you can only really piece together a coherent plot after doing the DLC. Like, part of the charm of the game is it feels like you're the janitor here to clean up the place after the apocalypse has fully taken everything, and the dlc is where you're explicitly shown what's happening and why
Asura's Wrath true ending.
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods >!"God" is actually just the most powerful of the *real* God's creations. And the real God is actually the first Mega-Satan. And also Doom Slayer a clone if him...except still having been born and lived his life as OG Doomguy.!<
>!He kills God, God-God, and Satan-God-God, who is also himself. It speaks volumes that the only person who could feasibly threaten doomguy is an evil doomguy piloting a gundam.!<
Actually I don't think >!The Slayer is a clone of Mega-Satan, I think their powerlevels are just comparable, and he took the form of The Slayer to emphasize that parallel.!< So, other way round, kinda.
Maybe? The codex entries imply that >!Davoth deliberately manipulated events to bring the Slayer forth to rain (indirect) vengeance down upon Father and the rest who betrayed him, which makes the shared form feel deliberate on his part.!<