I promptly downloaded Old World Blues for Fallout: New Vegas last night when I got home from work. Once MasterChef was finished and poor, lovable Giuseppe was out the door, I loaded up my most recent character Kapture, a dude that loves Energy Weapons and that looks like he’d be right at home watching children playing at a local park from inside his dark, seedy van, and headed to the specific map marker to get things rolling. To start Old World Blues, the Courier must make his way to a drive-in movie theatre, wherein a broken robot satellite will show them a movie. Then it’s lights out, and waking up elsewhere, with strange surgical cuts all over your body.
You’ll make your way inside a large science research building called the Sink (or is it the Think Tank?) at the Big Empty, eventually finding a bunch of whacky robots. The leader, Dr. Klein, will then explain the situation, with colorful commentary from the other local bots peppered throughout. You’re brainless. And have no heart or spine. That’s why you feel so weird, so calm and uncaring. These robots cut those organs out of you, and it’s not entirely clear how you’re, uh, still alive, but whatever, it’s a videogame, and that’s certainly some strong motivation there for completing this newest DLC: recover your brain, heart, and spine. Also, steal some technology from their nemesis Dr. Mobius.
What’s most notable about this DLC is that the first 30 to 45 minutes are spent talking. With crazy robots. Since I don’t ever skip dialogue, a good chunk of my playtime last night was spent with the controller resting gently on my lap, only picking it up occasionally to make a speech selection. Even after the main chunk of talking is dead and done, and the Courier has his main mission, he/she can still explore the Sink and Think Tank to talk further with these deranged robots. I exhausted every dialogue option, gaining three to four more additional sidequests from this. Doctor Dala is extremely creepy, and I was pleasantly surprised–as was Tara–to discover that Doctor O is voiced by a true cartoon doctor…Dr. Venture‘s James Urbaniak!
So far, Old World Blues has some of the strangest and funniest writing to date for the series, with the word penis popping more than you’d ever expect, and drowning in it–the dialogue, not the penises–first and foremost for the DLC is not the worst thing ever. Though I am looking forward to exploring outside the Sink/Think Tank and maybe shooting something. Maybe.
Grinding Down 