» Fri May 04, 2012 10:50 am
I agree, I do think that it's underrated. While I wouldn't call it my favorite DLC, it has more of what I want in a Fallout story and setting.
For one, I love Utah. It's a setting that I've been to, and it's fun to go through the Narrows and point out places that look like they could support a tribe. But above that, I love wilderness. A highway or a man-made facility definitely have their place, but the wilderness in Fallout mostly shows a place where the apocalypse was creeping in over time rather than a cataclysmic shift, like certain places right after the Great War or the Divide.
I think it's actually very well-done with the story. Perhaps the execution of the choices could have been done better, but it has quite a bit of merit for the Fallout universe. The tribals we see or here about (and I suppose this applies to the base game as well) are more fleshed out than they have been in past games. In Fallout 1, the Khans are little more than a raiding band. They have a decent amount of exposition, but there's no apparent culture. Fallout 2 doesn't improve upon this with them, but it does give us Arroyo. As a tribe, I found it to be a little shallow. It did establish some culture but IMO, a lot of it was clearly formed from stereotype. Fallout 3 . . . raiders were raiders. Nothing more to be said. The tribals in Point Lookout were better, but still mostly founded on stereotypes. We never actually get a name for them, either. Now with Honest Hearts, the tribes presented are given a lot of exposition. They have their names, origins, places they're from, different ways of operating, and they even bothered to construct some unique languages for each. There's still a bit of stereotyping, but that's unavoidable.
What I find best is that unlike the other 3, Honest Hearts isn't outlandish. A toxic casino with vending machines that can create items out of chips with hazmat zombie things that only die if they have limbs severed? A massive scientific research facility with crazy brains that take your brain and later you can have a conversation with your brain who is rather snooty? A nuked highway with skinless soldiers that dropped their differences for the collective purpose of killing things on sight? It's a tribal conflict, in a very real place, realistic origins, and a huge focus on appropriate post-apocalyptic development. I quite honestly prefer that, with the outlandishness sprinkled on top, rather than outlandishness with realism sprinkled on top.
