Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Review
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There is a unique wrinkle in Old World Blues, however, and it's something I absolutely need to bring up, something which goes beyond the focus of this review, and concerns the Fallout franchise as a whole. Going back to Fallout 2, there's been a division in the series' fanbase over what tone is best suited to the games. Many maintain that the original Fallout's self-seriousness, commitment to canon, and consistent atmosphere marks it as the better game, while plenty others enjoy Fallout 2's tendency towards absurdity, humour, pop-culture tie-ins, and generally more upbeat attitude. Personally, I'm a little bit on the fence - Fallout 2's humour and inconsistency got on my nerves, but I do prefer its more diverse and significantly larger world, not to mention plenty of other gameplay improvements. I fully understand both perspectives on the matter, and why it has to some degree split the fanbase in two. Why do I bring this up? Well, one of New Vegas' most-praised points by the original fanbase was the return to the franchise's roots, casting off much of the absurdity that crept into Fallout 2 and more so into Fallout 3. With that in mind, it's worth saying it straight out: Old World Blues is just plain ridiculous. It's silly, it's hilarious, and often winks at the fourth wall. It grabs hold of those 1950s underpinnings the original series had, and inflates them to the point where Old World Blues feels about as tongue-in-cheek as a game can be. And this, really, is the deciding point on whether you should pick up Old World Blues, because right from the moment you start it, it doesn't let up. As good as it is, I have no problem telling some players that they simply might not like it, because of how close to heart they hold Fallout and how strongly-conceived a vision they may have of it.
At the same time, all the absurdity is handled with a certain amount of class, a degree of intelligence - for every unexpected joke about "hand penises", there's another five or ten obscure references, innuendos, wordplays, etc., and it's all brilliantly well-implemented, tying in with the main characters in a way which brings them well beyond mere comic relief. Upon first visiting the Big Empty, I was a little bewildered at just how off-kilter it all was... but after spending a little longer, I began to realise what a finely-crafted world it really was, the underlying logic behind all the absurdity. By the end, the silliness gave way to a degree of poignancy and reflection, just tragic enough, and it made me appreciate the characters on a level above what I initially took them for. Funny though it may be, Old World Blues' biggest success isn't that it got me to laugh more than any other game in a long time, but that it did so without undermining its own integrity, and did so in a way that was respectful both to me, as a player, and to itself.
Of course, this is the part where I have to say that Old World Blues, despite its strong successes in creating a highly unique piece of the Fallout world, still has some flaws. The balance in combat is, for lack of a better term, iffy, with certain enemies proving to be extremely challenging, others the exact opposite, many of them boasting inflated hit-point bars, and so on. The DLC is recommended for characters of level 15+, and I went in as a level 39 Energy Weapons specialist, so perhaps much of that depends on how the level scaling treats each individual character, but I simply can't say that Old World Blues has been perfectly tuned. Moreover, while the dialogue itself is fantastic and delivered courtesy of some fantastic voice talent, much of that dialogue is loaded at the beginning and ending of the story, meaning that players with little patience for talk will still find themselves sucked into 20-plus-minute conversations. And as great as the dialogue and characters are, they don't quite leave the same lasting, more personal impressions as those in Dead Money, nor does the story have the same careful pacing, sense of mystery, or slow build-up to a strong conclusion.
Still, these are fairly minor complaints. Examined as a DLC expansion for Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues has a lot to offer, from a detailed and well-crafted world to explore, to new items, perks, enemies, and quests, to some of the most bizarre characters and entertaining dialogue to appear in a videogame in a good long time. For fans of classic Fallout, it provides a look into the past, at ideas which were left on the cutting room floor of previous games, such as Lobotomites, and the Environmental Protection Agency. For fans of the newer games, it offers up a lot of tie-ins to New Vegas and its lore, handled with thought rather than a hand-wave. There's really no question whether Old World Blues is "good" or not.
What does need to be considered, though, and what will undoubtedly be the significant factor determining one's enjoyment of Old World Blues, is its relationship to the other Fallout games, and the long-standing conventions of the series. It represents not so much a step forward as it does a complete sidestep in tone and attitude. This is going to be a sore spot for many players, and while I can heartily endorse Old World Blues as something most fans should experience, I, personally, don't want this to set the new standard for Fallout, for the next game in the franchise to abandon the seriousness in favour of laughs, even if they're good ones. It's a welcome break from tradition, and I'd love to see the ideas here expressed elsewhere, but it was a very good idea to keep them confined to a DLC, since, as a self-contained episode, Old World Blues is easily skipped for those who may not want it. This isn't the Fallout most older fans remember, and sometimes, experiments are best kept as such.
