Lonesome Road Final Choice kind of sucks

Ediros

Ediros

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Okay, so, Lonesone Road, while good place for loot, but kind of bad story wise. However, nothing comes close to absolute face-heel-turn or 180 degrees than the final choice of who to launch nukes at.

I am not talking RP wise, that’s all up to you, but mechanically speaking it's Terrible. Evil paths in RPGs tend to offer more power, more money, etc. However, nuking anyone in New Vegas should not to be blatant and confusing.

Even if you hate ncr or Legion, you are still killing innoccents one way or another. You would think that stopping the nukes would have something meaningful to offer, outside of warm fuzzy feeling and an ending slide. Instead, all you get is a minor rep increase for bos and followers.

Worse still, you are actively rewarded for nuking both factions and leaving EDE behind to be dismantled. That can be understood if you know what you are doing, but the game doesn’t inform you of said rewards and nuking anyone should label the courier to be a 'monster' or a 'omnicidal maniac'. It's huge meta gaming aspect, but that’s not the point.

The point is, why is nuking both factions so rewarding in the first place? Shouldn’t there be alternative? For instance, stopping the nukes and letting ncr or Legion know should net you at least the unique weapons and armours. As much as I like gaining some well deserved rewards, I really hate the way the choice is presented in gameplay terms.
 
I think the whole nuke thing is dumb too. Nuking one or the other or both doesn’t seem to have any affect on the game beyond giving you a new area to visit with some unique loot. It seems to me that launching a nuclear missile would be more significant than anything else that happens in the game, but apparently not…
 
Ediros said:
Evil paths in RPGs tend to offer more power, more money, etc.
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I feel like this is not always the case though. So many video game developers know that players on average will pick what most consider as morally good and are in turn, designed to reward that. Evil decisions should be rewarded with more but that requires a lot of work for what most players will avoid.
But usually the easy fix to reward an evil player more is to throw more weapons and ammo at them or even currency all while their consequence is cutting ties off with people either socially or physically eliminating those people. And we all know, outside of the more difficult games on harder settings, ammo and currency are laughable in the latter half of the game usually. Sometimes you do get a super unique item for being evil but you usually would have also gotten something of near equal value for being good that isn't just letting you steal from the candy jar.

As far as the choice being pretty dumb, I kinda agree. But I've put the least amount of thought into this final showdown than almost any other part of the game because this is the final few moments of a run. And while I've beaten the game plenty, I've also started far more runs than I've finished in full.

I think Avellone, and possibly Sawyer as well, really wanted to revisit aspects from Van Buren's story and this DLC was one of those ideas. We know the villain in Van Buren had a similar goal to send the post-post-apocalypse right back to the apocalypse and it seems like some of this idea of a "restart" is present in Ulysses too just for different reasons. He's just fed up with the world, he doesn't agree with the direction the Legion is taking and he doesn't believe in the NCR either obviously. He was the one who informed Caesar of the Hoover Dam which is now being fought over again in a second major conflict which shows that the Dam is Caesar's object of obsession that Ulysses essentially delivered to him. So instead of continuing to serve the Legion, he found solace in a place that you inadvertently took away from him. In kind, he wants to take away Vegas from you as you've likely invested time and resources into someone's power plays to control Vegas by this point and this is revenge. And he gets to hopefully change the trajectory of the Legion and stop the NCR from being in the Mojave while doing it.

Might be wrong about a few things, it's been awhile since I've played through Lonesome Road.

Iprovidelittlepianos said:
I think the whole nuke thing is dumb too. Nuking one or the other or both doesn’t seem to have any affect on the game beyond giving you a new area to visit with some unique loot. It seems to me that launching a nuclear missile would be more significant than anything else that happens in the game, but apparently not…
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Yeah and I expected it not to either. The core of the game is already there. They either let you keep playing and keep the masses happy or the end slides roll and you're told the journey is over. No way they'd be able to realistically represent the decisions you make at the Divide in New Vegas (and also keep the main storyline intact). Too many variables and way too much work for DLC that had its own content. They should have just avoided doing anything like that or told us that the DLC is a one way trip similar to the end of the game. But people would probably be upset by that too.

I think they should have just avoided the nuke bits of the DLC but it's also hard to tell this story without some major threat(s) backing it up. If Uylssess didn't have that type of firepower, you'd have very little story-related reasons to go through a hellscape to hear some dude speak weirdly at you.
 
Lonesome Road in general is kind of a wet fart of a supposed finale for New Vegas (given that it's the last piece of content released for it), pretty disappointed with it myself. Which is a shame because it starts so strong with Dead Money.
 
Norzan said:
Lonesome Road in general is kind of a wet fart of a supposed finale for New Vegas (given that it's the last piece of content released for it), pretty disappointed with it myself. Which is a shame because it starts so strong with Dead Money.
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It's crazy that New Vegas only received updates nine months post-release, probably because Bethesda wanted the game completely "finished" before Skyrim's release so as not to steal attention from it. Explains why everythiing was done in such a rush.
 
You know one thing I never understood, was why the heck did they make it out to be an important decision? Like why did they present it as "THE FATE OF THE MOJAVE WASTELAND LIES IN YOUR HANDS!" when really, it's just those affected areas that have been nuked. Am I missing something here? Like are talking about the Mojave being affected by your choice of nuking either area in the long run or...?

:confused:
 
Storywise, it does offer something. Your region is either self isolated or saved from having the need to wage 2 front wars. That is, if you are vilified with both NCR and Legion.

If you owned all Big MT techs and Sierra Madre Vending Machine, you can create your own isolated paradise undisturbed basically.

There are hints that the region that are nuked are not just what shown in the game, but other parts of region too.
 
TheKingofVault14 said:
You know one thing I never understood, was why the heck did they make it out to be an important decision? Like why did they present it as "THE FATE OF THE MOJAVE WASTELAND LIES IN YOUR HANDS!" when really, it's just those affected areas that have been nuked. Am I missing something here? Like are talking about the Mojave being affected by your choice of nuking either area in the long run or...?

:confused:
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They’re basically saying wherever you choose to launch the nukes is going to cripple that faction in the long run and be a catalyst of sorts for their demise.
 
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I think you should be allowed to nuke either or both factions, but it should result in game ending (similarly to Dead Money when you ally with Elijah or read Sinclair's logs in the vault).

The in-game effects are just super underwhelming and if you do it before going to Lucky 38/ dealing with Benny allows you to receive amnesty from both NCR and Legion.

It feels like Megaton choice in FO3 the way it currently has no effects in vanilla game and only marginally better with mods like Living Desert or Mojave NPCs.
 
Alphons said:
It feels like Megaton choice in FO3 the way it currently has no effects in vanilla game and only marginally better with mods like Living Desert or Mojave NPCs.
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I loved the Living Desert mod, but never played long enough to see what that mod did with Lonesome Road, what happens? Is it just hit squads that come after you?
 
PaxVenire said:
I loved the Living Desert mod, but never played long enough to see what that mod did with Lonesome Road, what happens? Is it just hit squads that come after you?
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NCR sets up medical tents at Mojave Outpost with survivors from Long 15 (ghoulified and wounded civilians and troopers).
Legion doesn't have any support for survivors, so you can find dead slaves and legionaries near the boat to Dry Wells + the area near Cove gets overrun by feral ghouls wearing the Legion armor (similar to feral troopers from Searchlight).

You also get the hit squads- I met the ghoulified Legion survivor, a group of vigilantes from NCR and a team of bounty hunters.
 
TheKingofVault14 said:
You know one thing I never understood, was why the heck did they make it out to be an important decision? Like why did they present it as "THE FATE OF THE MOJAVE WASTELAND LIES IN YOUR HANDS!" when really, it's just those affected areas that have been nuked. Am I missing something here? Like are talking about the Mojave being affected by your choice of nuking either area in the long run or...?

:confused:
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BEAR BULL BEAR BULL
 
Lonesome Road wasn't very good story wise. Ulysses has very cool build up in the interactions with the different DLC characters and even things like the White Legs hair. He then screams and stamps his feet at the Courier despite doing the same thing to New Canaan albeit probably worse? Destabilizing New Canaan seemed insane since he had seen Hopeville get nuked. It was definitely a wet fart and as someone else said in a 7 year old thread "The Meatball and the Beer, same story, old history, new roads walked, a sofa and a table, thought they were the same... not the same... no kött in the bull"
 
I always preferred the dialogue where you tell Ullysses he has the wrong person and that he's crazy.
It feels appropriate with the whole "being blinded by the past" that he does not see or even care that he got the wrong person.

Yossarrion said:
He then screams and stamps his feet at the Courier despite doing the same thing to New Canaan albeit probably worse? Destabilizing New Canaan seemed insane since he had seen Hopeville get nuked.
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If you threaten Daniel in your first conversation with Joshua Graham he lists 3 reasons why it's a bad idea- the first 2 are Daniel being capable of self-defense and Graham hunting you down.

Meanwhile the third reason
Lastly, waging war against good people is bad for the soul. This may not seem important to you now, but it's the most important thing I've said.
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I believe Ullysses did not care about Hopeville the way he says.
When he helped White Legs to sack New Canaan he also did not care about it.

The realization about what he did to Canaan only came back to him when White Legs tried to honor him with their braids.

But he doesn't want to take responsibility, so he hides behind his grandiose speeches about symbols and focuses on Hopeville's destruction as the event that brought him to destroy Canaan.
 
The idea of Ulysses as vanilla companion as direct competitor to Craig Boone is more intriguing than whatever Lonesome Road DLC is. Like just how ambitious Obsidian was to make a companion like him and along with Legion territory in Arizona + quests to make us a bit neutral toward Legion, if not receptive.

Perhaps a game like Tyranny was partial fulfillment of that wish and we probably see that in FNV in alternate universe.
 
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eissa said:
The idea of Ulysses as vanilla companion as direct competitor is more intriguing than whatever Lonesome Road DLC is.
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Ulysses should have been the Legion companion in the base game, the game badly needed a companion for the faction to give it more perspective.
 
Norzan said:
Ulysses should have been the Legion companion in the base game, the game badly needed a companion for the faction to give it more perspective.
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I edited my comment, so that Ulysses should be basically being direct competitor to Boone. Though if someone could have any idea how could it be done, lemme know.
 
Shame development was so rushed, same thing post-launch. Only 9 moths of support is criminal. FNV deserved better.
 
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