The Honest Hearts DLC released for Fallout: New Vegas last week expanding the game’s back story and history. The DLC starts with you taking a contract to escort a caravan to Utah’s Zion National Park. Unfortunately, there is only room for one person on the caravan so your regular companions have to stay behind. Like all things in New Vegas things to not go as planned and your caravan is quickly ambushed. As you proceed into Zion alone you soon meet the Burned Man and find out about a war going on there. To get out of Zion and back to New Vegas you’ll have to help resolve the conflict.
Fortunately you do not have to do it alone. There are three separate companions you who will help you at different times. They have some of the more interesting perks that they give you while they are in your party. One gives you the ability to be extremely quiet and stealth and another lets you spot map points from tall cliffs and ranger lookouts. For a while you even have the Burning Man joining you with his pistol improving perk.
The story of Honest Hearts is a fairly linear one with only a handful of side quests that I found. I did explore a good portion of the Zion area since it was a nice change of pace from the desert of Vegas, but I could have missed an optional quest or two. The main quests do offset this somewhat with many of them having multiple sections and optional objectives. The main quests are broken into a couple main sections, but they all have you crisscrossing Zion. There are plenty of map points if you don’t feel like walking that you can fast travel to, but I enjoyed the exploring with all the hills and rivers hiding caves and coves with fun items.
The story gives you two main endings and each of those gives you a couple choices on how to wrap things up. The different choices have fairly different outcomes but similar mission structure on what you need to do after making your decision. I was a little disappointed by this but enjoyed the overall story of Honest Hearts. The way it fills in some of the back story to events that already happened in New Vegas was a nice touch. It could easily have been a stand alone story like the events at the Sierra Madra but instead they tie in nicely to the evolving story. My only real complaint is that the Honest Hearts DLC is a little on the short side. I think it took me somewhere around 4 hours to complete. A couple more optional side missions or another main quest in the middle would have been appreciated. Despite the length, I would recommend fans of Fallout New Vegas pick up the Honest Hearts DLC. The story is worth the price of admission and you get some fun new loot as well.
A copy of Fallout: New Vegas Honest Hearts DLC for the Xbox 360 was provided to us for this review from Bethedsa.
