Honest Hearts may not be the most complete DLC ever released, but it is still a fascinating and unique expansion.
When Dead Money released, mixed reviews and some poor reactions from friends of mine kept me away (I have since downloaded it and will post a review at a later date). Honest Hearts, however, seemed just interesting enough to pull me back into the wasteland. There are few natural areas more beautiful than Zion National Park in the American southwest, and the thoughts of joyfully blowing the limbs off of baddies in rust red slot canyons and atop dusty plateaus seemed exciting. Well, I'm happy to report that despite a few failings Honest Hearts manages to satisfy those hopes while also providing potentially the most beautiful and color saturated area we've yet seen in a Fallout game.
I must warn you that the DLC does get off to a bit of a rocky start. You'll be given the standard opening message of "travel to this waypoint and talk to this fellow" when you fire up the game and load your preferred save. Irritatingly, the save you choose will have to be before the endgame has begun since the game's ending does not allow for a return to the Wasteland after its conclusion. This forced me to reload a six hours old save--not a big deal for me considering my character had hit the level cap long before the finale, but those of you who stand to lose a few levels and perks by doing this may find it a bit irritating.
Once you find the point on your map (it's just north of New Vegas itself), you'll meet up with a group from the Happy Trails Caravan Company who are conveniently looking for an individual with a pip-boy to accompany them on a mission to discover what happened to New Canaan, a town along one of their vital trade routes that has mysteriously gone silent. They must reopen the route at all costs to avoid the company going under due to logistical issues.
Before you can help them with this little problem, however, you must tell both of your companions to leave you AND you must drop your inventory weight down to 75 pounds or less (100 pounds if your speech and/or survival statistics are high enough). This may not be a big deal for low-level characters, but for those of you who have invested a lot of time collecting a huge supply of weapons, ammunition (which, if you're playing in hardcore mode like I was, has a substantial amount of weight to it and must be carefully sorted through), and supplies and who have become attached to their favorite equipment, this is more than a little irritating. I had to spend at least an hour sifting through the gear that I was carrying--nearly 300 pounds--and the loot I'd dumped onto my companions because, if you haven't figured it out yet, companions in New Vegas are essentially armed and dangerous backpacks. This involved going to multiple merchants to sell things I didn't need and my home in Novac to store the items I wanted to keep but couldn't take. Additionally, I had to leave much of my favorite gear behind, including my much beloved heavy power armor and anti-material rifle. While I can appreciate that Obsidian wanted to push the survival feel of Honest Hearts, it was pretty disheartening to have to abandon my favorite gear and take off basically in my underwear with only a couple of decent weapons.
Once I finally reached the weight requirements and told my friends to go back to the Lucky 38, I was able to begin my journey. The journey itself is comprised entirely of one of the loading screens that anyone who has played New Vegas probably has had burned into their minds. You then find yourself standing at the edge of what appears to be a vast, beautiful desert landscape, complete with the towering monoliths and arches that Zion is famous for. According to my group's leader, Jed Masterson, several weeks had passed since our group left the Mojave. It was also pointed out that we would not be able to go back the way we had come, video game code for "you're going to be here awhile." After some friendly banter between him and a couple of the other group members, we struck out towards New Canaan. About two seconds later we were ambushed by a group of apparently native White Leg warriors, and about 5 seconds after that I found myself standing bloody and alone in the middle of a pile of corpses. Everyone in my group had died despite my swift and decisive strikes against the ambushers. I was completely alone. Before long I was picked up by another native named Follows-Chalk who was himself busy with killing a few White Legs I hadn't noticed. Despite his nearly offensively stereotypical Native American name and accent, I followed his directions to the camp of his people, the Dead Horses.
Clearly designed to mimic the native peoples of the American southwest, these people were now being led by a gruff but well-spoken man covered from head to toe in bandages named Joshua Graham. Experienced and attentive players will immediately recognize him as the Burned Man, the famed general in Caesar's army that was covered in pitch and burned alive before being thrown into the Grand Canyon as punishment for failing his master. As the rumors claimed, he has survived this horrific fate and has now given himself over to a life of God and leadership among the native peoples. New Canaan, his home, has been destroyed, so he has dedicated himself to protecting the Dead Horses from the White Legs, a blood thirsty tribe loyal to Caesar that is hell bent on wiping them out. That's where you come in. You're handed your first set of fetch quests, and off you go.
Depending on your commitment to exploration, you will spend the next 5-10 hours wandering the Zion area and completing quests both for Graham and his fellow New Canaanite, Daniel, who happens to be leading a very different tribe known as The Sorrows in a narrow slot canyon. These two share very different views of how the White Leg situation should be resolved and, in true Fallout fashion, it will eventually be up to you to decide which path to take. You'll also gain a couple of relatively interesting but temporary companions, one of which is Follows-Chalk himself. The story is excellent if a little overly simplistic, and the characters that you meet along the way are interesting, believable people that you will alternately learn to admire and distrust. The religious undertones are also a welcome addition to the story, especially given that they manage to be completely non-offensive to any religious group that may be playing. The story is, however, relatively short, clocking in at only about 3-4 hours. Fortunately, the Zion area provides many other distractions.
In fact, the best part of Honest Hearts is Zion National Park itself. It is a beautiful if not entirely accurate portrayal of the western wonderland of southern Utah, complete with wind-swept vistas, babbling, shallow desert rivers, and freak rain storms that begin seemingly without warning. It also is arguably the most colorful area yet seen in a Fallout game; yellows, reds, and greens replace the drab and depressing grays and blacks that seem to dominate both the Mojave and Capitol wastelands. You'll even be treated to a wide variety of plants like cacti, yucca, and mesquite which you can use to make new survival items or use by themselves. The towering rock formations make for very interesting exploration; Zion provides a far greater level of verticality than the Mojave. Often you will find secret caves, stashes, or even quests tucked away on the cliffs high above the canyons and valleys. There is little in the way of straight line travel here, and you will frequently find yourself having to work to find that undiscovered location teasing you on the compass. There are dozens upon dozens of locations to discover as well, and if you are obsessive about finding every last nook and cranny like I am, you will find a great deal of satisfaction in exploring the massive area and uncovering its secrets.
While there are only a few really unique items to get excited about in Honest Hearts--a bear claw melee weapon and desert ranger trenchcoat among them--there is frequently a payoff when you finally do locate the elusive map point you've been hunting for, and nowhere is that more evident than in the survivalist side story locations. There are six survivalist caches--actually, there are seven, but I won't spoil the fun and closure of finding the seventh for yourself by discussing it--most of which are located in caves chalked full of nasty booby traps, helpful loot, and interesting computerized diary entries that allow you to follow your long-dead helper's life from the time the bombs dropped all the way to his death. The story is admittedly pretty morbid, but it is still fantastically interesting and I actually found myself looking forward to finding the next cache so I could see what happened next. The ties to the main story will eventually become apparent to you as you read more diary entries, and the end result is an organic, authentic-feeling interrelation between the main story's factions and the survivalist. Rarely do games elicit an emotional reaction from me, but the survivalist's simultaneously disturbing and uplifting story managed to do so, and for that reason alone it was my favorite aspect of Honest Hearts.
Despite the great story, memorable location, and hefty exploration, however, Honest Hearts is not without its flaws. For starters, there is an extremely noticeable lack of new enemies in Zion, with the White Legs standing out as the only truly new adversaries. Everything else you will run across is either a modified version of something you've seen before or a straight copy from either New Vegas or Fallout 3. This is a bit disappointing; it would have been nice to see the radically different area accompanied by radically different enemies. The expansion is also plagued by a few odd graphical glitches. Several times I saw a strange, stretched texture spread across my screen that didn't disappear until I popped in and out of third person view a few times. The game hard locked on me several times as well, forcing me to reload earlier saves. This is a problem that was present in New Vegas before the DLC, but it is no less annoying now than it was then. Finally, the friendly AI is just as stupid as it was in New Vegas, so if you're playing in hardcore mode expect to be reloading earlier saves frequently as your companions rush off to meet their deaths time and time again.
Despite its flaws, however, Honest Hearts delivers what I believe may be the best Bethesda/Obsidian DLC since Shivering Isles. If you loved New Vegas, I have no doubt that you will also love Honest Hearts. Add to that the fact that the expansion raises the level cap by 5 additional levels and you have a no-brainer for fans of Fallout 3 or New Vegas. Go buy it.