And now I've beaten Lonesome Road. To once more quote Sir Drainsalot:
Lonesome road reminded me a lot of DM - started off well then slowly died. At least the combat wasn't quite to head-bashingly frustrating. But the latter half has all the hallmarks of a ran-out-of-time-and-money job. A sandbox game reduced to a single linear path? Check. Entire plot threads dangled and then forgotten about? Check. Disappointing final boss showdown? Oh yes, without the effort to even animate the guys face, so we'll just stick a mask on there. It says something that the best character in there was an eyebot.
And here's something from Chris:
I didn't like Lonesome Road, I thought it prescribed too much of your character's back-story. By the time my courier got there he wouldn't have done half the things Ullyses accused him of. I also didn't like the really linear path and the lack of humour.
There was some cool new equipment in this one, like that rocket launcher. The combat was fairly challenging. And I really liked the harsh, bleak environment, which seemed like the ideal setting to finally close out the game's story. That's about all the good things I can say for this one. I actually feel a little bad for criticizing Honest Hearts after playing this. I mean, for fuck's sake, this add-on doesn't just feel rushed, it feels unfinished! Where are the sidequests? Where are the other characters? Where are the opportunities for exploration? Where's the roleplaying? Where's the opening introduction so we know what the fuck is going on? Where's the setup for why the Courier is even bothering to do all this shit in the first place? I'm doing it because I want to play through the DLC, of course, but surely there has to be some kind of in-universe motivation for the character, right?
Speaking of characters and their motivations, Ulysses sucked. I think Obsidian really wanted to portray him as a super-deep and complex character whose quest to destroy the player is totally understandable, but it didn't work. At best, he came across as a deranged nut. And his feud with the Courier had no personal resonance with me at all, because of the simple fact that I had nothing to do with what happened to the Divide. It was in the past! Now, if they could have played around with the timeline a bit and tied the destruction of the Divide to something that happened during the main story, something that the Courier did while being controlled by the player, then maybe it could have worked. But to simply make up an event that predates the main story and expect the player to feel any kind of guilt or responsibility for it? No. That's just stupid.
NV, more than any other game in the series so far, is about the past, nostalgia, resisting change; its namesake a relic of the Old World kept in working order by Mr House, a man who can't let go; the central event the battle at Hoover Dam, people across the Mojave fearing the inevitable change that will come no matter who is victorious. In keeping with this theme, all the DLC is in some way about people like Mr House: Thinktank, Elijah, Dog, Dean Domino, Joshua Graham and so on, they all want to cling to what is lost forever. Ulysses is the most extreme example, his tenuous grip on the Old World is his raison d'être, he is adorned with its symbols and resides in a place that likely resembles the world in 2077 (the closest he can physically come to the pre-war world), taking refuge from the chaos of the Divide inside a nuclear missile silo, the physical cause of the Old World's destruction. The final conflict of Lonesome Road is symbolic of the final death of the Old World, Ulysses being something like a steadfast cell, if you will, resisting the death and rot that has consumed the rest of the body. There are countless other examples of this throughout the game: a man who thinks himself a god (recalling Caligula) trying to unite the tribes in a simulacrum of Ancient Rome; the BoS resisting necessary change in the face of sure death; Enclave remnants trying but ultimately failing to leave behind their militaristic past; a ghoul who remains forever attached to a lost love and a former life; former soldiers of The Master's army seeking his likeness and dominion in Tabitha, Marcus and even Father Elijah in Dog's case—there are many more besides.
In LR we learn that a package The Courier delivered to the Divide a long time ago was in fact a bomb of some sort, sent by whom and for what reason we do not know. Ulysses doesn't know either, so who else has he, in his nostalgic madness, to blame but the one who made the delivery? When he sees that The Courier would be next in line after him for the Platinum Chip delivery, he quits the job so that they will take it, knowing that he is effectively signing their death warrant. When this plan fails, his obsession and desire for revenge grows even stronger, and he decides to do the job himself, calling The Courier out to one of the most inhospitable places in the west, knowing that, if they don't die on their way there, he will do everything in his power to destroy them with his own hands. Ultimately he cannot do this and, one way or another, lets go of the past. This fits with the idea that The Courier is the agent of change and bringer of closure to the inhabitants of the Mojave, with LR as the ultimate act of closure and Hoover Dam as the ultimate act of change.