Honest Hearts is the second DLC for Fallout New Vegas but is often suggested as the first you should complete when replaying the game. It is more open-world than its predecessor Dead Money and also a much gentler difficulty curve. The stories for each DLC being ultimately non-linear up to Lonesome Road also lend well to this route. So shortly after arriving at New Vegas proper I decided to head to the start of this DLC as an in-game excuse to nab some caps before heading into Vegas to find that rat bastard who shot me. What I found was a mini-open world with plentiful resources and a few very intriguing characters - though I wish I had gotten a few more.

The Good
-Zion itself is beautiful, the art direction and music fit perfectly with the mood of a tucked away part of heaven, incredibly distinct from the Mojave.
-The main characters of Joshua Graham, Daniel and of course the posthumous "Father in the Caves" are enthralling. Legit choked up several times reading the survivalist's notes + Graham has some excellent lines.
-The POIs are mostly quite good. Old ranger stations, supply drops, soul-shatteringly sad schoolbus remains...
-More melee focused White Leg enemies are a good differentiator from typical raider or Legion bad guys in the Mojave. VATS is actually tough to use on them from point blank range.


The Bad
-The main middle quests of "helping" the Sorrows and Dead Horses are pretty thin excuses to just wander around. There's only one kinda interesting quest in the middle with the Fiery YaoGui. The rest are too straightforward.
-The "Happy Trails" group is a thin plot device to get you to the start of the DLC but then get a whole chunk of the ending slide? Who honestly cares

The Meh
-Sadly the graphics are showing their age here. The blockiness of a lot of the textures does not flow well between the rock, dirt and plant life. That's just the time the game was made + the Bethesda engine sadly.
-The ending two quests are halfway interesting but need a bit more meat on their bones. Either you have enough Speech to have a sorta-peaceable ending or you just kill everyone and deal with the fallout. The base NV has MANY ways around your problems besides a speech check or gun - sadly not the case here.
-Didn't really care for any of the new guns either.

The Hmmmm
-The Flee Zion ending seemed a bit underbaked compared to the White Legs assault


Honest Hearts doesn't present a huge shakeup to the New Vegas formula but a combination of a more verdant wilderness + some excellent characters and the somber tale of the Survivalist that you piece together really make an excellent DLC that is quite a bit more than the sum of its parts. Ultimately being forced to choose whether to flee from danger or to face it head on, but ultimately realizing that will fundamentally change you... feels very apropos for the series.

Final Grade: B+

This DLC provided a bag of investment I didn't expect, plus it felt quite short.

It had a lot of thick lore to it and interesting character dynamics going through it. It was also my first time actually snagging a companion in New Vegas lol.

I liked the surroundings it provided, the options it manifested, the weapons I took with me, and the battles within it. There was some spirited variety in this one and definitley my favorite DLC so far for NV.

I really love the Zion National Park world space, the new items and I really enjoy certain parts of the narrative like Joshua Graham and The Survivalist story

Other than that, the DLC is definitely too short and is just a whole lot of fetch quests. I really wish there was more dialogue and interaction between tribes and other characters.

It's still pretty enjoyable to play every time I replay through New Vegas.

I love New Vegas, but this DLC is really weak, Joshua Graham is definitely the best part of it, he's just such a great character and I love how much he is alluded to in the base game by members of Caesar's Legion, but I really don't like the gameplay loop of this DLC of just basically fetch quests where you're told to go to a location to get some items and then come back (there was a really bad one) and quests where you just have to kill some enemies, the story is pretty decent but I feel like it lacks a bit of the depth that the main game has (notably not really seeing the White Legs point of view). Easily the worst part of this DLC was the lunchbox quest, the lunchboxes are hidden in the worst places possible.

“For many of us, the road is a difficult one, but the path is always there to follow.”

Looming over Honest Hearts is Joshua Graham, a character musing on rebirth and hellbent on revenge. He’s one of Fallout’s greatest characters, yet tragically doesn’t play a large enough role. Unfortunately, we are largely left with a bland map, scant characters, and uninspiring quests. Thankfully, at least, we are given a taste of newfound culture, religion, and language in the post-apocalypse that doesn’t feel forced. Additionally, there is a fantastic side-story stuck away in caves that explores the origins of the DLC’s mythical Father in the Cave.

Honest Heart’s exploration of revenge is, ultimately, rather shallow. While Joshua Graham is an absolutely phenomenal character, it’s not enough to save this from being mediocre content.