[Disclaimer: I’m going to spoil Lonesome Road from head to toe, but I’m also likely to spoil everything else in NV. I also need to discuss the Fallout TV Show. This is your only warning.]

I have a very nebulous relationship with the concept of ‘Death Of The Author’, but to dig into why we really need to back up a little.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “all art is political” before, and you likely have feelings on it. In having feelings on it, you’ve inadvertently validated it. When that phrase is uttered, I imagine most people’s minds dart over to the most obvious indicators of politics: Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Greens, etc etc.
This isn’t wrong per se, but the real meaning of “all art is political” is simple: Human beings are deeply opinionated creatures, and many of these opinions concern matters that’ve become, if not explicitly political, then at least ideological. Critics of that sentiment, lacking in self-awareness, would often point to paintings of forests or something “neutral” as a counterargument - unaware that the portrayal of nature as a calming or beautiful place is an idea that’s implicitly in support of nature and in implicit opposition to industrial expansion or deforestation. Like, c’mon dude, the idea that nothing can be something is so substantial to the human condition that we have a word specifically for it.

Now, to go back to my opening statement: As both an author myself (and one who’s had people read parts of my text in wildly different ways) and as someone who puts way too much thought into everything, I don’t necessarily believe one truly can invoke death of the author. Everything, from how one depicts the poor to what is considered ‘evil’ to how a work treats the concept of ‘order’, betrays something about the author. To me, the act of engaging with art has always been a three way split between the viewer, the art or subject, and the creator. Even the dumbest of humans, raised in isolation, would be a political creature whether they knew it or not.

With that all said, I consider Lonesome Road to be Chris Avellone’s finest work. Not out of any love for the man or even the DLC, no, but because it’s one of the few stories I can think of where I struggle to have an opinion of it.
A good chunk of that struggle comes from what I said a few sentences ago: Lonesome Road’s meaning, ideals, and politics vastly change depending on whether you prioritize Chris Avellone’s personal beliefs and intent, or whether you read the text as-is. People who’ve played Bioshock 1 may be getting serious Deja Vu right about now.

I don’t necessarily consider this a good thing, mind you. But, enough of the exposition for now. Let’s take it from the top, and talk about the text.

Lonesome Road is the culmination of a story arc alluded to in New Vegas proper (as early as the player reaches Primm, if they’re inquisitive!) and which properly began in Dead Money. This story arc revolves around the preemptively mythologized confrontation between the player (Courier Six) and a man named Ulysses - the former Courier Six.

And… I think what sticks out to me nowadays is that Lonesome Road’s meaningful content is mostly relegated to the chats with Ulysses. It’s a bit denser than the other three DLCs for sure, but much of that content is gunning down Marked Men (Ghouls but red) and Tunnelers (Trogs but brown) ad infinitum in relatively bland, linear shooting corridors. This will be important later.

As a brief recap in case you’ve not played LR for years or are just tourist-browsing: Ulysses is an ex-Caesar’s Legion Frumentarii whose tribe - the Twisted Hairs - was eventually forcibly assimilated by the Legion. He left in disgust after the White Legs tribe (from Honest Hearts) ‘honored’ him by carrying out cultural appropriation and styling their hair after Ulysses’ tribes’ signature dreadlocks. After the Legion were beaten back at the first battle of Hoover Dam, Ulysses stumbled upon a community named (and based in) The Divide.
The Divide as a community was established by people too stubborn to move, and Courier Six (again, that’s you) was their lifeline due to, well, delivering packages. Much like the rest of the territory surrounding Nevada though, it soon became a target for annexation by the NCR due to being a (functional) second highway into the Mojave. This, naturally, drew the attention of the Legion, who began enacting plots to convert or destroy it.
But it wasn’t any of the major factions that destroyed the Divide. On a routine job, Courier Six (that’s you) delivers a package to the Divide and walks away. This package, a transmitter keyed to nuclear warheads, ignites bombs underneath the Divide and destroys everything in it - NCR, civilian, Legion, you name it.

This recap is very important, I wouldn’t have included it otherwise and if you’re familiar with my writing you’re likely already aware that I fucking hate narrating the text to you.

Ulysses’ specific bone to pick with Courier Six (that’s you) is… Alright, before I begin, I need to do something out of character here: I don’t like to address other people’s criticisms directly, because these are my reviews and they should concern my opinions exclusively, right?
However, over the last ten or so years I’ve seen an alarming amount of people hate on LR for “forcing a backstory on the player”, and this criticism bothers me because it’s both wrong and hyperreactive. The only thing LR adds to Courier Six’s (that’s you) backstory is that they delivered packages to a place, and one of those deliveries went awry. This not only isn’t much of a backstory, it’s also literally the opening of the game. It’s already set in stone that Courier Six (that’s you) has walked all over the place, LR is completely inoffensive on that front. Hell, it’s entirely debatable as to whether the Courier he remembers is the same one you control: Noticeably, the player has a lot of options to recall things from their past across the game, but none to acknowledge the Divide or Ulysses.

But speaking of unworkable criticisms, let’s talk about Ulysses.

I’ve seen a lot of analytical pieces about LR and Ulysses written over the last decade, and many of them are wonderfully well-written, but… I think taking Ulysses at face value about everything is a mistake, and any approach to LR which posits him as a 100% reliable source of information that you’re meant to agree with is a non-starter.
From where I stand, it’s pretty obvious he’s both a hypocrite, and an angry man lashing out because he can’t accept that events happening by association does not mean those events have correlation. In other words, he can’t handle that “shit happens” sometimes is the only explanation.

Ulysses holds a grudge against Courier Six (that’s you) because, in simple terms, his experiences with the Divide and the Legion have convinced him that history is exclusively written by special individuals. He feels that Courier Six (that’s you) should ‘take responsibility’ for the atrocity you ‘caused’ in the Divide. This in itself is madness, for all that was done was a simple delivery - from the Enclave to the Divide. Ulysses does not hold the Enclave responsible - betraying how fake his world-weariness is - nor does he hold the NCR or the Legion responsible for what they were doing to the Divide.
Similarly, Ulysses betrays his own biases upfront in his logs and conversations. Despite his allegedly balanced approach to the world, he’s delusional enough to think the Legion is good at empire management and that the NCR are secretly the evil ones. This is despite being so high up in the Legion’s command chain that he reported to Caesar directly, and was trusted enough to attempt an assassination of Joshua Graham, so he really should know how bad things really are.
There’s also the matter to consider of his own actions. Ulysses believes he alone has a divine right to punish the Courier, the NCR and the Legion for what happened before his eyes, yet he pays no mind to anything he’s done. Ulysses is, to wit, directly responsible for the last three DLCs even occurring, set the plot of New Vegas in motion by rejecting the delivery of the Platinum Chip, and started the NCR-Legion war in its entirety by reporting the discovery of Hoover Dam to Caesar. In short, everything is his goddamn fault.
Lastly, despite the fact Ulysses will castigate the player for refusing to pick a side in the Mojave war, Ulysses himself doesn’t support any particular side and will admit upon interrogation (should he survive) that he thinks all four options are uniquely terrible. His attempts to punish the Legion and the NCR are just petty.

That said, I don’t think any of this is bad writing, no. On the contrary, I like that Ulysses is a deeply hypocritical and miserable piece of shit that’s built his entire worldview on a house of cards. People have debated the meaning of throwing “Who are you, who do not know your history?” back at him, but I’ve always taken it to be a reminder that shit does, indeed, happen. That Ulysses oftentimes was the shit that happened, and he’s no better than the Courier. Really, Ulysses being such a shitheel is in character for a game where Caesar misrepresenting Hegelian Dialectics is the first bullet point on the “Caesar is secretly a moron” list.

In a way, I’d compare Ulysses to an IRL conspiracy theorist. He’s fundamentally unable to accept that the nuking of the Divide was at worst an unfortunate, terrible terrible accident that nobody could’ve seen coming.

If anything, a lot of the guilt he seemingly wants Courier Six (that’s you) to feel reads like guilt he feels, given the overwhelming implication that he considers himself to have failed the Divide’s citizens. New Vegas’ dialogue files contain script notes, and a surprising amount of Ulysses are flagged with a note indicating that he’s trying to convince himself more than he is the player.

But this is just the text, divorced from everything I know about the real-world writing, authorial intent, and intended outcome.

Just to open on a loud note: Chris Avellone has admitted several times that Ulysses is his mouthpiece. Knowing this, I feel, drastically changes how a lot of Lonesome Road reads.

The Fallout TV show came out recently and, spoiler alert, it involves the NCR being nuked out of existence shortly after New Vegas ends (though the show’s writers got their dates wrong and had to clarify), essentially resetting the entire West Coast back to the Fallout 1 days. This sparked a lot of discussion online, surprisingly well-intentioned discussion too, about what “post-post-apocalypse” means.
As early as Fallout 2, the Fallout series had already begun to move into the post-post-apocalypse. No less than 7 major settlements occupy its map, with what’s considered to be “wilderness” vastly shrinking. Cities have already moved towards having printed/minted currency, and fledgling governments are beginning to strike out. New Vegas leans heavier into this, with the Mojave being relatively civilised and endless allusions to civilization existing beyond the playable borders. The NCR in particular have grown so large that they are, for all intents and purposes, beyond the post-apocalypse entirely.

Much of the discussion around this is derived from Bethesda’s ostensible hatred for the concept of a post-post-apocalypse. That, from where we’re standing, it seems like they want to tell stories about wastelands and misery and bad iconography forever. To me personally it was a tacit admission that Bethesda just want to make theme parks with the Fallout IP rather than games or stories. Fallout isn’t games anymore, it’s merch.

It’s worth noting that Chris Avellone is on the “keep the apocalypse forever” side of this debate, and doesn’t seem to hold much love for New Vegas’ central conceit.

Somewhat ironically for a DLC about roads, I find myself at a crossroads knowing all of this.

With Chris Avellone’s opinions and intent in mind, a lot of the praise I levelled at Lonesome Road starts to feel uncomfortable. Thorny even. Ulysses being a raving hypocrite seems like good writing at first, but knowing that Chris Avellone is just doing videogame blackface and using his self-insert to vent about how much he doesn’t like New Vegas kinda rubs me the wrong way.

And I think the reason it rubs me the wrong way is because it basically turns the DLC into Fallout 3.

Like Fallout 3, Ulyssesvellone is obsessed with both moral dichotomies and a very straightforward, incurious depiction of a ~post-apocalypse~. There’s a lot of decay in New Vegas, but it tends to shy away from outright ruination. Lonesome Road, naturally, sets the counter back to Fallout 3’s corner - the asset reuse from 3’s Raven Rock just adds to it.

Like Fallout 3, Lonesome Road is a hallway shooter with little in the way of exploration and a somewhat gratuitous obsession with gore, dark tunnels and subways.

And, like Fallout 3, the fail state isn’t actually any choices you do or don’t make. It’s speech checks. NV loves its dialogue checks, sure, but it both varies the skills you need to use (rather than JUST speech) and offers alternatives either in the forms or hidden objectives or in reactivity to things you’ve already done. Ulysses only demanding a speech or reputation check calls back to Colonel Autumn in ways that might not’ve been intended.

But where the Fallout 3 comparisons really start getting bothersome, they really get bothersome. In my Fallout 3 review I talked at length about how that game is obsessed with great men and how they’re the only ones allowed to lead civilization.
New Vegas steps back from this significantly: The Legion isn’t held aloft by one great man 0 it just thinks it is - but tons of subjugated and indoctrinated tribals using guerrilla warfare, tribal assimilation and salted earth tactics.
The NCR wins fights with well-equipped and well trained soldiers, but those soldiers are just people. Even Courier Six (that’s you) is just some schmuck.
House and the Legion crumple easily because they put all of their eggs in one human-sized basket, and if that basket is killed then it’s all over. Really, House and Caesar feel like scathing commentary on the whole concept.

Lonesome Road sort of veers back into that territory though. As a mouthpiece, Ulysses designates himself as a divine prophet that can pick who is the right great man to restore civilization, and explicitly calls out all factions as unworthy. In his eyes, it’s only you that can dictate the path of civilization.
Now, NV isn’t perfect about avoiding great man stuff, few RPGs are, but it’s very upfront with the idea that you’re just Some Guy who accidentally stumbled into a position of importance. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the relative unimportance you actually have initially is what makes it so compelling. So to suddenly have Courier Six (that’s you) be so important, and placed on such a pedestal, is alarming.

There’s also this strange dissonance between LR’s attempts to show you the horrors of nuclear bombs firsthand in the Divide, and the almost fetishistic veneration it actually has for nukes. I loathed the Fat Man in 3, resent its inclusion in New Vegas, hate that cars are nuclear bombs waiting to go off, and am frankly kind of annoyed that small-scale nuclear warheads are so commonplace in Lonesome Road. There’s a very strange love for the nuke underscoring Lonesome Road that is, to be entirely honest, a lot more alarming here than it was in Fallout 3 or 4.

I don’t think Chris Avellone is a total hack, he did write Planescape almost entirely by himself after all, but he’s more often than not one of the lesser RPG writers than he is one of the greats. Lonesome Road, to me, is a very curtains-pulled moment. It’s layered in a left-handed, overly serious derision for its source material and seems to care more about itself than anything around it, both of which are the same reasons why KOTOR 2 can be so suffocating - though LR thankfully has no women to be misogynistic about.
It’s a window into what a lot of his contributions to games end up as. I have an endless distaste for Divinity Original Sin 2’s Fane because he just reeks of that white nerd writing Avellone unfortunately built a career on. LR isn’t trying to be funny, at least, but there’s a sort of… Condescension, I’d say, baked into the foundation.

It’s funny, if you think about it. Remember when people thought the finale to LR was stupid? How the hell was one man gonna nuke the NCR? That’s an insane thing to put in a DLC.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then the Fallout TV show did it anyway. One has to wonder how Bethesda feels about Courier Six (that’s us) despite their claims of love.

I realize this might come across as me hating Chris Avellone, and I don't - even if he is a weird ghoul who struggles to say much of anything. I just deeply dislike his work, because even decades later it still has that weird grease to it that makes playing Fallout 2 so suffocating. Said dislike comes to a head here, in a DLC where his OC goes on stage and proclaims that everything in NV sucks and everyone involved is stupid. If anything, this review is more about the Fallout TV show than anything, as LR lays the groundwork for what came next.

I want to end off with a funny joke, but nothing comes to mind. Uh... Isn't it funny that the single part of NV's overall narrative that tries to say "all sides are wrong" ends up being more wrong than anyone involve in the Mojave, yet Ulysses will try to call you a centrist if you don't have particularly high faction rep?

I dunno man. The more I think about this DLC the more it feels like self-parody, and I regret knowing that it's meant to be taken seriously.