That's right. I have a confession. I haven't bought Fallout 4 yet. The Bostonian Wasteland continues to elude me as all my friends dive deep into the wasteland without me. I have been left in the radioactive cloud of dust, slowly ghoulifying with each passing day that I am denied my own opportunity to enjoy the newest set of wasteland adventures.
But enough whining, I need to save some for the other Fallout posts I make. This post will go over one of the more highly acclaimed mods for New Vegas, called New Vegas Bounties.
Author: someguy2000
Nexus Mod Manager (For quick and easy installation of mods, this is what I use)
Requirement: The Someguy Series esm (This file is required for all of someguy2000's mods, and must be placed before them in the load order).
The premise of the mod is simple, and right in the title. You hunt down bounties. But there's more than just the wanton killing, pop culture references, and excessive profanity, even though those are all you need to be successful.
The way it works is simple. You pick up a holotape in Goodsprings then travel to the firm Randall and Associates just outside of Primm, where you begin taking bounties from the eponymous Randall himself. Unsurprisingly they being somewhat simple, gradually escalating in both risk and reward. Each bounty you kill (No options to bring them in alive) you take their finger back and get paid, and Randall begins to open up to you about his own past as a bounty hunter and wandering gunslinger. The random tales he has to tell are an amusing distraction that come up every so often, when they feel needed.
The further you get though, the more apparent it becomes that there is someone working against you. You begin to find notes on targets or in random encounters from a mysterious rival bounty hunting firm that seems to have it out for both you and Randall. And here is where the true appeal of Bounties arises. The writing.
There is an underlying story to Bounties that shows itself gradually as you traverse its profanity spewing dialogue trees, referencing characters and events from both the past and future that gives the player a sense of other forces besides the ones in the Mojave making moves of their own. Add to it that all of the characters are well voice-acted, complete with full lip syncing while they immerse you into a brand new, well crafted storyline and you begin to forget that you're playing a mod. After a while it feels like a full-fledged DLC, minor audio issues notwithstanding. The narrative itself starts off in a similar vein to most in Fallout, but as it goes the tone shifts to something darker. Not dark for the sake of darkness but still more unsettling than most of the quests in New Vegas. I won't say any more on the plot. I believe that spoilers contain a power far more destructive than any nuclear missile, but rest assured that the story in Bounties is worth experiencing, even if you aren't a fan of particularly bleak narratives with a heavy Western atmosphere.
I spoke above of profanity and references. From what information I've been able to gather over the development process, the author assembled this content purely from pop culture references, alcohol, profanity, extreme violence, and more alcohol. There is a lot of swearing in this mod. So much swearing that I began to suspect that the author learned English exclusively from Tarantino movies and reruns of Full Metal Jacket. But I can't say that that in anyway detracts from the experience. You are, after all, hunting down drug dealers, slavers, outlaws, and hobos. Many of these assorted ne'er-do-wells are ripped from famous movies or books (One drug dealer by the name of "Tony Idaho" wielding an assault rifle named "My Little Friend" comes to mind), but in the strange and at times whacky atmosphere that Fallout is known for these aren't entirely out of place, though your mileage may vary on this point.
The bounties themselves aren't particularly difficult to bring in, aside from a few that throw a couple of twists your way, but several own unique weapons you can use or sell for good amounts of caps. The pay for the bounties, coupled with the junk you find on their corpses is enough to set a Courier up for a long while. One weapon acquired toward the end, a custom modeled revolver found in a safe, became my primary weapon when its good stats were rolled into a gun that brought you back to the days of the Old West.
If you enjoy Westerns, get this mod. If you enjoy good writing, get this mod. If you enjoy a well crafted experience from a talented modder, get this mod. This mod earns its recommendation.
In a day or two I'll set in on the sequel, Bounties II. Will it live up to the hype or do we need to string it up for failing to deliver? Well, there's only one way to find out...
Beside playing it for yourself. Or looking it up on Youtube. Or- actually I guess I was wrong. But come back here anyway. Please. It's lonely.
The way it works is simple. You pick up a holotape in Goodsprings then travel to the firm Randall and Associates just outside of Primm, where you begin taking bounties from the eponymous Randall himself. Unsurprisingly they being somewhat simple, gradually escalating in both risk and reward. Each bounty you kill (No options to bring them in alive) you take their finger back and get paid, and Randall begins to open up to you about his own past as a bounty hunter and wandering gunslinger. The random tales he has to tell are an amusing distraction that come up every so often, when they feel needed.
The further you get though, the more apparent it becomes that there is someone working against you. You begin to find notes on targets or in random encounters from a mysterious rival bounty hunting firm that seems to have it out for both you and Randall. And here is where the true appeal of Bounties arises. The writing.
There is an underlying story to Bounties that shows itself gradually as you traverse its profanity spewing dialogue trees, referencing characters and events from both the past and future that gives the player a sense of other forces besides the ones in the Mojave making moves of their own. Add to it that all of the characters are well voice-acted, complete with full lip syncing while they immerse you into a brand new, well crafted storyline and you begin to forget that you're playing a mod. After a while it feels like a full-fledged DLC, minor audio issues notwithstanding. The narrative itself starts off in a similar vein to most in Fallout, but as it goes the tone shifts to something darker. Not dark for the sake of darkness but still more unsettling than most of the quests in New Vegas. I won't say any more on the plot. I believe that spoilers contain a power far more destructive than any nuclear missile, but rest assured that the story in Bounties is worth experiencing, even if you aren't a fan of particularly bleak narratives with a heavy Western atmosphere.
I spoke above of profanity and references. From what information I've been able to gather over the development process, the author assembled this content purely from pop culture references, alcohol, profanity, extreme violence, and more alcohol. There is a lot of swearing in this mod. So much swearing that I began to suspect that the author learned English exclusively from Tarantino movies and reruns of Full Metal Jacket. But I can't say that that in anyway detracts from the experience. You are, after all, hunting down drug dealers, slavers, outlaws, and hobos. Many of these assorted ne'er-do-wells are ripped from famous movies or books (One drug dealer by the name of "Tony Idaho" wielding an assault rifle named "My Little Friend" comes to mind), but in the strange and at times whacky atmosphere that Fallout is known for these aren't entirely out of place, though your mileage may vary on this point.
The bounties themselves aren't particularly difficult to bring in, aside from a few that throw a couple of twists your way, but several own unique weapons you can use or sell for good amounts of caps. The pay for the bounties, coupled with the junk you find on their corpses is enough to set a Courier up for a long while. One weapon acquired toward the end, a custom modeled revolver found in a safe, became my primary weapon when its good stats were rolled into a gun that brought you back to the days of the Old West.
If you enjoy Westerns, get this mod. If you enjoy good writing, get this mod. If you enjoy a well crafted experience from a talented modder, get this mod. This mod earns its recommendation.
In a day or two I'll set in on the sequel, Bounties II. Will it live up to the hype or do we need to string it up for failing to deliver? Well, there's only one way to find out...
Beside playing it for yourself. Or looking it up on Youtube. Or- actually I guess I was wrong. But come back here anyway. Please. It's lonely.
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