Author: someguy2000
This mod also requires both of the Honest Hearts and Lonesome Road DLCs for the main game. ALSO, important note: Due to the quick release of this mod it does not require the Someguy Series esm. That means that once you activate Bounties III it will be immediately available to play even if you haven't completed the previous two. It's recommended that you leave the Bounties III file deactivated until you are ready to play it.
Now that we've got the links out of the way, let's get into the mod itself. It is, as the title implies, the third piece of the Bounties series which had more than a little bit of trouble during development. After missing its release date by several months, with the mod author practically disappearing from the face of the earth entirely. Fortunately though, the impending release of Fallout 4 pushed him to return and complete it, pushing it out in a mostly finished state in the Fall.
This time around it's much simpler, harking back to the days of Bounties I. You talk to a guy, he tells you to kill another guy, you do it, you get paid. No wanted posters and none of that "Taking them in alive" nonsense. Although, you can let some of your targets go if you feel they don't deserve a .44 slug to the brain, but you give up the bounty you would have collected on them if you do. Most of the mod takes place in a brand new worldspace that, other than the central town of Frosthill, feels pretty barren and empty. There are a few sidequests, mostly secondary bounties provided to you by your NCR handler named Brookshire that fall toward the dark end of the morality spectrum, and you can bash a bunch of rats for an old man in town, but the real attraction here is the main quest.
The mod begins with meeting one of Marko's cronies, a gunslinger named Virgil, outside of the old Randall and Associates building. From there he takes you on a 30 minute or so romp throughout the Mojave doing Marko's dirty work in exchange for him leading you to the notorious outlaw himself. You aren't doing anything particularly evil though, so good-aligned Couriers can do it as well without fear.
 |
| Virgil, Marko's trusted gunfighter. |
The work he has you do is actually a thinly veiled excuse to crap all over you, though. As is described by one of the characters in the mod, it's essentially a "Bunch of 'Ghost of Christmas Past' bullshit" but I found it to be intriguing. Virgil takes you and shows you how people around the wasteland were affected by your bounty hunting from the previous mods. A family is massacred after you killed the Fiend keeping their followers controlled in the ruins of Vegas, and they promptly began killing everyone they saw. One of your targets used the money from his robberies to support his family on their failing farm, and his death resulted in them falling in to poverty and one of the children being enslaved by the Legion.
Now, the way he goes on about it is more than a little reminiscent of Ulysses from Lonesome Road, but unlike that dread-locked windbag who can only communicate three words at a time, Virgil finds more success in his guilt trip because he relates the characters and consequences directly to things that you, as the player, have done. Instead of it being some offscreen incident that wasn't even hinted at beforehand you actually carried these actions out yourself. Whether you care or not is up to you, but Virgil's accusations carry more weight than Ulysses' ever did.
Virgil himself is an interesting character, and after doing his work you can speak to him to find out why he became a killer for Marko. It's an interesting backstory, and he has some thoughtful things to say about the nature of good and evil, and how without bad men the Courier themselves, even if they're good aligned, would be essentially nothing.
As you've probably gathered this mod is much more heavily oriented toward narrative than the others. The gameplay has been simplified from Bounties II but the narrative has only grown. I'd say more about the story but, as this is a conclusion, I'm afraid I might spoil something. Needless to say that, eventually, the player will get their long-awaited face-to-face with Marko and he manages to live up to his reputation, though I don't want to say more than that. The story takes a much darker, more personal turn toward the end that just ends up hanging there after the mod is complete. It's unorthodox, but it fits the style of Bounties well enough that I can give it a pass.
In conclusion, if you enjoyed the story of the previous mods, then download this one immediately. The story is the best part of a someguy2000 mod and Bounties III delivers.
No comments:
Post a Comment