Video Game / Honest Hearts Reborn

Honest Hearts Reborn is a fan-mod of Fallout: New Vegas by JamesAFloat of the Nexus that seeks to re-interpret the story of the game’s Honest Hearts DLC.

The Courier answers a radio broadcast sent out by Chen Masterson, who wants to venture into Zion Canyon for trade. The caravan is ambushed by a splinter-sect of Caesar’s Legion led by the Legate Livius, who blackmails the Courier into exploring the region on his Legion’s behalf in exchange for their freedom. At the unwilling behest of their Legion master, The Courier dives head-first into the inter-politics of the tribes of Zion and how they’re all connected to the tale of the Burned Man.

War is coming to Zion. And war never changes. Men however just might be able to.

Compared to other mods, Honest Hearts Reborn prioritizes open-ended player choice and the results they can have on the narrative over the addition of new content.

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Honest Hearts Reborn contains examples of the following:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Livius to Joshua. He loves him intently, but doesn’t care about his feelings on the matter. Convincing him he’s this with a high-enough Speech check during the final quest drives him off non-lethally.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Subverted. While your arsenal has nothing to do with how you interact with the Tribes, your ability to talk to them is dependent on your current companion. Brutus knows some Bloodstone and Zoe can speak all three while Graham’s only your companion during the final quest, where none of this matters.
• Adaptation Distillation: The narrative of the mod implies some events similar to those of the native Honest Hearts DLC occurred prior to Reborn, with the Canaanite mission Joshua and Daniel were a part of having long-since made home in the region.
  • Compared to the Tribes of Honest Hearts, the tribes of Reborn have little in terms of side-quests or issues you can resolve. They’re defined entirely by their chieftains. The Canaanites avert this, going from an off-hand association with a lead character to a full-on faction in Reborn.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The Honest Hearts Reborn version of Joshua Graham is very much this, going from a vengeful figure being dishonest to himself about his own darkness to a broken, yet influential man that wants to redeem himself in some way but isn't sure how.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Once he reveals his true intentions to you, Brutus comes off as this compared to Livius. He still favors the Legion, still wants to conquer Zion’s tribes and his intent for Joshua is duplicitous at-best. But, he deplores Caesar and relishes the idea of rebelling against him in revenge.
• A God Am I: The Memory living within the Vault that's also the "God" that the Sun-And-Moons Tribe worship. They're actually a child who had been experimented on pre-War by Vault-Tec and developed immortality, at the cost of still looking like a little girl, and god-like brain powers. They compare themselves to a God when in comparison to pretty much everyone around them, including you.
• Alternate Continuity: As the mod is a re-interpretation of Honest Hearts, it's this.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: When confronted at the Canaanite Temple, Livius reveals his love for Joshua as the impetus behind his trek to Zion. Regardless of your allegiance and intent, he’s turned down.
• Anonymous Benefactor: After presenting information to Livius that Joshua is alive somewhere in Zion, the Courier is approached by an agent under disguise as a Legion solider. Offering you with a job of trying to convince Joshua to act against the Legion, whatever faction you push Joshua towards doesn't matter to them so long as it's anti-Legion. This agent's allegiance si never fully revealed but dialogue options and that B.O.S. armor can be found at the end of the game with a note they leave you thanking you for your efforts implies it's the Brotherhood of Steel.
• Audience Surrogate: The Reborn version of Joshua Graham is a broken man unsure of who or what to fight for, yet he’s been deified by just about every living thing in Zion. He’s essentially the blank slate The Courier always is when they start a new game.
• Blessed with Suck: Having Brutus in your party reduces your chances of getting critically hit but makes the Locked Horns tribe hostile to you while he’s with you.
• Big Bad: Legate Livius.
  • The leader of the New Canaanites sees Joshua as this. Whether it’s true depends on what you say to him.
• Bigger on the Inside: The small crashed Vault-Tec plane encountered early in the mod contains a full-sized Vault.
• Big Good: The closest thing the mod has to one is Amy Wilks, the sage that lives in a crashed plane. She was friends with Edward Sallow and Joshua Graham before they left New Canaan to found the Legion.
  • Potentially you.
• But Thou Must!: Even if you pass the Speech Check to convince Brother Aecard you want to join the Burned Ones, he’ll still claim you’re lying and attack you alongside a horde of them. Justified however, as their ambush un-blocks the passage to Angel’s Landing.
  • On the subject of the Burned Ones: There’s no peaceful way to handle Adam, the Super Mutant guarding the entrance to Angel’s Landing. He’ll see you as a threat to Joshua no matter what you say.
• Central Theme: Does everyone really deserve a second chance? Can anyone truly redeem themselves at all?
  • The line between hero worship and zealotry.
  • Similar to the other New Vegas DLCs: “Obsessing over the past is dangerous.”
• Childhood Brain Damage: Carrie (one of two sisters at the Prospector's Camp) was born with a developmental disability; resulting in stunted speech and social skills. If you help Carrie find Lucas' old belongings throughout Zion, her sister will tell you of a possible medical cure to this disability within the Sun-and-Moons' Old Vault.
• Cutting the Knot: To gain their help in the final battle, the Locked Horns want 30 bottles of Nuka-Cola from the Sun-and-Moons’ Old Vault. Or, if you have that much on you, just dump it on them right away and save a whole quest.
• Darker and Edgier: To the native Honest Hearts. Honest Hearts was about the (possible) loss of innocence between two tribes and simply getting one man to let go of (or succumb to) his wrath. The Reborn version is a narrative about the existential complexity of redemption and how malleable people can be despite how aware of the world they tend to believe they are.
• Developer's Foresight: A rockslide blocks the Northern Passage, forcing the player to interact with the new NPCs standing outside to go to Zion. A prompt also pops up when you start a new game warning you not to have the Explorer perk when you start Honest Hearts Reborn to prevent overlap between the mod's locations and the DLC's.
  • If you go out of your way to gather every possible piece of faction evidence for Joshua during "What Do You See?", he'll remain indecisive instead of coming to a conclusion and outright ask you who he should side with.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The mod spends a great deal of time demonstrating what a horrible Jerkass Brutus is. Unless you actively intervene, he’ll die four-or-so quests in at Adam’s hands.
• The Dragon: Brutus to Livius. Or so it seems.
  • You to a vengeful Joshua.
• Elite Mook: Livius’ Legion has Riflemen, who’ll pelt you with Grenade Rifles.
  • The Watchers of the Bloodstone tribe serve as its elite guard.
• Enemy Mine: One of the final quests involves The Courier and Joshua recruiting the tribes of the area into fighting the Legion with them.
• Et Tu, Brute?: With a Speech check, the Courier can convince All-Clouds of the Bloodstone Watchers that Salt-Upon-Wounds is too brutal to remain the Bloodstone chieftain and needs replacing.
• Expy: The tribes of Reborn are re-tools of the ones from the native Honest Hearts. The Bloodstones are fleshed-out White Legs and the Sun-and-Moons re basically the Sorrows. The Dead Horses aren't accounted for, though the Burned Ones are the new residents of their general territory.
  • In terms of role, Mordecai takes Daniel’s place as the religious representative.
• Flat Character: The Locked Horns are defined entirely by their love of Nuka-Cola and little else. They don’t even have evidence to convince Joshua with.
• Foil: Oddly enough, Reborn Joshua is one to Boone from the standard game. Both were broken by traumatic experiences brought on by the very factions they stood alongside and now simply exist without meaning or purpose; blaming themselves for what happened. Both encounter the Courier and through this stranger’s actions are either able to put their pasts behind them or become entirely twisted by their own obsessions into dangerous marauders.
• Foreshadowing: If you’ve completed “Crazy Old Casca” before reporting to Livius about Amy’s information, you can pass a Speech check with the Legate that implies the two were friends until a betrayal split them up. He was in love with Joshua, who couldn’t reciprocate due to his faith.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Companions added to your party determine which of the Tribes you can talk to. If your companion doesn’t speak a tribe’s language, you’ll only get some variation of “This NPC cannot understand you,” if they respond at all.
  • Speaking of Companions, Brutus serving as your overseer means you can’t dismiss or swap equipment with him.
  • The Bloodstone Chieftain has two Sorrows Tribals laying in her beds, implying the Sorrows of Honest Hearts existed in this Alternate Timeline and were conquered.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Even if you’ve made Joshua vengeful towards the Legion and he declares Zion’s tribes irrelevant, he still comes up with a plan to recruit them against the Legion.
  • Legate Livius tells you the Legion in the Mojave is in the dark on what’s occurring in Zion. Killing Legionaries in Zion however still gives you Infamy.
• Gender Flip: The mod's incarnation of Salt-Upon-Wounds is female.
• Hero Worship: The Burned Ones have taken this to an absurd degree, adopting Joshua Graham as nothing less than a vengeful god of purity. Joshua himself finds them disgusting and actively scares them from his doorway whenever they get that far.
• Hint System: At times, a prompt will pop up that either explains the nature of a certain quest or nudges focus in specific directions. As an example, when Brutus and The Courier reach Angel's Landing, Brutus will challenge the Super Mutant guarding the entrance. Cue a prompt pointing out an opportunity to off him and flee the Legion's influence.
• Insistent Terminology: For some reason, the dwellers of Zion National Park refer to the place as “Zion’s.”
• Lighter and Softer: Downplayed. The mod itself is darker than Honest Hearts in terms of its overall narrative but the portrayal of Joshua Graham in comparison to the native DLC is very much this.
• Lost Aesop: One of the mod’s side-morals is about the dangers of hero worship, using the Burned Ones as strawmen for the obsessed. (And Joshua toward Caesar for zealotry) However, Joshua himself is not only ’’aware’’ of how powerful and influential he is, the second-half of the mod is about doing something with said power by swaying him toward certain groups; thereby (accidently or otherwise) reinforcing the region’s perception of him.
• Knight Templar: Brutus wants to convince Joshua to become this so he can rebel against Caesar.
• Medium Awareness: Joshua is well-aware that the tragedy that made him what he was has been romanticized by the dwellers of Zion into something that gives him power over them. Being unsure of what to do with said power is his dilemma. In a bid to come to terms with his own indecision, Joshua requests of the Courier to make contact with each of the Tribes and come up with evidence for whether they’re worth supporting or not. He makes clear from the start that he needs no convincing against the Legion.
• The Mentor: In Reborn, you can take this role for Joshua Graham.
• My Greatest Failure: Mordecai sees Joshua as this, as revealed in a note inside the Old Mission House addressed to Daniel that was never sent. It's one of the examples that can sway Joshua away from the Canaanites.
• No Ending: Implied. The "ending" to the mod is the player's final conversation with Joshua, which reinforces the new outlook he's been given by the Courier and his immediate plans. The fate of Zion National Park as a whole however remains ambiguous and the player is taken to an exit shortly afterward.
• Not So Above It All: Whenever Joshua ruminates on his time with the Legion, there’re moments where his resigned façade slips into something angrier. This can be embraced fully if you convince him vengeance is all that matters.
• Out of Focus: The Locked Horns tribe gets remarkably little acknowledgement despite them being listed as “one of the three tribes.” Amy Wilks technically represents them, (being the Chieftain’s aunt) but the story treats her like an outside party.
• Perspective Flip: Unlike other DLCs where The Courier is generally overseen by bigger figures at-play that want to sway (or use) them, they serve as a mentor to Joshua; attempting to mold them into a specific mindset - potentially for the sake of an agenda.
• Pet the Dog: While Brutus remains morally-singed at the best of times, he’ll admit a begrudging respect for you if you’re with him long enough and eventually reveals his plan to get revenge on Caesar.
  • The immortal child in the center of the Old Vault carries a special gene in her blood that’s essentially a Healing Factor up to eleven. If you convince her to lend you some blood samples for Joshua (and Carrie for the “Treasure In The Earth” quest) and thank her for it, she’ll remark that you’re the first person to ever thank her and fluster from the kindness.
• The Pollyanna: Downplayed with Zoe. While she’s certainly a cheery idealist that simply wants to spread love and peace everywhere, she isn’t blind to the limitations the New Canaanites place on themselves and others. If you ask her “what she believes in” when faith is discussed, she thanks you for distinguishing her beliefs from the Canaanites’.
• Posthumous Character: The Reborn version of Daniel is this, having died thirty years ago attempting to get through to Joshua during the First Battle of Hoover Dam.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: All of the tribes to varying degrees though the Bloodstones are the most straightforward and “savage” of the lot, being battle-junkies most receptive to a Legion takeover.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The Courier can stoke the evil in Joshua’s heart if they only show him hateful evidence of the New Canaanites and Tribes.
• Replacement Goldfish: The note left behind on the Legionaire Cretus implies Livius finds him “handsome.” Given what’s revealed about his relationship toward Joshua...
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Mordecai thinks Joshua deserved the fate that befell him, seeing him as a lost cause that betrayed everything they stood for to join Caesar.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Brutus reveals that he’s impersonating the real Brutus in an attempt to make a new Legion with Joshua at the head in retaliation against Caesar, whom he sees as unworthy to rule.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Burned Ones hail Joshua as a great cleansing force that will drown the region in fire. Depending on how you mentor Joshua, it just might happen.
• Spared, but Not Forgiven: If The Courier convinces Joshua to re-integrate into the Canaanites and approaches Mordecai on the matter, this is the best he'll be able to manage.
• Stalker with a Crush: The chaos in Zion is being caused by someone Joshua Graham rejected the advances of.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The immortal child within the Old Vault is mostly a brief gimmick character, but her providing a dose of her Healing Factor blood sample resurrects to fighting form the Burned Man everyone in the story is terrified of.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Chen Masterson replaces Jed Masterson as the caravaner wanting to trek into Zion.
• Technical Pacifist: The Sun-and-Moons Tribe took a covenant thirty years ago to never again raise a weapon or kill anyone. Their descendants however haven’t.
• Token Evil Teammate: Out of your available companions, Brutus. Livius plugs him into your party as leverage for your cooperation.
  • Also Joshua, if you’ve made him vengeful toward the Legion at the expense of everyone in Zion.
• Tragic Keepsake: Adam keeps an audio recording of Joshua preaching to him, which you can loot off of him.
• 20 Bear Asses: The Locked Horns want 30 bottles of Nuka-Cola from the Old Vault to help out in the final battle.
• Vision Quest: Before the final battle, Joshua requests you take one with him VIA the blending of Canaanite and Bloodstone traditions. The sequence takes The Courier through a (potentially symbolic) Flashback Sequence concerning a portion of the First Battle Of Hoover Dam as well as Joshua's falling-out with Daniel. Even Joshua isn't sure how literal the vision really was.