The unspoiled wilderness of Utah's Zion National Park shines in the first trailer and screens for Fallout: New Vegas' Honest Hearts downloadable content, coming May 17 to the Xbox 360 and Steam, with the PlayStation 3 version coming whenever the PlayStation Network decides to start cooperating.

The first of three new installments of downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas, Honest Hearts puts the fate of Zion in your hands, after a routine expedition goes awry. Players will find themselves wrapped up in a war between rival tribes, as well as a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man.

This sort of thing always happens. You'd think the hero would learn to just stay at home and sleep instead.

Honest Hearts goes on sale (mostly) on May 17 for $9.99 or 800 Microsoft points.

[NowGamer]

With names already outed via a series of trademark applications, Bethesda Softworks finally pulls back the curtain on Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road, three new packs of downloadable content coming to Fallout: New Vegas starting on May 17.

Remember how New Vegas' first downloadable content showed up on the Xbox 360 first? That exclusive bird has flown, and the next three add-ons for game will release simultaneously for the 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, starting with May 17's Honest Hearts.

Honest Hearts takes players into the unspoiled wilderness of Utah's Zion National Park, where they'll find themselves embroiled in a war between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man, who we've mentioned previously.

In June, Old World Blues kidnaps players and casts them as lab rats in a series of experiments that might explain where the Mohave's mutated creatures originally came from.

The story comes full circle in July with Lonesome Road, in which the player is contacted by the original Courier Six, the man that refused to deliver the Platinum Chip that started this whole mess. He'll tell the player why he refused, but only after a treacherous mission into the earthquake-ravaged canyons of The Divide.

Players can expect to pay 800 Microsoft points or $9.99 for each pack of DLC. That's $30 worth of new Fallout: New Vegas beginning this month. Who's excited?

This is Gareth. He's playing through the early stages of Fallout: New Vegas on the PC. Why are we watching him? Because he can play it without using his hands.

Gareth, who through disability does not have the use of his hands, is able to customise a game's controls to the degree that he can play through using only the mouse. And his head. It's amazing stuff.

The human chin is not built for that kind of precision work, juggling the left and right mouse button like that. You try it, see how far you get.

Then bear this in mind next time you're complaining about a game's control setup or how you don't like a particular control pad's analog trigger responsiveness.

Oh, and EA; if you could, adding customisable controls to Dead Space 2 would be great, thanks. Gareth can't play without them, but really, it should be an option for all gamers!

[thanks Russ!]

When the trailer for a fan movie about Fallout was released a few weeks back, I was...sceptical. Which was stupid, because the movie is now out, and it's actually pretty damn good.

The short film is called "Nuka Break", and is about the journey of a Vault survivor, his Ghoul pal Ben and a former slave to...find a stash of ice-cold Nuka Cola.

There's obviously not much Nuka Cola left in the post-apocalyptic wastelands of the Fallout universe, so instead, they spend most of their time shooting at people, wandering the desert and exploring the intricacies of Fallout's open-ended mission completion structure.

The flick was directed by Julian Higgins & Zack Finfrock and written by Brian Clevinger.

When you try to apply the logic and mechanics of the conversation system from Bethesda's Fallout series to real life relationships it can only end in tears - or dead girlfriends.

If only every major decision in life came with enough time to stop and ponder a selection of choices conveniently labeled in terms of good or bad. You could bring up the statistics screen, check your karma levels, and make an informed choice.

It sure beats the method I use. I throw darts whenever a big decision comes up. Not at a board filled with various answers or anything. Just tossing darts in random directions with no regards for human life.

Thanks for the clip, Carson!

Games like Red Dead Redemption and Fallout: New Vegas give players the freedom to explore unfamiliar worlds to their hearts' content, but is it too much freedom? Commenter GeneralissimoFurioso explores the price of free-roaming in today's Speak-Up on Kotaku.

Freedom, is it really all that it's cracked up to be?

Not freedom in the sense that we should all be spending our days calculating the digits of pi at the hands of our robot overlords, but games that tout open-world interactivity and then proceed to do nothing of note with that openness.

Is there anything inherently wrong with regulating a game to a set amount of areas nowadays? Do I really have to physically (game-ically if you want to be all technical) walk from one end of the world to another just because some people find it to be more immersive?

As much as I enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas, I would've enjoyed it a dozen times more if it simply implemented a map system like Fallout 1 & 2. For those of you not familiar, it was essentially a map with locations marked on it, you clicked a destination and watched your little map icon move towards the destination at speed (just like Indiana Jones!). You could have random encounters while this was going on and it wouldn't be like watching a group of assassins suddenly appear in front of you demanding that you die for them!

Developers wouldn't have to spend vital resources ensuring that you wouldn't get stuck between two rocks and could instead focus on the individual areas making each one as unique and memorable as the one that came before it.

Before anyone says anything, yes, I am fully aware that many games have fast travel and no it is not the same as what I am talking about as it doesn't have the same panache. I want my little blips and more detailed fun-zones please.

About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight it here.

Thank you, Kai Norman, for this incredible costume, which well and truly brings those badass Rangers of Fallout's New California Republic to life.

The armour is hand-cut out of foam, the mask is assembled out of pieces of plastic and even the coat was sewn together. Handy work.

Then again, in the dark, desolate deserts of the future, there are no seamstresses and no mask shops, so these are handy skills to have!

You can check out the complete journal of the costume's build here, and Kai's deviantArt page can be found here.

This is not your out-of-the-box Fallout: New Vegas. This is Project Nevada, an ambitious mod for New Vegas that adds bullet-time, sprinting, tackling, cybernetic implants, and more to Obsidian's desert romp.

The best thing about owning any Bethesda game on PC is the robust modding community, constantly striving to make games like The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3 even better than they already are. The team responsible for one of Fallout 3's most memorable mods, the Fallout 3 Wanderer's Edition, have returned to give Fallout: New Vegas a substantial upgrade, adding many popular features and ramping up the overall difficulty to create a faster, more dynamic experience.

Many of the changes the mod team is bringing in Project Nevada are the sort of features you'd expect in a modern shooter. Things like size-changing crosshairs that reflect weapon spread, or HUD elements that reflect the fact that your character is wearing a visor or a helmet.

Then there are the bigger, more impressive changes. Things like bullet-time slow motion combat, complete with support for the VATS targeting system. The ability to break into a sprint, tackling enemies to the ground before filling them full of lead.

They've even worked out a plausible reason for all of these new super powers in the form of a Cybernetic Implant system, complete with its own custom interface, seen below.

It's not quite a whole new game, but Project Nevada sure looks like a breath of fresh air for PC New Vegas players. Hit up the link below to track the team's progress.

Project Nevada [Fallout Forums via the Bethesda Blog]

Bethesda beats any potential fan-made Fallout: New Vegas demakes to the punch by creating its own for the Japanese New Vegas website. It's all in Japanese, but old school role-playing is the universal language.

Or not. I can't understand a thing that's going on over at the Japanese game site. I can make out a couple of yes or no questions, but what I am agreeing to or denying is completely beyond me. If you read Japanese, feel free to go check it out and report back what you find. If you don't read Japanese, enjoy the pretty pictures and squiggly lines.

The Official Fallout: New Vegas Japanese RPG Demake [Bethesda Blog - Thanks Adinnieken!]