Fallout: New Vegas’ fourth game add-on, Lonesome Road, is now available on Xbox 360. Later today the content will be available on Steam and PS3 (we’ll keep you posted). The content can be purchased on Xbox LIVE for 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99 on PSN/Steam.

So this confrontation in Lonesome Road, and the other Courier that claims to know me... did we make a past for your character? Nope. Do you have amnesia? Nope. In fact, when making Lonesome Road, we only knew a few things for certain about your character:

- You've been a Courier.

- You've walked the Long 15.

- You've walked West of the Mojave.

- You've carried packages and messages - and as the Platinum Chip proved, the packages can be far different than what they seem.

It's difficult to predict your character build, your skills and perks, let alone how you'll let things play out depending on your role-playing style. That's all we had to work with, so we did, and we'll leave the rest up to you.

For a change of pace, rather than being cryptic and overly dramatic with trailer speak, I'll end with some concrete facts (if only to focus speculation on the forums, since we're diligent about checking those). If I were your Gamemaster, I'd tell you this before the game session anyway.

- Ulysses is flesh and blood, just like you.

- Ulysses is not related to you, nor do you recall ever meeting a Courier with an Old World flag on his back and a flag pole he uses as a walking staff.

- Ulysses is not affiliated with the Enclave.

- Ulysses has been wounded - and it's reflected in his beliefs and in his voice.

And some minor gameplay advice:

- The weapons in DLC4 are great to use within the DLC, and also without... so check your gear when you get it, and get a feel for everything it can do for you. You won't be disappointed, and it may even save your life a few times.

Lastly, I wanted to thank not only the entire DLC crew, also the narrative designers who contributed to the projects and made the characters what they were.

John Gonzalez for the Happy Trails caravan company and the Survivalist Logs in Honest Hearts, JE Sawyer for the principal characters in Honest Hearts, Travis for all the great work he's done from Honest Hearts companions to the Old World Blues final brain and all the clever Sink appliances, and Rob Lee for a good chunk of the X-13 emails that fleshed out the location. The narrative arc was a team effort, wanted to give credit where credit is due.

Hope you enjoy walking the road - we did.

The past can be difficult to escape from. If you’ve played Honest Hearts, not only will you have heard hints of Ulysses’ presence, you will have seen the results of what he’s done in the past that helped shape the White Legs, from their armaments to their rituals. The knowledge your Courier can find in the Divide can help put the tragedies of the past in a larger perspective.

History follows strange roads, and it can follow you no matter how far you walk. This is the third of several holotapes your Courier can discover in Lonesome Road, and helps shed more light on New Canaan, the White Legs, and Graham.

The rest of the holotapes? They are for your Courier to find in the Divide. Perhaps the history within them holds the key to the future.

The Fallout New Vegas DLCs have been a unique opportunity to do short stories in the Fallout universe, and a rare opportunity to know, for certain, you’re going to be able to do a series of adventures, with a clear ending. As a narrative designer that allows you to do something rare in the game industry – foreshadowing across multiple titles.

As an experiment, we decided to use this opportunity to tell an overarching story in the Fallout universe, and let the player see firsthand the wreckage left behind in the tracks of two couriers, from your Courier, to Elijah, to Christine, to the Sierra Madre, to Graham and the White Legs, to the Old World madness of the Big Empty… and lastly, the road that leads into the heart of the Divide and the player’s past through Ulysses’ eyes.

This is the second holotape your Courier can discover in Lonesome Road, and helps put Ulysses’ journey to Big MT in Old World Blues in perspective. It was another accident sparked by what happened at the Divide, with far-ranging consequences.

JHS: The episode certainly captures the drama of the “toaster recording session”…were there any unforeseen challenges that arose with having Jace do the voice of the toaster?

There were two, really. One, was that we were cracking up the entire time. Both when we were filming, and when we were doing the “real” recording that we used in-game. Travis Stout was the writer of the Toaster, and it’s a very, very funny script. Jace handled it like a pro.

Which brings up the other problem – Jace’s voice. The voice he does for the toaster is super deep and aggressive. By the end, you could tell he was really straining himself to keep going. Fortunately it wasn’t a very long script, because I don’t know how much longer he could have kept up that level of intensity.

JHS: Why a toaster?

Why not a toaster? Why doesn’t every game in existence have a toaster? What this industry needs right now is more toaster-based gameplay. I eagerly await the first free-to-play toaster-based MMO. On Facebook. With portals. And parallax occlusion mapping. In 3D.

We’re still three weeks from the release of Lonesome Road. To get you ready, each week we’ll be releasing a new holotape.

To set the stage, here’s Lonesome Road’s project director, Mr. Chris Avellone…

Lonesome Road brings the DLC story arc to a close – events that were first hinted at in New Vegas and Dead Money come to pass, as the last of the DLC cast of characters, Ulysses, reveals himself. For a time, we just introduced him through the perspectives of other characters, a description of another Courier who wore an Old World flag on his back, and in Old World Blues, a mysterious figure who marked his presence through graffiti and holotapes left in the Big Empty.

But those holotapes weren’t the only recordings. Ulysses carried more on his journey back to the Divide, and used them to chronicle his past and yours. As your Courier will discover in Lonesome Road, these recordings of Ulysses are buried in the wreckage and storms of the Divide. As you walk the road, you’ll have a chance to hear the history of the courier who has spent years hunting you down.

This is the first of a series of holotapes your Courier may find in the Divide. While we, as developers only knew a few things for certain about your player character’s history, Ulysses can shed more light on past events – and events to come.