The Voice of Freedom, an atmospheric DLC that ends too soon
NB: The screenshots in this essay were taken at “Low” texture quality due to limited VRAM. So please don’t think the DLC has sub-par textures. Homefront: The Revolution generally has excellent texture quality.
Before Homefront: The Revolution became the open world game we know and love, it was a more traditional linear title, presumably similar to Crysis 2, which was released the year it began development.
The Voice of Freedom feels like a 45 minute demo of that game. It’s a heavily scripted linear experience that feels like a direct homage to the Metro series. With more Crytek rubber ducks.
You play Benjamin Walker, the hero of the Resistance and the protagonist of the 2011 novel also titled The Voice of Freedom, which featured Walker having the crap beaten out of him by bandits. Walker is one of the only plot elements that was preserved from the original Homefront storyline when it was rebooted for this game into “Half Life: What if the Combine were actually Koreans?”
You are tasked with infiltrating Philadelphia to meet up with the resistance at a very familiar safe house. I won’t spoil the finer details, but the majority of the DLC involves making your way through the subway tunnels, using stealth and combat to deal with a vicious gang called the “9–0”, who murder KPA and Resistance alike.
Peace Walker
The biggest difference between Benjamin Walker and Ethan Brady is that Walker isn’t a mute.
I find myself wondering whether this was always intended or was a direct response to negative feedback about Ethan Brady being mute. Walker talks about the situation. He remarks about items you’ve picked up and tasks you need to complete. He shouts “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” in the same manner Shia LaBeouf shouts “no, no, no, no!” in the Transformers movies. You feel like you’re playing an actual person with motives and beliefs, instead of the blank slate Gordon Freeman/Ethan Brady. In some ways, Walker reminds me of the journalist character you play in Enemy Front, another CryEngine FPS that is sadly quite underappreciated.
Off the beaten track
While a more linear and focused experience than the main campaign, TVOF isn’t 100% linear, despite some reports otherwise. There are missable side areas to explore with journal entries to find scattered about that give additional depth to the storyline.
The long and the short of it
The length will be an issue for some. It’s a $6 standalone DLC that is included in the Expansion Pass, and it offers around 45 minutes of content. It can be blitzed through in 15 minutes if you run really fast, follow the HUD markers, and ignore all the atmosphere the game is trying to generate. The final 90 seconds of the DLC is an FMV cutscene, and it clearly feel rushed. I can only hope that this DLC was scaled back to allow more resources to be allocated to “Aftermath” and “Beyond the Walls” the two upcoming DLCs.
I can see clearly now, my HUD is gone
And speaking of HUD markers, I sincerely recommend playing Homefront: The Revolution with the minimap and objective markers disabled. While it has the downside of preventing you seeing how many healing injectors you have left, it greatly improves the overall feel of the entire game. You are no longer being led around by the nose. You no longer have a clear idea of where enemies are located. This makes combat more intense and also masks AI limitations when they arise.
In conclusion, The Voice of Freedom is a short but fairly sweet DLC that offers a reasonably polished story-driven experience that tells the story of what Walker was doing in the hours leading up to the events of Homefront: The Revolution. I hope that future DLC is more content rich, but I thoroughly enjoyed this DLC. 45 minutes is not bad. The average story-driven FPS game has missions that are about 15–25 minutes long. I wish it had been longer, and I wish the ending didn’t smack of being rushed, but it is overall more positive than negative.
