When Homefront: The Revolution is bought up for any reason, discussion invariably revolves around the original game, its disaster of a launch, and extensive post-release patching. Some argue the game is still a mess, others argue the game really turned itself around. But the DLC, which almost never get a mention, are a very different creature to the main campaign. They're mechanically the same as far as moving and shooting goes, but they're structurally completely different. What they all have in common is that they're mostly linear, with an increased focus on stealth, and they all feature a voiced protagonist.
Contrast:
against
Notice how much difference a voiced protagonist makes? How much the silent protagonist undermines the believability of the story? Where Ethan in the main campaign was a blank slate errand boy cut from Gordon Freeman's lab coat, DLC Ethan is an actual character with actual beliefs and principles. Think about Dying Light. Think about the bad things the GRE made you do for the "greater good". Imagine if Kyle Crane had mutely done as he was told. The narrative wouldn't have worked. And this was the problem with Homefront: The Revolution's main campaign. You were a blank slate. You did all these terrible things in the name of freedom -- such as straight up murdering civilians for being collaborators -- without a murmur of protest or assent. Characters talked AT you, not TO you.
The first DLC is The Voice of Freedom, which is a prequel where you play as Benjamin Walker infiltrating Philidelphia through the subway system, encountering a Mad Max-esque gang that kills/enslaves trespassers. This DLC is heavily influenced by the Metro series.
The main campaign had Metro influence, but here it is overt. You spend most of the 30-40 minute DLC in a subway with traps and such and people who want to kill you. Unfortunately, this DLC was most clearly hit by post-release development cutbacks when the game sold poorly. Where there should be a second half of the DLC, it just cuts to a prerendered cutscene of Walker infiltrating the city and saving Brady, as we saw from the other side in the game's opening.
The second DLC is Aftermath, which takes place shortly after the events of the main campaign. Benjamin Walker, whom you failed to rescue during the events of said campaign, has been making broadcasts calling for people to throw down their weapons and stop fighting the APEX/KPA forces. Ethan Brady now has a voice actor, and this dramatically changes the tone of the story and allows the developers to start giving Ethan an actual character. You are tasked with finding and assassinating Walker, and Ethan doesn't like this idea. It's a decent all-round DLC, but both The Voice of Freedom and Aftermath were clearly lower priority than the final DLC in terms of length and general polish. (Not to say a lot of work didn't go into them, but rather that resources were stretched thin.)
The third and final DLC is Beyond The Walls, and this is the game's swan song. Although it's only only 60-90 minutes long, it's Dambuster's version of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It's a breath of fresh air. Literally.
In its 60-90 minute length, Beyond the Walls reinvents Homefront: The Revolution. It's no longer a Far Cry knockoff about liberating a city street by street. It's a first person shooter about an American resistance fighter escorting a British civilian agent to save Europe, perhaps the world, from Evil Apple. The fight to save America is presented as relatively incidental. APEX have thrashed your revolution. In the DLC's opening, you are fleeing the city. APEX cannot be stopped using conventional means. America cannot save itself. Only NATO can save you now.
The relationship between Ethan and Lisa Burnel forms the heart of Beyond the Walls. Their relationship is clearly aping Gordon and Alyx, but it's not romantic in any way. Alyx Vance was already subverted through Dana Moore. Dana Moore is a clear stand-in for Alyx, just as Mayor Simpson is a stand-in for Breen. But where Alyx fawned over Gordon from the moment she met him, the first thing Dana did to Ethan was threaten, nay, promise to free his nipples from his chest. Lisa is possibly the first major character in the story who isn't some kind of addict or failed human being. A big problem with Alyx Vance was how she existed to stroke the player's ego. Lisa doesn't do that, and she's better for it. And having fairly well written dialogue between Ethan and Lisa allows them to form an actual relationship in a relatively short span of time.
You only know Lisa for about an hour, so a lot of character development has to be crammed into that hour, and Beyond the Walls does this admirably. The characters form a bond in a very short space of time. The theme of the story is hope in a hopeless situation. They must succeed. There is no other option.
Beyond the Walls has outstanding set piece design. The game mechanics don't always allow it to be used to its fullest (especially because even on Deathwish difficulty Homefront: TR honestly isn't that difficult on PC), but the use of level design is fantastic. The diner where a patrol shows up while you're inside looking for some keys, and the sniper-filled village are outstanding. This is the benefit of Crysis 2-style linear design. Various AI problems (such as somewhat broken stealth) in the main campaign are significantly lessened by by the constrained format of the DLC.
Another key design point is the game's use of landmarks. Just as HL2 used the Citadel, Beyond the Walls uses the satellite dish, which is first glimpsed from across the lake and seen at regular intervals afterwards.
The ending of Beyond the Walls is slightly meta. Ethan and Lisa both die horrible deaths. But as Ethan says when he orders Lisa to press the button to fire the rocket -- he's trapped inside the shaft with the rocket -- "It can't all be for nothing." The game is no stranger to breaking the fourth wall. When Ethan first speaks in Aftermath, Parrish remaks that "I preferred it when you kept your mouth shut." Ethan's final request is IMO a commentary from the developers on their game. When they created the DLC for the game, they were under no obligation to create DLC that was actually good. They could have fulfilled their contractual obligations by tossing together some filler. They weren't even obligated to fix their game. They could have just written it off and focused their resources on their next game. But that would have been throwing years of work down the drain. Their efforts had to be for something.
It's unfortunate that the DLC combined only amounts to about 3 hours of content that barely meets the most literal interpretation of the promised "several hours" of DLC, but it's three hours of very good content. Content that inspires confidence in Dambuster's next game. (Although that next game is returning to an open world sandbox format, with all the risks that entails.)
The reality is that story DLC doesn't get talked about much. Typically 10-20% of players will play story DLC, even for popular games. It's one of the reasons story DLC isn't very common, with developers preferring to release lucrative MP DLC instead. (Linear DLC also tends to fall foul of cost vs length issues.) But Homefront: TR does have story DLC and it's very good DLC in the sense of the developers doing the best with what they had to craft a satisfactory conclusion to an unfinished game that tries to address the main campaign's shortcomings.
Contrast:
against
Notice how much difference a voiced protagonist makes? How much the silent protagonist undermines the believability of the story? Where Ethan in the main campaign was a blank slate errand boy cut from Gordon Freeman's lab coat, DLC Ethan is an actual character with actual beliefs and principles. Think about Dying Light. Think about the bad things the GRE made you do for the "greater good". Imagine if Kyle Crane had mutely done as he was told. The narrative wouldn't have worked. And this was the problem with Homefront: The Revolution's main campaign. You were a blank slate. You did all these terrible things in the name of freedom -- such as straight up murdering civilians for being collaborators -- without a murmur of protest or assent. Characters talked AT you, not TO you.
The first DLC is The Voice of Freedom, which is a prequel where you play as Benjamin Walker infiltrating Philidelphia through the subway system, encountering a Mad Max-esque gang that kills/enslaves trespassers. This DLC is heavily influenced by the Metro series.
The main campaign had Metro influence, but here it is overt. You spend most of the 30-40 minute DLC in a subway with traps and such and people who want to kill you. Unfortunately, this DLC was most clearly hit by post-release development cutbacks when the game sold poorly. Where there should be a second half of the DLC, it just cuts to a prerendered cutscene of Walker infiltrating the city and saving Brady, as we saw from the other side in the game's opening.
The second DLC is Aftermath, which takes place shortly after the events of the main campaign. Benjamin Walker, whom you failed to rescue during the events of said campaign, has been making broadcasts calling for people to throw down their weapons and stop fighting the APEX/KPA forces. Ethan Brady now has a voice actor, and this dramatically changes the tone of the story and allows the developers to start giving Ethan an actual character. You are tasked with finding and assassinating Walker, and Ethan doesn't like this idea. It's a decent all-round DLC, but both The Voice of Freedom and Aftermath were clearly lower priority than the final DLC in terms of length and general polish. (Not to say a lot of work didn't go into them, but rather that resources were stretched thin.)
The third and final DLC is Beyond The Walls, and this is the game's swan song. Although it's only only 60-90 minutes long, it's Dambuster's version of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It's a breath of fresh air. Literally.
In its 60-90 minute length, Beyond the Walls reinvents Homefront: The Revolution. It's no longer a Far Cry knockoff about liberating a city street by street. It's a first person shooter about an American resistance fighter escorting a British civilian agent to save Europe, perhaps the world, from Evil Apple. The fight to save America is presented as relatively incidental. APEX have thrashed your revolution. In the DLC's opening, you are fleeing the city. APEX cannot be stopped using conventional means. America cannot save itself. Only NATO can save you now.
The relationship between Ethan and Lisa Burnel forms the heart of Beyond the Walls. Their relationship is clearly aping Gordon and Alyx, but it's not romantic in any way. Alyx Vance was already subverted through Dana Moore. Dana Moore is a clear stand-in for Alyx, just as Mayor Simpson is a stand-in for Breen. But where Alyx fawned over Gordon from the moment she met him, the first thing Dana did to Ethan was threaten, nay, promise to free his nipples from his chest. Lisa is possibly the first major character in the story who isn't some kind of addict or failed human being. A big problem with Alyx Vance was how she existed to stroke the player's ego. Lisa doesn't do that, and she's better for it. And having fairly well written dialogue between Ethan and Lisa allows them to form an actual relationship in a relatively short span of time.
You only know Lisa for about an hour, so a lot of character development has to be crammed into that hour, and Beyond the Walls does this admirably. The characters form a bond in a very short space of time. The theme of the story is hope in a hopeless situation. They must succeed. There is no other option.
Beyond the Walls has outstanding set piece design. The game mechanics don't always allow it to be used to its fullest (especially because even on Deathwish difficulty Homefront: TR honestly isn't that difficult on PC), but the use of level design is fantastic. The diner where a patrol shows up while you're inside looking for some keys, and the sniper-filled village are outstanding. This is the benefit of Crysis 2-style linear design. Various AI problems (such as somewhat broken stealth) in the main campaign are significantly lessened by by the constrained format of the DLC.
Another key design point is the game's use of landmarks. Just as HL2 used the Citadel, Beyond the Walls uses the satellite dish, which is first glimpsed from across the lake and seen at regular intervals afterwards.
The ending of Beyond the Walls is slightly meta. Ethan and Lisa both die horrible deaths. But as Ethan says when he orders Lisa to press the button to fire the rocket -- he's trapped inside the shaft with the rocket -- "It can't all be for nothing." The game is no stranger to breaking the fourth wall. When Ethan first speaks in Aftermath, Parrish remaks that "I preferred it when you kept your mouth shut." Ethan's final request is IMO a commentary from the developers on their game. When they created the DLC for the game, they were under no obligation to create DLC that was actually good. They could have fulfilled their contractual obligations by tossing together some filler. They weren't even obligated to fix their game. They could have just written it off and focused their resources on their next game. But that would have been throwing years of work down the drain. Their efforts had to be for something.
It's unfortunate that the DLC combined only amounts to about 3 hours of content that barely meets the most literal interpretation of the promised "several hours" of DLC, but it's three hours of very good content. Content that inspires confidence in Dambuster's next game. (Although that next game is returning to an open world sandbox format, with all the risks that entails.)
The reality is that story DLC doesn't get talked about much. Typically 10-20% of players will play story DLC, even for popular games. It's one of the reasons story DLC isn't very common, with developers preferring to release lucrative MP DLC instead. (Linear DLC also tends to fall foul of cost vs length issues.) But Homefront: TR does have story DLC and it's very good DLC in the sense of the developers doing the best with what they had to craft a satisfactory conclusion to an unfinished game that tries to address the main campaign's shortcomings.
