Fallout:New Vegas-Dead Money

[Tyrannis]

Anyone played them yet? i just finished both this week, and figured i'd give a review of each since i remember a couple people having it from this board. I'll do each separably 
(SPOILER WARNING)




[You've heard of the Sierra Madre Casino. We all have, the legend, the curses. Foolishness about it lying in the middle of the City of the Dead, buried beneath a blood-red cloud. A bright, shining monument luring treasure hunters to their doom.”
—Father Elijah, Dead Money/b]


Dead Money is the first DLC to be released

It starts out like most other fallout dlc's, you pick up a radio broadcast of a womans soothing voice, inviting you to the opening of the Sierra Madre Casino's opening. You follow the Transmission to discover the abandoned brotherhood of steel bunker outside Camp Forlorn Hope. As you enter the bunker, the first thing you see is the body of a man, bloody&bruised on the floor. his head gone. as you follow the voice into the bunker, you discover the transmission is coming from a very old looking radio, sitting on a table at the end of a corridor,as you go to approach it, a bright light flashes, and a gas fills the chamber, as your pass out the last words to come from the radio is "begin again" This is your introduction into Dead Money, and the legend of the Sierra Madre.

As you start to wake up, you find yourself in a townsquare of a villa, the buildings corroded, and falling apart, but still retaining some beauty about them. as you lift your head, you see that the sky is filled with an omonous reddish dust cloud, so thick the stars cannot be seen, then finally, thats when you see it. the Sierra Madre, sitting atop a cliff overlooking the Villa, as you gaze at it, transfixed with its beauty, the fountain infront of you comes to life.  the image of an elder looking man floating above the fountain, the man speaks to you, informing you that all your pocessions were gone, that you had a bomb collar around your neck, and that you are now going to do whatever he tells you to, or he'll blow your head off. (the body you see in the bunker was of a person who resisted, and got his head blown off). after you agree to help the strange man, he informs you that he's trapped 3 other people. in the villa, but can not retrieve them. so he sends you out to find him, with a big problem: the villa is filled with old speaker equipment, who's signals have gotten crossed over the 200+yrs, and if you remain close to one of these speakers for too long without somehow turning it off, it can detonate your collar "prematurely". as the mans hologram disapers, another appears floating above the fountain, of a rather beautiful woman, she nether speaks nor moves, just hovers there staring at you.


As you set out after the other 3, the first You'll run into is a super mutant Nightkin named "Dog" who has been locked in the police station. as you enter the police station, be weary. theres an old radio transmitting at your collar, destroy it quicky. after that turn immediatly to the left and you'll find the police station's gun closet, pick the lock, and you'll find a police pistol(.357 short nosed revolver) and a automatic rifle(ww2 era B.A.R) i suggest using the .357 and saving the bar ammo, you'll need it alot later.
As you walk up to the holding cell, you find Dog inside, who looks bloody&beaten. in the fetal position and crying to you to (make the noise stop) as you approach the cell, a voice comes over the intercom, instructing you to come to the basement of the police station and if you dont, dog will die.  as you follow the strange voices orders, you come to a room with a holodisk, the voice instructs you to take it& play it around DOG.(the recording simply says "DOG! BACK IN THE CAGE!") as you play the message around dog, his demeanor changes, and so does his voice, into the voice over the intercom. this is when you discover dog is a former super mutant of the masters army with a severe case of split-personality. you also find out, that dog got so hungry, he ate his collar.  Dog is the strongest out of all 3 companions(since hes a super mutant).


After you get dog, the old man sends you off for the other person. as you search through the rubble of the villa you finally find him: The famous Dean Domino "The King of swing" from the pre-war,only now he's ghoulified. being trapped at the villa for over 200 years. he instructs you to sit in the chair next to you, which is rigged with a pressure bomb. through speech option you can get him to disable it, then follow you to the fountain. Dean doesnt go into much detail about himself and his involvement with the Seirra Madre, other than that he introduced the casino's main star "Vera keys" to the casinos owner&builder "sinclair". you find out more about Dean throught messages left on computers from the once-staff. than you do from him directly.


the third and last person of your team,is a woman you find in the clinic. when you discover her, she comes stumbling out of an autodock  station. scares covering her face and neck. you discover that she cant speak, and through sign language she informs you that she is a scribe of the brotherhood of steel, hunting the old man, who you learn from her is Father Elijah, the former BOS leader in the mojave before the defeat at helios 1.In the clinic, you can find the assasins suit, i recomend getting it, good armor is hard to come by in the villa so take it when you find it.

as you take your team back to the fountain, Elijah explains what he is doing more throughly. He informs you he plans on breaking into the casino, and that he's had others try to do it but failed.
He also informs you a little about the villa. The whole area of the villa is surounded by a mysterious reddish dust cloud, which depletes health over time, and depletes it rapidly in thick pockets. Also the villa is inhabited by "Ghost people"
mysterious forms who are hidden behind a hazard suit and nearly impossable to kill (you have to disembowel them to actually kill them, otherwise they just recover and get back up)
lastely, the villa is inhabbited by the ghosts of the past themselves, in the form of holograms of former workers and residents of the villa, scattered all around. nether talking or anything. just remnents of the old world.

I feel this DLC was very well done, it has a very emotional feel to it, you learn that the villa was actually built by the man named Sinclair for his wife the famous singer Vera Keyes. you find out that sinclair knew nuclear war was on the horizon, and had actually built the villa&casino to protect his beloved from it, proving the theme of the DLC "Begin Again".
You also learn that Dean& Vera were at first planning to betray Sinclair, on the night of the opening of the casino, they had decided to rob the vault of the sierra madra, taking the gold inside, and disappering. But after awhile, Vera changes her mind and decides she doesnt want to betray Sinclair, in which Dean blackmails her with photos of her. He gets her addicted to med-X(morphine) and sleeping medicine. along with alcohal. to keep her going through the plan.

Sinclair tho, knew of the plan long before the night of the opening, and had taken steps to change the Casinos vault from protection, into a trap for both of them.

On the night of the Heist tho, Vera had came to Sinclair, and admitted her&deans plans, begging for forgiveness. Sinclair, enraged, locked her within her room. planning on letting her die there, and proceded to travel down to his vault. where he set a trap for Dean. But while down there, Sinclair had a change of heart, mortified with what he had just done to the woman he loved. He Decided to leave the casino to her, planing on activating  the distress signal. allowing help to come to the casino to rescure Vera as Sinclair left it. But Fate entervined. As Sinclair exited his vault, The bombs droped. Nukes rocked the mojave.  causing him to stumble, and fall over the side of the railing. breaking his neck on the piping and killing himself.  Both of there skeletons can be found in the Casino. Vera's can be found in her room. sitting in a chair with her signature Dress.med-x and stimpaks spread around her(she druged herself up, committing suicide)
over her bed she had written in her own blood "LET GO". Sinclairs skeleton can be found in the vault, laying against the piping right below the railing.

But as the bombs fell, the interferance from the shockwaves switched the signals Sinclair transmitted, so that the radios didnt play a distress call, but an invitation, the same invitation that lead you& other fortune hunters to there doom at the sierra madre.

The game plays very well to it's two themes "Begin Again". alot of the charectors in the game, have to "begin again"(especially dog) before the casino can be completed. and the bos scribe woman christian, along with yourself and father elijah all need to "let go" of there ambitions, in order to succede.

Its a tale of love,Betrayel,Ambition,Greed,Lust,Security,and Passion. as you learn the story of Vera and her husband, what he did for her, how he betrayed him because of Dean, and how all 3 of them suffered in the end for it. it'll pull on you a little. and leave you speechless in some ways.

This song is Vera Keye's "Begin Again" which is the song that Sinclair fell in love with her over, and the main theme for the Dead Money storyline, its rather haunting, and sums up the feeling of sorrow nicely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgZ3sryr87I


i hope my review was helpful in some way  i plan on doing one for "Honest Hearts" as soon as i finish completely exploring the area.
 


 

[Tupac]

Did you write this? Very well written. It makes me want to play New Vegas again

[Seraphim]

It's a pretty cool add on. i played through it three times already, still find little things I missed beforehand. The holorifle is awesome, but an ammo hog. BAR is cool too. But what is best about the expansion, is that they have vending machines, where you can buy basic stuff, and later on, upgrades for weapons. One vending machine can be used after it is completed, inside the BoS bunker.

[Tyrannis]

Did you write this? Very well written. It makes me want to play New Vegas again

yes. except Father Elijah's quote, he says that himself in game 

It's a pretty cool add on. i played through it three times already, still find little things I missed beforehand. The holorifle is awesome, but an ammo hog. BAR is cool too. But what is best about the expansion, is that they have vending machines, where you can buy basic stuff, and later on, upgrades for weapons. One vending machine can be used after it is completed, inside the BoS bunker.

yea, one thing this add-on forces you to do is melee fight, Sinclair wanted to keep all foreign items out of the villa that he could, so you wont find guns just laying around wherever like in the mojave.

you do end up finding very nice weapons, The only problem is that ammo is even scarcer than the guns are.

The 2 weapons i ended up relying on were the cosmic knife/caravan shotgun(found out of ammo for it) and the police pistol (you can find a vender code to buy .357 rounds from the vending machines).

[Seraphim]

There's also a couple of tricks to get all of the gold bars out also. you can sell them once you get out for about 10k caps a piece.

[Tyrannis]

There's also a couple of tricks to get all of the gold bars out also. you can sell them once you get out for about 10k caps a piece.

yea, originally there was a glitch which allowed you to take all 37 bars without the weight holding you down.


but, not counting the glitch, those gold bars play into the storyline, there are 37 gold bars, each is worth 10,000 caps.

the problem is tho, each bar weighs 35lbs. very heavy.

of course, when you first see how much the gold bars are worth, most people would go dumping all the armor&guns they had in order to make weight room to try to take them all.

but thats the foolish thing to do. as Elijah had said,Greed had claimed the lives of many doomed treasure of the Serria Madre.  and many wont be able to survive the confrontation with Elijah due to them dumping all there weapons to make room for the gold.
you have to "let go" of your greed in order to make it out of the vault alive.

i was able to actually make it out with 2 gold bars, could of made it 3, but i didnt want to get rid of the assasins armor so i passed it up.

[Penguin]

[Disclaimer, I've only played FO3 but the engines seem to be the same]

That's odd, because I made it all the way through Mothership Zeta while carrying over one-thousand pounds of equipment.  It's still squirrelled away on some dead bodies (I'm planning on moving the items to a crate soon), and there is at least a hundred of thousand caps worth of alien equipment there.

It also seems that you never need to run, either; if you can't get there by walking, you're not supposed to.  I'd just carry everything I found, suck up the damage, and then simply hoard the gold bars in Lucky 38 as a trophy.

-Penguin

[Ack-Ack]

Dead Money was pretty much just average, though better than the FO3 DLC.  Honest Hearts is far better and does a better job of tying into FNV and FO canon in general.  If anyone is familiar with the original Fallout games and the lore will remember stories of the Burned Man.

ack-ack

[Seraphim]

[Disclaimer, I've only played FO3 but the engines seem to be the same]

That's odd, because I made it all the way through Mothership Zeta while carrying over one-thousand pounds of equipment.  It's still squirrelled away on some dead bodies (I'm planning on moving the items to a crate soon), and there is at least a hundred of thousand caps worth of alien equipment there.

It also seems that you never need to run, either; if you can't get there by walking, you're not supposed to.  I'd just carry everything I found, suck up the damage, and then simply hoard the gold bars in Lucky 38 as a trophy.

-Penguin

It's not that simple. Weight slows you down, and you are on a time limit to either fight Elijah, or just flat out escape. Escaping without fighting means you have to run to beat the time it takes for Elijah to figure out you left. Or, if you fight, you have only the time of the self destruct mechanism to blow you up.

There are two ways to get out of it, one is a cheat, and one takes a bit a of skill. I only did the cheat after I figured out how to get it all without cheating.

either way, it doesn't make a huge difference, because by the time you are high enough level to get to Siera Madre, you have a pretty good amount of caps anyways.

[Penguin]

I'm not in it for the caps, I'm in it for the trophies (the gold bars).

-Penguin

[Phoenix 7]

Im pretty big into the Fallout games, and I have to say I enjoyed the "Honest Hearts" add on a little better than "Dead Money". Both are solid DLC but quite simply getting the 1911 AND Thompson in "Honest Hearts" made me 

[Tyrannis]

[Disclaimer, I've only played FO3 but the engines seem to be the same]

That's odd, because I made it all the way through Mothership Zeta while carrying over one-thousand pounds of equipment.  It's still squirrelled away on some dead bodies (I'm planning on moving the items to a crate soon), and there is at least a hundred of thousand caps worth of alien equipment there.

It also seems that you never need to run, either; if you can't get there by walking, you're not supposed to.  I'd just carry everything I found, suck up the damage, and then simply hoard the gold bars in Lucky 38 as a trophy.

-Penguin

fallout 3 was made by Bethesda, the NEW owners of the fallout title.

New Vegas was made by Obsidian which has some of the original creators of fallout in it.

you can carry as much as you could in fo3, OBsidian said they didnt want to turn the player into a walking god like on  fallout 3, so they were making things a little harder.

plus if your playing on hardcore mode, ammo wieghs you down also, and becomes an factor.

[Penguin]

Ah, so that's why you can't take it with you.  I didn't know that there was a timer.  Thanks for answering my question.

-Penguin

[branch37]

Do you get to keep the weapons/armor/ect that you find in dead money after you get back to the mojave?  I bought it the other day and I just now entered the casino. 

[Tyrannis]

Do you get to keep the weapons/armor/ect that you find in dead money after you get back to the mojave?  I bought it the other day and I just now entered the casino. 

yes, everything you get in dead money can be used in the mojave, and the traders get stocked with the right ammo for each gun. the sierra madre chips can only be used on the vender in the BOS bunker tho.