Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Tyrannis on June 12, 2011, 07:21:06 AM
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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 :salute
(SPOILER WARNING)
(http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f385/xxREXxx_01/daf4db7d5510d8f5b735a5ed5e2aa5f4-1.jpg)
[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 :salute i plan on doing one for "Honest Hearts" as soon as i finish completely exploring the area.
:D
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Did you write this? Very well written. It makes me want to play New Vegas again
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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[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
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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
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[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.
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I'm not in it for the caps, I'm in it for the trophies (the gold bars).
-Penguin
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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 :x
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[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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
Sweet, I may actually have to finish it now :D
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Sweet, I may actually have to finish it now :D
i wrote a review of Honest Hearts on here too if your interested in knowing about it before you buy it. :salute
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Honest hearts is pretty cool too... I went through it quickly though, so i didn't appreciate it as much.
But I'm sure I'll play it again.
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Honest hearts is pretty cool too... I went through it quickly though, so i didn't appreciate it as much.
But I'm sure I'll play it again.
What is cool about Honest Hearts is that it's actually a quest story line that was supposed to be in "Van Buren", which was going to be the original Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios before Interplay closed it down. The Burned Man (also referred to as the "Hanged Man") was a NPC companion and this was the quest that would get him to join you but he was a bad luck companion, causing all sorts of trouble if he tagged along with you. In the original Fallout 3, he was hanged by Caeser and not burned but since the original Fallout 3 was cancelled, it never became official canon and hence they were able to change him into the Burned Man.
ack-ack
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What is cool about Honest Hearts is that it's actually a quest story line that was supposed to be in "Van Buren", which was going to be the original Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios before Interplay closed it down. The Burned Man (also referred to as the "Hanged Man") was a NPC companion and this was the quest that would get him to join you but he was a bad luck companion, causing all sorts of trouble if he tagged along with you. In the original Fallout 3, he was hanged by Caeser and not burned but since the original Fallout 3 was cancelled, it never became official canon and hence they were able to change him into the Burned Man.
ack-ack
what ack said.
in the original van buran FO3, you were to play as a prisoner. you'd encounter Joshua hung by the neck at fort abraham.
you had the option to cut him free, but by doing so allmost every tribe in the nation would be hostile towards you.
he was essentually a "jinxed" npc, he was one of the strongest followers to have, but he would of brought alot of trouble with him, and made negotiations very difficult.
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Oh guys one thing i did not mention about the Ghost People is that its speculated that they are the ghoulified mutants of the previous construction workers of the Villa.
Evidence to back up this theory is that some up the logs made by the construction workers states that they had ordered Haz-mat suits in an attempt to collect samples of the cloud.
But the Haz-mat suits did little to protect the workers, it actually corroded the locks on the suits to where the workers had to cut there way out of it, and even then the gas still managed to infiltrate the suits.
The lumbering movement is thought to be due to the clumberness of the hazmat suits added with the decaying of there own bodies. But just like ghouls, they can move fast for short periods of time.
There Glowing green eyes have 3 theories behind them.
1. there the night-vision optics of the haz mat suits.
2. its said by Dean that the ghost people live in the sewers of the Madre, so they could of developed glowing eyes over time as an evolutionary move towards seeing in the dark.
3.Ghost people enhale cloud residue directly, resulting in there eyes mutating into giant greenish orbs. This theory is backed up by the fact that you can create "ghost vision" from collecting samples of cloud residue that lets you see in the way that the ghost people see.
Theres 3 types of Ghost people:
Harvester:The most common variant. armed with knive spears and throwing spears. They are the weakest of the 3 variants and are usually the ones who hang back and throwing spears at you until you get in there face, in which they change to there knife spears.
Trapper:These are the types who have the bear-claw fists, and are responsible for all the traps set around the villa. They are best delt with from a distance. They also like to travel in groups.
Seeker: these are the types who wield the firebombs and knife spears. they are the rarest to run into out of the 3, and are the second weakest, but also the strongest overall.
The being said, it is possible to target the firebombs in VATS while still in there hands. if hit it will cause the bomb to explode resulting in a kill.(Dean explains that he found this out)
Hope ive been of further assistance :salute
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Sorry to reawaken this Old thread, But there is an Update on the Rust-like Cloud of the Villa.
-OWB+NV spoilers-
In Old World Blues, You find the answer to where the gas that had engulfed the villa came from.
It turns out that Sinclair, As rich as he was, Was not rich enough to pull off the massive operations he was planning to do at the Sierra Madre.
So he made a deal with the top scientists at Big Mountain, They would help fund the construction of his Villa, And in return he'd allow them to run experiments on the inhabites.
One of these experiments Sinclair was not made aware of: A malicious cloud of hazardous gas. The Scientists had been asked to create a type of chemical weapon that could be droped on Important Buildings within China, Kill all inside, but without harming the building or anything else within it.
The scientists at big mountain created such a cloud. and decided to test it deep within the vault of the Sierra Madre. The plan was to set off a small Dose of the cloud and record how it affected the workers who were building the vault. With this method they hoped by doing these experiments in the vault, It would be out of the public eye, And Sinclair would think the cloud was natural of the landscape, Instead of man-made.
Also, The scientist's wished to test our new hazard suits made specifically to protect one from the cloud. So when Sinclair called Big Mountain up, complaining about a mysterious cloud that was halting construction, The scientist's offered to loan some of these new prototype suits to a group of workers at the Sierra Madre.
The test became a Complete Disaster.
The Hazard Suits did not protect against the cloud completely. As stated. It ate away at the locks on the suit, and in the end, turned the people inside of them into Ghouls.
Before Big Mountain could get a handle on the situation, Nuclear War broke out.
As humanity fell into Chaos, The cloud went unchecked. It Began to grow, eventually leaking out of the vault into the villa. Where it killed anyone who Inhaled it in large doses.
And So that is the answer to the mystery of the Sierra Madre. A Place built by a man deep in love to protect a woman who was not faithful to him from Nuclear War which it failed to do And in the end the experiments done to the place scarred it for eternity.
P.S I'll be writing a Review for "Old World Blues" as soon as i complete it. Its by far the biggest DLC out of the 3 released so far. You find out a lot of where certain things in NV came from. I recomend getting it
:salute