So I'm finally playing through the New Vegas DLC and I'm doing them in order of release. Haven't been to impressed with Dead Money as its extremely tedious and redundant, but I'm towards the end and I've encountered what could be a glitch. Maybe not a glitch, but whatever it is it is causing a maximum frustration that a video game hasn't caused me since I went back and tried to beat Battletoads.

So I'm in Sierra Madre and I'm in The Tampico theatre trying to hunt down Dean. As I go to the right of the theatre, pass those hologram security guards, and go back stage it stated I was being poisoned by the fog. A bit annoying, as I thought we were past that, but I moved out of the way and it stopped. So I quick saved it as these frequency exploding radios are a huge pain in the butt and I tend to die as I explore for them. I did die but when I reloaded my quick save my health continues to drop. Now, I am playing on hardcoe mode and I do have the implant that regenerates from the New Vegas Medical Center, which does seem to slightly off set the drop. But come on! I take Super Stimpacks and its still dropping way faster than it was in the Villa.

Anyone know anything about this? This is truly miserable.

I'm going to try to make it out of the Theatre to see if that'll stop the issue, but man those holograms hurt!

Do you mean that you continually take damage? Even while not being in a cloud or attacked? If so, then yes, that's a bug. I suggest reloading the same save a few times to see if it straightens itself out, or reloading a previous save.

Are your saying that your health continuously drops everytime you load that character, even when you have left the cloud? That sounds like a save issue, which usually screws that particular save up. If you have one, load the autosave made upon entering the theater and try it again. If you walk all the way away from the cloud and stand in teh corner of the hall across from the door, you will definately be beyond the cloud without exposing yourself to any hologram issues.

Yes. It doesn't even register that portion of the cloud anymore in the backstage area. I just constantly lose health. I tried to make it out of the theatre but it told me all the doors were inaccessible! Even the ones I came through. So annoying. I hard save quite often, as I learned to do with Fallout 3, so I have to start before turning the gas off for Dog/God. I cannot wait to beat this and move on to Honest Hearts. This has been a nightmare.

Oh and reloading the quicksave didn't come through, as I've tried about 20 times to complete my objectives within the glitch, but it seems that it was impossible

You've fallen victim to a gamebryo script bug. There is no salvation but to restart.

Yeah, it must have been a crazy glitch with loading the Theatre section. Because this time when I grabbed the key from the music stand I had a dialogue with Dean. When I previously played this part of the quest the POV camera simply showed him on the top of the stairs back stage then showed him run in the back. I simply thought I had to follow him.

On my 3rd playthrough of DM I had the same problem but it occurred in the Vault. Only way out was to load a prior save. I save frequently so it was not much of a problem.

Just curious why you played Dead Money 3 times?

Probably for the same reason a lot of us have played it more than once, myself included, as I've gone through dead money more than 10 times now. We enjoy the DLC.

Well, that's cool. I just finished up Dead Money. As you can see from my post I had a few problems – probably because I am playing on the PS3 – but I'm sure there are bugs and glitches on other platforms. These are very complicated games and I try not to let the technical imperfections get in the way of my enjoyment of the game. However, I just didn't find Dead Money to be that compelling of a release - especially when compared to the grandness of the Fallout 3 releases. While I certainly enjoyed the minor added mythology of the side story elements from the main game, I really found the gameplay to be tedious and repetitive. The environment of the Villa was rather dull and while I did enjoy sort of being forced to sneak around more than usual, the gameplay device of: find the 3 people, take them to the fountain, take the three people to their spots, then go to yours, go into the casino, then find the three people to be quite redundant. It really seemed like a waste of time for what could have been a better gameplay scenario given the circumstances of this small story. Not to go on a rant or anything here, but there were small aspects of it I liked, but for the whole I thought it was rather weak, rushed, and seemed to have little involvement from anyone involved in the production of New Vegas-proper. Basically, I just couldn't see myself playing through it again, much less two more times – such agony. I'm happy you enjoyed it though. It's just after playing through the regular game for about 80 hours, doing all of the quests I could find, then playing Dead Money – I was admittedly let down. I'll probably start up Honest Hearts in the next few days. I believe I've heard its rather short. I am, however, really looking forward to Old World Blues.

I really did not enjoy Dead Money. I get how others could, but IMHO it has no redeeming value.

I play on PS3 too. No problems on my end.

Anyone who has spent about 5 minutes in these forums knows I HATED this dlc.It just didn't seem like Fallout to me.It seems the collars were added just to make it last longer.I hope the other 2 are better.I made the mistake of buying all 3 without doing any research.I've never had this much trouble with a game before.

I understand your pain. The first time I played through I found it frustrating, but I played it again and I actually took my time to explore the Sierra Madre and it was fun. Especially setting mines and demolition charges in places where Ghost People respawn

I'm glad to hear there is at least one PS3 player who hasn't had any trouble with the game. Fallout 3 didn't start bugging on me until I installed the DLC, and strange enough this is happening with New Vegas. FO3 would mess up particularly in the DLC areas but also in the DC wasteland the more I did and the basically the more the game had to keep track of. Operation Anchorage didn't have too many freezes but Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta would continually become "choppy" and "sluggish." This has happened to me in the main area of the Mojave, specially when I move into a new "room" or "area" of a location: screen loads, then "boom" I walk in and everything drops to 1.3 fps. I have to load a hard save to fix it. Really strange. Aside from this glitch in Dead Money at the theatre and when I went down to the lobby from Christine's room to load the song and everything looked like a laser light show, Dead Money went relatively smooth. Oh, and after I locked Elijah in the Vault and it loaded me to the fountain, I leveled up and the game froze, lol. That was funny in a really frustrating way.

The Sierra Madre didn't seem very big to me. Perhaps you meant exploring the Villa, the area before you get into the casino? I didn't spend quite a bit of time exploring it during the mission objectives. I like to complete the challenges to get the extra XP, and I was trying to find all of Dean's stashes, but I only found 10 or 11. After I realized how much time I was spending looking around I decided to move on. T'he Villa just got kind of boring after a while. I kind of wanted to find the Snowglobe, but since I killed Mr. House, there would be no point in finding it because I couldn't sell it or remove it from my inventory for display (at least I don't think you can).

Actually you explore after the mission objectives are complete when you are no longer tethered by the ridiculous collar. After collecting the snow globe it gives you 2000 SM chips whether you killed house or not.

The globe is automatically put with the collection once you pick it up.

Yes, I was aware that you could explore after the main quest was completed, but I certainly wasn't aware of the 2000 SM chips! That would contribute to quite a collection of stim packs.

Didn't see your response while I was applying to the one above, but that is good to know as well. Hmmm... I have a hard save at the fountain and the only play I've really done is trade some with the gun runners and move my loot around. Not sure if its really worth going back to get though...

I've never actually had any issues with Dead Money and really enjoy the DLC. It's certainly more interesting than Honest Hearts, who's plotline stumbles with an odd pacing. I can definitely see how Dead Money can be frustrating. It's one of the few situations where a player playing on Very Easy can actually die without blowing themselves up with a couple mini-nukes, so it forces a particular style of play that suits me, but these games aren't really tailored for that.

Anyway, that's not excuse for a scripting bug, but the engine was never particularly stable. Bethesda Softworks had a "Bare Bones" version of the Fallout 3 Engine, and as Obsidian layered complexity in there, it created more points of failure creating it's ubiquitous sense of instability. One of the few examples of a game that is designed much better than a predecessor, has more content, and an overall better quality of content, but is actually worse because the tech problems actually detract from the experience to a significant degree.

its one of those things that you have to play twice imo to really enjoy it. My second run through DM felt a lot better even though I had forgotten where everything was mostly lol. I still say the Casino was the best part of the DLC though.

New Vegas certainly seems to be more complex overall, but like Fallout 3 I hadn't run into any problems until the DLC was installed. My main quest, at around 90 hours or more, only froze up like 2 times before I installed and started playing Dead Money last week.


Glad you appreciate it, but I don't think I'll be touching it any time soon

There are a few parts near the end that were a bit too hard; Dead Money is the only time since Fallout 1 that I had to save and reload multiple times just to get past one part.

The story makes it worth it though; it has the best plot in all of Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

My first run was fairly rough too, but then I went in with a character who wasn't really ready for it. Subsequent runs have been a lot more fun, since I can concentrate more on the story and less on just trying to stay alive as I know where to get supplies and where all the speakers are.