» Thu May 03, 2012 6:34 am After getting the Ultimate Edition I finally got around to starting on the DLC content, decided to work through them in order.
So I started with Dead Money obviously, and after playing it through about 3x now, here are my thoughts on it.
There's no real spoilers in here, I just talk in general about stuff so it's probably nothing you don't already know.
FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS - DEAD MONEY REVIEW
As you may know, Dead Money without doubt got the lowest reviews of any New Vegas DLC by far. It was widely panned. After playing it myself, I can easily understand why this was so. I myself might have given up on it about halfway or two-thirds of the way in, but there were things I really liked about the DLC so after doing some quick and dirty mods of my own to change certain aspects of gameplay, I finished and was able to focus on enjoying the atmosphere and story -- having changed a few things that I really didn't like.
First of all I appreciated all the work that went into the setting (Spanish flavor) and the story. They borrowed in large part from films like, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "The Omega Man," the, "Living Dead," films, and probably a bunch of 1930s to 1950s Hollywood Starlet movies. I thought of a line in a song written by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, "Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?" And I wondered if she'd been part of the creative inspiration for some of this DLC. Maybe.
HIGHLIGHTS
The high point of the DLC was the potential companions: Dog, Dean and Christine. There is also the voice of Lt. Boyd from Camp McCarran who plays a prominent voice role in the DLC for at least two, maybe more characters. When I heard her start talking the first time, getting into the later stages of the main quest, that was when I really warmed up to the DLC. She has a really beautiful, engaging voice and she fit the roles given her extremely well. (She is also why I love doing the Lt. Boyd quest at McCarran whenever I go there.)
Another highlight of Dead Money was the fragements of the story you pickup regarding the holograms and the Ghost People. It's not said directly but it appears the holographic recorders somehow capture what they observe of people and incorporate it into a shell that mimics the original person in a form that is somewhere between a simple recording and a sentient intelligence. The Ghost People whom we know little of also appear somehow related to the holograms. It is not said, but it is fun to speculate they might be the result of a merger between biological and holographic entities.
Story delivery often feels rough and forced. A number of the convoluted player-companion dialogue loops serve to breakdown the immersion feeling, but the story does have some shining moments. And the delivery does tend to get smoother and more immersive as the quest progressed. Obviously, it was rushed. Not a big deal. It's a nice story, and the ending scenes in particular were extremely well done.
TROUBLES
Where I had real trouble and disagreement with Dead Money was exactly where most people did: the collar, the radios and the speakers. But I "fixed" that with my own small mod to alter the gameplay and moved past it. The premise of the collar and radios/speakers is a cool, fun idea. But it got carried through the entire DLC from start to finish ad nauseum. Easy to see why the DLC appeals to one small segment of the audience and not the rest, and explains why so many reviews panned the whole DLC. A classic case of a good idea spoiled by taking it too far. Way too far in this case.
The problem here is with implementation, not the idea. I think as a game developer it becomes easy to forget what it is like as a player who is not intimately familar with the layout of your levels to find and fix those emitters. I would have felt much differently about disabling emitters using a mod if I'd had a radio directional finder or some logical way to locate and triangulate on the speaker signals and be able to think through things. A little running and jumping is okay, but Dead Money gave me nothing to work with in too many case -- it came down to a boring process of trial and error: save, die, reload, try again. After my third pointless death about halfway through the DLC I wrote my mod. More than anything though, overuse spoiled an otherwise good idea just as too much sugar makes you sick.
MISCELLANEOUS
If you love crafting you'll love Dead Money. Raw materials are laying around in abundance. But I also felt like the developers were saying, "New Vegas has this crafting system and we're going to force you to use it, so here's a bunch of materials, now get to work." I think in this regard though, Dead Money succeeds in fixing the fundamental problem of New Vegas crafting by making materials and workplaces available. I really liked the supply rooms with the crafting benches and all the materials, had fun making weapon repair kits. In general though, crafting in New Vegas seems hardly worth the time and effort for most things which is a shame, so I was glad that Dead Money tried solidly to improve that by making crafting "more accessible" -- I guess that's a fair way to put it.
I loved the Holorifle that was whipped together by some lone wolf scribe. It is nearly as powerful as the Gauss Rifle but uses one fifth the amount of ammo. Since it's in an official DLC I guess it is lore friendly, too, LOL. Seriously, I love the gun -- especially since my build for Dead Money was energy weapons and no other weapon skills. And because I never liked the way energy ammo consumption was done on standard weapons, it's just way too high. The Holorifle is a good step in the right direction. The way folks in New Vegas talk, energy weapons should be desired, feared and respected, so the Holorifle is a step in the right direction.
After you are done the main quest the town is still open to explore at your leisure. I was even able to go back into the Casino. But when you return to the Mojave that's it.
I ended up writing a mod with a handful of tiny gameplay changes because when I play a game like this I am much more interested in exploration, story and crafting than in running and gunning. My mod made it so radios and speakers don't interfere with the collar, the toxic cloud is less of a near-instant kill and more of a "keep moving at a brisk pace" thing, and for my second playthrough I added a couple of site-to-site teleporters to eliminate a very long, tedious return treks from quest locations. Oh yeah, and I created a gun that can destroy holograms, to avoid emitter hunt tedium, heh
SUMMARY
Loved the setting, atmosphere and story, despite quite a bit of rough delivery.
Hate those radios and speakers, or rather the excessive use of said.
Loved the crafting, the holograms, and thanks you Ghost People for all the headshot practice you gave.
Loved the character stories, especially Christine and Vera, and I give Dog, Dean Domino and even Elijah strong seconds.
If you delve into the NPC stories in depth you get an emotional feel as well as a sense of why they are like that.
Loved the ending scenes, those were exremely well done and conveyed an emotional sense listening to them.
