I just finished DM for the second time with my 5th character, having played it through with my 4th character and i will say it did grow on me even more. The first time through i was still trying to figure out what the developers were going for with the look and the game play elements plus trying to as the completionist in me wanted to do everything to wring the most out of my additional financial investment that i seemed to over look the forest for the tree. I decided after a month to rerun FONV again starting fresh with a new character and just enjoy the FONV experience instead of trying to get through it and give in to the impatience of "gotta know how it plays out" having been ther and done that i just plodded along. This play is going on 2 weeks now at about 4 hours a day of game play and so far this has been the most enjoyable of them all. Anyway i digress, getting back to DM.

Going through DM at level 26 having built the character to excel in DM, with perks like light step, and taking the time to earn the caps to buy the mods like rejuvination and iron skin really took alot of the bite out of DM. The only real issue i had with this build is that i had to reload quite a few times as the companions still set off ground based traps even though i stepped over the trap which meant they died alot from bear traps and I beams on chains etc. I had to restart several time making a mental note of where traps were so i could disarm them before they killed my comapnion, Christine being the most vulnerable of the 3. With the rejuvination mod from the clinic i noticed that i did not loose health but i could not really gain either it more or less was just enough to offset the drain effect on health that was a major difficulty of the DM atmosphere.

So i completed DM pretty quick not by design but because due to the preparation and the character build alot of the things that make DM difficult was neutralized before i went in to the Sierra Madre. It was not until i finished walked out with 5 bars as it was all i could reasonably carry, a police revolver, Vera's dress x 2, and an automatic rifle, as these items are the only items i can not get in FONV that it hit me. In DM everything even with this build was so intense, requires some serious concentration, close to 20 restarts due to various reasons mostly companions getting killed by traps and such, and the general feeling of desolation that upon return to the Mohave it seemed so bright, cheery lolz. Just the simple fact of not having to kill any adversary twice like one had to do with the ghost people, downem and then cutem up so they wont get back up was something i had to get used to again. I seriously spent one game play period (for me this is about 4 hours if i am lucky) just wandering aimlessly around the Mohave that even at 30 (i was 30 when i exited DM) i felt kind of lost, lacking purpose and direction. Such was the spell of the Sierra Madre, that even as i was back it still felt like a dream, but such an powerful one that it taints your perspective even when awake.

The dream or nightmare that was the Sierra Madre is fading a bit more and more from my psyche with each passing day but enough of the experience still lingers that I (the player not the character) still feel it poke me like a phantom finger, sending chills up my spine for the breifest of seconds before it is lost in the mist of my subconscience. I have been back in the Mohave for 3 days now (real time) and i sit here and type this in the hopes i can banish these feelings from my psyche. I guess what i am saying is that for a DLC to have such a profound effect the first time through is not all that uncommon, but to gather more anxiety from the experience the second time through is really where this DLC shines. I enjoyed it the first time i played DM immensely, but to evoke this kind of response the second time having experienced the trick and traps previously, having developed a character with DM in mind knowing some of the best counters to those tricks and traps, understanding just what the developers wanted me to do this time, how to figure out the quests and knowing the maps a bit better, for DM to dig itself deeper into my psyche with the second play as opposed to the first foray into the unknown, makes it truely masterful work guys.

The sense of loss for Christine, the fact that Dean forced me to kill him, and that i was able to help a troubled and abused soul like dog/god awaken, and the fact that even as i type this i feel a sense of loss and joy for them really brought it home for me. While DM was about the Sierra Madre or so i thought, it was not until the second play that i realized it was not about the SM or me for that matter but about Dog/God, Dean, Christine and the writing really breathed life into these characters even with the limited interaction avalable. The palpable panic in Vera as her last moments were recorded, Sinclair! SINCLAIR! will forever haunt me.

Asai