To start, this is just my opinion. I'm not trying to push it on anyone else. Was just looking for a venue to relay my thoughts. It's important for any add-on content to relate to it's parent game, preferably enhance it in some way. It should not trivialize existing content or hard earned abilities, and having played through it should have an impact on the base world.

Dead Money (AKA Mothership Zeta, but lesser)

• You start out stripped and imprisoned. Having to start over to get back to a point of offensive credibility, and unable to move anywhere except in pre-defined locations. [For me, this is bad]
  
• Before you get to the casino, it's effectively the same stretch of scenery throughout the run of the DLC. [Bad]
  
• Before the casino, there are only two enemies, rehashed again and again. After the casino, it's those two plus holograms. [Bad]
  
• With the 1100 SM chips you get every three days, the following items are trivialized: Weapon Repair Kits, Stimpacks, Party Time Mentats (notable amongst many others). [Bad]
  
• When it's done, it's done. No going back. You must complete everything before going forward (requiring online research, rather than random discovery, if you're a completist). [For me, this is Bad]

To me, this DLC felt more like survival horror and less like New Vegas. Other than clutter, it didn't feel like Fallout to me. NV doesnt relate to it's story/structures, and the reverse is also true. Ergo, while the gameplay is good, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with its parent game. I liked the dark theme, but it wasn't a world that I anonymously stepped into to explore and conquer. I was drawn into it and made the central focus while following a linear path to completion and then evicted. It felt more like an irrelevant repetitive mini-game (to me).

Honest Hearts

• You get to keep your stuff. [Good] Keeping your stuff is important to me because you've built your character to relate to the world, in part, with what you carry. Without your stuff, you must change your entire gameplay dynamic.
  
• It's a large, open and freely explorable world. [Good]
  
• Untouched by the war [IMO, Bad]
  
• Notable religious overtones and mentions. [Depends entirely upon your view. I found it distracting.]
  
• After completion, there is no mention of the new trade routes or your exploits on Radio New Vegas [Bad, would have tied the DLC to NV at least somewhat].

As I understand it, one of the draws of this DLC was its relation to the "mysterious burned man". I have to ask. How curious were you about the burned man pre-DLC? We knew his entire story, right to his grisly death. Once you go through all his dialogue, you see that very little of it has anything to do with Caesar and his past (5% would probably be generous). Everything else has to do with the Dead Horses and their survival in Zion. All of that is postDLC and irrelevant to NV, meaning there really was no mystery surrounding the burned man. He survived and started a new life somewhere else, irrespective of NV and Caesar.

Another "draw" is the beautiful unscathed scenery. It is for this reason that I believe this would be a good expansion for Oblivion, not NV. This is supposed to be a postApoc world, filled with all the politics, daily traumas and meager existences associated with life in a ruined wasteland. Do you remember that refuge in Fallout 3, up in the mountains, the one unscathed by devastation? That felt so out of place to me. This does too. It's got excellent structure and is well done for replayability and sandbox feel, just not the sandbox I paid for. Hmm. The only content that I felt seriously related to NV was the Survivalist's memoirs, which I very much liked.

To me, the best DLC is going to be one that adds new, directly related content to the existing world. That can be returned to, doesn't trivialize existing achievements, and the impacts of which are going to be felt in the world that you're going to spend virtually all of your time in.

I agree with you on a lot of points... except

I liked the fact we got to see an area untouched by the war in HH... There are bound to be a few, and there would be no reason for it to be a tactical place to nuke.
I thought the religious aspects where cool when combined with how the Sorrows viewed the father. However I am atheist so it did not clash with any of my idea's, and I have friends who would probably hated that aspect of the game.

The only major downfall in HH for me was as you said in your last bullet. There is no talk of what you did mattering. There are no new merchants (would have been cool if opening the pass let in new merchants with more goods. I keep the Gun Runners out of my favorite ammo, and don't do the skip 3 days exploit. Also I don't understand why we can go back if there is really no reason to ever go back? At least if we could get back to DM we could have a new place to gamble.

Also wanted to ask you, what are you talking about 1100 SM chips every three days? Do you get them back at the bunker? I never returned there...

I'm a big story guy so the reverse was true for me; I loved Dead Money but found Honest Hearts a little light.

Having said that, HH was still good. The religion didn't affect me since it didn't seem to be a main part of the story. It was just used to give Graham a righteous feel, which I thought was cool. My only gripe would have been the story and, I guess, the fact that everyone disappears when you're finished no matter what ending you choose.

DM definitely has no middle ground; you either like it or you don't. I found it was a good break from everything else though. It was a lot more challenging in my mind. As far as items becoming trivial...what items aren't, really? By about half way through the game you would have collected enough meds to keep you going and enough caps to more than re-stock yourself. Your example might be more obvious, but its more a by-product of the game than anything specifically wrong with the DLC.

I would have to disagree with most of your points.

1. If HH was just another place destroyed by bombs it would have been boring becuase it would be literally the exact same type of place you spent 50 hours in already in the base game. Why would you pay more money for somehting you already have and have already seen for 50 hours, or that you could get one of 10000 different mods to simulate?

2. The radio is understandable becuase voice actors have lives outside of making games. It's entirely possible that Mr. New Vegas's voice actor couldn't be called back to record more dialog. furthermore Radio New Vegas only does news on the New Vegas area there's no reason for him to talk about the events of HH, also New veges merchants get the HH guns in their stocks once the DLC is over showing that they have benefited from the new trade routes.

3. Before Dead Money stims and mentants were already trivialized. Before starting the DLC I already had 300+ stim packs, and 50+ things of mentants. Also its not like they were hard to find or buy already.

4. Dead Money had 4 types of new enemies. 3 types of Ghost people and 1 type of hologram. That's the same number of enemies the Pitt had, and no one complained about the Pitt in that regards. Also the Dead Money storyline provides a reasonable explanation to why there aren't more.

5. If you start Dead Money at level 20 like is recommended, getting stripped of your weapons and items doesn't hurt you that much, you should have enough HP to be able to easily get around without much trouble. Also had they given you all your weapons the DLC would be to easy. HH was boring because you could basically 1 hit everything with the holorifle. Balance needs to be maintained in some way.

6. Im a completionist and didnt find not being able to go back to Dead Money annoying. If you spent any amount of time looking around you could have easily found all the skillbooks, return codes, and the snowglobe.

7. something that people seem to forget is that Fallout 1 was about the post Apocalypse. Fallout 2 was about the beginnings of a new civilization and New Vegas is a continuation of that. The Fallout main series has always been about the slow rebuilding of mankind.

Actually, most of them are the same enemy from main game with different equipment.

If you win 7500 chips at the Sierra Madre, you get a 1000 chip voucher (redeemable at the machine) every 3 days (along with the standard 100 chips) in the mini-safe.

I never saw a ghost person or anything that acted like a ghost person in the main game.

I was talking about the Pitt....those raider are the same from FO3

1. DLC are SUPPOSED to be different from the main game in their settings, that's the reason why people buy them. The settings that separate them from the main game is sort of the point of DLC. The DLC for New Vgeas shouldn't be like New Vegas or else there would be no point in buying it. If it was just a heavily fortified area or something that would be boring, and there's tons of mods for that.

2. Well as I said they probably would but can't becuase Radio New Vegas's voice actor has a life so they cant just call him in all the time.

3. Well you cant get Party Time mentats from dead money and normal mentant aren't themselves hard to come by, you say you use them becuase you lower your charisma to 1, why would you do that, so it seems like having mentants available would be somehting you would like.

4. There's Ghost People Seekers, Trappers, Harvesters, and Holograms.

5. Well as I have said before if they don't take away all your guns or limit your weight severely the DLC becomes to easy and it kills the balance. The HH weight limit of 75 was far to high, made it way to easy. Its hard to make a DLC for a game that has balance when the base game has so many OP weapons.

6. I'm red-green color blind and have a depth-perception problem. I still found everything quite easily, and my friend who is completely colorblind was able to find everything easily also.

7. The DLC are related to New Vegas they all tie into the unsolved part of the main games plot of WHO is Ulysses The plots of each DLC deal with a place mentioned in the base game or the other DLC at one point or another that you couldn't go to.

1. I view New Vegas as more of Fallout 3, just a different area. But definitely more of the same. So I'm sure it's a matter of preference.

3. Party Time Mentats are crafted from Mentats (except for 3 you can buy), and I ran across perhaps 50 total mentats in NV. I dropped my charisma to 1 so that I could enhance my other S.P.E.C.I.A.Ls with additional points at inception.

5. I understand. What I'm saying is that the content should have been appropriate for someone who is at least L20, right? So if you're just going to strip them, why is there is a level suggestion? Either have it be a truly independent pack, or play it as you've linearly progressed. Stripping you after you've already progressed is just an easy programming out to avoid having to take into account the variables of the progression they already suggested you be at. But they know you'll be less likely to buy a content add-on (an add-on, even though it's irrelevant to the main game) if it's only meant for a new character. The weight aspect of it is irrelevant because you quickly overload yourself anyway. I crept back through the gates with nearly 4000 lbs worth of stuff.

6. I'm like your friend. Completely colorblind. And no I don't see everything. The 90's inception into 3D game environments (I.E Tomb Raider and FF7) were very hard on my eyes. It's been getting better as graphical distinctiveness has improved, but Fallout's floors covered in garbage make it very hard for me.

7. I hope that's true for the upcoming DLC's. I don't see how the prior one's relate except to say that you need NV to play them. Neither of them have any impact on the world after you've completed them, except for the SM Chip Jukebox and .45 caliber equipment being available.

You are wrong then, the design philosophy behind both game are significant.


You can still buy Mentats from some vendors. SM chip is rarer than caps. Not to mention you have to broke SM's casino to get that many chip.


The level suggestion is there so the player would have high skill and hit points, as well as some perk and experience under their belt.

And yet you use red text?

But they fill in the blanks about some of the characters that didn't show up in the main game, like Eliiah and Jousha Graham

1.None of the FO3 DLC give somethinf new to the CW, by the execption of Broken Steel, (who was crap anyway)

2.Also, You cannot compare the worst DLC ever (Motership Zeta), with the DLC with best storytelling (Dead Money)

3-Fallout was always in that tone, until Fallout 3, who trhow the whole "civilization in a post apocalyptic world" in favor of the "people struggling for survival" who IMO I find horrible

4.Fallout was always humoristic, with Fallout 2 and New Vegas being the more good examples, I personally didnt like the uber seriousness of Fallout 1 , Tactics and 3, Didn suit to me, I like more the ones with black humor and brick jokes