I'll state upfront that I prefer either of New Vegas' DLC choices to every Fallout 3 DLC combined, so they are at least -heading- in the right direction, in my view. Story and characters are what make Fallout, not alien ships or bad combat simulations. That said, why exactly is every DLC just a mini-adventure outside of the primary game area, with no crossover over than a couple of new (usually a bit overpowered) items? What if instead of moving to a new game area for a DLC, they had the DLC take place in the game world they have already given us? Like Broken Steel, except if Broken Steel had been good.

For example: I would have greatly preferred getting a DLC with the Burned Man as a companion like Arcade of Veronica in the primary game world and -nothing- else. No new weapons, no new area, no more horrifying cazadores trying to kill me, just one scary companion with a grudge and a lot of dialogue and story to unlock. Was I the only one who, upon speaking to the Burned Man, wanted to drag him back to Mojave and help him kill Caesar? Get more of his thoughts on the NCR? Hear reactions from the Legion upon seeing the legendary Burned Man*? Take him to get ice cream?

Or, if just one companion isn't enough to sell a DLC, why not use a DLC to fix a weakness in the main game? The Legion is criminally underdeveloped, why not use a DLC to unlock a Legion city you can visit and quest in? Or, alternatively, wipe out and have some lulz about it with Chief Hanlon and the Burned Man later over a beer.

My point is, why not try to integrate the DLC into the game so that it feels connected, and not like a completely different game?

*I suspect it would be a lot of screaming and pants wetting. Well, they don't wear pants, but you know what I mean.

Its been stated multiple times, possibly over a hundred by various dev's from both companies. The game engine just doesn't allow it. They already stretched the tolerance of what the engine can do multiple times in New Vegas, and it ended up buggy enough. Attempting for proper integration would likely break the engine permanently.

The point of a DLC is to take you on a new adventure. I personally get very tired of the the Mojave Wasteland in just a few minutes. Everything in the wasteland, I've already seen. It's not like in FO3 where you would constantly be finding something new.There's a lot of variation between Rivet City and Raven Rock. But that's not my point. My point is, DLC wouldn't be as popular if it took place in the same old boring locations.

I know that I, and a lot of other gamers play F:NV - DLC for new locations, new items. It's really superficial, but the materialistic surface of a DLC is what people really like. I would have been extremely tired of F:NV if it's DLC's took place in the same area. Why fix what's not broken? Right?

The end result ended up buggy because of poor planing and resource management. "A good builder never blames his tools" granted GB toolset is limited but that never stopped modders from building things into the wasteland. I do think they should at least let dlc have some effect on the wasteland and not just be a sidestep from the game aside from weapons and armor.

You make more money this way.

I would've liked DLC's that gave a new main quest line "in" New Vegas with tons of new quests, characters and dialogue. (Some new weapons and armors that are added to main game enemies and merchants, and of course new perks and traits, but no new level cap..)

The problem with companions in DLC is that they werent designed Pre-Release. Cass, Arcade, Rex, etc every main game companion has scripts that let them touch the world, but in the companions in DLC don't. If you wanted Joshua Graham as a companion, you'd have to go through EVERY cell and mark his scripts to everything the other companions are scripted to. Ulysses might be a companion to us because he was meant to be in the game, and Chris Avellone said his companion scripts touch everything.

i agree a dlc that enriches the over all game is way better i felt let down a bit with the few Legion troops that where around and that can also be said for the lack of raiders, and other roaming evil folks or as i like to say moving targets...all that being said i still belive that fallout is one of the best sires of games i have ever played

There is no way that is what they said. These DLC are still being made with the same engine and they are being added to the data files of the game. The game loads the DLC just as it loads everything else. FO3 probably had more stuff in its Wasteland than in FONV's and they still added Broken Steel. The reason it is so buggy is because it was rushed and that may not be Obsidian's fault (not really sure who rushed who so I won't make accusations).

Anyways, what has always bothered me is the feeling of entering DLC's. I wish I could bring my companions with me to the new locations because when I can't it just breaks the immersion. In Honest Hearts there is that Ricky guy and you can go on the trip with him, but if you make him leave, the caravan guy says there is still not enough room for anybody else (what the hell? We just lost a guy and now we can't bring another????). I understand that it would require some work because the companions may unbalance certain things, but I wish I could at least bring them when the DLC is finished.

Also, whats up with the hate for Broken Steel? I don't know why so many people treat it like the red headed stepchild of FO3 DLC. I don't think it was the best, but it certainly wasn't bad (in my opinion).

You do more money in that way

How exactly does adding more content to the vanilla world break the engine? I have twenty mods running, they don't break the world.

Regardless of it being technically implementable or not, I personally just prefer a brand new area and location that is hinted at throughout the base game and other DLCs. Best case, it also has a tie in (a la Veronica and Dead Money). Though, if they did a Legion DLC that is in a different worldspace but connected and right next to the Mojave, I wouldn't mind. Hopefully Bethesda will return to expansions in the future and we can get some more main map stuff as well as a brand new adventure off the main area, but I'm not holding my breath. Who knows, maybe we'll get a surprise New Vegas expansion in between it and Fallout 4. Especially not holding my breath.

I don't care how big a Fallout fan anyone is you have to agree DM was bad. Getting a bomb strapped to my neck the entire span of Dead Money made me rank it the worst DLC out of both NV and F3. I literally had more fun getting all the 100 steel ingits( or w/e) in The Pitt then playing through DM. I know it's just your opinion, but really DM wasn't that good. The story that was given to us was pretty cool, the way we were forced to play it out was just bad. Also Broken Steel was awesome.

Dead Money had some big flaws (a couple plot holes, the bomb that disappeared randomly at the end), but overall the writing was solid. The characters were good, the end was excellent (aside from David Blaine making the collar vanish), and the themes were well presented. Broken Steel was just [censored]. The end of Fallout 3 was -awful-, and Broken Steel just compounded how bad it was by making it meaningless.

That may be so, but I am not against another Broken Steel type addon for FNV. I demand an open world ending on the Xbox 360. I know it won't make sense, I know it won't happen, but I know enough people feel the same so it should just be added :tops:

Really, so Mods never at all clash, never cause the game to crash just as it turns up. They never cause fatal errors and stuff if you happen to install two mods that work with the same area? After all every mod is automatically and perfectly compatible with the others?

/facepalm.

Anyway, as I was saying it just isn't possible to do so. To do it would require that all the new stuff be patched in, rather then added as DLC due to the quirks of the engine. You'd need to completely hook in hundreds if not thousands of places, bring back a large chunk of the voice cast, and completely bug check every single aspect of the DLC before bringing it in. If there was but a single error or mistake, the entire DLC is worthless, since the dlc itself can't be patched after release due to Microsoft and Sony etc etc. Unlike with mods, which can just be pulled temporarily while the creator takes it apart and rebuilds it, to do so to a piece of DLC would cost thousands of dollars in fines and fees from the big two companies.

And before you say that is the fault of the console players, no it really isn't. Steam is also similar, its just that they are slightly more developer friendly. Or at least they were, until they started getting a quasi monopoly.

I should call the police for your assault on that poor, innocent straw man. The argument was that the engine couldn't handle more. Yes, it can, and it does. If mods clash, that's a completely different issue than the engine being unable to handle more strain. A better anology (though still flawed) would be to say that one mod can crash the game, which is true, but I have some truly massive mods that don't. Both New Vegas Bounties and A World of Pain (which fixes the biggest flaw in New Vegas, lack of dungeons) run perfectly fine, and I very rarely crash. The argument you made, at least in this regard, is demonstrably false.. at least on PCs.

The only reasonable point you brought up was the fact that they would have to bring back the voice cast, which I can definitely see being a problem. It's a shame they're doing cheap DLC rather than releasing an expansion or two, but that's the gaming era we live in. I feel old.