After reading all of the so-so reviews of Dead Money, especially from places like IGN and Metro who didn't even pay enough attention to the DLC to understand what was going on, I just want to emphasize as a fan of NV that this is by far one of the best DLC's I've played yet.

First off, I encountered zero bugs. Great job with that, all things considered.

And second, sure, I had to save scum to destroy the radios, but in the process of entering a massive room, having my collar beep, having to backtrack to save and then find a way to take it out, the satisfaction and relief of pulling it off was more than worth it. Seriously, Dean's level in the theater was freaking intense.

And the weapons are incredible. One's basically a fully auto marksman carbine with nearly double the ammo, no scope and more spread. The other one is basically a scoped plasma rifle that, when fully upgraded, is super accurate, lasts a damn long time, and does a ton of damage. I didn't get to try out the melee weapons, as I was a guns/energy weapons character, but these guns are damn fun. Finishing the NCR path with the automatic rifle was a blast; grinding through hordes of legion troops with JSP's is catastrophic.

And the gameplay is unique, but still keeping the fallout flair. The game goes from being a survival horror game where every piece of loot can be used and maximized in some way, to a creative puzzle game, to one of the best and most innovative stealth sections ever designed in a video game. My only complaint is the fact that you can barely make it out (legitimately) with any of the gold bars. We have to have a high level character by this point in the game; why not let us enjoy the caps while we can? (although I guess bankrupting the casino was pretty fun, especially since my character has 10 luck) Regardless, once I got out with all the gold after half an hour of sneaking, I just dropped it all and proceeded to run around and explore the city. Finally cleaning out and fully unlocking all of the doors in the suites was pretty fun, and I think I spent another half hour just exploring and crafting stuff.

Overall, a great DLC. If this is what Obsidian started with, I can't wait to see what's around the corner.

Couldn't agree more.

Yea i really like it so far.7 or 8/10

Wow a positive thread. I'm so used to complaining on this forum that I don't know what to do with this.

It means there will be 3 more weeks of winter.

I agree with your post bar the radios. They started to feel very overused by the time I got in the casino.

Yeah, they were overused, and I nearly threw my controller at my wall a couple hundred times in the actual vault, but the feeling of relief you get knowing that you're not going to blow up is pretty awesome, and is part of what made exploring everything afterwards so much fun.

I agree with this thread. My only other complaint is that hardcoe is a bit TOO hardcoe at the beginning. You're extremely low on resources and you constantly lose health? No thanks. I turned off hardcoe at the start, and I always play on hardcoe, so that's saying something.

To be honest I'd have enjoyed this DLC a lot less if I had to play it on hardcoe, simply because exploring the villa would have had a de facto "timer" due to the constant health loss. And I hate timers (least favorite thing about Dead Rising series, too).

But the levels are very atmospheric, I really felt like I was exploring a lost, dead, legendary casino, a real wasteland ghost story. The Ghost People were cool because they were like a combination of the Dead Space necromorphs (dismembering) and the Snorks from STALKER (hopping, jerky movements, gas masks). I found them interesting and worthy opponents.

The gear is pretty cool, we get some construction hats, the awesome BAR, a bear trap fist, a snubby police pistol, some sweet armor, and cool new chems. And of course the Gold Bars for decoration or profit. The best thing though is that if you get all the holocards you can use the vending machine to vend a lot of the great stuff you find in the DLC, and the dropbox and chemistry set provide an infinite trickle of other items from the DLC that can't be vended.


Where this DLC really shines though, is the writing. The character interactions are quite simply some of the best I've seen in a DLC, and probably top anything from New Vegas or even previous fallouts.

Christine is definitely the best mute character, although I haven't seen too many in games. It was great fun to actually envision her sign language and try to figure it out yourself. Although perception and skill checks factor in, it's not the sum total of your interaction with her, you have the option to interpret her signs in different, possibly incorrect ways. And really, while you could just try to guess the most likely response to move the story forward, it's more fun to choose the response that you think she's trying to say, even if she gets upset at your misunderstandings.

She wasn't as cool when she got her voice back, though. I think a lot of her novelty was her muteness. Still a good character regardless, and it was nice to see

Dog/God is an amazing character. Schizophrenic and crazy, but not in a "lol so random" way like Tabitha was. He's a dark character, and when he's funny, it's in a dark way. I liked that. There's a propensity to make schizophrenic nightkin into silly characters, like the Chupacabra, Lily, and Tabitha, but Dog/God escapes this- the tone I felt in dealing with him was very serious.

And the dichotomy between the brutish, simple Dog and the intelligent, articulate, yet tortured God was excellent. The metaphor of the "cage" was a great device that really put you inside Dog/God's head. Seriously, this writing is almost on the level of Planescape: Torment.

Dean was kind of a [censored], but even he was well written. Though I couldn't help but notice his voice sounds sort of like Stewie from Family Guy. But still, his detached and rather fatalistic outlook on the whole situation and his history with the Madre, the place he has called home for hundreds of years, was a bit refreshing.

Father Elijah was great too, one could really sense his desperation and the madness he was descending into over his obsession with the Madre. There was a bit of graffiti that illustrated this, saying "The casino is the old man's collar". What he does in this DLC is very illuminating in regards to his behavior at Helios one, how he obsessed trying to get Archimedes II running.

And finally, the voice acting for all these characters was really great. NV had better VA than Fallout 3, but it had some lacking voicework as well. Dead Money has excellent acting all around. It's one thing to have good writing, but if your voice actors deliver those lines flat, it ruins the whole thing. The actors delivered nearly every line with proper emphasis and really made the writing come alive. Cheers to the team!

Despite the DLC's "flaws", which I feel are really design choices that some people just don't enjoy, there is a lot of awesome content to see, especially if you like story and dialogue. Plenty of good combat, puzzles, and exploration too, if you know how to take a crack at it.

The one thing which I think is an objective flaw is the inability to return to the Madre after the DLC. At the very least you get access to the BOS bunker which can give you stuff from the DLC, but I would have really liked the ability to return to the area at a later date to explore it with no collar and no pressure to get the quest done.

It would also have been nice to be able to fight a few ghost people whenever the fancy struck me. Personally I think that they should patch it to let you go back, but we all saw how well begging and petitioning worked in that department when we asked them to let us run through Operation: Anchorage again or go to the sealed off parts of the Ship in Mothership Zeta.

Overall, if one considers this the "Operation: Anchorage" of New Vegas, I think it's already a lot better than its Fallout 3 counterpart- it's definitely less linear, more story centered, and has more of a Fallout Feel. Hopefully, the next DLC will be the "Pitt" of New Vegas, and give us a new area to explore in which we can come and go as we please after completion.

I give this DLC a solid 8.5 out of 10, but reserve the right to lower my score if succeeding DLCs are even better.

:thumbsup: I agree with almost everything you said - except that Dog/God isn't schizophrenic, he has a "split personality disorder". Small gripe, but one that I can't help but point out because it's quite a common misconception (Fight Club has a lot to do with it for some reason I think lol) I loved the whole "cage" thing too.

Chineapplepunk, you actually have either a medicine, science, or intelligence (I forget) check in his conversation where you identify him as schizophrenic.

And Enduring Protectron, I couldn't agree more. Obsidian writes some of the best characters in existence, and this DLC is no exception. I enjoyed switching between Dog and God at will; when I was surrounded, I took out Dog and we went to town. When we weren't, I took out God and snuck around. Awesome character.

Communicating with Christine was pretty neat, as I had a somewhat high perception skill, but not enough to see what she was worried about before I went into the vault.

And Dean started out as an ass, but I came to like the guy as it seemed that he also did to my character.

In the end, though, I was curious as to where everybody went. I wanted to finish conversing with Christine and Dean, (couldn't save Dog) but they had disappeared. Oh well, still had fun exploring the town without my collar exploding.

Funny to see how little the reviews cover things like these, instead complaining about radios and the fact that they don't know how to play Fallout.

Wait, why was this moved? If I remove any "spoilers" can I get it back in general discussion?

That's weird, I had a medicine check where I identified him as having a split personality due to some sort of trauma, which he then explained. Must have been different for your game :shrug: Plus my boyfriend is schizophrenic and he definitely doesn't have an extra personality! just the one is enough lol. I really think they went to town with these companions - maybe it's just because I've got used to the NV ones and the novelty has worn off, but these ones were really great. If I'm honest, I was kind of expecting the companions to be a bit weak, seeing as they were only for the DLC and maybe not "good" enough to be included in the main game - I was happily proven wrong

In the past, DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, AKA Split Personality) was considered the same as, or even part of a Schizophrenic disorder. This is because DID patients often have many of the same symptoms as Schizos, and can even have both disorders. It wasn't until the 1980s that it was firmly established that they were separate disorders, and that many of those with DID had been misdiagnosed.

So in keeping with the 50s retro futuristic ideal, it would make sense to consider Dog "schizophrenic" even if he didn't display other signs of schizophrenia, which he does. Dog is paranoid, has delusions, and generally exists in a very unstable conception of reality. I'd say he qualifies for both Schizophrenia and DID, but that's just my amateur opinion.

Dog/God has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Any references to him being schizophrenic (which was mentioned in interviews, I believe, not from in-game references) are incorrect, and the Medicine skill when you meet him should diagnose him correctly.

:(

Why do you have to ruin my theories?