A few pointers please...

Oh don't get me wrong, Dead Money's narrative was solid, but it's negatives outweigh the positives for me. Plus... I wasn't sold on a lot of the core elements.

Replicators scattered about the hotel? Really?
Zombies? Ghosts? Honest to Gods living dead shambling about? Really?
Invincible Holograms that conjour laser bolts of death? Seriously?
It just... no. There was a really good idea buried in here somewhere, and Dean Domino had me hoping for an Oceans 11 style jaunt with a decidedly Fallout spin, but it never paid off.

I honestly think that would have been a far more compelling plotline; disarm the player not by force, but because the Casino won't let you walk around armed up and in combat gear. Set up your team and go for the gold, only to have the whole thing fall apart as personal greed, paranoia and the unexpected secrets of the Sierra Madre divide and conquer.

Finally, we needed a way for Dean Domino to get locked in the vault. I liked the guy, but I suspect he deserved it.
 
The holograms and the replicators were getting a little too far out there, yeah. As the NV DLCs would have it, Fallout's future wasn't just sci-fi, it was on the verge of becoming The Jetsons. It was a smart move on Obsidian's part to tie it all in to Big MT and make it all cutting-edge prototype tech that was strictly limited to the test sites and the lab, but it was sort of a transparent move. As a matter of fact, just about everything you say is something I can agree with, perhaps apart from the bit about voluntarily disarming and the Ghost People.

Getting your gear away from you is kind of a sticky wicket. Obsidian's way was clumsy, but when you get into the logistics of just about any other method, none of them would quite work the way they seemed to want them to. If the casino wouldn't let you in with it, why not just leave your gear somewhere where it could still be of use to you? If the Villa wouldn't, same question. The devs needed a way to take everything but your skills and your wits from you, and to justifiably say that you had no way of getting it back until you finished what you were brought there for. You could write your way around it and quite probably find a more elegant solution, but anything you came up with would require either convoluted circumstances or magical plot-tech, and given more than a passing glance most of them would seem just as arbitrary.

As to the Ghost People-- they're a bit of a stretch, yeah, but not actual ghosts or zombies any more than some of the Necropolis ghouls, I think, and especially not more than Bethesda's. The seals on the hazmat suits were fused by the Cloud, and yadda yadda exposure to mysterious Cloud chemicals yadda yadda some got sealed in yadda yadda mutative degeneration something something etcetera. There are a lot of unanswered questions about them, granted, but I think "mysterious chemicals did it" is just as valid a bit of handwavium as "radiation did it," and not out-of-keeping with the setting. To my mind, the cloud's mysterious nature and seemingly variable effects aren't any less plausible than those of FEV, and if Into The Wasteland! from the Fallout 1 loading screens was a real comic, I think Sierra Madre and the ghost people would be right at home on one of the covers.

Dead Money does require an extra helping of suspended disbelief, to be sure. In my opinion, it takes that investment in good faith and delivers enough to be worth it, but that's where subjectivity comes in.
 
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So.. My DLC disc came yesterday, had a rattle at it last night. I'm doing it in the order you suggested Yamu with Lonely Hearts first. Have to say so far so good. I'm loving having some new story line to sink my teeth into. I already had the GRA download so I've been rocking the battle rifle and 40mm grenade rifle with the extended barrel lately. Am I right in thinking that the colours have had an overhaul? Everything seems brighter or maybe it was just the beer I was drinking. Speaking of which, the other night after a couple i was trying to complete the quest, 'Oh my Papa' which as you'll know requires that I acquire the slave ledger from the Fort. Well anyway, I reached the Fort and without even really thinking (Beer!!) I just strolled on in which the inhabitants really didn't like. So one thing lead to another and before I know it I had wiped out the entire camp including Caesar!

So know I have random NCR guys coming up and telling me they wish they could have been there to see that, and thanks very much and the like, have any of you made a similar error? How does the rest of the game play out? Is there still a battle at the dam?

Maybe I should drink less beer...
 
Caesar's death has remarkably little effect on anything. I'll tag it for the spoiler-sensitive:

The chief in-game consequence of killing Caesar is that it opens up the best outcome in dealing with Chief Hanlon in the Return To Sender questline. Apart from that, in practical terms, hardly anyone notices. There's a line of dialogue here and there and the praise you get from NCR soliders, but all it means is that Lanius is in charge now and that the Legion falls apart quicker post-game. Perhaps a bit ironically, it actually makes a bigger difference to a Legion playthrough than an NCR one if Caesar dies during the game, but you still mainly only see it in the endgame slides.
As far as the colors go, yeah, the game overall seems more vivid. A lot of it probably has to do with the warmer shades (tans here vs. the Capitol's blanket grey) and the presence of more colorful enemies and scenery, but I suspect they've brightened things up a bit, too. They also replaced the scuzzy green lens filtering from F3 with orange, which is especially noticeable around Camp Guardian.

(And let me just commend you on accidentally wiping out The Fort. Taking out the guys in Caesar's tent has been a planned and meticulously undertaken challenge and an experiment in save-scumming for me in almost every single playthrough aside from the one with the suicidally insane drug-addicted mad bomber. That must have been a hell of a strong beer.)
 
Remnants Power Armour, Guns 100, a custom Brush Gun and 160+ .40-70G semiwadcutter will make short work of the Legion. And, for that matter, anything short of an Alpha Deathclaw.
 
My guns are 72! All I needed was my 40mm grenade rifle, the ratslayer and 5 cans of heineken! To be fair I managed to coax them into the tents which created an excellent choke point, the 40mm grenades did the rest!
 
Yamu said:
The holograms and the replicators were getting a little too far out there, yeah. As the NV DLCs would have it, Fallout's future wasn't just sci-fi, it was on the verge of becoming The Jetsons.
Click to expand...

You know, this is also a chief argument against the Institute's androids, but I don't see it. Fallout is sci-fi, but it's sci-fi where reel-to-reel computers are powerful enough to run near-human AI. I mean, that was in the first two games. Fallout's a universe where FEV exists, or where you can get attribute-buffing goo baths. I doubt either of these are more probable than a hologram that shoots laser beams or a replicator.

In my opinion, the "it's too advanced" argument would hold back Fallout. It should expand as a universe, not be held back by narrow restrictions on it's "tech level". Advanced androids or holograms are something straight out of the pulp sci-fi of yesteryear. As long as it stays within the boundary of "pulp retro-futurism", the content works.
 
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