Let's discuss Dead Money. Was it that bad?

[plasticsoda]

I finished my 2nd playthtough of Dead Money and caught myself thinking it doens't really deserves all the hate it gets. Here's what I think of it:

The Good:
1. The storylines are great, from the companions to the history of the Sierra Madre and the tragic tale of Frederick and Vera.

2. The overrall atmosphere and feeling of ''old world blues'' throghout the dlc, especially in Vera's suite, is beautiful and very melancholic.

The Bad:

1. It's not hard, it's just annoying. Lots of people complain that it strips you out of your gear, but before every DLC I leave my stuff at the Lucky 38 bc I know I will come back with a lot of loot. Problem is that the weapons they give you are underpowered.

2. The Villa is confuse to navigate, looks the same everywhere and its ugly to look at.

The Ugly:

1. Enemies are sponge-bullets. They're not hard, they're just take too much damage to kill. You can just run through most of them

2. The Vault is one the worst parts of it, too boring and takes too much time to get to the end, lots of boring enemies and SPEAKERS!

3. Fuck Speakers/Radios, they add nothing of value and dumb down the pacing forcing you kill yourself over and over on a trial and error hell.

4. Final confrontation with Elijah is awful, you don't even get to have a face to face talk with the man and your reasoning to get him to come down to the vault is also shit.




Dead Money has a lot of good things going on for it, but it ultimately gets overshadowed by the great amount of bad decisions

 

[Norzan]

Final confrontation with Elijah is awful, you don't even get to have a face to face talk with the man

For a man that spent so long trying to get to the Sierra Madre vault, i don't think he's interested in face to face talks.

your reasoning to get him to come down to the vault is also shit.

What? You can threaten to destroy the content of the vault, say you don't care for the contents of vault and say you just want to leave, say you'll unlock the vault and take everything for yourself, or cooperate. How are are any of these shit? These all sound reasonable given how desperate Father Elijah wants the Sierra Madre vault.

 

[plasticsoda]

For a man that spent so long trying to get to the Sierra Madre vault, i don't think he's interested in face to face talks.

Still, its very underwhelming that when he actually comes down all the options you have are to sneak out or shoot him at. I was looking forward to talking to him because the man caused me so much trouble.

What? You can threaten to destroy the content of the vault, say you don't care for the contents of vault and say you just want to leave, say you'll unlock the vault and take everything for yourself, or cooperate. How are are any of these shit? These all sound reasonable given how desperate Father Elijah wants the Sierra Madre vault.

Yes, now I renember that and you're right, guess the final confrontation left a bad impression on me that I overlooked the other skill checks. I used the speech check that said ''I don't care about this, I just want to leave''

 

[Norzan]

Still, its very underwhelming that when he actually comes down all the options you have are to sneak out or shoot him at. I was looking forward to talking to him because the man caused me so much trouble.

The mere fact that he had to put a bomb collar on you and only spoke to you through speakers and screens really just tells the player that he's not interested in face to face talks.

And he tells you his motive and really everything about him before you convince him to come down. What would be the point of a face to face talk? It would be redudant since you already know everything about him. A face to face talk would actually be absolutely ridiculous given how paranoid the man is.

 

[KingArthur]

I just shot him down after passing the barter check.

Elijah: I’m glad you’re willing to cooperate.

Me:

 

[FDO]

I finished my 2nd playthtough of Dead Money and caught myself thinking it doens't really deserves all the hate it gets.

Who is hating Dead Money? It is the best DLC of the four, the only one worth keeping as is in it's present state actually, if one was to rewrite New Vegas.

The Good:
1. The storylines are great, from the companions to the history of the Sierra Madre and the tragic tale of Frederick and Vera.

2. The overrall atmosphere and feeling of ''old world blues'' throghout the dlc, especially in Vera's suite, is beautiful and very melancholic.

This old world blues atmosphere works because the storyline is well executed, and because Dean Domino is still around to incarnate the old world parts of the story, and helping the player character to relate to it. It isn't enough to have a old world atmosphere, as proven by the DLC litteraly named Old world blues.

The Bad:

1. It's not hard, it's just annoying. Lots of people complain that it strips you out of your gear, but before every DLC I leave my stuff at the Lucky 38 bc I know I will come back with a lot of loot. Problem is that the weapons they give you are underpowered.

1. Enemies are sponge-bullets. They're not hard, they're just take too much damage to kill. You can just run through most of them

2. The Villa is confuse to navigate, looks the same everywhere and its ugly to look at.

Ghost people die with a few headshots from a simple gun, that is when you have to fight them at all... But why bother when hiding, or running is smarter and faster. Holograms 'dies' with one shot in their holo device, as for the robots in the vault, I never needed to fight them at all, unlike say, the damn real bullet sponges that are OWB roboscorpions.

The villa is small enough for it to not being that confusing to navigate, it didn't give me much trouble, and yet I generally dislike the walking simulator part of NV so, it can't be that bad.

The Ugly:

2. The Vault is one the worst parts of it, too boring and takes too much time to get to the end, lots of boring enemies and SPEAKERS!

3. Fuck Speakers/Radios, they add nothing of value and dumb down the pacing forcing you kill yourself over and over on a trial and error hell.

What? I give you that a few speaker are a pain, near the end in the vault, there is a mean vicious series of them that are a little too much and took me a few trials before making it. But I barely died because of the collar and speakers\radios except there even on my first time. You just have to look around and think a little, I love that element of DM, not only it is a bit different from the gameplay NV made you confortable with, but it serve and fit the story perfectly.
This certainly isn't ugly, on the contrary.

Dead Money has a lot of good things going on for it, but it ultimately gets overshadowed by the great amount of bad decisions

If these bad decisions are those you referenced, well...

 

[MayonaiseCream]

Ooh!Would love to try the game

 

[Black Angel]

Weird how you say it is 'that bad' when Dead Money ain't bad in the first place.

It's THE best New Vegas DLC out there. Literally every 'problems' with Dead Money are only problems for scrubs.

Now, if you argue it from the perspective that New Vegas's base game doesn't have properly working RPG mechanics and combat gameplay in the first place, I can say there's something bad, but only because the base game is bad.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Personally I thought the confusing layout and the Ghost People being hard as fuck to kill were great and helped the purpose of the DLC. My Courier who would usually just try to put down something out to kill him is suddenly now stalking through these alleyways, hiding from Ghost People and trying to remember which way he came in this hellish death maze. Generally, I avoided fighting the Ghost People and it did what Dead Money overall achieves very well: throws you out of your base-game comfort zone.

I also never, ever really found the speakers/radios a problem. It's weird, but they were always quick resolution to me. It was just another SAW trap to overcome in the Sierra Madre rather than a roadblocker to me.

The only gameplay part I thought was unfairly difficult and unfun to play was the final ringer of security holograms before the vault. There's three of them all in different patrols with very well hidden emitters. They are a pain in the fucking ass to deal with.

 

[HydroFlame]

I played DM for the first time recently, and ended up liking it overall more than I thought I would. The gameplay was a bit tedious for me because I had low sneak and unarmed skills, but it wasn't anything I didn't end up handling just fine. I loved the story. All the characters were interesting. Domino was my favorite, although I had to kill him because I insulted his ego.

As for my ending, I managed, by some dumb luck, to sneak back out of the vault before Elijah raised the force-fields, and hurried out of there. I didn't get to see what happened because I never looked behind me once I got to the door. I'm assuming he got trapped in the vault, since the other option was killing him.

 

[KingArthur]

I killed everyone except Christine and Dog/God.

So I killed Dean and Elijah. I liked Dean, but in that scenario I realistically would’ve shot someone that obnoxiously full of themselves first chance I got, I loved Christine because sweet, kind lesbian, I had a soft spot for Dog because I have a soft spot for broken things, and I killed Elijah because... well, why the fuck not?

 

[plasticsoda]

Well, it's interesting to see that in this forum people have a different opinion, if you go elsewhere, especially when it came out, people would lash out on it.

Ghost people die with a few headshots from a simple gun, that is when you have to fight them at all... But why bother when hiding, or running is smarter and faster. Holograms 'dies' with one shot in their holo device, as for the robots in the vault, I never needed to fight them at all, unlike say, the damn real bullet sponges that are OWB roboscorpions.

The villa is small enough for it to not being that confusing to navigate, it didn't give me much trouble, and yet I generally dislike the walking simulator part of NV so, it can't be that bad.

I played Dead Money when I was at a really (around 45) high level so that must contribued to the thougness of the Ghost People. They definitely didn't die that easy on my playthrough. They also weren't hard, whereve I got my ambushed by 3-4 of them it was just a matter of shooting, getting punched and pumping stimpak until they were dead; not really challenging, just a waste of time.

Holograms are okay in my book, it was fun using stealth to get past them in the casino

 

[plasticsoda]

I killed everyone except Christine and Dog/God.

Yeah, me too. Dean was asking for it after what he did to Vera and Frederick. Also, I wonder if Elijah could escape the Vault if I let him there, he's a very resourceful man after that but I guess he doesn't have the time

 

[Black Angel]

I played Dead Money when I was at a really (around 45) high level so that must contribued to the thougness of the Ghost People.

Just found that the Ghost People are apparently level-scaled. The fuck.... Oh well. My only advice against them: get Bloody Mess. Or abuse VATS. Or if using mods like Project Nevada which has bullet time, just aim at their limbs repeatedly. Crippling them guarantee a kill, even though their actual HP hasn't reach zero.

 

[HydroFlame]

I found the speakers to be more annoying than any of the enemies, especially when I couldn't find them.

BTW, when I first found Christine, she mentioned something about looking for something, but I took her back to the fountain right after finding her. Was there supposed to be a side quest for her?

 

[plasticsoda]

I found the speakers to be more annoying than any of the enemies, especially when I couldn't find them.

BTW, when I first found Christine, she mentioned something about looking for something, but I took her back to the fountain right after finding her. Was there supposed to be a side quest for her?

She was looking for Elijah, If you have a high perception the dialogue expands to ''looking for someone''

Nevada which has bullet time, just aim at their limbs repeatedly. Crippling them guarantee a kill, even though their actual HP hasn't reach zero.

Once you get the automatic rifle they become way easier but still not worth the trouble. Ghost People are cool in the beginning but they got stale quick, not really much fun in fighting the same two variations of an enemy through the whole dlc

 

[Alphons]

Police pistol and Hand Loader. That's it.

I kinda don't like the final message of "Let go of gold" when it's literally worthless when compared with fully upgraded holorifle, the best light armour in the entire game, complimentary voucher and literally thousands of pre-war money.

 

[plasticsoda]

Police pistol and Hand Loader. That's it.

I kinda don't like the final message of "Let go of gold" when it's literally worthless when compared with fully upgraded holorifle, the best light armour in the entire game, complimentary voucher and literally thousands of pre-war money.

I guess the final message is less about the gold and more about the fixations of each character.

Elijah is obsessed with the Sierra Madre and can't let go of his failure at Helios, Christine can't let go of her mission to kill Elijah, Dean still hates Frederick after 200 years and is still planning on the heist and God is fixated on control.


Also, I snuggled up about 8 gold bars and got about every implant in the game and there were still plenty of money left

 

[KingArthur]

Police pistol and Hand Loader. That's it.

*Laughs in 15 Guns skill*

 

[Norzan]

Melee builds are not kind to this DLC, ghost people just die so fast to them. The holograms are kind of annoying, but you can hack the terminals that monitor their routes and change them.