Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money, Completed

When last we left the Courier, they had just entered the Sierra Madre Casino.  Their companions had been scattered by the security system to other floors, leaving them alone in the Lobby.  Alone apart from Father Elijah’s voice, still giving them orders.

The  casino is very different in feel to the Villa (it’s more interesting for a start) with Holograms as the security, instead of the Ghosts.  Though the Ghosts do make  a guest appearance later.

Holograms are fairly slow to really react, invincible, and (in theory) have a limited range.  Also, if you can find the hologram emitters (glowing half spheres on the wall, ceiling, wherever), then you can take those out to remove the holograms.  Though in some cases there is more than one emitter, and finding them seems incredibly difficult.  I didn’t find most of them.

The first task is to get power back to the Casino.  Once you’ve done that, you can then set about finding each companion, and once that’s done, you can finally work out how to enter the Sierra Madre vault and see if the fabled treasure is real.

Thankfully, once the main quests are complete, you can then “freely” wander the Villa and Casino.  I quoted freely, because while speakers and radios are no longer an issue, there are still some Holograms that are deadly, and the Ghosts are still around.  However, this allows you to complete (for example) finding Dean’s stashes.

I found the Casino section far more interesting than the Villa.  It’s a little linear, but the story expands once you reach here, which kept my interest high.

I only have two real grumbles (if you ignore the 360 freezing occasionally) with this DLC.  Firstly, when Elijah tells you how to deal with the collars on your companions, you’re given a choice of killing a companion (and running like hell to get off that floor, as best I can tell, before yours goes boom) or “resetting the frequency”.  However there’s no indication that this last actually happens.  It’s probably meant to be assumed, but somehow that broke continuity for me.

The second was the end game.  Without giving much away, I got very sick of reloading until I worked out a method to actually finish the last quest.  Unfortunately (for me) the Wiki page on this quest is a little unclear, so it didn’t help more than give me a few hints.  I’m still not sure I’ve done it the “best way”.

Despite the slightly boring Villa, and the issues just mentioned, I still had a lot of hours of play out of this DLC, and enjoyed most of it.  The end wrap-up, when you finally leave the DLC (and a few conversations within) also give hints of future DLC and story.  It was also a very powerful wrap-up, at least from the choices I made. I had to watch it twice.

About Lisa

A Geeky Gamergrrl who obsesses about the strangest things.
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