Madcap's Game Reviews - Fallout New Vegas DLC: "Dead Money" and "Honest Hearts"

This is my second month as an amateur game reviewer, so naturally I’m getting a lot of firsts in this time.  Next on my list is my first review of DLC from the Xbox Live Marketplace (if you couldn’t get the message from the cleverly set up title…yes, I knew you couldn’t), and so I’ve chosen a franchise close to my heart, largely because it gives me heavy ordinance and an entire wasteland to pummel into dust.  That series is, of course, Fallout (yes, still knew you had no idea).  Let me tell you a story.  A long time ago in a decade far, far away, there was a company called Interplay Entertainment.  Back in the long lost time of the late nineteen nineties, they created a turn-based RPG called Fallout, set in a strange and fantastic retro-futuristic world where humans survived atomic war by surviving in deep, underground Vaults.  The game was kind of buggy in places but overall was a well received and praised for innovations to game play and pastiches of the blinding optimism that characterized the 1950s of America.

Then, there came the sequel, Fallout 2, where Interplay began an on-off relationship with Black Isle Studios, most known for Icewind Dale, and leaving the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series on an inexcusable cliffhanger for which they are going to Hell.  But getting back to the topic at hand, the sequel too was quirky and unique, still filled with parodies of Eisenhower-era optimism and radiation-born abominations that would make H.P. Lovecraft void his bowels in fear.  Of course, the joys of blowing up a Citadel, and then blowing up an oil rig in the sequel were followed by Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, the first in a series of spin-off games that would split the fandom to this very day.  It focused more on the Brotherhood of Steel, a joinable faction in the first Fallout and at least a bit of a presence in 2.  Some fans considered it to be new and inventive while others hate it with a fiery passion.  Having played it myself, I can say that it’s alright. Not a horrible game, just not really good (though, to its credit, an option is given to take over Chicago, but why one would want to do this is beyond me).

Now right about here is where I would mention Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (which is completely unrelated to Tactics…no, really), but as I don’t want to be lynched by the fanbase, I’ll avoid it.  Needless to say, the game was considered an abomination at worst and a very terrible game at best. That is, at least by the fans. I’ve never played it myself, but from what I hear (what with the total lack of retro-futuristic 50s feeling, and the use of bands like Slipknot and Killswitch Engage on the soundtrack when the previous games used songs by the Ink Spots and other bands from the 1950s and earlier), it’s not something I care to attempt. So, leaving that, Interplay finally decided to stop mucking around with spin-offs and finally get their knuckle down and get Fallout 3 off to a start. And, indeed, by the time that Brotherhood of Steel was out on shelves to be burned in piles by the fanbase and given severe beatings by critics, they had already begun work on the next “official” Fallout game, which was at the time code named “Van Buren”.  Then, Interplay fell through and laid off its entire PC development team to stay afloat, which deep sixed the game and it seemed as though the series would be dead in the water from that point.

Not so, said Bethesda Softworks (I’ve praised them enough, you know who they are) who scooped up the ashes of the series for a pretty penny from Interplay and then took them and turned them into the vibrant phoenix that was Fallout 3.  And, oh, did the fanbase weep! Their fancy, beloved games just ruined forever by the terrible, terrible people at Bethesda.  Well, in all honesty, Interplay fan boys, the series was a tired, aging relic (ironic considering its setting) and Bethesda breathed some new life into it, so shut up. And I’m sorry for falling to good casting here, but I will take all the fixed-eye conversations in the world if it means that Liam Neeson voices my father.  The game uses the Gamebryo engine and with it ragdoll physics that make the splattering of human/animal/mutant internal organs an absolute joy to behold.

And this, at last, brings me to (after five paragraphs of explanation) the topic at hand, Fallout: New Vegas.  Being that I’m reviewing the DLCs for the game and not the game itself, and that you’ll likely only get them if you buy the full game, I’m going to skimp on explaining the gameplay mechanics and jump straight into a brief summary of events.  New Vegas begins with your character, a man or woman of questionable ethnicity, being shot in the head for carrying a package (since Mojave society apparently considers being a Courier as a faux pas).  Only, instead of being taken up to the gigantic Vault in the Sky, your player wakes up in a clinic in the small town of Goodsprings. And, of course, being a silent protagonist, you have no say whatsoever when you get sent on a quest to find out who shot you and why.  Through the course of the game, this ends up with the player being caught in a power struggle between three warring factions over the Mojave, leading up to an event that will forever change the face of the Wasteland…

Dead Money DLC Box Art (Xbox 360)

Ironically, the DLCs for New Vegas have little to nothing to do with this, besides a few mentions of the events leading up to them and a few cameos by people involved in them at that point. The two DLCs I wish to cover – Dead Money and Honest Hearts – came out in December (for Xbox, February for PS3 and PC) and May (for Xbox and PC, came out in June for PS3), respectively, and are the first two in a series of four (at least), the next ones coming out in July and August.  Well, being the fan I was of the Fallout series and indeed of New Vegas in general, I decided to check them out. And dear me was I pleased with them.  Of course, both have their gripes and problems (I’m happy to say that I’ve encountered no bugs even in the vanilla New Vegas areas since I downloaded the first DLC, Dead Money), but both are actually very solid, self contained, vastly different stories that I like.

The first one I want to cover is Dead Money, being that it was the first one I played (though I chose it by flipping a coin right before I wrote this sentence, not by any particular order).  Upon loading up New Vegas and resuming my role in the Mojave Wasteland as Reese, a wise-cracking, hardened Courier with a heart of gold (yes, I give personality to my characters, it’s a ROLE PLAYING Game, after all).  Reese was travelling from the Mojave Outpost on the most southwest corner of the map when his Pip-Boy suddenly picked up a peculiar radio transmission.  And, of course, being the easily intrigued type that he is, Reese decides to follow it to an abandoned Brotherhood bunker where he proceeds down a dark and scary hallway and gets knocked out with some form or nerve gas.  After waking up, Reese found himself in the courtyard of what looked like some sort of residential area with some Mexican overtones in the design scheme when the hologram of a man known as Elijah telling him to gather three others who had been brought there in order to perform the greatest heist in history, and apparently attached a bomb collar to give him the extra incentive (it is around this point that I imagined Reese being a real person, bringing his hunting shotgun up to my face).

Dead Money takes place in and around the area of the once-beautiful “Sierra Madre” - the name subtle references to the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – a resort that was destined to open on October 23, 2077.  Unfortunately, the Great War happened on that very day and the opening never happened.  And so, the player (in this case, my Han Solo knockoff known as Reese) is forced to get the ceremony to get the hotel and casino open under way.  If this sounds easy, ladies and gentlemen, then please put your hearing aids in and listen up.  Dead Money is set up with a Level 20+ character in mind.  While this doesn’t seem like a problem, you’re left upon being dropped off in the place with nothing but your skivvies and a hologram rifle. No, that’s right a hologram rifle, which will be nicely effective once you meet the majority of the Sierra Madre’s population – men that are forever trapped in radiation suits who are going out of their way to murder you.  An explanation is given for them at one point that, apparently, the radiation from the Great War created a toxic “Cloud” over the place (which only affects certain areas). Those that were caught in it became…changed.  And thus feral, safety suited men who want nothing more than to turn you into a kebab. They are also frighteningly tough, they literally have to be decapitated in order to kill them, anything other than off with the head or at least some form of dismemberment will get them up and running again within a few seconds, much to the horror of Reese as he found himself running like made down the paved streets of the villa, fighting madly against the creatures.

To be fair, that was the least of Reese’s worries, as he soon found himself faced with speakers that would project a certain frequency that would make his bomb collar go all twitchy and, sooner than later, explode-y.  This presents a puzzle challenge through the entire story, because while certain speakers can be destroyed with a gunshot or a laser blast, there are several more that cannot be and require some serious thought or just dumb luck to get around.  And as an added bonus, Reese learned that the other three individuals he had to collect to assist him were also fitted with bomb collars and that killing one of them would kill all the others.  So after a series of hijacks that take Reese all around and through many deaths, he managed to collect a Super Mutant with a combative multiple personality disorder, a mute woman who apparently had some ties to the Brotherhood of Steel and is now hunting Elijah, and a ghoul that is apparently Fallout’s Dean Martin but with none of the class and just a little more rotten (in more ways than one).

The central moral of Dead Money seems to be greed is not good and that one just needs to let go of it.  Each of the NPCs has their own story and has several different conclusions to their tale, depending on how they interact with the player.  For anyone who is curious, Reese managed to keep only the mute woman alive.  The other two (or, if you count the Super Mutant’s other personality, three) decided to take a long vacation for being utter dicks, which Reese was happy to help them along with…with liberal use of a handgun.  But after getting your odd Beatles tribute band together, the disembodied head in the fountain sends you to recreate the opening ceremony as it would have gone off on the day of the opening, seeing as the doors to the casino proper are sealed until this happens. This means fighting your way through an area for each companion to bring them where they need to go, and then fighting through a fourth area on your own to finish the job.  Padding, much, Bethesda?

But getting into the Sierra Madre brings along the true test of a player’s ability to not cause their own premature baldness by way of frustration, and that would be the holograms.  Holograms were apparently a technology perfected by the original owner of the Sierra Madre, and are to balanced combat what a gunshot is to my skull.  Holograms can be dodged and snuck around, but neither God nor Satan, nor the almighty Capybara can help you when they spot you and open fire.  It’s not a particularly damaging attack (especially at high level) until you realized that the pause between shots is alarmingly quick, taking no more than about a half a second.  And the best part of this is that it isn’t actually possible to kill holograms, though they can be deactivated by either destroying or disabling their emitters, which will not be too far from the holograms themselves and glow blue so they should be relatively easy to find.  Top tip:  Make sure you have a good sneak skill when trying to sneak around holograms to find their emitters and turn them off.  Reese had a sneak skill of around 70 and he was continually laser barbequed until he became so frustrated that he started running for it.  Destroying it does seem the better option, however, as you need a high Repair skill to tamper with the device.  Mind you, if the hologram has you in its sights, you’ll find it hard to try and find the blasted thing while you’re being holographically curbstomped (yes, holograms aren’t supposed to be able to harm people, don’t ask me how it works!).

Regardless of the terrors you find within the hotel, you quest takes you to either reconcile or annihilate your three travelling buddies (which Reese happily did with his police revolver, “Yoko”) before heading down into the basement to navigate a maze of speaker-filled tunnels (most of which have to be worked around) in order to find and access the Sierra Madre’s vault.  Within one can discover a stash of Pre-War goodies, including several bars of solid gold.  However, reinforcing the ever-so delicately woven theme of how greed is bad, the gold bars all weight around forty pounds each.  And the player is given little time before Elijah arrives for a final showdown.  Without wishing to spoil, Reese got out alive, and as he journeyed out from the complex (never to return, as Dead Money will not let you return after leaving the place), he held in his right hand his new handgun and in the other a single bar of gold that he managed to get a little over ten thousand caps for upon his return to the Mojave Wasteland.

So in the end, the greed only worked out for Reese.  A bunch of bodies lay behind him and a promising future as the Mojave Wasteland’s lazy good for nothing lying before him.  Now, I liked Dead Money all in all.  The few characters it gave development to were deep and intricate where they needed to be.  Some fail to understand is that not every character needs to be well rounded and enriched.  Flat characters with a single personality trait, or a single motivation behind their entire being can be just as interesting in the right place.  And Dead Money, definitely is the right place for that.  The atmosphere was what Fallout is best known for, an air of optimism smothered by cruel, harsh reality.  The Sierra Madre is said to be place of new beginnings of a new future where happiness can be found, but in the end, the paint chips off and the place is seen for what it really is, a trap for the greedy, for those who can never let go of their greed. 

Getting away from the blindingly expressed Aesop given in the story, Dead Money also added some new crafting options to the game, many of which involved using the strange “Cloud” that envelops the resort to create poisons.  Also, perhaps out of pity by the game designers, there are vending machines found throughout the resort that take a special kind of tokens (due to the player having no caps throughout the entire course of the DLC) that can be found just about everywhere, which vouchers through the Sierra Madre allowing the player to access new items (so exploration is encouraged, though likely only after you’ve finished the DLC), and a perk even allows for the counterfeiting of the tokens, allowing for the player to theoretically get infinite items (so long as the conditions are met for the counterfeit tokens, obviously).  Several new weapons are added, including a delicious variety of knives for melee combat, a spear that is literally a stick with several of these knives tied to it, and fire bombs for those of you who think you’re really good with explosives but aren’t (I’m not kidding, be careful with those things, and be about fifty more feet away from whatever you’re throwing them at than you think you are).

So that was Dead Money.  Was it good? Well, yes.  It was padded out beyond belief and I highly doubt that even a 30+ Level character (on a reasonable difficulty setting) could tackle it efficiently without any equipment on the first go.  No sane person would attempt it, at the very least.  The story was good, the characters and their motivations were good for their setting, and the atmosphere of being in a depressing, lifeless villa juxtaposed with all the sweet promises of glory and happiness in the same place truly helped drive the point home.  Gold star!

And now, fourteen paragraphs in, we come to the second part of the actual review, Honest Hearts.  To tell a brief recap of the story so far, Reese left the Sierra Madre behind and came back to the Wasteland a rich man, selling off his gold brick and taking a truckload of caps to the nearest cantina.  There, he lost most of it to a sneaky Caravan player who cheated Reese out of his money and was repeatedly shot in the face until Reese got his money back. Leaving the bar with haste after taking his money back (as the bartender did not take kindly to Reese repainting his place), Reese found yet another mysterious radio broadcast from the “Happy Trails Caravan Company”.  Remembering how well it went the last time he decided to follow a strange message on his Pip-Boy, Reese decided that the most logical step would be to go check it out. 

And so, he journeys to not so far in the north from New Vegas and finds himself in a cave with a ragtag group wearing t-shirts that say “Forgettable NPCs”.  Joining up with the Company, the leader of the expedition explains that they’re going to New Canaan, a settlement to the far north in Utah to try and establish trade with the locals.  Both Reese and I were surprised to find that a requirement for the trip was that he only be carrying 75 pounds.  With no offense to this, by the time Reese was taking this quest on, he was level 32 and carrying enough firepower to make Duke Nukem blush.  But complying because he could not make the skill check to allow him to carry whatever we damn well pleased.  Also, it’s worthy to note that the weight limit never comes up after it’s been met, even upon getting into the thick of Honest Hearts, which leads me to wonder why it was put in there at all.

Honest Hearts DLC Box Art (Xbox 360)

Regardless, the troop makes their way through the weeks toward New Canaan.  During this time, Reese and I were shown a cut scene about New Canaan and one of its most famous former residents – the Burned Man.  He is mentioned a few times in vanilla New Vegas as one of the toughest badasses of Caesar’s Legion, a group of wannabe Romans led by a rather polite and reasonable (if megalomaniacal) name by the name of Caesar.  Time was that Caesar had a second in command by the name of Joshua Graham, a New Canaanite.  Those from New Canaan are general regarded as badass warriors throughout the Wasteland, eating danger and shitting bullets.  If this is the case, then Joshua Graham apparently eats atom bombs and fills his toilet with pure Chuck Norris.  The man was apparently covered in pitch and set aflame, thrown into the Grand Canyon on Caesar’s orders.  And what did this man do? He got up, crawled his way out of the Grand Canyon and then crawled his way to northern UTAH. Let me give you a paragraph break to let that settle in.

With this is mind, I maneuvered Reese to go with the group, reaching Zion National Park, home of tribes that seem to constantly be warring with one another  and I was depressed the find my party massacred while I was tucked safely away behind some rocks poking Reese’s head out at my leisure.  I found out from a tribal that ran up to me soon after I’d finished picking off the ones who had just been trying to kill me that those were members of the “White Legs” tribe, a group from the Great Salt Lake who have a strong dislike of anyone who is different (thus I have invoked Godwin) and are apparently responsible for the destruction of New Canaan, the place I was trying to get to begin with.  And just when it seems that Reese can walk away from all this, he can’t go back the way he came in and the local tribes refuse to give him a map until the issue with the White Legs can be resolved.  And as Reese smacks himself for following strange messages on his Pip-Boy, he agrees to help out.

From here there’s a series of fetch quests that are supposed to aid in the preparation for the upcoming battle, dragging along with you an NPC for each leg of the journey who are supposed to help you realize the plight being suffered by the two tribes by their nemesis, the White Legs, and how Zion will be utterly destroyed if nothing is done.  Considering Reese’s motivations and the fact that these guys were dumb enough to strike at him, he was more than willing to strike back.  And for the record, I exhausted the NPC dialogue options (as I normally do) whenever possible and took several of the side quests and I wasn’t really getting the vibe of fear from the these people, though that may have been the voice acting.  Regardless, by the time all was prepared for the final battle, I was given the option of evacuating Zion and letting the peace loving hippie tribe run like scared little kittens, or bring them into the fight to crush the White Legs as well.  Being the awesome asskicking symbol of masculinity that shows Duke Nukem up like it’s a cold day in the locker room, Reese declared “Tonight, we dine in Hell!” and the battle raged with two armies warring against the White Legs, which brings me to my first problem.

Now, Honest Hearts is completely different from Dead Money, the setting is different, the tone is different, and several things change with that.  Where Dead Money was a dark, creepy trip through some twisty but otherwise linear pathways, Honest Hearts is brightly lit and open, giving the player a nice area to run around in.  However, with the design of the enemies comes a problem.  The enemy tribesmen, from far off and often up close in the heat of battle are almost indistinguishable from the ones I’m supposed to be helping, so when Reese starts firing his shotgun randomly into combat that is ongoing and I forget to look at my HUD for the red tabs indicating enemies, Reese could be shooting someone who was going to name their child after him once this was all said and done, who is to say?  Apart from that, the enemies are all wildlife found throughout the park, including the triumphant return of the Yao Guai and the reemergence of the Cazadores (which are the creations of someone who I will personally be dragging to Hell myself) as well as some Geckos here and there, rounding out the usual Wasteland gang that wants to ruin your fun. (and for anyone who thought Vault 22 was super fun in vanilla New Vegas, there’s a special surprise waiting for you…)

However, like Dead Money, Honest Hearts gives us some new weaponry to mess around with.  .45s appear to be the divine weapon of God, and come in two varieties, the classic handgun and a machine gun version.  And let’s be honest with ourselves, if God chose this weapon, then who am I to deny it? So I admit I did end up using the handgun version often and rather enjoyed it. The weapon itself was easy to repair with the Jury Rigging perk and I got ammo from all over the place, so executions were beautiful and plentiful, which was more than I could ask for.   Hatchets and even the mighty tomahawk join the player’s arsenal (the later weapon being a favorite of the tribals in the area).

And, of course, like vanilla New Vegas, the face of Zion is forever changed because of the actions of the Courier.  So, in a nutshell, did I like Honest Hearts? Kind of, I suppose.  None of the NPCs are particularly memorable besides Joshua Graham, heated combat against the tribesmen can get you into a world of trouble with friendly fire.  Oh, and, of course, a mention of a mysterious Courier who has apparently been stalking the…oh, did I not mention that?  Yes, both Dead Money and Honest Hearts reference through dialogue a Courier who has been just missing the player by coincidence, but apparently was the original courier to carry the Platinum Chip in the base game, but ditched at the first opportunity, leaving Reese to eat a 9mm sandwich, so he’s understandably irritated by this guy.  But it appears that Reese will finally learn just what’s up with this guy later on in the next two DLCs – Old World Blues and Lonesome Road.  Will I be getting them? Yes. Why? Because I’m a sucker for story and I want to know what happens next! Also, anything to fill in the time until Skyrim.

Fallout: New Vegas is available for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC wherever games are sold.

Dead Money and Honest Hearts are available for download from Xbox Live, the PSN Store, and Steam, as well as available from most game retailers.