Best and worst New Vegas DLC?

[ERYFKRAD]

The trick to OWB's replayability is that you don't really have to do many battles with the trash mobs that walk around. The way I avoid them is that I save my stealth boys specifically for OWB. Using stealth boys, I reach a few strategically chosen places (eg, Little Yangtze or the Medical Facility), and then I take it from there whenever I want to go somewhere else.

You still have to fight some enemies indoors, and depending on your level, they indeed may be too bloated. Try to pick the right weapon and bullets. You hopefully brought MedX and Slasher with you, and now you also have Battle Brew. So you have everything you need to prevail.

I usually just beeline for that lobotomite with the healing headband first. No good in a fight but great for long term stimpak conservation

 

[Cryomancer]

I'm surprised that dead money is so popular. They removed all cool guns from the player...

 

[Sigourn]

I gave Lonesome Road a small spin yesterday to test out a weather mod.
The opening area (just as you enter the Divide) is a great example of what's lacking in New Vegas: genuine exploration. And I don't mean "finding dungeons", but finding loot by exploring your environment. It's pretty neat, and I wish there was more of that in the game. There's simply no concept of "finding loot" in the game because loot is only found in enemies and enemy-occupied areas, or lying out there in the open (e.g. inside a home that's blatantly visible).

Honest Hearts was very similar in that regard, but a bit on the nose ("see that broken trunk? You can search it!").

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'm surprised that dead money is so popular. They removed all cool guns from the player...

 

[Marat]

All the DLCs are pretty bad. I would love to trade the other three for an enhanced Honest Hearts though. A bigger world, an actually compelling story, a glimpse into world of Fallout outside of the most civilized areas. "The plague of tribal identities" straight out of Van Buren, interactions with the tribes and their goals and power struggles, abandoned ruins picked over by ignorant savages, a little outpost of civilization, perhaps in the form of New Canaanites, where the religious/moral conflict could be expanded upon, survival mechanics necessitated by a need to survive the tribal way deep in the wild, far from luxuries of Vegas or NCR. It would be an interesting expansion to the setting, one that could avoid the sin of the actual DLCs - they had nothing to do with the main story of the game, didn't expand upon it in any way, instead presenting boring side characters I couldn't give to shits about.

More specific criticisms:

Dead Money - frustratingly slow, put its money on horror style survival by depriving you of your stuff and then, five minutes in, just gave you all you need to fight head on, just worse than what you already had. Elijah's motivations make no fucking sense what-so-ever, like the writers couldn't decide if he is the BoS Elder and Veronica's mentor from the base game or a wannabe Presper.

Honest Hearts - seriously... The main story is just three super-generic, easy and quick fetch quests followed by a final assault (because who chooses Daniel) which didn't require those items anyway. Absolute zero of exploration of tribal culture, way of life, warfare or politics made for an extremely bland and disappointing experience - do compare with Van Buren design documents about tribes.

Old World Blues - a joke that wears out its welcome long before the initial conversation is over and from then its only more tedium. Repeating missions through the same corridors over and over, fighting HP-bloated enemies, reading uninteresting log entries. If it wasn't for the perks you get out of it, I wouldn't replay it at all. It's the DLC that I find the most tiresome and reluctant to play through.

Lonesome Road - bearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbullbearbull JESUS CHRIST SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING RETARD. We don't know who Ulysses is, only that he holds some grudge against the Courier and won't stop whining about it in the most unintelligible manner - the first time I played I started to brute force click through his dialogue about half way through the DLC and haven't went back since. The vertical exploration of a world in all shades of grey also doesn't work, I couldn't see enemies or paths through the rubble for jack shit.

 

[Multidirectional]

Dead Money is the only one I played to completion but wasn't exactly in love with it like some people. I remember finding it a little tedious. Honest Hearts I started but got bored probably about halfway through. Old World Blues was such cringe I couldn't play for more than 15 minutes, and since everybody kept saying Lonesome Road was worst I didn't even try that. Not a big fan of DLCs for this game, but I did like main game enough to finish multiple times. If I ever play it again I don't think I'll bother with any DLC.

 

[Trashos]

(I keep defending OWB lately, but do remember that it is only my 2nd favorite, behind the out of body experience that is called Dead Money.)

Old World Blues is not funny just to be funny. The themes are extremely dark under all that humor. Now, I happen to like that humor myself, but generally it is probably a good thing that it was written like that, because otherwise it would have been too heavy and depressing.

Spoiler

Just think about what Dr Mobius did to his pals, not because he wanted to, but because he believed it had to be done. Take it from there.

 

[Nano]

I'm surprised that dead money is so popular. They removed all cool guns from the player...

That's why it's GOOD, you idiot. DM entirely removes the player's sense of security and comfort.

 

[Sigourn]

I'm surprised that dead money is so popular. They removed all cool guns from the player...

That's why it's GOOD, you idiot. DM entirely removes the player's sense of security and comfort.

Problem is Dead Money ceases to be challenging rather quickly. It just doesn't live up to the start of the DLC, where the player asks themselves "how am I going to survive this?".

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Am I the only one who heavily disliked OWB's quirky characters?

Personally I'd go for something like DM > HH > LR > OWB. I would've put HH on the first spot, but it's just too barebones narrativewise (something which LR suffers from as well). Which is a shame since I really liked Joshua's character and the survivalist side stuff was neat as well.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I'm surprised that dead money is so popular. They removed all cool guns from the player...

That's why it's GOOD, you idiot. DM entirely removes the player's sense of security and comfort.

For an expansion to not just create a separate geography from the main game but to restrict the player from returning to the main geography until completing the expansion, and similarly to prohibit returning to the expansion geography once it has been departed from, is anathema to the basic structure of an Open World game. Honest Hearts also made the same error, and Old World Blues made half of it but does allow for travel between the Big MT and the Mojave region once the main quest of the expansion has been finished.

Removing the player's equipment and inventory simply adds insult to injury, as the player must now traverse the entire expansion without access to the hard-won items used throughout the rest of the game. Dead Money attempted to adapt Fallout: New Vegas for the survival horror genre, but this is a poor fit for an open world RPG with FPS characteristics.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

DM's restrictions were a case of smart gameplay and story integration imho. And it concludes brilliantly with the gold dilemma at the end (which you can cheese, but eh).

 

[Nano]

The story actually convinced me not to take any of the gold way back when I first played DM. I was so fucking stupid back then.

 

[Trashos]

You can return to HH, after you finish it and leave. Everybody important is gone, but you can return to it. (Unless one of my mods did that, but I think it was like that from the beginning.)

Getting stripped of your weapons for a while is a nice change of pace in such a long game. And I say that even though I am not happy with the DM pistol at all. It is a nice way to control the difficulty of the challenge. Not to mention that you appreciate your gear even more when you return to the Mojave.

Getting you locked in a dungeon with no way to exit until you finish is fair game in open world games, imo. Many games do it. Here it is not a dungeon, it is a dlc location, but it is the same principle. And you are warned before each dlc about being able to come back or not.

 

[Werdnicus]

DM>OWB>GRA>HH>a huge pile of BEAR AND BULLshit>LR

 

[Nano]

All of the DLCs except for DM are terrible.

 

[Beans00]

Genuinely curious who even needed cash by the time you finish DM. Basically by that point you should be rolling in it and money rendered completely irrelevant.
Also I remember reading some dumb asses saying the 2k odd .357 rounds at the end of DM was a good reward lol.

Surprised so many people here liked DM. Virtually everyone I've spoken to outside of this forum considers it the worst. Annoying maze like area thats a pain in the ass to navigate, retarded story, losing all your items gimmick(although some people like that which is fair enough i guess). Linear. IMO it had absolute nothing going for it aside from being tedious. Not that it was difficult either, I remember dying a few times while trying to find the things you had to destroy for the collar, thats about it.


Maybe OWB was worse, I hated that one almost as much. At least navigating it wasn't akin to pulling teeth though.

 

[Butter]

Dead Money filters plebs because they can't bring their All American and pew pew everything down in one second. It has the best story of the entire game, a cool atmosphere, environmental hazards that actually require the player to pay attention, the best exploration in the whole game, and cool setpieces once you get into the casino. The loot from the vault is icing on the cake at most.

 

[Beans00]

environmental hazards that actually require the player to pay attention

You mean the radios that start beeping so loud Helen Keller could hear them(that never take longer then maybe 5-10 seconds to spot unless blind)?

That's 'difficult environmental hazards' to you?



If people liked DM fair enough all power to them but some of these takes are brutal lol.

 

[Butter]

environmental hazards that actually require the player to pay attention

You mean the radios that start beeping so loud Helen Keller could hear them(that never take longer then maybe 5-10 seconds to spot unless blind)?

That's 'difficult environmental hazards' to you?

I never said difficult. But you forgot to mention the pressure plates, tripwires, and bear traps. The density of traps in Dead Money is approximately 5000% higher than anywhere else in New Vegas, and it works well with the scrounger mentality imposed by starting with nothing; you have to constantly survey your environment in order to succeed. Again, it's another filter for plebs who want to charge through everything at top speed.

 

[Beans00]

I never said difficult. But you forgot to mention the pressure plates, tripwires, and bear traps. The density of traps in Dead Money is approximately 5000% higher than anywhere else in New Vegas, and it works well with the scrounger mentality enforced by starting with nothing; you have to constantly survey your environment in order to succeed. Again, it's another filter for plebs who want to charge through everything at top speed.

That's true I guess.

I've never liked any parts of games where you lose all your gear. It always felt like a gimmick to me, a way to cheaply reset the player to square 1 temporarily with an aha good luck moment.


The most difficult part I remember in DM didn't involve any traps, enemies, radio collars. I don't remember which part of the town it was, maybe the part where you see the ghoul? Anyways I remember I had made it through, killed everything and disabled all traps, all radios ect. Getting back to the fountain took me like 30 minutes of incoherently wandering around through all the fog and dead ends.

I generally have a pretty good sense of direction both IRL and in games, maybe some people enjoyed that aspect but wandering through dead money genuinely pissed me off more then almost any other game.


The casino was easily the high point of DM and maybe the only part i genuinely enjoyed.

 

[thesecret1]

Dead money > Old World Blues > Honest Hearts > Lonesome Road. Of those, Dead Money was good, Old World Blues was meh, and Honest Hearts was shit, but not as shit as Lonesome Road.

That said, all of them, even Dead Money, were nothing to write home about. They provided a completely disconnected experience from the main game (felt like going on a themepark ride, really. I liked the Dead Money one, but it was still just that), and didn't provide any meaningful new mechanics. Even story-wise, it was all kind of pointless? Even things that should have large implications (like nuking the NCR) didn't really feel like they translate well to the base game. Furthermore, they all felt kind of devoid in terms of side quests and other content – it was a pretty linear experience.

 

[Trashos]

Dead Money had the collars and the health draining air, how many more new mechanics did you want it to have?
(plus the fact that you can't depend on your usual solutions with your overpowered gear, plus the whole you-have-to-pay attention-around-you concept)

I generally have a pretty good sense of direction both IRL and in games, maybe some people enjoyed that aspect but wandering through dead money genuinely pissed me off more then almost any other game.

Interesting. My sense of direction sucks (irl too), and naturally for a long time I was getting lost even in the Mojave vaults. I had some trouble with that in Dead Money too, but no more than I had in the vaults. Maybe I am just used to having trouble with that, not sure.

 

[Beans00]

Dead Money had the collars and the health draining air, how many more new mechanics did you want it to have?
(plus the fact that you can't depend on your usual solutions with your overpowered gear, plus the whole you-have-to-pay attention-around-you concept)

I generally have a pretty good sense of direction both IRL and in games, maybe some people enjoyed that aspect but wandering through dead money genuinely pissed me off more then almost any other game.

Interesting. My sense of direction sucks (irl too), and naturally for a long time I was getting lost even in the Mojave vaults. I had some trouble with that in Dead Money too, but no more than I had in the vaults. Maybe I am just used to having trouble with that, not sure.

The only other place in in the 3d fallouts I got lost aside from the DM town was vault 34(including the fallout 3 vaults aswell).

 

[KafkaBot]

OWB > DM > HH > LR.

I absolutely adore Old World Blues's characters, especially Cam Clarke's marvelous performance. I also never really felt it was as bloated as some here claim; the only thing that truly aggravated me was the scorpions, but not enough to hamper my experience.

Dead Money has great writing and atmosphere, but I think it gets enormously repetitive after a while, a feeling that is only dissipated when you get to the casino. It was a great experience the first time around, but I will readily admit to never being particularly excited to replay it. I once actually cheated by using a mod to bring a companion along, just so I could have her carry a few items from the main game for me. All of the writing, almost none of the inconveniences; cheap, sure enough, but I enjoyed it.

Honest Hearts is beautiful and has one of the best characters in the game, but it is so empty that its replay value is incredibly low.

Lonesome Road is... mediocre. Ulysses is actually interesting as a concept, and I think his rambling is fascinating at times, but there's so much of it that a lot ends up falling flat. He's also the only good thing about the whole DLC, and the final confrontation is as satisfying as a wet fart, especially if one chooses to persuade him.