You Should Play: Dead Money

“Finding it, though, that’s not the hard part. It’s letting go.”
Father Elijah, Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money

This is some controversial stuff, the first DLC for Fallout: New Vegas. I’ve had a few debates about this one online, and seen either the hate or the love that it spawns. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they thought Dead Money was ‘alright’. It’s either ‘holy hell that was amazing’ or ‘that was utter shit’.
So you can probably guess which camp I sit in already – I thought it was really stunning, though having read through a number of great arguments as to why it’s actually not, I can definitely see why people hate Dead Money, not that it’s changed my ultimate opinion on it – probably because I’m one of those people who would do pretty much anything for a good, meaningful story and characters.

So, we’ll start with the bad: Dead Money is punishing. It’s at times unnecessarily cruel. There are a number of different obstacles, which are alright to deal with separately, but juggling them all together can get infuriating.
Firstly, there are the mysterious and intimidating figures of the Ghost People, dressed in black hazmat suits and gas masks with glowing green eyes. These are one of the best parts of the DLC, as only by destroying their limbs when they are on the ground will stop them getting back up – they have some kind of incredible healing factor. This, coupled with the lack of resources available for any guns characters who might be used to finding a lot of ammo in the surprisingly plentiful Mojave Wasteland, means that players will have to change their playstyle. It’s no longer a mow down everything game, it’s a game where every shot counts. It becomes more survival horror than anything, which is quite impressive for a game where I can sling around a Mini-Nuke launcher. When that is taken away from you and you have nine bullets left in your 9mm as the Ghost People approach, you suddenly feel quite tense. It’s all on the line in these scenarios – and characters who might have scoffed at the idea of using something so crude as a knife might find themselves crafting superheated knives just to fight back against the Ghost People to avoid wasting ammunition.
Another one of the obstacles drenches most of the villa – this is the Cloud, a poisonous gas that deals damage to you the longer you are outside, and prevents you from just waiting all your problems away and hope that the Ghost passes by you. Before that happens, you might choke to death on the Cloud, and so you have that to contend with as well.
I’d say if it was simply those two obstacles you’d have to deal with, I wouldn’t understand the incredible hate towards the DLC. But there’s a big problem that people have – the radio. See, you’re armed with a bomb collar, but the collar is sensitive to the frequency of some of the radios around. So the radios that are still on have to be destroyed. That’s fine, right? It would be, except some of the radios are either located in ridiculous locations – so the game almost encourages save-scumming at this point – or are indestructible.
In addition, when you manage to get inside the objective of Dead Money – the casino – there are enemies,the holograms, that shoot lasers from their foreheads and are indestructible beyond turning off their projectors.
These are important facts to know – I don’t want to just send you blind into the DLC and then complain to me when the game is frustrating or annoying. And it is, it can be, especially when you get inside in the Casino.

But layered beneath the survival horror gameplay and the bomb collars is a clever story that actually benefits from the mechanics presented above. Because for the time you spend in the City of the Dead – the Sierra Madre Casino – you aren’t the unstoppable Courier, ultimate badass. You are just a regular human being, plonked in the desolate, horrifying aftermath of a nuclear war. The depressing, eerie locale adds so much to the game I could probably recommend it on that basis alone. The broken sounds of the casino’s warning alarms sound like the entire casino villa is breathing around you, and the broken, mangled sound of the song ‘Begin Again’ becomes like the wailing of lost souls, condemned to wander through the dark, cracked streets, buildings broken open and Ghosts wandering around, too eager to hunt down the intruders.
So the atmosphere is amazing, as well as the sound design – the song Begin Again is awesome and quite poignant to listen to by itself – but that’s not the best of it, in my opinion. The finishing touch to this is the story – the two stories, actually – the story of what the casino was before the bombs, and the story of you and those who want the treasures that are said to lie within the casino’s vault. Both stories contain elements of tragedy, and are both very worthwhile to follow through to their conclusion. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just have a quick chat about the characters.
Father Elijah, the antagonist of the story, has collared you up and wants to use you to break into the Sierra Madre, which is impossible alone. He is well-written, cunning, and insane.
God is a super mutant – a Nightkin – who is devilishly intelligent and quite eerie. He has a penchant for mocking you and saying that you are just like everyone else who has tried to break into the casino. That you couldn’t resist it’s allure. On the flip side, God has a split personality called Dog, who is maniacally loyal and needs to serve someone to be happy. God and Dog can be flipped around, with each one talking in a different way and providing different dialogue and insights.
Dean Domino is a Ghoul who has been at the Sierra Madre for a very, very long time. He could have left some time ago, but the treasure still calls to him. He just can’t let go, and it is this conflict inside him that then drives your interactions with him.
Christine is a mute woman who you can speak to only if your character is intelligent or perceptive enough to tell what she means from facial expressions and hand gestures only. She is one of the most interesting characters and I wish my character the first time around had been more intelligent so he could have gone through the dialogue with her completely.

So, Fallout: New Vegas wasn’t post-apocalyptic enough? It wasn’t grim enough? The story wasn’t tight enough (somehow)? It wasn’t tough enough? It didn’t have enough micro-management? The characters were mostly forgettable? Or you just enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas and want some more stuff from that world?
Dead Money is for you.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you…