Since the release of Dead Money, the DLC hasn't been appreciated that well among the Fallout fanbase like Old World Blues or Far Harbor. The story of Dead Money is brilliant, Father Elijah, the former Brotherhood Elder, wants to break into the Sierra Madre using people with the threat of death of bomb collars to help him break inside, "one cannot do it alone", and steal the technology of the Madre and destroy the NCR and perhaps build a nation. The characters are so well written, the world is so rich with lore and the enemies are so interesting. It's so interesting how this sets up the other DLC's and the events that will come, the battle of the Couriers in the Divide.
I think what people hate about this DLC is its difficulty. The radios that can set off your bomb collars, a lack of supplies and the enemies that are hard to kill. I've played this DLC many times, sure it's hard but it's not that hard.
The radios can be easily avoided if you look around to find them, hell even Elijah tells you to do this. The lack of supplies is due to making this DLC a challenge, that's why they recommend you to play at a much higher level and also the bunker you enter will remove any equipment you have that has a trace of radiation, that's the lore. You might complain that it is unfair, well it isn't. Fallout is a survival game, supplies are rare, why would you pick up a game about survival and complain about it? It's like playing Dark Souls and complain how hard it is, it's meant to be hard and challenging.
It is subjective for a story to be good or not, I'm not talking about the people who hate the DLC because of the story, I'm just shocked that people hate it because how hard it is.
What do you think?

The writing for Dead Money was absolutely fantastic. The back story of how the Villa was created, the horrifying experiments devised by BIG MT. right under Frederick Sinclair's nose, the tragedy of Vera Keyes and the triangle she shared with Sinclair and Dean, and of course Father Elijah. He already intrigued me from what Veronica and the Mojave BoS chapter had to say about him, and finally meeting the man himself was awesome in the grand heist of the century.

Dog/God has to be my favorite companion in the DLC, that lovable and schizophrenic super-mutant. Christine was good, and I have to admire Dean's manipulativeness. A shame you can't go back without using mods. Would of loved to see how Veronica would of reacted to meeting Christine again.

It's not the challenge people hate, it's the fact it quite blatantly ignores the players who play the game for exploration. The collar were a part of the story but either way you couldn't explore Dead Money to it's full potential. Many of us, myself included, like to wander about the game and collect items, discover locations and complete sidequests we didn't know were there. Dead Money has a lack of this. IIRC there's no sidequests at all alongside the main quests and nothing really to collect other than chips. There wasn't many different areas and the map was somewhat small.

I didn't like the characters too much. They all seem to just turn on you too quick. Dean Domino turns on you IIRC because of a dialogue option. I never really cared too much for the rest of the team because it seemed like the Courier was the only character actually doing anything. The antagonist, Elijah was a typical evildoer who just wants to expand his control using Courier and Friends, and the whole DLC looks good on paper but in reality falls short of being even a semi-great DLC.

Now, onto the good parts of DM. I loved the setting of the Sierra Madre it's lore and it's atmosphere was great. It felt dangerous, otherworldly and supernatural. The holograms and loneliness of DM added a nice touch, when with the main game, the loneliness was unbearable. With this DLC, the loneliness compliments the setting, due to the DLC aiming to be as depressing as humanly possible with a nice contrast to the main game's themes of humanity rebuilding. Many of the Sierra Madre's interiors were a sight to behold which were almost poetic how lively and joyous they were before the war.

I wouldn't say Dead Money is as terrible as Mothership Zeta, Honest Hearts or Nuka World, but I'd say it's meh. It's not an absolute bore to play through but it is certainly lacking in many areas.

Corvo wrote:

It's not the challenge people hate, it's the fact it quite blatantly ignores the players who play the game for exploration. The collar were a part of the story but either way you couldn't explore Dead Money to it's full potential. Many of us, myself included, like to wander about the game and collect items, discover locations and complete sidequests we didn't know were there. Dead Money has a lack of this. IIRC there's no sidequests at all alongside the main quests and nothing really to collect other than chips. There wasn't many different areas and the map was somewhat small.

I didn't like the characters too much. They all seem to just turn on you too quick. Dean Domino turns on you IIRC because of a dialogue option. I never really cared too much for the rest of the team because it seemed like the Courier was the only character actually doing anything. The antagonist, Elijah was a typical evildoer who just wants to expand his control using Courier and Friends, and the whole DLC looks good on paper but in reality falls short of being even a semi-great DLC.

Now, onto the good parts of DM. I loved the setting of the Sierra Madre it's lore and it's atmosphere was great. It felt dangerous, otherworldly and supernatural. The holograms and loneliness of DM added a nice touch, when with the main game, the loneliness was unbearable. With this DLC, the loneliness compliments the setting, due to the DLC aiming to be as depressing as humanly possible with a nice contrast to the main game's themes of humanity rebuilding. Many of the Sierra Madre's interiors were a sight to behold which were almost poetic how lively and joyous they were before the war.

I wouldn't say Dead Money is as terrible as Mothership Zeta, Honest Hearts or Nuka World, but I'd say it's meh. It's not an absolute bore to play through but it is certainly lacking in many areas.

After my first playthrough I disabled ther alarms to go and see if I had missed anything. I liked this one the best out of all NV dlc though. Finding out about Elijah and Christine being the one who Veronica was talking about. It all tied together but never went any further. I loved the story though and completed it on evil and good ways. Christine should have been a follower and you could have reunited her with Veronica, leading to opening up more content and quests.

There could have been something to do with all the gold from the casino. Take it to the NCR for equipment reimbursment or sell it to Khan black market traders. Something, anything! Despite it shortcomings, I I could relate the feeling that was put across to me more in this DLC then any of the other NV ones.

Dead money wasn't that bad of a DLC. It felt like it could've been much more though.

I always loved this DLC even with it's blatant faults like how you're forced to not really explore and the occasional repetitiveness. The theme of this DLC is AMAZING. It's so cool to see the parallels of the DLC and the movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre( if you haven't seen this movie, DO IT!). Greed, hatred, pain. These are really interesting narrative devices that really brings the world alive, or rather dead. The loot kind sucks in this DLC( besides the Holorifle) but the story is so good.

Honest to god, this DLC scared the crap out of me. The scenery along with almost no weapons to a very limited amount of weapons. On top of that the storylines were very well detailed which gave more emphasis on the atmosphere. The music that plays behind you at every step of the way which freaks you out and puts you on edge. Truly a good DLC. Could have been better in many areas but, none the less was very interesting to say the least.

I can't say that Dead Money is bad DLC, but it really freaks you out when you have low level and playing hardcore. All your companions could die, and well written plot is good.

with dragbodys horror overhal i just love it but before... meh the people are cool and i love God/Dog new mod to make him a follower just came out btw

tbh I agree more to ChuBBies1 in the sense that I also love how restricted we are when we are playing DM. I can still remember the horror of hearing alarms when I walk through the villa. And I would never forget the first time when I got in the vault and realise the mountain of gold that you could never bring them all out, as I throw away all the gold bars that I could not carry, the phrase "Let go, begin again" strikes my head like lightning. Gameplay and story wise DM is fantastic to me.

It obviously has something to do with our preferred play styles. As I love a good and convincing story I am more inclined to give up some element of exploration to a deep and intricate story. Naturally, that makes Old World Blue my least favourite DLC in New Vegas.

P.S. Honestly I hate Honest Heart too, but that's because of how short it was
P.S. Obsidian really knows how to make good DLCs, if only they could make another great Fallout game in the future...

The story, characters and themes of Dead Money are all extremely well-done and I enjoyed the sense of my character being a lot more vulnerable than they normally are. However, I consider it to be the worst of the New Vegas DLC.

It's not necessarily the difficulty that I hate about it, more so the bomb collar which only exists to make every goal more tedious to accomplish, and as as people have mentioned above, it also acted as a deterrent to exploring the Sierra Madre and the Villa.

This is why, in my opinion, Dead Money is deeply and fundamentally flawed.

Dead Money is my favorite NV DLC. It's because it brought in survival horror into the mix. You were stranded in a dark villa full of creepy zombie-like enemies who's sole intent was to kill you. You had to scavenge around for ammo and healing items in an effort to stay alive. While I loved the setting, the plot, and the characters, I still had quite a few criticisms for it.

First being that it was too short and too small. Time spent in the Villa adds up, but it's mostly just running back and forth. Once you get into the casino, it quickly spirals into the end as you do nothing but talk and run by holograms. They should have made the Villa bigger and maybe added areas outside of the Villa for you to explore. Instead of you being captured and dragged there, they could have had you have to find a way through the cloud and then collapse when you got through the gate. Then you wake up with the collar. You could have sought out shelter in the cloud while trying to get to the Villa. Hide in shacks, caves, and buildings along the way. For the second "half" of the DLC, you're in the casino, but as I pointed out, your stay there is very short. They could/should have made the Sierra Madre a lot bigger. They hyped it up to be this grand building full of wonder and luxury, but instead we get a few story building that is in a horrible state. They said it was sealed up and un-opened, but then why is it all destroyed on the inside? There's also holes all over which let the cloud leak in so obviously it's not as impenetrable as Elijah lead on. This means that the whole Gala event was kind of useless. A few well placed explosives around the walls with holes would have opened it up. I really wish they did more with the casino. Make it bigger and fill it with ghost people instead of boring holograms. They could have made it the ghost people's "home" rather than that shitty little center in the Villa.

Another criticism is the damn collars. They are far more annoying than challenging. There's good and bad kinds of challenge. For example, a good challenge is a strong boss that requires you to play better to beat. A bad challenge is putting a player in a room full of doors and most of them have insta-kill bombs behind them. The collars were a bad kind of challenge. It killed me many times, but that's not a good hazard as you're pretty much forced to do a trial and error search whenever a radio is out of view. Especially when you get to the place you leave Christine or get into the lower parts of the Casino. They're full of radios that are so well hidden that it'll take you a few deaths to find. Then one of them forces you to run to a computer in order to shut them off, but surprise! There's a tripwire right at the computer and you're dead due to the confined explosion. You'll most likely die at least once there and you barely have enough time to run there again, unrig the wire, then turn off the radios. Everytime I play DM, I always get a mod to disable the collar. It really hurts the experience.

Another issue is if you do a melee playthrough, you will not struggle in any combat. They gave too many options for melee when guns should have been the primary focus of combat. Why waste what little ammo you have when you can grab that bear trap arm and 1-hit every enemy? They should have made those weapons NPC-only weapons or severely nerfed them for the player. It could take multiple shots from a gun to take down a ghost person, but 1-2 hits with the bear trap. If they were nerfed to only do minimal damage, then they would have been a good last resort weapon. It would have been more enjoyable if guns were the first choice. If you chose to use guns above melee there, then you were forcibly handicapping yourself.

I still love the DLC, but I just wanted more from it.

Dead Money was fantastic. I know that a lot of people hated or disliked for many reasons. Some people disliked it for being to short or for basically being forced to play the game rather then explore. But the thing that I like about it is that it didn't feel like it was the player vs Elijah or the Player vs the Ghost People, It felt like the Player vs the Sierra Madre.

Of the four main NV DLC's I think that Dead money is the second on my list (Old World Blues wins first place) and the only real reason that Dead Money took second is because it was to short in my own opinion.

Dead Money had a great story and great story telling. The fact that you are brought to a location with a bomb on your neck forcing you to try and work with others in order to survive. Elijah does play the low grade "I want more power RAWR" bad guy, but he does it well.

The game didn't feel like the unstoppable courier vs everything while weilding a minigun in one hand and a flamer in the other, but it felt like a person who was alone and had to survive in a world where everything was trying to kill you.

Normally I say that Dead Money is my least favorite DLC, BUT! I like each of FNV's DLC for different reasons.

The writing behind Dead Money was outstanding! Even though I have not seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre (dad keeps begging me to see it) I have read that it has some inspiration from that. I love the lore and the details that were exposed to us (The Courier) as our time in the Sierra Madre drew on.

The story of Vera Keyes, Sinclair, Ghost People; all of it was outstanding and you don't really see story that "gels" in a game like that anymore (then again I am picky haha). I only hated that you didn't have the freedom to explore (due to the collars) and that you couldn't return to the Sierra Madre (unless you have mods...which duh, I do ) I just downloaded dragbody's Dead Money Horror Overhaul and I know I am going to get into a bad mess but I have longed to revisit the Sierra Madre.

But getting to it....that's not the hard part.....it's letting go.
(the story and interaction gives me goosebumps)
Cheers!
-Irish

Dead Money is my favourite Fallout DLC, because the story is dark and sad as I like them, because Dean Domino, because Vera Keyes, because Sinclair and his desesperate love. The atmoshpere also gave me that feeling, the same when you discover something incredibly awesome and dark. And the architecture was really good.

Dead Money is my boy.

I didn't know that a lot of people didn't like it as much. I've mostly seen positive feedback to the DLC. In my opinion it's even better than Lonesome Road. It had even more interesting lore behind it and the companions you came across were very unique and interesting. I liked the conversations with Dog/God, in general that companion really intrigued me. The Ghost People were also very interesting as well. I just love the mod. The sense of peril on every move you take through out is something that you frankly never get enough in your usual Fallout.

It's probably been pointed out already but I just wanted to mention that the lyrics of the Eagles' song Hotel California match the story of Dead Money near-perfectly.