So, I was recently taken out of commission by the flu, and had a bunch of free time. What better time to replay some good ole’ New Vegas? I have a pretty set way that I play this game at this point, having done so since it launched in October of 2010; set my tag skills to Barter, Sneak, and Explosives to get all the dialogue options to do “Ghost Town Gunfight”, ransack Goodsprings for all it’s worth, and then set out into the wild orange yonder to follow Benny’s trail until eventually arriving in The Strip, where I will simply go guns-a-blazin’ upon the poor saps who run The Tops. From there, I usually then dink around the New Vegas area proper doing random side-quests until I feel sufficiently leveled to begin the DLCs, starting with Honest Hearts, which I think is grossly underappreciated as a side western story. But this isn’t about that DLC, nor even the appropriately-praised brilliance of Old World Blues. No, this is about Dead Money, and why I think it is the best goddamn DLC for New Vegas. This is not a piece of critical examination; this is a love letter.
Dead Money gets a bad rep, and more or less has since it debuted in December of 2010 with complaints of confusing level design, hostile environments, and overly-difficult combat and trap implementation.
And I don’t refute any of that, so much as I point out that those are the exact reasons why I think Dead Money shines compared to the other DLCs and the base game by not being too similar to the bulk of the established content. It forces you to engage with it on its own terms as a survival-horror story, and not a power fantasy. It makes you have to scrounge, scavenge, and actually explore the desiccated corpse of the Sierra Madre to stand a real chance, and rewards you for doing so; plentiful Sierra Madre chips will allow you to have ample ammunition and supplies to weather what the villa and casino throw at you, and provide you with means of even thriving. And while I think it is perfectly fine to not like any piece of media for what ever reasons you like, I earnestly believe that Dead Money’s minor infamy is entirely unearned.
Let’s start with the beginning of the DLC, which has The Courier traveling to the Abandoned Brotherhood of Steel Bunker south of Camp Forlorn Hope south of the Hoover Dam. The bunker is suitably atmospheric, and with decent Science you can break into a small side room with some tantalizing tidbits for the ride to come, and when you sate your curiosity you can begin the story by approaching the radio playing an ad to “begin again” down the corridor. From there, a short cutscene plays where the player is knocked out, only to reawaken in the blood-and-rust skies of the Sierra Madre Villa, stripped of all of their possessions and wearing a bomb-collar. This clearly irritated a number of folks since, but this was the absolute right choice for the tone that the developers were going for, and is one that I frankly love. Stripping the player bare and forcing them to actually have to relive the early game of disempowerment, and maybe relearning how to actually look for whatever advantages they can get against the formidable ghost people that stalk the Cloud-plagued streets with rusty spears and explosive canisters.
And then you run into the actual layout of the first half of the DLC, those very same streets with twisting paths, seemingly endlessly branching and breaking off to random dead-ends, one-off collapsed rooms or storefronts, and oh-so-many traps for the unvigilant; shotgun traps, beartraps, and the radios which threaten to set off your collar prematurely. But all of those twists and turns, nooks and corners, all hide invaluable caches of weapons, ammunition, chems and stims that will quickly render you well-supplied if you have been careful. This reveals a truth about Dead Money; on the surface it looks as deadly and formidable as it pleases, but if you actually take the challenge and take it slow, explore, and learn that you don’t actually have to fight nearly any of the enemies you quickly learn that the Sierra Madre rewards those who come to understand the assignment.
Let’s run down a quick list. Getting maimed and killed by traps? Consider slowing the hell down. Most of them are visible if you are looking for them, and can be disarmed for precious ammunition and even weaponry. Ghost people got you down? Sneak around them, or learning their paths and setting your own traps. When they are unconscious, you can quite easily eliminate them with a melee weapon and they’ll never rise again. Running low on… everything? Have you been exploring, and picking up those shiny Sierra Madre chips? Between finding the vending machine recipes and Dean’s caches, I was practically drowning in supplies by the end. None of this is meant to be read as “git gut” advice, although I know it very easily reads like that, but I write them to ask; are you accepting Dead Money on its terms, or trying to bludgeon your way?
After the first half of the DLC which has the player navigating the afore-mentioned hazards, you are then allowed to enter the casino proper which presents another danger; the holograms. These are hostile enemies that… can’t be damaged directly, meaning no amount of frontal assaults will help. Instead, you are meant to find the individual projectors that produce the holograms and deactivate or destroy them, again reinforcing the idea of exploration from the villa before. There are plenty of sections where you can sneak around these holograms, or even dash past them in the right cases, but if you want them gone forever; you have to explore. And the casino itself is much more straight-forwardly laid out, with more conventional designs fitting of a casino building interior, but does feature some pleasant recursive level design that does allow for primary and alternate routes, as opposed to the chaotic streets of the villa.
The bulk of the time in the casino is spent trying to get into the basement, to get into the whole point of the DLC; breaking into the vault for Father Elijah for gold, valuable old world technology, and more. And, hoo boy, that goddamn basement is a trip in the best way. It functions as a gauntlet to run, with every hazard the Sierra Madre has thrown at you in the build-up: decaying radios, ghost people, traps, holograms, cloud pockets, the works. And if you have been paying attention, you know how to endure and get passed every single one of these hazards. Dead Money, mechanically, is a surprisingly generous and patient story that does a lot to teach the player how to interface with it, and nearly none of its advice is fanciful: it tells you plainly the dangers, and how to face them. I think a lot of players don’t like it because it is, very admittedly, a broad departure from the base game and other DLCs in terms of play and difficulty, which is fair and valid. But I fully stand by it’s deviation from the base game as a refreshing (if very tense) foray into survival-horror mechanics and change of pace.
I encourage anyone in this day and age to retry Dead Money with a fresh pair of eyes, and just really take the time to go through it.
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