Link (YouTube) |
So, for those of you who are curious, not everyone in the cast has played this DLC. So here’s pretty much how this week is gonna go down:
I have played through and completed Dead Money.
Mumbles has played Dead Money, but got stuck on a door halfway through that crashed her game every time she used it, so she uninstalled New Vegas instead.
Shamus is too rich and cool with his posh office-type job with the private jets and the board meetings and the dough that is totally rolling in to pay for something like DLC.
And Rutskarn is… well, whatever the hell Rutskarn is. But the point is, he hasn’t played Dead Money either.
Oh yeah. The commentary this week is going to be insightful.
This Scene Breaks a Character

Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Final Fantasy X

A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
The Opportunity Crunch

No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry

Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Juvenile and Proud

Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
The ghoul has the same voice actor as Master Li from Jade Empire and Uldred from Dragon Age.
Uldred… Idk, I really liked his over-the-top evil voice acting at the showdown in the mage tower top..
a quick question: what would it take for there to be an episode where in the shortcomings of the newer fallout games are compared against the first two games? how hard would it be to put the original game thru the same program that let us watch these more current game?
This. If it’s not too much to ask.
Thirded. Fallout 1 should be able to run in a dosbox, and even setting up a virtualbox with windows 9X for Fallout 2 might be worth a shot (I suspect that’ll work better than running it in windows 7 or xp).
Fallout 1 runs fine for me on windows 7. I only found this out because I finally succumbed to Shamus pressure and went to GOG,(Which messed up my already broken sleeping pattern even more).
It might hinge on the text being legible. Though I imagine it’d be a lot easier on Josh’s equipment to “film.”
Ah, text problems never really occured to me. Given all the mentions of being able to read subtitles because of stream quality I doubt the tiny letters of Fallout will help matters..
Not sure how fun it would be to actually watch with the turned based combat and all, unless they went for some completely broken build. Going Cuftbert would just probably be pretty boring, since some of those battles would take ages.
Also, I imagine the fallout text would be nigh unreadable (illegible?) on stream. Come to think of it, some of the smaller animations/critters would probably also be a pixelated mess.
I’m afraid pretty much everything would be a mess… I don’t imagine that lo-res and film would mix well together somehow.
There’s actually a slider that controls how fast enemy movements occur… since it’s all turn-based it doesn’t affect difficulty.
i mean more of a one off episode where in the guys, and gal, could get together and showcase the difference.
Great accents guys! I think all four of you should talk in crazy accents all the time!
Yeah, when Ruts started talking about the textile factory I was laughing so hard.
I am reading this before watching. Textile factories are involved? MUST SEE
I preferred the Sweeney Todd stuff.
I two was reading before watching and Textile factory almost did it for me but then you said Sweeney Todd now I must watch.
Im 9 minutes into the episode.
And the accents have confirmed one single fact: best episode ever.
Bah. I’ve definitely heard Ruts do that accent somewhere before.
To add to what Josh was telling Ruts about Dean, there is a reason the ghoul hung around all this time and it’s directly related to the casino (big shocker there), but I won’t say more than that at this time.
I actually liked all three of these characters. For me I think Dog/God was the most interesting with his multiple personality disorder and how that plays out in the end (especially if you talk to him which probably won’t happen here, understandably, in the name of moving things forward).
Christine comes in at number 2 for me, with her muteness
and she proves to be plot-integral.Dean was just fun, but you do learn some things in the end;
he also ends up making Christine even more plot-integral.I noticed people keep talking about guns being so expensive to maintain with ammo and all, and I understand what they’re saying; I don’t agree but I understand. I think. I’ve, personally, never had problems with guns.
EDIT: In this DLC, for example, I was able to headshot the ghost people no problem (I freaking love VATS, when I use it).
Guns are definitely viable but as they said in one of the early eps they take a lot more skill points to get there, energy weps are even worse, I had about 45 energy weps points early in my first run and guns were still more powerful for me with ~20points
As of the last set of DLC and patches, melee and unarmed still have an edge over ranged weapons of all sorts, but energy weapons and guns still have a decent amount of stopping power (this was accomplished by adding a DT-reducing effect to almost all regular energy weapon ammo and most shotgun ammo) I’m playing a guns-focused character and it kind of rocks now.
The bear traps, oh god the bear traps. At the end of the open the gate quest there will be bear traps every 5 feet, and it will be the most annoying thing in the universe, especially on hardcore mode.
Well, this might be an interesting read: It’s Chris Avellone (the guy who wrote and designed the DLC) reflecting on Dead Money and considering what he did wrong and such.
http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1&showentry=144
He notes that while they intended to go a Survival Horror route, he believes that they failed at least in the latter aspect.
Also, I love Dean’s voice and how he enunciates every other syllable he says. As to how he keeps that voice…
There’s a reason why he’s stuck around for so long. It’s a major part of his backstory.
I don’t know the criteria for such but I can’ help but think that Josh fulfilled the criteria for Dean screwing them over in the end. I know for certain that he won’t be able to save Dog/God and considering that he was sorta prickish to Christine when he busted her out he may have to kill her as well.
And on the animation in the game… In Honest Hearts, Graham has a pretty spiffy looping animation.
Btw, I disagree with him on a few accounts.
One: I think Christine would have worked just as well as a normal companion in the main New Vegas as she did here. Yeah, some people would complain about laziness, but she’s be interesting at least.
Two: I think the self contained thing hurts the DLCs more than it helps. It would’ve been cool if you could bring your surviving party members back with you after Dead Money and watched them interact with the Mojave desert. I know, it’d increase costs, but I’d pay an extra dollar or two for that…
Although this is more an industry problem than a Dead Money problem…
It would be cool to see them as NPCs at least. Dog/God recuperating in Jacobstown and Dean as the new act of The Tops. However I think J.E. Sawyer answered this in his Formspring.
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/199202593031882048
It’s such a spiffy animation that it’s still awesome after the hundredth time you’ve seen it while you’re talking to him.
“I’m giving you quests, answering your questions, AND personally cleaning the ENTIRE tribe’s arsenal of pistols at the same time.”
Personally, that animation gets on my tits. If they did it once that would be ok. If they did it once per 30-60 seconds that would be fine too. But constantly taking gun after gun even if you talk to him for half an hour and he ends up going through 650 of them, and not a single thing changes on his desk was just… bad.
But I understand. They probably spent half of the development resources making that one animation for the DLC so they had to show it off, right?
God bless quick save, I so enjoyed killing him.
This reminds me of the Bioshock season so much… Not from the gameplay wise, kind of. Just that there is nothing to watch that is interesting, and most times it is just annoying when you watch. And so the hosts just talk about everything else. Which adds to the annoying level a bit, because it is like listening to a conversation and wanting to add to it, but you can’t..
I actually like it when some of the cast hasn’t played a particular section/DLC. Especially when you get to bits of dialog or events that are obviously broken. Someone who has gone through may not have that “what the f….” reaction to what’s going on, since they’ve already seen it and worked around it.
Plus then you get to troll Mumbles on what she missed by not completing it. ;)
As someone who lives in London, I’m actually shocked by how good Rutskarn’s cockney impression is
Wait, seriously? It’s pretty much a joke.
That’s because modern cockney is an abomination unto Nuggan.
You sir, win brownie points.
Those are also an abomination. We’re well into the latter phase of the abominations.
But everything is an abomination unto Nuggan!
Technically, TECHNICALLY, so was I.
The guns definitely aren’t THAT bad. Even if those buggers can eat a lot of bullets, it doesn’t take that much effort to gun them down. My main beef was with the automatic rifle eating so much of the .308. Trying to maintain a good amount of ammo reserves AND not getting too heavy while playing on hardcore, I just couldn’t keep up with its demands. I ended up just ditching it and balancing between the police pistol and holorifle. It does makes it a lot easier if you get the perk from Dog which
negates the need to remove a limb.All it would have needed is going throughsome dialogue, but too late for that now.Also, the holorifle gets ridiculously effective if and when you get all the upgrades for it.Also, those of you haven’t played it, you really should play the DLC if ever possible. The whole survival horror theme gets a bit lost here because there literally isn’t much anything to be gained watching Josh rush through everything. Mileage may vary of course, and I’m afraid there’s a chance that getting spoilered will kill a part of the survival horror feel when you’ve already seen most of it. Hardcore mode comes highly recommended if you’re not playing with it already.
This so very much. As an energy specialist, the holorifle became my weapon of choice for the rest of the game. A sniper rifle (with plasma-like projectiles) with ridiculous damage output. It puts almost all other weapons to shame. It will kill a deathclaw in 3-4 hits, 1-2 if stealth-headshot. Its only real downside is the relative low rate of fire, 4 shots per ‘clip’ and relatively long reload animation. As with all sniper weapons, close-combat is slightly less effective, but still very doable, especially in vats. It also requires repair-kits as there is no weapon capable of fixing it, even with jury-rigging.
With this, you feel like a God.
Yes! The Holorifle has become one of my all-time favorites!
“The guns definitely aren't THAT bad.”
You forget one crucial thing here:Josh is underleveled.Sure,the guns are good when you are using them against the appropriate challenges,but melee is excellent even against things way out of your league,and even if you lack the requirements.
Plus, he has no points in any firearms skill.
But I wasn’t criticizing his choice of weapons. Just refuting the point that Guns characters would be somehow generally worse off than Melee ones. While yes, melee does have a certain advantage from the start of the DLC, there still are legit ways to get around the handicap which essentially brings the Guns/Energy Weapons to the same level, and that they’re not that difficult to acheive, if apparently easy to miss for some players. I couldn’t do jackshit with the melee weapons having barely any points in the skills compared to Guns and Energy Weapons which I both had maxed at the time I started the DLC so it was a natural order of business to be using them, and at the end I didn’t find it to have been too hard.
Cuftbert being underleveled proves only that you can still have a go at it if you invest in the right skills. I still don’t see why he couldn’t if he had invested in Guns or Energy Weapons instead.
“Stockton’s El Taco” (formerly a chain just called “El Taco” but now there’s only one left) is my favorite Mexican fast food. They have the best beans out of any bean and cheese burrito I’ve ever had. It’s a shame that they’re only open 7AM-5PM Monday-Friday.
I feel the Dog scene needs to be defended.
You need to turn on the switch. When the Gala event goes off, it’s basically a L4D finale, all the Ghost people will charge. If you leave the gate open, he’ll get attacked and likely die. If you close the gate, he’ll get hungry and turn to Dog, which he DOESN’T WANT TO DO.
So that’s what all the chatting is about, your trying to find a means to get him to stay. You have many choices beyond fetch quest…
This.
Also, it’s not that you’re having NPCs do things in your place, it’s that there are all the components that must be taken care of at the same time so you must divide and conquer. Once you get the three into there places (and convince them it’s safe for them to be left alone or whatever) then you have to go off and do your own thing.
Btw, Mumbles and Rutskarn, you guys are AWFUL at accents… But hilarious just the same.
Also, did Mumbles borrow Shamus’ mic for this episode?
I think I need to call shenanigans on Vent. I’m hearing WAY more clipping in the episode then I did while recording. I can’t tell when I cut MYSELF off, but I would certainly have noticed if Rutskarn and Mumbles were clipping as badly as they are here. In fact, his VERY FIRST LINE of Cockney Orphan:
“Oy! You just punched that guy’s ‘ead off, Guv’n-”
I KNOW that wasn’t clipped. I’m certain of it. When we were having the conversation, it was NOT clipped like this.
Very mysterious.
It’d be great if, after weeks of self consciously trying to figure out why you kept cutting yourself off and searching for solutions, you find out the problem is completely unrelated to you…
Its clearly an infection.
Exterminatus must now be performed on all systems that have been exposed. We can not allow the corruption to spread to other vents and teamspeaks.
Is it just because it’s a geek site or has exterminatus actually entered the common english language now? Cause that’d be cool and yet horrifying at the same time.
Josh is clipping them as part of his “Ultimate Troll” contest entry.
Truly a fearsome technique.
Just switch to mumble. It’s better and free-er anyway.
http://mumble.sourceforge.net/
*listens to the file I have here*
*no clipping*
wtfff
dfskl :[
My suspicions confirmed?
The plot thickens…
I give up Q_Q it makes no science
Need more points in science for it to work.
:3
So… erm… who edited these videos together again?
SCIENCE!
Try skype and audio hijack.
Now I see what is going on. Rutskarn is actually secretly Dick Van Dyke!!
I’m disappointed in Shamus and Josh for not bringing their own bad accents to the episode. Work on that guys.
Okay, everyone hates fetch quests at this point, but you have to give them style points for giving you a fetch quest from a Dog. Turnabout is fair play.
Actually, in this case God gave us the fetch quest.
…
Yeah.
Oh boy, the Holy Grail references, I can hear them…
And he even made a comment about how good you are at fetch
Rutskarn
Vary your diet.
I totally read that in your Barry White voice.
Awww, I thought you were going to have a field day with that bit.
TAAACCOOOOS
I totally though “Ah Sweet! Rutskarn is going to spend the whole episode shouting incoherantly something about Tacos!”
You owe us Ruts.
Wait wait wait wait wait, Pre-War Technological God-King of All he or Anyone Surveys, Most Holy and Notable Father Elijah (of the Brotherhood of Steel) can knock you out and put a slave collar on you, but can’t open the front gate to a casino? Maybe if he used some of those explosive he kept putting on peoples’ necks, he could just blow open a hole or something. I haven’t played the game so I can’t really speak from experience, but unless the door is guarded by MechaGodzilla and a Behemoth with a fat man, this seems like an incredibly arbitrary round about way to open a door.
EDIT: OK, security systems… that Dean knows how they can be shut off.
And speaking of which, why couldn’t he get Archimedes running when it was so simple for the Courier, a repair skill of like 50 OR a science skill of 50 was all you needed.
I’m beginning to think this guy is only as smart as the plot demands.
It is explained later on – at the very end of the dlc – why Elijah had a somewhat roundabout way of getting you inside.
The Courier fixed ARCHIMEDES so easily because Elijah did all the hard part. When the NCR attacked, Elijah pushed the Brotherhood to hold because he was minutes away from getting it running. Once you’re past the security system, there’s literally one set of faulty wires remaining. All the rest of that? Elijah fixed.
And the wires took about 3 seconds to fix. So by all rights he should have been able to activate it and blow the NCR to hell and gone, not escape. The Brotherhood also had time to activate ALL the security defenses, but not fix some wires?
Really I’m just nitpicking because this bomb-collar thing seems like an incredibly arbitrary way to begin a fairly standard quest archetype, just replacing McGuffins that need to be aligned with people that need to be placed.
He probably wasn’t near the wires when the attack hit. And remember how there were like a dozen lethal robots and turrets between the NCR and those wires? That’s the reason they couldn’t get to the control room in the first place.
I’m imagining you’re gonna say “but the NCR have guns! Why don’t they just point them at the turrets and make them explode!?”
There were also some terminals to activate, which were outside, where the NCR was attacking. Elijah may have been using the time during the attack trying to find a way to bypass those terminals.
Hey Josh, do you know of the connection between Christine and another character in the wasteland – excluding Elijah? (not spoiling it yet).
Mumbles,you like everything that is not Rutskarn.
Its because hate and love are two sides of one coin.
Mumbles’s’s Southern accent was kinda cute.. It’d be horrible to listen to for a day or more, but, y’know… Still cute.
About the dead money this time – so basically the whole dlc is taking place in a building/corridors? WHYYYYY? Obsidian is HORRIBLE at interiors!
Also, idk about other guys, but I for some reason find it incredibly annoying that a game char has my name >.> Dunno why. But I just hate it.
your name is god?
Why no, my good man, that is merely my occupation, as it were.
So your name is actually morgan freeman?
Now you know how Mumbles felt with Kelly on the Normandy.
Myeaaaaahhhhh I guess you have a point there >.>
Except that this guy didnt get a std from a varren.
Mumbles full points for bravery, but… As a person from the south you do not have the southern bell accent. You have the vocabulary and the similes were funny, but… it’s just off, too much of your normal voice and not enough concentration on the vowels…
If anything, she sounded Texan.
I resent that good sir. I am Texan and I sound nothing like that.
Granted, the most hopelessly redneck of the ladies down here actually DO sound (somewhat) like that. I’m going to deflect that accusation onto some other southern state, say….Georgia. Yeah, that’ll work. She totally sounds like a Georgian. (cough)
I enjoyed this episode thoroughly.
Off the top of my head, I think this episode had my favorite offtopic banter of the season. Tacos, Rutskarn’s ominous permission slip, the accents, the Bioshock season and Shamus’ critical failure on the fanboy rage disarm roll, it was golden.
Haven’t watched the vid yet, but I had a mini-epiphany concerning Mumbles.
Mumbles is in essence Christopher Walken except with more uterus attached, for all I know Mr Walken could be carrying with him a large number of uteri can’t be sure but I doubt he has any permanently attached. It’s just the manner of speaking and the frequency with which she says, “Like a fucken’…” and other such phrases.
I expect to see Mumbles on a late-night talk show shortly, reading a Lady Gaga song to the camera in a flawless dead-pan.
That is
the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me O_O;;
fun fact! I used to play Team Fortress 2 with Walken.
Well, between bad impressions and mentions of Christopher Walken…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF1ANzUmSv0
But nothing still compares with the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5JwYOlgvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzZ9pew0cyo
I was listening to that while concentrating on something else, and I swear it sounds way more like Bobcat Goldthwait than Christopher Walken…
One time Christopher Walken came up to Rutskarn, said something that made him curl up right there at Christopher Walken’s feet and begin uncontrollably sobbing, and then Christopher Walken danced away like he did in the video for Fat Boy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice”.
True story.
So you know you might be related or something.
Regarding repair kits: There’s a holotape somewhere in the Sierra Madre that unlocks them for purchase from the vending machines. If you get thrown out of the casino, they’ll send you a few thousand chips every couple of in-game days, which you can use to purchase an unlimited quantity from the vending machine in the bunker back in the Mojave proper. So that’s not broken or anything.
Even without that it breaks the dlc. You can get 10000 sierra madre chips from the casino, which is turned into the same amount of old world money, which is worth 10 per unit. So you walk out with 100 000 caps worth in paper as well as whatever you managed to sneak out of the vault. Even if you sell at 20% of the total price you can still buy all of the expensive toys you’d want to have. Which you don’t need, because this game has the best light armor in the game and the best energy weapon in the game, and an extremely powerful rifle (if you have the ammo, which you can buy). This dlc takes the game economy and breaks it like a toothpick.
But if you go here before House he will still flash that thousand caps reward like it’s something that will set you for life…
“Ah, there you are Courier. I have a job for you, you will get 2000 caps for it.”
“Screw you house, I just robbed a casino and got 1000000 in caps. I’m going home*
“This dlc takes the game economy and breaks it like a toothpick.”
Yeah,and it was such a solid economy before.
The game economy was already broken beyond repair by how easy you can break the bank at the New Vegas casinos.
Btw, on the subject of the Duct tape… It hurts my soul to watch Josh pick up Mashed Potatoes, Cram, Pork N Beans and Lunchbox IN THE SAME ROOM as a stove, and proceed to eat them separately…
I know, he probably doesn’t have the skillpoint for it, but do Caravan Lunches ROCK. In hardcore mode, those things saved my life…
Yeah, and it’s been just amazingly fun to watch him trigger the drink animation for every single sip when he’s using a water item.
GOTTA REEEACH FOR THE TOOP! STAY ON THE MOOUNTAAAAIN! NA NA NAAA NAAA NA NA NAAAA NAAAAAA!
You better make sure this pays off Rutty! You can’t back out of a L4D reference once it’s been made.
Careful what you wish for.
I think I miss Del Taco more than I miss In-n-out burgers…. All we have here is suck-ass Taco Bell.
And what is this rich Shamus you speak of? This much be some type of nerd hilarity like ‘l337’ and ‘n00b’ because the only Shamus I am aware of had to shove a wadded up paper towel in his lawn mower to get it to work rather than buy a $4 filter. That and he is probably still wearing the same aquaman t-shirt he was wearing last month…..
This place needs an F’n Del Taco…..
I’ll be rich soon. I can feel it.
As soon as some of this Internet Money comes in. When that happens, the two of us can fly out to the west coast in a solid gold jet and have us some Of The Taco.
You should go on strike,thats a great way to make more internet money,friend.
I’m not your friend, buddy!
I’m not your buddy, PAL!
I’m not your PAL, NTSC!
AAaawww look honey..the nerds have an inside joke! They’re so cute at this age…..
There’s a Del Taco right across the street from me. Seriously, I can see it from my bedroom window. It’s good food, too; much better than Taco Bell. I had a huge “wut?” moment when everyone started dumping on it.
EDIT: On a completely unrelated note, I love the little SmugGear I’ve always got.
We’ve got Del Tacos (and Taco Bells) here too, and we’ve even got legitimate Mexicans making legitimate Mexican food around here (for comparable prices). I don’t get it.
Actually, the accents were Shamus’ fault. He said Rutskarn’s voice was bad, and we all know where it went from there.
So, thank you, Shamus, for an episode of hilarity.
It’s rare I’ll ever watch any episode more than once, but I have some favorites that I’ll watch over and over again, and this is one that is now a favorite.
The accents, Mumbles shouting “BEES!” in a squeeing kind of way…this is what really makes this show worth watching.
Was anyone else waiting for the cockney orphan to start talking about how getting parents requires So Much Paperwork?
I like the looks of it. I like it a lot :D
Okay, first Rutskarn can identify a Colt Detective Special on sight, now I find out he’s memorized parts of Sweeney Todd.
You are a lot more dimensional of a person than I thought.