Spoiler Warning S5E32: The President of Burp Head

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 10, 2011

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 168 comments

Wherein Dead Money gets revenge for all our taunting, moaning, and glitching.


Link (YouTube)

I think it’s pretty impressive that for all of the ridiculous stuff we’ve done on the show, this is the first time we’ve had to resort to cheating. I think Rutskarn is right – I’m sure Christine getting stuck was a result of our earlier jackassery, where we glitched Christine to save her life.

One more episode of Dead Money remaining, and then we’re back to the Mojave Wasteland for a while.

 


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168 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning S5E32: The President of Burp Head

  1. Mincecraft says:

    Running away till she gives up doesn’t really seem like glitching to me, just smart thinkng.

  2. Kelly says:

    These rooms. Fuck these last few rooms. They are the worst. Especially for me, playing on a laptop that doesn’t run NV on a proper framerate.

    1. Eärlindor says:

      I have a love/hate relationship with this DLC. This room has got to be the worst.

      And I didn’t even know about those hologram projectors on the top, so I ended up just bull rushing it.

      Thank you, Josh.

    2. M says:

      I thiught a plot door froze your game, so you never completed it, Kelly.

      1. krellen says:

        Wrong Kelly.

  3. krellen says:

    This is probably the only part of this DLC where being properly levelled actually does help with the combat.

    1. MrWhales says:

      Wait.. against the holograms who you can’t hurt?

      1. krellen says:

        Their damage doesn’t scale up; more hit points means they hurt relatively less. At level 30, I was not dying in five hits.

        1. Eärlindor says:

          Dang, by the time I had got to this point, I was level 29 and those FRICKING HOLOGRAMS WERE STILL MURDERING ME!

          … I’m fine…

          1. Moriarty says:

            hm. I was lv 17 or so and I could more or less ignore those things. I just ran through that entire bit without needing a stimpack. Altough that was an my unarmed courier with 10points in endurance, the DT implant and 5DT through perks.

            1. Eärlindor says:

              Yep, that would do it.

  4. DanMan says:

    Calling into a radio station and listening to it doesn’t cause interferance. What happens is called feedback. The tones of the speaker (of the radio) are picked up by the microphone (of the phone) and then transmitted back to the speaker (of the radio), which gets picked up by the microphone (of the phone) etc.

    Alternately, most radio stations are on a delay, so what you are saying on the phone doesn’t get to your radio until 10 seconds later, causing an echoing affect or just noise in the backround.

    The signal of energy going through the air does not cause any problems at all.

    1. MrWhales says:

      All the radio stations around me record what you say then play that. Usually during a song and when it is over, they do their talking and play you talking.

      1. Grag says:

        Yeah Mumbles— if you guys don’t pre-record or run a tape delay, you have to let us know what station you work for.. and what hours we can call that you won’t be there so you don’t get in trouble. : )

        1. Eroen says:

          Yay for media (self-)censorship! </flamebait>

          1. Grag says:

            Media self-censors (at least in the US of A) because if they don’t there’s a 250,000 fine leveled by the FCC.

  5. psivamp says:

    Ugh, yeah, I did not like this bit. I am noticing right now though that at least on death you can get back into the game instantly.

    I was playing the Human Revolution leaked beta on Livestream when Rutskarn failed to show for his Hitman stream and on my laptop which barely runs DX:HR, it takes two minutes to load a stage with Procaster up… Ugh. Is not conducive to Cuftbertian or Incompetent Man-style play…

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      Bawwuh? Damn. Now I wish I had showed up for that stream.

      1. psivamp says:

        I saved the stream: http://www.livestream.com/psivampyre

        And, since, I’ve been trying to get the intro stuff recorded — I did record it but the sound is WAY too low. DX Failure is pretty much my first stream ever, so I’m clueless as to how to fix anything except by repetition.

        1. psivamp says:

          Success, assuming livestream will let me upload the results… had to run it through the amplifier in VideoPad twice… and all so that the two people who MIGHT watch these files don’t blow their eardrums on livestreams ads…

          Bam! Amplified videos uploaded. The longer one is still converting… ETC unknown… livestream keeps increasing the processing time…

          1. X2-Eliah says:

            Thanks for that :)

          2. psivamp says:

            Seriously, livestream? You predict over 2 hours to finish converting a video and less than a minute later when I check your tab, it’s done? Whatever.

            It’s open season on my poorly narrated intro cutscene and sequences. And in about six hours I’ll stream the first mission.

        2. Sekundaari says:

          Wait wait wait- does this mean the reason Rutskarn’s Livestream channel is missing so many recordings is he forgets to save them? For the love of ARGH

          1. psivamp says:

            I think there are a few streams he didn’t save… in his defense the Procaster dialog will take almost any input except alt-tab as an excuse to delete your stream.

            It’s happened to me already and I’ve tried to do six streams or so.

    2. Kelly says:

      Deus Ex 3 looks amazing. The Deus Ex sequel we always wanted, as opposed to Invisible War.

      Of course, it includes the ability to hide behind walls, and thus Shamus has already written it off.

      1. Shamus says:

        I never wrote it off. Don’t put words in my mouth.

        1. Kelly says:

          Just a joke Shamus. Just a joke.

          1. Shamus says:

            Ah. Fair enough then. I get accused of “You decided to hate this game before you played it!” and sometimes it makes me a little paranoid.

            1. Kelly says:

              That said you really should take a look at some of the dev diaries they’ve been putting up. One of them has a dev show off how they designed the game (or if you wanna be super cynical, how they designed that one part, though what people are saying of the leaked build says otherwise) so you can solve everything in numerous different ways, such as stealth, gunning, or going completely around the enemy to back entrances and such.

              1. psivamp says:

                There are some places with a good amount of choice. I tend to think that stealth is pretty dominant here until they absolutely force you into an open confrontation.

                Are you referring to the video with the three approaches to a warehouse?

                1. Kelly says:

                  Yes. It’s old news now that there’s an actual LEAK of course, but I thought it was a nice demonstration.

              2. decius says:

                Why didn’t you use stealth at any point during this sequence?

                1. psivamp says:

                  Because I kinda thought that would be boring to watch. I’ll do a non-lethal stealth run on Deus Ex difficulty live Wednesday.

      2. psivamp says:

        I started a Deus Ex difficulty non-lethal run. This is great.

        I don’t end up doing a lot of cover-based shooter stand-offs in that playthrough, but it can happen. If it happens on Deus Ex difficulty, they try pretty aggressively to flank you and get out of the cover-based shooter stand-off.

        1. Entropy says:

          How difficult is Deus Ex difficulty relative to…well..Deus Ex? Because that game was usually kinda easy due to the way you could exploit the AI.

          1. psivamp says:

            Except where you get stuck in a direct confrontation, if you stealth it up the game’s pretty easy. It only takes 4-5 shots to kill you, but you can pretty easily avoid being shot at except when goons are in that sweet spot between blind-fire over cover and aimed fire next to cover.

            I think I’m near the end of the beta in my offline stealth run, and only now running into real difficulty.

  6. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Hell of a place to leave off before a weekend…

    And may I say that some of these falls where Josh died are prodigiously far down for someplace that someone dug. They’re like what? 70 feet? That’s like Portal-scale Down happening underground…

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      [since I don’t seem to have permission to edit my own comment anymore]

      Also, I can kind of see radios as being a collar-trigger as a side effect of their operation. Radio receivers use frequency combinations to move signal in and out of other frequencies in a technique called “heterodyne” which also produces secondary radio signals. EG if you have a carrier wave with a audio signal on it, and heterodyne it with a generated wave of the same frequency, you get back the audio signal, plus a secondary copy off in another frequency shift. Which could conceivable be at or near enough to the trigger frequency for the collars. Especially if the collars work by proximity to a “don’t blow up” signal instead of listening for a “please blow up” signal. (Same reason they tell you to not use radio receivers on airplanes. Don’t want a spurious signal stomping on or distorting a signal you want to listen to.) The timed beeping indicating “I’ve lost my don’t-blow-up signal” fits in nicely with that.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Except that(if I got this correctly)one of the functions of the collars(them being linked with one another)was lost because of the interference with its signal.So these collars do seem to way for the blow up signal,even though it would be quite a stupid way to make these things work.

        1. MrWhales says:

          Of course all of this is nill, because you are underground in metal tubing with metal scaffolding/catwalks everywhere.. Which block radio transmittions. Which i why you can’t get good signal on phones in the same conditions

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Well at least there are workarounds for that.You just put transmitters inside.

            Wait a second…..Transmitters inside…My god,those radios are actually transmitters for your collar!

      2. 4th Dimension says:

        What you are describing sounds awrfully like demodulation. But you dont TRANSMIT ANY of those new signals, AND you activly FILTER out that other signal at 2*fc. (Incoming radio signal (modulated) SigIn=A(t)*sin(2*pi*fc*t) (A(t) is the modulated signal that is transmited over radio), you multiply that signal with a locally generated carrier signal MultSig=A(t)*sin(2*pi*fc*t)*sin(2*pi*fc*t)=0.5*A*(cos(0)+cos(4*pi*fc*t))=0.5*A(t)+0.5*A(t)*cos(4*pi*fc*t). Than you filter out this second term, and now you have a pure demodulated signal.)

        1. Eroen says:

          Yes, but the simple/cheap way to filter away unwanted parts (A*exp(i*2*w_c*t)) is to radiate the power with some transmission line filter. Voila! Instant interfering transmission at some arbirtrary frequency.

  7. Wow, that last episode gave me a good reason to never buy this DLC. Glad you’ll be getting back to regular NV soon, and love the show. Also, love the commenters who’ve explained the DLC’s plot!

  8. psivamp says:

    I thought it was ‘save scrum’ like from rugby’s scrum where the teams are locked and trying to push each other — also, where we get scrimmage in football.

    1. Nyctef says:

      I’ve mostly heard of it from NetHack, a game where death means restarting from the beginning, so save scumming is kinda against the spirit of the game: http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Save_scumming

      (and, of course, there’s the TvTropes article)

      1. psivamp says:

        Okay, I sit corrected. I remember doing this with ADOM, a rogue-like I used to play A LOT.

        1. Sekundaari says:

          Scum.

          Also, STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM

          It’s really a cheap thing to do in Nethack, at least. There’s an explore mode for playing without risk, so save scumming only helps if you want to do that but still get a highscore.

          ADOM is a bit different I guess, it has no explore mode so save scumming might be the only way to see the whole game without spending ages on it.

          And then there’s start scumming, making and quitting a whole bunch of characters until you get a great starting inventory and stats. Amusingly, in Civ IV this is a (sweet) feature. On the first turn, you can choose to regenerate the map if you don’t like the starting position.

          1. psivamp says:

            I have no idea how anyone could beat ADOM… The enemies leveled the more you fought them, and there were summoners who would fill the console with them… Jackals, they were usually what got me. Out in the wilderness you could get jumped by two jackalweres who would then summon a protective swarm of jackals, you’d fight your way to one but by then there were at least two more waves called in…

            The jackals, the jack–

            1. Sekundaari says:

              Yeah, it’s too randomly annoying for me too. The leveling à¼berjackals seem more like an oversight than intended behavior. I haven’t beaten it; haven’t savescummed, though I have spoiled myself silly, as is my wont.

              What I’m saying is, to me ADOM feels like an open beta, not yet balanced and maybe missing some features. The interface is nice though.

            2. Even says:

              You’d be surprised

              http://adom.brinkster.net/hof/

              (use the menu on the left for the lists)

          2. anaphysik says:

            Also, STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM

            “This one has forgotten whether its heatsink is over capacity. It wonders whether the criminal scum considers itself fortunate.”

            Savescumming is a time-honored technique for defeating punishing and/or stupid-hard gameplay. There’s no shame in it so long as you don’t post a video of your savescum attempts for you public viewership to see…. waiiit.

      2. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Yeah, I heard the term migrate from roguelikes to other games recently, it doesn’t really have the stigma in other games when it is used like Josh is using it here. Though even in non-permadeath games there is that “slightly darker than grey” area though, like random loot.

    2. psivamp says:

      I wasn’t trying to tell everyone they were wrong, just say that I thought it was something different and that it made sense.

  9. RTBones says:

    Unsung hero of this episode: Kevin Macleod. I think I laughed more at Josh pushing, jumping, cursing, and shooting during the fast forward interludes than I have in a while – largely because the music matched this episode so perfectly.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Yeah, the show would really de-compose without the tunes.

      1. NonEuclideanCat says:

        I am going to beat you with a conductor’s baton for that.

    2. Manny says:

      Thirded. Excellent music choice for the fast-forwards!

  10. poiumty says:

    This was a stealth section. The reason Josh had problems with it is because he was doing it UTTERLY WRONG.

    Just thought I’d throw that in there. I never even killed any of the 3 holograms.

    1. LurkerAbove says:

      This. I’ve never even thought about killing those holograms. On the way back out, after Elijah, I can run right past them before they go hostile.

      And I feel the need to join the chorus suggesting that only one of you having played the DLC (and that person being distracted by actively playing) made for poor viewing, compared to previous episodes.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Sooo… basically first we get a part of “have good melee or you’re screwed by ghost people” and now we have a part of “have high sneak or you’re screwed by holograms”? Honestly, what is the point in giving you the freedom to build your character if later on the game will throw sequences of “you must have a skill of at least X or try 50 times to get through this ride” at you?

        Considering the radios I don’t think it can be done properly without trial and error even WITH a good skill build. Some of those seem to be placed in such a way that you either find and disable them or you have no chances of getting outside of their range.

        Edit: Note this comes from someone who hasn’t actually played the DLC. On an unrelated note, does a stealthboy work on these holos or can they see through that too?

        1. Deadpool says:

          You actually DON’T need high stealth for this to work. Holograms need line of sight to notice you. All you need is to avoid their eyes and switch their patrol patterns via the terminals. It really is pretty easy stuff.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            Once you know what exactly you’re doing. First time you try you’ll probably barge into a hologram when trying to change his patrol route. Then you’ll change it, but you actually have to step back to figure the new patrol route out. Repeat for subsequent holograms. In between that you’ll probably get blown up at least a few times since it’ll often be “either the radio is that way or I’m dead, reload and try the other way”. At least that’s what it looks like from here.

            1. poiumty says:

              First off, the stealth skill itself is absolutely useless against holograms. Second, the holograms wouldn’t kill you so fast if you were the actual recommended level for this DLC. Third, it’s a really short section with about two adjacent rooms and 3 holograms. It’s not as lengthy as it seems.

              1. BenD says:

                Because of the ‘Hidden/Detected’ designator, stealth is totally useful for telling you if a hologram has seen you from behind, where you don’t have a camera.

            2. Deadpool says:

              Nah, I dodged the first hologram to the changing station pretty easily. Finding the second one took some doing because I was trying to jump through the window (which I knew wasn’t how it was MEANT to be done, but tried it for the gigles). Once I saw that failed, looked around, saw the other one and Bob’s your uncle.

              Then again I went through most of the DLC WITHOUT destroying radios and hologram emiters, so dodging them was pretty reactionary by then.

            3. Myth says:

              Note the holograms turn yellow in ‘warning’ before actually going into attack mode. In both of those rooms, I basically would move around until I got a warning (either from beeping or from yellow holograms), then stepped back and figured out which path to take. Like others, I never even found the emitters for the holograms – I just crept through, opened the door, and then ran for it, then hid around the corner until they left me alone.

              I get it might not be to everyone’s taste, and those rooms definitely are brutal, but you can feel out the routes without having to save/die/reload your way through.

    2. kanodin says:

      Yeah but it’s a terrible stealth section that expects you to avoid getting their attention and hide while simultaneously having you go through radios that force you to keep moving.

      Edit: And what happened to fallout letting you play it how you want to?

      1. Deadpool says:

        It’s really not that hard.

        And technically, you CAN go in guns ablazing. I mean, Josh did. It’s just quite a bit harder… Especially when you have a stealth spec’ed character and are about 10 levels below recommended level.

        1. kanodin says:

          Oh come on, that’s just apologetics for the designers, leaving in an incredibly difficult way to do it that they don’t want you to use and that they actively obscure by hiding the emitters on the roofs is not giving you a real choice.

          Replying to you here and above: having to figure out how their patrol patterns work is still trial and error gameplay, and your personal experience of finding it easy does not negate everyone who hated this part.

          1. poiumty says:

            The hell? Figuring out their patrols means just LOOKING AT THEM. Not dying to them over and over. LOOKING AT THEM. That is not trial and error.

            1. X2-Eliah says:

              Yeah, if you are looking at them, then if they turn towards you, they see you. If you duck, you don’t see them any more and can’t see their patterns.
              Stealth sections work when the engine and design permits stealthy gameplay. New Vegas doesn’t, without special calculation tools – sneak skill and stealthboys. If you ditch the games main sneak mechanics and try a ‘line of sight’ thing without any indicators, or even an engine that is good at that sort of thing, then it’s just plain stupid.

              1. poiumty says:

                You might recall I said they have a pretty short sight range. It is possible to observe them from afar if you’re having problems.

                And I never said anything about the sneak mechanics themselves. The having to guess when they stopped turning yellow thing was probably the most annoying.

                1. Deadpool says:

                  The third person camera does WONDERS for looking around corners without exposing yourself…

          2. Deadpool says:

            Sure it is. You can do it the hard way or the easy way. It’s STILL A CHOICE. The whole thing is designed to be done without touching the emiters. They then made the emiters accessible (which they didn’t HAVE to remember, they did it for the whole choice angle. It’s a stupid plot hole designed just so that people who don’t like stealth have a second choice) but hard to find. It’s the last hologram section in the game, it’s SUPPOSED to be harder than the others, and it IS.

            If you’re a tank and tons of health, you can run through them quickly and survive the shots. If you’re stealthy, you can sneak through. If you’re an explorer you can run around shooting the emiters.

            You have choices. One is easier than the other, but it’s still choice.

            Actually, it’s a COMMON one. Speech checks and stealth skills often avoid confrontations.

            1. X2-Eliah says:

              It’s the same kind of choice as ‘You can play it or not play it. It’s a choice olololol’.

              No, no it isn’t. At any rate, it is definitely not a choice of equally valid options.

              1. Deadpool says:

                Neither is talking the last boss into suicide as opposed to shooting his fifty bajillion HP body while being flanked by constantly respawning mooks.

                Or sneaking into a base undetected, activating a nuke and high tailing it out of there without fighting or even TALKING to the last boss comparable to fighting your way through wave after wave of mooks.

                Nor is gathering your five man party, convincing a squad of Enclave soldiers and hacking a dozen turrets before fighting the last boss comparable to going it solo against the last boss AND the turrets.

                Using Terrifying Presence to scare off a cadre of Paladins is much easier than fighting them all while surrounded.

                Speech, Science, Stealth, etc are ALL often used in this kind of RPG to mitigate combat sections, easy and tough alike. This scene actually REQUIRES NO SKILL POINTS, making it even easier than what I mentioned before since ANY build can do it.

                It IS a choice.

                1. Deadpool says:

                  Edit: You know, pondering upon the dillema, I find the difference.

                  In most cases (especially in Bethesda games), ANY build could fight their way through any situation with SOME difficulty, but only specific builds could speech/sneak/science their way out of it without save scumming and luck.

                  In THIS case, ANY build can sneak/science their way out of it, but only very specific builds could fight their way out of it without save scumming and luck.

      2. poiumty says:

        Fallout letting you play it how you want to doesn’t really work for this DLC which had a specific atmosphere in mind.

        It’s not terrible. Josh just makes it look terrible. All you need to do is memorize their very short patrol routes and change them accordingly. Never took me more than a few tries.

        1. kanodin says:

          You just admitted it took you several tries and that it was all about memorization, how is that not do it again stupid?

          1. poiumty says:

            Me doing it in several tries was because I tried to run past them. Memorization doesn’t take several tries. They have a really short sight range.

            Oh, and it was “a few” tries. If I recall my HoMM3 knowledge correctly, “several” is a bit more than “a few”.

            1. Keeshhound says:

              Several tries is about par for the course in most stealth sections. Even in stealth games. Sigh.

            2. Jarenth says:

              About five more, give or take. Yes, I spent time looking it up.

              1. poiumty says:

                And that is how Heroes taught me english.

                1. Deadpool says:

                  Funny, I learned from Chrono Trigger…

            3. RejjeN says:

              Few, Several, Pack, Lots, Horde, Throng uhm… Zounds? And finally Legion. I think…

    3. Hitch says:

      Okay, Josh’s strategy is always to send Cuftbert in, bear trap blazing, and try to brute force his way through. Can anyone confirm that it’s possible to get through that section without dying by taking your time, thinking and studying the layout and patterns? Or is it inevitable that you’ll die several times on the way through until you can discover the patterns and locations of the speakers?

      1. poiumty says:

        I can confirm that. It’s probably harder than it needs to be, but it’s possible.

      2. SlowShootinPete says:

        Possible, but less fun to watch.

        1. Deadpool says:

          Agreed. This IS far more entertaining.

      3. Alphadrop says:

        Yea, I grooved through it first time and only set them of once or twice which just meant hiding behing a wall for a minute of two because they only follow you for a few minutes. Really wasn’t that hard.

      4. BenD says:

        I did not die in the hologram-infested room, because I am the slowest player ever, I watch things before I try to zip through them, and my tendency is to check out terminals whenever they appear. That said, I died a lot in the room before and after this, where collar-beeping is the main killer, because I am not so good at nimbly, swiftly leaping from beam to beam. I think it’s a playstyle thing; Josh is swift and nimble where I am slow and… slow.

  11. Obai says:

    Is this the angriest Josh has ever been on LP?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I think the part with the electricity in fallout 3 made him pretty angry too.

      1. Sekundaari says:

        So angry he started hitting the level geometry.

        Wait, now he does that all the time? I guess it became a thing with trying to leave Rapture through the pipes.

        1. Jarenth says:

          And/or through the windows.

  12. HeroOfHyla says:

    The beginning reminds me of when I was playing Half Life 2 Episode 1, and we were just getting on the train. I brought a rollermine in, not realizing it would detonate automatically. When it did, it pushed Alyx into the geometry, and she got stuck. So she just stood in place indefinitely, never going to examine the console on the train, so the train never got to its destination.
    I had to restart from the last checkpoint.

  13. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So these emitters can emit through solid metal?But lets say that these are special holographic emitters that can transmit through non-transparent materials,then why werent all the emiters everywhere built into walls?It makes this the most laughable security ever.

    Also,how come these holograms can see you?Even if you make a solid hologram using forcefields or something,it still wouldnt have any sensors on it.

    And its not like someone already didnt think of a way around all this:Star trek has portable emitters that can be attached to the hologram they are emitting.So why not use this here?And if you want some of your holograms to be vulnerable and some not,make it so that the emitter is inside the holograms themselves,thus protected by the field that makes them solid,but some of them are glitching(because they are old),thus allowing you to see and shoot the emitters themselves.It would also explain why these guys can shoot you as well.

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      They can smell your blood

    2. poiumty says:

      You’re a bit behind with the times on being outraged about this.

      But I can see where they were going from a gameplay perspective: they wanted unkillable obstacles that would force you into an old-school (not skill-related) use of stealth, that could be interacted with via terminals (so they had to be robotic) and eventually killed (though exploration) once you’d gotten past them. It’s part of making the experience the same for all levels, because nothing related to these holograms uses any of your skills (you can disable the emitters via repair, but you don’t have to).

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yeah,Ive kinda been tolerating this up until now.But now it is beyond ridiculous.And I too get what they wanted to do,but why didt they use portable emitters then?Those offer you both the emitters you can destroy(they are glitching,thus are uncovered,or are mounted externally)and the ones you cant(internally mounted and completely covered),plus actually make more sense than this.

    3. Even says:

      Putting them inside walls wouldn’t really make much sense from a maintenance perspective.

      “The hologram’s malfunctioning you say? Well let’s see, the emitter’s two feet inside this concrete wall according to blueprints, I guess we’ll just have to drill through, as usual.”

      That makes even less sense.

      I agree though that some less exposed positioning would have made for smarter security, but inside walls.. I don’t think so.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Pipes can burst,yet those are put inside walls/floors.And these things have worked unmaintained for 200 years,so they are even more durable than pipes we are using today.

        1. Even says:

          But you see, they’re put there because of necessity. You have dozens to hundreds of meters of pipe and wiring you need to put somewhere when you’re building a structure. You wouldn’t want to place any more than you really have to in there, unless you’re an extremely paranoid crazy person.

          Putting any extra features there would just mean that you have to tear the walls down even more often than you have to in case something is not working properly, and that’s just Not. That. Practical. Just because they’ve managed to work by some magic for so long doesn’t make it any less of a stupid idea.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Not always.For example,heating pipes are fairly small,and you can put them outside(which is often the case),yet in my building they are going through walls and the floor.So its an aesthetic choice.

            Tell me what is more practical:To spend one day a year to have holes drilled in the walls and repaired(assuming you didnt make hatches like its usually done with such things),or having your expensive equipment regularly broken by careless,spiteful or drunk guests and/or thieves?

            1. Even says:

              Heating pipes, outside?? One good winter and you’re off to replace those, good sir. And wouldn’t that look a bit awkward on the outside?

              Even if so, you’ve still got a whole load of water pipes, sewage pipes and air exchange vents which can’t be placed outside (edit:or suppose you can, I just don’t know why you’d want to) so I don’t really see how it’s just down to aesthetics. (Fun fact: In my country, a lot of houses are heated by radiators which use heated water. There’s one in every room by default).

              Lastly, that position assumes one would be stupid enough place their expensive equipment in places where troublesome guests would have access to them. The casino setup is obviously stupid, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be more clever about it. For example, just make a dead zone where there’s no plausible way for someone to approach an emitter without having to deal with a hologram and why maybe just hide the emitters to be part of the scenery so as to make them hard to spot and/or just shield them propely.

              1. X2-Eliah says:

                Outside of a wall, inside a room. Unless your house doesn’t have interior space and is just a solid block of walls?

              2. Even says:

                Duhhh-Edit: That is unless you meant outside the WALL and not the great outdoors. Still, my argument stands. (Having a little fever here so please excuse me..)

                Edit2:

                To add to last comment: Hatches aren’t really that common at least where I live. There’s definitely none in the building I live in. Maybe big buildings have them and the room to make them big enough to fit a man to fix all them pipes, but regular houses, the walls are definitely going down.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  Yes,outside the wall,but inside the room.And I even saw water pipes running outside as well.Also,in numerous government buildings here,ducts for air conditioning are also outside,stuck to the ceiling.So it is mostly aesthetics.

                  As for the hatches,I didnt mean crawl spaces.For example,my last building had the main fuse box outside the wall in a box.My current building has them inside the wall,covered with a hatch.

                  1. Even says:

                    Fair enough. I’m just stuck with the thought about having pipes and wires running about willy-nilly with no apparent logic to their placement, but don’t think nobody would be really that stupid. I can live with that kind of hatches, too. Just to me placing them somewhere generally more accessible (barring a hatch) would seem like a better idea if only for convenience’s sake.

                    1. Topaz Wolf says:

                      So long as they are not out in the open. I would even be okay with a series of inaccessible, thin hallways that can only be accessed through maintenance areas. Not a really a good solution, just a better one than the current solution. Even if the walls are damaged and the emitters are still easy to shoot, at least we could rest knowing that they tried to keep things running smoothly.

              3. Topaz Wolf says:

                Solution: Place the stupid emitters in the floor, under a rug with exterior panels that are held in place be special made screws. That way if you have the correct tools, all you have to do is pull up the rug, remove the panel and work on the emitter. When done you put everything back. It is the most sensible way to do it with the added benefit that, unless someone knew where they were, the emitters would not likely be found by guests.

                1. Deadpool says:

                  Hide it behind the curtains and it’s INACCESSIBLE to the public…

                  1. Topaz Wolf says:

                    A valid point. But I am not certain the repair men could bypass such a fearsome obstacle.

    4. Entropy says:

      Mirrors? I’m just making excuses though.

      There is also the point that maybe having an army of unkillable holograms is a bad idea if say, someone hacks your security, or they malfunction. A good idea to have some way to stop them.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        How can they hack them if you dont put them on an external network?

        1. Jarenth says:

          Because a high enough Science skill is like magic in the Fallout universe?

          1. Neil D says:

            In any universe, according to Arthur C. Clarke.

  14. Uristqwerty says:

    The simplest explanation of why the radios cause interference is simply that they transmit, as well. With such advanced security, wouldn’t it make sense if the owner also ensured the capability to eavesdrop from every single speaker in the area?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      This.Those dont even have to be real radios,they could just be made to look like radios.

  15. Nonesuch says:

    “I think it's pretty impressive that for all of the ridiculous stuff we've done on the show, this is the first time we've had to resort to cheating.”

    Wait a second. Didn’t you guys cheat back in the last episode of the ME1 playthrough? Levelling up and getting gear and such?

    1. McNutcase says:

      And getting out of the sticky rubble in Old Olney, back in Fallout 3.

    2. X2-Eliah says:

      First time in this particular game.

  16. Sekundaari says:

    Bloody electromagnetic field! How does it work?

    1. poiumty says:

      They probably couldn’t make a toggleable object transparent without making it an NPC. So they just took a random NPC and swapped the collision range and model… but forgot to take out the blood animation.

      Veery minor issue.

      1. Sekundaari says:

        Thank goodness they remembered to take out grunts of pain then. The horror…

  17. Paul Spooner says:

    You know… “Mumbles” is also a negative term.

    Also, there’s no reason that heterodyne would be significant enough to overpower a carrier signal. Basically, Shamus is right, there is no real reason that speakers or radio (recievers) should interfere with an RF signal. If anything, there should be signal repeaters around to boost the dont-blow-up signal.

    Even if they are also eavesdropping transmitters, no one would be dumb enough to put them on the same frequency. He wouldn’t be able to hear the eavesdropping when the collars are turned on!

    Stupid, stupid, stupid.

    1. CalDazar says:

      I think Elijah mentions that the collars get set off by radio/speakers because he’s linked them (the collars that is).
      So it’s less buggy collars, and more a Brotherhood Elder can’t get them working.

      Which just shifts the problem at best.

  18. blizzardwolf says:

    The entire vault section of Dead Money drove me to cheating. I praised Dead Money in an earlier post for its atmosphere and story, but shortly after that I played through it again and realized I must have been suffering from selective memory. The DIAS gameplay at the end was so bad I wanted to retract most of the good things I said about it.

    If you’re trying to play this DLC normally, and you haven’t played it before, the vault can prove immensely frustrating. The radios are stashed where most players won’t see them and wouldn’t think to look anyways, and usually can only be found by detailed searching. Which runs counter to the 10 seconds or so you get before they pop you like a bottle of champagne.

    Assuming you find all the off switches for the radios after you’ve died looking 20 times or so, you still have jump puzzles and those holograms to get through. I think I put up with 10 attempts spread across both of those rooms before I decided not to let this game waste any more of my time and just threw on god mode to get through.

    I felt bad that I had to resort to cheating, but I felt even worse for the people who bought this DLC on the Playstation and XBox, and didn’t have console commands to save them. These people probably banged their heads against this DLC for a fortnight memorizing timing, radio locations, and sequences of steps.

    This one area made me resent the entire DLC up to that point, and has made me reluctant to ever play it again, because I know as good as the first 3/4 are, I’m still gonna have to waste time on this DIAS gameplay at the end.

  19. rrgg says:

    So why does Josh like this section so much again? Is it because he’s the only one here to play it through and wants to justify his purchasing decisions, or is it because of the engrossing story and fantastic gameplay?

    1. No, I think he and the rest of us absolutely hate the path to the vault. The vault itself is good, the section before is all right, but the actual maintenance area before the vault is just ridiculous.

    2. Veloxyll says:

      I was thinking as Kevin played over another death sequence “and people paid MONEY for this!”

    3. Jarenth says:

      Why does Josh like this section? I might have misheard, but I think he referred to this section as ‘the worst rooms in the DLC’.

  20. ProudCynic says:

    OK, so I think this is just going to be a stream-of-conscious thing as I watch the video.

    @6:00: Well, it was owned by the ‘Ghost’ people…

    Oh, how I remember how much that room tormented me. By the time I was done I was just so sick of Dead Money I left as soon as the main plot was done.

    Don’t remember those holograms though. Maybe I snuck past them?

    Wow. At this point, I totally agree with the commenter a thread or two back that said the SW crew is going to do Honest Hearts by killing everyone. Honestly, I would not blame them at this point.

  21. Eärlindor says:

    Wow, I have never Seen Christine do that before. That’s terrible.

  22. Alex says:

    Well, as the current President of Burp Head, I would like to state categorically, for the record, that BLAAAARCH UUUUUUUURP FLAAAAAAA-EECHP BLOOOOORF; ERP BLAAAARP (urp hic) HHUUUUUURRPFFFF BRAAAAP WWOOOOOOOOAARP. Thank you, and God bless.

    (Oh, and as someone who has fairly extensive on-the-job experience in both cellphone and data networks – IOW, I worked in radio before working in radio was a thing – I had to keep myself from shouting at the screen during that discussion…)

  23. Sucal says:

    Am I the only one who wishes they would release a deleted scenes episode of three, with the awkward dialogue and stuff that gets deleted when they fast forward?

    1. Hitch says:

      On previous occasions Josh has come out of a fast forward sequence prematurely for a couple lines of commentator dialog and them fast forwarded again. So I assume if anything really entertaining was said Josh would make sure it was included. I’m sure by this point in this DLC all that was said was the same bitching we’ve heard repeatedly for the last couple weeks.

      Now the question on my mind is, “Is this thing going to have a payoff that makes me (and perhaps one or more of the commentators) say, ‘Wow, I should go back and do a sensible play-through so I can I properly appreciate the story?'”

      1. Vipermagi says:

        If you want to do a second playthrough, I’d say pick a character you don’t mind putting in the fridge as soon as you hit the vault :P

      2. Hush says:

        Actually, that’s something I’d like to know: After seeing this DLC for yourselves and hearing Josh talk about it, would you play Dead Money for yourselves? (This is mostly aimed at Ruts and Shamus, I’m guessing Mumbles isn’t going to touch this thing again)

        Playing it would certainly be more enjoyable than watching someone else play it, and play it for an audience with expectations, no less. Or has the DLC left an unfavorable impression on you, so much so that you wouldn’t spend Monopoly money on it?

        My own two cents: I don’t own New Vegas, though I probably will at some point, but if I did, I’d get Dead Money. The characters are certainly interesting enough to me, and I’d love running around the place, exploring and picking up bits of casino lore. I’d hate the sections with the radios and the bomb collar idea in general, but I’d look forward to cutting off Elijah’s head and giving it to the dogs to play with. It doesn’t look that bad either, even if it gets samey after a while(especially in the villa). I personally would pick it up and give it a chance.

        Would you?

  24. JPH says:

    Incidentally, pencils and cigarettes are always the items I collect in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, since they’re weightless.

  25. Eddie says:

    I haven’t played the DLC and maybe I missed it if it was shown in an episode, but is there any explanation as to why the radio that’s strapped to your wrist doesn’t cause your collar to explode?

    1. Hitch says:

      Elijah tuned the collar to not be affected by Pip-boy frequencies, but couldn’t do the same for all the radios and speakers in the Sierra Madre.

      (Okay, that’s even dumb for a no-prize answer.)

  26. Dante says:

    Its gotten so bad….they did a The Room reference

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      So hows your sex life?

      1. Deadpool says:

        Meh, it’s okay. She enthusiastic, but she’s got vaginismus so–

        Oh wait, you were joking. Sorry, carry on…

        1. Veloxyll says:

          Ohai Deadpool, maybe we should throw a football around now

          1. Nick says:

            Because that is the only activity that men may do whilst reciting awkward dialog

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Haha,what a funny story Nick.

  27. Slip says:

    An electric field that bleeds.. made my day.

  28. Littlefinger says:

    You know, Josh, you’d have had it a lot less difficult if you went for the roof projectors first, and then killed the radio and the last blue orb. You can just run to the roof and they’ll go yellow at best – if you time it right. And you can stay out of radio range on a large part of the catwalks.

    Thanks though: when I played this, I never realised you could simply shoot the projectors, but now I know what the benefit is of repair-disabling them. It doesn’t make the others go hostile. Of course, the projectors in this room/area have the ridiculous repair requirement of 100 (which I fortunately had), so you’d have no use from that knowledge.

  29. John R. says:

    Oh God, The Triangle Shirtwaist Casino. Damn you, Rutskarn, for making me laugh at an industrial tragedy.

  30. Veloxyll says:

    All I could think of when Josh kept dying to the holograms is “if only this game had a stealth skill”. Or some sort of science or explosives skill to disable your collar (or the holograms).

    As for the people earlier in the comments who said “they were going for a certain kind of atmosphere” – the problem is it doesn’t work in a Fallout-esque RPG. Your character skills are supposed to matter and define how you play. I think that’s probably the biggest problem with this DLC, it just doesn’t fit the core game (Christine’s buggyness aside).

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      Or even a device that visually obscures you by rendering you pseudo-invisible…

      1. Veloxyll says:

        Ahh, if only

    2. Deadpool says:

      To be fair, a tank-spec’ed character can survive QUITE a few of those shots. Someone early on this thread mentioned that his Toughness + combat surgery + high EN level 17 character didn’t even need a stimpack.

      The problem is that Josh is a STEALTH SPEC character who decided to do a stealth section without being stealthy.

      Sure, it’s Cuftbert’s way, but hardly the game’s fault he was having a hard time.

      1. Mr.Lou says:

        That would explain why Cuthbert is running around with his Pipboy light on.

  31. Tengokujin says:

    Off-topic: I feel marginally compelled to link this: http://www.thedrunkenmoogle.com/post/3365688182/jarate-team-fortress-2-cocktail-ingredients-2
    (It’s a cocktail named “Jarate”)

  32. Viktor says:

    I went back to the original ME posts as part of a recent archive crawl and came upon post #2, where you mention that Josh is wearing 2 headphones because he’s using 2 computers. So I asked my sound-nerd brother for a solution that’s under $20(assuming Josh isn’t wearing 2 headphones for an entirely different reason now). Buy 2 mono cables that can output from your computers, then a mono to stereo converter plug so that sound will output to each earpiece. You’ll basically be running one headset off of 2 computers. It might screw with the sound quality that you hear, and look ridiculous, but should be simpler to use.

  33. TraderRager says:

    Josh, you are required by law to BRING ALL THE GOLD WITH YOU.

    If you do not saunter out of The Sierra Madre with gold literally falling out of your ass, 200 pounds over encumbered, I will personally murder you.

  34. Duoae says:

    Have to say, and this probably makes me evil or something, but this was the most enjoyable episode covering this DLC yet. I took a perverse pleasure in you guys failing and having to restart and fast forward…

    I know you guys say that Dead Money is a good DLC…. but nothing i’ve seen of it makes your comments on it make any sense in this regard.

  35. AlternatePFG says:

    Yeah, I really liked Dead Money but I hated this part. It’s ridiculous how much damage those holograms do to you.

  36. BenD says:

    Er… isn’t there a way to unlock that door by using the data recording of Vera’s audition and the music recording Elijah made you unlock by going to the three parts of the casino? Or did I dream all of that during my playthrough? XD

    1. Chuck says:

      That option may only be available if Christine is dead.

      1. BenD says:

        Nope, it was available with Christine alive and kicking. Maybe it’s only available in a subset of conditions that includes Christine being dead and/or… something else. I am not sure exactly what I did that Josh didn’t, or vice versa, except that my Dean ate some bullets.

        1. Chuck says:

          IIRC, the message you need has to be formed; the tapes you gather don’t initially form the message properly. Their may be a terminal or something where you need to properly organize the words.

          Didn’t need that for the Enclave, but it’s a thought.

  37. lupus_amens says:

    so more uploading problems?
    or again recording problems and not feeling like telling us until Thursday…

  38. superglucose says:

    1 minute into the video Rustkarn says, “Because gold bars in the future will be totally worthless.”

    Gold has been an object of high value since the ancient Egyptians, bro. We’re talking 4,000 years ago. Historically speaking gold is the most secure form of currency you could hope for… and in the Fallout canon, the NCR dollar was backed by gold from Redding mines. At least until some weird event caused the gold mines to become unreliable, and now it’s backed with water from the Colorado.

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