Fallout: New Vegas DLC raises level cap

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 25 November, 2010

Adds "hours" of gameplay.

Fallout: New Vegas' first downloadable add-on, Dead Money, raises the level cap to 35 and adds new perks and achievements.

The Xbox 360-exlcusive DLC, due out on 21st December, adds "hours of extended gameplay" according to a new post on Fallout's official website.

In Dead Money, players take part in a casino heist. You have to work together with three other captured wastelanders to make the magic happen.

Not only will you go up against the mysterious Ghost People, but the defences of the Sierra Madre Casino. "Navigate your way through a challenging new storyline, with even tougher choices," reads the official blurb.

New Vegas is the Obsidian Entertainment-created spin-off from Bethesda's Fallout 3. Dan Whitehead reviewed for Eurogamer, awarding the post-apocalyptic open world RPG 9/10.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Lotos8ter #1 2 years ago

    I wonder if each & every piece of DLC will raise the level cap by 5...
    Sure way to piss people off and keep the money rolling in at the same time.

  • Snaggletooth #2 2 years ago

    exclusive to xbox? so no DLC for PC?? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

    They relesed the game on 3 platforms, they should support all 3! Mutherfuckers. This is my favorite game ever, they better bloody release DLC for PC or i'm going to write a letter of complaint.

    EDIT: phew....ok, good...I hate writing letters of complaint
    Edited by Snaggletooth at 25/11/10 @ 09:34

  • peeps #3 2 years ago

    I imagine its like last time where 360 gets the dlc first

  • BBIAJ #4 2 years ago

    Chillax man, it's only a timed exclusive!

  • andywilkie35 #5 2 years ago

    Glad I stopped playing this fairly early, means I can resume when the full game has been released. Only blunder was buying it in the first place, should have waited.

  • thewool #6 2 years ago

    I could spend many more hours playing the original game if you could be bothered to fix the twat.

  • Whitster #7 2 years ago

    I think this time I'm going to wait for the inevitable disc pack of all the expansions, it'll be like getting a whole new game that way rather than 3-10 extra hours a time.

  • fiery_jackass #8 2 years ago

    A perk that allows you to fast travel to where you want to go, sayyy The Tops Casino, instead of where you don't want to go, sayyy about 4 loading screens away from The Tops Casino, would be an improvement.

    See also "Normal hill-walking ability" perk which allows you to walk up hills directly rather than crabbing and jumping and glitching to avoid walking MILES through cazador nests instead of YARDS over a fucking hillock.

    Maybe also a "Yeah, Whatever" perk that stops you spinning around to look at the beastie that a companion has just despatched, confusing the piss out of you when it reverts to your own view.

  • Ranger101 #9 2 years ago

    @fiery_jackass - you can turn non-VATs cinematics off.

  • Paperghost #10 2 years ago

    "I think this time I'm going to wait for the inevitable disc pack of all the expansions, it'll be like getting a whole new game that way rather than 3-10 extra hours a time."

    Did this with fallout 3, and it ended up generating a few additional complete playthroughs that wouldn't have otherwise happened. will be bloody hard not to jump on this as soon as it hits, but given the huge shambles involved in the original DLC releases that might be all the incentive I need to hang back.

    / edit - lol at "Yeah, whatever" perk. that auto turn thing has got me killed by packs of deathclaws so many times.
    Edited by Paperghost at 25/11/10 @ 09:59

  • fiery_jackass #11 2 years ago

    >Ranger101
    ah! Like Dorothy, I had the power all along and didn't know it.

    I shall do this if I prove able to face the DLC, thank you.

  • PearOfAnguish #12 2 years ago

    This is the future of rpgs. Limit the level cap then charge people to increase it. Maybe they could have it setup so it deducts a quid every time you level up?

  • SomaticSense #13 2 years ago

    Just fix the fucking game already please, instead of asking for more of my money for a borderline broken product.

  • SomaticSense #14 2 years ago

    PearOfAnguish wrote: "This is the future of rpgs. Limit the level cap then charge people to increase it. Maybe they could have it setup so it deducts a quid every time you level up?"

    Or better yet, design the game so that people hit the level cap ridiculously early (say, about 30% through the game), so that come the time of the DLC with the level cap increases they'll be itching to get back to levelling again and will more likely pay the points to download it. Oh, and make sure you set the level cap at 30 this time, so that the gamers think that they are more value this time, but make sure it takes much less time to reach it than level 20 in Fallout 3! That'll fool 'em!
    Edited by SomaticSense at 25/11/10 @ 10:38

  • Moribundman #15 2 years ago

    @snaggletooth It'll be out on PC within 6 months (knowing those clever young pirates there'll probabyl even be a hacked "jury rigged" GECK version ported from the 360 code on teh torrentz before then).

    Since they can't carry on directly from the endgame directly for obvious reasons, maybe Obsidian should be the first devs to grow a pair and make DLC available ONLY if you finish the game and play to a specific conclusion...

    Mass Effect 2 got a little silly releasing (quality) DLC which ostensibly followed on from plot missions or other DLC but didn't require you to have played it in case anyone who hadn't played that got upset (Overlord using Hammerhead even if you hadn't played Firewalker to get it). Dragon Age allowed you to play (par example) Return to Ostegar which worked well as a mid-plot side mission, but fighting your way through to get the Kings armour as a "flashback" where you couldn't use it once you got it was a bit silly.

    At least Fable 3 spoon feeds some of its DLC content and doesn't just dump it all on you in one fell swoop right from the get go...

  • Moribundman #16 2 years ago

    @fiery_jackass: This, THIS, a thousand times THIS!

  • Gecks #17 2 years ago

    @SomaticSense, i'm about 35 hours into Fallout:NV and i'm level 18 (the cap is 30) and I've done a fair portion of the quests available, with the end-game in sight. conversely, in Fallout 3 i was level 20 (the cap) long before the end, and feeling ridiculously over-powered long before that.

    give obsidian some credit - they know how to balance RPGs and levelling, where as bethesda clearly don't.

  • kangarootoo #18 2 years ago

    Why include a level cap at all? i can understand they might be worried that I'll do loads of side missions and then find the "final battle" too easy, but on my head be it surely? What I do find more annoying is that character progression, a CORE PART of any RPG game, stops working. Not good.

  • Gecks #19 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo "Why include a level cap at all?"

    i've always seen it as a way of forcing players to make a choice about their character's progression. how likely is it that you could be a master-of-all-trades, a sort of superstrong, charismatic, idiot savant who can jury-rig a gun together from moss and molerat fur whilst picking locks, and head-shotting badguys from miles away? there's a lot of fun to be had operating within the restrictions of a character, rather than just having the perfect skillset for everything (hello fallout 3!).

    plus the thing with a decent levelling system is that you shouldn't even see the cap. in fallout 1 and 2 i seem to recall that you almost couldn't hit the cap of 20 unless you did literally EVERYTHING, or at least spent an age grinding the wastes' random encounters. better to work out where the player can realistically get to, and balance perks to suit, rather than create some endless progression, with no balance.

    EDIT: oh, seems that fallout 2 had a cap of 99, but the top perks only required 24. not sure what level you were likely to reach before the end, mind.
    Edited by Gecks at 25/11/10 @ 12:46

  • chrisola #20 2 years ago

    only trouble is you have to use an older save to access this.

    You should just be able to launch it from the game menu and jump straight to the DLC with the a character from your main save, would make more sense

  • kangarootoo #21 2 years ago

    @Gecks

    I agree with all the stuff you say about balancing your resources, but I think you really hit the nail on the head with...

    "plus the thing with a decent levelling system is that you shouldn't even see the cap"

    A well balanced game world shouldn't need a level cap. If I do few side quests, I should expect to struggle with the main quest. And if I do ALL the side quests, I expect to be tough at the end.

    A level cap is too simply an approach, too simple a solution for the problem of maxing out everything. Balance the game properly, and give me plenty of development options to match, and you don't need to cap the level. In its simplest form a level cap is saying "we have run out of choices for you to make reards character development, so we are going to stop you making them".

    I LIKE levelling up and making those choices, operating within the restriction of the character exactly as you say in your first paragraph. You are right on the money there. And if a level cap stops me doing all that fun stuff....

  • glaeken #22 2 years ago

    I don't get wanting to increase the level cap. I am at level 23 at the moment and have guns, repair, science, speech and lock pick maxed (plus a couple more close to being maxed). Do people want to be able to max out every single skill? I don't really see the point of an RPG where you can level a character to have maximum skills in everything. I am already at the point now with my current character where when I level up I am not sure what to put the points into as at this stage its really a matter of deciding if I want to use a skill have not really used much at a late stage of the game. Really its all about the perks on levelling now for me and given I probably have another 3 or 4 of those to pick before I reach maximum level that seems enough to me.

  • kangarootoo #23 2 years ago

    @glaeken

    "Do people want to be able to max out every single skill?"

    If there is no level cap, I get to choose. If I don't want to max skills, I can simply stop levelling up of my own accord. There are of course other solutions, such as metering out XP more gradually, so I don't get to max my skills before the end of the game. But for a very long game, maxing skills may be a reaonable goal for some players to have - its even worth an achivement or trophy in some games.

    Each to their own of course, its just that personally I feel that stopping me outright from making any more character decisions is the worst option of the ones available.

  • glaeken #24 2 years ago

    That is fair enough if that is how you want to play it. I just find personally what happened towards the end of FO3 was nothing in the world could remotely challenge me so levelling no longer gave me much sense of reward. I am finding this pretty much the case in FO:NV as well now. At least for you guys who don't want a level cap they increased it from 20 to 30 for NV. That is something I guess.

  • Gecks #25 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo
    i see your point. i suppose it's not the level cap that i like per se, but rather the design choices that tend to come with games that use them. i didn't even realise you could go to level 99 in fallout 2 because i finished the game way before then, and if someone wants to sit in the wasteland doing random battles getting up to level 99 then that's fair enough. however i think at their core, RPGs (ignoring those that you play some sort of demi-god) should be designed around meaningful choices + limitations, rather than a gradual progression to invincibility.

    it doesn't matter that it was the cap - level 20 in fallout 3 meant you were maxed-out in most (all?) of the skills, and you were basically invincible. it was a design flaw that you could reach that level by just playing through the main quest line.

    @glaeken
    "I just find personally what happened towards the end of FO3 was nothing in the world could remotely challenge me so levelling no longer gave me much sense of reward."

    this. this, so much.

    "I am finding this pretty much the case in FO:NV as well now."

    that's a shame :( as i said, at level 18 i'm finding everything still quite a challenge on normal, whereas with fallout 3 it was a walkover even on hard once you hit level 10 or so (can't really remember). i like the fact that my courier (he/she is just a courier, remember) has to run from deathclaws even after months of hard wastelandering.

  • Paulie_P #26 2 years ago

    I must suck at Fallout 3, I'm at level 30 and still die. A lot. Bloody Deathclaws.

  • glaeken #27 2 years ago

    @Gecks I do think its harder than FO3 so its improved but at level 23 now the only thing that seems to be giving me trouble is deathclaws. I think they have up'd deathclaw toughness and numbers quite a bit as I don't remember being swamped by 5 or 6 large deathclaws at any point in FO3 and there are a couple of area's in NV where this happens and you die very quickly. It's actually a bit of a shock as by this point everything else is a push over. I must admit I am yet to take on many super mutants so I am not sure how tough they will be for my level. The Nightkins seemed pretty tough but I met them when I was still at a pretty low level.

    Obviously difficultly will also vary based on your character build. I have 100 guns and 100 repair so am dishing up maximum damage for a conventional guns character.
    Edited by glaeken at 25/11/10 @ 16:41

  • X #28 2 years ago

    This game seems to be at a fairly decent price now but I got burned by the DLC costs on Fallout 3 so like others I think it'll be the GOTY edition for me. Gives me time to finish F3 anyhow...

  • saku_luk #29 2 years ago

    a NO to PC? huuuummm

    Well we still have our modding community so no biggy I guess.....

  • metalangel #30 2 years ago

    @Paulie_P: Make a dart gun, and shoot them with it. Crippled legs = slow deathclaw.

  • AgentFortySeven #31 2 years ago

    How many times have developers said "hours of entertainment" to find out you can complete it in an hour. Im sure the FO:NV will be the same. New DLC means new bugs. Jesus no wonder gamestation are flogging this off for £19.99

  • glaeken #32 2 years ago

    @metalangel I don't think the dart gun is in NV. Not found a schematic for it anyway and the forum thread on this has a few others also saying the dart gun is not in NV. You can of course shoot deathclaws in the legs to slow them but its not as effective as the dart gun in FO3.

  • SomaticSense #33 2 years ago

    @ Gecks: Obsidian should know better than most how to balance RPGs, but from my experience they screwed it up in this.

    I hit level 30 shortly after reaching New Vegas, and before reaching Fortification Hill. I'd hardly made any effort doing any real exploring, only travelling from Goodsprings, down to Primm, and around all the way up to New Vegas via Nipton and Novac, completing all the quests around those areas as I went. I did none of the 'ooh where does this hollow arrow lead to?' explodring that made Fallout 3 so great, because I imagine if I had I'd have hit the cap even earlier.

    It's not just the levelling, but there are so many dodgy design decisions in the game that I'm starting to question whether this really is the same group of devs that were formerly Black Isle. It's not a terrible game by any means, but it is nowhere near as good or as well balanced as Fallout 3.