Fallout: New Vegas Cut Content Tidbits

Our friends at Fallout site No Mutants Allowed have received a tip from an unnamed but apparently reliable source about several pieces of cut content from Fallout: New Vegas. The reasons for their removal range from changes in gameplay throughout development, to lack of time, to technical limitations. Some of them we’ve heard before, but there’s some new nuggets of information in there to be found. Note that this does not represent an official statement by either Bethesda or Obsidian Entertainment in any way.

* We already know that Freeside and the Strip were meant to be single worldspaces rather than broken up in little pieces, and that they were changed to make the game run on consoles and lower end PCs, but apparently a few other areas were affected: originally the Crimson Caravan Company area, North Vegas, Westside, the Aerotech Park and the Fiend territory were all part of the main worldspace rather than separated by a loading screen. After trying to get the game to run on consoles like that and not getting good results, they made each of those areas its separate worldspace.

* When Ulysses was still a companion in the game, he was indeed meant to be recruitable at the location that became Wolfhorn Ranch, as some people have guessed from the fact that the location was called “Ulysess’ camp” in some localized versions of the game. This version of Ulysses would actually not be open about his allegiance with the Legion, but rather try to gently steer the character to more pro-Legion views while offering commentary of the various locations and events of the game. Ulysses would only openly admit his pro-Legion beliefs when dealing with a Legion-affiliated PC.

* You might remember that the Fallout wikis used to note that NPCs will cheer at the death of the NCR Drill Sergeant. That doesn’t actually happen in the game, and has been removed from Nukapedia’s page since then (there’s no older version on the Vault, likely because this change predates the split). We can confirm that the idea floated around the dev team at one point, and was possibly even implemented just to be scrapped later on.

* The Black Mountain location was meant to play a larger role in the NCR/Legion conflict at one point, with factions interested in controlling it due to its satellite system (the NCR to expand their broadcast range and the Legion to use as a jamming system). Digging through the files of the game one can still find some references to a quest that involved blowing up the satellite dishes that was tied to that older design of the area.

Head on over to No Mutants Allowed to see the full list.