PCG recently reported on what our own Jody Macgregor called a “humdinger” of a Fallout: New Vegas discovery: a pre-release build of the game from a month before it went on-sale. The find was made by a new YouTube channel called Games’ Past, and is two gigabytes larger than the release version of New Vegas and filled with cut or altered content that the team has been slowly teasing out.
Now there’s more. The pair of Xbox 360 devkits that contain the build also have a drive containing early versions, in some cases very early versions, of the New Vegas DLC. The recovered files include PDBs with debug information that’s invaluable in reverse-engineering efforts, and now the intrepid explorers have accessed cut content from the expansions, although some of it is far from what would be considered playable.
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A version of Lonesome Road, the final New Vegas DLC, is also present, but is dated seven months before release. It’s essentially the framework for Lonesome Road, the basic locations and environments, but with hardly any detail, items or NPCs.
It does, however, contain Lonesome Road’s final encounter with Ulysses, who in the release version is a rather talkative character. Here when approached he says “Hello. I am the antagonist.”
Your response options are “I thought as much! Time to die, cheese weasel!” or “Don’t do it bro! Let’s hug it out!” Should you choose the second Ulysses responds simply “I only act out because I want attention.”
That’s so good it really should have been left as-is.
Perhaps the most notable thing is how much moodier New Vegas looks in these earlier iterations, with much gloomier lighting broken by shards of neon. It’s a very different vibe from the final game, and if you ask me it looks great, funky textures and all.
The data mining of these builds will continue. Earlier discoveries include Mr. House’s second securitron girlfriend named Marilyn—cut from the final game, but present for an entire conversation in this pre-release archive. There’s also an earlier version of Mr. House with additional cut dialogue, in which he gets rather saucy if you’re playing a female character with high charisma.
It feels like Games’ Past has a lot more to discover, and what will be especially interesting is what modders make of some of these changes. There’s a whole bunch of cut and unvoiced dialogue in these builds, as well as things like holotapes and NPCs that didn’t make it through to any release. It’s certainly a good time to be a New Vegas fan: but next year might be even better.
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