Spare Us the Cutter

The following text is a transcript of Spare Us the Cutter, an article penned by moburma, a modder responsible for reimplementing much of Fallout: New Vegas cut content back into the game in his series of mods New Vegas Uncut. moburma has graciously given permission to the Fallout Wiki to rehost his extensive guide to cut content, to benefit from our wiki architecture.

The intro
 

The Kings
 

Freeside


Atomic Wrangler


The Strip


Hoover Dam Endgame Fight


Companions
{{transcript|text= Pretty much all the companions have lots of blank dialogue topics for them to comment on important game events/areas that were either cut or not finished in time. In particular, Cass has a huge number of blank dialogue topics. It seems that she would (for example) have had nearly double the comments to say to Freeside people in particular, and also a massive amount of other lines to chip in during during game events such as meeting important NPCs.

Arcade

Arcade has several more lines about ED-E that are unused. He has two lines that are clearly supposed to trigger once ED-E's first log is played that further reinforce his dislike of ED-E due to recognising his Enclave origins. The line he says is meant to change depending on the player knowing his background or not. Speaking of which, a variable is checked to know whether the player knows Arcade's background. This is never actually set, so several lines of dialogue never play, most notably rehiring Arcade with ED-E in your party which will cause him to express concern, but never the Enclave specific version of this line.

He also has a snarky line to say to (or more likely comment behind her back - there is no reply line from Emily herself, and Arcade seems too passive aggressive to say it to her face!) Emily Ortal if the player accepts the quest to bug the Lucky 38 that is unused. There's not even the needed delivery method (special "blank" topic and AI package) needed for this line to work, so it seems to have been entirely forgotten.

Arcade also has a line to say after meeting Caesar. It suggests that originally Arcade (and probably other companions) could be present in Caesar's tent, so this was presumably abandoned after this was no longer possible.

Rex ---

As the King says, Rex was supposed to hate rats, and go mad attacking them if one was on the current map. The code for this is all in the game, but is deliberately dummied out in VDialogueRexScript. It seems to be quite early code, and doesn't actually work properly if enabled. An earlier attempt at this effect can be seen in the ai package FollowersRexHuntRatsPackage but this doesn't really work either (it just makes Rex randomly search around for a rat rather than running straight to one and attacking). There's also a specific dialogue (!) topic for this - VRexSmellsARat. It seems the ways that were devised to handle this functionality just didn't work so it was abandoned.

I believe this effect was meant to be in the game, but was abandoned due to it not working. The reason why is a simple game engine limitation - it's actually not possible to arbitrarily make two characters start combat with each other at long distance due to a lack of a detection event. Basically if two characters can't see each other they can't start fighting.

Cass

Cass was intended to have an even greater amount of incidental dialogue than the insane amount she already has. She has a LOT of cut blank dialogue topics relating to the Hoover Dam battle events that comprise around FOURTY cut lines relating to each endgame outcome (e.g. fighting for House, independent, NCR, Legion). She has lines to comment on various areas of the dam, as well as meeting certain important NPCs (e.g. Oliver, Lanius, etc). Interestingly she also has lines that presumably relate to the cut Arizona spillway map (e.g. VCassEventHDHouseSpillway). This suggests these lines were cut early on.

Cass also has a set of reactivity dialogue lines for commenting on all kinds of player choices. It's not clear what the criteria of these would have been (from the spectrum of comments, presumably for completing quests in certain ways), but she has a large number of positive and negative comments to go from being impressed by the player's action to being disgusted. There are four topics, which are VCassReallyLike, VCassReactLike, VCassReactBad, VCassReallyBadReact (good example: "{Commenting on player's behavior}Set an example, others will follow." bad example: "{Commenting on player's behavior}That was fucked up". She also has unused dialogue that was supposed to play when the player drank whiskey while she was a companion, as part of her Whiskey Rose perk ("{Shot of whiskey}Now all I need is some shame to wash it down with."). The reactivity comments and whisky lines are all fully voice acted.

There is an early test version of her dialogue located in VFollowerDialogueRose. It just contains a few test lines to advance parts of her questline.

Jason Bergman posted on the game's official forums about how Fallout: New Vegas was going to have romancing options for companions, which were abandoned due to lack of time. The endgame of Cass' romance plotline would involve the player waking up drunk and finding themselves married to Cass (by the King!). This was never even started, and there is nothing regarding it in the final game.

ED-E

ED-E's companion quest has several unused takes on the dialogue. While they are ultimately the same, there are two different takes of Senior Knight Lorenzo's dialogue, and three different versions of april Martimer's dialogue. One Lorenzo line actually has one of its last lines missing, and instead still uses a voice file of one of the developers delivering the line!

for the Followers lines, there is a version that is designed to play immediately after the Brotherhood line, as if April had cut off his transmission. There are are a further two deliveries of these lines with minimal differences.

Ulysses

Ulysses seems to have been cut early on - there is barely a single trace of him in the game files. However, in all foreign language versions of the game Wolfhorn Ranch is called 'Ulysses' ranch' - so this would obviously be where the player would meet him. Outside by a camp fire is a sit marker called VUlyssesPointSitRef - this is where he would start in the game. The official strategy guide cheekily sez: "What was once a profitable Bighorner ranch has recently been abandoned, and its ownera man named Ulyssesis nowhere to be found."

His weapon seems to have been the cut Eagle Flag Pole weapon.

Further evidence that this is what the ranch was really called - the nearby troops who spawn to ambush the caravan are called VSpawnSpecialLegionRecruit03Ulysess (SIC).

Prospectors

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Not cut at all, but people probably don't realise Some interesting and ambitious stuff was intended for these generic characters. Looking through their scripting (e.g. VProspectorScript50 - the number at the end is the percentage chance this Prospector will spawn - the idea was to ape chanced spawns like in Oblivion), they were intended to be found all over the Wasteland doing all kinds of autonomous stuff. Essentially the intention was for them to behave like other player characters would in an MMORPG, wandering the landscape, getting into fights with enemies, and raiding dungeons for loot. They actually do carry out most of this behaviour, but they're also fairly rare in the actual game, and mostly just wander around a few uninteresting locations. Their code was started by Jorge "Oscuro" Saldano and continues on from some of his sterling work on OOO for Oblivion.

Wasteland Adventurer

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A fully realised but cut NPC. I don't think he was really ever going to be in the game; he reeks of "my first npc". He's not placed in the game, but a combination of his dialogue lines and the names of the markers his packages would use suggest he would almost certainly be found in front of the sign leading to Primm (which indeed the player can ask him about). He also has quite a lot of interesting/complex behaviours, but he really does just seem to be a test character. One of his goodbye dialogue lines has commented out code to make him perform an idle that would make him flip the player the bird (which further suggests he was a joke/learning the Geck character). Peculiarly he also sleeps in the same wrecked caravan as the "gecko man" character the player can meet early in the game.

Pre-mutant Lily and her Grandkids

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These are NOT cut. They're used to deliver lines in Lily's recorded message sequence. }}