Freeside

"Metallic Monks"

Freeside is the main slum adjacent to, but not controlled by, Mr. House's New Vegas in 2281. It is protected and/or loosely ruled by the Kings and the Van Graffs. The streets are dangerous and lack the luster of the New Vegas Strip. There is a conflict between the locals and squatters that followed the NCR to the area.

Background
Las Vegas wasn't heavily damaged during the Great War, but people didn't immediately settle into the remnants of the old city. The various Vault tribes and indigenous people that emerged years later hunted and fought amongst themselves within the ruins. It was not until the "return" of Mr. House and his Securitron enforcers that they ceased most of their open hostilities.

Mr. House's robots directed the tribes to use the sizable quantities of pre-War construction materials to build the crude (but effective) outer walls that separate The Strip and Freeside from the rest of New Vegas.

While House valued the area around Fremont Street, he ultimately viewed it as secondary in importance to the Strip itself and had a second, inner wall built that separated the two areas. When the NCR prospectors (and eventually the army) arrived in the region, people typically went straight for The Strip, leaving "Freeside" (as it had become known by locals) as an informal stopping point. Eventually, Mr. House recognized that he could use Freeside as a filter for undesirables and pulled his favored tribes and all Securitrons into the Strip, leaving Freeside to fend for itself.

In the two years that followed, Freeside slowly degenerated into a hostile, lawless den of ne'er-do-wells. For a while, it was completely without order, but two power groups managed to come to an understanding about how the area needed to be maintained. The Kings prevent all-out-chaos from erupting, but do little to deal with the day-to-day nastiness that Freesiders inflict on each other. The Followers of the Apocalypse, no longer associated with the NCR, settled in the Old Mormon Fort. They receive some protection from the Kings in exchange for help with the community's basic needs (food, water, health services and some education). Despite the oversight from the Kings, and help from the Followers, the people in Freeside live in daily peril from each other as well as outside forces.

Layout
Freeside is centered on the intersection of Las Vegas Blvd. and Fremont Street and is divided into two sections via a gate. The first section is C shaped and comprised of the western, northern, and eastern parts of the district. This section is the first that can be entered from the Mojave as it has both of Freeside's external gates. Several rough bodyguards stand near the gates, offering their "protection" on the mean streets for a paltry sum of caps.

Points of interest in this section include:
 * The Old Mormon Fort, the base of operations for the Followers of the Apocalypse, is just inside Freeside's North Gate.
 * Mick & Ralph's, which is just inside Freeside's East Gate. Ralph sells a fake passport to the strip if The King gives permission, or with a Speech skill of 50. The price is 500 caps, but a Barter skill check can be passed for a lesser price of 375 caps. Outside the store, a pair of children can sometimes be seen running around the streets, a boy and girl. The boy is named Max and if he is spoken to, the Courier can pay 1000 caps (or 20 caps with 45 Barter) for his "toy gun" the Euclid's C-Finder which is a unique energy weapon that is powered by the ARCHIMEDES II satellite.
 * Cerulean Robotics, which can be found in the western part of this section.
 * A ruined store which holds an NCR food distribution center, also found in the western part of this section.

The second section covers the central and southern parts of the district. This section is reached from the north by passing through a wrecked-vehicle roadblock that divides the two parts of Freeside, or from the north-west through a zone door at the back of a ruin building between the Silver Rush and the Atomic Wrangler casino, or from the south via The Strip North Gate.

Points of interest in this section include:
 * The King's School of Impersonation, home of the Kings, a gang holding a large amount of influence in Freeside.
 * The Atomic Wrangler casino, run by the Garret twins.
 * The Silver Rush, the base of operations for the Van Graff family.

Campfires can be found up by the north gate to the New Vegas Strip. When facing the gate, the fenced off area guarded by securitrons is flanked by empty lots. In each of these lots is at least one campfire.

Appearances
Freeside appears only in Fallout: New Vegas.

Behind the scenes

 * The telephone poles in Freeside all have metal plates with "TES-04" stamped on them. This is a reference to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a game by Bethesda.
 * Freeside is named as such due to the main sign losing all but the first three letters (Fremont Street), similar to Arefu, Novac, The Pitt, and the Fabulous New Vegas sign.
 * James Garcia created the 3D model of the neon sign letters.

Bugs

 * The two kids that can be spoken to have regular voice actors. After killing the rat, the girl or the boy (whichever is closest) will eat the rat. When talked to, they share a voice actor making the boy sound like a girl, or vice versa.
 * Sometimes after killing the giant rat, the first boy chasing the rat will fall to his knees to take a bite but will continue to move forward at running speed despite being in a crouched position and going through the rat-eating animation.
 * Being outside of the Vegas Strip when updating the game, but having gained access to it at another point, it is possible to be permanently locked out.
 * Sometimes outside the Old Mormon Fort the super mutant Tabitha can spawn and go hostile; killing her results in the completion of the quest "Crazy, Crazy, Crazy" (if not having started the quest it will add the quest to the Pip-Boy and just say the final bullet point).
 * Achieving a certain level of reputation in Freeside makes a King's Gang Member encourage the Courier to keep up the good work and give a little present. However, sometimes those messengers keep coming in quick succession: as soon as one leaves the location, another one appears. This doesn't seem to fix over time.
 * There is a bug where you can buy the Euclid's C-Finder gun from Max multiple times.
 * The building by Mick & Ralph's sometimes glitches by standing by one of the corners and walking forward and hitting the Pip-Boy at the same time to fly all the way up the corner of the building and be above and sometime it will summon one on top of the Lucky 38.
 * Sometimes the two kids will be going through the rodent chase animations but the rodent will be nowhere in sight.
 * After killing the giant rat for the first time, it will re-spawn a few days later, but the kids will no longer chase it. If the rat is killed, the kids will run and eat it again.
 * Sometimes when fast-traveling to an area in the wasteland, the background effects of Freeside, such as dogs barking and glass bottles breaking, will be heard.
 * There is a bug noted elsewhere where save games do not load and the game simply hangs up. This can be triggered by spending more than a certain amount of time in Freeside. Going through transitions using autosave can often trigger this. A simple remedy is to fast travel to anywhere outside of Freeside then fast travel back to one of the Freeside gates. This is a memory leak issue that was supposedly addressed in an update, as the above Freeside sounds being heard, but still exists in the latest update.

Interactive map
