Freeside

Metallic Monks

Freeside is the main slum adjacent to but not controlled by Mr. House's New Vegas in 2281. It is protected by 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.

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 indignant people that emerged years later hunted and fought amongst themselves within the ruins, but it was not until the "return" of Mr. House and his robot 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 you can enter 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, which 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 if you have a Speech skill of 50. The price is 500 caps, but you can pass a Barter skill check 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 player 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. Alternately, you can wait until he goes to sleep and steal it from him.
 * 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 The Strip North Gate.

Points of interest in this section include:
 * The King's School of Impersonation, home of the Kings.
 * The Atomic Wrangler Casino, run by the Garret twins
 * The Silver Rush (base of operations for the Van Graffs)

Campfires can be found up by the north gate to the New Vegas Strip. As you face 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, another 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

 * In Freeside you will notice a boy and a girl chasing a giant rat, talk to them as they run and the girl has a regular voice actor as well as the boy. After killing the rat, the girl or the boy (whichever is closest) will eat the rat. When you talk to them now they share a voice actor. So the boy now sounds like a girl, or the girl a boy.
 * Sometimes after you kill 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.
 * If you are outside of the Vegas Strip when you update the game, but have gained access to it at another point, you can be permanently locked out.
 * Sometimes outside the Old Mormon Fort the super mutant Tabitha can spawn and become hostile; killing her results in the completion of the quest "Crazy, Crazy, Crazy" (if you have not started the quest it will add the quest to your Pip-Boy and just say the final bullet point).
 * If you achieve a certain level of reputation in Freeside, a Kings Gang Member will encourage you 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 if you stand by one of the corners and walk forward and hit your Pip-Boy at the same time you will fly all the way up the corner of the building and be above and sometime it will summon you 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 you've killed the giant rat for the first time, it will re-spawn a few days later, but the kids will no longer chase it. If you kill the rat, the kids will run and eat it again.
 * Sometimes when the player fast travels to an area in the wasteland, the background effects of Freeside, such as dogs barking and glass bottles breaking, will be heard.