New Vegas Cut Stuff

The intro
=========

Originally the game was to have an in-engine introductory sequence. This would show the entire scene with Benny and the Great Khans Jessup and McMurphy that takes up the second half of the finished game's FMV sequence. At some point in development two things happened; firstly a press demo was created that commented out the intro and skipped straight to the character creation part of the game, and secondly the in-engine intro was completely scrapped and replaced with an FMV instead. When the latter happened they actually just used the press demo code with an extra line to play the new FMv. This is what is used in the final game.

In the original in-engine intro the scene starts immediately with the player hooded and standing in the grave. The dialogue follows the same basic arc, but the actual words spoken are completely different (in particular Benny's "bad luck" line is much less pithy and polished than the one used in the FMV). This sequence also features Victor actually digging the player out of the grave, something that is only spoken of but never actually shown in the final game. The code that runs the intro sequence is a battleground of commented out contradictory lines where different iterations have introduced and then removed new effects and ideas. For example, One iteration uses the setscale command to make the player half the size to give the impression of kneeling (the player is actually standing bolt upright the whole time). This then breaks the later character generation sequence as it triggers a bug where the player is classified as a child. There is a later workaround to this where the player's age is reduced and then immediately increased with agerace -1 and then agerace 1. This doesn't seem to work right either and usually still results in the player still being classified as a child.

Even stranger, there are dialogue lines for TWO different versions of this sequence. One is twice as long, with extra lines featuring the three characters bickering about how to get home again from the dangerous area. There is also an extended version of the final scene with Victor digging up the player where he actually reaches out to help the player out of the grave (in the shorter "final" version the player stands up of their own accord and promptly collapses again).

Finally, at the point in the intro where the player is shot and collapses into the grave, there is code to run an FMV file called FNVLogo2.bik. This is of course not present in the game, and would likely either simply be the game's logo, or possibly be the early teaser video shown of Victor digging up the player, as it would fit in perfectly with the next part of the sequence.

The digging/burying scene relies on using the blood spatter effect to slowly cover up the screen. It also uses a command that controls how long the spatter effect stays on screen to ensure it remains until wiped off by the script. However, this command is not implemented in the final game! Calling this command at any time instantly crashes the game.

There are also lots of AI Packages created for this scene that were eventually abandoned in favour of directly calling some of the actions from the quest script (e.g. Jessup pistol whipping the player).


The Kings
=========

Pacer has general dialogue that is impossible to access in the finished game. Going on other evidence, it's likely the Player would have first met him in this state, and could have asked him about Freeside etc. Speaking to him in this state also lets you ask him about how to gain access to the Strip. This would likely have flagged up extra dialogue in the King's dialogue as explained further along. Instead, at some point how you meet Pacer was changed, and he instead hangs around the doorway and forces the player to pay a toll to see the King. Once this change was made, all his dialogue was cut.

If the player had found out about the ability for the King to get them into the Strip (almost certainly by talking to Pacer first as outlined above), They could ask him about this when he is first encountered. In the final game this is impossible to trigger as no one provides the needed flag.

Once the player had exposed Orris, it was originally intended for the player to somehow be contacted by the King (presumably by a messenger) and told to come and see him up in his room to begin the second half of G I Blues. This would lead to a rather risque scene where the King is laying on his bed with his two groupies, and on entering the room he would make a comment about his "little friend" having "just come". The dialogue, triggers and scripts for this sequence are all in the game, but not placed on the map so it never plays. Instead he is just found downstairs in the stage area as normal.

There are two unused endings to King's Gambit. If the player gets the help of either Colonels Moore or Hsu, then Pacer would object and try to stage a coup. Dialogue was recorded for a further scene where the Player could try to reason with him, and either talk him down with a speech challenge, convince the Kings to shoot him (as normally happens in the finished game), or tell the soldiers to open fire on everyone. This was presumably cut to make the two different choices more distinct and less redundant. I.e. The player is told Moore will not tolerate any bullshit, so it makes sense that involving her men leads to unavoidable tragedy for the Kings.


Freeside
========

There are different iterations of Freeside visible in the game's scripts. Initially Freeside was one single large worldspace. This extra space was well used with a lot of NPCs, and in particular a very neat touch where travellers would constantly enter at the North gate to head to the strip, explaining how all the people in the Strip got there (this code and its trigger is actually still in the final game and can be triggered, however a debug line deliberately makes the conditions for travellers to spawn impossible, and the trigger code is commented out). However, this setup was buggy and caused all kinds of performance problems, most notably on consoles. It seems the next iteration solved this by using triggers to activate/disable NPCs as the player approached/left an area. These scripts also give us an idea of what and where NPCs were originally placed, although this may have only been implemented once the area was split. In the initial iteration the Mormon Fort was also on the same map - this can be seen on the freesideworld map where the remaining LOD doors are shown completely open.

Eventually things must have reached a head and the original plan was abandoned, with the map now split into two halves. If they didn't exist before, the enable/disable NPC triggers existed in this iteration. However it's clear this still didn't solve the performance problems (or perhaps it simply caused too many bugs by itself - most notably fleeing npcs disappearing if the player chased them past one of their triggers). In the end the majority of NPCs were simply removed, and things that relied on the area being one persistent worldspace were removed or dummied out as well. This includes the travellers and a further scene with Orris' favourite customer getting a new bodyguard.

A huge amount of effort and expense was put into recording dialogue lines for locals, squatters, and other special NPCs in the area - this was all wasted as in the final game all squatters are removed save a handful in the NCR ruined store (and even then their dialogue conditions are broken making them only able to say one single line of their lengthy dialogues), and all local dialogue is completely broken, as well as only a pathetic two "local" NPCs surviving the cull. There were also lines recorded for Ghoul locals (both male and female), however ghouls are not included in the pool of NPCs that can be locals so cannot be seen. There are also two different sets of dialogues for locals, covering different topics. However, they clash somewhat, as in one set many of the locals sound sluggish and drunken, whereas the same characters in the other set sound sharp and alert. This may also be why this particular set was disabled (unlikely, they were just botched to be honest). There are also several drunk characters near the east gate. These are all disabled in the game, and indeed none appear at all in the entire game. They have unique dialogue and make use of the many special idle markers for them nearby. Many of the NPCs in the drunk pool do not have the right voice type however, and so cannot say any lines. Finally there are several unique (disabled) bodyguards near the East gate, and a final one by the north gate who is deliberately disabled.

There were two more unused NPC types - Pickpockets and Beggars. There were to be two pickpockets on the map, charmingly named "Roger the codger" and "Bitter Bob" as visible in VFreeFormFreesidescript. A very basic script for pickpockets exists, and full dialogue exists in VfreeformFreeside2, but has no recorded voice lines. No actual NPCs exist, but a faction exists.
Beggars are in the game code, and consist of 3 old men who play an idle where they beseech people for caps. They have no dialogue and are not placed on the map.

Strip gate rushers would randomly spawn instead of travellers. There were drawn from a random pool including ghouls. In the final game the traits of these characters are not inherited, so the one single rusher left in the game (the one that appears when Old Ben is first talked to) has a weird looking placeholder face/body.

On release there were three children chasing the rat. With subsequent patches this was reduced to just one.

Originally the Van Graff intro sequence in the Silver Rush was longer. The scene would start without the guy kneeling on the floor, and instead Gloria would tell Jean Baptiste to go and get him (he is locked in the bathroom, which explains that odd area), to the bewilderment of the customer. It would then be explained who he was - a former employee who was romantically involved with Gloria and cheated on her. He is then shot to show the customer not to mess with the Van Graffs. This was cut presumably due to a complete lack of bound hand animations.If restored, the "volunteer" will walk normally to his end place, where the bonds would magically appear on his hands as he sits down, and then disapper again (bonds are broken in the game generally, no one who is tied up is actually tied up at all if you look!). As this whole part of the sequence was cut, a hasty edit job removed other parts that would now be missing, including the final gag where Jean Baptiste congratulates Gloria on her great story about sleeping with the now dead guy (who he thought just stole some stuff from them). He then realises she wasn't joking and is appalled! There's also another part of this that was cut early. Originally the "volunteer" would stop at the stairs and be pushed down them onto his face by Jean Baptiste. There is a pusher object to achieve this and a trigger, but it is disabled and presumably cut very early on. Its script notes mention it will have to be spruced up on "polish week", but it seems it was just abandoned.

I'd speculate it was originally possible to get into the top of the Silver rush from outside, as there are a number of idle furniture items in there that are impossible to see from the street - someone must have put them there on purpose. In the final game it is inaccessible.

Rotface was originally intended to have an entire unmarked quest dedicated to him where the player could influence what happened to him by way of dialogue. Once he began to make money from supplying tips to the player, he would bling up, and depending on what was said to him, either attract too much attention from local thugs and be killed and robbed, get too big for his boots and attempt to rob the player at gunpoint, decide to leave Freeside, or join the followers of the apocalypse. It seems they just plain ran out of time to implement this, as his script is only half finished despite all dialogue being present. Parts of his quest DO work in the vanilla game but are extremely hard to trigger. If the player buys exactly ten tips (not including the first "free" one he says which erroneously does not increase the counter even though it was clearly intended it should) and then leaves the area and returns, he will have bought his new hat, which is unique in the game, and embarrassingly still named "Euology's hat" as it's a leftover Fallout 3 item.

The Strip
=========

As with Freeside this area was supposed to be one large worldspace. Again, problems with framerates and memory occured as long open areas leave nowhere to hide NPCs and result in frame rate crippling draw distances. The original iteration can be seen in the E3 preview video, and most tantalisingly a slightly later iteration of the same version in the early playthrough presentation with J E Sawyer. It's also apparent from this that the area would have stretched further sideways, with a second row of casinos etc. This was likely cut when it was clear that getting the content present in the final game running would be difficult enough. Vestiges of this iteration are visible in the final game; the Tops has a marker and trigger for the quest messengers (NCR embassy mesesnger, etc) outside an impossible to reach doorway outside of the strip in case the player left that way. In the final game the corresponding doorway inside the Tops is an elevator.

The E3 version shows considerable changes to the area; not only is it one coherent worldspace with no gates dividing it, but it's also wider. The far left Tops entrance door is fully accessible in this iteration, and the walls demarking the end of the strip extend further back behind the casinos on that side of the strip. The destroyed bridge near Vault 21 is notably absent in this version, and the plants outside the Ultraluxe seem slightly different. Interestingly the walls of the strip are also solid concrete walls, and at the end of the strip are a pair of concrete guard towers with snipers on as found at Camp McCarran. This design was for some reason changed to the junk wall design found in the final game, and is fully represented as such in the intro video (which however, does NOT show the ugly dividing gates, either as a necessary aesthetic compromise - the strip looks terrible with them in place and would break the fly by camera effect - or because they weren't there when the video was made).

There was likely a further iteration after this one, that looked like the one present in the final game. It was still one freely explorable worldspace at this stage. The strip was split into eight notional areas for moving NPcs around, with triggers to move them to the intended position. It seems even at this stage that persistent Refs were used for NPCs, which is interesting as the early Freeside used placeatme characters which resulted in greater variety of NPCs but causes crashes due to the amount of memory used (persistent characters are always kept in memory, whereas placeatme ones are new each time - requesting new models from a pool as big as the freeside travellers all the time seems to trigger instability and crashes in my experience).

At some point this was abandoned in the same way Freeside was, and the checkpoint gates were installed. The strip is still one worldspace, but the gates hide the long view distance and reduce the number of NPCs that need to be present at one time. As they're just teleported around.

Once Mr House has died it was intended for a eulogy message to be played here, but it was never implemented. See Mr House for more.

Securitron dialogue is broken to a ridiculous degree. All regular action dialogue (entering combat, warning the player, etc) has not been randomised, so only the topmost out of the three responses for the many topics will ever be played. Furthermore Strip based securitrons cannot play some crucial dialogue lines due to dialogue faction settings, so only lucky 38 securitrons can play these lines (which are to do with the strip!). There are also peculiar unused dialogue lines to warn the player about entering off limit areas and to "return to the surface"(!). Finally there are also alternate lines for the "girls gone wild" scene in the fountain that never actually play ("ladies, please remove your bras from the bottom of the fountain!").

There are also some curious leftovers from early testing present in the game files. There are a number of disabled objects linked to markers that are named "streetgoof". This seem to be early ideas for what would later become the strip's scripted sequences (e.g. girls in fountain, graffiti, etc). One "goof" is a man chasing a woman around in much the way the children do in Freeside. The others are stranger - one spawns some sun loungers and bottles of beer on top of the NCR Embassy, and a further one inexplicably spawns some cushions and a mattress propped up at a 45 degree angle on top of the Gomorrah casino (!?).

There is also a second unused brahmin that was obviously intended to be included in SS7 (brahmin loose on strip scene). It doesn't have it destination set like the other cow, however.

Commented out lines in gate movement scripts show originally there was more than one station vendor, and more than one Tops promoter.

The E3 video shows Mr Holdout running up to the player rather than calling them over once a trigger is tripped. This was likely just an early oversight rather than intentional.


Mr House/Lucky 38
=================

There is an early test map for Mr House and the Lucky 38 in the game called Lucky38Penthouse. This contains a stripped down basic version of the full game penthouse with an early placeholder version of a human Mr House! He's in the game files as MrHouseoutdated. He has no dialogue if you talk to him, but in fact his placeholder dialogue IS in the game. It's just early versions of the proper dialogue, and mostly has no voiced replies, although some lines do. These lines are listed as MrhouseOUTDATED in Vdialoguemrhouse.

It seems it was originally intended that the Lucky 38 doors would be closed every time the player entered the strip and would have to ask Victor to open them again. The code for this is in the game but commented out, likely as it's clumsy/stops the player from gaining entry if they kill Victor.

Originally if the player started combat with the securitrons in the casino, rather than end the whole House Questline, Mr House would shut down the elevator for 24 hours until the player had cooled down. This would be handled by the Quest VMQHouseLockdown, but it's a real mess in the game and doesn't really do terribly much. The quest and the quest script work at cross purposes and don't set variables the other is expecting. The quest also contains a huge number of stages for every permuatation of the main quest(s) that contradict what is outlined by the quest script and other variables to do with this event. The quest objectives suggest that the Lockdown is simply what normally happens if the player kicks off in the casino, only with Mr House telling them to leave (i.e. Victor no longer controls the elevator, the faction becomes an enemy). However, the quest SCRIPT suggests that what was intended was that the elevator would become completely unusable and the player would have to wait 24 hours in order to use it again. The dialogue for this event also relies on a variable that neither of these two set. vDialogueMrHouseElevatorAlert contains the dialogue for House.

Mr House has dialogue to greet the player on first entering the Lucky 38 Penthouse but not having spoken to him yet. In particular he tells the player that he "invited you you here so we could talk, not so you can nose around".

Originally it was planned that Mr House could be seduced (presumably only by female characters). If successful in some sort of speech challenge, the player would be told to enter the secret area of his penthouse and enter some kind of "scanner" (to perve over the player's body?). It's not clear what would happen next, but presumably the idea would be that it would let the player enter his secret area (fnar!) without setting off the alarm like usual. This is detailed in Mr House's dialogue script:

int seduction		;1 = House has expressed interest, 2 = invited to secret area, 3 = has been scanned

There are also blank placeholder dialogues for this scene, but they contain no actual dialogue ("Scannerafter", "Scannerbefore").

There's a real mess involving the Securitron next to the secret room terminal. There are about 3 different aborted ways in which this Securitron would be triggered to tell the Player to stay away from the Terminal using a special dialogue string. There's a talk dialogue package, a special trigger, and the trigger that is used in game to mark when the player has already done this part and got into the secret room (and the commented out code in here is a broken mess that woudln't do anything). God knows what caused all this (signs point to someone who didn't know what they were doing!), but the dialogue topic that was going to be used is missing in the finished game.

Originally there were four ceiling gun turrets in the area. They were to be spawned once the player gained access to the secret room. They presumably can't all have been inside the relatively tiny secret room area, so some were likely to haved appeared in the main area near Mr House. Early scripts have four turrets, but later scripts (particularly one that is used in the game to handle the player killing Mr House and resetting the Securitrons etc) only feature one single turret that is commented out. Presumably they just found the turrets unbalanced (it's hard enough getting in with just the Securitrons) and removed them one by one until the idea was abandoned altogether. The turret enemy is still in the game files as "L38TurretCeiling01".

Once the Secret room area is broken into by the Player, a klaxon alarm sounds. However, originally it was intended for a second warning message to be read out in a stereotypical cold computer voice. This is all set up to run in the game, but the dialogue is missing. Only the blank topic "vDialogueMrHouseRoomBreach" remains. Hidden just behind the control room door is a disabled female NPC called "vLucky38AlarmWoman" and a talking activator that would have broadcast her message.

If the player were to destroy the Fort Securitrons and/or if the player enters the secret room, Mr House was supposed to taunt the Player at each area of the Lucky 38. In the casino entrance he would taunt the player with the impossiblity of fighting their way to the penthouse, in the penthouse he would tell the player to give up and that winning was "unlikely", and once the player entered his control chamber he would plead with the player to spare him. There are two different dialogues for each area depending on what had happened - if the securitrons were destroyed he is more defiant and angry, and once the player reaches the final chamber he tells them to "get it over with", whereas if the player has only entered the secret room he begs for his life. This dialogue is a mess - There is only dialogue in the casino for "vStoryEventMrHousePissed 1", which is the secret room entry state. Therefore the player would never be in a position to hear this unless they ran away from the penthouse while Mr House was still alive - which is impossible - and if the player has destroyed the Fort securitrons, the dialogue would not meet the criteria to play anyway (even thought it more explicitly refers to this event). Furthermore, several scripts in the secret room area reset the variable to vStoryEventMrHousePissed 1 in the game, so if the player was in the vStoryEventMrHousePissed 2 state (destroyed securitrons), this will be overwritten and the alternative defiant dialogue would not play. VStoryEventMrHousePissed 2 is oddly also set once Mr House is killed, even though I don't think anything checks it at this point.

Dialogue topics:

vDialogueMrHouseCasinoPissed, vDialogueMrHousePenthousePissed, vDialogueMrHouseControlPissed

This is all academic, however: there are no activators or npcs setup to actually play any of this dialogue to begin with!
The dialogue is also spoken in Mr House's regular face to face voice rather than the echoing tannoy style voice that is used when the player is in the Basement, which may be a further reason why it was cut. The files are also in mono, so the game would only play them as regular dialogue audible only a few feet away from whatever is saying them, and they wouldn't be heard across an area, further limiting their usefulness.

Once Mr House is dead there were supposed to be (presumably regular) broadcasts of this fact in the Strip. There are two randomised takes of this dialogue, and it would explain how people inexplicably know he is dead all of a sudden. (vDialogueMrHouseLastWillTestament)

Originally the Player had three ways to gain access to the secret room - They had either to pass a hacking skill check, obtain the Platinum chip, or obtain a Lucky 38 VIP keycard. In the final game the latter was essentially removed and is no longer checked (although the items can still be found. There are also several unused quest stages for all the main quests where the player must obtain a lucky 38 VIP keycard.).

Originally the quest 'The Moon Comes Over the Tower' was vastly longer and would presumably supply the player with the information needed to solve the above problem. There were originally three futher quest stages; two are deleted but their quest markers exist (one simply links to the terminal, the other to a waypoint in the casino ceiling). A further unused stage still exists, in which the player must "Disable the Lucky 38's network encryption from three executive consoles.". On accessing the terminal in the Lucky 38, a message would presumably alert the player the terminal could not be accessed. The player would then have to go to the House Tools Office, New Vegas Steel and Camp Golf to find computer consoles that would allow the Lucky 38 to finally be bugged. It's likely at this point that the data would reveal how to get into the secret room, and presumably reveal the existance and use of the VIP keycards, which are located nearby. In the final game the items are still there, but are not checked by the secret room terminal - only the platinum chip is.

There is no extra dialogue from Emily on the subjects above, but she does allude to possible problems with "network encryption". In the final game there are two versions of what was left; originally the player must have had a science skill of 50 as WELL as the bug. What was eventually used was a guaranteed win with no science check at all, making the quest pretty much redundant as it doesn't even have any meaningful outcome.

There are also a couple of unused quest markers for this quest placed in seemingly random parts of the Lucky 38 casino. Possibly they were destination markers for stuff on other floors (i.e. the terminal in Mr House's room) before someone else fixed it up and just used conditional markers for the actual doors etc.

Marilyn remains a mystery. According to J E Sawyer she was cut late on due to "problems with her dialogue". It's hard to work out what her role would have been. Both herself and Jane appear in the penthouse but are also present but disabled in the Lucky 38 suite as well (it's possible originally they would sell the suite upgrades). Looking at Jane's dialogue, it is attributed both to her AND Marilyn. Therefore it's very likely they were merely redundant copies of each other with different dialogue (but with the same outcomes, i.e. giving snowglobes etc). Perhaps they had some kind of "ping-pong" effect planned where dialogue would swap between them between lines, and that is what didn't work?

Originally the Lucky 38 would start out darkened, with the external lights turned off at night. The player would be tasked with restoring the power to the Lucky 38 in several ways - one would be to manually walk into the basement and turn on the power via a high level (85) science skill check, another would be to go to the Eldorado substation and "jumpstart" the reactor to make it run. This would then turn on the reactor. Unused dialogue from Yes Man and Victor says this would then make the Lucky 38 independent from Hoover dam, and the reason to conquer that area would then be mere dominance of the region and to sell the unneeded electricity back to the NCR. There is also dialogue for a cut scene where the player, Yes Man/Victor, and some other securitrons would sit on a distant hill and watch the lights come on. Once this would happen, a script flag would cause all NPCs in the game to comment on this event - this dialogue also remains for a huge number of NPCs. At some point this was abandoned (probably because it robbed House/Yes Man of their motivation in the final act), and the Eldorado substation quest was reused instead as a way of getting extra power in order to increase the range of secutritrons to take back Hoover dam. The Eldorado terminal still has all the original power on functions for its original use, but a script overrides this so the player cannot actually use the terminal proper and instead shows a button prompt.

Once the above quest was abandoned, the player was prevented from ever entering the basement of their own violition. Originally the player could enter and explore at their leisure, with no forcefield blocking the room ( there is even code in case the player gets hit/hits the securitrons during their demonstration due to this). Victor would appear downstairs and still has the dialogue necessary to tell the player what level they were on. This is also why Mr House and Yes Man both urge the player to go back upstairs as soon as possible when in the final game they have no choice but to.

The original name for the basement was "facilities management". This was then changed to "physical plant", although this dialogue is not heard in the finished game as Victor is of course removed the basement area.

There is dialogue for Victor to introduce the Cocktail Lounge floor in the Lucky 38. For some reason it was deliberately decided to not have him spawn there (perhaps to prevent combat oddness as they're the same worldspace?). The dialogue even notes he's deliberately not there and the dialogue is only provided in case someone changes their mind.

Victor was originally meant to confront the player on their next visit to the Lucky 38 (outside on the strip) if the player destroyed the fort securitrons. Dialogue remains but is unused.


The Tops
========

Originally the player would be kicked out for doing something at the tops, most likely for breaking the bank on the gambling games. There are two identical scripts/quests (VTopsKickedOutSide VTopsKickedOut) that handle this, but they are deliberately dismantled so never run. It's likely they found that banning the player completely from the Casino wasn't very fun, so just stopped the player from gambling anymore.

As explained previously there was also originally a further Tops exit that lead to what is in the final game outside the bounds of the level. In the final game the actual corresponding door inside is an elevator.

There seems to have been some kind of chase sequence with Benny planned once he fled the Tops. Inside his Hotel room is of course the secret back area with Yes Man, but also a further corridor area with a locked door at the end. This door cannot be opened, but there are exploits to get inside (as well as of course simply using the console to "unlock" the door). On entry the player can explore an area that segues from the Tops basement through to a rocky underground area full of explosives (which Benny has clearly used to blast through the walls) into the remains of part of Vault 21. The tunnels extend a ways in two directions here, with some loot to be found and some locked doors that can be opened. However, both directions eventually lead to empty void where the section was never finished and was just abandoned. According to J E Sawyer the area was intended to lead to an exit some ways outside of the Strip walls which Benny would use to get in and out of the Strip without Mr House noticing.

Parts of the left hand tunnel and Vault 21 roughly align, so its possible that at some point the two areas would be joined together. There is a sizeable but unfinished part of Vault 21 behind an unopenable door that roughly leads to this area, so possibly at some point it was intended for the player to be able to open the door and enter the tunnel that way.

Misc
====

Doctor Rotson was originally called 'Doctor Canton' and has basic placeholder lines for the player to ask for medical help (with no replies) in place in vDialogueSL. Rotson also has ownership of the original Doctor Canton inventory container.