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Update 26.5 ? Loose Ends

So that was Dead Money, proper. But! There was, of course, another option. There are actually two more! One I can do, the other requires several things to have been done differently so I will say roughly what those are and post what it is.

As these aren't video captures of the slides, I do recommend you head over to The Fallout Wiki page and click the little speaker buttons they have to hear the VA's deliveries on some of these.

First up, what if the Courier were aggressively stupid?

We will start with a thing I missed (speaking of being aggressively stupid )



Look between the last two railings on the left side.



Hey! A holotape! Also, look at the light. A skeleton on a pipe! What's up Fred.



Let's hop down there.



Hey cool! +3 Energy Weapons

The skeleton is container called The Founder's Remains (it's empty, but you can interact with it which is rare for a New Vegas skeleton).



Also I failed to show the gun case in the Vault. Look at all dat ammo!



Here we are again!

Click!



The game (understandably) doesn't want you to click this.

I SAID CLICK




Sinclair is, honestly somewhat rightly, pissed off at Dean. There's the and that people mentioned, but also a heavy dose of because Sinclair has to the best of his knowledge never done anything to Dean. And as it turns out, he never really did, he just got on the wrong side of Dean's whole being severely fucked in the head thing.

At this point the game slaps you straight into an alternate version of the ending slide, narrated by Vera.

Vera Keyes/Dead Money Alternate Ending posted:


The Courier, lured by the promise of the Sierra Madre, could not escape. Once inside the vault, the casino did not let go. When the Courier finally passed away, the casino created a new Hologram to walk with the other ghosts that filled its casino. It was a pre-programmed homage intended for another. It assumed a new meaning in the likeness of the Courier. A means of allowing even the dead to begin again.


Seriously, I find this path in particular really disappointing. All that potential for a complete and utter meltdown from Elijah! It would put his anger in the other part to shame! Just completely wasted!



The second question is what if the Courier were a complete crazy, but smart enough to not press the big button telling you not to?

Well, you can actually side with Eljah! IF, and it's kind of a big if, the player has pretty strongly negative NCR reputation AND has killed God AND manages to ask all the questions in Elijah's final conversation, you can side with him!

Father Elijah/Dead Money Alternate Ending posted:

In the years that followed, the legend of the Sierra Madre faded, and there were no... new visitors to the city. Years later, when a mysterious blood red cloud began to roll across the Mojave, then West toward the Republic, no one knew where it had come from. Only that it brought death in its wake. Attempts to find the source of the toxic cloud failed. The Mojave was cut off. Through the Cloud, lights were seen from HELIOS One. There were stories of ghosts immune to gunfire, who struck down anyone they saw with rays of light. The last chapter of the Mojave came when a modified REPCONN rocket struck Hoover Dam, releasing a blood-red cloud, killing all stationed there. All attempts to penetrate the Cloud and re-take the Dam failed, and both the NCR and Legion finally turned away from it, citing the place as cursed. In the years that followed, communities across the West began to die as traces of the Cloud began to drift over lands held by the NCR. Only two remained alive in the depths of the Cloud, at the Sierra Madre, waiting for their new world to begin again.


Madness! Total madness. I assume he is able to get the tech in this scenario because, since the Courier is cooperating fully, he is actually able to get the message for Vera and knows that accessing Sinclair's accounts is going to spring the one deathtrap the Madre was actually supposed to have, so he works out a different way. As someone mentioned in the thread, the "Vera" option that we got the warning from completely disappears after being read.

There are some other bits of ending changes as well, for players who for one reason or another kill one of the companions.

If Dog was killed!

Dog and God posted:


When Dog fell in the Sierra Madre casino, two died as one. Dog died hungry, alone, frightened. The voice in his head died with him. Screaming. Furious. Enraged. But the voice was gone, and Dog was grateful. At least Dog was dead and the voice needed to watch over him no more. In the moment before their lives ended, the wall between the two personalities fell. The two became silent as they saw the chain between them. Hunger and control are twin greeds, something Dog and his shadow had never realized


If the God personality is dead, but Dog is still alive:

Dog posted:


Dog, free of the voice inside his head and no longer waiting on the voice of the Master, wandered back West. His hunger never ended. Often, small communities would suddenly vanish. They were assumed to have been hit by Wasteland creatures and dragged away... dogs, brahmin, and humans alike.


Similarly, if the Dog personality is dead, but God remains:

God posted:

Freed of both Dog and the one who held Dog's leash, the other voice resumed control. First the mind, then finally, the mutant's shell. His first act was to tend to the scars on the body with careful hands, slowly healing all the scars except the ragged name torn on his chest. He briefly thought of remaining at the Sierra Madre. But it was a monument built by humans, representing something he no longer needed. He began walking west, in search of others like him. As he did, he spoke of the courier who had set him free and allowed his life to begin again.


Killing Dog entirely or the God personality are the bad endings. Killing the Dog personality alone is a strange sort of not actually BAD, but it's certainly hollow.

If Dean dies:

Dean Domino posted:

Dean Domino, entertainer, singer... thief... had his last show on the Sierra Madre stage. The heist he spent over two hundred years planning fell apart, just as the first, by underestimating his partner's strength. Not long after the Courier left the Villa, the lights in the theater shut off, one by one. Only Dean's Hologram remained on stage, singing silently to an empty room. Still... as consumed as he had been with its riches and ruin, the Sierra Madre had held him captive long ago.


Dean's on the other hand is a pretty solid ending for the prick though

And lastly, if Christine is killed:

Christine Royce posted:

Christine, scarred by her hunt for Elijah and unable to let him go, perished in the Sierra Madre Casino. She never completed her mission, nor did she stop to consider what had driven her to accept the mission in the first place. Obsession is another form of greed, a lesson that Christine never learned.



So, that was the plot of Dead Money and some alternate endings. But what happened to Courier after he left the Madre?

Well, the first thing is you will hear the radio that was playing Vera's invitation playing something different.



Next up, let's get to wandering about.



This little box is in the bunker/mantrap.



This is why you want to get the Complimentary Voucher code for the Madre machines! This will restock every 3 game-days for a total of 1100 Madre chips if you got the code! It's literally infinite stuff!

There is a vending machine in the area to use them on, of course. There's really only one properly interesting thing though:



Elijah's previously key-requiring computer!



There is a chemistry set that gives a free piece of Cloud Residue every 24 hours.





And the "Download Holomessage" is... a specially locked thing for Veronica, actually, so let's head on out.



Also once you get up this far into the bunker the game just dumps everything you had previously into your inventory with no ceremony or choice so you will suddenly move a lot slower, most likely. This means that for the next several minutes of play, you will get the "_______ has been added to your inventory" message for every single fucking item you had previously! I kept them in so you guys can be annoyed too.



Also this typo graffiti entertains me.



Hi Veronica!



I found Elijah.

You did? Where? Oh my God, I mean... I thought... I don't even know what I thought might have happened to him.



I had to trap him inside a Pre-War... prison.

Trapped him? Where?



holy shit that's a special kind of sad

Did he say anything when you met him? Anything... anything at all?

There's something I wanted to pass along.

Where did you get this?



It's a message. The news is up to you.

All right, I'll watch it.



This is, of course, just kinda crappy gameplay/story separation. Show, don't tell dammit! Oh right Gamebryo. You are forgiven Obsidian.

Did it make any sense?

The parts I understood? Didn't matter. Past all the garbage, all it amounted to was goodbye. Sorry... feel a little out of it. Head's spinning a bit...



I think he left me a gift. Maybe I can use it better than he did.



Veronica gets a power up out of the DLC if you do this. Note that this affects Melee Weapons, not Unarmed. By default, Veronica's Melee Weapons skill will never go over 18

Incidentally, the player can get Veronica to unlock the tape and then keep it from her, getting the Elijah's Ramblings perk for an additional 50% critical damage with Melee Weapons.

Also that's another thing that rubs people who played the DLC thoroughly the wrong way, actually. We can tell Veronica about Elijah, but we are apparently incapable of putting two and two together and telling her about Christine.