Fallout: New Vegas Prototype DLCs Discovered, Contains Cut Mission

The team behind the extraordinary Fallout: New Vegas prototype build leaks back in November is back with an even bigger discovery, but this time they’re delving into the game’s DLC missions.

Last month, we reported on the discovery of three unique prototype builds of Bethesda’s 2010 RPG Fallout: New Vegas, which were unearthed and uploaded by Games’ Past, who self-describe themselves as an “organization dedicated to discovering, restoring, and releasing canceled video games & video game prototypes.”

If you want the details on the previously discovered builds of the game, including the cut Mr House romance dialogue discovered therein, I suggest checking out our previous article on Games’ Past’s findings. However, if you’re all up to date, then great news: the team behind the last prototype leak has just released a brand new report detailing an even greater find, which contains prototype builds of all four of Fallout: New Vegas’ story DLCs.

Games’ Past's latest video features insights into Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road, but, likely due to the fact that they were released last, the last two DLC prototypes contain the juiciest info.

The biggest discovery lies within Old World Blues’ prototype, as it houses a cut, almost fully playable mission that didn’t make it into the full release. The retail version of Old World Blues features a location named “X-13”, which has baffled players ever since its release. The X-13 building contains a fully modelled VR room, but the location itself doesn’t exactly feature much in the way of content. While you can explore the tiny room, there’s not actually anything of note that you can do in there.

As the prototype build of the DLC has revealed, the X-13 building was supposed to let players take part in an Operation: Anchorage-style VR stealth mission, but was cut from the retail version of Old World Blues late into its development.

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The X-13 VR room from the prototype version of Old World Blues, featured in Games' Past's video

From the looks of Games’ Past’s footage, the mission was almost complete, save for a few buggy visuals. However, once you complete the mission in the prototype build, the game will ultimately crash (which may at least partially explain why it was cut from the full release).

The prototype build of Lonesome Road is equally interesting, but for an entirely different reason. The prototype build of the DLC is dated February 15th, 2011– over seven months before its retail release on September 20, 2011.

As a result, the build of the DLC is in a far more unfinished state, and its contents feature an incredibly rare glimpse into Obsidian Entertainment’s development process. Most of the locations in the prototype build seem more like proof of concepts, and differ heavily from what we’d ultimately see in the retail version of Lonesome Road.

It’s not just the assets that are unfinished, though, as only one NPC can be discovered and spoken to in the prototype version of Lonesome Road: the masked antagonist Ulysses.

If you interact with Ulysses in this build of the game, he has a bunch of placeholder text that features the dialogue "Hello. I am the antagonist." The Courier is able to reply by saying "I thought as much. Time to die, cheese weasel!" or "Don't do it, bro! Let's hug it out!"

Nice to know the folks at Obsidian Entertainment were having a bit of fun working on Fallout: New Vegas’ final DLC, considering how hard they had to crunch when they were developing the base game.

As Games’ Past notes in the video, there’s likely far more hidden within the prototype builds than they were able to discover themselves, so keep an eye out for any new info in the next few weeks. Or, if you really want, you can download the prototype builds and play them for yourself.

Here’s hoping that someone out there manages to fix that VR mission in Old World Blues, because that has been bugging me for almost 15 years at this point.