Video Game / The Frontier

The Nuclear Winter is here.

Fallout: New Vegas - The Frontier is a mod for Fallout: New Vegas released in January 15, 2021, eleven years after the game's release. Set around the same time as the events of the main game itself. Instead of the Mojave Wasteland, however, the mod introduces players to the titular Frontier, a cold, desolate waste surrounding what was once Portland, Oregon. The main plot focuses on a conflict between three factions. First are the NCR Exiles. Led by General Blackthorne, the exiles deserted from NCR after being betrayed by President Kimball, and have journeyed to the Frontier in order to get the supplies and weapons they need to return to California and oust Kimball from power. The NCR Exiles are currently engaged in a war with the Northern Legion, a sub-group of Caesar's Legion led by the enigmatic Legate Valerius. Valerius hopes to not only conquer the Frontier for Caesar, but also to institute necessary reforms that will allow the Legion to function as a standalone nation rather then the warband it is now. Lastly there are the Crusaders, a Brotherhood of Steel splinter cell that has embraced the theology of Mormonism. The group seeks to avenge the Brotherhood's loss at Helios One and also save the soul of the wasteland.

The mod features two (formerly three) distinct main questlines, along with dozens of choice driven open ended side quests. In addition to a large, new setting, the mod features drivable vehicles, including Vertibirds.

On January 28th, 2021, the mod was removed from Nexus Mods and its Steam page was quietly taken down due to serious controversies surrounding its content and creation, as well as some of its developers. A revised build with multiple assets removed both to disassociate from a developer due to the discovery that they drew highly controversial erotic content, among other misdeeds, and at the request of contributors who no longer wished to associate with the mod, was released on Nexus on the 1st of February 2021. Though it has been halted a few times, the developers are in the process of adjusting most aspects of the mod that were criticized on released.

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Tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: Downplayed. The NCR Exiles have this reputation among a chunk of Frontier natives thanks to their involvement in the Snowblind Massacre and the Bright Town Massacre. This only makes it easier for the Northern Legion to find recruits. On the other hand many consider them the better option to the enslaving, crucifying Legion.
  • Even among the NCR, Josiah Zurich is despised for being a Dirty Old Man and an insufferable General Failure. No one misses him when the Hanged Man kills him toward the end of his companion quest.
  • People in Junkflea find Bugeye so annoying that you actually get positive reputation for killing him.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The Frontier adapts the plot point from the unreleased Fallout: Van Buren that the Enclave were planning on leaving Earth to find new planets to live on, and that they planned on setting up a space station of sorts. The plothole is that, while Van Buren made it clear the idea didn't get off the ground and was just a plan, The Frontier gives the Enclave a space station filled with such advanced technology that blows anything from the canon games out of the water. The point of the idea in Van Buren was that it failed to work, but The Frontier adapting it and making it having happened creates huge problems with the setting, because if such a thing could have existed in the canon games, the Enclave realistically could never have lost in the past games, yet now the player has to assume it just never was used before now.
• Adaptational Villainy: Various characters come off far harsher than they did in the vanilla game:
  • General Lee Oliver, in addition to being a Glory Hound who lied to Blackthorne about releasing his men, also gives the order to execute wounded NCR soldiers due to the hospitals being at full capacity.
  • Colonel Royez is depicted in flashbacks as having left behind his own men to die in order to secure power armor and supplies during the Brotherhood war.
• Advertised Extra: Legate Valerius and Dr. Voss feature heavily in early trailers for the NCR Questline, which portray them as the major antagonists. In the end though, neither character appears much in the questline and they're both dispatched fairly quickly by the Courier, allowing Rancor to swoop in and assume the role of Big Bad.
• Affably Evil:
  • Joe Goddard has led an untold number of people to their deaths at Snowblind Point, but this doesn't stop him from being kind and courteous to the player the whole way through.
  • Also Alexander Warren. He is a kind old gentleman who also hunts innocent people for sport, possibly including you.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: All over the place in the Frontier, most notably with Sanctuary and The Netwrk (maybe)
• Alice Allusion: Prodigal Station is chock full of these, and even includes an appearance from the Jabberwocky. Justified as Voss' father filled the location with things his son liked, and as it so happens Alice In Wonderland was one of Voss' favorite books.
• All for Nothing:
  • Should you betray Valerius in the Legion Questline, the ending slides will indicate that the Northern Legion descends into civil war and all but destroys itself, thus making all of Valerius' (and to a certain extent your) efforts pointless.
  • How the NCR Exiles' campaign ends. Blackthorne dies, and so do a lot of characters that could've continued his legacy... not that there's anything to continue: the Liberator gets destroyed in a fight between the Exiles loyal to the Courier and Rancor's forces, and between that and the nuking of Sac-Town any chance of the Exiles reforming the core NCR went up in smoke. The remnants of the Exiles don't have enough manpower to bring civilization to the Frontier. And just to twist the knife, the 2000 caps you got for completing the tour of duty is barely enough to cover a bus ticket back to the Mojave.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Played for laughs with the companions. You can flirt with the vast majority of them, but they'll all turn you down.
• All of the Other Reindeer: This is a major theme for the companion Scrapz. A robot who is part of the Legion, a group of Evil Luddites who hate his guts. Depending on how you resolve his personal quest, he either finds true acceptance in the Legion, or spends the rest of his days with other robots who hate him even more then the Legion did.
• All Hail the Great God Mickey!: You can find a note in the Frontier that indicates at least one person worshiped Sunset Sarsaparilla as a God.
• Always Second Best: In the power structure of the Legion, Legate Valerius is this to Lanius due to Valerius' NCR upbringing. Valerius hopes that by conquering the Frontier he'll finally be seen as Lanius' equal. He succeeds if the player helps him.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Tenth Eye, the leader of the Netwrk. He's probably just a guy speaking through his eyebots, but it's entirely possible that he's actually a sentient eyebot; the questline doesn't give an answer either way.
  • The Mad Merchant of Salt Town as well, as evidenced by his odd appearance, even odder way of speaking, and his ability to slip into heavily guarded areas without issue.
  • As her quest goes on, it becomes more and more obvious that Wrench sees you in this way.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Unlike New Vegas, the player will be put in the shoes of various other characters depending on choices made. The first example happens if the Courier asks about the origins of the NCR Exiles proper where there'll be a playable flashback of Gray, the NCR recruiter, during the battle of Helios One.
• Anyone Can Die: Subverted in the NCR questline, as unlike in the main game most of the characters in the questline cannot be killed by the player. Played with in that this doesn't stop the vast majority of them ending up dead before the credits roll. Played straight in the Legion and Crusaders questlines and the vast majority of side content.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted. Unlike the main game, the player can have as many companions as they want.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: The NCR Exiles have a shooting range where the shooters are pointed directly at the hangar, with nothing between them but the few targets and the short walls the targets are on. Meaning that any missed shots that go high have a good chance of hitting their primary hangar, and they also have nothing to protect people who don't realize where the range is, as it is hard to see from some directions.
• Artistic License – Religion: The Crusaders were founded by ex-Brotherhood soldiers who converted to Mormonism after escaping to New Canaan, but some of them apparently drink caffeine and swear, both of which are major no-nos for practicing LDS members. Their insignia contains a cross pattée; while this fits with the Crusaders' neo-feudal theme, real-life Mormons do not wear or otherwise display crosses of any kind as a symbol of their faith. Possibly justified by a conversation with Warden Howell, who suggests that Domina Weaver's rage and survivor's guilt from the Brotherhood War and the destruction of New Canaan have influenced her faith.
• Ascended Meme: The Tricky Dick character, as well as a unique loading screen, make fun of how often people asked for an Enclave questline despite the dev team making it clear that there would be no such thing. Both have since been toned down in a recent update.
  • Also applies to the companion Skitters, a spider who was cut from the mod early on, only to be brought back and fully implemented mostly on the whim of the dev team.
  • One of the loading screens depicts the infamous Loss meme.
• Asshole Victim: Depending on how you look at things the Midnight Riders might be these at the end of "Dead and Buried".
  • Also Voss' father, even if his death did drive poor Voss insane.
• The Atoner: Donovon's companion quest has him and the Courier tracking down a missing child to make up for Donovon's role in his father's death. It doesn't end well, though he can find a measure of peace if they track down and kill the man who hired him.
• Badass Adorable: Skitters and LAP-N, the two non-humanoid companions, are rather cute, but are also quite deadly in their own way.
• Badass in Distress: If the player refuses to cooperate with the Legion the Courier will be crucified while the NCR mounts a rescue.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: A multi-stage version of this makes up one of the more memorable moments of the NCR Questline.
• Bastard Understudy: It's possible to be this toward Valerius. This path doesn't really work out in the end though.
• The Beastmaster: The player can go up against one of these in the Legion arena. Additionally, one of the bounty targets, Maelon, is this. Given that the player has the Animal Friend perk, they can one up Maelon and get her dogs to fight for them.
• Berserk Button:
  • Wrench utterly loathes the Crusaders, and will refuse to work with you if you help them out.
  • The Crusaders themselves will go berserk if you drive America over the edge. That fury will involve a quick and brutal death.
• Big Damn Gunship: The NCR Exiles have one, a pre-war prototype. In fact, it's the reason they're in the Frontier in the first place. It takes flight in the grand finale of the NCR Questline, at which point it's been commandeered by Rancor and the player needs to destroy it.
• Bleak Border Base: The Vanguard Outpost is this for the NCR Exiles. In the lore, this position used to belong to Outpost Gresham, before it was taken by the Legion.
• Blown Across the Room: This is what happens to you if you manage to survive Charlene's powers overloading.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Invoked by the Ghoul Florence, who used to be an anarchist before the war and mentions this as a common stereotype. Played with, and potentially played straight when it turns out that Florence's solution to the battle over the Salt Town mine is to blow it up.
• Boomerang Bigot: The companion Scrapz, like the rest of the Legion, is distrustful of technology. The fact that Scrapz is himself a robot doesn't seem to phase him.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Quite a few of these, per Fallout tradition.
  • Dr. Welick is an insufferable jerk and glory hound, yet despite this is still a capable doctor and medic. He was in the Followers after all.
  • The Hanged Man is an adorable practical joker with a penchant for pre-war cardgames. He is also a deadly Vigilante Man and a skilled sniper.
• Big Damn Heroes: After the Courier gets captured by the Legion, the NCR exiles, led by Hardcase and his Wolfpack, mount a full-scaled assault on the Legion's camp in order to rescue them.
• Big Good: General Blackthorne for the NCR aligned groups in the Frontier. For Legion aligned players, this role is filled by Legate Marcus Valerius.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lot portrays himself as a happy-go-lucky trader just looking to save his sister from a deranged cult. When you finally catch up to said cult, however, they reveal that Lot is a slaver that's enslaved hundreds of people. When confronted by this he's very nonchalant and doesn't even pretend to care about his victim's grievances.
• Bittersweet Ending: The NCR ending big time. While Rancor is stopped the Exiles suffer extreme casualties and by the end of it the faction as a whole is destroyed with various groups either trying to become a vigilante peacekeeping group or turning into Raiders themselves.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The NCR Exiles are ruthless with a standing order to refuse surrender and have a With Us or Against Us mentality. On the other side the Legion commit the same atrocities as the base game (slavery, torture, crucifixions, etc.) and they're brutally sadistic besides as shown with them slowly dismembering a begging NCR soldier to try and break the Courier.
  • Their recruitment methods showcase this perfectly. On the NCR side the Courier is treated as just another soldier by those who aren't aware of their reputation and the worst that happens is one commanding officer reprimanding them for refusing to kill surrendering Scavengers. On the Legion side they make the Courier go through a beatdown, execute a helpless NCR soldier, and then kill the other recruits just to prove their worth.
• Blamed for Being Railroaded: A lot of the hallucination segment in the NCR campaign consists of blaming the player for things beyond their control, or for them picking any option in a Sadistic Choice.
• Blatant Lies: Sam Viper, an NPC in Junkflea, will give you a short tidbit of information for 15 caps each. Every single thing he tells you is either a flat out lie or Entertainingly Wrong.
• Broken Ace: Wrench. Much like a typical Fallout protagonist she travelled the wastes solving problems and helping people. Unlike the typical Fallout protagonist, it completely blew up in her face, leaving her bitter and cynical. Depending on how you resolve her personal quest, she either grows out of this or doubles down.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Lot is confronted by one of his former slaves about his crimes he's very casual and continues to quip that he has no idea who she is. He makes it very clear he doesn't care at all about what she went through and that she was just one of his numerous victims.
• But Thou Must!: Happens a lot in the NCR Questline, owing to it's more linear nature and focus on spectacle. Averted most everywhere else though.
• Cain and Abel: Played with in regards to Callidus and A.J.. Callidus THINKS he's the Abel, as all he wants to do is protect his sister at all costs. However, he's so insane and obsessive about it that he is the Cain in the relationship.
• Came Back Wrong: The Jabberwocky in Prodigal station is a dead body brought back to life by Dr. Voss. The result is... well, this trope. The same also applies to the other cyber husk on the Space Station and anyone exposed to RUST.
• The Cameo: General Oliver appears in the first flashback of the NCR Questline (though he's voiced by a different actor. Corrupted versions of Benny and Doc Mitchell (also using sound alikes) appear later in the questline.
• Central Theme: Failure. The vast majority of companions either have a major personal failure that's central to their backstories or experience such in the course of their companion quests. In addition, the three main factions and their leaders are each trying to overcome a major failure in their recent past.
  • Another major theme is lies and deception. All of the major faction leaders are in some way either lying to you directly or keeping important details hidden from the player. Not to mention Rancor, the main antagonist of all three routs, is a spy, meaning that lying is his job.
• Cerebus Retcon: The main game portrays the NCR victory at Helios One as a complete victory. The mod quickly establishes however that human cost of taking Helios One was quite large. Not only that but the battle and it's outcome are a major contributor to Blackthorne and a good portion of his men deserting the NCR for the Frontier.
  • New Canaan has typically been portrayed as a borderline heaven on Earth compared to the rest of the wasteland (at least before it was destroyed). Some elements of the Crusaders and Callidus show that even Canaan had some bad seeds.
• Challenge Run: An in-universe one, the "Vault-Tec Challenge" can be found while exploring the city.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Some endings for the NCR and Crusader Questlines result in this.
• Chekhov's Gun: One of the NCR Main Quests shares it's name with this trope.
• Chewing the Scenery: The Legion priest seen early in the NCR Questline is found of this. As is Dr. Voss and his robot double, Von.
  • Justified in the last two cases as both of their personalities are based on a character from a very cheesy pre-war movie.
• Church Militant: The Crusaders are this taken up to eleven. Justified as they are also a splinter group of the Brotherhood of Steel. Averted with the Church of Eternal Life.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: The Courier can be played as this more blatantly than the vanilla game. Wrench attempts to disparage this behavior due to her own experiences though chances are the player won't listen.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The Courier and their unit are subjected to this early in the NCR Questline. The player has several opportunities to perform this during the Legion Questline and up on the receiving end of it again at the climax of "Of Wolf and Man".
• Collection Sidequest: There are several teddy bears hidden around the Frontier, you can turn them in to a man named Richanald in Irvington. Doing so will eventually drive him to suicide, as they remind him of recently deceased family.
• Companion-Specific Sidequest: As in the main game, all of the Frontier's companions have some sort of quest attached to them.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The events of the game occur around the same time as the base game's story, so the conflict in the Mojave plays a big role in the backstory. Kimball is still president and Blackthorne has been reassigned to the Frontier to prevent him from stirring up anti-war sentiments.
  • A successor to the HELIOS One ARCHIMEDES satellites from New Vegas plays a role in the plot.
  • One of the Ghost People from the Dead Money DLC appears and is dueled by the player.
  • The Vault Vikings from New California's Survivalist Raiders originated from Vault 37.
  • A terminal in the town of Irvington indicates that it was once watched over by the ancestor of Frank Horrigan before the war.
• Contrived Coincidence: Following the dogfight in orbit with Dr. Voss, his vertibird blows up. Not only does the Enclave C-Finder that he was carrying survive said explosion, the C-Finder also survives entry and landing back on Earth. And of all places on Earth it not only just so happens to land in Portland, it lands smack it in the middle of the local Legion stronghold.
• Cooldown Hug: This is one of the options at the climax of The Hanged Man's personal quest.
• Cool Plane: The Vertibirds and their variants.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Wyatt is one for New Vegas Bounties' Steven Randall. Like Randall, he's a former bounty hunter that now runs a bounty office with a chip on his shoulder when it comes to ghouls. He's also named after a legendary Old West hero, befitting NVB's numerous references to The Western genre. Like Randall, he gets shot and possibly killed by a figure from his bounty hunter past. However, while Randall is depicted as an overall decent guy with a set of standards, Wyatt is both implicitly and explicitly described as someone living in the past and not acknowledging the darker side of his business. He also killed at least one man based on flimsy evidence, and wanted to shoot his little kid when he saw him do the deed. While Randall dies at a hand of Marko, who's an unrepentant raider and slaver, Wyatt can get killed by the son of said man.
• Cowboy Cop: Wyatt of the Junkflea bounty office is an almost literal one. Even though he's now a Retired Badass he is still a firm believer in taking the law into one's own hands, thus his position as head of the bounty office. Deconstructed, as it turns out Wyatt is also suffering from a mild case of Black-and-White Insanity, which in the past not only drove him to kill a possibly innocent man based on a hunch, but also kill the man's completely innocent son after he witnessed Wyatt's action. However, said son is Not Quite Dead and he can potentially kill Wyatt at the end of of "Dead and Buried".
• Crapsack World: It's a Fallout mod so this is to be expected. This is especially true compared to the Mojave Wasteland however. The Frontier not only has to contend with the same region wide conflict as the Mojave, but has to do so with none of the infrastructure present in the Mojave. It really says something when multiple characters make a point about how settlement completely collapsing into themselves is a regular occurrence in the Frontier.
• Crazy Survivalist: The Scavengers, groups of various people who struggle to make a living in the Frontier's cold. And while some are pro-NCR, other Scavenger groups are either hostile to everyone else or had ended up becoming absorbed into the Legion.
• Crucified Hero Shot: This happens to the Courier him/herself early in the NCR path, at the hands of the Legion. He/She is rescued by the NCR Exiles shortly after.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Owing to it's Hitman inspirations, you can perform quite a lot of these against The Wolfpack in "Of Wolf and Man".
  • Some highlights include: Blowing a man's head off with a rigged cigarette, overdosing an addict on his favorite chems, locking a target in a Vault and then removing all the air in the room, or gathering all the targets in one place then blowing the tram car their standing next to up.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • If A.J. doesn't die during "Of Wolf and Man" then she'll end up getting her tongue cut out, and eventually her limbs are removed by her own brother.
  • You can do this to Valerius if you turn the Legion against him. If you do this though, he'll just come back and fight you to the death in the Grand Finale.
• Creepy Monotone: Quinten, the leader of the robot settlement called Sanctuary, has this. It's particularly pronounced when he threatens to kill you during Paranoid Android. Also Callidus, fitting with him being an expy of Vulpes Inculta.
• Cursed with Awesome: America can Feel No Pain, which is an extremely useful trait in the dangerous Frontier. Unfortunately it had her branded as a mutant, kicked out of the Midwestern Brotherhood and abandoned by her own parents.
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • During the first NCR main quest the Courier is hit with artillery and captured by the Legion despite the fact that the player can survive and fight back against far more stacked odds in the vanilla game.
  • At the tail end of the NCR Exiles campaign, an NCR trooper demands that you turn in your weapons. His face and head is covered, and he speaks with the voice of a guy who had just betrayed you. Despite all the red flags, you get a single dialogue option to turn your weapons in, and aren't allowed to deny, fight back, or reveal his identity.
  • This actually happens numerous times in the NCR plotline to the point of Running Gag. The Courier will be gassed, knocked out and subjected to Mind Rape among various other indignities throughout the main quest. Most glaringly being incapacitated by Rancor and the one soldier he has with him and being helpless while Rancor murders Blackthorne right in front of them. Attempting to fight back won't work since Rancor is invincible and the only way to proceed is to jump out of the vertibird over a height that would kill you in normal gameplay.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Pretty much all the companions can potentially have one of these depending on what the player chooses. Played with in regards to Donovan and Wrench, as they're already very cynical, the player can merely make them more so.
• Darker and Edgier: The mod is more violent and bloody than the main game, with a lot of gore and a graphic torture scene. You have the option to skip those cutscenes, however.
• Deadly Gas: Agent RUST which turns people into zombie like creatures.
• Death of a Child: There's an entire quest, "Take My Leave Of You", dedicated to finding out who's responsible for one of these.
• Deadpan Snarker: As in the main game, there are plenty of sarcastic dialogue options for the Courier.
• Decapitated Army: Valerius believes that if he dies, the Northern Legion will cease to function and fall apart. He's right.
• Deconstruction: The developers have stated that the notorious "enslaving America" dialogue chain is an attempt to deconstruct the Speech check, or more specifically, the idea that Speech checks always have good results. Here, blindly taking the Speech check causes you to do something morally reprehensible. The problem is that the (non-Speech check) dialogue choice that starts the chain is "(try to talk America into putting on a slave collar)", meaning players aren't "blindly" clicking on the Speech checks in the first place. It doesn’t help that both the base game and the Dead Money DLC already did it better; in the former, the Boomer sidequest "Young Hearts" features a speech check that results in the poor fool you’re talking to getting blown into a fine paste and immediately failing the quest, while the latter had the entire plot with Dean Domino, which can be derailed from the first conversation if the wrong barter or speech check is made, forcing the player to eventually kill Dean because they made him distrustful.
• Democracy Is Bad: The Trochili hold this belief, with Queen Juno openly decrying the idea of elections when the player brings them up. Justified in that the Trochili are a race of sentient mutated lizards, and so their hierarchy is as much biological as it is governmental.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The opening of the NCR Questline goes out of its way to introduce you to Hardcase and Hotshot, only for them to die not long after. Also applies to pretty much everyone at Camp New Phoenix, as even characters who die farily quickly into the questline, like Yuri Osmo, have a good amount of dialogue.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The player can literally pull this off in the Swordstone Tower.
• Defector from Decadence:
  • Legate Marcus Valerius views himself as this, given that he was a defector from the NCR that became enamored with the strength of Caesar's Legion.
  • Zig-zagged with Wrench and Theo. Both of them are Enclave defectors who are nice to the player, but they're also both unapologetic ghoul racists and Wrench in particular can be quite caustic in her interactions with the player.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Up until recently with the arrival of the NCR Exiles, slavery was considered a common and normal fact of life in the Frontier. Quite a few Frontier natives react with surprise if the Courier expresses an anti-slavery stance.
  • The Crusaders may be less xenophobic towards Wastelanders then the Brotherhood, but they still have a noticeable bias against Ghouls and other mutants.
• Didn't See That Coming: Unlike the NCR and Legion paths, Rancor is completely caught off-guard in the Crusader questline and is taken down relatively easily when the combined NCR and Crusader forces storm Ostia. It’s clear that he didn’t expect the Courier to jump ship from both factions to one he had no influence in.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the quest "Big Bear is Watching" a man named John Wayne asks you to investigate several so called "subversives". In short order you discover that one of them is a Communist, one is having sexual relations with another woman, and one stole some cereal. Wayne figures that best punishment for these "crimes" is to drag all the suspects out into the middle of the woods and shoot them in the head.
  • Subverted somewhat when you do a little digging you discover that they're all guilty of much worse. The Communist is also feeding intel to the enemy, the lesbian is a drug dealer, and the cereal thief is faking an injury so that he doesn't have to fight anymore. Double subverted when it turns out that Wayne doesn't actually care about that stuff, and wants to kill them all for their non-crimes.
• Disproportionate Reward: Used to make a point in the bounty hunter quest, "Dead and Buried". The cap rewards you get throughout the quest vary wildly and do not progress upwards linearly as they typically do in bounty hunter style quests. This is because some of the bounties you're taking on have been posted by rich, well connected people, and most have not. Thus, one of your first bounties in the quest (which is set up by well to do merchants) is liable to give a bigger cap payout then one of the bounties toward the end of the quest (which is set up by a couple of homeless people looking to get justice).
• Distaff Counterpart: Charly in the Wasted Angel is an obvious one to Dean Domino, being a ghoul lounge singer with a similarly fragile ego. She even has a Berserk Button in Vera Keyes, like Sinclair to Dean.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Can be done a few times by the player. Most notably when they're being tortured by Hardcase towards the end of the Legion Questline.
• The Dog Bites Back: During "Of Wolf and Man" Private John can go ballistic and beat Hotshot to death after yet another one of Hotshot's insults.
• The Dragon: Callidus to Valerius. Rancor to Blackthorne. Clements to Weaver. Depending on which faction the player joins, they can end up being Co-Dragons with the aforementioned characters.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Averted this time around, as the Frontier doesn't bother with the main game's disguise system. Played straight in a few Crusader side quests and the Legion quest "Of Wolf and Man" which offer special one time use disguises.
• The Drifter: Wrench tried to be this, but it didn't work out. Depending on the ending, she can potentially become this again. The Hanged Man is a straight example.
• Driven to Suicide: The player can do this to several characters throughout the mod.
• Drugs Are Bad: Played straight in most of the mod, but zigzagged with the Trochili. While overusing chems is a problem for them (and in fact the lower half of the sewers is filled with Trochili who have been driven insane by chems) the vast majority enjoy them recreationally and suffer no real ill effects. Notably, helping the straight edge Marz is considered the bad ending.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Resoundingly averted. The NCR speaks to the Courier like a Living Legend and, apart from a few NPCs, treat them with awe and assume that their presence will be a turning point in the conflict. They even mount what's at least a 200-man rescue to save them if they're crucified by the Legion, much to one soldier's annoyance and disbelief.
  • Played straight with the Northern Legion. Even if you’re idolized by the main game Legion Legate Valerius will still treat you like a lowly recruit and insist on punishing the Courier even though their spy inside the NCR camp outright told them to work with the NCR till they could establish contact with the group.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: After rescuing the Courier from the Legion and taking down countless mooks, Hardcase runs out of bullets and is shot down by a firing squad on the Legate's order.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The Crusader-NCR peace is bar none the happiest ending. The Legion is destroyed, the Exiles and the Crusaders set aside their hatred to work together for the sake of saving the Frontier, and Rancor is stopped before his plans come to fruition.
• Easy Logistics: In their time on the Frontier, the NCR Exiles have assembled a fleet of Vertibirds, tanks, and gas-powered vehicles, plus what amounts to a helicarrier. How they manage to keep all of them fueled, armed, and repaired is not addressed.
• Egopolis: Underland is one for Dr. Voss. Justified as Underland was actually built by Voss' father to celebrate young Voss' birthday.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Prodigal Station is a pre-war military base designed in such a way. The Trochili also technically have one of these, though it's more just a sewer system they happened to get stuck in. Late in the Crusader and NCR Questlines you visit another one of these and launch a nuke either at Archimedes II or at California, which will destroy Sac-Town.
• Elevator Action Sequence: The final battle against the Prime Yeti is one of these.
• Enemy Mine: Towards the end of the NCR and Crusader Questlines, the two factions can work together against a common enemy (The Legion and/or Rancor).
• Epic Tracking Shot: The NCR Questline is rather fond of these.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As bad as the Northern Legion is, they look down on cannibalism and do not tolerate child abuse in any way.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Why the Northern Legion, with all its many faults, is still preferable to the Portland Enclave.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Legate Valerius has a secret wife and two children sequestered away near Ostia. For all his many, many faults, the man seems to legitimately love his family, which is why he keeps them away from the rest of the Legion.
  • Callidus cares deeply about his sister in his own sick twisted way, to the point where he will attack Valerius should any harm come to her. In the non-Legion paths during the attack on Ostia he’s been caged and left for dead because he tried to stop the rest of the Legion from raping and abusing his sister.
• Exposed to the Elements: Normally averted with NPCs covered in bundled or at least full sleeved clothing. Played straight by the Courier (if they choose to not wear Frontier specific armor) and America (who wears leather armor that exposes her arms and midriff). Justified for the latter given her condition meaning that she doesn't feel the cold of the Frontier.
• Expy: Various characters are very similar to some main game NPC's:
  • Legate Valerius is one to Legate Lanius, being a brutal commander and torturer with a knack for strategy and combat.
  • Callidus Praceo is one to Vulpes Inculta, being an Evil Genius with a Creepy Monotone who use atrocious tactics against their enemies. Similar to Vulpes' dirty bomb Callidus switched his uniforms with that of the slaves in one town they conquered then sent them out to be killed by the NCR strike team sent to rescue them, both so his garrison could escape safely and to demoralize the NCR.
  • Dr. Voss is a very unsubtle one to Deathshead from Wolfenstein, to the point where your encounters with him on the space station mimic the opening levels of The New Order.
  • The Scavengers are essentially reskinned Raiders. While a select few are neutral to the player the vast majority attack on sight and cannot be reasoned with.
• Faction Calculus: As in the main game, the NCR Exiles and Northern Legion are balanced toward each other, however, their strengths are the exact opposites of their main game counterparts. The Exiles have fewer men, but those men are better equipped and trained. Meanwhile, the Northern Legion has entire throngs of Cannon Fodder to throw at the Exiles in any given battle, but the average Northern Legion soldier is nowhere near as well trained as their Exile counterpart. Averted in regards to the Crusaders, who are a new player in the region and do not fit into the balance of power.
• Faceless Goons: Any time the player is put in the hands of a different character, their face is obscured, presumably to keep up the illusion of it being another character. Though the effect is somewhat dampened given that they don’t remove the Pip-Boy as well.
  • Not only that, but you are made to play characters who have white skin. If your Courier is black, you will notice that while playing the "other characters", breaking the immersion.
• Face Death with Dignity: Hardcase can die on his feet, standing up to the Legate after successfully rescuing the Courier.
  • In the Legion Questline, should you betray either Valerius or Rancor, they will each be fully prepared to die fighting you. Weather you actually give them a dignified death, is up to you.
• Face–Heel Turn: Legate Marcus Valerius is an NCR defector, though he views it as a Heel–Face Turn.
• Fantastic Racism: As per usual, Ghouls suffer quite a bit of this from Humans. The Enclave is also just as prejudiced as ever against anyone who isn't a "pure" human.
• Festering Fungus: The same one from Vault 22 can be found in the lab beneath Irvington.
• Fiery Redhead: America is one of these, she even points it out in one of her first conversations.
• Flunky Boss: Subverted for once, as the vast majority of the boss characters are fought on their own.
• Fate Worse than Death: The majority of the Portland Enclave has been ruthlessly lobotomized and experimented on by Dr. Voss and ARGUS, turning them into mindless shells that can only follow orders. Depending on your choices, either Badger or Siren will suffer this fate.
  • Also applies to A.J. if you give her to Callidus as she's left trapped in Ostia, and has her limbs removed one by one to prevent her from killing herself.
• A Father to His Men: One of the first things General Blackthorne does is to find a safe base of operations for the NCR Exiles and minimizing casualties. Even before being Reassigned to Antarctica, he was a popular figure among the soldiers stationed in the Mojave.
  • Somewhat subverted when he willingly risks the lives of hundreds of his men to save the Courier and even prioritizes the Courier’s care over that of his men, which led to the death of those who needed medical attention as well. By the time the Courier wakes up it’s mentioned that at least a few soldiers are considering a mutiny due to the blatant preferential treatment.
• Feel No Pain: America has congenital analgesia, which means that she doesn't feel pain. This got her branded as a mutant and kicked out of the Midwestern Brotherhood after an incident where her left hand was crushed and she didn't even notice.
• Friendly Sniper: The Hanged Man is this.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • Marcus Valerius went from a random doctor in the Brotherhood of Steel, to a major leader of the Legion who may very well conquer the Frontier with the player's help.
  • A common theme shared by all of the Netwrk's backstories.
  • Happens in most of the Trochili's endings, as they come out from nowhere to take control of the Frontier's chem market.
  • The Foreman of Salt Town was just a random mercenary, but he got in a fight with the previous Forman, accidently killed him, and took his place. Since then, he's now become one of the most powerful people in the Frontier.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Parodied by Sam Viper, a con artist in Junkflea who claims that Valerius and Blackthorne are secretly lovers, which is very obviously not the case. Towards the end of the Legion Questline, you can actually bring this up as one of the reasons why Valerius has to go. The Legion are... less then convinced.
• Full-Circle Revolution: It becomes more and more obvious throughout the Salt Town questline that Dell's miner revolution is destined to be this. By the end of the questline, if Dell is in charge, the leadership of the town is just as authoritarian as before, but the quality of life has diminished significantly due to Dell lacking the Foreman's business expertise.
  • Subverted in regards to Florance's plan to collapse the mine in on itself, as doing this secures the good ending for the town.
  • With the right skills, the player can convince Rancor that his plan to take over the Legion at the end of Legion Questline is also this. Pointing this out causes Rancor to kill himself.
• Gaiden Game: The mod takes place roughly around the same time as New Vegas but is set in a different location with a largely unrelated plot.
• Gambit Pileup: Not as much as the main game, but still present in some regard thanks to Rancor's machinations. To whit: the main conflict is between the NCR Exiles and the Northern Legion. The Exiles are trying to get a superweapon called the Liberator working so they can take back California and remove Kimball from power. The Legion are unaware of this (though Valerius is Genre Savvy to realize that the Exiles must be here for some reason) and mostly just want to destroy the Exiles so they can secure their foothold in the region. In the shadow of this conflict are the Crusaders, new arrivals to the Frontier who want to defeat both factions because it's the right thing to do (Legion) and because they want revenge (NCR). Independent of all this are the Portland Enclave, who have been kidnapping Scavs for years, and are planning to unleash a biological weapon on the planet to cleanse all human life. And in the middle of all that is Rancor, who works for both the Legion and the NCR Exiles, while also working for a group of evil NCR Senators back in California... except Rancor isn't actually loyal to any of them and is using them for his own gain. From there, the plot of the NCR and Legion questlines mostly consists of Rancor manipulating you and whichever faction you're a part of to remove these one by one and leave him in power. Subverted for the Crusaders Questline however, where you mostly ignore all of the afformentioned gambits and just do your own thing, ruining Rancor's plans more or less on accident.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Despite allowing the player to play as different characters, they’re essentially just Faceless Goons with all of the Courier’s stats and even their Pip-Boy. Justified since otherwise the player wouldn’t be able to do things like access inventory or use V.A.T.S.
  • Despite all the characters talking about the freezing conditions of the Frontier there's no actual cold mechanic. The player's free to use any vanilla game armor or even run around in their underwear with no ill effect.
  • The player's first 'official' introduction to Junkflea comes during a later part of the main questline. If the player goes there beforehand one merchant claims that they've never seen them before even if they have an Idolized reputation among the Scavengers.
  • The game largely assumes that the Courier has completed every major questline and every DLC, earning themselves a reputation as a legendary badass. Of course, it's also very possible to start the mod relatively early in the main game before they become a major player in the war for the Mojave.
    • The mod itself offers the option to instantly level up to the recommended level for this expansion if you create a new character, making this even more confusing.
    • On top of the above, the writing also assumes that you're at the very least not against NCR. The only way to get to Portland is signing up for a tour of duty with the Exiles, and despite the writing treating you as a living legend, nobody says a word even if your actions paint you as an outspoken Legion supporter.
  • The ending slides if you go through the NCR Exiles questline aren't consistent in what the outcome is — most have the NCR Exiles be gone as a major force, which is what the final quests indicate, but several speak about it as if it was an active choice the Courier made rather than the consequence of how many — and important — NCR Exiles die as a result of the questline, and some have the NCR be an active, powerful force in the Frontier.
• Gay Option: A few, most notably Hardcase.
• Gender Is No Object: Played more straight with the Legion this time. It's harder to join the Legion as a female Courier, but otherwise female characters aren't nearly as restricted in their dealings with the Northern Legion as they are with its Southern counterpart. There's even a female slavemaster.
• Genre Shift: Numerous parts of the NCR questline shift into a horror game with the Courier facing monsters and grotesque environments. Likewise the entirety of Chapter 3 takes place in space, briefly turning the game into a Space Opera.
• Gladiator Games: As in the main game, the Courier can fight in the Legion arena, and this time it isn't gender locked. It's said that the Legion does these fairly often to test new recruits. During the NCR Questline, the player can take advantage of this to sneak into Ostia.
• Global Currency: Played with. Bottle caps are still the main currency of the Frontier, but where as the "backing" of caps in other games is typically either water or actual gold, the backing of caps in the Frontier is instead salt. Thus, Salt Town is quite a wealthy location.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: A villainous variation, as the Legion Questline ends with you gathering all the factions you've recruited through the story for one final push into the NCR camp. Nothing of the sort happens in the NCR Questline, or the Crusader Questline.
• Good Is Not Soft: The Crusaders are the most morally good of the three main factions, but this doesn't stop them from being deadly warriors when the need arises.
• Guide Dang It!: This is inevitable thanks to the mod being made by non-professionals. Perhaps the most egregious example is starting the Hanged Man quest. Doing so requires the player to have the Hanged Man as a companion and hit three of four very specific, and hard to find triggers. The things you need to do actually make sense if you know that the Hanged Man used to be part of the First Brigade, and that he was involved with Bright Town, but that doesn't become super clear until the quest itself.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Rancor, for all three questlines.
• Grim Up North: Compared to the Mojave, let alone the NCR proper, the Frontier is a frigid wasteland. With the NCR Exiles even mocking their comrades in the Mojave wishing for a nuclear winter — they have no idea what they're asking for.
• Hero of Another Story: Wrench's background portrays her as being the archetypal Fallout protagonist before she got burned out. Likewise the player is put in the shoes of various other characters with their own unique backstories such as Hardcase and Gray.
• Hidden Elf Village: Zigzagged with the Trochili. They tick all the boxes, but are hiding in the sewers not out of a desire to get away from humans, but because they're cold-blooded, so heading out into the frozen tundra of the Frontier would be a death sentence for them. Played straight with Sanctuary, a small settlement of sentient robots.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Happened to the Bleeders prior to the events of the mod. The tribe loved to Rape, Pillage, and Burn, which lead to one of their warriors contracting syphilis from one of the people they raped. The disease quickly spread through the tribe thanks to their communal bleeding rituals, and the tribe was ultimately wiped out.
• Homage: A few of the quests are ones either to previous Fallout games, or to other media. Such as "Take My Leave Of You".
• Honor Before Reason:
  • The Crusaders hold this attitude somewhat, Weaver in particular. They grow out of it in the Golden Ending.
  • Deconstructed with Last Pathfinder and the Bleeders. Last Pathfinder is dead set on killing himself (and failing that, getting the Courier to kill him) because of this trope. As with the above example, he grows out of it in his Golden Ending.
• Humiliation Conga: Valerius puts the Courier through this early in the NCR Questline.
• Humble Hero: The Courier can be played this way by choosing to downplay their reputation or claim that they're not as much of a legend as other characters say they are. Of course the player is also free to make them the complete opposite.
• Hypocrite: General Blackthorne disparages the likes of Kimball and Oliver for throwing away the lives of their men just to accomplish their goal. Considering he says this after willingly risking over 200 men just to rescue the Courier, and leading to a vast majority of their deaths, in the hopes the Courier be the lynchpin in the conflict it can come across as hollow. Additionally, Blackthorne mentions that he wants to overthrow Kimball and install a more patriotic government inside the mainland NCR. Kimball's inadequacies as a leader aside, the revolution Blackthorne is calling for would lead to the death of many NCR soldiers on both sides, causing the very loss of life he claims to hate. Much like Caesar, who claims that the wars being waged now are a necessary evil to ensure prosperity for future generations, Blackthrone isn't much better.
• I Can Rule Alone: Should he survive to the end of the Legion Questline, Valerius realizes he doesn't need Caesar's guidance anymore and declares himself Caesar.
• It's Up to You: Played straight and deconstructed in both the present period and Wrench's backstory. General Blackthorne believes in the Courier's ability to save them so much that he willingly risks hundreds of his men and his best unit to rescue them after their capture by the Legion. He even orders their care to be prioritized even if it means letting other men who need medical attention dying. Wrench meanwhile got burned out after her attempts at saving a town just led to failure anyway with them become overly reliant on her to do things for them instead of doing it themselves.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Played for laughs when you confront the cereal thief in "Big Bear is Watching".
  • Played straight in "Take My Leave of You". With the right stats, the player can point out that Josiah Church, the sniper guarding the portion of the base where a child was found dead, immediately started the conversation with "the dead kid", even though he said later on he didn't know a child had died until the player told them.
• Internal Homage: Convince Von that he's a fake and he will give a speech similar to the Master's last words when you talk him down in Fallout.
• Interspecies Romance: Juno of the Trochili (mutant lizard people) is more the willing to sleep with humans, and apparently does it rather frequently. You even get a perk for sleeping with her yourself! This is later revealed to be part of her Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Jerkass: Hotshot from the NCR Wolfpack squad will always disparage the Courier no matter their reputation. Even beating his high score in the firing range doesn't make him any nicer. He's also very vocal about leaving the Courier to be crucified by the Legion rather than attempting a rescue, though he arguably has a point about how it's not practical to risk over 200 men to rescue just one person.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Wrench may be a rough merc with a tendency to belittle the player, but she has a soft spot for her dog Bolt, and is ultimately a good person.
• The Juggernaut: Rancor's Titan armor turns him into this.
• Just Following Orders: Grey in the first flashback where he's forced to shoot wounded NCR Soldiers.
• Karma Houdini Regardless of what path the Courier follows, Rancor’s corrupt NCR bosses are never confronted or dealt with despite being complicit in Rancor’s plan to launch a nuke at a major city and murder the Courier to use as a scapegoat.
• Kill Sat: Archimedes II from the main game makes a return here. This time it's an element in the plot of all three main questlines.
• Kingmaker Scenario: Downplayed in comparison to the main game, but still present.
• Knight in Sour Armor: The Hanged Man, by all accounts, should be this but he isn't. Played straight with Wrench, Donovan and a good number of other characters.
• Large Ham: Dr. Voss who comes replete with an over the top Germain accent. Justified as Voss has based his current personality on an in-universe movie that featured one of these.
• Last Stand: The end of the Wolfpack segment of the NCR Questline is one of these.
• Living Legend: The Courier is treated as this and a Hope Bringer by almost everyone who's aware of their reputation, but it's also deconstructed in that the Legion crucifies and breaks (rather than just kill) them in the belief that the NCR losing their 'savior' will demoralize them. Meanwhile General Blackthorne believes in the Courier so much that he's willing to sacrifice hundreds of his men in a deadly assault to rescue them purely because he hopes the Courier lives up to their myth and will be the savior they've been waiting for.
• Made of Iron: Both the Courier and Hardcase. The latter takes a truly absurd amount of bullets from a Legion firing squad before dying while the former is continuously put through so much abuse that they should be ground meat. After their rescue from the Legion the doctor even notes that all their limbs were broken along with numerous other fatal wounds and yet after a week of bedrest they're up and able as ever. Later on Valerius is incredulous when finally confronted, admitting that he thought the Courier would be confined to a wheelchair rather than storming Ostia.
• The Man Behind the Man: A few notes heavily imply that the Breach Outreach is being bankrolled and controlled by The Netwrk.
• Mirroring Factions: The NCR Exiles have ended up paralleling the faction they fought in the battle that led to their founding: the Brotherhood of Steel under Elijah holding Helios One, a veteran group making significant use of pre-War equipment to compensate for their small manpower (though the Exiles favour vertibirds over power armor), with restrictive local recruitment habits, holed up in a pre-War installation and stuck in a fight in large part because their leader believes that if only the pre-War superweapon at the installation can be made functional, everything can be fixed.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Deliberately invoked by The Netwrk. In Tenth Eye's Bunker you can find a number of holotapes all of which give different contradictory origins for The Netwrk. A nearby holotape indicates that Tenth Eye did this on purpose so that no one would know who he really was.
• Mundane Made Awesome: If you have Wild Wasteland active, you can choose to settle things with Tiberius Rancor via a game of Caravan. Losing causes the Courier's head to explode.
• Murderous Mannequin: Not so much murderous as creepy, but moving ones with Glowing Eyes of Doom are all over the place in Swordstone Tower and are a recurring motif in some of the wilder segments of the mod.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
  • Wrench and America due to the latter being locked behind the Crusaders and the former hating said group. While Wrench will still stay with the Courier if they join the Crusaders continuing with their questline will eventually have her leave. To add to the exclusivity, their respective personal questlines can only be done after passing the point of no return for the NCR Exiles/Crusaders (respectively) questlines where the other questline is locked off^note as released, this was not the case for Wrench, allowing one to do both if done in the right order, but later patches moved the point of no return to the start of the NCR Exiles quest whose completion is a prerequisite for starting Wrench's personal quest.
  • Scrapz has a harder exclusivity with more than one other companions: he can only be repaired, and hence recruited, if the Legion is joined, something which naturally locks you out of the NCR and Crusader-loyal companions.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: The NCR Exiles and especially General Blackthorne remain loyal and patriotic to New California, even after they deserted to the Frontier. As they make clear their issue comes with the leadership, particularly Kimball and Oliver.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Some NCR Exiles criticize their comrades in the Mojave for wishing for a nuclear winter, referencing an infamous bit of generic dialogue the NCR troopers had in the base New Vegas game.
  • One of the new enemies is a mutated Enclave soldier designed to resemble Frank Horrigan.
  • In the Trochili Sewers one can find a picture of The Master from the first game. It's also heavily implied that the picture was sold to the Trochili by Katja, a companion from the first Fallout.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Courier essentially ruins everything in the NCR questline. While most of the blame can be placed on Rancor (and Blackthorne, to a lesser extent) by the end of it the numerous casualties, up to and including Sac-Town being nuked, can be placed at least partially at their feet. This questline also ends with the three major factions being either destroyed or crippled beyond repair, leaving control of Portland to roaming groups of opportunistic Scavs.
• Nonstandard Game Over: As in Dead Money, the player can access a non-canon extra ending by convincing Tiberius to let you help him at the end of the Legion Questline. Another, far less glamorous one is achieved by using the vertibird Rancor gives you to head back to the Mojave, which drops you right in the middle of Quarry Junction.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Salt Town mine would give anyone with even a passing knowledge of safety standards a heart attack! In fact it's so bad that it nearly kick starts a revolution.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Hardcase returns near the end of the NCR questline as a white wolf in order to lead the Courier to a radio tower so they can call for a rescue.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Passing a high intelligence check at the end of the Trochili's quest reveals that Queen Juno, who up to this point has been portrayed as a laid back party animal, has actually been manipulating the events of the quest for her political benefit. Sure enough, if Juno is still Queen by the end of the quest, then the ending slides indicate that Juno helps the Trochili corner the chem market in the Frontier, or makes a deal with whatever faction is in power to keep the Trochili alive and comfortable for the forseable future.
• Obviously Evil: Tiberius Rancor sticks out since aside from his name he dresses up in complete black complete with Sinister Shades. You can even ask him outright why he dressed like a Bond villain.
• One-Man Army: The Courier, as expected, particularly in the combat focused NCR questline. During the mission to Ostia instead of stealth it’s possible for the player to just kick down the door and kill everyone inside including Legate Valerius. Also, due to sharing the Courier’s stats, Gray and Hardcase are also this. The latter will likely kill his way through dozens of legionnaires and a tank by himself despite a loading screen crediting the entire Wolfpack group as killing ‘just’ 70 enemies in total.
  • Exaggerated when the player enters Vault 9. The Courier is constantly drugged and tortured to be a Manchurian Agent, which is represented by them going through a horror scenario filled with monsters. By the time the Courier wakes up again they find out that they've killed everyone in the Vault aside from possibly their NCR allies. The sheer amount of gore and damage to the Vault's infrastructure paints a really horrific picture of what they must've done.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Invoked and averted. On the Legion path the player can argue against killing their fellow recruits to prove themselves since it's a waste of valuable manpower. The instructors says he almost agrees... then detonates their collars anyway.
  • Marz makes it no secret that he hates humans (which includes you), and that he plans to enslave humans once he's in power. He still works with you and rewards you for your work however, as he would be unable to take control of the Trochili without your help.
• Proud Warrior Race: The Trochili used to be this, but after the last queen discovered chems, the race as a whole have given up on war in favor of laying around getting high all the time. They may become this again however if the player helps Marz depose Queen Juno.
  • Deconstructed with the Bleeders, a warlike tribe that used to rule Portland. However, their violent rule proved untenable and their predilection towards raiding villages ultimately lead to their downfall. Now the only true Bleeder left alive wants you to kill him, because he is in horrible pain and the laws of the Bleeders say he can't kill himself.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: In an earlier version of the Mod's story, General Blackthorne's growing popularity and increasingly public criticisms over President Kimball's policies in the Mojave led to him and his supporters being exiled to the hostile border territories of the Frontier. In the mod proper, Blackthorne and his men are deserters, though there are still a few dialogues that seem to have been written with the earlier backstory in mind.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The NCR Exiles are a benevolent example. Although General Blackthorne and his men deserted from the army, they still remain loyal patriots and intend to return to the Mojave in force. The Crusaders, similarly, no longer have any real connection to the Brotherhood of Steel. If Valerius survives to the end of the Legion Questline, then the Northern Legion will become this as well.
  • Thanks to their zealotry the Crusaders have quite of few of these, two of which in particular The Ushers and the Order of Eschaton are important to a few quests.
• Sad Clown: The Hanged Man.
• Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: Two examples, one in Mass and one in Distance.
  • For Mass, the ARCHIMEDES II space station is shown to be massive. While the exterior of the station is understandably huge, the interior is so massive and complex that it feels Bigger on the Inside.
  • For Distance, this example comes from the tail-end of the NCR Questline in which Rancor launches a nuke at Sac-Town, a major city in California, namely what used to be Sacramento before the Great War. After Sac-Town is nuked, the player character and see a huge, fully visible mushroom cloud of the nuclear missile detonation. However, the mod is set in the post-war wastes of Portland and surrounding areas, which is about 579.6 mi/932.77578 km away. The mushroom cloud from a commonly deployed nuclear weapon - between 100 and 500 kilotons - would top out between 14 and 19 kilometers, which could be observed from 420 to 490 kilometers away, respectively. For megaton-sized weapons, the cloud tops might be observable up to if not beyond 700 kilometers away. So at the distance the player character is at, the mushroom cloud either should not be visible or at the very least, should appear very small due to perspective, let alone be able to hear it at that distance.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: Similar to Dragon Age: Origins, there are hints that the events of the NCR and Legion questlines still happen even if you're not playing that questline. Instead, it's the successfulness of those quests that's influenced by the Courier. Subverted with the Crusaders questline, the events of which only occur if the player is present.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Breaking America's heart will end horribly for you if done anywhere inside or near the Crusaders' HQ.
• The Sociopath: Lot shows heavy signs of this. When the player first meets him he casually greets them while surrounded by the dead bodies of his former caravan mates and continuously makes quips as the player examines their bodies. Later when it's revealed he's a Slaver and is called out by one of his former victims he doesn't even pretend to care, continuing to make poor attempts to lighten the mood along with encouraging the Courier to kill everyone in the building so he can escape.
• Spanner in the Works: The Courier, but only in the Crusader questline where they make peace with the NCR. In the NCR and Legion paths, especially the former, they’re an Unwitting Pawn to Rancor until just before the end.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Charlene of the Crusaders holds a more benevolent of version this attitude, as do most other members of the Sopher sub-faction.
  • Subverted with the Northern Legion thanks to Legate Valerius, in stark contrast to their basegame counterparts. Granted, this is more out of necessity than any ideological differences.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: As a few players have pointed out, the NCR campaign plays very similarly to a Call of Duty game with an emphasis on combat, switching between multiple characters and full on assaults rather than being able to use stealth or speech. The Courier’s rescue even plays like the typical Call of Duty mission with a very well-equipped commando (who’s not the Courier) starting off in a vertibird before it’s shot down and they have to take out multiple AA guns with the help of their squad.
• Survivor Guilt: Either Badger or Siren will suffer from this depending on who got turned into a nano.
  • Grey suffers from this in general. As does Tasha Weaver and a good number of the Crusaders.
• Tagalong Kid: America is the youngest of the human companions (having recently turned 18 while the others seem to be in their 20’s to 30’s at the youngest) and generally the most innocent and emotionally fragile.
• Take a Third Option: Instead of siding with the NCR Exiles or the Northern Legion the Courier can decide to throw their lot in with the Crusaders as the Frontier’s version of the Independent path. And like many third options it's the happiest option with the possibility of the NCR and Crusaders breaking the cycle of hate in order to help the Frontier. Rancor is also stopped before he can detonate a nuke over an innocent town.
  • Subverted for most of the major side quests, which often force the player into a Sadistic Choice. Played straight with Salt Town, however.
• Take That!:
  • One can find the long dead body of Elsdragon... in a dumpster. General Silverman's body can be found in Camp Phoenix Maintanance Hangar B ... in a dumpster too.
  • The quest "Dead and Buried" is one long take that to New Vegas Bounties and The Someguy Series as a whole. Especially obvious when you ask the quest giver about using fingers to turn in bounties and he mocks the entire idea.
• Tank Goodness: One of the drivable vehicles is a large WWII-style tank.
• Token Good Teammate: While the vast majority of companions are good or at least neutral-aligned, The Hanged Man sticks out as he is an active vigilante protecting the innocent well before the player meets him. Should the player push over him the Despair Event Horizon, he'll become much more violent, and in some endings becomes little more then a serial killer.
• Totally Radical: Parodied with the robot Fizzer, a walking advertisement for the local soft drink H-Bomb who's speech is filled misused or outdated slang in an attempt to sell you H-Bomb.
• The Starscream: Tiberus freaking Rancor. Rancor is a Legion Frumentarius who is also secretly working for some NCR senators, and depending on the questline he can end up betraying all of them. In the NCR Questline, he has the Courier kill Valerius, kills Blackthorne, NUKES AN NCR CITY to take care of the senators, and then assumes control of both Frontier factions. In the Legion Questline, he does the exact same thing, minus the nuking California part, with the Courier's help. The only questline this doesn't happen is the Crusaders, not that he doesn't still try.
  • Marz of the Trochili also counts.
• The Plague: The town of Irvington is in the beginning stages of one, though they'll try to deny it. It later turns out the "plague" is actually the mutating spores from Vault 22, which were shipped to the Irvington Hydroponics Lab before the war.
• Token Evil Teammate: Lot functions as this given that he's a Slaver who shows absolutely no remorse for the hundreds of lives he's ruined.
  • Scrapz also counts as one, by virtue of being a companion that's exclusive to the Legion.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Gray, in a way. He was present at two major battles, the events of which lead to Legate Valerius joining the Legion and Tasha Weaver creating the Crusaders respectively. Thus, he's indirectly responsible for creating the Exiles' major enemies. It's also entirely possible that he shot down Valerius' brother during the second flashback, making him DIRECTLY responsible for the rise of the Northern Legion.
• The Voiceless: The Hanged Man never speaks, due to damaged sustained to his throat. Should the player bring his sister's killer to justice, then he'll speak for a few moments in order to thank the Courier.
  • And of course, the Courier themselves never speak whenever they're shown as an NPC.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: As per Fallout tradition. Particularly pronounced when it comes to America, as the player can convince her to either head into the wasteland to die or ENSLAVE her from the very first converstation.
• Violation of Common Sense: To get the best ending for the NCR Exiles that doesn't end with the group being destroyed the Courier has to alienate them by joining the Crusaders so they can later establish peace between the two factions and stop Rancor. Actually going through with the NCR questline will end with the vast majority of them dying, the Liberator being destroyed, a California city being nuked and the Exiles being destroyed as a faction.
• Virtuous Character Copy: Marco, one of the targets of the bounty hunting quest, is one to The Someguy Series' Marko Booth. Marco is introduced in a quest that's somewhere between a reference and a jab at New Vegas Bounties, and both Marco and Marko are raiders with a personal connection to the bounty-hunter-turned-questgiver (Wyatt and Steven Randall respectively). While Someguy Series' Marko is an unrepentant villain that Randall pursues to enact vengeance, The Frontier's Marco is a former lawman and associate of Wyatt's that turned raider after Wyatt executed a man on flimsy evidence, didn't shoot the victim's kid after he had witnessed the deed, and struggled with his guilt until his death.
• Visionary Villain: Legate Valerius, head of the Northern Legion, seeks to reform the Legion with more liberal policies. Whether or not he succeeds depends on the player's actions.

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