Video Game / The Overseer Series

The Overseer Series is a series of mods for Fallout: New Vegas, created by writer and modder th3overseer, which add new quests and locations to the game. The mods have an overarching story that mainly centers around various raider gangs under the influence of a man called Sheridan, as well as some very dangerous and evil people within the upper echelons of the New California Republic.

The mods released in the series include:

• The Initiation: Building off a specific sidequest (wherein the Courier convinced the Great Khans in Red Rock Canyon to reject Caesar's alliance in "Oh My Papa"), the mod centers around a new questgiver, Rivas, asking for the Courier's help with a number of jobs... while offering the chance to become a full-fledged member of the tribe if they perform well enough.
• Eliza: Adds the titular companion to the game — a young woman who works as an runner for the Great Khans, and has several new quests and encounters associated with her arrival in the Mojave.
• Headhunting: Adds 30 new Bounty Hunter quests to the game, complete with new encounters, locations, enemies and more.
• The North Road: A quest mod that tasks the Courier with undertaking a job to find and bring in a politician's son convicted of crimes, who is hiding in an isolated region north of the Mojave. Adds a new landmass with multiple quests, characters and encounters.
• The Depths of Depravity: A Darker and Edgier quest mod that follows the Courier's quest to find and rescue a young girl who went missing while in the care of a mysterious church that has opened a branch in the Mojave...
• The High Desert: A Lighter and Softer quest mod that involves multiple drug trips, dungeon crawling and new characters to interact with.

Additional works that exist alongside the series include Overhauled NPCs (a reworking of various vanilla character designs to look more unique), Curtis Munitions (a fully-stocked store in Outer Vegas), and (the non-canon) Revenge of the Cyber Nazis, which adds a challenging dungeon with an eclectic group of enemies.

Similar to The Someguy Series, the various mods have an overarching story that can be further explored through decisions from earlier mods that will become relevant in later works. Though plans for additional mods in the series were considered and documented, tensions with the mod hosting site, in addition to severe creative burnout, have led to th3overseer putting the series on hiatus with no clear indication of when (or if) it will continue.

You can find the master file here, which links to all the different installments in the series.

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The mod contains examples of:

• Asshole Victim: Pretty much all of the targets in Headhunting, who range from simple thieves and criminals to the leaders of armed gangs and infamous warlords. Even the ones who arguably don't deserve death are still very annoying.
• Being Good Sucks: Ryan O'Neill puts just about everything he can into the betterment of Westside, but ultimately feels it amounts to nothing. The player can agree with him at the end of the mod.
• Black Comedy: The tone of the series varies somewhat, but it usually falls somewhere around here.
• Breather Episode: It's not a coincidence that the goofy, lighthearted The High Desert comes directly after The Depths of Depravity.
• But Thou Must!: In Headhunting, most of the targets deserve what they’re going to get, and most of the ones who don’t can be dealt with non-lethally. However, Goodsprings Gary has a price on his head for the crime of planning to start a radio station. You can’t find this out before you agree to take on the bounty, you can’t switch the bounty out for a new one, and you can’t talk Goodsprings Gary into not starting the radio station. You have to kill him in order to continue the mod.
• Butt-Monkey: Caesar's Legion is treated as this through most of the series, typically only appearing as low-tier cannon fodder side enemies or as victims of a more threatening antagonist.
• Carnival of Killers: The player gets one of these set after them by the Burke estate after they deal with Adam, with several assassins going after you in the open, and all of them having "Open Contract" notes speaking about the bounty on your head.
• Dirty Business: How Caleb Alquist sees his massacre of an entire town in The North Road.
  Alquist: "The world needs bad men like me to make hard decisions for the greater good."
• Deadpan Snarker: A staple of the series.
  • Joe Tully provides rather dry remarks on the bounty targets and factions in Headhunting.
  Tully: (speaking about the Legion) "'I was ripped from my home at the age of five. I watched them rape my mom and burn my dad alive. Then they tortured me and forced me to train. They forced me to kill innocent people, under the threat of crucifixion. But I don't hold a grudge, because fucking safe roads.' Fucking retards. People are too goddamn stupid for their own good, I swear to god."
• Early-Bird Cameo: Bob Early, Ryan O'Neill, and Eliza Kinney are all mentioned in notes before appearing in later entries.
• Evil Clown: Nearly every entry in the series contains at least one of these as an enemy encounter.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: A recurring theme in the series. Charlie has this to say about Ulysses from New Vegas' Lonesome Road DLC:
  Charlie: "I feel it necessary to point out that I've also been traumatized, but I didn't choose to cope by launching ICBMs into population centers."
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Liquidators from The Depths of Depravity.
• He Knows Too Much: Several characters in Depths, including Eddie Hurst, Reverend Burke and the staff of the Path of Light Ministry are executed on orders from higher-up once it becomes clear that they're threatening Senator Burke's operations.
• Hope Spot: In The Depths of Depravity, Eddie Hurst asks the player to confront the Reverend with the evidence they've collected, thinking he will talk. But, when they arrive, the Reverend has already been killed, along with the missing children the player was investigating the disappearances of.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Charlie, the Professional Killer the OMA hires for you in Depths is a qualified master assassin who has own apartment, maintains a wide assortment of Ace Custom gear (including her own Pip-Boy), offers you contract work but tells you she doesn't need the help unless you're desperate for something to do, and will more than likely drop every enemy you face before you realize it, due to carrying customized silenced weapons. This is then subverted when you realize she's a Broken Ace who's equal parts depressed and Laughing Mad.
• Knight of Cerebus: Senator Burke. His appearance signals the shift in tone in the mods, as he's one of the only antagonists who is consistently not funny in the slightest.
• The Men in Black: The Office of Mojave Affairs, a group of NCR operatives that are stated to be behind most (if not all) of the high-level intelligence gathering operations you've heard about in the main game.
• Mercy Kill: Chunks Woodcock begs for this when the Legion puts him up on a cross.
• Mugging the Monster: Lampshaded by the Courier when Petey Baja attempts to kill them.
  Courier: "I've got a body count higher than the war. Why do people always think they'll be the one to bring me down?"
• Never Suicide: Eddie Hurst is found dead of an apparent 'suicide' just as he was about to meet you regarding the things you uncovered about Senator Burke.
• Old Save Bonus: The various mods will add exclusive content based on which of them have been completed beforehand. For instance, completing a specific mission in Headhunting before enlisting Charlie's help in Depths will lead her to comment on the assassination, while completing certain missions in The Initiation will open up more dialogue options in Eliza and three small Fetch Quest missions in Depths.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. 'Charlie' is used as a name for two very different characters: Funky Charlie from Headhunting, and Charlie from The Depths of Depravity.
• Outlaw Town: New Rockwell from Eliza — a place where an ex-Brotherhood sect, led by Samuel Greene, functionally controls the town, while the Sheriff and deputies look the other way because they don't want to rock the boat, and the locals are keeping their heads down until the whole mess blows over.
• Pædo Hunt: The North Road has you tracking down Adam Burke, the son of NCR politician Senator Burke, who has been convicted of offences against minors (and fled north of the Mojave in an attempt to escape justice).
• The Perils of Being the Best: The Courier's reputation draws a lot of heat (both good and bad) from various factions over the course of the mod series, with the Office of Mojave Affairs (the Secret Police) functionally showing up and conscripting the Courier into their pipeline to help solve some delicate situations.
• Religion of Evil: The Path of Light Ministry is revealed to have a far darker side than you're initially led to believe, as it's revealed that they're running a high-level slave ring.
• Secretly Wealthy:
  • Megan Humboldt (the child sister at the Humboldt Ranch) offers you more than 1,000 caps to deal with Dalton — an amount of caps only mid-tier merchants and up have on them at any point in the game. She lampshades this by saying she gets half the profits at the ranch, and would likely have had to pay someone to do the job, anyway.
  • Charlie (the Professional Killer companion you meet in Depths) subverts this; she makes a strong living off contract killing, but claims she has no real use for the money beyond buying weapons and books, and taking a peek around her house reveals a large assortment of customized weapons and a fully-stocked library. The player can recommend she donate some of her wealth to organizations that will help the less-fortunate.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The bonus dungeon in the North Road is this — a Harder Than Hard gauntlet that pits you against waves of high-level creatures, including Deathclaws (and variants), Cazadores, and more, that you ostensibly follow because you're trying to find a missing adventurer who may have high-level loot on him. Once you reach the end, you find... nothing except a note (with the adventurer's body) functionally laughing at the player for wasting all their time carving through enemies for no reward at all.
• Shout-Out: The Grace Lancaster rescue in Headhunting is one to The Way of the Gun.
  • A number of quest names throughout the series are taken from the lyrics of the song Far From Any Road.
• Sinister Shades: Brecker. In the climax of Depths, the player can mock him for wearing his sunglasses indoors.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Many characters in the series are rather foul-mouthed, but one of the standout examples is Todd from The North Road.
  Todd: (After killing an enemy) "Hehe, fuck you, asshole."
• Starter Villain: Big Daddy from The Initiation.
• Take That!: The series contains several aimed at common narrative tropes of other quest mods, such as monologuing villains, random revenge-seeking family members, and shallow attempts at guilt-tripping. There are also several shots taken at Fallout 4 in Headhunting, and a questgiver in Eliza who will point out the inefficiency of using bottlecaps as currency.
• The Unfought:
  • Several of the mods revolve around "Senator Burke", a high-ranking politician whose activities include stashing his son (a convicted criminal) in the hills north of Madsen to escape NCR justice, and overseeing a slave ring run through a church. Despite Burke authorizing the deaths of several characters connected to the storyline, and sending a group of assassins after the Courier via an "Open Contract", he's never fought proper, nor is he seen in person.
  • Sheridan is another example. He’s the boss of the majority of the raiders the Courier will face. He’s never seen in person (there were plans for the Courier to eventually face off against him, but th3overseer quit working on the series before they could come to fruition), but the Courier will spend a lot of time fighting his minions.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Depths of Depravity to season 1 of True Detective.
• Would Hurt a Child: Several characters throughout the series.
  • One of the Raider hangouts in Eliza contains the corpse of a child.
  • Charlie mentions that she has taken out contracts on children in the past.
  • The end of The Depths of Depravity reveals that Reverend Burke was responsible for covering up and profiting from an evil cult that abused and killed children, and they are killed as part of a cover up.

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