Highlights
- Embrace immorality in Fallout: New Vegas - make evil choices like betraying companions or wiping out towns for a rich role-playing experience.
- Evil options abound in New Vegas - crash rockets, side with villains, let Boone kill innocents, and even offer companions as cannibalistic sacrifices.
- Choose ruthlessness with Caesar's Legion, assisting in slavery, destruction, and murder - the darkest path in the morally complex world.
Fallout: New Vegas is beloved for its deep and varied role-playing mechanics. As The Courier, players can make decisions that affect how they are seen by other factions and people who populate the Mojave Wasteland. Reputation, branching quests, and well-written companions all play a big part in making the world feel as though it reacts to the player's choices.
All Minor Factions In Fallout: New Vegas, Ranked
While the largest factions vie for complete control of the Mojave, there are many smaller groups that play important roles in New Vegas.
One thing that makes the role-playing in the Fallout series so good is the option to make immoral choices. In Fallout: New Vegas, instead of being a revered hero, the Courier may make the lives of those they encounter worse. Throughout the game, there are many terrible choices to be made, from betraying one's traveling companions to wiping out whole towns of people - while not everyone may be able to stomach them, having a wide variety of options is essential to add depth to any role-playing game.
1 Crashing Jason Bright's Rocket
Side Quest: Come Fly With Me
Throughout the Fallout series, there are a number of different ghouls players may encounter. Some are hostile, designed to be gunned down without a second thought, while some are fully-fledged NPCs with stories and personalities. Jason Bright is the latter. He can be found on the road to New Vegas and his quest begins in the early game, just after the Courier reaches Novac. His ultimate goal is to get himself and his "flock" of fellow ghouls onto a rocket to travel to "the Far Beyond," a place he believes will give them all a better life.
After helping Jason board his spaceship, a Courier with high enough Science skill may be able to change the rocket's coordinates. A good Courier could choose to make them more accurate - however, there is also the option to make the rockets crash immediately, killing Jason and everyone else inside. Given how hopeful the ghouls were as they departed for a better life, killing them when they were so close to achieving their goal is an extremely cruel choice.
2 Siding With The Powder Gangers Against Goodsprings
Side Quest: Run Goodsprings Run
One of the first branching side quests that players may encounter begins in the opening location of Goodsprings. Despite being a small town, its significance in introducing the player to the game makes it one of the Mojave Wasteland's most iconic locations. The Courier will be made aware of a conflict between the people of Goodpsrings and the Powder Gangers, a faction of recently escaped prisoners.
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While many players will choose to side with Goodsprings, there is also the option to side with the Powder Gangers. After collecting some supplies, the player and their Powder Ganger allies wipe out Goodsprings and claim it for themselves. Though this may only be the beginning of the path of destruction the player may pave, killing the people of Goodsprings feels exceptionally evil due to the kindness they were willing to show the Courier - even Doc Mitchell, who saved the player's life at the beginning of the game, will be caught in the crossfire.
3 Aligning With Caesar's Legion
Main Quest: Render Unto Caesar
Throughout the series, Fallout has introduced a huge number of factions, each with different values and ideals. Caesar's Legion is arguably one of the most evil factions in any of the games: they are a dictatorship notorious for their slavery, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Despite their evil, however, the player can align themselves with them during the main quest, working directly with Caesar against the NCR.
The faction's quests will have the player engaging in plenty of immoral activities, such as destroying the Brotherhood of Steel and assassinating the NCR president. However, the most evil aspect of joining Caesar's Legion is the simple fact of aligning with a faction that enslaves and kills people as they please.
4 Letting Boone Kill Manny
Companion Quest: One For My Baby
To recruit Boone as a companion, players may be required to undergo a quest for him: finding out who sold his wife to Caesar's Legion several years ago and bringing them to him to kill. There's a lot of freedom to this quest - almost anyone in Novac may be chosen as Boone's victim, with the player needing to do some detective work to figure out who the true culprit is. One of the suspects is none other than Boone's best friend, Manny. Manny may be asked to follow the player to his death, with Boone taking a shot at him from his lookout spot.
6 Hardest Moral Dilemmas In Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout: New Vegas is filled with tricky moral dilemmas that will make players weigh their options carefully.
Though being told he killed an innocent man will make Boone angry, players with a high Speech skill will be able to convince him that Manny is guilty. Not only does this mean that Boone can be convinced to kill his innocent best friend, but he can also be made to believe he sold his wife to Caesar's legion, never finding out the truth.
5 Feeding Your Companions To Cannibals
Side Quest: Beyond The Beef
One of the many groups players will meet during their time in the Mojave Wasteland is the White Glove Society. They run the Ultra-Luxe casino on the New Vegas strip and, like many NPCs in New Vegas, they have a secret: they used to be cannibals. One member of the society, Mortimer, is determined to return to their former ways, planning on cooking human meat and serving it at a society dinner.
There are many ways to solve this quest, some more evil than others. However, one of the most evil solutions involves sacrificing a companion, locking them in a freezer, and allowing them to be killed and eaten. It's an incredibly dark fate for a character who has traveled with and aided the player up until that point.
6 Turning HELIOS One Into A Deadly Weapon
Side Quest: That Lucky Old Sun
There are a multitude of outcomes for what happens to HELIOS One - after fixing the generators beneath the plant, players are given a choice as to where the power goes. No choice pleases everyone, with the Followers of the Apocalypse and the NCR wanting very different things, but there is one option in particular that serves only the Courier's interests: diverting the power to ARCHIMEDES II.
If the player diverts power to ARCHIMEDES II, none of the surrounding areas will benefit from the power HELIOS One generates. The Courier, however, will gain an extremely powerful and dangerous weapon that can be used to command a laser strike once per day. One thing that makes this choice so evil is how tempting it is, showing just how nuanced the immoral choices in New Vegas can be.
