Characters / Fallout: New Vegas - Courier and Companions

aka: Fallout New Vegas The Courier

Fallout: New Vegas Character Index
Courier and Companions | New California Republic | Caesar's Legion | The Strip | Settlements | Other Factions | Other Characters | Dead Money Characters | Honest Hearts Characters | Old World Blues Characters | Lonesome Road Characters

Character page for the Player Character of Fallout: New Vegas and their companions. Some spoilers may be unmarked.

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The Courier

Voiced by: Yuri Lowenthal (male), Laura Bailey (female) (grunts only)

"It appears that you are both the messenger and the message."

— Legate Lanius

The truth is, That's you. You were just a regular schmuck working for the Mojave Express. During a particularly strange delivery job, you're ambushed on the road. The ringleader of your muggers, a man named Benny wearing a distinctive checker-coated suit, steals your package (a rather important Platinum Chip), puts two 9mm bullets into your skull, and has you buried in a shallow grave just outside of town.

By all accounts, you should be dead. But your aren't.

The story is driven mainly by the your attempts to understand the meaning behind the attack, the significance of the Platinum Chip, and getting said Chip back to finish the job. Ultimately, you gets to decide the future of the entire Mojave Wasteland and beyond.

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• The Ace:
  • It's very possible for them to become this, being tough enough to take a whole platoon by yourself while outsmarting everyone in the wasteland, whether through extensive knowledge, practical experience, better planning, or better people skills. Possibly all at the same time.
  • In a meta sense, canonically, the Courier is also the most experienced of the series' protagonists, having been, well, a courier and a frequent traveler of post-apocalyptic America for years before making that fateful delivery from Primm, with the job itself being coming with all the occupational hazards that wandering blown out roads full of wildlife and bandits bring, as demonstrated in the introduction. Other protagonists (save for some of the spin-offs) only enter the wider wasteland during the present stories of their games.^*The Vault Dweller lived a boring life in a Vault before being chosen to venture out into the wastes, the Chosen One lived their young life in an isolated village with only local wildlife to worry about while being prepped for the tribes mission, the Lone Wanderer had lived their whole teenage life inside a Vault and only left because they were forced to, and the Sole Survivor actually came from pre-War times with all the comforts it brought, albeit with the benefit of military training
• Accidental Hero: In the Honest Hearts DLC, if you expose Ricky's lies and make him leave the group, you end up saving his life, since everyone except you dies in an ambush.
• Action Hero: Get a duster and a hat, load up with revolvers, lever-action rifles and the appropriate perks, you become a gunslinging cowboy. Take tons of drugs, grab an assault carbine or light machine gun and be Rambo. Get a combat armor, a silenced pistol and turn into Solid Snake. Take resistance perks, drop all armor, seize a giant sword, and become Conan the Barbarian. The possibilities are endless.
• Affably Evil: Nothing is stopping a very evil Courier from picking polite options in conversation and even helping the occasional person if doing so doesn’t interfere with their own self-interests.
• All for Nothing: As revealed in the Amazon Prime series, all their struggles and hardships don’t accomplish anything since the NCR is left in uncertain but dire straits with New Vegas itself seemingly a destroyed husk by 2296.
• Almighty Janitor: While someone who delivers packages across the Mojave Wasteland is obviously gonna be fairly tough, you are still essentially a mailman who can wipe out hordes of enemies by yourself, master various skills, and even be the deciding factor in who conquers the Mojave (or even conquer it for yourself). Don’t piss off the mailman.
• Ambiguous Situation: The Wild Wasteland trait changes the entire world to have less sensible qualities, but the fact that it's a trait and the icon implies that it may just be the Courier being a Cloud Cuckoo Lander. Still, the trait does cause hard changes that can't be so easily written off as the Courier's mind being a bit on the wayside, such as the Alien Blaster and a variety of enemies that can hurt and even kill you.
• And the Adventure Continues: Regardless of the ending you get, it is made clear that the Courier's romps through the Wasteland are far from over. It's even an option in the NCR ending dialogue. Note that the adventure doesn't actually continue; game's over once you hit the ending (originally, you would have been allowed to continue roaming the Mojave after the epilogue but this was cut). The ending of Old World Blues says that the Courier eventually settled down in Big MT to watch it over after all their travels. Well, for a given value of settled down.
• Anti-Hero: Even if you play as a Good Courier working for House, The NCR or as an independent, you will have to make some questionable decisions if you want your faction to win.
• Assassin Outclassin': You'll end up doing many of these if you get on the wrong side of the NCR or Caesar's Legion as you trounce the hit squads they send to deal with you.
• The Atoner: You can convince Ulysses, the man wearing a flag on his back to make up for what happened to the Divide by turning the Mojave into the potential New World "nation" that the Divide was working towards. This is worth an extra point if you create an independent New Vegas, free of the control of any other major powers and making true that promise true.
• Asleep for Days: Eight days, specifically. The Courier's "death" occurs on October 11th, 2281. They regain consciousness on October 19th.
• Badass Boast: The Terrifying Presence perk gives you the option of opening hostilities by calmly informing enemies of exactly what you're about to do to their guts.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The Courier can find formal attire and pre-war business suits.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • The Courier duster, worn during the last slides of the Lonesome Road ending. It's got a different emblem on the back depending on which path you chose.
  • The box art of Lonesome Road depicts a different duster design, equally long and equally badass.^note  This design was likely, like so much of New Vegas's content, cut for time. Fans have since re-created this design through mods.
  • Not to mention the many variations of Ranger armor available.
• Badass Normal: At first, the Courier is just an ordinary wasteland survivor... who takes two bullets to the head, and all it does is put them down for a long nap (and, as revealed in Old World Blues, an anomalous brain condition).
• Badass Pacifist: If you go for the Pacifist Run.
• Badass Transplant: In Old World Blues, the Courier has their brain, heart and spine removed by the Think Tank, which are then replaced by artificial ones. These grant them increased resistance to addiction, increased efficiency from healing items, increased damage threshold (DT), total immunity to poison, and making your head and torso impossible to cripple. The Courier can keep any or all of them at the end of the DLC; taking back the original parts grants a different set of perks, and leaving your newly-independent Brain in a Jar behind in Big MT even adds a few unique slides for it in the DLC's ending reel.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • There's nothing stopping a kind-hearted and morally good Courier from taking the Terrifying Presence perk and utterly scaring the shit out of anyone who messes with them.
  • And even if you don’t take Terrifying Presence, a very good karma Courier who talks their way out of every fight and goes out of their way to help everyone they meet is still likely to be carrying enough firepower to level a small town by the end of the game.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Aside from the range of eccentric actions the game allows you to make on your own time, the Courier can make some amusingly out-of-touch-with-reality remarks while being as ruthless and powerful as in any playthrough.
• Big Bad Ensemble: If you play a Wild Card Courier with evil karma, you will be one of the main threats against the Mojave along with the Legion.
• Big Good:
  • What counts as "good" is up to negotiation, considering the game's Grey-and-Black Morality, but a Good Karma Courier that does enough legwork for a "grey" faction of their choice becomes powerful and influential enough to qualify for the trope.
  • If you play a Wild Card Courier with Good karma, especially if you secure an alliance with the majority of factions.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: You can end up being this in a side quest if you decide to train the NCR Misfits while having your skills of Weapons and/or Explosives below 45, which makes you a horrible trainer. You can only complete the positive ending if both are at 45 at the very least. It's even worse if you have them below 25, which means you're not even able to teach them the initial lesson.
• Blind With Out Em: Any Courier with the Four Eyes trait, which gives +1 Perception while wearing glasses but -1 without them. Annoyingly, you have to take off your glasses to wear a power armor helmet.
• Boomerang Bigot: A female Courier or a male with the Confirmed Bachelor perk (named for a common euphemism for gay men and allowing the Courier to be a man's man himself) who sides with Caesar's Legion, since they will be helping a faction that enslaves and/or kills people like them.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • The Courier can invert this when dealing with Benny and Jessup, since they'll freak out when seeing you, even if you aren’t chasing them down for shooting you, and ran into them by accident.
  • You can also play it straight in the story of Lonesome Road, by telling your enemy Ulysses that the delivery of the package that destroyed the Divide was just like any others. Played even more straight as, until Ulysses reveals what happened there, the Courier genuinely had no clue what destroyed the Divide.
• Came Back Strong: Before Goodsprings, you were just an unknown walk-of-the-wastes deliveryman making their way in the world - a tough cookie by any account, but nothing remarkable. Afterwards, you become a One-Man Army who takes the fate of the entire surrounding wasteland in your hands, carving, sneaking and/or talking your way through anything and everything between you and your goal, whatever it may be.
  • Doc Mitchell alludes to this possibility directly if you get an especially high Intelligence score upon waking up:
  "Look at that. Maybe them bullets done your brain some good."
  • Legate Lanius realizes this when you convince him to stand down, giving this gem of a quote:
  "Violence gave you that strength, awakened you - I can see it upon your face, where two bullets left their mark."
• Card-Carrying Villain: You can be one if you wish.
  Arcade: (after you tell the Enclave Remnants to support the Legion) What are you thinking? Do you want to see Vegas turned into the new slave capital of the west?
  Courier: Actually, yes, I would like to see New Vegas turned into a slavery hub.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Have a high enough Unarmed skill, and your bare hands can literally punch limbs off or even reduce low-level enemies to chunks of meat.
• The Charmer: With the right stats and perks, you can use your natural charm and magnetism to sway people your way.
• The Chessmaster: The Courier, especially if they're pursuing the Wild Card route, has the ability to play the various factions of the wasteland in order to come out on top, either by getting rid of strong enemies by turning them against each other, sabotaging their operations, or charming them to get them on their side.
• Chick Magnet: A male Courier who apart from Cass having the hots for them, can also earn the affections of Sarah Weintraub and Red Lucy. With the Lady Killer perk they can also add more. All in all they can have Lady Jane, Light Switch 02, Dr. Dala, the Stealth Suit Mark II, Jonna, Dazzle, Sweetie, random girls at Gomorrah, old lady Gibson, and can mention a encounter in Montana that may have led to a kid. They also have Ship Tease with Christine in ‘’Dead Money’’ regardless of gender. They can also use this to their advantage by making Janet fall in love with Jack. There are also other sexual encounters, if you’re willing to pay for them.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Depending on player choice, the Courier can side with numerous characters, factions and settlements, only to betray and harm them, or completely wipe them out. The Wild Card route optionally encourages you to do this by siding with one of the three main factions {NCR, The Legion and Mr. House, though Yes Man encourages pretending to side with House}, use them to further your own goals and then betray said faction at the last minute to take over Vegas for yourself.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: The Wild Wasteland trait makes you see things quite a bit... differently. Even if you don't have it, they can still can come up with quite a few outlandish trains of thought. (Particularly after failed speech-checks.)
  Veronica: Do you know anything about the Brotherhood of Steel?
  The Courier: I've heard they shoot lasers from their eyes!^note A callback to Liberty Prime from Fallout 3
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: To the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3.
  • The Lone Wanderer was 19 when they left the Vault and as such had no knowledge of the world since they lived their entire life in the Vault; the Courier's age is unknown but it's hinted you're in your 30s at least,^note A male Courier implies he had a fling with a woman in Montana around 17-18 years ago, meaning he was at least at the age of sexual maturity at that time. you were born in the wasteland (though to be fair so was the Lone Wanderer) and are a seasoned explorer.
  • The Lone Wanderer had Three Dog center his newscasts around them and gives them their moniker as a way to identify them; the Courier is never mentioned by name by Mr. New Vegas, who only refers to you as "a civilian contractor" and other anonymous synonyms.
  • The Lone Wanderer traveled the wasteland searching for their father, the one who gave them life; the Courier travels the wasteland looking for their would-be murderer. Likewise, Fallout 3 starts with the Lone Wanderer's birth while Fallout New Vegas starts with the Courier's "death".
  • The Lone Wanderer's early life is detailed in several sequences through the years; save for Ulysses and other optional dialogue, the Courier has a Mysterious Past (or a Multiple-Choice Past, if you prefer)
• Courier: Wow, who could have guessed that one? The whole first act of the game involves chasing a package that was stolen from you, and you get to mention your (former) occupation in the dialogue at least once.
• Combat Pragmatist: Aside from the usual Fallout tactics^note No, not that one. of sniping, Stealth Boys, immolation, gratuitous high explosives, and sending your companions to fight for you, The Courier has many new and inventive options to choose from, including (but not limited to) crafting many different types of poison and applying them to their weapons, tossing sand into their opponent's eyes, and hijacking an orbital death ray to call down solar-powered annihilation upon their enemies.
• The Conscience: Serves as this for Joshua Graham, the Burned Man, during Honest Hearts, as with the right skills, they can orchestrate a peaceful end to the conflict in Zion.
• Consummate Liar: A Courier with high Speech can bluff their way into many victories.
• Cultured Badass: During Silus' interrogation, a Courier with high-intelligence can reveal not only a familiarity with Latin, but prove to be knowledgeable enough to be able to quote Virgil and Cicero.
• Curiosity Is A Crap Shoot: Aside from all the times the player would enter a cave or door only to immediately regret it when they see whatever's on the other side, this is ultimately what leads to the events of Dead Money, Old World Blues, AND Lonesome Road. Ulysses calls you out for this in the latter, though the validity of his accusations is up for debate.
• Cursed with Awesome: In Old World Blues, you get your brain, heart, and spine surgically removed by Dr. Dala. However, the same process nets you cybernetic replacements that work even better. You can even remove the "Cursed" part by getting your original Brain, Heart and Spine back, but with some advanced tech remaining with them, and while some of the bonuses are reduced, other bonuses are actually increased. For example, your artificial spine gives +1 Strength and immunity to torso crippling, but with your organic spine restored, that torso crippling immunity is toned back to crippling resistance, while that +1 becomes a +2 Strength.
• Cyborg: Functionally becomes one in Old World Blues. To a lesser extent, the Courier can be upgraded with implants at the New Vegas Medical Clinic. In addition, some perks seem to be cybernetic implants... that the Courier seems to know how to install in themselves without any need for surgery.
• Darkhorse Victory: In the Wild Card path, the Courier gives the finger to House, the NCR and the Legion. And wins.
• Deadpan Snarker: When told that they should be dead by someone who witnessed them get shot in the head, the Courier can reply, "I'm a ghost. Ooooooooh!"
• Determinator: Gets shot in the head at point-blank range and buried alive in a shallow grave. Nine days later, one very annoyed Courier wakes up and decides to track the shooter across the entire Mojave Desert. When you meet him, Caesar says this trope is why he took notice of you: when you want to do something, you get it done. You won't let a pesky thing like death by headshot stop you.
• Disability Superpower: While normally taking two bullets to the brain is bad (even if the Courier was only out for several days), it comes around to being a benefit during Old World Blues. As the bullet-trail scarring on their brain ends up being in just the right spot for Big MT's first successful brain removal, sparing them from becoming a truly mindless Lobotomite.
• Disappeared Dad: A male Courier with the Lady Killer perk can imply this of himself. Or at least that he thinks that he might be. When meeting the Lonesome Drifter and learning that he's both from Montana and never knew his father, you have the option to ask, rather nervously, if he's 17 years old. Much to the Courier's relief, he's not, but that doesn't mean there's not still a Courier Jr. kicking around in Montana somewhere.
• The Ditz: If played with a low intelligence stat, anyway.
• Doomed by Canon: [[spoiler:The Amazon Prime series reveals that nothing they do matters as Vault-Tec will nuke the NCR's Shady Sands and New Vegas itself seemingly abandoned by 2296. Whether the Courier themself even survived the destruction is unknown.
• Doom Magnet: Ulysses sees the Courier as a kind of harbinger of mayhem, destruction, and change wherever they go. He's not exactly wrong.
• Double Agent: Played with: The Courier can work with the Legion, Yes-man and/or NCR at the same time, or with House, Yes-Man and/or NCR at the same time (It cannot be done with Legion and House at the same time, because one of the first things you have to do for the Legion is kill House), to the point where you can complete the Boomers mission for three factions at once, but eventually one major faction will give you an ultimatum to stop you from continuing to work for another faction. (although you can complete all the missions of a faction, only to betray them for Yes-man at the end)
• Double Tap: The Courier was on the receiving end of a double tap, courtesy of Benny. Miraculously, they survived even after being Buried Alive, though not without some serious brain and facial reconstruction surgery from Doc Mitchell.
• The Dragon: You can be this to Mr. House, if you so wish. Averted with Caesar where it is made clear that your rank is too low to be this.
• Dragon-in-Chief: If you are in the service of Mr. House, you'll be going around doing all the work for him. And you can design your character to be as intelligent and lucky as he is. If you help him gain control of New Vegas with an evil character, during the ending the narrator will reveal that the only reason why he's keeping you around is because he's terrified of your retaliation, should he cross you.
• The Dreaded: The Courier is this to their enemies. Even a very good karma Courier is not someone many people are eager to get on the bad side of.
  • The Powder Gangers even refer to the Courier as "The Grim Fucking Reaper".
  • Even your allies can be terrified of the Courier, should you take certain "old-fashioned" ways of completing quests. Like freeing slaves by murdering every single other person in the compound. Or, apropos of little, announcing that you killed a person with an undertone of daring your audience to do something about it (they won't).
  • An evil Courier working for Mr. House manages to terrify their own boss, to the point that the only reason he lets you keep working for him is because he knows he doesn't stand a chance against you and really doesn't want to piss you off.
  • After the boss fight at the end of the Lonesome Road DLC. The narration says The Tunnelers and The Marked Men let you travel back to The Mojave without a fight partially because of this trope.
  • “Terrifying Presence” allows you to use this quality to scare people into doing what you want.
• The Drifter: The Courier is quite a veteran of the trail, having traveled all over California and parts of Nevada, even having, if some optional dialogue is to be believed, made some detours to Utah, Arizona, and Montana.
• Dumb Muscle: It's perfectly possible to play the Courier with very high Strength/Endurance but low Intelligence. Your character can reduce the likes of Deathclaws into bloody bits but may sometimes communicate in Hulk Speak and the reduced skill points per level will make it harder for your character to be proficient in science, medicine and other fields of expertise.
• Easily Forgiven: Depending on how you play, the Courier can do this with Benny and Jessup, forgetting revenge to do other things, or even going as far as saving them, which in Benny's case causes an automatic reputation drop from the Legion.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • In Old World Blues most of the Courier's vital organs are extracted and replaced with advanced cybernetics, granting you resistance to damage, chems, and superhuman strength. Even before then, you can become more than human with the use of implants and power armor.
  • Not to mention the fact that if you take the perks literally, by the end of the game the Courier can absorb strength from sunlight a la Superman ("Solar Powered"), lace their bones with metal ("Adamantium Skeleton"), regenerate damage while irradiated ("Rad Child"), and inexplicably repair equipment with non-matching parts ("Jury Rigging").
• Even Evil Has Standards: An Evil Courier can still vehemently oppose the Legion and condemn the vilest of the various atrocities they see in their trips around the Mojave.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": See also "Hello Insert Name Here." While you can name them whatever you wish, the name prompt defaults to "Courier" if you don't change it.
• Evil Is Easy:
  • In many faction missions you have to deal with a minor faction, either ensuring their loyalty or destroying them, the diplomatic option usually involves doing a series of side missions to increase your reputation, and going around a lot. Of course the "Non-diplomatic" Option is simply to kill them, and thus you get rid of having to do their secondary missions.
  • Averted in Yes-man's route, since he only asks you to visit them and give him a report, it is not necessary to destroy them or gain their loyalty (Since Yes-man considers the Mark II Securitrons to be the only allies you are going to need), so this would be more of a case of "Doing nothing is easier"
• Evil Overlord: An evil-karma Courier who takes the Wild Card path sets themselves up as a fearsome tyrant backed by a Mecha-Mook army.
• Evil Versus Evil: When an Evil Courier decides to go up against The Legion, especially if you're doing the Wild Card route. The same applies against Elijah, which mixes in with Evil Versus Oblivion.
• Eviler than Thou: A Very Evil Courier can take the Wild Arm route and rule a despotic regime worse than the Legion could ever hope to be. Though an evil karma Courier can kill the Fiends, this ends up being subverted as killing the Fiends racks up a lot of good karma and can therefore turn an evil karma Courier into a good or neutral karma one.
• Exact Words: If you do the Boomer quests for some faction, but you're planning a Wild Card ending, you can tell the leader of that faction that you managed to get the loyalty of the Boomers, without specifying that they are loyal to you, not him.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Men. Women. Robots. Ghouls. Yeah, it's an option. With the appropriate Perks, you can even hit on your own disembodied brain. It's appropriately horrified, despite being your brain in the first place. Perhaps the most explicit and strange of the Courier's trysts is performing what is, essentially, a biological strip-tease for a Brain in a Jar (not your own this time) that causes a robotic Immodest Orgasm.
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: You're free to swing your Karma Meter whichever way you like. One of the top-level perks in Lonesome Road (a set of three) is awarded based on your karma. If you're very good or very evil, you can take it for a significant combat bonus while resetting your karma. The bonus varies depending on the extreme.
• Failure Hero: The Amazon Prime series reveals that New Vegas seems to have been abandoned, meaning that all their efforts amounted to nothing regardless of which faction they supported. Even worse for an NCR-aligned Courier since the faction's first capital city, Shady Sands, was destroyed by Vault-Tec shortly after 2281.
• Faux Affably Evil: It's very possible to pick the most polite dialogue options and seemingly do a favor for someone, only to screw them over for your own personal gain in the end. In some quests, you can kill/destroy who or what you were asked to save, only to deceive the quest givers by framing it as a harsh truth you're dealing, or blame someone else.
• Female Misogynist: A female Courier can help Caesar's Legion take over the Mojave and condemn all its women to slavery.
• Foe Romance Subtext: A female Courier has a lot of very good reasons to hate Benny and want to watch him die. That does not prevent her from potentially sleeping with him. Even he is initially freaked out by this.
• The Fool: It is fully possible to play the game doing things that don't make any sense at all and still somehow manage to do far better than you would have otherwise, especially with a high enough luck stat. Raul clearly believes this of you.
• For the Evulz: Some NPC conversations after the player commits evil deeds can have the Courier bluntly admit they did it for no reason other than they simply felt like it.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Played straight, subverted or averted depending on the playthrough. Evil characters with the Four Eyes trait, certainly apply. Neutral or Good karma? Generally averted. Good players with a Legion alignment are a brilliant subversion.
• Friend to All Living Things: You can come quite close. Between having a high charisma, high speech and the Animal Friend perk, you can get through much of the game quite peacefully if you're careful.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • You start off as just a package courier and by game's end you could be monarch of New Vegas, or have decimated the Legion, the NCR, a half-dozen small communities, or all of the above. Alternatively, just ask Benny.
  • Or ask Ulysses, who watches as the Courier unknowingly damns the community of the Divide they helped create from a potential godsend for the wasteland to a literal Hell on Earth.
  • The game starts with you being killed, just because of something you were carrying. The very idea that you could actually still be alive is ludicrous, and yet later on you can be the one making Benny kneel, pointing his own gun (the one that 'killed' you) at him. There may never be a more karmic reward for shooting the messenger.
• Gadgeteer Genius: With the "Jury Rigging" perk, they can somehow repair Super Sledges with a pool cue, a ripper with a combat knife, or a Power Fist with a regular glove. It's even pointed out in the perk description:
  "You possess the amazing ability to repair any item using a roughly similar item. Fix a trail carbine with a hunting rifle, a Plasma Defender with a laser pistol, or even power armor with metal armor. How does it work? Nobody knows... except you."
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • If you dump Endurance or Luck, Doc Mitchell comments on how having 1 in either of these stats doesn't align with being sturdy/lucky enough to survive two bullets to the face (though going by purely gameplay terms, this is actually quite possible).
    Doc Mitchell: I just don't get it. A stiff breeze'd tear you in two but a couple of bullets and you're right as rain.
    
    Doc Mitchell: Now that don't make a lick of sense. Seems to me you're the luckiest son-of-a-gun in New Vegas.
  • If you only have 1 in perception, the Doctor recommends you to wear glasses. In the real game the perk that allows you to increase your perception while wearing glasses is impossible to get with only one point in perception.
  • Per Word of God, the Courier didn't get amnesia from the double tap, but many dialogue options in the early game suggest that they don't remember (or don't know) much about the politics of the area - though this one has an out-of-universe justification of introducing the setting to the player.
• Genius Bruiser: With high Strength/Endurance and Intelligence.
• Genius Ditz:
  • It is entirely possible to have an intelligence stat of 1 yet max out Science, Medicine, and/or Repair.
  • With the Luck statistic being deconstructed in NV, a Courier with high luck and low intelligence is a Genius Ditz as well. They're essentially a master at calculating odds and variables, and pushing events to their favor, while being dim when it comes to everything else.
  • At one point, you can actually perform brain surgery. This takes either a lot of skill in Medicine, or a high Luck stat. With the latter, you can admit that you had absolutely no idea what you were doing, but succeeded anyway.
  • If you're one of those people who feels the need to exhaust every dialog option (indicated by the option 'graying out', though still selectable), you'll end up asking a lot of questions to the same people repeatedly. A small number of NPCs will even take note of this.
    Raul: That's what I love about you, boss, your firm belief that one day you'll actually remember things people tell you.
• Gentleman Thief: High Charisma, Speech, Sneak, Lockpicking, and sticky fingers.
• Going Postal: The whole plot gets started with the Courier having a really bad day at work.
• Good Is Not Nice: Nothing is stopping a very good Courier from picking the rudest conversation options.
• Good Is Not Soft: You can have the karma of a saint, and still never fail to cap anyone who threatens the freedom and safety of the Mojave.
• Guile Hero: In most scenarios, when there's a conflict, a Courier with high Luck/Charisma/Intelligence has an option to use charm, wit and trickery rather than weapons and hard work, whether it's wiping out a large group of people using the environment, purposefully botch a job to kill or impair their enemies, getting someone else to fight for them, or figuring out a way to solve a problem quickly and/or efficiently.
• Handicapped Badass: In Hardcore mode if you get crippled limbs and choose to limp and fight your way back to town instead of fast travelling to have you healed.
• Had to Be Sharp: While this technically applies to everyone in the Fallout universe, the Courier's chosen profession literally involves walking through the hostile wastelands, often completely by themselves.
  Cass: Caravan code of the wastes is you don't fuck with the one who brings you your mail, and you don't fuck with your supply line.
• Hated by All: You can achieve this by getting a “Vilified” reputation with each faction and settlement.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Played with; regardless of the name you pick you're almost invariably referred to as "The Courier" or "Courier Six". Your chosen name will sometimes appear in written dialogue, but never in the verbal dialogue. Alas the limitations of pre-recorded voice acting.
• Heroic Seductress: Both genders can be this trope. With high enough Speech, Charisma, and/or proper perks (Lady Killer, Black Widow, Confirmed Bachelor and/or Cherchez La Femme), you can resolve a lot of conflicts with flirtation or flat out sex.
• Hidden Depths: A Courier with high intelligence can show some knowledge of Latin and speak full sentences in it, enough to fool a Legion's centurion.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: To the NCR, who are completely hopeless without your assistance. Also to Mr. House, though only to the extent that he physically cannot enact his plans without outside help, and it's not like House himself is a pushover. Averted for the other two factions: Caesar doesn't really need the Courier and mostly just has them around as a bonus, while Yes Man is this trope to you.
• I Am Who?: The DLCs hint towards the Courier being more special than they appear to be, given that they appear to have a relationship with Ulysses. Finally revealed, as the Courier was the specific one that Ulysses watched over as they helped the settlement at the Divide. Until the destruction of the Divide that killed everyone except Ulysses.
• Iconic Outfit: Two, both from Lonesome Road; First is the Elite Riot Gear, arguably the best medium armor set in the game, and in which they are frequently depicted in fanart. The second is the original concept art version of the Courier Duster, as seen in the cover art for Lonesome Road◊, and restored in-game through mods.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • The Cannibal perk allows you to feed on human corpses. Eat enough of them and you'll unlock the option to cut off some "Human Remains" to take with you as a food item for later. This can be taken to Extreme Omnivore levels with the Ghastly Scavenger perk (which requires Cannibal), which allows you to feed on Super Mutant and feral ghoul corpses. Feeding a corpse or eating Human Remains causes you to take a karma hit (yes, even the feral ghoul that just gave you positive karma for killing it), and NPCs who witness the act will be horrified by your "crime against nature" and turn hostile.
  • For those without the perk(s), there's always Strange Meat, which is all but stated to be human flesh that less morally-sound individuals sell to other people without telling them what it is. Also, there is a clearly marked "Human Flesh" food item sometimes dropped by feral ghouls, which is different from the aforementioned Human Remains and can be eaten without losing Karma or turning witnesses hostile.
• Implacable Wo/man: You trudge across half the Mojave Wasteland to find the man who shot you. Even Caesar applauds your tenacity.
• In Medias Res: The Courier is the only main protagonist besides the Chosen One to start the game with experience of surviving in the wasteland, with every other player character either having lived in a Vault for their whole life or, in the case of the Sole Survivor, the world before the war ever even happened.
• Instant Waking Skills: The Courier is never at a disadvantage right after sleeping, even if said sleep is interrupted by a friendly NPC. (or a hit squad)
• Irony: According to Ulysses, the Courier helped build the community in the Divide by carrying supplies to and from there. It was one of these deliveries that caused the Divide's destruction.
• Jerkass: Most of the lower dialogue choices just drop off sarcasm and downright rude or insulting to who you talk to. The Terrifying Presence perk combines this with The Dreaded.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: If you're still good karma and selective on who will you treat like jerk and who will you treat nicely.
• Karma Houdini:
  • You can steal and murder and get away with it if you're careful not to be seen. You can also commit heinous acts against factions and still associate with them as long as you have a means to raise your reputation back up. You can kill every Legion member you come across on your way to New Vegas, then you get the Mark of Caesar, pardoning you of all crimes and inviting you to a private audience with Caesar himself.
  • Likewise, you can cause serious harm to the NCR and potentially kill several of their troops or even civilians, but as long as you do all of this before confronting Benny or entering the Lucky 38 and don't kill Ambassador Crocker or Colonel Moore, you'll receive a pardon from the NCR, who will have no problem accepting your help despite the trouble you caused them.
  • Inversely, there's certain points in the game that making certain decisions will cause factions to turn on you, even if there's no feasible way they could have gained knowledge of these choices that fast. The game handwaves it as you being under surveillance... inside the most secure facility in the entire Mojave, which no one but you has entered for decades. Although there are hints that the NCR is cyber-spying on House (given that he hasn't updated his systems since before the Great War, shouldn't be difficult) with Yes Man and his programmer being a possible example.
  • In the quest given by Marcus, you can ask him for 2500 caps to bribe the mercenaries so they don't attack Jacobstown, only to convince them using a Speech option, and keep the caps for yourself. As long as you only ask for 2,500 and not 3,000, the game doesn't punish you with bad Karma for ripping off Marcus, and Marcus will even congratulate you on resolving the conflict nonviolently.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge:
  • The good karma ending of Old World Blues states that the Courier went on to serve as protector of Big MT for many years, releasing beneficial technology to aid in the development of the Mojave, on an as-needed basis.
  • Also should the Courier decide to not inform the NCR about the Archimedes II and instead chose to rewire the Helios One power-plant to provide free electricity for the entire Mojave Desert. An agent from the Followers of the Apocalypse is also there and seeks you help in hiding the destructive potential of the plant from the NCR and the Legion.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: A Evil Courier who still ends up screwing over or outright destroying some of the nastier factions {Such as the Legion, Powder Gangers, Fiends and Omertas} is basically doing this.
• Liberty Over Prosperity: The Wild Card ending has the Courier create an independent New Vegas for this reason, believing that people of the Mojave deserve to control their own destiny rather than be ruled by another. No Gods, No Masters. However, if you make the right choices and broker the right agreements, you can help New Vegas have (most of) their cake and eat it too, putting them in a position to both prosper (albeit not as much as they would have under House) and retain their independence from any one faction.
• Lightning Bruiser: If you have high Strength, high Endurance, high Agility, and take the Travel Light perk (which allows the Courier to move 10% faster while wearing light armor or no armor whatsoever), you can invoke this.
• Literal-Minded: If playing with low intelligence, the Courier's social intelligence is just as bad, and some of the dialogue options change accordingly, much to the annoyance of some of the people you meet.
• Living Legend: After a while, you can simply mention you're "The Courier" for the enemy to get nervous.
  • The first time players will probably notice this is the reaction of Boxcars, who's one of two survivors of the Legion's razing of Nipton. Boxcars has survived the Legion having decapitated a quarter of the town, crucifying the rest, and as he came second in their lottery, they left him alive but crippled. But even all that doesn't scare him as much as seeing the Courier walk in.
    Boxcars: Are you fucking kidding me? First I get my legs smashed, and then in walks the Powder Gangers' Grim Fucking Reaper. What the fuck have you got against us, man?!
  • The end of Lonesome Road counts, too. When you walked in, the locals— mutated soldiers and horrifying freaks of nature— harassed you to no end. When you walk back out, they keep their distance out of either respect or fear.
  • This is the whole reason the Courier is courted by Caesar and the NCR shortly after arriving on the strip: after hunting your would-be killer across the desert and waltzing into the Lucky 38 like you owned the place, they want you on their side. Caesar in particular is especially impressed if you kill Benny and House before meeting him.
• Made of Iron:
  • You survived being shot in the head twice and then being buried.
  • Also, with an implant, two level perks, and two DLC perks, you can have a naked DT of 13.2, which is higher than most light armor.
• Magnificent Bastard: An invoked play style. High Intelligence and Speech-based Couriers, as well as those who take the Independent path, can manipulate just about everyone they come across without even trying.
• Master Actor: In Old World Blues, the Courier can impersonate DR. MOBIUS himself in order to intimidate the Think Tank into backing down, provided you have the necessary skills to pull it off.
• Master of All: A Courier with high intelligence can end up being this at levels above 40 (especially if you acquired the Skilled trait early in the game, bought implants and got books that increase the stats of a skill by 3 or 4), getting to the point where even stats you ignored for most of the game end up with more of 60 points.
• Master of Disguise: If you can procure yourself the clothes of a faction, you'll appear as one of them to anyone who sees you, which allows you to walk past enemies without them opening fires.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: In Lonesome Road, it turns out that by delivering a certain package from Navarro to the Divide, the Courier inadvertently activated the ICBMs hidden underground, destroying the thriving settlement there, and instilling Ulysses with some twisted ideas about how a single person could determine the fate of a nation. Honest Hearts revealed that this had another big effect: the nuking killed large numbers of both NCR and Legion soldiers, but turned out massively beneficial for the Legion, both because the NCR troops were worth proportionally more and because the incident crippled the NCR expeditionary force's supply lines right as they were about to capitalize on a major victory.
  Joshua Graham: I can say that we were both lucky that NCR's supply lines and land routes north of Mojave Outpost were destroyed before the Battle of Hoover Dam. Something bad happened near Death Valley, at a place called the Divide. NCR couldn't cut across anymore and it slowed down their reinforcements. Terrible storms ripped entire companies apart before they even got to Nevada soil. The aftermath of Hoover Dam could have been far worse for Caesar.
• Mildly Military: If you side with the NCR. You do numerous missions for them, some of which include slaughtering entire armies, but you're still officially considered a civilian (Mr. New Vegas' broadcasts refer to you as a "civilian contractor"). They also put you in charge of NCR forces at several points in the game and give you some high level NCR armor (and a beret that designates the owner as an officer) and weapons. Additionally, a high NCR rep lets you boss around several NCR officers. Examples:
  • If you get "Accepted" reputation with the NCR, you can acquire an emergency radio that lets you call in a Ranger or a Trooper to help you fight whenever you want. Said Ranger/Trooper will be under your command and follow you around and heal after fights, just like a companion.
  • The final section of "Restoring Hope" involves you commanding an NCR squad (usually about four troopers, not including an extra one you may have called with the radio) and leading them in the attack on Nelson. They'll follow you on path you choose: frontal assault or ambush through the mountains.
  • A squad of six Veteran Rangers are explicitly placed under your command in the final battle. You can get them to snipe, follow you, or just kill all the enemies in the area for you.
  • In "Three Card Bounty", you can have First Recon follow you and kill one of the bounties, one Driver Nephi.^note This will cost you some extra cash if you're careful as they aim for the head and you need the head intact to get the full bounty.
  • With a high enough NCR rep, you can simply demand additional troopers as part of the "No, Not Much" quest instead of doing favors for the commanders of the bases you visit.
• Morality Pet: The Courier could qualify as this for House, particularly if they end the game with high karma.
  "Mr. House afforded [the Courier] every luxury at his disposal in the Lucky 38 out of gratitude and a quiet sense of pride for his choice in lieutenants."
• Mouth of Sauron: Should you decide to side with Mr. House, you'll step into this role for him, acting as his emissary in any matters that require a face-to-face presence. You aren't the leader however, as Mr. House is making all the shots.
• Mr. Vice Guy / Ms. Vice Girl: The Courier can be played like this; frequently using addictive chems, always being drunk, having lots of flings (including soliciting prostitutes), constantly gambling and talking people into giving them a bigger reward, while having high Karma and/or picking polite dialogue options.
• Multi-Melee Master: Between the Melee and Unarmed skills, if it stabs, slices, or smashes, you can use it.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Practically required for Couriers who focus on Guns or Energy Weapons, since they'll be using scrounged weapons and ammo for at least a little while and have to switch between whatever happens to be in the best condition at the moment. Later, when resources become less scarce, it's still a good idea to carry (at least) a scoped rifle for long-ranged combat in the wastes, a SMG or shotgun for short- to medium-ranged combat, and a (preferably silenced) pistol that can be smuggled into any of several areas that check you for weapons upon entry.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The player can choose a number of details regarding their past, such as their age, their relationship with their mother, and their familiarity with the Brotherhood.
• Mysterious Past: Much of the Courier's history is left up in the air in the main game. You're mostly a blank slate, in sharp contrast to the three main series Fallout games where your past is known and relatively benign. However, some dialogues and stat checks imply a few things, namely :
  • A male Courier can infer he slept with at least one woman in Montana in 2263.
  • The Courier has been to New Reno and Utah before, where they learned the language of the Zion tribals, as well as bits of Spanish. Ulysses also implies that they went to several other NCR cities like Vault City.
  • Dialogue with Boone indicates a knowledge of military topics such as sniper teams.
  • A high Intelligence Courier knows Latin and shows advanced knowledge of computers, implying an educated background.
  • Some optional dialogue with Veronica can even imply the Courier doesn't know where they were born.
  • If the quest info is not just for out-of-universe convenience, the Courier's enough of a music buff to name most of their quests after song titles.
  • The DLCs then subvert this, especially Lonesome Road. Exhaust all the dialogue options you can with people, because it turns out you've been shaping the fate of the Mojave for a long time even before the game began and you were hired by House. You just never realized how big an impact you were making.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: The Courier takes on many, many jobs throughout his romps throughout the wasteland, including bounty hunter, mercenary, repairman, psychologist, doctor, drill instructor, assassin, chef, hunter, computer programmer, and of course, Courier.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Nice job single-handedly destroying the Mojave's greatest, most promising civilization and turning it into an irradiated, stormy hellhole, Courier. In all fairness, the storms are the result of something else, and the Courier could not have known what was about to take place. Also, one has to wonder how much of this is Ulysses simply glorifying that which he lost.
  • Though it's undeniable that, by unwittingly destroying Hopeville and Ashton, the NCR's supply chain into the Mojave was drastically slowed down, allowing the Legion to maintain a toehold in the region after being routed at the First Battle of Hoover Dam. So, in a roundabout way, they are responsible for the entirety of the game's conflict.
  • If you decide to go for a Wild Card ending as Good Karma, it's revealed that Vegas just got more chaotic than ever. It's even worse if you didn't upgrade the Securitrons, deal with the Powder Gangers or the Fiends, where the Mojave is shown to be thrown into complete chaos.
• Nominal Hero: An Evil or Neutral Karma Courier who goes for the House or NCR endings will end up as this. It’s also entirely possible to pick the heroic options in quests just so you can shake people down for caps.
• Odd Friendship: The Courier's companions are weird.
  • In the main game: A flying robot created by a fascist, pre-war paramilitary organization that flew to the Mojave from the Potomac; a suicidal, self-widowed, ex-military Cold Sniper; a lesbian wandering tinkerer with ties to a feudalistic post-war paramilitary organization; a gay doctor with ties to a fascist, pre-war paramilitary organization; a 209-year-old cyberdog; a blunt, foul-mouthed, gun-toting alcoholic known to get around with guys almost as much as she does with a bottle of whiskey; a 234-year-old Mexican ghoul handyman and onetime vigilante vaquero; and a schizophrenic, Axe-Crazy super mutant grandmother.
  • In Dead Money: A mute, lesbian assassin that's part of an offshoot of a post-war feudalistic paramilitary organization; a super mutant with two separate personalities, an Extreme Omnivore of a Dumb Muscle and a Control Freak of a Genius Bruiser; and a 200-year-old celebrity-turned-survivalist ghoul.
  • Honest Hearts has two relatively tame tribals that can be your companions, but you can also have an Implacable Church Militant that was The Dragon to the Big Bad of the main game as your companion.
  • Lonesome Road gives you a copy of the aforementioned flying robot as a companion, but this time it has an excitable personality. If you choose to talk down Ulysses, you can add a slightly-deranged ex-Legion Warrior Poet who's spent the last four years plotting to murder you and destroy the NCR to the list.
• Older Than They Look: Although the character's age is ambiguous, it is implied that a male Courier is old enough to have a 17-year-old son (and presumably the female is of a similar age), still, you can make him look as young as possible.
• Old Soldier: The age of your character can be adjusted during creation, allowing the Courier to look like a weathered and seasoned veteran of the wastes. However, many of the older NPCs will still refer to you as "kid".
• Omnicidal Neutral:
  • It is an option in the Wild Card ending; you can collect the weak and destitute factions under your banner or crush them and rule yourself.
  • Especially if you stack it with the latter above, in Lonesome Road, you can choose to launch nuclear missiles against NCR and Legion's only pathways to the Mojave and thus leaving them to slowly choke to death from the lack of a trade routes (in NCR's case). Yikes.
• One-Man Army: If you level up enough, you don't need anyone besides you and your weapon of choice. People lampshade how the Courier seems to be a force of nature, being able to do the impossible, most noticeably if the player chooses to kill Caesar or President Kimball. And by the end of the game, you've single-handedly tipped the balance of power in the Mojave for your faction of choice and ensured their conquest.
• Only in It for the Money: A Courier can make it clear that is only helping someone just for a fee. Strangely in most cases will still receive positive karma anyway.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: With a high Science skill (with some overlap from a high Medicine skill), the Courier can become an expert in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, robotics, computer programming, radiology, neurology, psychology, electromagnetics, and aeronautics, among other things.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Downplayed; you can mention your name in your own dialogue, and certain characters will know who you are, but of course, the current technical limitations of voice acting means that they will never call you anything but "Courier" out loud. The Courier sometimes does have the option to simply introduce him or herself solely by the nickname/job title.
• Only Sane Man: In Old World Blues. Says something that you're this even if your Intelligence is less than three.
• Outside-Context Problem: To either the NCR or the Legion, if you don't pick their side. The Courier's quest has nothing directly to do with the war over the Hoover Dam, and they were a complete unknown before the events of the game. You can start meddling with their business from the moment you reach either Nipton or the NCR Correction Facility, and by the time you reach The Strip, whichever side you didn't pick (if not both) realizes that you're a big enough threat to warrant hit squads constantly sent after you.
• The Pig-Pen: Their brain complains about their hygiene, and it's safe to assume they know what they're talking about.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Was on the receiving end of one, and not only survived it, but also has no scar to show from the double gunshot to the face they suffered. Doc Mitchell's dialogue at the start of the game implies that your face was actually a mess, and he did some pretty damn impressive reconstructive surgery. Mainly this serves as a Hand Wave for the player customizing the character's appearance.
• Really Gets Around: With the perks Lady Killer, Black Widow, La Femme, and Confirmed Bachelor the Courier has more romance than any other Fallout protagonist.
• Rebel Leader: In the "Independent" path, where you can lead the various minor factions in the game against all three major powers.
• Rebellious Spirit: The Independent path in a nutshell, particularly since you'll likely be betraying more than one of the factions you've reached high approval with.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: In the Wild Card finale, the Courier doesn't seem to solve any of the Mojave's problems, such as destroying the Fiends, despite having an army of advanced securitrons.
• Robosexual: Some dialogue options for FISTO, a sex-bot looking like a normal Protectron, paint the Courier as downright excited at the prospect of, ahem, using its services.
  Woohoo! <assume the position>
• Sixth Ranger: You can be this to the NCR or the Legion if you join them: you operate outside the basic command structure but are recognized as the reason they gained control of the Mojave.
• Shrouded in Myth: Played with. While some NPCs recognize and are aware of the things the Courier has done, there are those who either don't believe the Courier was responsible or dismiss the various stories as little more than rumour.
  • Possibly averted by Mr New Vegas, who only ever refers to the Courier by name once when reporting this miraculous recovery in Goodsprings. It's left vague whether he's aware or simply doesn't acknowledge that the lone civilian responsible for most of the other current news in the Mojave happens to be the same person.
  • Ulysses' dialogue suggests that his obsession with the Courier has essentially mythologized them in his eyes.
• Silver Fox: With Lady Killer/Black Widow perks and an aged Courier, you can basically invoke this in the people you meet.
• Smarter Than You Look: If you pass intelligence checks with some people, they'll remark how you're "not as dumb as you look". Even with high Intelligence, Raul still treats the Courier as if they were a moron.
• Smug Snake: There are certainly dialogue options available, which especially fit if you haven't played them with the competence they imply.
  Oliver: Do you seriously think you have what it takes to build a nation? Carve out a frontier, train troops, build roads, and create towns?
  Courier: My sycophants tell me "Yes".
• The Starscream: A Wild Card Courier can be this to House, Colonel Cassandra Moore or Caesar, if you decide to accept main quests from a faction, only to choose to be Wild Card before the final battle Although is only necessary to kill House to complete that ending.
• Stupid Evil: A wild card with evil Karma can end up being this, since most evil decisions are things that end up affecting him, such as killing possible allies.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: A Male Courier with the Lady Killer Perk can invoke this when nervously asking if the Lonesome Drifter, who has traveled from Montana to the Mojave looking for his father, wouldn't happen to be exactly 17 years old? When he replies he isn't, he asks why the Courier is so interested in knowing his age.
  Courier: No reason.
• Terror Hero: Via the Terrifying Presence perk.
  Brotherhood of Steel Paladin: We heard Veronica talking with the Elder. We won't stand for this.
  Courier: I will cast down your codex and bask in the dying agony of those who hold it dear.
  Brotherhood of Steel Paladin: No. No!
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: Shot in the head at close range, twice, and buried in a shallow grave at the very beginning of the game. Naturally, being the Player Character, they get better, though some quick work on the part of an escort robot and the local doctor, along with being the Fallout universe, could affect the outcome. ^note On a meta level, it's assured the Courier would survive. Even with a max Guns skill (which Benny doesn't have), it's impossible to kill even an Endurance-1 Courier with two head shots.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: A Yes-man ending where the securitrons are not upgraded (or even destroyed), while the fiend leaders and Powder Gangers are still alive, will see the Mojave become an anarchist world filled with chaos and death. If you have good karma, this can also be considered an example of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
• Token Evil Teammate: The Courier is the only non-antagonist character who can be unambiguously evil, as the rest of their allies are all trying to help people, and even Graham is good-intentioned if he goes off the deep end. A Courier with Evil Karma will also end up being this if you ultimately side with the NCR.
• Token Good Teammate: The only character in Dead Money who can be unambiguously good, since even Christine is willing to let your collar go off to take out Elijah. Alternatively, you can gleefully bully and manipulate your fellow prisoners for your own greed. A Courier with Good Karma can also be this to The Legion, as they work with them but still try to do the right thing in spite of the Legion's brutal actions and structure.
• Tongue-Tied: In Old World Blues, the Think Tank have put in mental conditioning that prevents you from talking about Big MT to the outside world as a handwave for keeping the events of that DLC self-contained.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • You're just a regular delivery person... then you take two shots to the head. The rest of the game sees you slowly solving every challenge you come up against, tearing through established powerhouses and steering the fate of the Mojave by your own hands.
  • If you managed to pass all of Lanius' speech checks (requires 100 speech skill to pass all of them), he will comment that the two bullet holes in your head are making you strong.
• Transhuman: Thanks to a selection of cybernetic implants, especially a few that boost mental aspects.
• Unexplained Recovery: Sure, you know that Doc Mitchell saved you, but to everyone involved in your death, you're a ghost coming to haunt them. Played for all it's worth in dialogue choices:
  • From one of the Great Khans present;
    Jessup: What the hell, you're supposed to be dead!
    Courier: I got better. / I'm a ghost, here to haunt you. Oooooohh!
  • And Benny, the man who put you in the ground.
    Benny: Hu— wha— you're... how are you alive?
    Courier: I got better.
  • When first meeting Veronica:
    Veronica: You look like a mess. Where do you come from?
    Courier: The grave.
    Veronica: Huh. I take that back. You look pretty good, all things considered.
• Ungrateful Bastard: You can have the Courier be this to Doc Mitchell and Goodsprings if you choose to side with the Powder Gangers: He saves your life and helps you completely free of charge, so how do you repay him? Manipulate him into giving you medical supplies to help a gang of convicts take over the town, and then murder him alongside the majority of the town's residents when they try to fight back.
• Unstoppable Mailman: Being a courier in the world of Fallout is not for the faint of heart. During the first half of the game as you track Benny to the Strip, you have the option of telling characters, up to and including Benny himself, that you have no interest in vengeance or payback, you just want your package back so you can complete the delivery. Other characters express various shades of disbelieving humor that finishing your job is more important to you than revenge on the man who shot you in the head.
  Mr. House: You've been a very busy courier, haven't you? You take your obligation to deliver a package very seriously; an ethic for which I am grateful.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: One package you delivered before the story began was an active detonator that turns The Divide into the hell hole it is in the present day.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: One of the reasons you can give for allying with the Legion.
• Vague Age: While the first two Fallout games let you set your age, and the third game set you as a teenager / young adult, this game is very vague. There's a hint you're in your 30s-40s^note Optional dialogue where you could be worried about fathering a 17-year old child in Montana means you're probably mid-to-late 30s at the youngest, but it's only a hint. The ability to customize your character's facial appearance only adds to the ambiguity; an Age slider during character creation lets you change how old your character looks, but there's no option to decide how old they actually are. Some characters such as Benny, Johnson Nash and Caleb McCaffery refer to the Courier with terms like "youngster" and "kid" regardless of appearance.
• Villain Protagonist: If you don't find the idea of playing as The Hero appealing, you don't have to be one; you can act like the biggest asshole ever to walk the wastes instead. Even more so than the evil versions of the Vault Dweller, Chosen One, Lone Wanderer, and Sole Survivor, as the main story at least pitted them against monsters who were planning to destroy most of the remaining human race. However, the Courier can hook up with the Legion to bring a nation of crucifying, rapist slavers to power, throw New Vegas into absolute anarchy and chaos with help from (but much to the regret of) Yes Man, join forces with Father Elijah and turn the Mojave in a completely uninhabitable, poisonous wasteland (although doing so results in a Non-Standard Game Over), and utterly obliterate several factions in horrible ways For the Evulz.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The player can actively encourage this. For example having Evil Karma but good Reputation with most of the factions.
• Warrior Therapist: Among the eleven possible companions, only ED-E, an eyebot, and Rex, a cybernetic dog, do not seek guidance from the Courier. Dean Domino can also count, depending on how nice they are with him. It is especially true with Veronica, with whom The Courier can be something of a Big Brother Mentor/Cool Big Sis. Her reliance on them for emotional support and advice is quite apparent throughout her personal sidequest.
• Wasteland Warlord: In the Wild Card ending, you can betray and overthrow Mr. House, expel the NCR and Legion out of the Mojave, and then rule over New Vegas as a despot backed up by your army of Securitrons.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: The same way as Ulysses after completing Lonesome Road. Doubly so, you not only get a duplicate of Ulysses' duster, but you also get your own based on your end faction choice as a gift from Ulysses. The Mr. House version looks identical to Ulysses' Duster.
• Wild Card: You tip the balance of power in the Mojave Wasteland, whether to the NCR, Legion, House or yourself. This is even the name of story arc set around doing this.
• You Are Number 6: Is literally the sixth Courier who have been hired by Mr. House (and the one carrying the Platnium Chip itself) and is therefore called "Courier Six" by some characters.
• You No Take Candle: A Courier with low intelligence will sometimes speak this way. For instance, responding "me take your job cause me smarter" when Fantastic asks if NCR sent the Courier to replace him.

Companions

For tropes related to DLC companions, see the Characters pages for their respective DLC:

• Dead Money (Dog/God, Christine Royce, Dean Domino)
• Honest Hearts (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, Joshua Graham)
• Old World Blues (Roxie)
• Lonesome Road (ED-E (Copy), Ulysses)

In General

Meet your crew.^note from left to right: Rex, Cass, Raul, Lily, Boone, ED-E, Veronica, and Arcade

The Courier can meet up with a lot of interesting people in the Mojave, from humans to ghouls to super mutants. Some of them will offer to travel with you; these are your Companions.

---

• Badass Normal: Some of them are just baseline humans with training. Doesn't stop them from kicking ass and taking names with the rest of your companions.
• Can't Catch Up:
  • Non-humanoid companions suffer from this compared to humanoid companions, since unlike humanoid companions, you don't have the option of equipping them with weapons and armor to make them more effective. ED-E gains back some ground if you complete the other ED-E unit's questline in Lonesome Road.
  • Lily has a decent starting DT, but unlike other companions you can't put armor on her to improve it, so she is likely to be overshadowed by Veronica who has a low starting DT, but you can put a power armor on her. Ironically, Lily may end up being more useful as a stealth companion than as a tank.
• Central Theme: Nearly all of your companions (even including the dog) are currently questioning their place in the world and what to do in it when the Courier meets them. Depending on how you treat them and/or how their personal quest goes, the Courier is able to change their outlook on things. For each of them:
  • Arcade grapples with being the youngest remaining survivor of the Enclave. During his personal quest, the Courier helps him decide whether to inherit his father's mission and become a vigilante using Enclave tech or to forge his own path by helping people through science and medicine with the Followers of the Apocalypse.
  • Boone is a Death Seeker, due to a combination of taking part in the Bitter Springs Massacre and being forced to "save" his pregnant wife from being enslaved by the Legion. At the end of his quest, the Courier can convince him to let go of his suicidal tendencies and try to make up for what he's done, or convince him that people die all the time, so why bother worrying about them?
  • Raul lives still haunted by the loss of his family, his little sister, and a Replacement Goldfish that reminded him of her. He's on the fence about what to do with his nigh-immortal life as a ghoul at 200+ years old: should he once again take up his old guns to defend the innocent or settle down and fix machines for the rest of his life?
  • Cass is driven into hard drinking over the imminent loss of her caravan business, her pride and joy (not to mention the likelihood that her father's heart defect passed onto her and means an early grave). If and when she gets help in discovering the Van Graffs and Crimson Caravan teamed up to purge their rivals including hers, the Courier can follow her in painting the walls red with their blood or calm her down by convincing her that taking the evidence to the NCR would be a slower, but significantly more damaging wound than even the best-placed load of buckshot.
  • Lily suffers from memory problems, mistaking other people for her grandchildren, and contends with a malevolent split-personality, Leo that's gradually overtaking her mind. Her medicine keeps Leo at bay, but further clouds her mind, so she deliberately only takes half-doses. The Courier can have her continue what she's doing, have her take her recommended dose (which further blocks out Leo but ultimately has her lose the memory of her grandchildren), or convince her to not take the medicine at all (which results in her becoming a raging monster with Leo at the helm).
  • Veronica helplessly watches as her chapter of the Brotherhood is dying out, all the while knowing it's because they follow the Codex too deeply, and previous attempts to sway them from the path of self-destruction earned her a Black Sheep reputation among her fellows and reassigned to external scavenging operations to keep her away. Her quest deals with trying to find a way to convince the Elder that other technologies besides Power Armor and energy weapons are useful. All efforts ultimately fail, however, and she can be convinced to either stay with the Brotherhood (trying to futilely reform it from within) or leave for the Followers of the Apocalypse... which ends in further failure when some overzealous Brotherhood soldiers massacre the group she intended to join to prevent the chance that she might share technology and knowledge with them. It only cements her belief that she was right to leave the Brotherhood behind.
  • Rex might not be able to speak or really understand the decision being made for him, but he too is at a crossroads when the Courier finds him: the cyberdog is hundreds of years old and it's come time that his preserved brain is gradually giving out, necessitating a replacement. His quest involves finding another dog to donate their brain (willingly or otherwise) so that Rex can live on, with the Courier's choice affecting Rex's personality for years to come.
  • ED-E has a relatively limited personality in the base game, courtesy of being previously damaged to the point of being rendered inert and requiring crude but effective repairs. However, during the Lonesome Road DLC, the military technology of the Divide scans him and outputs an upgraded version — with a restored memory and an emergent ability to think and feel, enough for this version of ED-E to willingly sacrifice himself to stop a nuclear countdown (inspired by the memory of his human creator, the Enclave researcher Dr. Whitley, who did the same for the newly self-aware ED-E to spare him being destroyed and repurposed by the Enclave). Alternatively, if the Courier opts to launch the nukes at one of two, or both targets, then like the original, the copy of ED-E carries on to California and the eyebots' "home" in Navarro. Or, if the Courier didn't care enough to let him out of stasis, he's disassembled, and everything he remembered is lost all over again. However, regardless of which ending the Divide's ED-E receives, the original ED-E in the Mojave receives his copy's combat upgrades and memories of the Divide... with the implication that those memories of his creator are all still somewhere inside him, waiting to be unlocked.
  • The DLC companions all have some sort of obsession or trauma that gnaws at them due to their inability or unwillingness to move past it. Resolving their personal dilemmas in the best way gives them the means to either let go or begin again. For each of them:
    • Christine is a Brotherhood of Steel black-ops soldier who has both a personal and professional reason to keep going after Elijah, respectively being forced to break up with her lover Veronica and later getting mutilated at his hands by the Big MT machines, still carrying out her order to punish him for causing the HELIOS One debacle and abandoning his post as Elder. If the Courier doesn't kill her and remains friendly to her, Christine resigns herself to living as the Sierra Madre's warden, protecting it from the outside world... and the outside world from the Sierra Madre.
    • Dog and God are two in one. Dog, like many nightkin, is psychologically broken by his massive use of Stealth Boys and the loss of the Master, seeking an authority figure of any kind to replace him. God is much saner and only wants to help and protect Dog, but is a violent Control Freak who sees the whole world as threats to Dog. Both hate each other: Dog sees God as something evil inside him, to the point he's willing to kill himself by setting the casino on fire just to silence him, and God sees Dog as childish, ungrateful and incapable of taking care of himself. Merging the two personalities allows him to "let go" of both his personas' traumas, becoming a new individual free from Elijah and the need to follow a "master".
    • Dean has never once thought of letting go of his petty grudge, which has kept him in the Sierra Madre for two centuries just so he could spit on Frederick Sinclair's legacy by robbing his beloved casino. If you rubbed him the right way and acted as his subversive Number Two, he eventually gets over his grand revenge after finding out what happened between Vera Keyes and Sinclair (though he still has no idea why he feels bad about the whole affair) as he finally leaves the Sierra Madre to try his luck in the Mojave.
    • Follows-Chalk grapples with being loyal to his tribe in Zion and wanting to fulfill his wanderlust, worshipping Joshua Graham for being a badass but is also utterly naive about civilization outside Zion despite his scouting skills. If the Courier talks him out of leaving his tribe, he relents, but comes to terms with the idea that it's for the best. If the Courier convinces him to pursue his dreams of wandering the wastes, he is happy, though has to leave in secret against the wishes of his family, and is never seen again.
    • Waking Cloud is resentful about the disappearance of her husband and Daniel's refusal to tell her what happened to him. If she is told the truth, that the White Legs killed him while he helped the Sorrow's children flee Zion to safety, she is angry at Daniel for hiding the truth, but eventually does forgive him and mourns her husband with her mind appeased, then moving on and taking a new husband. If the Courier goes along with Daniel and denies her the truth, she does eventually find out and poisons the minds of her people against New Canaan's pleas for peace out of rage and spite.
    • Joshua channels his hatred of the White Legs and the Legion after his failed execution into his New Canaanite faith, claiming he does God's work by killing the Sorrows' enemies. Convincing him to spare the White Legs' leader, Salt-Upon-Wounds after exterminating the tribe makes him stop and realize he was driven by wrath more than righteous justice.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four human companions in the main game: Veronica is Sanguine (good-humored, lively, passionate), Cass is Choleric (steadfast, confident, fierce), Boone is Melancholic (reserved, practical, self-critical), and Arcade is Phlegmatic (calm, idealistic, doubtful). Unfortunately, you can't have all four at the same time unless you use an exploit or mods on PC.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Mostly inverted — Arcade prefers his trusty plasma defender, Raul is The Gunslinger, and Boone is a Cold Sniper, while Veronica is a Bare-Fisted Monk, and all of them will complain if you have them switch from their preferred range (although Boone and Veronica do have tagged Melee and Energy Weapons, respectively). Super mutant Lily wields a massive BFS made from one of the blades of a crashed vertibird, and while she doesn't complain when asked to switch ranges (she carries an assault carbine by default), Melee is one of her tagged skills but Guns isn't. Cass, meanwhile, has both Melee and Guns tagged and is more than happy to get into a good scrap with either, but if asked, what she actually likes best is chucking dynamite or even using her bare fists, even though she knows she's not as good with them.
  Raul: Sure, I'll stop using my rather effective gun and switch to, ah, this piece of metal tubing here. Great plan, boss.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Most of the companions are strong, educated and/or experienced enough to play this role to a low-level Courier, but Boone and ED-E in particular can be picked up much earlier than the others and offer enough utility to be the straighest examples.
• Party of Representatives: Each of your companions represents a certain group of people, allowing you insight into their beliefs and flaws. Veronica is a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, Arcade is part of the Followers of the Apocalypse and was born into the Enclave, Lily is a veteran of the Unity and lets you witness the effects of schizophrenia present in all nightkin, Raul has lived in Arizona, watched it be pacified and thus seen the (relatively minor) good side to Legion control. Boone and Cass are both NCR, but Boone represents the military side while Cass is a civilian business owner.

Main Companions

Arcade Israel Gannon

"I'll be here. Just don't expect me to fend off a gang of Super Mutants while you're gone."

Six of Spades

Voiced by: Zachary Levi

"It's... a thing. A science thing. It hurts robots. Don't worry about it."

Arcade is a Followers of the Apocalypse researcher who is stationed in Freeside. He follows the Courier if he is persuaded, with prestige or pity or charisma or flirting. He's very reluctant to share his past, but he is committed to making New Vegas a better place. Strangely enough, Arcade is suspiciously proficient in energy weapons and makes comments and observations about the wasteland that a typical Follower should not know.

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Provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: He dies in most of the endings where he is either sold to the Legion or the Legion wins and unable to even save the local refugees, the only ending where he survives is fighting as an Enclave soldier and is imprisoned for his act of selflessness.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Not many gentiles have "Israel" for a middle name. "Arcade" can be seen as a variation of the Russian or Eastern European name Arkady, favored by Jewish people. Then again, his voice actor is not Jewish despite having a "Jewish-sounding" middle name, so the same could be the case for him (especially since "Gannon" is a very Anglo-Saxon name).
• Ancestral Weapon: Ancestral Armor: the Gannon Family Tesla Armor, a hand-me-down from his father, an officer in the Enclave.
• Author Avatar: According to this forum post, his views and personalities were inspired by Joshua Sawyer's own idealism, and that out of all the characters that he has written for the game, Arcade is closest to himself. However, Sawyer also notes this trope is not intended, and Arcade is not directly representing him.
• Badass Bookworm: Extremely knowledgeable about medical matters, and also quite deadly with a plasma pistol and combat-ready, with his own Enclave power armor!
• Beware the Nice Ones: Even knowing his past with the Enclave, he's a surprisingly effective fighter, and you can have him show up at Hoover Dam in full power armor, gunning down Legion soldiers left and right. He also reacts... poorly if you suddenly throw your hat in with the Legion.
  • Then there's his unusually vicious remark when you go after the Fiends with him in Three-Card Bounty:
  Arcade: I'm not exactly a mercenary, but killing scumbags of this magnitude wouldn't cause me to lose any sleep.
• Bad Liar: Arcade's obviously practiced at deflecting questions about his past, but occasionally little details and landmarks in the Wasteland will cause him to let something slip, and he's terrible at backpedaling should the Courier notice. He'll even skip the question even if it's not directed at him. When you ask him if he knows more about vertibirds, he'll try to brush it off, or even flat out ask you don't ask any further.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • He's the companion who'll try to nudge you toward an independent Vegas if you ask him, but if you achieve it, he'll find his workload increase greatly. Subverted, in that even after realizing this, he rolls up his sleeves and delves in.
    • A more straightforward example would be if the Courier didn't upgrade the Securitrons, deal with the Fiends, and the Gunpowder Bandits, so chaos reigns in the Mojave. If it were not because the dialogue remains the same.
• Being Good Sucks: As one analysis of his character summed it up, Arcade is an idealist in a non-ideal world, and thus he will never be content. No matter what you do, the epilogue shows that he won't get a Golden Ending. At best, he'll be somewhat disappointed at the outcome if New Vegas falls under NCR control or achieves independence, but he understands that it's the lesser of all the evils. In all the others, he ends up either being brutally murdered, enslaved and eventually Driven to Suicide, crucified, bitterly disillusioned with his ideals, or hunted down as a war criminal by the same people that he worked very hard to help. The best-case scenario for him is on the Independent route, where he gets to keep helping people as a doctor or a Power Armor-clad wandering hero, but there is the problem of him constantly having more people who need his help.
• Berserk Button: Don't ever think of viewing the Legion as a solution to the wasteland. He gets even madder than Boone when it comes to it. The other factions at least have something he can reasonably consider why someone would side with, but the Legion is such a terrible thing for the wasteland, that he can't fathom why anyone would believe in it.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the House ending where he remains at the Followers camp, it is said that he grows disillusioned with the Followers and leaves them to work "happily" as a family doctor in the Boneyard. In the Independent ending where he aids the Remnants, despite his pride at victory over the NCR, Legion, and House, he realizes an independent Vegas is not as great as he imagined it to be, but he uses his Enclave knowledge and technology to help keep the peace (essentially becoming a post-nuclear Enclave Batman).
• Chainsaw Good: His default melee weapon is a ripper. Makes sense, considering his past in the Enclave. It possibly also does double-duty as a bone-saw, which would be very useful for a doctor.
• Combat Medic: He's a doctor which gives you a perk that increases the effectiveness of all your food and medicine, and while he's not the best fighter in the game, he's pretty handy with energy weapons. Some players are perfectly fine with loaning Arcade the REPCONN Q-35 Matter Modulator whenever they need some bodies disintegrated
• Court Physician: It's possible for you to "volunteer" the services of Arcade as a personal slave and physician to Caesar. Should Caesar survive his illness and achieve victory over the Mohave, Arcade spends many years unwillingly attending to his new master's health, even becoming valued as an companion for his education and his willingness to argue with Caesar; in the end, Arcade is able to use this as an opportunity to steal a scalpel and disembowel himself. However, if Caesar dies prior to the endgame and Lanius achieves victory in his stead, the Legate quickly tires of Arcade's sarcasm and has him crucified.
• Cultured Badass: Always has a quote from Vergil, Lucan, Cato, or paraphrase of Shakespeare thanks to delving into the Followers' libraries, and a crack shot with a plasma pistol.
• Dark and Troubled Past: As evasive as he is about it, he was once with the Enclave.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's probably one of the most sarcastic characters in the game.
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: He's probably the second-most anti-Legion companion after Boone, given he doesn't outright kill any Legionary you meet right away like Boone will. Arcade won't start shooting them on sight, but he makes his contempt known every step of the way. He outright refuses to talk to the Courier if you're wearing Legion armor, even after you've recruited him, calling it insulting.
• Downer Ending: He draws the short straw in all of the Legion endings, and any NCR ending where he joins the Enclave.
• Driven to Suicide: In one of his endings. If you sell him to Caesar's Legion, he ends up as Caesar's personal doctor/philosophical sparring partner. After the end of the game, in despair over being forced to help an organization he utterly despises, he disembowels himself with a scalpel in an unguarded moment. Of all the ways he could have chosen to kill himself, he chose the slowest, most agonising way as an affront to Caesar and his legion since he was the only trained, modern medic in Caesar's Legion. Caesar, who grew to see him as an intellectual equal, mourned his death for months.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In the Wild Card endings, he gets to roll up his sleeves and make the Mojave a better place with his talents, even if everything wasn't "as good as it could possibly be."
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Arcade Gannon will be proud to see an independent Vegas no matter the circumstances. Which is, even if the fiends and gunpowder bandits continue to spread terror in the Mojave, while chaos reigns in Vegas.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Outside of doing something that he disapproves of (such as activating Archimedes), after you complete his personal quest, he will leave for the rest of the game, either to rejoin the Enclave or to go back to the Old Mormon Fort to work with the Followers of the Apocalypse again.
• Golden Ending: Arguably the NCR ending where he stays at the Followers camp in Freeside. He helps with the sick and wounded while the situation stabilizes, then moves back to California with the Followers to act as a teacher.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Even if you have high Karma, Arcade won't buy into any stories about your good deeds so easily. He also has a personal "dislike counter" where Machiavellian thoughts about how "The End Justifies The Means" will anger him and outright psychotic actions (such as activating a Kill Sat on the NCR) will cause him to leave you. For similar reasons, he also dislikes Mr. House for exploiting the people of Freeside. That said, he doesn't hesitate to exploit any sort of advantage for the people of Freeside if given the opportunity.
• Good Is Not Soft: Arcade's an unambiguously good man. However, if he's with the Courier while hunting down the leaders of the Fiends, he'll casually comment that while he's hardly bounty hunter material, he won't lose any sleep over killing them.
• Gratuitous Latin: He speaks fluent Latin and knows a lot about the history of the Roman Empire. But he's very quick to assure you he did not learn it from the Legion. He still pronounces "Caesar" the English way, presumably out of spite.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: To ensure Arcade's future well-being, it's better for him to be sent back to the Followers' base to continue his work as a doctor at the end of his personal quest. Should he join the other Enclave remnants and survive the battle, the NCR will identify him as a defector to the Enclave afterwards, and he'll either be forced on the run or be imprisoned indefinitely. The only good outcome where he joins the battle is combined with the truly independent Vegas ending, where he'll become a peacekeeping vigilante armed with Enclave tech.
• Hidden Depths: Arcade looks nothing more than a doctor in his mid-'30s. Beneath his witty personality and introverted ways, however, he's actually a former member of the Enclave and their youngest survivor.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Arcade's somewhat bitter, but he's also genuinely devoted to trying to do good and helping the people of the Wasteland. Also, if the Courier has an Intelligence score of less than 3, he'll follow you since he believes someone like you needs all the help they can get.
• Lampshade Hanging: If Arcade is following the player when the player receives the "The Moon Comes Over the Tower" quest, he'll sarcastically complain about the fact that the quest-giver (who is also a member of the Followers) ignored him. Technically she did, but only because she wasn't given any lines where she speaks to him.
• Like Father, Like Son: Sawyer has implied that Arcade's father, Mark, was very much a reluctant optimist with a tendency to use Gratuitous Latin too.
  Mark Gannon: It's an old lie, Arcade. Canis caninam non est.^note "Dog doesn't eat dog."
• Malicious Misnaming: Being well-versed in Latin, Arcade presumably knows that Caesar is supposed to be pronounced "Kaisar". He still pronounces it the English way regardless, just to make his disdain for the Legion and Caesar's philosophy obvious.
• Meaningful Name: Arcade. Arcadia. The "Israel" part of his name also ties into the idea of something higher and better (like the concept of a promised land), which encapsulates his motives and goals rather well. JE Sawyer pointed out that in some interpretations "Israel" means "one who struggled with god", which works well for someone having difficulty being moral in a world full of immorality.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Objects to this mindset, and highlights one of the other characters who espouses it. His pride in the Followers of the Apocalypse is that they don't forget the little man in their quest to do great good.
• Neutral No Longer: If you get 5 relationship points, Arcade will decide to abandon his apathy to the conflict, and decides to lend support to Mr. House or the NCR to expel the Legion.
• Nice Guy: His tendencies towards acerbic remarks aside, Arcade is one of the most well-meaning people in the wasteland. Which makes it all the more tragic that his endings will only ever be bittersweet at best, even if you don't sell him to Caesar.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Arcade is very soft spoken, even if you sell him to Ceasar. However, if during the quest That Lucky Old Sun you decide to activate Archimedes, he will blow up at you for doing so and leave on the spot.
  Arcade: You activated Archimedes?! What the hell are you thinking?!
  Low Intelligence Courier: Oh, uh.... whoops. I thought that was to turn it off.
  Arcade: Argh, you moron! You're going to kill all of the troopers down there!
• Sarcastic Confession: If you're blunt enough to call him out on dodging your questions, he responds with this:
  Arcade: (deadpan) To obfuscate my past involvement with a fascist paramilitary organization. (beat) I'm kidding, of course.
• Saying Too Much: Every time you visit someplace that triggers reminiscing on his part. Invariably followed up with clumsy backpedaling and painfully obvious evasion.
• Science Hero: At first, he's just a guy in a lab coat with a plasma defender, and maybe a bit more depending on how generous you are with weaponry. Make him join the fight for Hoover Dam, and he even gets the cool Powered Armor requisite of any genius hero.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A bit, at first. Worth noting because after he warms up to you, he starts speaking much more naturally.
• Shameful Source of Knowledge: He knows a surprising amount about certain obscure topics, such as vertibirds or top-secret pre-war research projects, due to his connection to the Enclave.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Arcade thoroughly trashes the reasoning of both Caesar and Legion-aligned players.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Any ending where the Legion wins will result in his death.
• Sins of Our Fathers: If you convince him to fight with the other Remnants at Hoover Dam, you better be going for the House or Wild Card endings. Otherwise, he ends up being hunted by NCR Rangers or imprisoned indefinitely as a war criminal, despite being innocent of any crime other than being his father's son.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: He's somewhere in between. Unlike many other members of the Followers of Apocalypse, he understands that he lives in a Crapsack World and sometimes one needs to resort to violence to get things done. He's also quite an idealist, however, and very much wants to see an independent New Vegas.
• Small Steps Hero: Doesn't really like sacrificing people for the greater good, which is why he isn't a big fan of the NCR. It takes convincing for him not to dislike you if you turn in Anderson, even though he stole water from NCR people and murdered the person sent to find out where it went.
• Sophisticated as Hell: In regards to the Legion and especially Caesar's POV, he doesn't even try to calmly deconstruct his reasons and just yells out that he's full of shit... in philosophical/political language, mixed with a healthy number of Precision F Strikes.
  Arcade: What a load of Brahmin shit, can you believe this guy!?
  Courier: Who, Caesar?
  Arcade: Of course, Caesar! You can hardly even hold his men responsible, given how they're practically raised to worship him as a living deity. What's the point of surviving the war? Why did the founders of the Followers crawl their way out of vaults to bring knowledge back to the wasteland? So we could act like the last two thousand years didn't happen? Play dress up so we can fight ancient wars all over again? No way is he getting away with this. I'm not letting it happen. You're not letting it happen.
  Courier: He seemed pretty smart to me.
  Arcade: Being "smart" doesn't matter if you're insane. Everything makes sense to Caesar because he's twisted everything to his world view. He's Caesar reincarnated, the NCR is the corrupt Roman senate. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought the Colorado River were the new Rubicon.^note As Ceasar rants to the Courier later, yes, he totally does. He abdicates responsibility to a myth of historical inevitability. But he's not Caesar. This isn't Rome. And he isn't going to get away with this.
  • If you hand him over to the Legion to be Caesar's personal physician, he will have this gem to give you when you say hi to him afterwards:
    Arcade: In the words of Socrates, "Go fornicate yourself."
• Specs of Awesome and Stoic Spectacles: Cannot be removed from his face when giving him new pieces of clothing.
• Straight Gay: Other then a few comments here and there, he rarely acts upon his orientation. The only way to know for sure he's not heterosexual is that you can recruit him with the Confirmed Bachelor perk.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Admits to wanting to throw ED-E into Lake Mead with a few pulse grenades after it for good measure. After learning about his past, presumably Arcade was worried that ED-E would've recognized him as a former member of the Enclave and give the game away.
• Unlucky Everydude: His explanation for why he's currently unattached is that he's "boring". The reality is more interesting, but you won't be finding out any time soon because he's got issues.
• Vigilante Man: In the Independent ending where he aids the Remnants, Arcade uses his Enclave knowledge and technology to help maintain the peace, essentially becoming an Enclave Batman.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Although he only opens up enough to tell you about it during "For Auld Lang Syne", Arcade is curious and anxious about whether his father would be proud of him. You can either encourage or discourage this mindset.
• We Win, Because You Didn't: Despite not liking either faction, his priority is for the Legion to lose, to the point of being willing to support Mr. House or the NCR if it means the Legion does not take over the Mojave.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If you tell the Enclave Remnants to support Caesar's Legion, he'll completely drop his normally calm and logical personality and lose it, denouncing you as a cold-blooded murderer before leaving you forever. He also does this if you use Archimedes to kill the NCR troopers stationed at Helios One.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: According to the developers, this is ultimately the point of his character. While he's a little more cynical and worldly than your average example of this trope, his idealism is what drives him.

Craig Boone

"A murderer who does good deeds is still a murderer. And he still gets his judgement. I left the NCR when my tour was up. Had enough of war. Decided to start over. None of it made a difference in the end."

Two of Hearts

Voiced by: Jason Marsden^note Miscredited as James Marsden

"You take out a debt, it's only a matter of time before someone comes collecting."

Boone is a former NCR First Recon Sniper who settled in Novac. His wife was recently killed and he wants to hunt down those responsible for the events which lead to her death. He enlists the aid of the Courier and will tag along after the matter is settled, however, he is being haunted by other ghosts in his past. Boone is highly proficient with rifles, tough, and he's a surprisingly decent melee fighter too.

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Provides examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: One of the possible endings has Boone reenlisting with his old unit after the victory of NCR.
• The Aloner: After the death of his wife and a falling-out with his best friend, he spends most of his time alone. Until you come along.
• Anti-Hero: While certainly well-intentioned, he has no problem decapitating an unarmed old woman with a single shot (albeit for a very good reason). Depending on how you resolve his quest, he may remain in this slot and murder his old commanding officer or decide to make the best of his situation and become a less ambiguously-good anti-hero.
• The Atoner: For the most part, it appears that his coldness comes from the incident with his wife, but what disturbs him most is the Bitter Springs incident where some innocent civilians were killed with him directly involved.
• Badass Bandolier: A possible reward for his personal quest if you make him let go of his Death Seeker penchant.
• Badass Boast:
  • Also a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner, but before a fight or even during it, he often says "Can't run from me," and can easily back it up.
  • He has another when discussing First Recon's motto, "The last thing you never see."
    Boone: It was pretty accurate, and so were we.
• Berserk Button: You can unequip his 1st Recon beret by removing it from his inventory. But you shouldn't.
  Boone: I would really like my beret back, please.
• Bond One-Liner: If you are heading to kill Caesar and bring Boone with you, he has one after doing the deed:
  Boone: Thumbs down, you son of a bitch.
• Book Dumb: Downplayed, but Boone has a fairly low Intelligence stat compared to other companions. Makes sense in that while other characters come from either educated backgrounds (Arcade and Veronica) or have developed skills other than fighting (Raul and Cass), Boone is just a very talented and well-trained soldier. His experiences against the Legion do at least mean he's familiar with a few Roman customs.
• Boom, Headshot!: With Boone around, often the first warning you'll be given of an enemy coming at you is a slow-motion shot of their head exploding. He is a sniper after all. Also how he deals with Jeannie May.
• Cold Sniper: He's an emotionless, taciturn army sniper whose sole purpose in life is to hunt down every last Legionary he can and shoot them dead. Notably every other member of 1st Recon other than Bitter-Root averts this to one degree or another, as if to show that not every sniper turns into this, and how unhealthy and detached Boone really is.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Depending on the ending. One ending has him sniping high-ranking Legion officials from afar and amassing a huge bounty with no one daring to chase after him, while another has him pulling off a particularly epic suicide mission in the heart of Legion territory and killing scores of Legionnaires before being being captured and crucified.
• Cool Shades: Wears them, the better to wipe away any trace of emotion from his face.
• Creepy Monotone: Speaks like this most of the time, particularly when he gets angry.
• Death Seeker: After the atrocity that his unit committed at Bitter Springs and the death of his wife, he doesn't see any point in living any more and joins you because he had a feeling that traveling with you will lead him to the death he deserves. At the end of his personal quest, he goes on a suicide mission of defending an NCR refugee camp against a full-scale Legion attack, fully expecting this to be the event he sensed, and will be surprised when he survives. The player can talk him out of his mindset, or not.
• Defiant to the End: In his suicide mission ending. After killing scores of legionaries, he's eventually captured by the Legion and is sentenced to death. But before his crucifixion, he's brought before Legate Lanius, who expresses admiration for Boone's recklessness. Boone's only response is to spit chewing tobacco into Lanius' eye, thereby humiliating him front of the whole Legion.
• Disc-One Nuke: Possibly one of the most powerful companions in the entire game in terms of combat effectiveness and he can be obtained fairly early on. Often, the first warning you'll get that you're under attack is a slow-motion shot of the enemy's head exploding. Offset somewhat by the fact that having Boone along makes any kind of peaceful interaction with the Legion completely impossible, but for many players that's not much of a downside.
• Dumb Muscle: It doesn't take looking in the game files for anyone to guess that Boone's charisma is set to 1, but most players wouldn't immediately realize is that Boone is also rocking the worst intelligence of all humanoid companions as well at a measly 3 (tied with Lily, who's not only a nightkin, the species renown for their bad intelligence, but also has severe brain damage and needs medication to keep her self thinking straight). For reference, if the player's intelligence hits 3 they can't even form basic sentences. Despite this Boone is unquestionably the best combatant in the game. Even ignoring his preference to guns, he's actually really good at melee, having the melee skill tagged, the 2nd best stat for it overall behind Lily, and having 7 strength. given his history as a soldier, it's not too surprising he doesn't think to hard about things when he does them.
• Empty Shell: It's implied he was already The Stoic before losing Carla, but when you meet him he's an emotionless killer whose only remaining purpose in life is to kill as many Legion soldiers as he can and then die trying. Establishing just how dead Boone is on the inside was important enough to the devs that he has a unique script for his Idle Animation where he won't look at passing characters, including the Courier, unless they address him directly — he just stares straight ahead until it's time to go back to work. He barely speaks unless spoken to, and makes no extraneous gestures — if it isn't walking, fighting, or a basic autonomous function, Boone doesn't bother.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his hatred of the legion, he will not attack underage recruits as long as the Courier does not attack them first.
• The Fatalist: He's convinced that fate is out to get him for the things he's done and he's not about to stop it. After the Legion launches a raid on Bitter Springs, he's convinced that it would be the end for him. When he and the Courier survive, he's surprised, feeling like a Cosmic Plaything and still convinced that it'll happen eventually. You have the option to talk him out of it or encourage him to embrace it.
  Boone: It don't mean disrespect. It's a hell of a thing having someone with your ability looking out for me. But I've come to believe that there are things that nobody can stop.
• Fire-Forged Friends: If you complete his companion quest and are still firmly committed against the Legion, Boone basically becomes this to you. If you then bring him with you to launch an attack on Caesar's Fort, just before taking the boat over, he will stop and tell you It Has Been an Honor.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: While Boone was a loyal soldier and never questioned what his orders were even at the worst of times, his Intelligence stat being at 3 doesn't really match up too much with how he's shown in dialogue. For reference, the only other companion with 3 intelligence has severe brain damage and is a super mutant, who're are infamously stupid outside of The Masters lieutenant, Fawkes Marcus, and Keene. This is really highlighted when the player's intelligence stat matches his, as your IQ is so low you often struggle to say even basic words. Boone doesn't display anything even remotely close to this. It's always clear he doesn't put much thought into anything but he clearly shows to be of at least average human intelligence.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's an anti-social jerk, but he does mean well.
• Happily Married: Well, he was. Based on how Boone talks about Carla, she was able to pull him out of his guilt for a while, and it was clear just from how he talks about her that he deeply loved her.
• Heartbroken Badass: His beloved wife was murdered.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite his aloof nature brought about by his traumatic experiences, he's a good man at heart who admits he appreciates the Courier's company and he makes it clear if you ask that he's glad they could save some NCR soldiers in person, instead of just giving them a Mercy Kill from afar.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Literally, since his Guns skill is actually over the maximum: skills can only go up to 100; Boone is hardcoded with a Guns skill of 106. His damage, accuracy, and range all add up to a Disc-One Nuke as a companion. Quite often your only indication that a hostile enemy even exists while Boone is traveling with you is a sudden gunshot and the chime of XP as he kills them at maximum range.
• Informed Flaw: He claims that he's not as proficient with melee weapons as he is with guns, which is technically true because of his Guns skill exceeding the maximum 100, but it's still one of his tagged skills.
• It's Personal: Boone has a HUGE mad-on for the Legion after what happened to Carla, such that his response to them is to shoot them on sight.
• Jump Scare: His ability to kill enemies you don't know were there causes this as you suddenly see a enemies' head explode with no warning as you walk along.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Boone is an utter cynic and the only meaning he sees for his life is hunting legionaries, but he still has some morals and believes that NCR is fighting for the right cause even after he left them due to the Bitter Springs massacre. This can be subverted if he became vengeful over Bitter Springs and the Courier accomplished a victory for an independent Vegas or Mr. House, as Boone will abandon his morality and turn into a mercenary and assassin, without carrying if his targets are innocent or not.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Privately believes himself to be a (justified) victim of this.
• Last-Name Basis: Boone goes by Boone, not Craig. It's how he introduces himself, and the few people you meet who knew him before are his NCR army buddies.
• Last Stand: If the Legion wins and he's not been persuaded to let his vengeance go, he'll go on one of these and kill hundreds of the bastards before being captured and crucified.
• The Load: You shouldn't bother with Boone if you're planning to side with the Legion (or have any kind of non-combat dealings with them at all)^note although the developers wrote two endings for him if you side with the Legion (depending on how you complete his companion quest); of course, triggering one of them while siding with the Legion most likely requires to finish his companion quest (which involves killing legionaries) before getting Caesar's mark; with him at your side, every Legion NPC will immediately turn hostile, regardless of how many quests you've done for them, as soon as they come in range — and keeping in mind Boone is a professional sniper, "in range" is well beyond what the player is likely to see, or even what the game can render. He'll at least warn you about it when you enter Legion territory, asking if you want him to stay behind.
• The Lost Lenore: His dead wife Carla.
• Machete Mayhem: His default melee weapon is a simple machete.
• Mangst: Textbook: the Legion took his wife and unborn child from him, and now nothing matters to him but his revenge.
• Memetic Badass: In addition to being one out-of-universe, even people In-Universe recognize his skills, since the 1st Recon insignia is universal shorthand for badass. Special mention has to go to the radio announcement after you complete his quest:
  Mr. New Vegas: One witness said, quote, "God sent us two angels and at least one of them had a .308 caliber flaming sword of justice with a telescopic sight."
• Mercy Kill: Killed his own wife (who was pregnant with his child) after she was captured, because what awaited her and the kid in the Legion was worse.
• Murder-Suicide: If the NCR wins, and you either do not complete his companion quest or complete it and convince him to seek revenge for Bitter Springs, his ending has him load a pistol with only two bullets and set off for California to find the NCR officer who ordered the attack.
• The Musketeer: While Boone is primarily a sniper, he's actually quite competent in melee despite what he says.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Averted. He's still loyal to the principles and ideals of the NCR, but he sees that the republic has some serious issues when it comes to their expansionism and corruption. However, he seems to have no real problem if the Courier manages to secure Vegas' independence as long as they're still friendly with the NCR, and he'll even end up staying in the Mojave over going back home since he can't bring himself to leave the place where he met Carla.
• Notice This: Invoked as a mechanic. Boone's companion perk is Spotter, which marks enemies in shiny glowing red while you aim for easy sniping.
• Oblivious to Love: Maybe. It's hard to tell, since he's so reticent. The game suggests that his best friend Manny has feelings for himinvoked. Boone went to him for help first after she disappeared, but when he realized Manny was more glad than anything, they had a falling out. It's not made entirely clear if Boone knows why Manny was so glad.
• One-Man Army: Gameplay-wise, he can solo several groups of enemies by himself. A Bad Ending to his personal quest mentions he rages a suicidal attack on the Legion and brings down dozens before he's captured.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: See the Roaring Rampage of Revenge below.
• Professional Killer: As a sniper, this was a pretty big part of his job. Also, a possible ending for him if you make him abandon his personal moral code.
• Punny Name: He's a boon companion named Boone.
• The Quiet One: Relatively so, at least. Unlike the other companions, during his travels with you, he can go on for weeks without speaking a single word.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Implied; the bathroom mirror in his motel room is shattered (but few mirrors in the game aren't), and there's a bottle of drugs left in the sink.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • For kidnapping his wife, he's pretty much devoted his life to hunting down every last Legion soldier he can find.
  • If the Legion takes control of Hoover Dam and his Death Seeker tendencies are encouraged, he'll go on one against the whole Legion, taking out scores of legionnaires before he is caught and crucified. If he's reined in on those self-destructive tendencies, he instead goes on a one-man killing spree through Legion territory against Legion officials, racking up a huge bounty on his head but with everyone too fearful of him to hunt him down.
• Signature Headgear: He still wears his 1st Recon Beret and will give you a spare if you help him find out who sold out his wife. If you take the original out of his inventory, he'll be a bit peeved at you. If you ask, he also answers that he keeps his beret even when he sleeps. Which he indeed does, because NPCs don't change clothes to sleep.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: He and Manny both wear their berets despite no longer being part of 1st Recon. Also, completing his personal quest grants him a (unique) NCR military outfit, regardless of the faction the Courier and he side with during the story.
• The Stoic: Doesn't show much emotion other than his hatred for the Legion.
• Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Two, actually. His wife Carla and the civilians at Bitter Springs.
• Target Spotter: He has training as a spotter from his days in First Recon. If you recruit him as a follower, he'll mark hostile targets with a red aura when you use iron-sights aiming, making them easier to pick off.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Important enough to his character that Boone has his own unique script for his Idle Animation than other characters: Boone only stares in one direction when he isn't moving and won't look at the player when they walk into his view until you talk to him — at which point he won't look anywhere else.
• This Is Unforgivable!:
  • Upon realizing that his one and only friend is happy that his wife is gone, he instantly cut all ties with Manny and refused to speak with him anymore. It's not clear if he understands why Manny was happy Carla was out of the picture, but regardless Boon was livid, to the point that they are unable to patch things out.
  • He'll also pull this if you help The Legion. At first he'll give you a angry warning not to do this again, but if you persist and ultimately side with The Legion he'll leave you for good and refuse to speak to you afterwards.
• Tragic Keepsake: If you play in Hardcore Mode and Boone dies, upon looting his body you will find out that he carried a letter he wrote for Carla in case he died before her.
• Tranquil Fury: Even when he's angry, he speaks in the same level, emotionless tone of voice.
• Vigilante Man: In the same ending as above, he spends his off-duty hours gunning down slavers.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: When the question in hand is the Legion, that is.
• What the Hell, Hero?: You have to keep a decent NCR rep and a low Legion rep to keep him around. Kill too many NCR soldiers or civilians, or help the Legion, and he'll call you out and leave you. Also, if you purposely make him kill the wrong person in his mission in Novac and let him know about it, he'll quickly try to kill you.
• Younger Than They Look: He might look and sound like he's in his late thirties or forties, but he's actually 26 years old, making him the youngest companion (Veronica being a year older than Boone).

Raul Alfonso Tejada

"You really enjoy dragging me into situations where I get shot at, don't you, boss?"

Voiced by: Danny Trejo

"I'm an open book, boss. Granted, the book's in Spanish and some of the pages have fallen out, but I'm an open book."

Raul is a Wandering Ghoul Mechanic Vaquero who is captured by a crazy super mutant named Tabitha in Black Mountain. He can be rescued by the Courier, and becomes a companion out of gratitude. There is more to the ghoul than meets the eye however. Raul specializes in revolvers and lever-action rifles and can also maintain the Courier's equipment.

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Provides examples of:

• Amusing Injuries: On his leg to be exact. And if you knock him unconscious...
  Raul: AHH, PETRO CHICO BOY! PETRO CHICO BOY IS AFTER MY CHICARRONES!... Oh, just a dream. Just a dream...
• And I Must Scream: If you make Tabitha leave Black Mountain by repairing Rhonda, she leaves without unlocking Raul's cell. She also turns off Black Mountain Radio, preventing him from broadcasting his call for help. What would have happened to him if the Courier hadn't freed him?
• Anti-Hero: He's mostly good, but he holds a positive view of Caesar's Legion. He explains that he is fully aware that people have very good reasons for their objections to the way they run the show both internally and externally, but also he notices that he has seen with his own eyes how their rule has brought peace and stability to quite a few lawless hell-holes. It all hints at him harboring some dark views on government or suffered personally at the hands of bandits that the Legion is the lesser evil of the two.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Raul's a pretty cool guy, if a bit snarky. If you get him angry, be prepared to be filled with revolver bullets. The raiders who killed his sister and those that killed Claudia later learned this the hard way.
• Boring, but Practical: He defaults to the life of a mechanic fixing things when his quest is complete. The ending narration makes it clear that this is a dignified fate that is just as good as him going back to protecting the innocent.
• Cool Old Guy: He's been around since before the bombs fell.
• Cowardly Sidekick: If you take him to the REPCONN test site and encounter Feral Ghouls, he'll tell them to eat the smoothskin.
• Cowboy: Formerly a Vaquero to be exact, though he can be convinced to become one again.
• Deadpan Snarker: Will snark at anything. Even if you point a gun at him, he'll only say that he "wouldn't mind so much, if it wasn't for that maniacal glee in your eye".
• Determinator: Raul, on the subject of Claudia being kidnapped...
  Raul: They had a head start, but they slept nights. I didn't.
  Raul: [I survived by] being a meaner old cuss than the rest of them, boss. I wanted to keep living until they weren't, so I just kept shooting until they were all dead. I was in pretty bad shape in the end, though. I don't know how long I laid there with the sun baking me and the buzzards chomping at me. Eventually I got the strength to start moving. Some long time after that, I managed to drag my carcass back to town.
• Downer Ending: Sort of, though through no fault of the writers. The three senior citizen NPCs you need to talk to for his companion quest are all notoriously buggy and have a higher than normal chance of disappearing, spawning where they shouldn't (i.e. IN the maps) or bug out and not give dialogue options at all. This makes them impossible to talk to and thus makes it impossible to complete Raul's quest, resigning him to a fate of going back to being a drifter and never finding peace.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: If the player does manage to get through the above risks and complete his personal quest, he will get one of the happiest endings of the companions. He will either happily retire to the quiet life of a mechanic, or once more become a heroic vigilante vaquero in his sister's honor, determined to protect the weak.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: Per his companion quest, Raul, a nigh-immortal ghoul transformed by radiation, shows a fear of growing old and what to do with his life after it.
• Fastest Gun in the West: He was once a renowned gunslinger before his experiences, namely the loss of his little sister and later on, a girl that reminded him of her to raiders, caused him to hang up his guns. If convinced to continue fighting during his companion quest, he puts on his gunslinger outfit again and gains a perk that significantly increases his firing rate with revolvers and lever-action rifles.
• Fate Worse than Death: A minor version; If the Courier doesn't bother to make the trip to Black Mountain, Raul is just stuck there, falling prey to the whims of a crazed super mutant. He knows she won't kill him before he could possibly repair the robot she adores but it's still a miserable existence.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Raul frequently references being in poor physical shape, moving slow and having bad eyesight caused by cataracts due to his age, yet he has 6 points in Strength^note Possibly due to it being the Strength requirement for both his default weapons, as well as it being the highest Strength requirement for all lever-action firearms and revolvers in the game and Perception and 8 in Agility.
• Genre Blind: The reason for his Ghoulification. He admits that at the time, he wasn't really aware of the effects of the radiation spread by the Great War's nuclear devastation, so he didn't realize why going to a nuked-out Mexico City was a bad idea until after the radiation poisoning set in. Unfortunately, being laid up sick kept him from being there to protect his sister from a bloodthirsty gang of raiders...
• Heroic Neutral: Because the Legion-aligned companion Ulysses was cut from the game during development^*He was brought back for the Myth Arc of the four DLCs, albeit with a different disposition towards the Legion, Raul is the only companion that has anything nice to say about Caesar's Legion, albeit he's clear in that he only likes the Legion for how they secure their territory; the former state of Arizona was a lawless hellhole infested with raiders before the Legion rose up and completely eradicated them (another companion, Cass, a strong supporter of NCR, admits that caravans have it better when trading in Legion territory). But when he sees anyone that preys on the weak, Legion or otherwise...
• He's Back!: A possible outcome of his companion quest, where he'll snark about how the old ghoul in the vaquero outfit will just blend in with the scenery.
• Insistent Terminology: One thing he's a bit of a stickler on is the name of Tucson, Arizona (pronounced 'two-sawn'), which he adamantly refuses to refer to as Two-Sun like the locals of the present do. It's mostly because he was likely the only one living there who even remembered its real name.
  Raul: ...the locals can call it Two-Sun all they want, but it's Tuscon, dammit!
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The Courier can convince him to give up his gun-slinging ways and focus on being a repairman.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: His Old Vaquero perk really gives his edge back.
• Made of Iron: But it's more due to sheer force of will than physical prowess (having a radiation-fueled Healing Factor in a post-nuclear wasteland certainly helps, along with the general physical hardiness that all ghouls have).
  Raul: By being a meaner old cuss than the rest of them, boss. I wanted to keep living until they weren't, so I just kept shooting until they were all dead.
• Mr. Fixit:
  • A skilled repairman who can even fix terminals. Having him around makes your weapons degrade 50% more slowly. He can also repair your equipment and has a Repair skill of 100, but you have to dismiss him and tell him to go to his shack instead of the Lucky 38 for him to be able to do it.
  • If you convince him to give up being a Vaquero and hang up his guns for good, he spends the rest of his days living in New Vegas, fixing ancient machinery. This also makes his companion perk more effective, causing your equipment to degrade 75% more slowly (which will fully cancel out the downside of the "Built to Destroy" trait if you've taken it).
• My Greatest Failure: His failure to protect his little sister Rafaela, as well as Identical Stranger Claudia many years later from being killed by raiders.
• Mythology Gag: Raul has a similar habit to Vic in that he keeps calling the Courier boss. It helps that he's also a repairman that you rescue from slavery.
• The Nicknamer: He always refers to the Courier as "boss."
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He's a Ghoul Mechanic Vaquero.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  Raul: I been doin' this longer than you, pal!
• Quick Draw: His specialty in his days as a Vaquero. If you make him return to his Vaquero ways, he gets a perk that increases his firing speed with revolvers and lever-action guns. No matter what perks you have, he will shoot faster than you.
• Really 700 Years Old: He was alive before the Great War and can still remember how the world used to be.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Can equip revolvers and lever-action rifles, typical cowboy/vaquero weapons.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Has had to pull this off twice now, for his sister and for Claudia. Wasn't pretty for either side.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Like Arcade and Veronica, Raul is prone to making snarky comments. Unlike them, it's pretty apparent he actually believes you're completely foolish, though he avoids saying so outright. Just like the rest of the companions however, he still believes in you.
• Servile Snarker: Raul is perhaps one of the wittiest companions in the entire series. Even if he clearly sees you as a fool, he'll follow you through any faction's path, even the Legion's. He may sound snarky whenever he calls you boss, but after his companion quest, you know he isn't kidding.
• Shrouded in Myth:
  • If you persuade him to go back to his vigilante ways, his ending has stories coming in of a ghost Vaquero who protects the weak.
  • He treats Mr. House this way, stating that he could either be a clever raider with a mind for history who took his name, that he left instruction to his robots before the war, or that he uploaded his brain patterns to a computer to become a "godless, soulless machine-god" that rules Vegas (though he's obviously sarcastic about that last one). He even suggests that it could all be one big coincidence. He also notes that even before the war, House was an enigmatic figure.
• Sombrero Equals Mexican: Usually averted, though played straight with the sombrero included in his vaquero outfit.
• Sweet Tooth: He will comment on sweet consumables such as bubblegum and Sunset Sarsaparilla if you leave them in his inventory.
• Token Evil Teammate: Downplayed. He's not evil per se, but he's the only companion that has a somewhat positive opinion on Caesar's Legion.
• Undying Loyalty: To Rafaela, Claudia and, especially after his companion quest, you.
  • Case in point: Gameplay-wise, he and Lily are the only humanoid companions^*along with Rex and ED-E as the only two "animal" companions that will never leave the Courier's employ for any reason whatsoever (all the others may quit due to the player's actions, faction reputations, or karma).
• Vigilante Man: In his Vaquero ending, he takes up his guns and hunts down those who would prey on the weak.
• Weak, but Skilled: He states that his eyesight among other things have gotten poorer with age but he's still fairly fast with a gun. As stated above, he can get his edge back.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If you tell him that his family deserved to get killed by raiders in their sleep due to not setting a watch, he'll accept that while they should have been more careful, saying that they deserved this is way out of line.
  Raul: Maybe we made a mistake. It was early on, we didn't know just how serious it was out there. But to say they deserved it? What kind of devil are you, boss?

Rose of Sharon "Cass" Cassidy

"Shhhh... we're hunting shitheads."

Three of Hearts

Voiced by: Rachel Roswell

"A sober woman might take insult at that. Me, I might just bust you one."

Rose of Sharon Cassidy used to be the proud owner of the Cassidy Caravans until it was erased from the Mojave Wasteland. The Courier can convince Cass to sell the will to her caravan but it will take some heavy persuading or some heavy drinking to do so. Now down on her luck and with nothing better to do, Cass joins the Courier on a romp through the Wasteland.

In combat Cass is capable of a variety of methods to eliminate the opposition: shoot guns, chuck dynamite, and even bludgeon someone when it's really necessary. Just like dear old dad.

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Provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Rough and tumble and fond of a good bar fight.
• The Alcoholic: Her companion perk and much of her personality are based around her constant drinking. You find her at the bar at the Mojave Outpost, where she says she's already been there for days and she'll stay there until when or if the Courier recruits her. After that, she continues drinking and suggests the Courier join her, offering to brew up some godawful homemade "whiskey"/moonshine on the trail. Her companion perk actually removes all the downsides of being the Alcoholic for the Courier.
• Ambiguously Bi: Cass is heavily implied to be attracted to a male Courier and goes looking for his room in the event of an NCR victory at Hoover Dam - only to find a random NCR trooper quartered there, so she has her way with him instead. Yet much of her more flirtatious dialogue with a female Courier remains unchanged, and with the Cherchez La Femme perk, she'll comment "sometimes I get so drunk, I don't care who I share a bed with".
• Anti-Hero: She may be a coarse, hostile boozy snarker, but her morals are solid, being the only follower to call the Courier out on evil Karma, and expressing concern for your welfare as the story progresses. Depending on how you resolve her quest, she may become more violent or keep to her morals.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: She starts out with the Shotgun Surgeon perk, which ignores 10 points of DT (Damage Threshold) on each of the multiple projectiles fired with every shot.
• Badass Normal: Compared to the other three human companions, she has no military training or equipment. Cass is just a cowgirl with a shotgun who's been around the wasteland a lot, and picked up a lifetime's worth of fighting experience.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Someone who's been living off whiskey and getting into bar fights for more than half her life should not still be that gorgeous.
• Booze-Based Buff: Her companion perk, "Whiskey Rose", removes the penalties from all alcohol items and alcohol addiction, allowing you to gain all the SPECIAL bonuses with no downsides. She'll also match you drink for drink, though in her case the Strength bonus is only useful if you've equipped her for melee.
• But Not Too Bi: She’s technically bisexual as she doesn’t outright reject the possibility of having sex with another woman and even says that she is willing to do it if she is drunk and horny enough when the female Courier flirts with her but nothing ever comes out of it. Justified, since she heavily prefers men over women.
• Canon Immigrant: Not the character per se, but her face. It bears a strong resemblance to several non-canon depictions of her father's face: bony cheeks, straight thin nose, blue eyes, and straight lips. Granted, her face is more feminine and has 30+ years less on it.
• Continuity Nod: She is the daughter of Fallout 2's Cassidy. She also inherited his heart condition and gets upset if you use drugs.
• Cruel Mercy: You can convince her in her quest that letting the NCR bureaucracy deal with the Crimson Caravan and the Van Graffs is far worse than simply killing them. However, if the player previously helped the Crimson Caravan's owner, Alice McLafferty, steal the Gun Runners' design schematics, this option still winds up getting McLafferty and the Van Graffs killed once their crimes are publicly exposed, though by the Gun Runners instead of Cass.
• Deadpan Snarker: Something that she learned from her father.
• Disappeared Dad: John Cassidy just up and left one day; Cass has no clue what happened to him. She believes he probably died somewhere in the wastes — she's not sentimental, but she doesn't think he was the type to just walk out on his family.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Her rather colorful metaphor for the NCR's expansionism.
  Cass: Nobody's dick is that fucking long, not even Long Dick Johnson. And he had a fucking long dick. Thus, the name.
  Courier: Thanks, I got that.
• Downer Ending: Potentially. If you side with House, the epilogue reveals that Cass eventually dies of a heart attack (having apparently inherited her father's congenital heart problems) sometime after the ending. Her narration echoes the last line in The Great Gatsby:
  Cass: We were going full speed ahead... but facing backwards the whole time.
• Drowning My Sorrows: You find her doing this at an NCR outpost.
• Fiery Redhead: Quite a mouth, outspoken, snarky, prone to slug someone who talks smack with her, and crimson-locked.
• Functional Addict: Dialogue with her makes it clear that she's an alcoholic, however it doesn't seem to affect her at all. Her companion perk even turns you into a functional addict as well, removing the penalties from alcohol addiction.
• Gargle Blaster: The ingredients for her moonshine. Do you wanna try alcohol that's made from fission batteries?
• Generation Xerox: Like her father, she becomes the companion of a person destined to change the wastelands. The nightkin on Black Mountain seems to know her father as well.
• Gilded Cage: Tell her to go to the Lucky 38, and she says "Back to the gilded cage." In general, she seems to display a certain level of contempt for Vegas as a city. She even has a unique text when/if the player sends her to wait in the Lucky 38 " Cass has returned...reluctantly...to the Lucky 38."
• Good Is Not Soft: She's tough as nails and twice as righteous. If an evil Courier pleads that they tried to do the right thing, but life in the wasteland was too hard, she'll be unequivocal — become harder, and do good anyway.
• Guide Dang It!: A mild case, but compared to your other companions her recruitment quest does have the most steps. First you need to make it to Crimson Caravan headquarters and do Alice McLafferty's first mission, delivering an invoice to Fort McCarran. Only then will she give you the mission to buy out Cassidy Caravans, at which point you can go back to Mojave Outpost... only to find out you must pass a Barter/Speech check of no less than 50 to make the deal. If you were already at level 30 in the base game (and don't have the DLCs) that raise the level cap), you might be out of luck.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: To the extent that her companion perk lets you drink whiskey and become an alcoholic with no downsides. She even teaches you how to brew moonshine.
• Heart Trauma: She has a heart condition, much like her father. As Downer Ending indicates, she potentially has a fatal heart attack sometime after the Courier helps Mr. House.
• Ironic Name: In The Grapes of Wrath, her namesake is submissive, hyper-feminine and very nearly useless. On the other hand, Cass is tomboyish, independent, and hard as nails.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She might be foul-mouthed and sarcastic at times, but she also has a very strong sense of morals, reflected by her adamant refusal to travel with you if you have Evil Karma.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Alice and the Van Graffs may deserve a bullet in the head, but attacking the former in public will result in the deaths of a lot of innocent bystanders, even if Cass has thought about it more than once over what she believes they did to her caravan.
• The Lad-ette: She drinks, sleeps around, swears a lot, and is incredibly adorable.
• Late Character Syndrome: Fitting her strengths and weaknesses as a companion into an established playstyle isn't always easy. You can only have one humanoid character at a time, and although Cass isn't located the furthest from Goodsprings at the start, recruiting her does require you to jump through several hoops, and even then, you have to do some extra work to make her competitive with combat-centric companions like Boone, Veronica, and Lily. Even her "Whiskey Rose" companion perk can be somewhat niche, possibly requiring a previously sober Courier to suddenly take up drinking to be fully effective.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Most of her interaction with the Courier has subtle shades of this, likely a holdover of the cut companion romance quests.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Partially subverted. Although she's an NCR citizen and a patriot, she sees that there are a lot of problems with the Republic. Nonetheless, as Cass herself puts it:
  Cass: The NCR's like family. Not the functional kind, but more like 'Some dumbass younger brother, say, who knocked up the pastor's daughter, can't hold a job, and his home-away is a jail cell'; they frustrate the hell out of you, but you stand by them anyway, because that's what families do.
  • However, she doesn’t mind the Courier siding with Yes Man or Mr. House and will continue to folllow them if they do so.
• My Girl Is a Slut: Though she's normally only into men, she'll admit to a female Courier with the Cherchez La Femme perk that once she's got enough booze in her, she doesn't really mind who she beds, male or female. However, she seems to have genuine affection for a male Courier, where even the platonic relationship she has with him resembles marriage.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Following through with her Roaring Rampage of Revenge and killing the Van Graffs and Alice will severely damage the NCR's efforts to supply the Mojave once the battle for the Hoover Dam is over. Letting them live, on the other hand...
• Oh, Crap!: If her currently-equipped weapon is inadequate for the enemy she’s facing:
  Cass: I’m just pissing him off!
• Older Than They Look: Cass is actually 37 and the oldest of the human companions. She looks around ten years younger than that, which is odd for someone who's led such a life of hard drinking and running a caravan through the untamed Mojave Wasteland.
• Parental Abandonment: Her father left at an early age. And even though Cass comments that he wasn't the type to just cut and run, it nonetheless put a heavy chip on her shoulder.
• Really Gets Around: She’s had her share of fun in the wasteland, and admits when she gets enough booze in her, doesn’t care who she gets in bed with. If the NCR wins, and a male Courier helped them, Cass will later go to his room in order to 'celebrate', only to find a male NCR trooper whose barracks got destroyed. So she cuts her losses and has her fun anyways.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: An option in her side quest is to gun down those responsible for shooting up her caravan.
• Ship Tease: She seems to have the hots for the Courier (mostly a male, though female is not entirely out of the question with enough booze). As noted previously, she shows signs of Unresolved Sexual Tension as well as having a relationship Like an Old Married Couple.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Her default weapon is a caravan shotgun, and she has the Shotgun Surgeon perk to give her shotgun blasts extra penetrating power (-10 DT). Even this can slow her down in the later game, but shotguns can remain competitive with the right ammo. In particular, get the girl a riot shotgun and watch the bodies pile up.
• Shout-Out: As she'll point out short of naming the title, her father took the name from The Grapes of Wrath. Apparently naming after characters runs in the family - Cassidy Senior liked to mention he was named after a character from some old comic book.
• Signature Headgear: She wears a unique variant of the rattan cowboy hat, with hers having a little piece torn out from the brim.
• Situational Sexuality: She mostly prefers men but, in her own words, is open to having sex with a woman if she is drunk and horny enough.
• The Snark Knight: She adheres to a very strict code of conduct. "Tact" is not part of that book, however.
• Stunned Silence: The Independent ending implies that Cass is absolutely amazed at the Courier for managing to hold off the Legion, NCR, and House, but for once, shows enough tact not to directly say anything about it.
  Cass lived to see the Courier take down three armies, and by her count, that was three more than she expected. She kept quiet about that though.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Veronica's girly girl. Possibly to a female Courier as well depending on how you play.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Definitely displays this with a male Courier.When romance sidequests were planned, there was going to be a quest where the two of you woke up with The King watching over you, only to find out the two of you got drunk the previous night and The King married you.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Not for herself, it actually ends up working completely in her favor. When the Courier finds her drinking her sorrows away at the Mojave Outpost, she drunkenly points them in the direction of the Crimson Caravan Company to find work. Following her advice starts one working for Alice McLafferty who, after an initial errand, sends them on a runner job to deliver a buyout offer for Cass' own caravan, which allows her to be recruited as a companion and request that the Courier take her to see her caravan's ruins. This leads to them uncovering the conspiracy between the Crimson Caravan and the Van Graffs to eliminate their caravan competition and gives Cass the opportunity to go on a bloody rampage and murder the both of them, or to bring evidence of the conspiracy to the NCR for a slower, but much more definitive death blow to both groups' ambitions in the Mojave.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Openly defied if the player slaughters the Van Graffs and Alice. Cass will say that while she had her inner doubts about the whole ordeal at first, she's nothing if relieved about their deaths and feels "purified".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Depending on the player's actions, she can easily become this with the Courier, especially if their Karma teeters on the edge of Evil.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: When she learns that Alice McLafferty conspired with the Van Graffs to kill off her competition, she initially wants to kill them all, which would also mean killing several guards at the Crimson Caravan outpost who likely did nothing wrong and knew nothing of the conspiracy. She can be talked out of it, under the justification that reporting their dealings to the NCR is worse, if more time-consuming as a punishment.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • She will leave you if your Karma drops too low for her liking. A stand-out example, really, because other companions with the risk of leaving make their judgment according to your reputation among their favored factions. Luckily your Karma is unlikely to drop low enough that she takes off unless you're purposefully trying to be a bastard... in which case you're likely to have sold her out to her enemies and gotten her killed beforehand.
  • She'll also call you out if after convincing her to let the NCR deal with the Crimson Caravan and the Van Graffs, you just kill them anyways, asking why you even bothered in the first place, though she's more annoyed at how you just wasted her time.

Lilian "Lily" Marie Bowen

"You shouldn't say things like that where Leo can hear you, dearie. He doesn't like it."

Voiced by: David Anthony Pizzuto (as a nightkin), Marianne Muellerleile (as a human, holotape only)

"Grandma's got a present for you!"

Lily's an old nightkin who was transformed long ago, when The Master amassed an army of nightkin like her, having been an elderly woman at the time. Like all nightkin, she has developed schizophrenia as a result of prolonged Stealth Boy exposure, which manifests as an aggressive alternate personality/devil on her shoulder named Leo. She joins the Courier when she learns about the investigation behind the recent Bighorner disappearances. Lily can fire guns, but she really shines in sneaking and melee combat. During their adventures, the Courier discovers that Lily needs to take her medicine so that her mental faculties regain some semblance of order. The Courier can either help Lily on the road to recovery or make it easier for Leo to come out and play.

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Provides examples of:

• Ace Custom: The Courier can obtain copies of all other companion weapons except hers. Her melee weapon (a vertibird propeller blade) is one of a kind (she made it herself), and while the Courier can easily get his/her hands on an assault carbine, it's impossible to get a silencer mod for it.
• Anti-Hero: Would probably be a straight-up good guy on her own, but her Split Personality Leo's influence can push her into psychotic behavior. Can slide deeper into insanity and evil depending on the player's actions.
• Ax-Crazy: She's a lot more sane then most nightkin, but she can still go crazy during combat and as a companion, she'll occasionally have a mental breakdown and attack everyone she sees.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Even though she's a nightkin, Lily's still got the personality of a sweet ol' granny. Leo, on the other hand...
• Berserk Button: Don't mess with her bighorners... just don't.
• BFS: She wields a vertibird propeller blade as a sword.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She may be senile and is even more crazy than most nightkin you encounter, but she's still a competent fighter and was a high-ranking member of the Master's army.
• Call to Agriculture: A former Unity spy and assassin turned bighorner shepherdess.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: As with all nightkin, persistent Stealth Boy abuse has resulted in mental illness, in her case a violent split personality named Leo. She's also a hulking super mutant who acts like your slightly forgetful grandmother, though in her case that's actually her original personality shining through.
• Cool Old Lady: She's a stealthy version of The Incredible Hulk who actually was a sweet old lady in her pre-nightkin days, and post-transformation regained most of her grandmotherly tendencies in the years since she left the Master's army. Even better, she more or less adopts you as her surrogate grandchild and kicks ass on your behalf with a sword made out of vertibird and/or an assault carbine. What's not cool about that?
• Downer Ending: Lily is the only companion in the game with no real "good" ending to her arc. Depending on how the Courier convinces her to handle taking the anti-psychotic drugs, one of three endings occurs during the ending slides:
  • Taking the full dosage of her medicine results in Lily completely forgetting about her grandchildren and throwing away the holotapes that helped her remember them because they now mean nothing to her.
  • Continuing to take half-doses results in Lily still remembering her grandchildren, but she remains just crazy enough to think they're still alive and ultimately she leaves the company of the Courier to spend the rest of her life on a futile search for them.
  • Completely stopping taking her medicine results in Lily ultimately going totally crazy as "Leo" takes over completely and she roams the wasteland as a mindless, violent beast.
• Extra Ordinary World Ordinary Problems:
  • Lily's side quest involves learning an elderly friend/family member is not taking their psychiatric medicine properly and then trying to make a difficult decision on balancing its benefits with its side effects.
    • If she takes it properly, she stops having episodes but she loses her memory of her grandchildren.
    • If she continues on her half dose, she developes a dementia like state where she falsely remembers her grandchildren as alive and wanders off to look for them.
    • If she stops completely, she loses her mind to violent insanity.
  • Lily is an old woman struggling with memory issues, including forgetting her own grandchildren.
• Funny Schizophrenia: Played with. On one hand, the way she talks to or about Leo is pretty funny. But when "Leo" fully takes control of her, the implications are a lot less funny.
• Gentle Giant: She's incredibly kind by Super Mutant standards to the point that she's one of the few West Coast Mutants to actually hate The Master (with even Marcus reminiscing fondly of his days in the Unity).
• Gollum Made Me Do It: Leo Made Me Do It: When Lily goes into an Unstoppable Rage, it's because Leo managed to take control of her.
• Granny Classic: She may not look like one (apart from her hat and floral-print dress) but she sure acts like a loving, protective grandmother... that is, until Leo takes over.
• Hope Spot: If you decide to convince her to drink her full dose of medicine, even if it will make her forget about her grandchildren, she mentions that at least she has their holotapes so she can still hear their voices. In the epilogue is mentioned that she threw them away, since she did not remember any reason to keep them.
• Insane Equals Violent: Lily is clearly suffering with schizophrenia, mistaking people for her long-dead relatives and hallucinating that a voice called Leo is making her do violent things but in general Lily is pretty harmless when not in combat. If she is convinced to stop taking her meds however she becomes nothing more than a rampaging berserker, lost in her madness.
• Invisibility Cloak: Regardless of whether the player has any Stealth Boys or not, Lily turns invisible automatically when you crouch.
• Lightning Bruiser: As a super mutant, she'll charge into battle faster than you can, she maxes out with the highest HP of any main game companion (Dog and God can have more), her skin is the equivalent of Combat Armor, and she wields a BFS by default. It's also reinforced by the fact that she has 9 in Strength, 8 in Endurance, and 10 in Agility.
• Mama Bear: She's this, and thinks you're her grandson, regardless of your character's actual gender.
  Lily: Get behind me, dearie! (Lily proceeds to paint the room red with blood)
• More Dakka: She's the only companion whose default ranged weapon (an assault carbine) is automatic. Although Raul with his vaquero outfit and revolvers comes close.
• Never Mess with Granny: Especially if she is an invisible super mutant with a Split Personality coming at you with a weaponized helicopter blade.
• Nice Girl: If you ignore the violent tendencies from Leo's influence, then Lily's an absolute sweetheart. Whereas all the other humanoid companions are either cold, sarcastic, snarky, and/or abrasive to some degree, Lily has nothing but kind, doting words and concern for the Courier at all times.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Super Mutant Ninja Grandma.
• No Indoor Voice: Like most super mutants, she has trouble keeping her voice below a dull roar.
• Old Soldier: Like all West Coast super mutants, she served in the Master's army at one point.
• Parental Substitute: Lily somewhat considers herself to be this towards the Courier.
• Punch-Clock Villain: If asked about her time back in the Unity army, she openly calls the Master a "nasty man" and says that he got what was coming to him.
• Replacement Goldfish: Lily latches onto the Courier as a replacement for her grandchildren.
• Split Personality: "Leo", her Ax-Crazy alter ego.
• Split-Personality Takeover: If she's severely wounded, Leo will take complete control of her and she goes berserk.
• Stealth Expert: Despite her size and lack of volume control, Lily is still a nightkin and has the highest sneak skill of all companions. She employs an unlimited-use personal Stealth Boy when going into stealth and her personal perk doubles the time the Courier's Stealth Boys last.
• Stealthy Colossus: She's a nightkin, elite super mutants specially equipped with Stealth Boys and trained by the Master's army to act as spies and assassins.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Downplayed, but choosing to have Lily stop taking her medicine entirely will make her more susceptible to Leo's influence (she will go berserk at 50% health instead of 25%), but will make her more effective in combat, even when Leo isn't in control. If the Courier convinces her to stop taking her meds she'll be able to remember her grandchildren... but her schizophrenia becomes progressively worse until the sweet granny becomes lost under her violent madness.
• Token Good Teammate: In contrast to most West Coast mutants, who are either nostalgic or ambivalent towards their time in the Unity, Lily actively hated The Master and is happy that he's dead.
• Undying Loyalty: Gameplay-wise, she and Raul are the only humanoid companions that will never leave the Courier's employ for any reason whatsoever (all the others may quit due to the player's actions, faction reputations, or karma).
• With Catlike Tread: Although she's still the Stealth Expert regardless. Go into crouch mode and this is what you get:
  Lily: Don't worry, Grandma knows how to stay quiet!

Veronica Renata Santangelo

"Great. Thanks. Thank you. I'll encourage people to name their non-ugly children after you. Seriously. "

Voiced by: Felicia Day

"Thanks for taking a chance on a naive young girl from California with stars in her eyes and a pneumatic gauntlet on her hand."

Veronica is a Brotherhood Scribe whose mission is to retrieve supplies that her bunker needs. But that doesn't stop her from tagging along with the Courier, hoping to learn more about the world and the Brotherhood's place in it. She specializes in crafting items for the Courier and dishing out violence with her fist.

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Provides examples of:

• Action Girl: A scout for a secret paramilitary/monastic/knightly order of power-armored heavily-armed soldiers and scientists.
• All There in the Manual: Her full name is Veronica Renata Santangelo, but she is only ever referred to by her first name in the game proper. That information comes from a PS3 blog post.
• And This Is for...: If you wipe out Hidden Valley before meeting her and tell her about doing so when she asks you if you've heard of the Brotherhood of Steel.
  Veronica: In that case, this is for them.
• Badass Adorable: She's very cute, helped a lot by her quirky and humorous personality. She's also perfectly capable of punching Elite Mooks to death.
• Badass Bookworm: She's a Scribe, but she's as effective in combat as a Paladin. She can even wear Power Armor and despite being a melee-focused character as her own stated preference, she has Energy weapons as a tagged skill, though since her standard ranged weapon is a 10mm Pistol, she has to be provided with both a weapon and ammo to employ her energy weapon proficiency.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Her specialty, as she prefers to use knuckledusters or a good power fist in combat. She will use ranged weapons if so instructed, but only grudgingly. Bonus points for actually having monk robes as her default outfit.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Her sense of humor is quirky, but her Power Fist will still wreck you if you underestimate her.
• Being Good Sucks: Like Arcade, she's an idealist in a world that does not like them. She recognizes the Brotherhood is going down a dead end, but they refuse to listen to her and she's become a pariah for her views. Every ending involving her ranges from Downer Ending to Bittersweet Ending; in the "best" two, either she becomes a wandering tinkerer afraid that anyone she gets close to for long will be executed by the Brotherhood, or she stays with the Brotherhood and learns to keep her mouth shut, spending her life studying promising new technologies she knows they'd have no interest in if she brought them forward.
• Boyish Short Hair: Underneath her hood, she keeps her hair in a short and surprisingly tidy style.
• Break the Cutie: The Causeless Rebel ending of her questline sees her horribly traumatized by the fanaticism of the Brotherhood, as a few particularly zealous Paladins massacre a Followers of the Apocalypse camp and then try to gun down you and her, just because they wanted to take no chance she might have told them something.
• Cute Bruiser: As mentioned, she's cute and hits like a runaway freight train.
• Deadpan Snarker: Up there with Raul as one of the quippiest companions, with a slightly more deeply hidden bit of Sad Clown thrown in for good measure. She cracks jokes constantly but there's definitely some lingering regret in there.
  Veronica: (when you tell her that you want to ask her a question) He was already dead when I got there!/I was young and I needed the money!/Well, when two people really love each other... you really don't know this stuff yet?
  Veronica: (asked about herself) My favorite subject!
  Veronica: (opening her inventory) You're making me carry the heavy stuff, aren't you?
  Veronica: (if you point your gun at her) Why do we always hurt the ones we care about the most?
• Eating the Eye Candy: Played for Laughs whenever you happen across female strippers. After a while, she might begin stealing glances at them before full-on staring.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Even though she doesn't advertise her sexuality, female NPCs will hit on her. Anyone that isn't currently trying to kill you both has a chance of calling Veronica hot stuff.
  Random Vault 3 Female Fiends: Hey, your friend... Does she put out?
• Genki Girl: She stands out as the most openly energetic and cheerful amongst the other humanoid companions.
• Girly Bruiser: She is very much a girly-girl who loves dresses, but her fighting style revolves around punching people in the face with a Power Fist.
• Guide Dang It!: In many paths, she either leaves as a companion or it becomes impossible to finish her questline and thus get her ending. There's also an odd bug when she teaches you an Unarmed move, due to its trigger being shared with 9 other things. Very few guides actually have this.
• Head-Turning Beauty: When you travel around with her, male and female NPCs alike will comment on how attractive she looks.
  Random Powder Gangers: Damn, that's a fine looking woman. Just needs to ditch the robe...
  Random Great Khans: Your friend's cute — is she single?
• Incompatible Orientation: Should a Male Courier order her to stay close, she jokes that the only way that could work was if they suddenly turned into a leggy brunette.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Played for laughs as one of her humorous responses when you ask her about herself.
• In the Hood: Her cloak's hood is almost always raised, giving her a nomadic appearance. Apprentice Watkins even asks "Still hiding that hair of yours, Veronica?
• Item Crafting: Her companion perk more or less makes her a mobile workbench.
  Veronica: Step into my office.
• It's All My Fault: She comes to believe that she's to blame for getting innocent Followers killed by the Brotherhood. However, she also takes this as how leaving the Brotherhood was the right choice.
• Kicked Upstairs: Quite literally. The reason that Veronica was promoted to rank of being a "procurement specialist" on the surface was because the Elder wanted to prevent her from spreading her subversive ideas by sending her as far away from Hidden Valley as possible.
• Lipstick Lesbian: You can ask Veronica if she has ever been in love. She tells you that she was in love with a woman in the Brotherhood, but they were separated by the other woman's parents. What makes her a Lipstick Lesbian instead of merely Straight Gay is her single greatest desire: to own a pretty dress. If you give her Formal Wear or White Glove Society Attire (which look exactly the same), she thanks you rather excitedly and teaches you an Unarmed attack.
• Meaningful Name: Veronica is supposed to mean "the one who brings victory" as a reflection of how the Brotherhood should progress.
• Megaton Punch: When recruited, Veronica comes armed with a Power Fist and a great love of punching things. If you tell her to use ranged weapons, she asks if jumping on the target and hitting it counts.
• Morality Pet: Not to anyone in-universe, but to players. Several players have admitted that the only reason they spared the Brotherhood of Steel is because destroying them would hurt Veronica.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: At the end of her quest she can decide to stay with the Brotherhood in order to try and help them in whatever way she can since in the end they are still her family.
• Nice Girl: Bits of playful teasing aside, Veronica is the most cheerful and easygoing of all the human companions, the rest of whom are quite jaded or crass to some degree.
• Only Sane Woman: She's the only one of the Brotherhood who sees that their current path leads to stagnation or extinction, and is actively taking steps towards helping her fellow members. She'll even choose this if you tell her to make the decision for herself.
• Power Creep: More like utility creep. Veronica's first companion perk makes her a mobile work-bench. With the Lonesome Road DLC, however, ED-E will become a mobile workbench and reloading bench. This doesn't make her useless, however; she still's one of the more powerful combatants in the game. Give her a Ballistic Fist and a set of Brotherhood T-51b power armor? She'll slaughter anything that gets into melee range and tank anything until she gets into melee range.
• Plucky Girl: Very much so, determined to do good with a good attitude even as no-one back in Hidden Valley seems to agree with her. Even more so when she's exiled, or if Hidden Valley is destroyed.
• Realpolitik: While she dislikes the Legion, she also acknowledges they're a much easier threat for any Brotherhood paladin to deal with than the NCR. She also wouldn't mind joining House's cause since he reminds her of Elijah. That said, in Dummied Out dialogue she admits that while the NCR may make things difficult for the Brotherhood she has no regrets helping them since they'll give the region its best chance for stability.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Consciously subverted. She's responsible for roaming the harsh wasteland for supplies, confronts the Brotherhood about the slow suicide of their isolationism and with levelling she'll punch out a deathclaw. But what she would really like to find is a pretty dress to wear. Find one, and she'll be touched by your thoughtfulness. Find a really nice one ("Formal Wear" or a White Glove Society outfit) and she'll squeal with delight and teach you to punch harder out of gratitude.
• Sad Clown: She's a witty, snarky joke-machine, but there's a lot of inner turmoil and angst under that smile.
• She Knows Too Much: If she decides to join the Followers of the Apocalypse, she'll find that after a day a group of fanatical Paladins (who may or may not be sent under the order of the Elder) have destroyed the Followers outpost in an attempt to deal with her for potentially spreading knowledge to outsiders.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: She seems to have one with Watkins in the Hidden Valley bunker. Veronica will comment "I can hardly notice that lazy eye anymore, Watkins." and Watkins will sometimes say "Still hiding that hair of yours, Veronica?"
• Start of Darkness: Defied. Veronica claims that, by observing Elijah, she learned what she didn't want to become. Some of the endings in which she stays with the Brotherhood of Steel hints at her starting to have inclinations similar to Elijah's.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: On the one hand she loves dresses, cute animals and wishes she could feel more like a woman. On the other hand she like gadgets, technology, takes a boyish glee in fighting and mentions that she likes boxing.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • If you destroy the Brotherhood Of Steel bunker with everyone locked inside, she'll call you a murderer and leave you, saying you might as well just add her to your hit list.
  • To a lesser and more bearable extent (if the player would prefer not to be tongue-lashed by her), if you can convince her to leave the Brotherhood, she'll still pay homage to "The only family she's ever known" if you destroy the bunker, but won't leave your party.
  • On the other hand, if you do this before you meet her...
    The Courier: I killed everyone in the bunker.
    Veronica: Oh. Well. This is for them then.
  • And naturally, if you bring her to the bunker and then start killing everyone individually, she will eventually go hostile.
  • In a manner Played for Laughs, when you trade equipment she snarks "You're making me carry the heavy stuff, aren't you?"
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: She far prefers punching things with her Power Fist over shooting. If you ask her to switch to ranged tactics, she asks, "Does jumping at them with my fists count as ranged?".

ED-E

Whitley: "Eyebot Duraframe Subject E is both the prototype and the last functional model."

ED-E (Pronounced either "Eddie" or "E-dee", but "E-D-E" in the base game) is an Enclave Eyebot from the Capital Wasteland heading west towards Navarro. He is damaged along the way, and the Courier can choose to repair him. ED-E is more of a support character, with a huge carrying capacity, decent damage output and a truly awesome perk.

Another version of ED-E accompanies the Courier in Lonesome Road. See the DLC character sheet for information on that incarnation.

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Provides examples of:

• And the Adventure Continues: In his ending, he either remains with the Courier, continues his travels to Navarro, or is taken on a travelling caravan as a guard.
• Ascended Extra: In the base game, ED-E is barely given any real personality. Lonesome Road, however, expands on his character and goes more in depth into his history.
• Badass Adorable: He may not look very threatening, but this lowly Eyebot floated his way across roughly 2800 miles of post-apocalyptic wasteland, and was only brought down when he got to Vegas. Doubly so in Lonesome Road when you get insight on his personality.
• Cute Machines: He's a pretty adorable little Eyebot and the adorability is raised with Lonesome Road.
• A Day in the Limelight: The upgraded copy of ED-E in the Divide is your sole companion (other than Ulysses's radio lectures) throughout Lonesome Road, which reveals his surprising Dark and Troubled Past and thousand-mile journey from the Capital Wasteland to the Mojave.
• Disc-One Nuke: One of the most useful companions in the series is the first one you can stumble upon. And then a few towns later, you can gain the other Disc-One Nuke Boone, who synergizes extremely well with ED-E. The upgrades you can get for him in Lonesome Road keep his nuke status alive in the late game.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the E3 trailer, where he is shot by an unknown sniper while hovering down a road playing Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle". This explains his broken state when the player meets him in the actual game. This incident is finally heard in the Lonesome Road add-on.
• Flat Character: In the vanilla game due to lacking a distinct personality. This is subverted come Lonesome Road, however.
• Fun with Acronyms: ED-E actually stands for "Eyebot (Duraframe) – Subject E".
• Glass Cannon: ED-E can take decent punishment from the start and has a decent weapon, but with a DT of 8 he's not the most durable thing around and will start hurting once you get to Vegas. The end of his companion quest lets you upgrade his gun to heighten this status, or turn him into a Stone Wall with a whopping 20 Damage Threshold. That's like strapping a suit of combat armor to him. It can be raised by 2 more with the "Lonesome Road" upgrades he can get.
  • On the other hand, you can improve his weapons array instead, really boosting the 'cannon' part. His rate of fire more than triples, and his damage, Critical Hit rate and critical damage all shoot up. Rank 4 of the Camerader-E perk increases his beam damage by 5 more.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: ED-E has travelled all the way from the Enclave bases in Maryland and Illinois to get to the Mojave, and has still further yet to go to reach Navarro. In short, it's a full cross-country adventure from the East Coast to the West Coast.
• Hidden Depths: In Lonesome Road, the copy ED-E has intact memory banks, revealing a much more detailed backstory and personality than the normal ED-E has. The DLC implies that those depths do exist within the original ED-E, but too much wear and substandard patch jobs mean he can't fully access it.
• Item Crafting: With Lonesome Road installed and with some nifty skill checks (Repair and Science 25), ED-E becomes capable of acting as a mobile workbench and ammo-reloading station. The utility character suddenly has even more utility! The level 2 ED-E Cated perk allows him to create Microfusion Cells, Small Energy Cells, Flamer Fuel, and Missiles Once-Per-Day through dialogue options. The first two by benefit of having the perk, the other two after passing an Explosives Skill Check.
• Robot Buddy: The Courier's faithful robotic right hand, with a multitude of crafting options on the go.
• Stone Wall: In contrast to the Followers' upgrade, getting the Brotherhood upgrade gives him a DT of 20. Still not the best, but it's just shy of Ranger Armor and Powered Armor in terms of protection. Rank 3 of Camerader-E will increase it by 2 more.
• Super Prototype: ED-E is an Eyebot prototype, albeit for an upgraded series of Eyebot that never went into production rather than Eyebots as a whole. ED-E is made of the same materials used to make Hellfire armor, can carry more than 200 pounds, and his laser isn't anything to laugh at. Plus, his 'Enhanced Sensors' perk lets you not only detect enemies from ridiculous distances, making sniping a breeze and allowing you to prepare for incoming NCR Rangers/Legion Assassins, it also lets you target cloaked enemies in V.A.T.S. Handy when you are fighting Nightkin, and makes Nightstalkers laughable.
  • However, if you give him to the Brotherhood they make an army of ED-Es.
  • He can also be brought along, in a sense, in Lonesome Road: the tech within the Divide makes a very long-range remote-scan of ED-E and makes a construct of him from the old eyebots in the Hopeville military installation, with an extra special bonus that he can scavenge upgrades from other broken eyebots...
  • He even packs a mobile reloading/repair bench, handy for Enclave soldiers who need weapons maintenance but too far from supply lines. With the proper skill checks, he becomes an all-in-one energy weapons and explosives ammo dispenser.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Not quite a power-up, but ED-E will play a short tune before charging into battle. Just one more reason why he's awesome. Lonesome Road reveals that the song comes from the pre-war TV series "Ralphie", about a boy and his heroic eyebot, which ED-E loved watching with his creator, Whitley.
• Took a Level in Badass: If you pick up all his upgrades in the Divide, he becomes free weapon maintenance, can manufacture ammo of various types, is a mobile workbench and reloading bench, and has a DT/accuracy/damage boost all in one, on top of Enhanced Sensors, and the Brotherhood/Followers upgrade.
• True Sight: With ED-E along, the Courier can use VATS against targets who are cloaked, and also can detect them on the compass.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Courier for fixing him up, especially helping enhance him with the Followers/Brotherhood's help during his companion quest, as well as his (most-likely-former) creator, Whitley.
• The Unintelligible: He can only "speak" through electronic beeps, and continues to do so even in his epilogues. In Lonesome Road, the Courier is able to understand him, somehow. (It makes sense if Old World Blues is completed before starting Lonesome Road, since the Courier becomes a Cyborg and reasonably could have some machine-to-human interface included. Otherwise... who knows?)
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: ED-E was subject to painful testing under the orders of Colonel Autumn under this philosophy. His creator Whitley subverts this, however, treating him with genuine affection, and is horrified by ED-E's cruel treatment at the hands of others. Whitley is strongly implied to have been executed for smuggling ED-E to safety rather than consigning him and the other eyebots to the scrap pile to make more Enclave Hellfire armor.

Rex

Five of Spades

The King: "First, he hates rats. Can't stand the things. Giant rats, molerats, doesn't matter. He catches a whiff of one and he's off like a shot after them. [...] Second, he doesn't like hats, or the people wearing them. Don't ask, I have no idea why. Maybe because it rhymes with rats."

Rex is a cyberdog who belongs to The King, leader of the Kings gang in Freeside. While very much a good boy, as learned in his companion quest "Nothin' But a Hound Dog", he hasn't been doing good lately on account of his cybernetics and brain starting to malfunction. Rex is a melee character, with a surprising amount of hitpoints for a dog thanks to his cybernetic enhancements.

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Provides examples of:

• Action Pet: A dog that can damage your enemies with melee attacks.
• Artificial Limbs: Has a transparent braincase and cybernetic jaw, left foreleg, and hindquarters.
• Babies Ever After: If the Courier created Roxie, another cyberdog during the Old World Blues DLC, all her endings will involve her eventually meeting up with Rex and together, they build a litter of "Boston Terrifier" Cyberpuppies.
• Back from the Dead: If Rex dies from his condition or is killed during the game, an ending in Old World Blues where Roxie was repaired involves Roxie finding him and dragging his body to Big MT to fix him.
• Berserk Button:
  • He hates rats and hats, the latter allegedly because it rhymes with rats. Do not test this near people you want to live.
  • He also seems to hate ED-E, the other "pet" companion, tending to growl at it.
• Brain in a Jar: It's even interchangeable (Well, once.) The cybernetics in his transparent brain case allow for a personality backup, letting Rex keep his original memories and mannerisms while the memories from the new brain meld with his. Depending on the brains the player gets him, he'll either gain an increase in damage, health, or speed.
• Canine Companion: As per Fallout tradition, one of the possible companions is a dog.
• Cyborg: A cyberdog with a healthy helping of Zeerust, a visible Brain in a Jar, cyber-skeletal paws, and gratuitous visible fans in his mechanical components.
• Flat Character: Played with. He's a loyal and excitable cyberdog, but in a rather colorful cast of NPCs with varied backgrounds, Rex seems to contribute the least backstory-wise. That said, he actually has hundreds of years of adventures, but obviously, just isn't able to tell anyone about them.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Rex has lived since before the Grear War 200+ years ago. He served in the Denver police K-9 unit during the final pre-War days, once acted as a loyal war-hound to Caesar himself, been a companion of The King for who-knows-how-long, and generally has had lots of interesting experiences in his life. For obvious reasons, he is unable to tell anyone about them.
• Notice This: His companion-perk, "Search and Mark". It highlights useful pickups, (like weapons, ammo, food and medicine) and containers that carry them.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Rex is a good fighter in his own right. However, thanks to the Lonesome Road add-on, his fellow "animal" companion, ED-E gets multiple upgrades both before and during the exploration of the Divide that place ED-E leagues above Rex in terms of usefulness to the Courier.
• Punny Name: His previous owner, The King named him Rex, as in the Latin word for "king". Fittingly, he was also once the personal hound to Caesar himself.
• Really 700 Years Old: It's obvious that a cyberdog can live longer than a normal one, but Rex has been around since before the Great War. The only companion older than him is Raul, and Rex looks a lot better than Raul.
• Recycled In Space: Rex is basically Dogmeat reborn as a Cyborg.
• Red Ones Go Faster: Has a red racing stripe/swash of war paint along his flank in the shape of the bull icon of Caesar's Legion.
• Robot Dog: A faithful hound with both organic and Cybernetic components.
• Split-Personality Merge: Giving him a new brain means that he effectively has to blend both his memory and the memory of the previous owner together. For Rex, the brains of Rey and Lupa (a housedog and a Legion hound, respectively) have an easier time going through this than that of Violetta, a drugged-out mutt owned by one of the Fiends.
• Undying Loyalty: First to his old handlers in the K9 cyberdog unit in Denver, then to Caesar during his time as a war-hound in the Legion, then to The King while he lived in Freeside, and finally to the Courier, especially once he's given a new healthy brain during his companion quest.

Temporary Followers

Deputy Beagle

See Primm

Logan

See Other Characters

Rhonda

See State of Utobitha

Private Halford

See New California

Ranger Bryce Anders

See New California

Orris

See Freeside

Ted Gunderson

See The Strip

Securitron

See Fallout Creatures

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