History VideoGame / NewCalifornia

** Almost all the endings (save the [[spoiler: Unity and Empty Earth ones]]) counts as this since inevitably the Star Player has to leave their faction for some reason and begin a new life as [[spoiler: [[{{Characters/FalloutNewVegasTheCourier}} The Courier]].]]

* MinMaxing: The game heavily encourages this due to the fact that much of the skill checks are rather high with very little opportunities to level up, meaning that you're going to have to abuse things such as chems or outfits to pass skill checks.

* MinMaxing: The game heavily encourages this due to the fact that much of the skill checks are rather high with very little opportunities to level up, meaning that you're going to have to abuse things such as chems or outfits to get satisfactory results.

** A terminal in Senator Duville's office references ''Machinima/FalloutLoreTheStoryteller'' with [[spoiler:"Project V13", an NCR cloning project, as well as NCR Ranger Helen Tanner. Though knowing New California's plot and reveal, this becomes much more significant...]] Another terminal in Doc Marius' workshop also references it, providing a sort of [[TakeThat explanation for the Storyteller's existence]].

* InkSuitActor: Played with; In the NCR base one of the pictures on the wall is Creator/TonyShalhoub in a suit, presumably representing Aradesh.

* The Survivalist Raiders, a military dictatorship and conglomerate of numerous smaller raider tribes, united under Boss Elsdragon in their opposition against NCR rule.

** The Raider Alliance as a whole, since by the time of New Vegas proper the NCR has conquered all of California and is moving into Nevada. [[spoiler: Facing NCR expansion, the tribes ultimately break apart the Alliance and scatter, with most of them fleeing east and being absorbed by Caesar's Legion.]]
** Even if the Star Player sides with the Enclave, [[spoiler:it's revealed that Enclave Squad Leonidas eventually move east to answer President John Henry Eden's call, and is doomed to be wiped out by the Brotherhood of Steel in the Capital Wasteland.]]

* GoodThingYouCanHeal: [[spoiler: The player character has superhuman healing abilities, as a result of the Father's experiments on them. As a result, they can shrug off bullets, fatal falls and a ''nuclear strike.'']] It also explains why [[spoiler: they survived [[BoomHeadshot being shot point-blank]] by Benny in the intro to New Vegas.]]
* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: The player's exact involvement in the events in the Pass are largely forgotten by virtue of government cover-up and most of the people involved dying over time. [[spoiler: Of note, most of the player's surviving allies died at Hopeville and Ben mentions in the Mojave that the California Tribe was eventually destroyed by the Legion.]]

** The as of yet unimplemented 1.0 rewrite contains one more, radically different than the rest: [[spoiler: A Wild Card route where the Star Player rejects all players in the Pass and instead sides with a surviving Yetti Hail, reforming the Wasteland Scouts and saving the survivors of Vault 18. With no faction in the lead, the war for California is much bloodier, but ends nonetheless, and the Unity and the Braggs are defeated. The Star Player and their companions simply ride off into the sunset, becoming the stuff of legends. And the Courier is simply someone they pass on the road...]]

** [[spoiler:Jenn Hail can be found at the start of New Vegas in Goodsprings, giving you a quest to find the others.]]
** [[spoiler:Ben Kurtz can be found in Cottonwood Cove, inside the slave pen, with a grudge against the Legion for enslaving his tribe, seeking to kill Aurelius.]]
** [[spoiler:Kira Mann can be found locked inside the Silver Rush, having been imprisoned by the Van Graffs and forced to produce energy weapons for them.]]
** [[spoiler:Eric and Jamie Campbell can be found in a ranch near Brooks Tumbleweed Ranch, where the player must pay 3000 caps to support their two children to join them as companions.]]
** [[spoiler:Johnny Matheson can be found in the Casa Madrid Apartments, owning a brothel and requiring the player to pay 1000 caps to join them.]]

* ShoutOut: All over the place, but mainly to other Fallout works. Notably, there are a few nods to ''VideoGame/TheFrontier'', referring to the frigid territories north of California. For instance, the Vault Vikings came from Vault 37, which is said to be in Portland. [[spoiler:It's revealed in that mod that the remaining Vault Vikings eventually wind up there to escape assimilation into Caesar's Legion.]]

** One researcher [[spoiler: who worked in Fort Daggerpoint thought the Project Brazil parasites were aliens. [[CloudCuckooLander He was wrong.]]]]
** The biggest case of this is probably [[spoiler: the Father, who has grown delusional believing that his decades-long BatmanGambit ''must'' have been successful in creating a clone of the Vault Dweller and treats the Star Player as such, when he has no proof at all and even killed followers who questioned him.]]
* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler: Through terminal entries you can find that the Father was once a Nightkin named Mark, and WordOfGod states your blood sample originated from a random blood splatter found on the floor at Mariposa, leaving your true identity a mystery.]]
* YouDontLookLikeYou: At game's launch, there's loading screens featuring artworks of [=NPCs=] with some noticeable difference compaired to their ingame appearance (beside the ArtShift).

** Kira Mann's dyed hair are pink instead of dark purple, and her eyes are tilted.
** Chevy Bragg has a cybernetic green glowing eye (instead of her eyepatch) with a Vault 18 Security Armor. [[spoiler:The loading screen makes her look like a mashup of her early and late-game appearance. In the first act, she wears an eyepatch and a Vault 18 Security Armor. When you encounter her during the end, she lost the eyepatch (which hides the aforementioned cybernetic eye) and wears an Enclave power amor]]. She's also wielding an Infiltrator assault rifle, a ''Fallout 3'' weapon which hasn't been ported to ''New Vegas''.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: Once you decide to end the prologue, going to bed triggers a level-up to level 3, then the Enclave attack on Vault 18 happens. The game checks the level-up to procede to the story's next step, and choosing the Skilled trait at character's creation (which results in +5 in every skills and slower XP gain) results in the player character not receiving enough XP to level up, which immediately freezes the story (this can be resolved by using the console to get enough XP to be able to level up).[[note]]Using third party mods which affect XP gain rate have the same effect[[/note]] That's obviously an oversight from the devs, because Skilled is added by the ''Old World Blues'' DLC, and ''New California'' doesn't require any of the official [=DLCs=] to work.

** In older versions of the loading screen, there were a bald Kevin Rossman (his head is fully covered by a short haircut), a bareheaded Johnny Matheson with a broken nose covered by a plaster (ingame, he has no plaster on the nose and always wears a Vault-ball helmet), and a brown-haired Juan Maxson-Elsdragon with different facial hair (his hair is dyed dark green ingame, and his chin beard is thinner).

** In older versions of the loading screen, there were a bald Kevin Rossman (his head is fully covered by a short haircut) and a bareheaded Johnny Matheson with a broken nose covered by a plaster (ingame, he has no plaster on the nose and always wears a Vault-ball helmet).

** Ben Kurtz wears red warpaint on his face, a different paintjob on his armored jumpsuit, and bare forearms with warpaint.

** In older versions of the loading screen, there were a bald Kevin Rossman (his head is fully covered by a short haircut) and a Johnny Matheson with a broken nose covered by a plaster.

*** Jenn Hail's ouftit shows much less cleavage and has a gun holster next to her shoulder.
*** Ben Kurtz wears red warpaint on his face and a different paintjob on his armored jumpsuit.
*** Kira Mann's dyed hair are pink instead of dark purple, and her eyes are tilted.
*** Chevy Bragg has a cybernetic green glowing eye (instead of her eyepatch) with a Vault 18 Security Armor. [[spoiler:The loading screen makes her look like a mashup of her early and late-game appearance. In the first act, she wears an eyepatch and a Vault 18 Security Armor. When you encounter her during the end, she lost the eyepatch (which hides the aforementioned cybernetic eye) and wears an Enclave power amor]]. She's also wielding an Infiltrator assault rifle, a ''Fallout 3'' weapon which hasn't been ported to ''New Vegas''.
*** In older versions of the loading screen, there were a bald Kevin Rossman (his head is fully covered by a short haircut) and a Johnny Matheson with a broken nose covered by a plaster.

*** Chevy Bragg has a cybernetic green glowing eye (instead of her eyepatch) with a Vault 18 Security Armor. [[spoiler:The loading screen makes her look like a mashup of her early and late-game appearance. In the first act, she wears an eyepatch and a Vault 18 Security Armor. When you encounter her during the end, she lost the eyepatch (which hides the aforementioned cybernetic eye) and wears an Enclave power amor.]]

* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler: Through terminal entries you can find that the Father was once a Nightkin named Mark, and WordOfGod states your blood sample originated from a random blood splatter found on the floor at Mariposa, leaving your true identity a mystery.]]