Fallout New Vegas beta build reveals scrapped content left on the cutting room floor

YouTuber Games' Past unearths tons of cut content from early prototype versions of Fallout: New Vegas, showing different world textures in beta builds.

Fallout New Vegas beta build reveals scrapped content left on the cutting room floor
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Senior Gaming Editor
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TL;DR: Early beta builds of Fallout New Vegas, including pre-release prototypes with unique lighting, models, and cut content, have been recovered and compiled for modded Xbox 360 and dev kits. These versions offer a distinct gameplay experience and may enable new mods, revealing valuable insights into Obsidian's classic RPG development.

Two hard drives containing early beta builds of Fallout New Vegas have been discovered and compiled so that anyone with a modded Xbox 360 or a dev kit can play pre-release versions of Obsidian's beloved classic RPG.

Fallout New Vegas beta build reveals scrapped content left on the cutting room floor 6
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YouTuber Games' Past has unearthed some surprising new prototype builds of New Vegas. The channel was able to recover two working prototypes for New Vegas--one from July, which is roughly a month before the game was gold mastered and feature complete, and the other from August 2010, after the game was finished. The prototypes are roughly 6GB in size, two gigabytes larger than the retail game. The August version comes with the added bonus of having console commands enabled in the Xbox 360 version.

The main differences between the pre-release and public versions are the lighting effects and model designs--the final game has complete lighting added to various areas. Discovery of New Vegas' PDB files could also lead to mods on the Xbox 360 version.

"There are more textures, more models, and most of all, tons of temporary and cut audio."

"Playing through this prototype version of the game is basically a whole new experience, and is worth playing through if you have a modded Xbox 360 or a development kit. What you're seeing so far is barely scratching the surface of this prototype's build sequence, and we're so excited to see what you all will find on your early playthroughs of New Vegas."

The prototype is also technically playable on the Xenia emulator, but there are tons of graphics glitches so it won't be an actual proper gameplay experience.

Another example of cut content includes a quick NPC interaction when you leave Goodsprings for the first time. The NPC basically tells you what's what and gives you hints on where to go and which places you should avoid. There are incomplete dialog sequences that were generated with text-to-speech that serve as placeholders.

The team also secured a second hard drive that includes a build of all New Vegas DLCs, but Old World Blues and Lonesome Road are incomplete and contain "mountains of cut content."

Be sure to check out the video for download links.