As part of DualShockers' week-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of Fallout, every day our writers recall a moment from across the series that stuck with them over the years.
TheFalloutgames are full of great quests, I don’t think that’s in dispute. Whether you’re finding an old woman’s violin, tracking down a runaway synth, or building a body for a sentient AI, every game in the series is full of unique and creative misadventures that have helped Fallout endure for 25 years.
But there’s one particular escapade that stands out to me as one of thebest side-quests in gaming. “Beyond the Beef” fromFallout New Vegasis a twisted madhouse of a quest with an immersive-sim level of depth and complexity. It evoked in me a mixture of total revulsion, morbid fascination and genuine admiration for whoever managed to put the thing together.
Brace yourself, it’s a wild ride.
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The quest can trigger in a couple of different ways, but most players will encounter Heck Gunderson, a highly unscrupulous Brahmin baron, in the Ultra-Luxe Casino. He tells you that his son Ted has gone missing, and you’re to find the boy and bring him home. All fairly run-of-the-mill stuff as far as the town of New Vegas goes, but things take a sudden turn when the player is introduced to Mortimer, a high-ranking member of a group of ex-cannibals called the White Glove Society, who now run the Ultra-Luxe casino.
Mortimer however, hasn’t quite kicked the cannibal habit. It turns out that he kidnapped Ted Gunderson and intends to kill him, then serve him at a banquet thrown for the other members of the society in the hopes that they will revert to their old ways. Upon discovering this, what happens next is entirely up to you. My first time through, I handled things in a fairly sober manner, and it was only later that I discovered the dizzying array of possibilities I’d had before me.
If you’re feeling evil, then you can agree to help Mortimer. It turns out Ted wasn’t his intended victim, and he’s anxious to get rid of him without harming the casino’s reputation. To do this you will need to kill Ted, take a sample of his blood, and plant it in his father’s penthouse. Inform the authorities and then watch as Heck resists arrest, and is killed for his trouble. Mortimer will then serve the rest of Ted for dinner, and the society will return to cannibalism. Ahhh, all is back to normal… sort of.
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For the slightly less evil player, you can take Ted back to his father and pretend you don’t know who kidnapped him. You will however have to find a new person to feed to the cannibals. You can offer up one of your companions at this point, or go after a man Mortimer has his eye on called Carlyle Sinclair who you can either seduce, trick, or abduct. Whatever you decide to do,someonewill end up back at the casino and will be eaten instead of Ted.
There are of course alternatives for the more morally upstanding among us. you’re able to avoid conflict altogether by rescuing Ted, and cooking up some mock human flesh to be served in his place. You then turn up with Ted once Mortimer has revealed himself as a cannibal, after which he is expelled from the White Gloves. Or how about spike the society’s wine and make off with Ted in tow while they sleep off whatever it is you’ve slipped them? This involves getting mixed up in the affairs of a dead investigator who was working with a White Glove insider to stop Mortimer.
Just shooting the place up and walking Ted straight out of there is of course an option. Inform Heck of Mortimer’s plan, and he’ll even give you a shotgun and a few shells to help you out. It’s not subtle, but it gets the job done. It is also possible to infiltrate the members-only section of the casino and escape with Ted completely undetected, which admittedly, is a lot harder to do. I’ve attempted it many times only to fall back on the old, ‘shoot everyone and run away’ masterstroke.
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Just to push the complexity of Beyond the Beef one notch higher, it actually ties into another quest called Pheeble Will. It turns out Heck Gunderson is no paragon of virtue himself (surprise, surprise) and has conned another rancher called Walter Phebus out of a large tract of land. you may actually speak to Phebus and help him enact his revenge, which involves killing Ted and then his father. As you’ll have seen by now, you will be given ample opportunity to do both those things. You might decide that Heck deserves what’s coming to him ignore the whole cannibal thing to help Phebus get even. It could of course be argued that murdering the Gundersons is a hugely disproportionate reaction, but I’m not here to tell you how to play the game.
I’ve replayed Beyond the Beef so many times that all its twists and turns are burned into my brain. It’s one of the reasons Fallout New Vegas is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s gruesome, darkly comedic, and labyrinthine, all the things that define Fallout at its best.
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