Fallout: New Vegas mod restores cut NPCs to the Strip

A security robot and military police officer, drawn in the Vault Boy-style

(Image credit: Bethesda)

One of the most underwhelming parts of Fallout: New Vegas is the New Vegas Strip itself, which feels empty and lifeless when it should be a thriving urban hot spot—at least by radioactive wasteland standards. That's because a bunch of stuff planned for the area was cut to keep performance up, which The Strip NPCs Uncut mod aims to fix.

As modder PushTheWinButton explains, "There are actually a fair number of perfectly functional, mostly-implemented NPCs already placed around the Strip, but they were likely cut late in development for performance reasons on console. As far as I am aware, no-one has touched these NPCs yet, probably due to difficulty in deciphering the scripts related to the Strip. This mod fully restores them."

While existing mods add new NPCs to indoor areas, like Populated Casinos (which made our list of the best Fallout: New Vegas mods), The Strip NPCs Uncut restores 12 NPCs, some of whom recur across the area's zones, upping the population by 32 in total.

There are several mods for restoring cut content to New Vegas, like Uncut Wasteland, which brings back a bunch of different NPCs and elements of background scenery, or the mod that restores the ability to summon Gojira by slaying legendary monsters.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.