Fallout: New Vegas modders come fully unglued in a race to see who can do the stupidest possible thing to a missionary's hat, and it's lasted nearly a month so far

(Image credit: chrisgreely1999 / Bethesda)

Well, the Fallout: New Vegas modding community is officially beyond help. It's with a mixture of amusement and alarm that I bring you news the modders have lost it, becoming so intoxicated of modding a single Mormon's hat that I fear they may have no route back to polite society at all. The hat is their world now: All they know and all they can ever know.

I am referring, of course, to the just-concluded war for Daniel's hat. Daniel is a Mormon missionary from New Vegas' Honest Hearts DLC, the pacifist counterpart to Joshua Graham's righteous fury, and generally not a character given much attention by the fanbase. He is, after all, a bit dull compared to the iconic figure of Graham.

That is until a modder named Redquinox created Daniel's Hat Refitted, an attempt to adjust dear Dan's sombrero "so it actually fits a human head." Our hero was a bit miffed by the hat as it was: "I was sick and tired of staring at that stupid, comically oversized clown hat floating over Daniel's head, knowing it had the potential to be the best-looking hat in the game were it not for the aneurysm the designer must have had while making the model."

Redquinox's strong emotions triggered a hat inferno. The next day, a creator named clanky4 uploaded Daniel's Hat Unfitted, a "Mesh adjustment for Daniel's hat, so it actually fits an entire human." Redquinox themself followed that up with Daniel's Hat Unfitting, which made the hat tiny, and then we got Daniel's Hat Remasked, which adjusted the hat so it covers Daniel's face.

Literally all of this happened in the course of around 24 hours or so.

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A 'before' slide from Daniel's Hat Refitted, showing the myriad ways the default hat is too large. — (Image credit: Redquinox / Bethesda)

Then it all just got very silly. June 1 saw Daniel's Hat ReHatted, which put Daniel's hat inside several other hats. We also got Daniel's Hat STYLISH, which just tilted it to around a 30-degree angle on his head. Over the next three weeks or so (that is to say, until literally yesterday) we got mods to turn it into a beer hat, a mod that turns it into the infamous Fallout 3 train hat, a mod which turns Daniel into his own hat, a mod that… well, I don't know what it does, but the description just reads "Daniel has weaponized his hats. God save us all."

And many more. I strongly recommend taking a gander at the Nexus Mods search results for Daniel's hat to get a taste of just how buckwild the community got with this one. My personal favourite? Daniel's hat 8K 120fps. Finally, the headpiece you know and love in "STUNNING NEXT GEN 8K HDR RTX." Gaming is saved.

The moral of the story is, ah, well, hmm. Nevermind. Anyway, the last mod to be uploaded in the saga was Everybody Wears Daniel's Hat, from SquidHat. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and bills itself as "The long-awaited finale to the Daniel's Hat saga." But somehow, I don't think that's true.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.