Simple question. I'm sure it's been asked before but i'm curious as to what consensus (if any) has been reached.

The good thing about New Vegas is that there are many endings. Sure the big four endings which are in the poll but there are also many options.

The Boombers, Khans, Brotherhood, Fiends, Powder Gangers and so on are all side options. So that being said I support the New California ending. But I don't believe everything should have gone their way. Could have it so the Powder Gangers are still around and so on.

I think House is most likely going to be the end canon for NV.

As great as that could potentially be for humankind, I somehow doubt it will enter canon. House lays out an ultimate plan for restoring humanity. Simply because of that, I dont think it would be canonized or if it did, Houses utopia would be somehow fractured.

A canonized house ending would also minimize the role of the protagonist as opposed to an Independent ending.

Independent most likely. It gives future games regardless of location the freest hand in that they could avoid addressing anything from New Vegas at all very easily if they wanted to.

Of course that's also why I consider it the most boring ending.

Everything getting nuked, as Avellone suggested, or the tunnelers destorying everything.

Houses big speech about "going to the stars" and such doesn't have to occur for the ending to become canon.

I highly doubt any of the "large scale" stuff that House says will actually occur. At least not within the timeframe of the series. Still, House becoming autocrat of Vegas and negotiating a treaty with the NCR seems the most likely ending for the game.

House is a carefully crafted character who has a hand in the game from the moment you wake up in Goodsprings. Would be a waste to see that new character (and new faction he represents) be wiped away.

How so? The protagonist is key to House's victory.

Plus look at it this way: usually the player character isn't given such massive authority, as what happens in the independent ending. In nearly every game in the series, the hero makes his mark, and sort of fades away into the background after "saving the day." Not ruling as sole lord over an entire region with a massive robotic army at his back.

To me that fact alone makes the independent ending the most unlikely. The PC is too much of an unknown quantity.

I much more prefer the former to the latter. Tunnelers are the most shoehorned and needless thing casually thrown into the Fallout Universe. Maybe because it was intoduced in the form of a DLC.

Ok, I'll agree with you there. It just always seems to me that whichever ending pedestals the PC the highest in a non-evil or overly chaotic way would seem to be the canonized one.

I would say House is killed, but not replaced by Yes Man, the Hoover Dam get destroyed, both The legion & NCR lose interest in the area and the anarchy is back.

Although, i prefer no canon ending so our choices keep their strenght.

I always thought the good NCR ending would be canon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEX-d0yuxGk (spoilers, obviously)

I'd prefer the House ending to be canon (although I 've probably sided with Yesman and NCR more often).

A "Walks on Water" Independant ending, with the Slide for the Followers having "until the Autodocs mysteriously appeared in Mormon Fort at night." voiced by Doctor Mobius.

I think a Neutral Karma House ending will be Canon.

I if recall it correctly, there is a way to destroy or render the dam useless, through Yes Man questline.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Yes_Man%C2%A0

"Attack (NCR)? No, not attack them. Wipe the slate clean. Make the Mojave like it was meant to be: undisturbed by man. I'll send the Cloud, the Holograms. Bring ruin in my hands until only I stand atop the HELIOS One tower again. I'll scour Hoover Dam with the Cloud, rain its walls with spears from the sun - with an army of Old World ghosts behind me. [...] I'll kill them until it's only me, me alone in a quiet world."

Certainly doesn't sound like it.

Even the ending slider for if you choose to help him with low NCR reputation states only two survive

That would be a pretty sweet short story or comic, the story of what Elijah does if he succeeds at the sierra madre and how he does it. I can just imagine him placing hologram emitters everywhere throughout the mojave, rigging up a rocket launcher and firing it at the hoover dam from a nearby cliff edge. Basically one old man going on a genocide spree, that would be pretty cool.

Or if someone made a mod that has you play as a random wastelander who goes to investigate the mysterious cloud rolling into the mojave, you gotta follow elijah's footsteps and read/listen to his journals and you have a chance to stop him, but make it really friggen hard.

I should get into modding and do it myself, but i never got the time for that.

House ending would make the most sense, and he is the best option out of the four to keep the mojave thriving and growing with a 'booming' economy. I could see Yes Man being the popular choice as canon though. But that just seems too easy and isn't the best option for the Mojave's future.

Or......

It was something intentional, thinking ahead.

Yes Man seems to be one of those cute characters, but ..... how can I say ... amoral. A character more or less like the bear in Danganronpa. Or Zero Jr. in Virtue: Last Reward.

He even looks like the Laughing Man, from Ghost in the Shell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Man_%28Ghost_in_the_Shell%29

Does the premature death of the Courier would not do Mojave an odd place to live? Without someone to lead the Yes Man, who knows what could he do?

Who knows how thinks an AI without moral restraints ...... Obviously killing is not a problem for him.

Maybe it turns into a bizarre version of House? Or decide to expand their territories?

It would be an interesting faction to seeing in the future

Can be done.

Hell, even I who am no professional writer can think of at least three reasons.