The Idea

So, I was thinking about this. There are a few factors that have been screwing around with my mind for a bit now, and I just can't keep this to myself. The thing is, a lot of the key factors of this are already in the Mojave.

For example:

On the eastern edge of the map, we have a Deathclaw promontory of sorts, a hive, a lair, with so many of the little buggers running around. We have our old friends from Novarro, we have Doctor Henry, an Enclave Scientist, we have an old Enclave bunker. We have a great deal of the ingredients we'd need to do something completely crazy!! To hell with intentions, it'd be a wonderfully rebellious thing to do.

The Execution

Step 1: The Discovery.

The player learns of the history of the Deathclaws and what happened in Vault City, and through Doctor Henry and a five-fingered deal they further learn of the means as to how these creatures came about. The Deathclaws are a huge problem for the Mojave, what with the clutch at Quarry Junction and all, stopping easy travel between New Vegas and Goodsprings, essentially cutting off a valuable avenue of tourist trade for those poor 'springers!

Step 2: The Conception.

The player has a choice, being an ethical person, instead of simply wiping out the Deathclaws, they could try and create a new strain of intelligent Deathclaws. This wouldn't be easy, but it would be fun. Wouldn't it be fun? Playing fast and loose with the laws of nature, pretending to be certain named deities and so forth? Who wouldn't want that. You can't lie to me, we all want that. Well, the player could have the option of simply wiping them out... or doing something amazing, something brilliant.

The seed is planted.

Step 3: The Plan.

The player needs to devise a way to deliver the FEV virus to all of the deathclaw in the area; there could be a number of ways to do this, either outright stealth to setup a number of devices in the area to distribute the virus, or going in with a weapon that would render the Deathclaws unconscious but otherwise unharmed before setting up those handy dandy FEV dispensers.

Step 4: Not Quite Yet.

The FEV dispensers would activate a number of times over a period of a number of in-game weeks, the player might have to refill them occasionally as the process follows along, until the virus is at such a point of saturation that it can alter the genetic build of the Deathclaws, essentially rendering them (and their future generations) notably more intelligent and capable of language.

Step 5: Building the Future.

You now have a lot of Deathclaws on hand with the impressionable minds of youngsters. You'll need a whole stash of pre-war books, caps, and hired help to make this work. You can influence the Deathclaws in different ways, to like or dislike certain factions. Basically to tie in with the ending. These people will require facilities, so you'll have to supply a great deal of caps to have places built; you'll need installations to teach them about culture, society, science, military, and all of that.

Step 6: A New Face in the Mojave.

The Deathclaws learn fast, and quickly learn to make use of these facilities themselves, they become self-sufficient and carve out their own little niche of the wasteland, becoming less a threat, and more a peoples. As a faction, you'll have a lot to do to help them out, there will be missions you can run for them to earn their trust. You can teach the wasteland to fear them, or you can use your suave ways to talk the peoples of the wastes into accepting them as a diplomatic power unto themselves, something that the Mojave would need to survive.

One of the quests could be to setup a secondary Deathclaw outpost in Quarry Junction, bringing the feral Deathclaws there around to the new way of life that your first experiment now enjoys.

Step 7: Your Reward.

One of these intelligent buggers becomes fairly attached to you and your ideals, they grow over time and gain different perks based upon how you educate the Deathclaw peoples. This Deathclaw will be a fully voiced companion, with his own quest tied into his faction. And depending on which way you went with educating his peoples, he'll have a choice of a few unique weapons to choose from, sort of akin to how Lily's Vertibird Blade works. And being a Deathclaw, he's going to pack quite the punch, and I'm not talking about alcoholic beverages here, neither.

Step 8: The End.

The Deathclaws will accompany you to the final battle at Hoover Dam. And they'll have their own spot in the ending based upon the decisions you made when helping their race to grow and learn. Also, your companion will have his own slot there, too. Thus tying up their story, and making them a part of the Mojave. Either as their own peoples, proud and so far detached from the shame of Vault City, as residents of the NCR, or as slaves and warriors in Caesar's Legion.

So That's the Pitch

I'm not really a modder myself. I can do a little coding/fixing, but I don't really have much in the way of talents beyond being an idea man. Ideas are what I do, and I tend to have some fairly interesting ones. And seeing how all the elements of Fallout 2 came together in New Vegas, it was driving me crazy that the game itself didn't do this. It certainly could have... but it's all there, and waiting, for a group of talented community modders to unlock its potential.

And besides, Deathclaws kicking [censored] at Hoover Dam, wouldn't that be amazing?

This would be freaking amazing!

Maybe have Goris be the quest starter? Have him hanging around Jacobstown or something... It's feasible he could still be around and be a crotchety old man...male deathclaw.... whatever... by now.

@Sir-Stabs-Alot

I'm glad you agree. C: Deathclaws would be a fighting force to be reckoned with, whichever side they ended up on!

@MadCat221

Another tie-in to Fallout 2, you say? Sounds like a good idea to me! I hadn't thought about Goris having his own place in Jacobstown, but it would make for a really nice nod to the old fans, and more than that, it would fit in perfectly. He could consider himself an intellectual sparring partner of Doc Henry. And if a sound-alike could be found, the quest could even be started with the player overhearing a conversation between the two about the 'old days'.

(Of course, there's no harm in doing it with just text. But yes, this is a brilliant idea, and I'd love to see Goris again.)

It's got a lot of potential, but it would be a huge amount of work too.

Oh, I know. But I've seen mods on a similar scale for Fallout 3, like that manual town-building mod and so forth, if the voice-work and quests were left for later, and the basic ground-work was laid down first, simply the main line of getting them sentient, then other things could come later. First that main line could be done, just to create a settlement of friendly Deathclaws, then some content could be added, then they could be worked into the ending, and finally some optional side content could be added later on if the team wanted to. And polish can always come later as well.

If you look at the core of it, sans content, it isn't a huge amount to do. It would just take a lot of conviction. I wish I were in a place where I could help more, but I feel I'd bungle more than anything else, I'm hopeless at design, but I always have really good ideas, and I'd be happy to supply ideas for content, and dialogue. If there's one thing I can do, it's write! Oh my yes, I can certainly do that.

Ideas are a dime a dozen....

Sorry man.

Sound like a rip snortin' good time! You might be able to get red lucey boss of the Thorn to help train your V 2.0 deathclaws. I doubt deathclaws would be accepted into the wasteland suvivor community seeing as how super mutants and ghouls catch so much flak about being mindless or RAGH HULK SMASH!

Id say start up with a talking Deathclaw companion and work out from there.

@Astrobleme

True! But if Obsidian have taught me one thing, it's that with a high enough speech skill, you can talk anyone into just about anything. You can talk an old Enclave soldier into defending the army he hates and opposes, and you can talk the commander of a vast army into cowardice so that he'd leg it (arf) for the hills. With a broad and warm enough smile and a gentle demeanor, with people knowing you for being a friendly, and generally helpful sort, you could likely talk folks into accepting a community of Deathclaws as well.

If nothing else, the Mojave is certainly open-minded. And I'd bet the Followers would have my back with this one, people respect them, so that'd be a great place to start, and a good idea to tie into the mod, too.

@Echonite

This could work as well, certainly as a precursor. After all, if you're going to try this experiment on a large scale, then you might want to capture and try it on one, first. So the mod could be a series, starting off with just a talking Deathclaw companion. And then, gauged on the popularity of that, if enough people are interested, perhaps further content could be created. So I agree, that would be a great place to start.

@Toryn

So are troll posts, friend. But I thank you for the useless non sequitur, nonetheless. You did bump the thread, after all.

if you look at fallout tactics the deathclaws are intellegent and you actually get to fight with them on your side after you defeat them on a couple of missions.

I wondered myself for a long time why they didnt tie deathclaws in more to the story and have them with dialog becuase as you say that are awesome and a force to reckoned with!

Yep. I wondered the same thing, hence this idea. It just feels like there's something missing. And what I mean by that is that New Vegas is obviously a spiritual successor to Fallout 2. The gang's all there; the Enclave from Navarro, the NCR, and even some of our friends from Van Buren. It just seems really strange to me to remain that true to the Universe, and then ignore the Deathclaws as a potential story angle as much as Fallout 3 did. It just seems like such an incredible waste to me, since there's loads of potential there. Potential for a particularly deep story, told from a unique standpoint, a faction with a more alien outlook on things.

The Deathclaws in Fallout 2 touched upon that just a little bit, and it's something that really could be expanded on. For me, really, not doing anything with the Deathclaws would be like forgetting the NCR exists, or the Vaults. They're a pretty staple part of the Fallout Universe, and yet nothing happened with them at all in New Vegas. So odd. Personally, I'd love to have them there at Hoover Dam, because then? Then the party would truly feel complete, everyone would be there. It'd be a reunion.

Edited: In fact, on that same note, a mod could give the Super Mutants of Jacobstown a stronger presence in the game (including at the Dam) and in the ending, too. And if you manage to get all of these working together, Deathclaws, Super Mutants, and all the rest, then the Mojave could be seen as the most open-minded and accepting place known to man post-war. And that'd be a fun addition for the ending, too.

Is it possible to lipsync creatures that were never intended to talk?

Ah, this is answered with knowing one's lore, friend. You see, the Deathclaws of Vault City (in Fallout 2) spoke well enough, so one could hardly say that they were never intended to talk, and they did it plenty well enough without lips. Two birds with one stone there, eh?

They used a system similar to how parrots emulate human speech, if you're curious. It was a very clever mimicking of the sounds. The thing is this, you see: If you have a sapient creature, regardless of what physiological tools they do or don't have at their disposal, they're eventually going to figure out a system of communication. The Deathclaws of Vault City learned to emulate the sounds made by the humans there, and used their intelligence to give those mimicked words worth, speaking their own mind instead of that of another. Deathclaws exposed to the FEV and then provided with the correct stimulus could learn to speak the same way.

If, however, you're talking of concerns on the more technical side of things, then there's one obvious response, there: Rex, Dogmeat, and ED-E, none of them have lips, but they all have audio lines. You don't need to move lips to play an audio track, after all, and having the Deathclaw not move its mouth too much actually fits with the lore. It's a win-win.

I think he was talking from a technical standpoint. Deathclaws do not have their own jaw bones, so making their mouth move when conversing would be difficult.

But an idea to deal with that. Remember those enclave mind control devices? Perhaps involving those and telepathy? Like the protoss!

Give a deathclaw psi blades and I will father your children.

I can't decide whether invisible Dark Templar deathclaws or Deathclaw Motherships would be worse.

En Taro Goris!

Intelligent Deathclaws would have to live together with humans to make or use tools because they cant do anything with their enormous claws. They cannot use any small tools that were made for humans. So they would either enslave the humans or befriend them.

Okay, in order...

The Technical Side of Things: I don't think this would actually be a big problem. I mean, we don't see much jaw movement in Fallout 2. I think that as long as the voice files were there, it wouldn't be a huge thing if the jaw wasn't moving at all. One could simply explain it as something they do at the back of their throat. To this end, you could have them have trouble with certain letters that would be made easier pronounced at the front of the mouth.

All in all though, I don't think that jaws not being able to move is an issue, since it actually fits the lore. The Deathclaws in Fallout 2 didn't seem like jaw-waggers, either. So, I think that works, it's all in how you explain it!

Human Tools: Yep. In my OP I actually suggest exactly this. It's all there. In one of the steps I speak about hiring a cadre of people to actually educate the Deathclaws, they could provide whatever tool use and construction is necessary, and they could work with the Deathclaws to build tools for Deathclaw use.

Right, that said...

I was thinking of somehow getting this rolling in some small way. I was wondering about encounters, specifically Wild Wasteland ones. I've done a little modding, but never encounters. Are there any good tutorials out there for that? Basically, what I think would be entertaining is having an encounter where two Deathclaws wander by, named 'Acolyte of the Path', 'Acolyte of Goris' or something like that. They could discuss a bit about Vault City, with one wondering whether it truly ever existed, and the other saying that he should be quiet, lest he incurs the wrath of Goris. It would be a bit of a nod to Goris being still out there, and it would be a fun learning experience for me.

Unfortunately, I don't know where to start. And I'm a bit burned out right now after a mod I put together earlier. In the morning, I might peruse the GECK for grandmas, and have a look online for standard encounter tutorials, to see if I can't piece it all together. But if anyone could supply me with any useful information, it would be appreciated.

I think it's possible, there have been bigger and more complex mods for the engine. Atleast make a companion.

I'd enjoy seeing this come to life, since it has alot of potential with-in the game, and it would give the Courier something else to do on side.

Am I the only one who immediately wanted to respond, "by something to do, I hope you mean a job, otherwise talk to gomorah's?" (sp?)

Yeah, there really is loads of potential there. I mean, all it really takes is Goris, a small family he's created by passing on the intelligence gene via mating, some FEV (perhaps secured from a certain vault they'd heard tell of in DC?), and a willing Scientist who regrets the past actions of the Enclave (Henry!). All the pieces of this particular puzzle are there, it just takes someone to put ti together.

Moreover, I can't help but notice how absolutely infested with Deathclaws the Mojave is. Has anyone else noticed this? You have Quarry Junction, there's the promontory to the far East, which is absolutely flooded with Deathclaws, and then you have a sizable Deathclaw family and a Legendary Deathclaw in Dead Wind Cavern... they're everywhere in the Mojave, and they seem to breed like rabbits. What better staging ground could there be for an experiment with intelligent Deathclaws than this? I mean, if they keep breeding like they do, then they might become a problem, and one that would pose a threat to humanity, one that may need an extermination attempt. Goris would have a counter-proposal, by creating creatures that can be reasoned with.

This would make for a great bit of story-telling, and it would wrap up the events in Fallout 2, which were left hanging. It would provide closure to the tale of Goris, the Deathclaws, and the Enclave. Goris could let go of his anger, and forgive the last Remnants, since he'd now have a very large family to look after and be the ambassador to. And those few Remnants of the Enclave could leave behind their guilt in regards to what happened at Vault City. It would be a real high point for the history oft he wasteland. Not everything has to be so very maudlin, after all.

am i sensing new DLC? i would pay for it!

Likewise, I would too. We've got so many wrapped up elements in New Vegas, I'd love to see a decent ending for the talking Deathclaws, too. Returned to the wastes, given a second chance at life, and a real go at civilisation. The super mutants have had a fair go of it, so why not the Deathclaws? And there's so much one could do with a Deathclaw character and the unique perspectives they'd have, anyone who remembers Goris would know this.

But yes, whether the community pulled together to do a mod of it, or whether it was DLC by Obsidian, I wouldn't mind either way. But I think the Deathclaws deserved better.