As you were delivering a package to the New Vegas strip, a strange man stops you and captures you, only for you to be shot in the head. He leaves you for dead and takes your package. You awaken in a clinic in the town of Goodsprings, where a doctor heals you and helps you get back on your feet. You have to defeat this strange man and have him pay for his crimes and find out what's in the package.. or betray the residents of Goodsprings and other small towns for their money and property... it's all up to you.
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If you're playing with the Wild Wasteland trait switched on, head southeast of Goodsprings early in the game and you'll find a skeleton inside a blown-out refrigerator. It's a direct callback to the moment in the fourth Indiana Jones film where he survives a nuclear blast by hiding inside a lead-lined fridge, except in the wasteland, that plan clearly didn't work out so well.
Game director Josh Sawyer built his own personal mod, unofficially nicknamed JSawyer, that rebalances a lot of systems and fixes issues he felt never got resolved before launch. It's essentially his own director's cut of the game, made purely out of passion rather than any studio mandate, and fans still use it today when they want the experience closer to his original vision.
The Great Khans, the drug-running faction you find holed up in Red Rock Canyon, were designed as a blend of real motorcycle gang culture and Great Plains Native American history, drawing loosely on groups like the Kansa, Osage, and Cheyenne alongside the aesthetic of clubs like the Mongols MC. It's a strange combination on paper, but it gives them a distinct identity compared to every other faction in the Mojave.
The Caravan card game challenges Know When to Fold 'Em and Know When to Hold 'Em are lifted straight from the lyrics of Kenny Rogers' classic song The Gambler. It's a small touch, but it fits the whole Vegas-casino vibe of the game so well that it almost feels like it should have always been there.
The Mister Sandman perk, which lets you kill sleeping targets silently, takes its name from the 1954 song of the same name by The Chordettes. Given how much of the game's soundtrack and quest naming leans on 50s and 60s music, it fits right in with everything else going on around it.
There's a noticeable lack of child characters wandering around the Mojave. Early on the team apparently planned to bring back Fallout 3's Child at Heart perk, but because so few kids ended up in the final game, the perk was left in as unused code that never actually gets triggered by anything.
Raul Tejada, the ghoul companion and gifted mechanic you can rescue from Black Mountain, is voiced by Danny Trejo. It's a fun bit of casting when you consider Trejo had already built a career playing tough, world-weary characters, and Raul, an old gunslinger who's outlived pretty much everyone he ever cared about, fits that mould nicely.
Brotherhood didn't just win over players, it picked up a Writers Guild of America award for its story and script, beating out some stiff competition including Fallout: New Vegas and God of War III that year.
