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Fallout New Vegas has now been with this for well over a decade, originally being released way back in the good old days of 2009, when life was simple, and I was legally not allowed to work at anything more strenuous than a paper route, allowing me to spend far too much time playing what would become a focal point of my life and my favorite game of all time.
However, even though the game has been out for so long, many quests can be accidentally overlooked, missed, or simply forgotten about. I am, therefore, taking it upon myself to hopefully educate those unaware of the Auld Lang Syne quest about its many great moments and how to activate said moments.
This quest is a typical missed New Vegas quest, as it is a follower-specific quest that is only activated by hotting triggers dotted throughout the game with the correct follower in toe.
During my first couple of playthroughs of New Vegas, I didn’t even know this quest existed, let alone anything about storyline triggers or follower-specific questlines.
So, in this For Auld Lang Syne guide, I am going to take you through, step by step, the storyline triggers required to advance the player’s relationship with the follower in question, Arcade Gannon, to get the good doctor to open up about his past and allow us into the Auld Lang Syne quest.
This may seem like a lot of effort just for one quest, but believe me, if you are a fan of Fallout lore, this is the quest for you. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it!
Arcade Gannon, A quick Rundown and Acquisition guide
When the player is exploring New Vegas, they will eventually wind up in Freeside on their journey to the New Vegas strip, most likely in search of Benny and that wonderful suit of his.
Once in Freeside, the player will eventually end up in the Old Morman Fort, the HQ of the Mojave arm of the Followers of the Apocalypse.
This organization hosts a group of doctors working to help the sick and infirmed members of the Mojave wasteland and Freeside in particular. Arcade Gannon is one of these doctors. However, if you want a full breakdown and overview of the Followers, check out this guide I wrote previously here.
As mentioned, Arcade Gannon is one of the doctors in the Old Fort located in Freeside; therefore, to gain him as a follower and kick off the path to Auld Lang Syne, we are going to need to do a couple of things.
There are many ways to recruit Arcade into our service and start trotting around the wasteland with him. The most common and easiest way is probably by just having a high Speech skill, and anything above 75 will allow the player to recruit Arcade.
However, if you are going for a different character build, you can get him by increasing your reputation with the followers through whatever means necessary. Traditionally and most simply, this will be done by completing the High Times quest given by Julie Farkas, another doctor in the Fort.
However, regardless of these actions, if the player is cozy with Ceasar’s Legion, you will be out of luck when trying to recruit Arcade, as he hates any fascistic organizations. You can get around this if you wear an NCR uniform while recruiting him.
So, What are Storyline Triggers?
As mentioned previously, during my first couple of run-throughs of New Vegas, I had no clue that there was anything like storyline triggers running in the background of the game. Therefore, I did not pursue them or manage to progress down any follower’s quest tree any more than the very shallow elements.
I remember that with followers such as Boon, where you have to engage in the opening of his quest to recruit him as a follower, I desperately wanted to figure out what happened to his wife, but I just couldn’t get the stubborn sniper to budge. This is where storyline triggers come in, and they are unique to each follower.
In this guide, we will focus on Arcade’s storyline triggers, but please remember that each New Vegas follower has unique and wonderful triggers. Now that we have this general background covered, let’s look at Arcade’s trigger points.
Arcade’s Pressure Points
There are numerous ways to trigger these points for Arcade, earning the player his trust. In total, to activate the quest in question, we will need two of these trust points. I like to break down these trigger points into two sections.
Main Storyline Trigger Points
- Destroying the Brotherhood of Steel or dethroning Mr. House.
- Entering the El Dorado Substation.
Wild or Environmental Triggers
- Discovering the Crashed Vertibird location just southwest of Camp Searchlight.
- Entering the REPCONN headquarters building.
- Traveling to Cottonwood Cove and speaking about Ceasar in a negative light with Arcade.
Gaining Arcade’s Trust
With these two trust points garnered, the quest will eventually activate when you and Arcade are both in a safe location, with Arcade approaching the player and telling them about his connection with the Enclave and his wish to help the player by recruiting the remnants of his order to help with the coming battle at Hoover Dam.
As you stick with Arcade throughout the New Vegas main story, he will offer little quips and thoughts on what you are doing, alluding to his past. However, he will always cut himself short, leaving you with more questions than answers.
After you gain enough trust points and Arcade has partially explained his past, he will finally drop the bomb on the player that his father was a prominent member of the Enclave. Although, he was not born until two years after the fall of the Enclave in the first Fallout game.
Recruiting The Remnants
After Arcade tells you about the remnants, the focus of the quest shifts to finding these five members scattered throughout the wasteland.
While the player’s main goal of this quest is to recruit each member of the remnants, you must also get a piece of a passphrase from each member to access their bunker in the later stages of the quest.
This bunker not only holds some impressive pieces of technology and a Vertibird, but it is also the meeting place for yourself, Arcade, and all five members of the remnants after they have all been recruited.
Remnant Number 1: Daisy Whitman
As with the rest of the Remnants members, recruiting Daisy is not exactly difficult; one must travel to her and work their way through a dialogue tree to recruit her and gain her piece of the passphrase – “Dear.” Daisy’s dialogue tree is literally two lines before she agrees.
Daisy can be found in her hotel room in Novac, the same hotel that you can or would have already recruited Boon from earlier in the storyline. Sometimes, however, she can be found wandering around the grounds of the hotel, but usually, she stays within the confines of the chain-linked fence.
After you meet Daisy, Arcade will tell the player about his relationship with her and how she served as a surrogate mother to him through his youth. This little bit of dialogue helps endear Arcade to the player, considering he has mostly been cool or aloof until this point in the quest.
Remnant Number 2: Cannibal Johnson
Owner of both a cave and the coolest name in all the Mojave, Cannibal Johnson can be found in the creatively named Cannibal Johnson’s Cave.
Johnson’s cave can be found to the southwest of Vault 34 and northwest of Camp Golf. The entrance can be easy to miss if you have never been here. To find Mr. Johnson, head for the hollowed-out rock just beside the cave’s main entrance. Here, you should find Cannibal.
Once inside, ensure you don’t step on the bear trap just in front of the cave’s entrance and make your way over to Cannibal. He will be alone inside, sitting by a humble fire.
Again, your conversation with Cannibal will be pretty straightforward, with the old man giving you his word, “Old,” by the end of the conversation.
Arcade will tell the player that Cannibal was only a member of the Enclave in name, serving with as much opposition as possible. He also talks about how Cannibal was a great friend to Arcade’s dad.
Remnant Number 3: Doctor Henry
In what I suspect to be a subtle attempt to break up the monotony of the entire affair, Doctor Henry is the only Remnants member to offer the player a quest before he agrees to join you and Arcade in your death march across Hoover Dam.
Firstly, you can find Doctor Henry in the Super Mutant settlement of Jacobstown, and you may have already met him should you have tried to help the Nightkin in the area or Rex, the King of Fressdie’s cybernetic dog.
This quest, Guess Who I Say Today, is the Nightkin helping quest I mentioned previously, involving the player tracking down and killing several Nightstalkers to help the Nightkin of Jacobstown.
This quest is pretty straightforward and will most likely be already completed by the player, as many other side quests throughout the game push you in its direction.
Once this quest is done, the good doctor will agree to help you and his old allies in the fight at Hoover Dam, giving you his passphrase section – “Friends.”
When Arcade speaks about Doctor Henry, he paints the physician in a rather unflattering light, talking about how he would operate on patients just for the challenge of it all, uncaring about their afflictions or the emotions of those around the patient.
He will also talk about how Doctor Henry may be forgotten by history but that he is still responsible for saving more lives than most Mojave heroes.
Remnants Member 4: Orion Moreno
After our quest with Doctor Henry, we crash back down to earth and return to the mundane find and converse section of this quest. Orion Moreno, the fourth member of the Remnants we need to recruit, can be found in his little home, situated north of the NCR Sharecropper Farm settlement.
Once you meet with Orion and cover the same ground you have already crossed with three other Remnants members, he will join you and give you his word – “Remember.”
Unlike the other Remnants, however, Orion will ask the player who they intend to side with. If you intend to side with the NCR, the player must lie in order to even get Orion to travel to the bunker.
When Arcade speaks to the player about Orion, it appears that he is a true believer in the Enclave and everything it stands for, seeing a direct line between them and the old-world government of the United States. According to Arcade, once the Enclave fell, a bit of the old man died with it.
Remnants Member 5: Judah Kreger
Lastly and probably the least, we have Judah Kreger. This former Enclave fighter can be found in Westside and gives you little more than their word – “Navarro.”
This completed the entrance phrase to the bunker, “Dear old friends, remember Navarro.” This is a little bit of fan service from fans of the older Fallout games and, in particular, Fallout 2.
Navarro was the main base of the Enclave in Fallout 2 and was subsequently destroyed by the player and the Brotherhood during the events of the game. The inclusion of this little bit of game history and lore was lovely to see when I first played the game.
What is interesting about Judah is that he was the leader of the Remnants and the glue that held people like Cannibal and Orion together.
Arcade also tells the player that Judah decided to look out for Arcade out of respect for his father, treating him as another member of the Remnants, regardless of his young age at the time.
Catching and Preventing Bugs
This section of New Vegas, and any part of the game requiring specific background actions to complete, is very buggy and prone to causing issues; therefore, to prevent this, keep these things in mind while progressing through the Remnants recruitment section of the quest.
- While you should do this with every Remnant member after their recruitment, you should wait for Arcade to talk to the player after your conversation with Cannibal concludes to ensure that quest targets update properly. This is a particularly annoying bug with this quest.
- Should any of the Remnants faction die before or during this quest, it is impossible to complete the quest. This is also true if they just seemingly disappear into thin air, as they did during one of my playthroughs.
Making Your Way to the Bunker
Eventually, all your hard work and walking back and forth across the Mojave will be worth it as you gain entry to the Remnants bunker; first, however, you must find it.
As you might expect, the bunker is located below ground, but the entrance can be found near Ranger Station Foxtrot and to the east of Jacobstown.
This is a rather underpopulated section of the map, with little reason for the player to go there before this part of the quest, practically ensuring that most players will not accidentally stumble across the bunker without prior knowledge of its existence or the Enclave’s inclusion in the game.
Of course, I stupidly wandered by it once and had no clue how to get in before a quick google search ruined the reveal for me entirely.
Once you get into the bunker by speaking the passphrase, you will see piles of Enclave equipment for the first time in Fallout New Vegas. After taking in your surroundings for some time, you must progress through the bunker and enter the meeting room at the back of the space.
Choosing Sides
Once you arrive in the meeting room at the back of the bunker, Judah will ask the player, now that all members are assembled, which side the player wishes them to side with, NCR or Ceasar’s Legion. If you wish to pursue a Yes Man or Mr. House ending, picking the NCR option is the way to go.
However, if you choose to side with the Legion, Arcade and Cannibal will immediately throw their toys out of the pram and leave the bunker, refusing to fight at the Dam. in light of their absence, Orion will give the player some power armor training and subsequently gift you Cannibals suit of armor as he will not need it.
If you choose to side with the NCR, however, you may lose Orion’s help, who will storm out over his hatred of the NCR. However, unlike Arcade and Johnson before, you can convince Orion to stay and help you should your speech skill be 80 or above.
If you cannot get him to stay, Daisy will give you your power armor training in his stead, subsequently gifting you her power armor as it makes her feel too claustrophobic.
After you settle your disagreement with Orion and set in motion the Remnant’s inclusion in the battle for Hoover Dam, Arcade will thank the player for their actions.
Arcade’s Choice
After another heart-to-heart between yourself and Arcade, your companion will begin talking to you about his place in all this, about how he never really saw himself as a member of the Enclave or the Remnants and that when the bullets start to fly on Hoover Dam, he doesn’t quite know how he will react.
The good doctor will then continue, speaking about how the action on Hoover Dam will ultimately back up into Freeside, throwing the entire settlement into ruin and forcing the Followers to kick their medical intervention efforts into high gear.
Essentially, these pieces of dialogue stand as Arcade’s arguments on whether or not he should join the player during the battle or head back to Freeside. Ultimately, the choice is yours.
After this conversation with Arcade and you receive your power armor training from Daisy, Arcade will gift the player with the Gannon family Tesla armor, a unique piece of armor that serves to fittingly round off a great quest.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Where can I find Arcade Gannon?
Answer: Arcade Gannon can be found in the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside. This location is the headquarters of the Followers of the Apocalypse in the Mojave.
Question: Do you have to side with the NCR or Yes Man to complete the Auld Lang Syne quest?
Answer: While Arcade is very vocal about his hatred of Ceasar’s Legion and any other fascistic type of leadership for the Mojave, it is possible to both recruit Arcade as a follower and complete this quest while serving the interest of the Legion or Mr. House.
To do this, you can wear an NCR uniform when recruiting Arcade and then, as the quest progresses, do some clever hiding of the truth until the final conversation with Judah and the Remnants in the bunker. Sadly though, Arcade will flat-out refuse to fight for the Legion, leaving the player at this point.
Question: Can you get Tesla armor in Fallout New Vegas?
Answer: You cannot get the Tesla power armor like typical armor sets in the game via vendors or general killing and looting. Instead, you will have to progress through the For Auld Lang Syne quest to get your hands on some of that cool armor.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it, a comprehensive guide to one of the best side quests in Fallout New Vegas and probably the best companion quest in the game.
I love this quest for many reasons; however, the thing that makes it for me is the canon implications of it all. You see, the inclusion of the Enclave in Fallout 3 just doesn’t make sense to me canonically; after all, in Fallout 1 and 2, we spend our time destroying the Enclave, so how are they so powerful in Fallout 3?
Obsidian manages to fix these issues by depicting the Enclave as they truly would be after the events of the first two games.
Regardless of Bethesda’s failings, I really do hope you enjoyed this guide and found it helpful. I wish you good luck in your New Vegas adventures.