Even the final bosses can be chatted into submission if your stats are high enough. My advice: New Vegas is so skewed towards dialogue that, for the first run-through at least, you should put as much as you can in Speechcraft and Barter skills. I plumbed for my usual mix of lockpicking and stealth skills, eventually regretting my Thief-centric approach to character creation. If I found the people I was dealing with personally repugnant, I'd give them Wasteland justice. Lady Buck, I decided, was simply going to be an extension of me. What would Clint do? Or, in my game, an athletic, red-headed lady I named 'Buck'. Do you track down the man who put you in the ground, explore the desert, beat up some nearby gang members, or look for a faction to join? Crafty Buck Shot in the head, buried and presumed dead, you're caught up in a revenge tale that turns into a battle for control of the region, with you in the Clint Eastwood role. New Vegas might be cleaner than Fallout 3's Washington wasteland, the Mojave desert having got off relatively lightly during the nuclear apocalypse, but it's still a game about survival.
