So, a few months ago, when playing through NV for the first time, I was startled by just how easy it was to off Mr. House (playing the NCR ending; I'm guessing it's the same for any of the others, but I'm not sure). I could basically just waltz into the Lucky 38, open the antechamber, and go on down the lift to the control room, and when I returned to the penthouse it was as if nothing happened. The Securitrons weren't hostile; indeed, apart from handing me an obituary of Mr. House (as authored by the great and powerful Mr. House himself), there was no reaction from any of them.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I'm playing my second run, this time with Yes Man. Between the two runs, I've been able to use my shaky Xbox LIVE connection to patch the game, and when I returned to the Lucky 38, the situation was quite different indeed. This time, I'd played through Mr. House's questline as far as quest number II (the Fort one), and so the Securitrons were upgraded to MkII and the hidden army of them was activated. When I decided to take out House, I noticed another Securitron in the Lucky 38, this one right in front of the antechamber door. I shrugged this off based on my previous experience, but when I'd opened the antechamber, the Securitrons all around me immediately opened the lids on their shoulders, and before I knew it, I was a stain on the rug.

So I went back, determined to try and mop up the Securitrons as early on as possible to avoid this problem (I'd dismissed the idea of managing to open the antechamber without turning the Securitrons hostile). I decided upon a funneling strategy; rather than opening the antechamber from House's office, where I'm completely surrounded by Securitrons, I decided to stand in the big spacious room just outside the lift's penthouse exit, and shoot up the stairs at Jane. I did this (using an assault carbine, stupidly enough), and expectedly, all of the Securitrons turned hostile. Unexpectedly, however, I did much less damage than I'd expected (while V.A.T.S. said I'd kill Jane with the four bursts it landed me, I only drained about a third of her health; I'm guessing this is due to the Securitrons' high DT), and even more unexpectedly, given that these Securitrons were still running the MkI OS (they had the policemen's faces, anyway), they started chugging grenades at me, and I was again killed before I could do anything.

How did this difference come about? I can appreciate the fact that it was a bit too easy to get into the antechamber in the unpatched game, but wasn't this a little overcompensation? And how come the Securitrons can use the grenade launchers on MkI? Is this a bug, or was it changed in the patch (despite House mentioning no such thing when I watched him upgrade them)?