Father Elijah not consistent in Dead Money

Z

zowmaster

First time out of the vault
So in the regular game when Veronica mentions that Father Elijah was all about some technology, more specifically creating/utilizing new technology as opposed to the regular BoS which was more about hoarding old-world technology. This is further illustrated by his obsession with HELIOS One/Archimedes; obsessed with the technology to the point where he lets the NCR overtake the BoS’ position and losing his leadership and power(allowing lots of BoS’ members to die in the process I’m sure).

However in Dead Money, his focus is not really on the technology within the Sierra Madre. In fact at the end conversation with the Courier when you ask why Elijah is doing this, he states that he would bring the Cloud to the Hoover Dam and Mojave to cleanse and build a nation; that he would even start printing money (paraphrasing probably not exactly how Elijah said it).

This seems to go against everything that was previously established about the character, why would somebody who already had a nation (i.e., the BoS) and seemingly didn’t care about leadership or power, just technology, all of a sudden do a 180? Am I missing something? Thoughts, comments and opinions are appreciated…
 
Well Elijah basically has the same motivation as the BOS in the West; preserving technology and protecting people from using it wrongly by simply taking it away from them.
However the BOS is failing at this task as they are not able to carry out this goal, there are simply to many people in the wasteland who recover advanced technology before the BOS can and either sell it or put it to use instead of "Hey Mr Bos, I found this laser rifle or advanced power cell and I am turning it over to you in order to protect myself from abusing it".

It is the main reason why they have a conflict with the NCR, the NCR's prospectors and scientists are all over the pre war technology sites such as Hoover Dam, and there is little the Bos can actually do about it.
They don't have the charisma to convince people otherwise and certainly not the man power to take it away by force.

I think Elijah decided at some point he had to take it further and that the Bos actually had to control the land, establishing a nation which population is under control of the Bos, and so get control of all the advanced pre war technology in it.

The Bos as told by Veronica still have this idea that eventually the rest of humanity will go extinct, allowing the Bos to truly rebuild the world.
What they have to in the meantime is simply wait it out.
Only thing is, the non Bos people are not going extinct, they are thriving and expanding again and during that claim all the technology the Bos desires.

You are correct in saying that both Elijah and the Bos are nothing like the Bos from Fallout 1 who were a xenophobic order hold up Lost Hills, hoarding and maintaining the technology they got from Mariposa and having little to no interest in going outside and getting more. (hence the failed renegade Bos expedition to the Glow)
 
It's pretty plainly stablished that Elijah was excomunicated from the BOS as his personal goals started clashing with theirs. Him wanting to use the Sirra Madre technology to "wipe the slate clean" is just the extreme to what he originally wanted, Veronica always said he was trying to take technology beyond it's limits and taught her to question authority. He didn't have a nation in the BOS.
 
It's also worth noting that Veronica is almost certainly a biased source as concerns Elijah, as he was her mentor so she's likely inclined to spin things to put him in a better light, both because she has some fondness for him and in order to rationalize the time she spent with him. She's also likely to overemphasize those things he did which personally made her feel wronged.

So combining the fact that "Veronica is biased" and "Elijah's agenda is going to change with time and circumstances" I don't think it's especially inconsistent. A lot of the reason he doesn't drill down on specifics about the technology in DM is because both he and the player are driven in part by the mystery of "what's in the vault" His conversation with the Courier in the vault is in part written to convince the player that Elijah is, in fact, bad news because it turns out there aren't any sort of technological wonders in the vault. Otherwise you could just let him have and part on amicable terms. It's not as though those gold bars are especially useful, after all.
 
Of course there are technological wonders in the Vault, they are all around the casino, the Vending machines, holograms and the cloud itself. Gold is actually very usefull for the Vending Machines as well as the fact that there is implied to be more records on the specifics of how they work and such inside the Vault not to mention the origin of the Cloud seems to be on the basement of the Sierra Madre itself. There is an ending where you help Elijah and it ends with his plan all coming into fruition.
 
Well, the only thing really of particular interest to Elijah in the vault is the computer. If he just wanted hologram emitters and vending machines, you only have to get inside the front gate to find some of those (he's trapped in the Casino, but they're there too. The origin of the Cloud was the Z-43 Innovative Toxins Plant at Big Mountain, which Elijah could have checked out when he was there if he really wanted to. I really think he was driven to get at the vault not because he knew what was in there, but because he wanted to know what was in there (and he assumed it was something really valuable to him.)
 
The computer holds all of Sinclair's accounts and records, also all of those Vendign Machines have to be connected to something. The cloud was created in Big MT but the direct physical source to get it was in the lower levels of the Sierra Madre.
 
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