Do you have to kill Dean?

I'm in the Sierra Madre (Dead Money add-on), and I was trying to be a nice guy -- I really was. But when the time came that I could decide whether to kill my companions or let them live and disable their collars, Dean started yammering about how he had a scheme for centuries to loot the joint, and then set me up to die with holograms.

I eventually found and whacked him, but is there a way to do Dead Money without killing him? (It seems that Christine and Dog/God don't need to be killed; I'd like to do it without killing Dean as well.)

Solution 1:

I didn't have to kill him. This article points out that getting the "good" ending with him hinges on saying the right thing when you first meet him. You need to avoid any confrontational conversation options with him up to that point, avoiding insulting his ego or being rude to him in any way.

Solution 2:

You still get the good ending when you kill him, pretty sure Dean has to die no matter what. Made me kind of sad even though he was a jerk!