NV is pretty based but I still catch people in queer servers and stuff saying “NCR has problems but theyre the best one!!!” like the only viable option isn’t to say “NOBODY CAN HAVE THE STRIP” and do as much damage to all three major factions as possible. Give the Followers free stuff.
Good post for leddit though generally.
It’s an issue with the game’s framing, where while it shows that none of the endings are good, no actual alternative is given. This naturally leads to less-evilism, and it’s not hard to see how that gets to the NCR. Like, if you have to choose 1 of 4, where the options are:
- Fascism
- “Libertarianism” (Fascism)
- Personal Dictatorship by a bethesda protagonist
- “Liberal Democracy” (Fascism with extra steps)
it’s easy to see how “liberal democracy” wins out, especially given that’s the base accepted political view in the real world. Yes the Followers might be nice, but they’re just not electable! You have to choose between Rome LARPers or the ideology that caused the apocalypse.
Okay sure, I did that too when I first played the game at age 15 or whatever. But it took one playthrough to be like “these guys are burgerland clowns and their bullshit benefits nobody”, so it didn’t take me long to decide that no choice is any good and the least bad option is to hold off all challengers basically.
I don’t view Wildcard as a personal dictatorship, I always took it that the Courier basically installs Yes Man for the security of the Strip, and then fucks (probably to The Divide) off a la the Vault Dweller and Chosen One. The endslides for Wildcard don’t make it sound like a personal dictatorship…
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the end slides so I went to check on the wiki, but the vault wiki is now on fandom and it crashed on loading twice
Anyway I don’t consider Yes Man running things to be much better given he doesn’t really value anything other than putting whoever’s talking with him in power.
Certified fandom moment!!!
Idk what a Yes Man vegas strip would look like, his bit about being secretly evil at the end is intended as a joke so Idk. I kind of assumed he’d just run strip security and stuff as usual?
change the url from “fandom.com” to “antifandom.com” and boom
I love you
o7
Also you can use indie-wiki-buddy to automatically redirect from fandom to independent wikis (if available) and a fandom mirror otherwise!
There’s an independent fallout wiki not based on Fandom: https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki
(sorry, I don’t know how to inline links)
Thanks! (The auto-linker worked this time so you’re good lol)
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thanks c:
I’m the Bethesda protagonist in this case, so me as a dictator is the best ending because I would push the communism button. I’m putting The Kings in charge of The Strip and will form a government with chosen members of The Followers and Mojave civilians.
Its the fact that the ncr can “ally” with the most factions that gets alot of people it seems.
I think it’s a reflection of existing hegemony. People look at the NCR and see them as the closest thing to what they’re used to, therefore they see it as the default.
Yes that is the actual reason they think this way. I was mentioning the NCR’s perceived ability to work with everyone (even if you literally have to do all the actual work for them) is what alot of people who like the NCR seem to point to as there reason for supporting them. Its wild that people still think America tries to be cooperative in this day and age.
It’s a liberal power fantasy. I can pull them left!
“None of our problems are delt with and the Ncr will likely hunt us down in a year. Everyone involved hates this.”
“Well thats just the price of progress, sweety.”
The fact that no ending makes the followers a major faction is a tragedy.
Was planned but had to be cut
Patrollin’ the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter…
Damn really? That’s disappointing. I’ve been playing fo3 lately and although I think new Vegas is fun I think there is something to be said about fallout focusing more on how and why prewar society led to the destruction of the world than trying to make new societies and stuff. When you put your effort into creating new societies or having them be facsimile of a real life ideology unironically anything other than communism or anarchism just seems stupid and wrong. That’s what I thought the entire point of war never changing was supposed to be about. It never changes because you have to have a new ideology to actually start a new society. Fallout should always kinda be about the inherent doomed aspect of its own story. Not because nothing good can ever happen, but because the overarching story of fallout should focus on why nothing good could ever come from a society like Americas. You cannot build a new society from those ashes because OOPS ITS ALL LIBS
think there is something to be said about fallout focusing more on how and why prewar society led to the destruction of the world than trying to make new societies and stuff.
I mean, New Vegas does this in that its factions all represent prewar societies or ideologies. It’s one of the ways NV is truest to the original Fallout imo.
I like the idea of a Followers ending too, but having an objective correct and good ending might be a bit on the nose for NV?
New Vegas does this in that its factions all represent prewar societies or ideologies.
I understand that, but there feels like some kind of disconnect with this idea when it’s presented to the player as “you will be making a big decision that will affect how the world works”. I think that’s why I don’t like the idea that you are progressing the history of new Vegas when in reality the stagnation is the point. In fo3 the main story has its own problems from a narrative standpoint, but it feels more like a survival game in that everything you go through is just to get access to clean water whereas new Vegas puts too much emphasis on “the fate of the Mojave”. The good karma ending of fo3 is closer to a FOA ending than anything presented in NV and I don’t think the game was worse for it. It’s worse for a bunch of other reasons, but not that one really.
Nah, it’s just working with the material conditions in the Mojave imo. You can’t just start building communism, so the No Gods No Masters quest is the closest you can come to setting the Mojave on a better path. On reflection I think that’s why I like Wild Card, because it splits the difference of still allowing the game to analyse sad dead old-world ideologies, while allowing the player to do something about em.
Fallout games aren’t really about the stagnation of history, Fallout 2 features lots of societal progression since Fallout. Bethesda definitely wants to wallow in a stagnant world, but Interplay-related staff try to explore the follies of our current (western) world through the stumbling steps of the new one.
But that’s my point exactly, these people are not only nowhere near building communism, they’ve had every bit of left wing thought exorcised from them before the bombs fell. The only idea about communism they could possibly have is Chinese commando field manuals if they can even read at all. This isn’t just a lack of material conditions, the wasteland itself is supposed to represent the ideological landscape of America itself. A barren land not only of resources, but of alternative ideas. Even the different AIs present in the wasteland which would theoretically make the central planning of what resources are left very easy only want to horde wealth or commit genocide. The stagnation of history is imho a central theme of fallout as a medium although maybe one not intended by Interplay.
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Are you talking about irl or the games themselves?
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Gotcha. On the irl side I’ll say that I don’t see bipoc ideologies as part of the American society that I mentioned in the comment, it would be a genuine break from that. In the game I always took the lack of those ideologies being present as part of the narrative. The entirety of American society in the games have exorcised any and all left wing ideas from it and that would include any and all minority liberation movements before people even made it into the vaults which is why they don’t really exist in the games.
Anyone who doesn’t Yes Man their ending isn’t a comrade. The quest line is even called No God’s No Masters. I can wreck the ncr, nuke the legion to cinders, provide electricity to the Mojave with more of that to come once Hoover dam is mine. Kill the Boomers and all the guys you don’t like, upgrade your robot army and there’s 2 reason you only nuke the legion when you get to the divide, to keep some of the NCR aeound but weak as hell so yiu can continue to bleed them dry financially and to have the best ace in the hole available, a fucking nuke. Hell, you could probably find more warheads in the divide and rig up some missiles out of rockets at Repconn. You can set your character up get the Mojave in a communist direction post game.
My thoughts exactly, I do not trust anyone who can pick one of the three. Also turning Mr House’s weird technocrat libertarian ideals and goon-pod body to mush is a plus too, fuck that guy lol
It wouldn’t even be hard. You’ve got the only source of electricity, so you can give people the goods and you have nukes, a robot army, no legion to worry about cause you killed em all and your capitalist NCR neighbor is now significantly weaker and you could probably get some stacks flowing by selling them electricity. Plus I’d get people to get their shit together more. Broadcast over radio New Vegas to all those somehow still functioning radios despite 200 years of rust and dirt that the hotels and motels throughout the Mojave are now free housing to those who need it or also want it, cause we’re gonna start building buildings again. There is no damn reason no one has thought to make concrete yet. Weird shotgun shacks with charred skeletons still there for some reason will be a thing of the damn past, the resources are easily available to make pre war style homes with construction planned for further incorporation with other public works projects, a big one being to get clean running water to people. None of it should be radioactive anyway at this point cause there’s this thing called the water cycle that you can learn about from the magic schoolbus. The issue is probably the pipes. Most of the problems these people face are really really easy to overcome. I’m dumb as hell and could fix most of the Fallout world’s problems with an absolute dictatorship in less than a decade. These people spent 200 years not doing the things that make surviving past 40 viable, it’s really basic stuff.
I think the Mojave is just meant to be underdeveloped, because there are newly built adobe houses in Fallout 1 & 2 that are pretty nice, so clearly the materials exist. Make this a mod lol
It’s the desert and the Colorado River can be found nearby. You’ve got sand and water, there’s industrial equipment. Fucking quarry junction has a hand cement mixer or two laying around. He’ll, we can move people back into.the vaults I cleared out. A few of those still have some power keeping those computers running, I’m sure.theres also lots of useful stuff to gut from them or like hydroponic farms that would need to be fixed but that’s still like, LOT of underground farms just waiting to be fixed up. If they could just not act like video game npcs for a week they’d have a lot of this stuff solved.
666 upvotes
Hot take but I think New Vegas’ overarching narrative post guy who shot you in the head is overrated at best, lib at its worst. Caesar’s Legion is the worst written faction in the game and is basically your Bethesda edgy faction that you can pick for your “evil” play through (yeah I went there).
NCR is the best written faction in the game but the problem is that (probably due to the 18 month development cycle) they don’t actually have any real opponents besides edgy skirt boys who enslave women and a geriatric computer screen with mega death robots.
If the people at Obsidian truly wanted to write a compelling anti-imperialist work they would have never written Mr. House and Caesar they way they did. If a work doesn’t have communism as its answer to fascism then the work itself is fascist (liberalism is just the moderate wing of fascism). The easy fix for this would to not give the geriatric elon musk a mega death army of super robots and instead actually have him strategize and pit the two major factions against each other. Then whatever choices you made in his questline would be more meaningful than cleaning up trash since he would actually have a stake in them. Like stories need to have tension in them.
Caeser’s legion is the dumb. Completely scrap that idea. No, having a purely “eeeevillll” faction in your post-post apocalypse sci-fi is a liberal power fantasy about “hooman-nature.”
Just make the faction that competes with the NCR a result of blowback from their war crimes and corruption, that’s literally all you have to do. Just make the story that the NCR bullied and oppressed ethnic minorities in Nevada (this is in the base game as well) and so they all banded together (a la, putting aside cultural differences and adopting 1 banner sorta like the legion) and sought help from a neighboring superpower in Arizona/New Mexico and Mr. House. Then you can write conflict about unresolved tensions within the united tribes or tension between their backers (regional superpower from abroad or Mr. House’s ulterior motives). They feel trapped because they need the support in order to do intifada and push the NCR out completely so the player character has to resolve these tensions but since they are fighting for the underdog they wouldn’t be as materially supported as they would be in the NCR + having to deal with NCR rangers trying to kill them all game.
You choose the liberal democracy NCR as the “bad/lazy” option where you have to pick up their slack for them (and also do some fun ethnic cleansing). The exchange is that you materially benefit from the NCR’s projected power and resources in the region (making the game easier in a brutal way), but not much else while they do imperialism and try to replicate amerikkka and the game would force you to confront the consequences of the NCR and implicate you in their crimes.
The NCR’s biggest enemy is themselves and the game does a pretty good job of telling you why and how. If the courier doesn’t solo carry the NCR and do all it’s dirty work it’s assumed the Mojave chapter either gets owned or will likely spread itself wayyyy too thin. The NCR makes its own enemies and there’s no need for a comparable faction to resent them.
There’s a list of factions that NCR oppose (Khan’s, Followers, BOS, the independent towns) mainly due to NCR’s aggressive expansionism however writing them in a way to band together would probabaly be ridiculous but it can be done through an independent playthrough
The point is that it is ridiculous. That should be the driving conflict of the game and not american liberals vs. Retvrn Primitivst death cult vs. Donald Trump with robots.
The other regional superpower is used to legitimize the struggle and force the tribes to work together. But then the conflict arises from people worrying that this new superpower would just replace the NCR’s imperialist ambitions.
New Vegas has lib brainworms that people just choose to ignore because its overshadowed by the world building and sub-narratives.
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Also just look at how many fuckers online fully bought into it and argue it’s amazing because “human nature” and “best outcome for the wasteland”
I find that a weak justification for shallow writing. Like the writers couldn’t think of a system beyond liberal democracy so they imagine a group that does genocide and slavery and think that’s clever. Or just a capitalist with a soulless machine army.
Caeser legion type factions only work in post Apocalypse settings (like the super mutants in Fallout 1 who were better written because the goal of that game was to survive in a wasteland not meant for humans) but New Vegas styles itself as a post-post apocalypse narrative about imperialism so groups like the legion are borderline harmful. There were plans to more fully flesh out the faction by being able to go to their settlements so I think there’s a possibility that the caricature of fascism that liberals dream about wasn’t going to be in the final game.
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I do agree to a point that the late game plot is kinda meh and lib, but generally expecting a pro-communist message, from Fallout? The series was at best anti-capitalist and sneering at McCarthyism, but NEVER actually leftist, just generally nihilist in an “everybody sucks, all systems are equally bad” way.
I love NV (and FO 1 and 2) but the writers have always been this particular flavor of “end of history” lib
I like it cause it’s good
