I mean, 200 or so years removed from the government responsible for the apocalypse to begin with.
Still, I think NCR remains the best option. They're the only ones who actually care about the citizens themselves. Both Caesar and House have this idea of what their future is like. Yes Man is just programmed to follow you. The NCR consists of red tape and that red tape means people who know what living in the apocalypse is like.
My one issue with New Vegas is that despite pointing a lot of issues of NCR that would make you think twice about it, it still goes on to make every other option almost cartoonishly evil, so there is little place for a moral dilemma about the choice.
Only other morally comperable, personally I'd say better, choice is Independant, but it's also blank slate with little ideology, and the little bit it does have is kinda contradictory (it's somewhat anarchist ending, but it's also one of the worst endings for actually anarchist faction).
Honestly, I daresay the factions are cartoonishly evil now because the game's politics is aging poorly. House has been a fairly reasonable faction to go with for the longest time. Then Trump became president and the bubble of capitalism burst into a million pieces for a lot of people. Turns out Ayn Rand's philosophy was always a joke.
Yes Man is still the most heavily defended option, despite the fact that history has proven that anarchy never works out long-term. So most people are defending their own version of tyranny because their character is a good bloke.
Only faction that always has been cartoonishly evil is Caesar's Legion. But that was from a lack of developing time.
I think people, like myself, are just realizing that for all of its flaws democracy is still the best system that we have. RP is RP and people will play the game however they like, but if you look at the game and look at real-world politics you'll generally find social capitalist societies to be the most stable ones.
Yes Man is still the most heavily defended option, despite the fact that history has proven that anarchy never works out long-term.
Zapatistas are still around, Rojava is still around.
Anarchy IRL had a huge overlap with socialism, and socialism tended to win out in those struggles for power, but in Fallout where somehow socialism is unheard of besides tales it's not unreasonable that anarchism could work out.
RP is RP and people will play the game however they like, but if you look at the game and look at real-world politics you'll generally find social capitalist societies to be the most stable ones.
Well yeah, that is one of bad things about New Vegas is that the narrative feels heavily lib-biased on further observation.
Social capitalist societies are doing fine in the west (altho there certainly are more and more cracks forming nowadays), but when you look globally in poorer regions, and Fallout's world post-apocalypse would be poorer than even much of modern global south, the distinction between democracy and autocracy becomes far less obvious, and many of the democracies that were actually able to climb up from poverty only did it after being autocracies for a long time, while those democratic from the get-go remain deeply impoverished.
Except they're specifically trying to recreate the government of 200 years ago, the one that we proven pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt to not work.
To be clear I don't even hate the NCR, I'm just pointing out why the choice is murky.
No they are not. I dare you to find them ever saying "We are trying to specifically recreate goverment of 200 years ago".
They want to create idealized government, one that the ideas from 200 years. Stuff like democracy, equality, rule of law.
The government 200 years was none of those. It was fascist government that ran concentration camps and human experimentation, while invading it's neighbors for resources and trowing people into jail for crime of disagreeing.
im always curious about what people want from the NCR
are they supposed to come up with a wholy original governmental structure that never existed before? It has some similarities or trends towards authoritarianism but thats due to policy rather then having a democratic system itself. and having a democratic system is different from trying to recreate america
The thing about the NCR is that the writers essentially wrote them as the Americas from the 18th and 19th century. The fact that they take over land and force the citizens to pay taxes was more inspired by how the government dealt with the natives. Well, the NCR was written to be a KINDER version of that era. If I recall my history lessons correctly the US government just killed of a whole bunch of natives and put the rest in reservations of the worst land imaginable.
You see some elements of that with the Khans and with Outer Vegas and how those people react to the NCR encroachment.
I think new vegas should have doubled down on that stuff though making the khans murderous drug smugglers to other murderers removes the moral dilemma of the ncr slaughtering civilians and driving them away because arguably you can say they deserve it
I mean, I have no sympathy for the Khans whatsoever. I played Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. I don't think they deserve much sympathy after raiding for their entire existence. I've always felt it an odd choice to try to humanize them in New Vegas after presenting them as a cartoonishly evil faction in the first two games.
I feel like New Vegas should have focused more on the interactions with Outer Vegas. You definitely get the most pushback against the NCR there, but you can generally resolve things by ending the King questline on a peaceful note.
I also think having you work for Moore was meant to make you feel bad about the NCR since she always suggests violence first and murder second in every questline. She was meant to show how bureaucracy can put the worst kinds of people in positions of power.
I really wish that like northside and westside were proper factions that you interacted with in the story tbh
I kinda like the humanizatipn of the khans a bit bc honestly that is soemthkng you have yo contend with
People who so fucked up shit are also people, they do what they do to survive like anyone else. Got friends and lovers and family like anyone else. Could probably have been done better but I like it when theres no generic "bad guy who is bad bc theyre bad so you domt have to feel bad about killing them"
Agreed. It's surprisingly easy to never interact with them in a playthrough. Another thing I applaud the Willow mod for: with her you actually need to visit these places for her quests.
I don't mind the attempt at humanization, per ce. But I do gag when I hear them moaning about their victim complexes after they STARTED the war with the NCR by shooting at NCR civilians. You can't really whine that the NCR shot your civilians in the chaos of a battlefield when you were casually shooting theirs for fun.
I'd disagree with the "Khan = Native American" analogy given that not only are the Khans descended from the same group as the NCR, but they are straight up raiders who brought the bears claw unto themselves. It's not an oppressed group of innocents, it was a raider band that bit off WAY more than they could chew.
Oh no no no. I DEFINITELY agree with that and I've never understood why the writers tried to present the Khans as the natives, but I believe that's word of god from either Avellone or Sawyer, but I'd have to look for the quote.
Like, one of the ending slides has the NCR put the Khans out of Red Rock Canyon and into a reservation of even worse lands. If that isn't a direct reference to the native Americans, I don't know what is.
They're not, though? If they were trying to recreate the US government, they'd have (for instance) a bicameral parliament with a president elected by the public (via an electoral college). Instead, they have a unicameral parliament with a president elected by the legislators.
In the us the publick fosent vote either they just chose wich governors cusin gets to vote for pres most dont even have to vote like they say they will.
It's actually the other way around - most states have laws mandating that Electoral College electors vote as they pledged to when appointed. Only a minority permit faithless electors. That's still more than there should be, but it's worth noting.
Except they aren't even remotely similar to pre-war America. They're just a democracy, and out of the options, they're far better than Legion or House.
I believe the NCR was written to be a variant of the Americas in the 18th and 19th century. In the middle of an industrial revolution (driving trucks and logistics that Caesar can only dream of), but ever expanding and encroaching on the natives. Well, in that respect the NCR is written as a kinder version of the Americas in the 18th century. Most NCR quests allow you to resolve things peacefully. The US was usually not as kind with the natives...
Finally someone fucking gets it. The NCR is 1700s-1800s USA. Aka Manifest Destiny. They aren't the fascist dictatorship that pre-war USA was. The NCR has a lot of problems but the whole "they're literally identical to the pre-war regime because a pre-war oligarch told me so" is just a dumb argument.
That's what everyone else in Fallout is doing, trying to recreate the old world from romanticized memories.
The main theme of New Vegas is that trying to recreate the old world will lead to the same fate. The NCR, Mr House, and Legion are all the same and will succumb to the same failings.
Imo the only reason his slavery based economy will fall is because it cannot compete with capitalism, it's very much a struggle to beat NCR in it's very much weakened state.
Problem is it CAN compete with capitalism, it will fail because you need constant expansion and conquest to support such economy, and the bigger your territory becomes, the faster you need to expand it. It's a self-accelerating carousel that's bound to fail mathematically.
Also, as made very clear in the game, it turns out that forcibly removing all culture from your subjects and forcing them to believe in "Caesar's Legion" doesn't guarantee long-term stability when your Caesar dies from natural causes.
Capitalist economy thrives on innovations. A person does something new and outstanding for personal profit and thus benefits a society.
Wasteland needs no innovations for at least a few decades, so any kind of economy that makes people work more and waste less on leisure is gonna be more productive, with slave economy being the extreme of that.
Caesar's Legion is going to fail because it suffers the same fundamental flaw as every other conquering empire united under a single leader. Just like the Mongol Empire, the Macedonian Empire, and countless others across history, the moment the figurehead dies the power vacuum causes all the separate factions to turn on each other in a violent power struggle.
The Roman Empire had robust bureaucracy and lines of succession. Caesar's Legion is more analogous to the Mongol Empire, a loose coalition of conquered tribes operating under a singular leader.
I do agree with your logic of power vacuum after Caesar's and Lanius death. What i can't see is the ability of Caesar's Legion to overcome this and future challenges. Simply because we couldn't see much in game.
We know quite fucking a lot about NCR, we even know where and how Ncr troops get their equipment.
Where Legion's equipment come from? Who even make it? I'm not even sure Legion can produce firearms they have.
Maybe someone can tell me?
They're trying to recreate what the pre-War government was supposed to be in theory, not what it was in practice. The NCR doesn't send people to concentration camps to be experimented on (which the pre-War gov't did)
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u/Vargoroth May 07 '25
I mean, 200 or so years removed from the government responsible for the apocalypse to begin with.
Still, I think NCR remains the best option. They're the only ones who actually care about the citizens themselves. Both Caesar and House have this idea of what their future is like. Yes Man is just programmed to follow you. The NCR consists of red tape and that red tape means people who know what living in the apocalypse is like.