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DeathChicken posted:Planescape was the most memorable one I can recall for having an evil route consisting of nothing but completely vile choices with nothing fun about any of it. I don't think I ever finished the thing, it was a straight road of "Ew" Good, more games should do that. Make being evil evil and not just the same thing but everyone around you is kinda rude dr_rat posted:Did the presidents family really hate him that much? Poor president. Kimball getting popped would make him a martyr and pave the way for even more militaristic freaks. Imagine President Cassandra Moore
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Apr 15, 2023 16:03
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Every evil route should have at least one instance where one of the game's actual villains ask you to chill out cause this a bit too much even for them.
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Apr 15, 2023 16:08
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oh jay posted:Siding with Caesar let's you assassinate the president, which is always fun for the whole family. Biggest failing of the game IMO is that the Yes Man path doesn't let you choose to assassinate the president. Why wouldn't Yes Man be all "OR - you could kill him! It's your choice!" Is there a mod that adds this kind of thing?
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Apr 15, 2023 16:30
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Pretty sure you can still shoot Kimball and Yes-Man goes 'well... poo poo. Anyway'. Haven't done Yes-Man in ages though
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Apr 15, 2023 16:43
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The point of the Yes Man path is you can do anything and still finish it. He thinks it's a really bad idea to do some stuff but you can still do it. He works for you.
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Apr 15, 2023 17:22
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Yeah, yes man will never not be the best. I could never kill the brotherhood on a yes man run just as I love his reaction when you tell him you not worried about them.
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Apr 15, 2023 17:31
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SlothfulCobra posted:Weirdly, most "choice" games tend to have an option like the Legion. Just a straight-up evil option (although Edward Sallow is more well-spoken than most leaders of evil factions), because apparently that was the biggest novelty of the ability to choose things in games. Some people want to play as utter bastards, but for the majority of people who still don't, the ability to choose to do the good thing gives it some kind of extra weight. I think it's great for the game that the Legion exists, and is there to choose if someone wants to, I just meant I personally can't. My read on House always was that he wants to keep going forever, and as a by-product of this there's a lot of economic activity around him, which is both good and bad for the people involved. House isn't as blatantly evil as the Legion, if you put him on a silly D&D alignment scale I guess he'd be on the neutral side of things. I guess the NCR see themselves as the best parts of the "old world", bringing order to the Wasteland. In effect, they're a sometimes ineffective bureaucratic mess.
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Apr 15, 2023 17:36
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Rappaport posted:I guess the NCR see themselves as the best parts of the "old world", bringing order to the Wasteland. In effect, they're a sometimes ineffective bureaucratic mess. Pretty sure most people in the NCR are pretty aware that the NCR is a ineffective bureaucratic mess. Possibly just the NCR in Vegas, but I wouldn't be surprised if most people in the NRC know this. I mean even as a ineffective bureaucratic mess, not sure Fallout, other than at a small village level shown a functional government forming post nukes, so by defult NCR still seems by far the best of what's formed at remotely it's size. I mean poo poo, I lived in a few countries that were quite a bit less functional than the NCR, it's actually doesn't even seem the worst as far as ineffective bureaucratic mess go. dr_rat fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 15, 2023 17:45
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dr_rat posted:It's funny the Legate, who's been talked up as a blood thirsty idiot might actually be shown to be the most intelligent leader. You point out how thin his forces are spread, and how it's causing weakness. He thinks about it, realises the analysis makes sense and retreats. No ego, no bluster. Just goes off the facts. Lanius ' character still remains baffling to me because, while that was very practical and reasonable, he will also pointlessly go after the Enclave Remnant or the Boomers, while Caesar wisely decides to leave both the hell alone after they've helped him. This sounds more like the Lanius Ed will tell you about. Anyway, I like the Legion. I think it's interesting that in NV and POE2 you get various flavors of "not good" or even just downright "bad' options. Some people think House is better than Caesar but I attribute this to House's evil being entirely familiar. We see nothing like Caesar, we see House's everyday in the real world. He's just as murderous as Ed, just as utterly convinced in his superiority to every other living being, but he goes about it in less of a warlord way and more of a businessman fashion. He created the slums of Freeside by killing or just plain forcing out anyone who wouldn't bow to him, and they're continually resupplied by people who come to Vegas, lose their rear end, and become impoverished addicts. That's very, very common to our experience. Crucifixions not so much. But is one really morally superior to the other? Ultimately, House and Caesar represent very different types of dictator. House's problem is that even the best individual needs loyal subordinates. Yet House's lackeys betray him very, very regularly. ]You betray him in 3/4 endings. I'm sure this was intentional as a contrast to the fanatical loyalty Caesar inspires. House holds people in thrall with money and fear while the Legion is an ideological device. But money and fear can only get you so far hence the nonstop betrayals. There's a reason House has lost before the game even really starts and only becomes a player again through your intervention. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 15, 2023 17:51
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NikkolasKing posted:Anyway, I like the Legion. I think it's interesting that in NV and POE2 you get various flavors of "not good" or even just downright "bad' options. Some people think House is better than Caesar but I attribute this to House's evil being entirely familiar. We see nothing like Caesar, we see House's everyday in the real world. He's just as murderous as Ed, just as utterly convinced in his superiority to every other living being, but he goes about it in less of a warlord way and more of a businessman fashion. He created the slums of Freeside by killing or just plain forcing out anyone who wouldn't bow to him, and they're continually resupplied by people who come to Vegas, lose their rear end, and become impoverished addicts. That's very, very common to our experience. Crucifixions not so much. But is one really morally superior to the other? I'm going to take a butt-gently caress wild guess and say you aren't a woman? Not that I don't think House is also extremely evil, I just know which one I'd prefer to live under 
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Apr 15, 2023 18:33
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Indeed, I don't think anything can be compared to Legion and I don't think the authorial intent was to 0ut them in House league. It seems to me that the writers went out of their way to make House the best dictator he can be while still making him human who sometimes says irrational things ("why should I kill Brotherhood of Steel?" "Because they're ridiculous"). House is long-lived so it's not your typical dictatorship that crumbles as soon as the dictator is dead. He seems to be as smart and incorruptible as he says. He's Stalin as seen by Stalinists, the best dictator you can get, and if he does something nasty then it's for the greater good. NCR is presented as your average democracy with some problems, but their critics aren't providing a critique beyond good times create weak men or some other teen angst. Legion just has no redeeming qualities beyond promises by Caesar. And, again, I think it's fine. RPGs like that often suffer from making all choices equally morally gray and/or realistic. If you think that some guys look better than the others in a BioWare game then you can expect a twist about them using children tears to fuel their healing magic or something. PoE2 probably suffers from being better written and making more sense, so all of its factions are vicious, corrupt and make roads safe (except for maybe pirates, but even those are presented with redeeming qualities and their leader has plans for better society which sound less insane than Caesar's), and this makes a lot of people unsatisfied with their choices cause it feels like a trick question. FNV allows you to support basically a version of modern America or a fantasy dictator so far removed from real dictators it doesn't feel like you endorse a real-world idea of w dictatorship. There's also a power fantasy of going Yes-man and Legion, and you can be proud of any of your choices at least not being Legion
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Apr 15, 2023 19:03
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DaysBefore posted:Kimball getting popped would make him a martyr and pave the way for even more militaristic freaks. Imagine President Cassandra Moore Most of the people in-game seem to have the opposite read, that the whole expansion into the Mojave was the big project of Kimball and Oliver, and that if they're successful they'll be vindicated and the NCR will move onto the next conquest, and if they fail the NCR will pull back to its borders. Or at least will try expanding in a less barren direction.
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Apr 15, 2023 19:09
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PinheadSlim posted:I'm going to take a butt-gently caress wild guess and say you aren't a woman? I am not a woman but I don't think House has any particular interest in the plight of women given the beaten, drugged, terrified sex slaves the Omertas keep. He's far more interested in the White Gloves' cannibalism. Because that's against his rules and only his rules matter. Everything else is fair game. Plenty of people are suckered in by House and it's all because he's "the despot we know."
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Apr 15, 2023 19:31
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Everybody in the Mojave except Doc Mitchell has blood on their hands. Where's my mole-butt ending?
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Apr 15, 2023 19:36
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NikkolasKing posted:I am not a woman but I don't think House has any particular interest in the plight of women given the beaten, drugged, terrified sex slaves the Omertas keep. He's far more interested in the White Gloves' cannibalism. Because that's against his rules and only his rules matter. Everything else is fair game. The difference is that House isn't going to get the Omertas to impose their rule on the rest of the women of the wasteland.
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Apr 15, 2023 19:41
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Some notes: While the equivalence is appealing (and there's gotta be a mod at this point), House can't be the Musk of the Mojave because unlike Musk he's depicted as the genuine article: self-made and superhumanly competent at most of the things he does (though it's not clear the rocket plan would actually work- there's a notable throughline of his rocketry company specifically failing in ways his other projects haven't) House's stated reason for hating the Brotherhood probably isn't his actual reason, which is what Yes Man disclosed: House's calculations indicate the Brotherhood will be the biggest single threat to his postwar order. The game's very explicit (and ropekid's also been pretty explicit inthread) that a part of the depiction of Caesar and the Legion is specifically that whatever happens, the Legion is extremely unlikely to survive his passing, because as a classical despot modeled on Caesar, Sallow has set up a situation with a bunch of infighting lieutenants and a total lack of succession, without all the civil society that the actual Caesar had going for him. On that note, the reason folks think Caesar's worse is because he's the explicitly genocidal tyrant of a fascistic cult slave empire occupying a significant portion of the old US. House is terrible, but it's incredibly difficult to make any kind of argument that his harms or ideology are on the same level as Caesar. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 15, 2023 19:54
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ilitarist posted:It's totally fine to have a faction that most players won't ever play as. Even if you only interact with them superficially they add a lot to the game. They have some quests that don't feel evil or anti-NCR and even can help you help NCR like leading you to a traitor in Camp McCarran. Are there any non-evil Legion quests? Besides Caesar's tasks, all the other ones I can think of involve helping the Legion grow its strength or intimidating the NCR. Although I like to bamboozle them into trusting me by handing over dogtags from NCR troops who weren't killed by me. dr_rat posted:It's funny the Legate, who's been talked up as a blood thirsty idiot might actually be shown to be the most intelligent leader. You point out how thin his forces are spread, and how it's causing weakness. He thinks about it, realises the analysis makes sense and retreats. No ego, no bluster. Just goes off the facts. I always felt that you had to sucker him into believing that. If the Legate wins at Hoover Dam, the Legion rolls over the Mojave with relative ease.
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Apr 15, 2023 20:21
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oh jay posted:Everybody in the Mojave except Doc Mitchell has blood on their hands. Where's my mole-butt ending? Doesn’t Doc Mitchell come out to help fight the Powder Gangers?
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Apr 15, 2023 20:25
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Arivia posted:Doesn’t Doc Mitchell come out to help fight the Powder Gangers? Not with his bum leg. But he does give you some doctors bags.
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Apr 15, 2023 20:28
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Yeah unfortunately that's what it means to be the lassiez faire ruler of a city of casinos. He cares about what will harm tourism, but the three families can do what they want aside from that. The White Gloves' charter was the original terms House gave for empowering the family in the first place. I guess worth noting that the Chairmen were the ones who were more in House's favor anyways since he had been setting Benny up to be if not his heir, at least his top man in Vegas, but Benny threw that all away. Chamale posted:Are there any non-evil Legion quests? Besides Caesar's tasks, all the other ones I can think of involve helping the Legion grow its strength or intimidating the NCR. Although I like to bamboozle them into trusting me by handing over dogtags from NCR troops who weren't killed by me. I guess maybe the one where you learn a special melee move? I think the game is balanced fine with having one mostly bad side so long as there can be complexity for choosing between the remaining factions, but it is kinda disappointing how one-note the Legion is. There's one chattel slave in Cottonwood Cove that is carrying like a comically large backpack to represent the Legion's slave labor that is just kinda trying too hard. There's some alleged stuff about Legion territory being very safe and there being non-legion citizens beneath the Legion's rule, but nothing really firmly established. In theory the dangers of the wasteland could justify heavy militarization, but that's nowhere near the Legion's primary angle.
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Apr 15, 2023 20:55
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Chamale posted:Are there any non-evil Legion quests? Besides Caesar's tasks, all the other ones I can think of involve helping the Legion grow its strength or intimidating the NCR. Although I like to bamboozle them into trusting me by handing over dogtags from NCR troops who weren't killed by me. I'm not saying Legion ever asks you to do benevolent things, but a completionist player character who wants to stay neutral as long as possible can do some tasks for them. Nipton raiding party asks you to tell NCR what happened to Nipton. It's intimidating, yes, but it's not like you feel you're doing something bad. Another time Vulpes Inculta asks you to save a girl from Omerta, and the girl thinks she's spying on Omertas on behalf of NCR. Caesar wants you to destroy House's factory and them the man himself and everyone except House himself. I think you can only heal his tumor only when you commit to Legion path, but that one is not something you'd call amoral itself. Really Legion doesn't usually ask you to do anything outlandish IIRC, their nature is usually revealed indirectly.
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Apr 15, 2023 23:13
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The best ending is House with a good Courier: Legion are pushed back, House has someone to keep him grounded and not lost in his own world, and the NCR stops trying to over expand, and can work with House. Something I don't see people talking about is how awful a person Dale Barton is - he smugly goes on and on about how much money he makes in Legion territory, ignoring the suffering around him, because the NCR dare to...charge traders taxes.
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Apr 15, 2023 23:26
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He's just a guy in a hard lovely world doing what he sees as work he can handle to survive. He's got nothing on the brahmin barons.quote:"Between having to hire protection and getting slapped with taxes, it's more profitable to stick to Arizona and New Mexico. But, I do cross the river from time to time when an opportunity comes along." Hiring protection which itself has a chance to just rob you is a lot more substantial than trade taxes, especially trade taxes for a government that can't keep the roads safe. Even assuming 100% benevolence that's a huge profit hit for walking enormous distances. Security vs Freedom is one of the better arguments the series makes overall in a lot of cases and probably the only true sticking point the Legion has. It's really hard to argue morality if the alternative is being dead, though that itself is a pretty hard moral argument, living as a slave vs dying free, etc. And the Legion suffers from having indefensible evil stances like misogyny and slavery so I can't do anything for them unless that playthrough is one where I say "he heh I think I'll be bad this time." But I can't really fault a guy who wants to use the safe roads and has no reasonable power to change things on either side of the river. He could do trading and bring supplies to those who oppose the Legion but the NCR doesn't give him much reason to believe in them. Think of it this way when you consider the importance of secure roads: going from Goodsprings to Novac will likely get you attacked by at least two groups of raiders and the only realistic reason you survive is because you're a video game character with abstracted physical capabilities. Maybe it'd make more sense if you could introduce him to the Crimson Caravan, who'd I assume can have protection on staff and roll it into merchant dues/taxes.
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Apr 15, 2023 23:46
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OldMemes posted:The best ending is House with a good Courier: Legion are pushed back, House has someone to keep him grounded and not lost in his own world, and the NCR stops trying to over expand, and can work with House. Nah, good courier with yes man is the gooderest one
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Apr 15, 2023 23:52
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Nah getting eaten by a gecko five minutes in is the best ending. Sure the Mojave may go to hell, but that nice gecko and it's family probably all had a nice meal. 
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Apr 15, 2023 23:57
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Doomykins posted:He's just a guy in a hard lovely world doing what he sees as work he can handle to survive. He's got nothing on the brahmin barons. Raul also says quote:How do you feel about Caesar's Legion? I've thought about this since I first played FO3 and NV and I think New Vegas just doesn't feel like a land desperate enough to need the Legion. It reminds me how people criticize FO3 for being post-apocalyptic when they say the point of Fallout is to be about human society starting again long, long after the apocalypse. Ron Perlman even says civilization only come to the Mojave when it's conquered. But for players, with the roads and cities, without super mutants or bandits attacking you every second, life doesn't seem so bad as to require such brutal solutions. But apparently Arizona was like the Capital Wasteland. Or maybe the Mojave was supposed to come off as more lawless and awful than it actually did. I dunno.
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Apr 16, 2023 00:43
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Caesar's Legion isn't invading the Mojave to bring order to the land - they are invading the Mojave to bring order to Caesar's Legion. Caesar isn't the only structural weak point in the Legion
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Apr 16, 2023 00:53
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NikkolasKing posted:I've thought about this since I first played FO3 and NV and I think New Vegas just doesn't feel like a land desperate enough to need the Legion. I mean the Mojave has the NCR and to a lesser extent Houses security bots, which although not getting things completely under control probably have made things a bit better. Particularly on the strip proper. And there are parts where are just completely violent desperate wasteland'esq. Just look at the outskirts of Vegas, which is completely over run by fiends. Even just outside the gates to vegas is pretty mugger abound. While the Legion is it's own awful, I get how in universe people could want organized verse unorganized violence if they see those as the only two options available.
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Apr 16, 2023 00:56
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There was some kind of planned cut content for seeing some of Legion territory, as well as having Ulysses as a Legion-aligned companion, but I guess to be honest even if you try to ignore the slavery or handwave some of the misogyny because it's not always in direct sight, it's really hard to ignore the Legion's habit of wanton murder everywhere all the time. They have a real habit of wiping out settlements. The blew up a dirty bomb in Searchlight because some NCR soldiers set up camp there. They slowly and systematically brutally murdered everyone in Nipton because they were trying to sell the NCR out to the Legion, they have a plan to murder all the Khans, and by most people's accounts of the Legion's march throughout Arizona, Caesar drat near utterly destroyed every group of people he came across. Some accounts of are of him killing all the adults so that the kids can be brought up in the Legion from scratch? Seems to run directly contrary to the idea of there being any civilians at all.
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Apr 16, 2023 04:32
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Also, it's not like the NCR doesn't police and execute bandits. When people talk about the Legion clearing out all the bandits, what they really mean is "enslaved or executed everyone undesirable." It's not that the NCR gives bandits a slap on the wrist, it's that they at least bother with trying to find the guilty ones.
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Apr 16, 2023 15:29
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I'm sure they do but there's loads of mention and several direct quests that the NCR are stretched so thin that several large stretches of New Vegas are just "lol good luck."
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Apr 16, 2023 18:22
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SlothfulCobra posted:The blew up a dirty bomb in Searchlight because some NCR soldiers set up camp there.
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Apr 16, 2023 19:18
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Fallout universe radiation works totally different from real life radiation so it's completely fine. No worries about long term health issues or cancers, worst that's going to happen is you become immortal
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Apr 16, 2023 19:27
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The "NCR has bandits and Legion territory is serene" thing never made sense to me because the NCR is somehow both rich and safe enough for tons of people to travel to New Vegas just to lose their money gambling. House's entire economy and plan is based on this. Of course the immediate area around New Vegas isn't great... but that's an active war zone.
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Apr 16, 2023 19:35
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We only really have one merchant's account and some dev notes to indicate that civilian Legion territory is even really a thing, as opposed to just empty wasteland after the Legion killed everybody they couldn't recruit or enslave and then moved on (which is what some other NPCs imply). It's just that the idea of "safe" legion territory is a useful concept when playing devil's advocate for the Legion, since freedom vs. security is an old idea and in theory that's one of the few benefits that the Legion could provide. In practice, a militant dictatorship run by a crazed (altho superficially intellectual) ideologue would probably lead to a lot of abuse of power, so if there is a whole civilian Legion society somewhere in Arizona, presumably various legionaries could abuse or steal from the civilians in much the same way that bandits would. It's not uncommon for armies in general to act as bandits to the locals of wherever they're staying. Possibly in the Legion's organizational system civilians would just be another kind of slave? Helots? I've never really bought the idea that the Legion would be so great at spying either. And also from most indications, interior NCR territory is also pretty safe. The only big issue we see is the Crimson Caravan attacking rival shipping companies. And of course, the NCR shipped a lot of criminals out to the frontier to help build roads, in a more socially accepted form of slavery.
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Apr 16, 2023 20:32
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SlothfulCobra posted:We only really have one merchant's account and some dev notes to indicate that civilian Legion territory is even really a thing, as opposed to just empty wasteland after the Legion killed everybody they couldn't recruit or enslave and then moved on (which is what some other NPCs imply). As I've noted a page ago, this very merchant also mentions how someone from Legion killed his bramin cause he felt like it. I'm pretty sure even this character is supposed to subvert the good old "tyrants at least makes roads safe" idea.
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Apr 16, 2023 20:48
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Youremother posted:Fallout universe radiation works totally different from real life radiation so it's completely fine. No worries about long term health issues or cancers, worst that's going to happen is you become immortal
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Apr 16, 2023 20:53
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SlothfulCobra posted:We only really have one merchant's account and some dev notes to indicate that civilian Legion territory is even really a thing, as opposed to just empty wasteland after the Legion killed everybody they couldn't recruit or enslave and then moved on (which is what some other NPCs imply). It's just that the idea of "safe" legion territory is a useful concept when playing devil's advocate for the Legion, since freedom vs. security is an old idea and in theory that's one of the few benefits that the Legion could provide. I mean, I've never viewed these as contradictory. Legion territory is safe specifically *because* they killed or enslaved everyone who didn't demonstrate their loyalty to the Legion (and probably some who did but the local Legion commander didn't like the look of), whereas the NCR has things like unaffiliated towns and non-enslaved farmers that sometimes become raiders.
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Apr 16, 2023 20:53
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I always figured the roaming heavily armed legionnaires would keep all the radioactive monsters dead.
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Apr 17, 2023 07:31
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Sankara posted:I always figured the roaming heavily armed legionnaires would keep all the radioactive monsters dead. I've seen how armed legionnaires go against cazadors, so... I mean there would probably be less geckos and feral ghouls about at least.
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Apr 17, 2023 07:44
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