Fallout Series: Because Arguing Never Changes

Honestly, it only bothers me that killing wild Ghouls and the Fiends that are outside of shelter 3 gives you good karma, since they are hostile by default, it qualifies as self-defense.

Ironically, if you don't want to get good karma while doing the mission of selling drugs to the fiends, you have to be very stealthy.

But remember, stealing is bad, even if it is from murderers you just killed in self-defence. Killing them doesn't get you bad karma, but stealing from them does.

Eh, even NV's rep system is kinda lacking.

In theory it sounds like you could play against each faction by threading a needle. In practice all it takes is one encounter to go straight to vilified, meaning you kinda have to stick to being turbo buddies from start to finish.

Faction uniforms looked like a compromise at first, letting you disguise yourself, but rep points still hit you regardless of what the uniform says.

And you can get into trouble with a faction for wearing their uniform.

I admit it's kind of hilarious that all you need to do is put on a NCR uniform to sneak past them and take over the army of Securitrons.

Wait, don't you need to get past the Legion by any means to get to the securitron army?

I think it's a great system that should be built upon in the next game (and maybe made invisible). The disguises should come back as well but be built on more.

Edited by king15 on Apr 3rd 2024 at 6:24:31 PM

Speaking of faction disguises, I remember that there are certain npcs that cannot be fooled, which will prevent you from being able to do certain missions, even if you are disguised.

• For example, if you helped the initial city defend itself from the escaped prisoners, you will no longer be able to do the mission that involves helping the NCR recover that same prison, since for that second mission you need to talk to the leader of the ex-prisoners, which will be hostile even if you are wearing a prisoner costume. (That's why if I'm playing as someone good, I do the second quest, first)

• In The Mission to Kill the President, there are several guards who are not fooled by your disguise, so unless you have a stealth boy, or a stealth greater than 80, the mission is almost impossible. (The killing the president part is easy, but the game forces you to talk to your accomplice who is surrounded by guards to tell him that "You are ready")

*2. Wait, don't you need to get past the Legion by any means to get to the securitron army?

Yeah, the exact process is:

• You have to do is confront Benny (You don't even have to kill him.)
• Caesar will send you an invitation, and give you access to the fort. (If you were hated, your reputation will be reset to Neutral)
• Caesar will give you access to the underground shelter.
• Enter the underground shelter, where there are a lot of robots, which you must destroy or hack.
• Activate the army, and avoid destroying the energy engines.

And ready, you have an army to help House, or yourself, to take over the Mojave. (Note: It is possible to take over the Mojave without the army, but that will lead to a bad ending.)

Edited by Luisdalas on Apr 3rd 2024 at 12:52:38 PM

I think my biggest complaint with the karma system was that it always felt like the writing for evil stuff was little more than a half-assed afterthought thrown in just so that they can claim you aren't railroaded to being good.

The issue is that players like to have feedback on what they're doing, not only is seeing a visible increase in rep often enjoyable but it's also makes the changes more obvious. If you don't know that you're having an effect you might as well not be having one, from the player's POV the faction will just suddenly start liking you for reasons that could be hard to grasp.

There is a time and place for opacity but this would have a good chance of feeling unsatisfying in practice.

That is a good point. Maybe a toggle? I doubt it would be too much work to make it so you have the option to make reputation visible or not.

I think the idea of Karma Meters being too black-and-white isn't precisely the problem in most cases.

There's a specific problem a lot of games with "Karma Meters" run into, and Fallout 3 in particular. Basically, they equate doing an evil playthrough of the game with being disengaged with the narrative.

Basically, the assumed playstyle for an evil playthrough is that you're the sort of player who massacres a village because fighting the town guards sounds fun and you don't really care about the narrative.

The problem is that if you're designing a game around this assumption, it makes it very difficult to roleplay an interesting villain. Being evil in Fallout 3 assumes you're not roleplaying.

Faction allegiance gets around this problem because factions are integrated into the story. Caesar's Legion, for example, is evil and has a full storyline you can be engaged in. Roleplaying a villain is as easy as coming up with a character who'd work for The Legion.

I think the problem the karma runs into in NV (though to be fair, it isn't a big issue since it's barely used in that game anyway) is that, yes, the Legion is fully evil (there's complexities to it, but I can't take anyone who argues it is good for the wasteland seriously) but the other 3 factions (well, 2 factions and Yes Man) are different shades of grey. Even the (seemingly) most 'white' faction (the NCR) is heavily, heavily flawed, flawed enough that you can make arguments for the other 2 factions. This works great in the game because it means that there's both moral complexity and the ability to roleplay as an evil person. However, it does make the karma system work weirdly. Like how (as you have to disable House in the NCR and Yes Man endings) technically the House run is the only ending in which you don't receive any negative karma, even though you can certainly make valid arguments that he isn't better than, say, the NCR.

Just a reputation system in games such as NV which are faction focussed makes more sense to me than having a karma system.

Yeah, you have to kill him for the NCR. And you get the same negative Karma points whether you kill him or just leave him in isolation. On one hand, I like that one isn't treated as better than the other because that is a genuinely hard moral decision (would you rather die or be forced to live trapped in a pod without being able to do anything?). But, to the same end, wouldn't it be better to have no karma from either choice (especially since you have no choice but to do it for 2 (NCR and Wild Card) of the 3 arguably good factions)?

Edited by king15 on Apr 3rd 2024 at 12:24:17 PM

You have to kill house for the NCR? I thought it was just for the Wild Card ending, which can be seen as a naked power grab.

You kill or disable House on most Routes. (NCR, legión, and Yes-man.)

You are forced to destroy the brotherhood in two routes (House and Legion)

Benny, despite being the initial villain, you are only forced to kill him on the legion route.

Despite Caesar being the Big Bad, you are not forced to kill him in any route, although you can unlock an ending for Lanius if you do so in the legion route.

Edited by Luisdalas on Apr 3rd 2024 at 5:36:23 AM

Something I was going to add actually is that another problem is that it often isn't relevant what your character's morality orthogonal to anything else. Faction Reputation is the thing that'd actually come up.

Indeed, part of the weirdness is that you can be a Pro-Legion good guy, which I'd say is basically impossible at least for someone in The Courier's position.

With New Vegas they do mess some things up with how Karma is calculated and who they call "Good" and "Evil".

For example, Caesar himself is considered "Neutral" despite being, in my opinion, not only evil but one of the worst villains in the entire setting.

But this is more of an issue of execution than anything.

I get the feeling with NV that Karma was just something left over from 3 that they either didn't have chance to or weren't allowed to remove. So they kept it in, but didn't do anything with it (which I'm glad of, really, because NV is a game with a fair few great moral dilemmas and a more conclusive Karma system would undermine that).

Maybe instead of getting bad karma for a decision that 2 of the (arguable) 'good' factions force you to do, the game would make you feel bad about killing him. Like you go down the streets and see some acts of violence as (even if you upgraded the securitrons) House was still a unifying presence in the city. People are shocked and scared about the future, and those who know it was you give you a What the Hell, Hero?. Yet, there could also be some nuance by showing others being really happy about what's happened (the former residents of that Vault he sealed up, people in Freeside) as he was a man who saved and improved the lives of many, and also ruined the lives of many. Granted, this is probably a development time issue (like how barely anyone outside the Legion react to Caesar dying) and I suppose bad karma is a way of getting that across without spending too much (already stretched) development time on it.

Edited by king15 on Apr 3rd 2024 at 2:09:54 PM

I like the game making a point that killing House is murder even though he's kind of a douchebag.

And when you open the isolation chamber that contains it, it becomes clear that there is no turning back, since there is no option to put it back.

So you have two options: Kill him or disable him, which is probably even worse.

My assumption is that House, despite his bad deeds, is Neutral Karma.

Hence the bad karma for killing him.

I don't get how murdering an old disabled man in order to usurp his position wouldn't be considered evil come on. Ya'll are talking like "Detect'n'Smite" paladins here.

To Mr. House's slight credit, his ending implies he would prefer a good courier working for him, and takes pride in that fact.

I found House's personality and goals a bit questionable when I was younger, but as I grew older, I grew to distrust him even more. Largely due to my growing dislike of rich corporate assholes, and the fact that he literally calls himself an "autocrat".

House is obviously meant, in-universe, to be massively flawed as a human being. There's no argument that he's actually a good person. However, he's a great deal better person than Andrew Ryan and far close to Howard Hughes and Jobs than Musk (and both Hughes and Jobs were self-promoters as well).

House's biggest credit is that in addition to actually being the smartest person on Earth (barring the Courier) is that giving up looter capitalism for autocracy has made him a better leader. House actually doesn't accumulate money for its own sake but as a means of creating better lives for his people.

Which is NV's perhaps most damning treatment of capitalism.

But if House had been GOOD instead of massively self-interested, maybe he would have done just about anything than a stupid plan to create his own kingdom post-apocalypse and intead tried to either prevent the war or save many-many more people.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 3rd 2024 at 8:24:33 AM

Like has been said, House is an asshole. Nobody's saying he's a good person. But he's not moustache-twirlingly evil either. He does do a decent amount of good despite himself. Splattering his brains across the wall doesn't inherently make the wasteland a better place. (Spattering Legion guts across the sand does, for the record.)