Fallout: New Vegas

The best thing about a Legion playthrough is the ability to play as a double-agent, sabotaging the NCR while they think you're helping them. And the mission to assassinate Kimball is all kinds of fun.

For all I care, outside of an NCR playthrough, the Mojave BOS can take an extended vacation in Camp Searchlight without their power armor.

@Honey The Brotherhood evoke a certain coolness, and their weakened state and long history in the west makes any action against them melancholy at best. It's also not at all clear that this particular chapter has engaged in the acts of rampant xenophobia which otherwise define the faction as a whole, so they haven't been shown to be guilty enough to deserve their fate to the satisfaction of the majority of players.

edited 19th Mar '16 6:42:33 PM by Artificius

Last I checked, that was a long history of being dicks to anyone who happened to have a laser pistol.

Some ages are better ended. *Opens Crusader Kings 2, sieges Constantinople*

edited 19th Mar '16 6:36:48 PM by Balmung

Heretic! The light of Rome burns forever in the hearts of the righteous!

^^^^^^I pretty much did a quadriple-agent thing with all 3 factions when I did the Independent Route, helping each of them at a time until the "Don't Trend On The Bear" and "Beware The Wrath Of Ceaser" quests got started up, in which I then killed Mr. House and turned against the NCR, siding with The Legion until after killing Kimball {Which was fun}, then they got betrayed too. I even killed Ceaser during the brain sergery quest and played it off as him dying from complications due to his age, with Lucious none the wiser.

That whole manipulation and backstabbing aspects of the Independent Route you can do is the reason why it might be my favorite route in the game. Kind of makes you feel like a badass with how effortlessly you can play all sides of the conflict for your own benifit, combined with how you can switch back to Indepenent at any point in the game. Sure, it doesn't exactly help the wasteland or very many of the people involved, but hey, that's just how things work in the world of Fallout {I'm the kind of Fallout player who does both good and bad things for my own benefit in the Fallout games, with some occusionally genuiene Pet the Dog moments here and there, such as convincing the Great Khans to leave and thus saving them from both NCR and The Legion's inevitable betrayal, or helping that one rape victim of Cook-Cook get psychological help}.

edited 19th Mar '16 7:03:33 PM by marston

I'm just anti-Fiend, anti-Legion. Indifferent to most other factions. Anti-Brotherhood now that those three thugs murdered those Followers of The Apocalypse doctors. Probably gonna go blast that bunker into oblivion now.

I don't get it much either. The only likable chapter was the one in Fallout 3. I had no problems smoking these assholes.

Oooo, forgot about that. Murdering the folks trying to advance medical and agricultural technology for even entertaining the idea of giving one of your outcasts refuge definitely qualifies as an act of rampant xenophobia, though it could conceivably be blamed on that one particular band of knights. It also perfectly highlights why they're perched on a knife's edge by the events of the game. I used it as my Courier's personal reason to Nuke 'em. Guy was already aghast at their refusal to save themselves when Veronica offered them a way to grow their own food, so watching some of them freely gun down a Fot A outpost for taking her in left him embittered and indifferent to their chapter's fate. Haunted by the lessons of Zion and the Divide, House easily convinced him to put down one more rabid tribe.

edited 19th Mar '16 8:15:10 PM by Artificius

Really sad about the fact that the Veronica mets Sarah scenario will never happen

I didn't kill the BoS despite agreeing on how shitty they are because:

1) I don't kill innocents if I can avoid it, and there were noncombatants in that bunker.

2) Honestly, they're kinda sad and pitiable and on the way to obsolesce as the other powers pass them by, all because of an unwillingness to drop their Codex. They'd die anyway without the Courier's involvement one way or another.

>Obsidian.jpeg◊

That works. Bugginess for the win!

I agree somewhat, I've only destroyed them once, the very first time I played, but since then I've helped them out of their deplorable little hole. I just wish their was a way to keep them from reverting to their tech-hogging ways if you decide to go with the Independent Vegas ending, since it makes the effort to reform them seem utterly pointless or borderline malignant; at least that's how I interpret it.

Yeah. I think I've covered before how and why I think the Independent ending slides short changed the fuck out of errybody who rolled that way, but suffice to say one of the main reasons was to make it less popular than the default NCR Wins/America Fuck Yeah! ending. Because given what you can do in the Independent chain, none of the slides makes any sense whatsoever, especially if you do every sidequest and fix every faction's problems apart from those you are busily screwing over at a rate of knots.

Alternatively, maybe it's reasonable to expect serious drawbacks to kicking out everyone with the infrastructure to enforce any level of governance above the village level?

You know, just a thought.

You've got House's computer networks to raid, which had all his plans on how to build infrastructure to support his grandiose space colony ideas. Why would you need to rely on a backwards, corrupt, inefficient and proven to be as criminally incompetent as fuck in-game mess such as the NCR?

It's one guy and a computer, not a government. And I don't mean literal, physical infrastructure, I mean organizational infrastructure. Not that the incompetent corpse-king of the Lucky 38 had either - he had blueprints and a Missing Steps Plan to turn them into reality.

You need boots on the ground, preferably boots with some ability to make their own decisions when needed. And since you don't have that and you don't have a bureaucracracy that can handle the administration of the Strip, much less the entire Mojave, you're going to need time to build that, and then more to get everyone to agree to listen to it, and by the time you're done, you've picked up a lot of the same issues as the NCR because you can't escape the Iron Law of Oligarchy and you may well have missed your chance to get the BOS and others to play ball. Even if you keep your hands clean, the best you can hope to do is keep the people you'll have to delegate to on a shorter leash than the King keeps Pacer on.

Basically, I see Independence not actually being so great or at least not as ideal as some people think as Reality Ensues.

edited 6th Apr '16 2:22:00 PM by Balmung

My courier has ensured that there will always be trade with the NCR, if not allegiance. The Mojave also will have a huge demand for weapons, which the NCR can sell, via folks like the Arms Merchant at 188. It will also fend the Legion off on its own, through its securitrons and armed populace without the NCR having to expend its overextended troops and supply lines to fight. It's always good to have a frontier. A frontier is a place to dump your criminal element where they'll actually potentially do some good, a place to get new resources at a controlled pace, and a barrier between you and the Legion. NCR's best interest is actually NOT seizing the Mojave.

And that trade could even bring in NCR government AID. Not as in hand outs and welfare. More like, "We'll trade you water and excess power from the dam, you send in teachers who can help us set up a functioning government." It's a hell of a lot more gain for a lot less headache. Win-fucking-win.

edited 6th Apr '16 4:12:16 PM by Journeyman

I would have loved a 5th ending where you do a conglomerate between the NCR and Independent Vegas, the Courier runs the place but works with the NCR and helps them settle in, making it smoother and better for everyone!

It is kind of annoying that we have to choose between total annexation and Bomb Throwing Anarchy.

edited 6th Apr '16 4:23:35 PM by blkwhtrbbt

But I like total annexation.

I'm a good citizen of the Republic.

Exactly! Hence any Fanfiction I write for NV will be set in a co-op ending where the NCR and the Courier are working together.