Fallout: New Vegas

I was agreeing, I was just trying to phase it slightly difffrently because most entities are like that. >.<

I was talking about the general idea I see throughout this thread, your post just reminded me of it.

I know. And I was also rephrasing what I said.

... I like to hear myself talk. (Read my own posts?)

edited 14th Aug '16 12:55:41 AM by SilentColossus

"It's not about what you accomplish, it's what you leave behind that matters."

There's this guy named Napoleon Bonaparte. You've probably heard of him. When he was defeated, he left France weaker than when he first took over.

Now, tell me, who is the single most famous leader of France from that period? Do people know Napoleon or Louis Philippe? Do they know Charles X or Napoleon? Do they even know there was a Napoleon III?

Napoleon is one of the most legendary and respected figures in history, in spite of everything he worked fo rcollapsing even in his own lifetime.

Then of course there is Alexander, a man who was literally revered by almost every culture in teh world that even so much as knew of his existence. It tells you something when Christians and Muslims are clamoring to honor to a pagan and even claim he followed their religion in spite of existing before any of these religions.

No, what matters is what you do in life. Your legacy is secured from that.

edited 14th Aug '16 1:18:02 AM by Nikkolas

And his legacy is genocide, rape, and slavery and generally being a spoiled brat.

Except Napoleon's legacy is managing to create a revolution in military strategy, methods that we still use to this day. Sallow's contribution upon his death is... zerg rushing and slavery.

Wellesley had the beating of that arrogant Corsican prick - first in the Peninsular War, which sent him down to defeat and first exile in Elba, and then at Waterloo, where the British didn't make the same mistake afterwards and made damned sure he never came back from Saint Helena.

Napoleon's greatest achievement? Turning an army of 680,000 men into one comprising barely 120,000 after royally fucking up the invasion of Russia.

Of course, it helps to be in an area that you share with the future people who respect you and with people who had a long standing tradition of being the ones to write self-serving histories, even if they lost (the statement that the winners write the history is a terrible and false assertion, by the way) - Temujin Borjigin engaged in conquests that make Alexander the Pretty Okay look like a mere hobbyist at conquering and left an empire that lasted longer after his death than the entire span of Alexander's life, restored the Silk Road, displayed nigh-unprecedented tolerance for other faiths. In almost every imaginable respect, he accomplished more than the Macedonian, and yet he is widely reviled as one of the most brutal and murderous men to ever live, even getting the crimes of his descendants lumped with his own (for example, the Sack of Baghdad, which happened more than 30 years after Temujin died, is often credited to him), while Alex gets wanked over by everyone and most of his own flaws glossed over. Unless you live in Mongolia, at any rate, in which case, Temujin's a national hero.

Napoleon's legacy and fame is almost entirely military - his administrative and diplomatic accomplishments are practically unknown compared to his military feats. And speaking of being geographically convenient to a group of people with a long tradition of writing self-serving history, he happened to be a major enemy of the British, who have a habit of writing such histories, and doing so in the first language of most of the people on this forum to boot. Much of his fame is also as the IRL equivalent of a raid boss fight that the British happened to be involved in. So naturally, much of the English-language history amounts to Brits yacking about this super-tough guy they totally soloed (while everyone who fought on their side rolls their eyes), with Napoleon getting tougher (yet physically shorter) with each retelling - after all, the tougher the enemy, the more glory there is in your victory over him.

For an example where I am more particularly familiar with how the common narrative (the legacy) differs from the facts, look at World War II - the capabilities of the Axis are routinely exaggerated (eg. the Germans came within a few miles of Moscow, so the common narrative is that just a little more and they could have actually taken it, even though they did reach Stalingrad and Leningrad, and those didn't simply fold, or the Battle of Britain being a "near Luftwaffe victory", even though throughout the entire battle, British pilot and fighter reserves were growing (or at worst, shrinking slower than the Germans') and the Luftwaffe was hemorrhaging fighters and bombers throughout the entire battle, or Rommel was perceived as a genius commander, even as he made repeated boneheaded logistical and strategic mistakes and much of his tactical success dried up when the Allies patched an intelligence leak) and those of the Allies are routinely downplayed, as a more powerful Axis and less powerful Allies creates a more compelling narrative than the more realistic narrative of Germany getting extremely lucky early on, then getting rolled over on by the Allies and their combined ~75% control of all world industrial and military capability. The legacy of the events and people, the narrative we tell after, is only loosely based on what actually happened.

Your legacy is as much a function of where you were and who your friends and enemies were as it is of what you actually did.

He might be remembered as a brutal madman who slaughtered millions and charged the NCR with an army of wholly undisciplined bare-chested warriors armed with naught by sticks and stones, he might be remembered as the honorable leader of a dangerously advanced, tightly disciplined army who wouldn't dare kill an innocent, all of whom were clad head-to-toe in bullet-proof plate, wielding advanced firearms, he might be all but forgotten, he might be reduced to the basis for the legitimacy of a future Arizona-based empire. Regardless, his legacy will likely as not involve the exaggeration of a few aspects of his empire (and downplaying of conflicting on not-particularly-important-to-the-narrative elements) in whatever way is seen as creating the most compelling (and useful to the writer) narrative, such that it will likely bare little resemblance to what he actually did, as nobody will let the facts get in the way of a good story.

edited 14th Aug '16 2:23:49 AM by Balmung

I don't like debating history. You'd think it be nice and simple. Facts are the facts. Not so. You can make your case the Nazis weren't so hot in terms of technology or tactics and I can find people who wholly disagree. I'm in no position to argue either way, I just post on forums and see it come up a fair amount. What I never understood, if the Nazis were just lucky, if they didn't possess great technology or strategy, what took so long in defeating them? Their luck ran out years before the war ended. As you noted, the Allies kind of had extreme advantages so if the Nazis were just completely shit, then they should have fallen over dead a lot sooner, crushed by these advantages.

If nothing else, I've always heard the Germans had the best tanks. Is that true or false?

edited 14th Aug '16 2:33:56 AM by Nikkolas

Patently false. Their tanks were maintence nightmares and were often outgunned, out armored, and out performed in general by their American and Soviet counterparts. Especially once the T-34 entered the war.

German tech was outstripped almost completely a few years into the war. They couldn't catch up. None of the Axis Powers could.

edited 14th Aug '16 2:35:07 AM by LeGarcon

They had a brief moment of somewhat meaningful superiority from '38 to '40, but beyond that, especially for the first few years, Germany also got extremely lucky. So many things could have gone wrong and stopped the Fall of France, and yet, they didn't, and the Allies were basically tripping over themselves with bad decisions, such as France exhausting their entire reserve on extending the line before there was any meaningful fighting.

As for tanks, specifically, they had an edge on certain ease of use features, such as the three-man turret early on, but the Allies quickly figured out such things, and by the time that any serious medium tank was packing a 75mm cannon longer than 30 calibers, there wasn't any real technological edge left to speak of. Hell, the M4 Sherman contained many features that were almost or wholly unique at the time, such as a stabilized gun barrel and wet ammo racks (admittedly, not from the start), and was built with such large amounts of castings that no other country had the industrial technology to replicate it (only really the Soviets could match the technology needed to cast the whole turret, and I don't think even they could do mass production of a wholly cast tank hull, as seen on the M4A1 (the A-number on the Sherman denoted different manufacturing variations, rather than successive improvements).

And the infamous "T-34s didn't have radios" myth (I know you didn't bring it up, but it's a common aspect of the German tank is best tank myths), to my knowledge, is wholly untrue. Many earlier models of Soviet tanks did not have a radio in every tank, but for the T-34 and KV-1, radios were standard.

I mostly brought up WWII because it's at an interesting point where we can see both the legacy and more of the actual facts than ever before, and they differ very greatly, often because someone had something to gain from pushing this narrative or that (eg. Britain is losing in North Africa, so Rommel must be some super general, rather than admitting that the glorious British Empire might be making mistakes, which creates a narrative in which Britain gets to save face on their defeats, and claim more glory when it finally turns around.)

edited 14th Aug '16 5:24:43 AM by Balmung

Fair enough. Far be it from me to trust popular history. I was once a Leninist and while I've shifted rather farther Right, I still hold my general mistrust and disdain for Western nations and their narratives. I have always been more interested in the sociopolitical aspects of war than the hard numbers and battles and WWII is, as you say, a great example of myth-making. Hitler has become synonymous with evil, not because of what he did, but because of who he did these things to - namely, other Europeans. If he had only had the decency to slaughter brown or yellow people, then he might be regarded a bit harshly but he'd be nowhere near the "epitome of evil" he's regarded as today. Imperial Japan's crimes are not half as well known as the Nazis' in the West because Japan mainly killed some Chinese people and who cares about them? We hate them, anyway.

So I can very easily believe Nazi Germany being a titan of military might is some self-aggrandizing crap pushed out by the victors.

edited 14th Aug '16 5:40:06 AM by Nikkolas

Except Japan's crimes ARE very well known. It helps that a lot of Chinese folks speak English and at least one famous author wrote a famous book on the topic

Even the most uninformed person knows "six million Jews." They know the Holocaust.

You really think just as many people know about Imperial Japan's crimes? From pesonal experience, it seems unlikely. US History classes don't help.

Western Nations pick and choose their angels and demons. Gandhi is another good example. Everyone fucking knows Gandhi. He might as well be synonymous with goodness, benevolence and righteous resistance. Now, how many Westerners know Muhammad Ali Jinnah?

Selective ignorance and recognition have always interested and infuriated me.

edited 14th Aug '16 6:21:36 AM by Nikkolas

Why specify western? Eastern history does much the same, just with different individuals.

To take one of your examples, the Rape of Nanking and other Imperial Japanese crimes are infamous over there, while the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes are obscure enough that, for example, there's a Nazi-themed cafe in Indonesia and much of their symbolism carries little or no stigma to them.

edited 14th Aug '16 6:40:34 AM by Balmung

I don't kill Vulpes until Vegas because his quest gives a lot of exp early on. Plus I'm not really able to survive a fight with him that early in the game either.

I kill him in Nipton because it's transparently obvious that he massacred the town and the Fox Squad's cowboy repeaters are generally a step up on whatever peashooter I'm using at that point.

The 300 xp never crossed my mind, as xp is cheap.

Well, I have much less exposure to that seeing as I have spent all my life here in the US and have a better idea of our stereotypes and biases than those of various Asian nations.

Although, as a fan of anime, I understand all too well that Japan has no Nazi stigma and I figured the same held true for most other Asian nations. I also know the Nazis are relatively more popular among certain Indians because all they know of the Nazis is that they contributed indirectly to the liberation of India. Or so I've heard, anyway.

Touch late but the German super science/high tech thing is tied to the idea that the Soviets just zerg rushed their way through the war and didn't actually write the whole fucking book on armored warfare with things like Deep Battle.

For the longest time our only source on the Eastern Front were German officers we pardoned and acquired in intelligence grabs. The Iron Curtain came up almost immediately. Hell even a bit before that if we're honest.

So they embellished their stories and told tales of superior German technology being beaten by massive human waves thrown at them by the barbaric Soviets. When in reality the Soviets were years ahead of them in both tactics and technology in addition to having countless millions for their offensives.

Those millions were rather demoralized, at least early on. Barbarossa did push almost all the way to Moscow and could feasibly have it if not for its postponing.

Back to FNV, Caesar's Legion is a step-up over a band of raiders, but it's not saying much. Since we're talking history, it kind of reminds me of Great Moravia, a fairly successful country that nevertheless didn't even make a century. Caesar's Legion is kind of like that: it will collapse without Caesar, either quickly or perhaps in a span of few months, maybe years. Whether something worthwhile emerges from its ashes is a whole another story, but more likely than not it would just degrade to a bunch of marauders terrorizing the locals before petering out.

If Blücher had turned up a couple of hours later on the 18th of June, 1815, we'd have been fucked. He'd already fought and lost a battle two days earlier at Ligny when he got smashed from his horse and trapped underneath its corpse for hours, only to get dragged out by his ADC, bathe his wounds in liniment and his guts in schnapps, get back on another horse, lead two corps of his army to Waterloo and made sure that Wellesley with his great assistance was able to finally crush the French, instead of going down to either a close defeat or a score draw.

The German army in both subsequent world wars of the twentieth century used his name as a battle cry.

(Full disclosure - I knew about the subject of that last sentence for years, but much of the previous paragraph I only learned about on his wikipedia page.)

I CAST THREAD REVIVAL FOR MOD NEWS

The Frontier is currently estimated to be about 12 Gigs, and may be closer to 30 by the time it's finished.

edited 20th Nov '16 6:43:02 PM by EchoingSilence

Holy shit. Is this a fan mod? I'm suspicious of fan mods that add new content. Bad experiences.

This one's been looking pretty good for a while. Somehow the hollowed out skyscrapers in these games have never looked this right, not even in FO 4. Weird thing to focus on I know, but y'know, it's the little things. Like I'm really wondering how they got tires that actually seem to conform to the uneven ground they're on.

Ya, but will it fix the game CTD'ing on me every 5 minutes? Because if not, all it's going to do is multiply the load times to get back into the game by a factor of four.

If that's still happening to you five years after the game came out, then probably not. And if we're adding dozens of models, more detailed burned-out skyscrapers, and all the extra scripting for vehicles, that's probably not gonna help fix much either.

Not sure what Obsidian did to the game that made it crash so much for some people but not others. It had quieted down a lot for me by the time the DLC started coming out.