Fallout: New Vegas

Speaking of rewards, I did an Evil Karma NCR Courier run (easy enough to do if you blow up the BOS Bunker after massacring everyone in as the last thing before the final battle) a while back. While the slides seem largely the same, there's this very pointed sentiment among the NCR citizens that you really shouldn't be awarded shit for being a Grade A War Criminal.

To my knowledge, Good Karma Legion Courier also gets called out by the slides. After having the Karma system be largely diminished to secondary matters, not unlike in 3 or earlier Fallouts, having the game priding itself on its grayness explicitly say "NCR good, Legion bad" (not that anyone debates the latter) is kind of disingenuous.

Doing good is its own reward. -nods sagely-

That reminds me of Mass Effect 1. There's a quest in the Citadel where a guy asks you to go recue or help some of his men. You can ask him why you should do this and he's like "it's the right thing to do." My Shepard promptly said well, good luck with that

Video games kinda promote greediness.

I noticed that as well. You can try to rationalize it but the game is pretty much explicitly saying "WTF."

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 21st 2019 at 4:48:36 AM

Yeah, pretty much.

Anyone else decorate their Presidential Suite with all of their unique weapons they've found to collect dust?

Absolutely

Skyrim at least let you mount them properly...

And yeah, gaming is... weird... when it comes to reward. Because good playthroughs SHOULD be the end being the reward in themselves. The bad choices are often there just for "choice" as you still get solid rewards for doing the good thing, which muddies the water of intent.

It's like in Fable where to show how evil you were to a demon door, you had to eat 10 chicks in front of it. Arbitrarily cruel, but not "grand scale" evil.

But then you start going down the murky path of Well-Intentioned Extremist and whether evil is an absolute.

Would just like to point out that Caesar knowing about real Rome and admitting that there's worlds of difference between his Legion and actual Rome only disproves the notion that he's ignorant, not the notion that he is stupid.

If you want to bake a pizza, you must start with kneading flour into dough, and then placing the tomato sauce and cheese and other toppings and such, then firing up the oven and placing this raw pizza in it.

If we are baking a pizza the Caesar way, we start with making a baking soda and water paste paste because both baking soda and flour are white powders so they must be the same thing, and then lathering ketchup because they're both made of tomatoes so what's the difference, and then applying natto spread because cheese is made from milk and natto is made of soybeans which is used to make soymilk so that's like the same thing, so all that's missing from this pizza is we need an oven.

Trust me, I've read the best books on pizza making, this will totally work!

As for the good vs evil thing, there needs to be more games where the evil path actually legit leads you to more reward, while also being calculated evil rather than just arbitrary cruelty.

There's a couple of games flirting with the idea like Vampyr most recently, but it doesn't work out very well if the numbers aren't high enough to justify the whole "sink teeth in friends" deal.

Ideally, Good Path and Evil Path (and Neutral Path) should give out different rewards rather than more of the same. Sometimes it doesn't work out, and it's a matter of careful balance, but it would at the very least invite a notion of trying once more, this time as a different option.

With good being its own reward and all that, the issue is basically that video games seldom force the player to make are generally only in-universe. Being evil in-game hurts nobody and being good in-game helps nobody.

What this means for the player is that they'll generally put fun above being moral in-universe. Indeed, they might not even care about the story much at all.

Personally, what I suggest if you're making a mechanic around morality is to have it revolve around Delayed Gratification. Evil choices give you a larger short-term gain but locks you out of long-term rewards (possibly even punishing you), good choices involve sacrificing short term rewards for better long term rewards. And neutral being in the middle.

What's the Presidential Suite? Is it in that corpse's awful tower?

The only home base I need is a room in Novac.

Edited by Balmung on Feb 21st 2019 at 3:55:34 AM

Yeah I really dislike the Lucky 38. It's cold, eerie and inhumane, much like House. Who would want to live there?

I'll take a shack out in the woods like a proper murderhobo.

Also I apparently really need to play Tyranny. Talking about morality systems elsewhere too and Tyranny geting tons of love. Sounds right up my alley, too!

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 21st 2019 at 2:00:41 AM

I just hate waiting through like three loading screens instead of one.

The main thing I like about the Lucky 38 suite is just that I can store all my companions there and have them all in one place. I also greatly prefer the room in Novac just in terms of feeling “homey.”

Infamous gave pretty much equal rewards for playing as a superhero or super-villain. The only real difference it one decision made near the end, and it doesn't make too much of a difference if you were diligent.

I don't think anyone here particularly thought that the Legion needed to be more grey in the sense that they would be equally grey with the other factions. Rather I think Obsidian, at least some devs, wanted to make the Legion a less puppy-kicking, Obviously Evil shade of black. It's not so much about giving equal weight to their views, just about showing how they came by them. So that they're a human evil, and not just an army of rampaging orcs in football gear whose leader is a man with literal brain damage.

The fact that House's theoretical paradise is rather sterile and cold is pretty much the point — nobody would side with him if he weren't seemingly offering so much up front. They want you to pull the thread, follow the seams, read the fine print. It's its own spin on the whole Tranquility Lane/Uncanny Valley schtick.

Edited by Unsung on Feb 21st 2019 at 11:23:45 AM

And logically House's paradise couldn't be anything but that — a consequence of the man only being able to interact with people through a monitor.

A Good Karma Courier who sides with him would thus have a very useful purpose as the more personable and human face of House's world.

Ultimately it seems like the Courier ends up a propaganda figure no matter what in every ending barring the Independent Ending (in which the Courier basically flips off everyone who wants to use them as a propaganda figure).

Edited by M84 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 2:24:20 AM

You never see a stable guard presence in the Mojave except the NCR, for values of the word stable. There's individuals in the non-NCR towns you meet, but nothing like an organized force. In Novac it's just two snipers who trade off and a couple mercs with a traveling doctor. You've got Sunny in Good Springs, but she can't do a whole lot on her own. Ultimately the whole place just feels so unprotected.

So really, NCR's the only way to go. The Legion are too dark and unstable to do a good job and House only wants to protect the Strip.

If we had an endgame that looked more like the Hearts of Iron IV mod Old World Blues, it'd be a different story. My House campaign there took over a shit-ton of land, even extending outside the Mojave. There was over-extension for sure, but I could have held if I hadn't gotten greedy.

A united Wild Card ending adds Jamestown, the Boomers, the Brotherhood, the Strip Gangs, the Kings, and of course the Securitrons — not to mention, depending on your Courier's actions, the scientific base of the Big MT, and Khans and Powder Gangers who are friendly to you if not the NCR. The difficulty is in getting them all to play nice with each other, and that's not nothing — but given how overstretched the NCR is, and based on their internal corruption, I still see them dealing with a potentially friendly independent power as better for them and the Mojave than removing any autonomy those settlements have just so the NCR can add yet another stack of chips to their pile. And there's still the potential for an alliance between the two down the line — just one where the people of the Mojave hopefully retain more of their own voice rather than just being purely a colony state set up around the Dam.

Except that when House wins, he's actually capable of projecting force all over the Mojave. That's the whole point of you assisting him with his upgraded Securitron army.

Its been a long time since I last played the game, so I could be dead wrong, but I remember getting the sense that all the different smaller settlements and factions preferred a state of anarchy/isolationism, and were so hostile to the idea of actively working together and pooling their resources on any major level that a strong outside force making it happen like the NCR, Legion, or House was the only workable possibility. The Courier going it alone just perpetuated said anarchy and delayed the process of forming a functional state in the Mojave even further.

The House ending shows he dosen't do much to patrol Vegas outside of the Strip.

Your not wrong, it seems like most of the townspeople (especially Goodsprings) just want to scavenge ruins their entire damn lives living in bum#uck nowhere. Surprised they're not as inbred as the Point Lookout swampfolk at this point.

Anarchy Is Chaos is kind of a flawed idea as a starting point, and a lot does depend on how you leave the various factions, but there's nothing as final about it as you're saying. They don't have to become a uniform state to present a united front and to work together, trade, and defend the region from external threats. As has been said, the NCR started out the same way.

And really, I have no problem with the Mojave allying with the NCR eventually, and even with the NCR maintaining a presence in the region after the Battle — I could still see the Mojave ultimately joining the NCR down the line. But with a democracy, with any ideology, the way you fight your battles is important. The NCR occupying Vegas by force of arms, and simply subsuming the region into itself, good intentions or not, goes against their founding principles of democracy and liberty, and hypocrisy on that scale isn't that easily smoothed away. History repeats — condone those kinds of acts and you're making a statement about who you are as a nation. Letting Vegas come around on its own is the harder route for the NCR, but if you really believe in the values the NCR is said to represent, then it's worth it.

Edited by Unsung on Feb 22nd 2019 at 10:43:51 AM

Exactly. And that's one of the points the game makes and that House points out. That the NCR is there for resources - namely, electricity. Yes, they want to use the quarry as well and see if they can Sharecropper the heck out of the land.

(And the sharecroppers are another example of how underhand the NCR is with farming - though it depends on the financial arrangements the sharecroppers have I suppose)

House offers trade and stability, but is Authoritarian. Without a central power structure the NCR just views New Vegas as not even a rebellious city state - just a settlement with a power vacuum. The desert around it just more terrain to travel over, not a nation.

But even with House in power, the little settlements do what? His only focus is the Strip, really. If it's the Courier in charge (And not sure if that is the case) then could they control things? For how long? And what happens when the Courier goes?

The NCR would be better playing the long game; but the Brahmin barons and the President want a quick win and are pushing too hard. Short sightedness is the issue with them

Strip away the ending slides, and a Yes Man ending has potential. Maybe you start off just holding the strip, but you do have that army. You can start patrolling and keeping the raiders at bay to provide secure trade, then use your securitron army to support individual settlements and help with their problems. I mean, most of what you did getting to New Vegas could have been done by Victor if he'd been inclined to.

Well, I always thought the Legion needed to be more grey.

NCR is for if you think a liberal democracy is an inherent good.

House is for if you think a technocratic autocracy is just as good.

Wild Card is for if you think taxation is theft, ain't no one gonna tell me what to do.

And Legion should be if you think a centralized militaristic fascist state that is harsh but fair is just as good.

We could have had a Legion that crucifies raiders, destroys tribal culture to force assimilation, and tortures its PO Ws without also giving them rape camps. The Legion could have been a faction that is savage but not pointlessly cruel to the point of ridiculousness.

Instead it is for if you think kicking puppies is A-OK as long as their leader can talk a big game about knowing all about Rome because he read the best books about it.

Also I wouldn't mind siding with House's sterile and cold future (it's what I did in my playthrough, after all). Sterile and cold I can stand, I don't care what the rules are as long as they are reasonably fair, as long as the rules exist and are enforced, I can thrive.

Edited by PRC4Eva on Feb 24th 2019 at 4:36:39 AM

It's kind of hard to grey up the state that is the Legion, I personally think they're just fine as the evil faction, my only major criticism is that they should've had more quests revolving around making this a thing.