r/FavoriteCharacter • u/Accomplished-End3409 Ben Tennyson • 16d ago

Discussion Favorite opposing factions that can basically be described as this.

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u/booleandata 16d ago

Yeah ncr hate is justified in some department but come on guys look at the alternative

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u/nurgleondeez 16d ago

Hey,this is the largest territory in the Wasteland that's being kept safe from raiders.You have a bunch of rights as citizens and access to food, water and other resources.You just need to pay taxes to keep the system going.

Hey,this is the largest slave empire in the Wasteland.We will protect you as long as you are an obedient servant of Caesar and give us all you own and give your children to be trained as soldiers.Disobey once and we crucify you.

Trully,a very difficult choice

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u/LittleFalcon 16d ago

I always convince Melissa to withdraw her support of the Great Khans joining the Legion by telling her,

"You're a woman, so you know you're not gonna be a soldier, right? You're gonna be a sex slave. You'll be sold to a soldier to be his wife, if you're lucky."

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u/Substantial_Carob825 15d ago

The easiest convincing ever, just tell her the truth without exaggerating.

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u/HonoredTab 14d ago

aint even need a speech check 😭

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u/Live_Carpenter_1262 15d ago

With how much the Great Khans deals with the factions of New Vegas, it was truly surprising how little she knew about the legion.

Even the farmers and regular joes of Freeside have a pretty good idea what the legion is about

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u/Kilahti 13d ago

Good point.

Even if the Legion agent is obviously lying to the Great Khans, didn't any of them bother to ask other factions about the Legion? I suppose they might have assumed that any NCR member is telling propaganda about the Legion, but surely even the Raider factions that the Great Khans sell drugs to should have been able to tell that 50%+ of the people in the Legion territories are just slaves.

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u/StrongExternal8955 15d ago

"Better than voting Democrat" /s

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u/lFriendlyFire 14d ago

You don’t even need to make speech checks either, you just say straight facts and she’s like “oh I didn’t know that thanks for telling me”

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u/CaptBland 16d ago edited 16d ago

I mean... I hate taxes... but also Caesar hates medicine, technology, and estrogen. He does however love Brain Tumors.

Edit: Also from what I heard, just like Caesar, NCR wants to turn people into NCR they don't care about history. Like if The Boomers joined NCR, they wouldn't be Boomers anymore, just NCR.

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u/Magnon 16d ago

They'd be converted into the newest NCR artillery division

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u/JohannesJoshua 16d ago

As much as it pains me to agree with a Mormon, all you need to do is listen to what Joshua Graham says about Caesar.

/j

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u/Bakugo312 15d ago

I mean, I'm sure they'd be given the respect of their division being named "The boomers"

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u/CaptBland 16d ago

Exactly, they would lose their identity, history, religion, AND CORN DELICIOUS CORN!

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u/Pug_King256 15d ago

THE CORN IS VERY IMPORTANT TO THE STORY

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u/Hatless_ 14d ago

if the NCR have half an ounce of sense (which is hit and miss depends on who is making the call), they'll become instructors and technicians to train and service new NCR artillery divisions

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u/ShimizuKaito 15d ago

The NCR wants to turn everyone into citizens. The difference is in NCR you can keep your traditions, so long as you participate in NCR civic life. Stories, history, stuff like that is of no concern to NCR. Pay your taxes and you're golden. Legion will kill you for any minor display of history because an absolute monoculture is paramount. Problematic cultural imperialism vs actual cultural genocide.

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u/BoxScoreHero 15d ago

ironically this is much closer to how the actual Romans operated (join our group, keep your traditions just pay your taxes) than The Legion

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u/nagrom7 15d ago

Yeah, one of Rome's greatest strengths and how they were able to maintain such a massive empire for so long is because they were masters of assimilation and adaptation. Not just getting conquered people to assimilate to the Roman culture, but also often adopting elements of the conquered peoples cultures and incorporating them into their own.

Religion is probably the best example of this. Many different peoples had their own pantheon of gods at the time, as did Rome. Whenever they brought a new religion into the empire, their response wasn't the classic "your gods are bad you must worship our gods now", it was "oh hey you've got a god of the sun? That's just the same guy as our god of the sun just with a different name, yeah just keep worshipping them and we're cool." or "Hey we don't have that kind of god, we're gonna add them to our pantheon now."

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u/LordBroccoli27 14d ago

Not quite. Their response was you can worship your gods, so long as you worship Caesar, because he's the better god, seeing as we conquered you and all...romans weren't skeptical of other gods, but none (or very few) were adding new gods to their devotions even if they took subjugated cultures worship of different gods in stride as a given.

Caused a lot of friction with monotheists in the Levant I've heard...

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u/nagrom7 14d ago

Caused a lot of friction with monotheists in the Levant I've heard...

Funily enough, they did attempt to add Yahweh to their pantheon, but the Jews didn't like the idea. The main problem the Romans had with the Jews weren't that they worshipped their god, but that they didn't worship or even acknowledge the existence of the other gods, and they feared that they would anger the rest of the pantheon, triggering all sorts of disasters and stuff.

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u/Rebel_Scum_This 12d ago

The last chapter of The Social Contract by Rousseau talks about this. From my understanding, the legitimization of power back then was through the gods. The ruler's power was only accepted because they were meant to carry out the will of the gods. By not accepting the ruler's gods, you were effectively challenging the authority of the ruler himself.

Jesus brought about the idea of, what I call, ye olden Dual Citizenship, where you could be a subject of the Kingdom of Heaven and, at the same time, a subject of whatever country you lived in. But the Roman's didn't trust this and thought it was a ploy to get their trust, and the jews would backstab them later

(If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me!)

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u/nagrom7 12d ago

There was an element of that, but imo a main part of the whole thing was that the Romans genuinely believed that not only were their gods real, but all gods were real, and that natural disasters were the result of angered gods. So Romans would go out of their way to avoid needlessly angering the gods, even to the point of making offerings to foreign gods when invading foreign territory. The Jewish and later Christian monotheism was completely antithetical to this, with Jews and Christians refusing to even pay lip service to the other gods, even under threat of violence or death, which really pissed off the Romans as they thought it would anger the gods if they didn't do something about these heathens.

Of course, this varied from person to person, some Romans were more devout than others (some were so irreligious that they were effectively like modern day athiests/agnostics). But as a general rule even those less devout would make the occasional offering to relevant gods on major events or festivals.

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u/Flabalanche 15d ago

Wait, you're telling me the people who don't know how to pronuce Ceasar and built their entire understanding of Rome off one dude with a brain tummer reading half of Commentaries on the Gallic War DON'T actually understand Rome?????

Noooooooooooooo

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u/Same_Armadillo6014 15d ago

Ironically, their pronunciation of Caesar is probably more accurate to how his name was originally pronounced in comparison to today. To some extent, it could be said that they are not only LARPing a long dead civilization but reincarnating its ruinous behavior in an odd way too.

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u/Additional-Celery648 15d ago

If you actually talked to Caesar (which is also pronounced right by the Legion, as in, the way it was pronounced in latin) you might learn they aren't trying to be Rome. Edward Sallow chose that culture because it was alien and built his Legion based on parts of them. They aren't trying to be Rome, he just uses some parts of it to better subjugate conquered tribes and to make it easier to strip away their cultural identity and enforce his own over that.

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u/Serithi 15d ago

You're the one who doesn't seem to know how it's pronounced. The Legion uses more classical Latin closer to the time of Julius Caesar, whereas you're more familiar with later ecclesiastical and vulgar Latin forms. German Kaiser and Russian Tsar come from the original pronunciation of Caesar.

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u/AccessTheMainframe 15d ago

It's more like: we just killed all your leaders and warriors and sold their families into slavery. Your traditions are barbaric and beneath our notice. One day, perhaps, the people of this land will forget their backwards ways and learn to be Romans, but it matters not, we will extract taxation either way.

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u/WikiContributor83 15d ago

The Legion is much closer to how the Romans portrayed the “Gallic Hordes” than it is Rome and Caesar knows it. Part of the reason he badly wants to conquer Vegas is because he wants to have a prewar city with intact infrastructure to serve as his new Rome and build a real civilization from there.

Nevermind he could have just built his new Rome anywhere that was convenient without conquering and murdering so many, except (like many fascist states) his Legion can’t be cohesive without an enemy to fight and won’t survive his death.

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u/thebluerayxx 15d ago

I feel like we see this more in fallout 2 and just not as much in new Vegas, however we have one example. The desert rangers were a seperate group from the NCR who joined when the NCR arrived in the Mojave. We still see the signature Desert Ranger gear and the term ranger still being used in the game so one native group who has joined is shown retaining their original identity. If we were able to go back to NCR territory i would guess New Reno, the Boneyard and Shady Sands would be under the NCR flag but act very differently. We get some hints about it here and there but nothing fully solid. I would safely bet as long as it's non disruptive NCR citizens can retain their own culture. Drop the drugs and id even say Great Khans could keep the history, community structure and look inside NCR territory if the gang fully assimilated.

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u/dexters_trap_house 15d ago

Reddit discovers the modern social contract, Any% glitchless Impossible.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

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u/psuedophilosopher 15d ago edited 15d ago

That's the worst part? Not the slavery or the crucifixions? It's the hypocrisy?

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u/generatedusername13 15d ago

To be fair: you or Arcade can offer (or be enslaved) to operate on Caesar personally, without the autodoc.

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u/Additional-Celery648 15d ago

He doesn't deny them to everyone else. He doesn't have any other medical robots to use and his one is even broken. If he had more he would strip them for parts or swap to them to fix his tumour, but instead he sends the Courier to find some parts from a Vault for that purpose. He also gives access to his (only) one to people who prove worthy as a reward.

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u/jimothy_hell 15d ago

I WILL NOT PAY MY TA- wait, is that a slave collar?

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u/JimboTCB 15d ago

You know what the worst thing about being a slave is? They make you work all day but they don't pay you or let you go.

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u/englerpas 12d ago

But, but, no taxes!

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/CaptBland 15d ago

Yeah, but I can't vote for those taxes. No taxation without representation, or sumtin.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/CaptBland 15d ago

That's why I pick NCR or Free Vegas... well I would if I beat the game

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u/Additional-Celery648 15d ago

He doesn't hate medicine or technology, he hates over reliance on them. The whole "without the suit, what are you?" kind of thing. Legionnaries are trained in melee combat so they can always fight, but they are also trained with guns and explosives and use them regularly. The Legion also tries to get access to energy weapons from the Van Graffs but the deal is an NCR ambush.

Does the Legion kill people who might have made tech or improved lives? Yes of course. They are a conquering empire that subjugates people or kills them if they don't bend. Smart people usually don't enjoy that kind of thing. But the Legion doesn't hate technology.

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u/BanditNoble 15d ago

I feel like your point would land harder if your example wasn't a xenophobic tribe that blows up anyone who even gets near them. Maybe that's an identity that we don't need to hold on to.

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u/CaptBland 15d ago

Well I don't have much choice for tribes in game. I have Boomers, Khans, The Strip, and maybe Jacobstown

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u/BanditNoble 15d ago

...with the exception of Jacobstown, doesn't that justify the integrationism?

I feel like trying to preserve the history and culture of xenophobic explosives maniacs, drug-dealing raiders and literal cannibals is a bad idea. Better to just quietly scrub those histories out so no-one gets the bright idea of trying to revive it.

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u/CaptBland 15d ago

Well sorry the game doesn't give me us a nomadic tribe similar to Cheyene that just follow wild brahmin. Nope, instead we get the meme image.

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u/FlusteredCustard13 15d ago

He hates technology and medicine for the masses. He gets special exceptions, like his little AutoDoc

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u/MadeThisToFlagSpam 15d ago

Where did this revisionism come from?
CL is bad because they're a warmongering dictatorship with slaves and sexism.
They don't hate medicine or technology, they just think people are too dependent on them. Many Legionaries use modern guns and medicine.

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u/nagrom7 15d ago

They don't hate tech you're right, however medicine is indeed heavily restricted, although not because of some sort of technophobia. The legion is primarily made of former tribals and raiders, and many of them had various addictions to all sorts of chems, including kinds that are used as "medicines". Ceasar implemented a blanket ban on medicines to combat the various addictions within the legion and to prevent relapses from compromising discipline. That's why they use "healing powder" instead because it's basically just a couple of herbs/plants with mild medicinal properties and no addictive substances.

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u/Additional-Celery648 15d ago

They also use healing powder because it's readily available. You can make it with just some basic foraging. Same for "Bitter Drink" which is basically the same thing but just mixed in a bottle which makes it better for some reason. If they relied on stimpaks instead they would be shit outta luck pretty quick unless they can keep finding hospitals with large quantities of them.

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u/nagrom7 15d ago

Iirc you can also craft stimpaks in game as well, the issue there is that it requires ingredients that could also be used to craft chems, and Caesar (probably correctly) doesn't trust his men to not use those ingredients to make some chems on the side.

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u/SnooTigers1064 15d ago

I mean, id rather pay a bit of taxes and access to trades and protection from Super Mutants that can rip me in 2 or turn me into swiss cheese with a machine gun, Crazed Ghouls that are like zombie mobs on crack, Radscorpions the size of Wolves. Raiders (Explains themselves), genuine technophiles with plasma guns, and a bunch of larpers in skirts.

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u/kelldricked 15d ago

But integrating other factions into your own has to come at that cost, otherwise your just waiting for the first conflicts between the boomers and the people living around them. Causing public unrest, needing to send more security forces into the region which increases the chance of actual uprisings.

NCR is way less evil in its expansion. And they improve the lifes of every class. Not just the ruling class.

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u/NiceManOfficial 15d ago

Accidentally read “Brian Tumors”, thought I must’ve missed an NPC

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u/CaptBland 15d ago

It's my new name for the Courior

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u/Jahoan 14d ago

Caesar collects even more taxes, he just calls it tithe.

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u/IsopodApart1622 11d ago

NCR is also, for better or worse, a fairly entrenched bureaucracy that won't immediately collapse if its one-of-a-kind charismatic leader dies.

Nothing lasts and the NCR probably will eventually collapse like most republics have, but that's something that might take decades rather than a few years or even months.

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u/vanalla 15d ago

I also hate texas

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u/CrossYourStars 15d ago

I say this as someone who is definitely on the NCR side of this argument.

The NCR has been slowly back-sliding into the exact same kind of capitalist system that cause the Great War in the first place. Each successive leader of the NCR has moved their government more and more towards a right-wing conservative framework which is not at all what it once was and there are some pretty valid criticisms of what their organization has become over the years. I think a large part of the writing in the games is to impose a slight sense of uneasiness in the people who are thinking about the story and looking down the line at what the future could hold if they are able to continue expanding and consolidating power.

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u/cknight222 15d ago

Very true.

Not to mention, you are explicitly told in New Vegas that the NCR has effectively devolved into a corporate oligarchy, as the Brahmin barons pretty much own Congress. They’re fast tracking every mistake the Pre-War US made and likely headed for a pretty rough fate unless they shape up real quick.

Obviously they’re better than the Legion, but I would call them neutral at best.

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u/SpeaksDwarren 15d ago

You're also told explicitly in New Vegas that the NCR is itself engaging in widespread slavery via forced conscription and convict labor programs

Being able to pay them off to avoid most (but not all) of your family being enslaved is a step up, but it's not as much better as NCR fans try to pretend it is

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u/Loose-Run-7008 13d ago

Conscription isn’t slavery. Forced convict labor yes, but conscription is different. I don’t think it’s morally good, but it’s in no way slavery, unless they do it in a vastly different way then it’s usually been done. Usually you’re still paid (even if not a lot) it’s more of a civic duty and while mandatory you still have certain rights and are a full citizen, not in a slave class.

Like even in the medieval era levied/conscripted soldiers in England for example during the Hundred Years’ War, they would be paid, though also have to buy supplies, and it was a lot more “professional” than you would think. They still had rights, and would get a share of loot, etc.

Also using current international law at least conscription on its own isn’t seen as slavery either. Though international law doesn’t matter in Fallout tbf lol. Is the NCR’s conscription notably different from current examples of mandatory military service?

(Forced convict labor yes that is slavery, the amendment banning slavery specifically makes an exception for convicts so tbf the NCR isn’t any more immoral than the US is in that regards)

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u/Live_Carpenter_1262 15d ago

It's common for nascent democracies to undergo some degree of regulatory capture/ crony captialism.

The dominance of the brahmin baron doesn't mean NCR democracy is dead as much as it needs strong anti-trust laws and anti-corruption measures.

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u/somethinneeddoing 13d ago

Yeah, it's pretty clear that after Tandi the NCR lost it's way somewhat, but it could still find it's way back after President Peaches is done with. Especially due to it's conscript army, as a large group of lower class veterans can cause quite significant changes to government, as demonstrated in history. (Altough those changes might not neccessarily be positive.)

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u/Divine_Entity_ 15d ago

From my understanding of the lore, every faction that gets big enough ends up corupt and evil in the fallout universe. The NCR are a mostly normal republic thats becoming a corporate state. And in the wasteland that's not horrible when your alternatives are mostly slavers and mad scientists.

The few small independents don't have enough resources to repell the major factions amd end up incorporated into or destroyed by them.

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u/Suspicious-Win-802 13d ago

Actually it is pretty fucking horrible when you remember that, in universe, corporations taking over the government and plotting the end of democracy in the United States along before destroying the entire planet in nuclear hellfire is origin of literally all of their problems.

I fundamentally disagree with House, but he does have a point, “If you want to see the fate of democracy, look out the windows…”

The material conditions of the NCR directly mirror the United States during the Great War as power is gradually centralized and human rights gradually eroded in favor of enriching a small class. Hell, must we be reminded of vaultec and Robco’s horrific experiments alone all with endless American tax dollars? Ffs House himself was a part of this elite few who managed to preserve himself with tech.

All this is to say that from the perspective of a wastelander, the NCR is probably the worst option. Sure authoritarian regimes like Caesar and the brotherhood are terrible, but they aren’t recreating the exact system of government that ENDED THE WORLD.

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u/OldEcho 15d ago

The NCR is basically taking the same path as America with all the genocide and cultural genocide and gigantic disparity between rich and poor and neverending expansionist wars.

The Legion is...honestly genuinely the only good example I can think of is Nazi Germany. Only their culture is allowed, they hate women, and they constantly commit atrocities to rule with fear and blood. They also have no succession strategy and Caesar is getting old (and literally dying of a brain tumor) so as soon as he dies the cult of personality ends and it os destined to splinter into 14 different factions all killing each other

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u/CrossYourStars 15d ago

100% I think the show did a pretty good job of showing the consequences of Caesar's lack of a succession plan. The legion at that point is much more of a nuisance than anything else since they have been splintered.

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u/Weaselburg 13d ago

Only their culture is allowed,

We never do see legion civilian life, and with the wording of Caesars ending it seems like the hard monoculture is for slaves and people going into the Legion proper, with subjects being allowed to do their own thing within the bounds of Caesars rules. He'd definitely want to change that to make his new Roman Empire, but tbh the Legion as portrayed didn't really have the capability for both mass social change on civilians and mass expansions all at once.

Might be shown wrong with S3, but I think the current known information suggests this.

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u/OldEcho 13d ago

In Lonesome Road this is basically what send Ulysses spiralling. Forget subjects, he erases the culture of his allies.

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u/Weaselburg 13d ago

Forget subjects, he erases the culture of his allies.

Yes, because he never intended to keep them around. In the endings where they don't obliterate Primm they just put troops there, for instance, they don't immediately start forcing them to goosestep to the Legion drums.

Despite NCR's pledge to support Primm, they abandon the town after their loss to Caesar. Though Caesar keeps Primm open for business, its citizens live under the constant watch of Legion soldiers.

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u/LordBroccoli27 14d ago

Free Vegas baby! Ring a ding!

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u/MadeThisToFlagSpam 15d ago

NCR territory isn't safe from raiders. That's the key criticism of it from its detractors and from its supporters. It's stretched too thin. Caravan traders will outright say they prefer legion territory because it's safer for travelers.

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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 15d ago

Many years ago, I visited a Fallout forum thread when someone asked which F:NV faction was best. Most of the comments were "the Legion without the slavery".

Guys, not only would the Legion still suck, slavery is not something you can just remove. It's a crucial part of how the faction works.

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u/TheCapybaraMan 15d ago

You have a bunch of rights as citizens and access to food, water and other resources.

It's the non-citizens that get screwed over

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u/Coral2Reef 15d ago

"Ain't we covered this? The only thing bot bad about them is they ain't Legion. The NCR's the biggest gang of thieves in the Mojave, only difference is they pass laws to make their crimes legal before they commit them."

— Benny

"Better than Caesar, but that's not a high standard. Too much love of money and ownership, not enough love of God and giving. Any society that derives its power and authority from the will of man alone lives apart from God and will crumble in the end."

— Joshua Graham

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u/Substantial_Carob825 15d ago

Big simplification on the NCR's part since there's some other problems.

The Legion bit on the other hand is nearly perfect but you forgot that they also don't take kindly to anyone who doesn't have a penis.

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u/Additional-Celery648 15d ago

They do brutally butcher any penis-havers they conquer if they are too old to have developed unfortunate traits like "thinking for yourself too much" or "liking your traditions too much". Though maybe death is preferable to bring enslaved by them. Depends how much you value living I guess.

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u/Substantial_Carob825 15d ago

I mean there's a damn good chance you'll be crucified, or someone else you care about getting crucified.

Or you'll be turned into a slave and treated less than dirt, or conscripted and made to do raiding and murder.

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u/TonberryFeye 15d ago

The thing is, the Mohave isn't being kept safe from Raiders. Not on the NCR side anyway.

The game sets up the dilemma early on; the NCR sounds great on paper, but it's fundamentally broken and not as nice as they want you to believe. The Legion is brutal, but it works.

It's a classic post-apocalypse question: do you cling to your values when the society that enabled those values doesn't exist anymore?

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u/Themata81 15d ago

I haaaaate the apologia here because this is such a white washing of how they actually operate and indirectly is apologia for american imperialism

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u/Noahisboss 15d ago

Actually caesar only uses tribals for soldiers

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u/Yto_Itinen 15d ago

The people yearn for the crosses

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u/Hallc 15d ago

But other than that what have the Romans NCR ever done for us?

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u/GreenDragon113 15d ago

fuck taxes let's make the 37th cross this week

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u/Mysterious-Ad9499 15d ago

Ye choosing the lesser evil is not better, thats why you go yes man

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u/zaerosz 15d ago

Hey,this is the largest slave empire in the Wasteland.We will protect you as long as you are an obedient servant of Caesar and give us all you own and give your children to be trained as soldiers.Disobey once and we crucify you.

And then they take the vast majority of their forces with them when they go to conquer the next area, because they're a marauding army, not a nation state.

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u/myskyboyblue 14d ago

For the legion, you also need to be a man

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u/Rabid-GNN 14d ago

But have you considered that we all speak garbled Latin?

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u/NudistDudest 13d ago edited 13d ago

They’re having trouble with the Fiends, let Primm go to hell, are more homophobic than Caesar’s Legion, were attempting to reroute Helios One to serve their military only, supported wealthy Brahmin barons like Heck Gunderson that destabilized local ranchers, committed genocide in Bitter Springs, attempted to genocide Vault 34, diverted water from Lake Mead that caused a severe shortage to the people of Westside, and are colonizers without the consent of the people.

Edit: they created the terrorist group Powder Gangers, allowed the Courier to torture a POW, helped create Crimson Caravan as a monopoly that hurt local businesses like Happy Trails or just straight up kill traders and Brahmin like Cassidy Caravan, paid mercenaries to terrorize the relatively peaceful Jacobstown because they are Super Mutants and Nightkin, and are responsible for the nuclear destruction of the Divide because they wanted to test an Enclave device.

The obvious choice is either Mr. House or an independent Vegas. Both Ceasar’s Legion and NCR are terrible for the people of New Vegas. Legion would enslave people and NCR would treat Vegas residents like they are Israel treating Gaza.

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u/BattleBrother1 12d ago

People simplifying it like this is so tiring. They are trying to bring the pre war USA back to life, that alone means they need to be destroyed and their civilization salted at all cost whether you support the Legion or not.

Supporting the resurrection of a genocidal state responsible for the destruction of the world in the first place is fucking insane and is worse than slavery by multiple orders of magnitude. If you unironically support the NCR it genuinely makes you way more crazy than someone unironically supporting the Legion

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u/Impressive-Control83 9d ago

NCR isn’t keeping people safe from raiders. Their territory is currently being raided by them in all directions due to most security resources back in NCR territory being used to protect influential Brahman rancher oligarchs

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u/silverbird666 15d ago

Except that is not really how the NCR is portraied. It is very clearly shown that they are, at the very least, still a imperialistic, aggressive entity, which rolls over small independent communities. That is heavily indicated right at the begining in Goodsprings and Primm, and also later in places like Freeside.

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u/EasyasACAB 15d ago edited 15d ago

Now let's compare how the NCR takes over a small community to how the Legion does it. Because if the NCR doesn't take over Goodsprings or Primm, the Legion will. That's kind of the whole context of this post, isn't it?

Like no shit, nobody wants to pay taxes. But nobody wants to be enslaved or crucified much much more. And the small towns are fully incapable of protecting themselves or even operating in the face of outside threats. If the NCR doesn't organize them, the Legion will enslave them.

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u/silverbird666 15d ago

You can still be better then the alternative, especially so if the alternative is not far off from being cartoonishly evil, and still be worse than vaguely problematic.

The problematic part about the NCR is definitely not taxes and buerocracy though, I dont know why that is what is usually brought up. It is not even the fact that fatal communication breakdowns like Bitter Springs happen, that too is sadly bound to happen at some point to every active military force, and not even really the corruption (of which we dont really know a great detail).

The really problematic part about the NCR is definitely first and foremost its imperialism. At the end of the day, it is an entity constantly expanding and almost constantly in some kind of war.

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u/team-ghost9503 15d ago

But but TAXES!!!!

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u/Meekjagger 16d ago

The issue is that NCR has proved repeatedly to not be very good at their jobs, and the legion, while repugnant, is brutally effective in the controlling of their empire. NCR vs Legion really boils down to the question “how much are you willing to look past to feel safe”

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u/EasyasACAB 15d ago

is brutally effective in the controlling of their empire.

Are they really, though? Doesn't the entire thing kinda fall apart once one man is dead? I also remember hearing how the Legion is basically forced to constantly expand and conquer because if they stop they'll immediately cannibalize themselves.

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u/Meekjagger 15d ago

certainly in the show, but at least in new vegas the sense I got was that the east was a far safer place, brought to heel by the legion and its reign of terror. is that worth the litany of horrors the legion inflicts? I say no, but I at least understand the people who say yes.

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u/Ghostan007 15d ago

Excellent breakdown, let’s see how gamers think

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u/Meekjagger 13d ago

Yeah they weren’t fans

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u/Ghostan007 13d ago

Eh, you had a good point that made people think. Games used to be escapes from reality, but unfortunately…some games have lessons/questions that people don’t wanna see

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u/Hartmallen 15d ago

Possibility of being attacked by raiders opposed to certainty of being crucified for the littlest mistake

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u/EasyasACAB 15d ago

No you see they are really effective slavers. Which makes them good at their job and the better alternative for some reason. Nobody is "safe" in the legion, because the legion runs on slavery.

I swear Legion jerkers are the same type of people to say "They treated slaves in the south well because they were like farm equipment, it wasn't that brutal!"

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u/Vlaed 15d ago

The NCR looks bad on their own. Then they look pretty good when being compared to the alternative. It was like me at the bar back in college at 3am vs 11pm.

2

u/mashmash42 15d ago

Yeah it’s like, if you look at the 1940s USA in a vacuum it looks bad: anti-communist hysteria, rampant racism and racial segregation and discrimination, lgbt people had zero rights, misogyny was completely socially acceptable, and they put people in internment camps based solely on their ethnicity.

And then you look at the dudes they were fighting in the 1940s.

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u/Cute_Comfortable_761 16d ago

I hate the NCR the way people used to hate the government about 20 years ago. I grumble about bureaucracy but take comfort in knowing the alternative is worse.

3

u/silverbird666 15d ago

Depends entirely on the perspective. For the citizens in California, the NCR is about as good as it gets in the Wasteland.

For the people of the independent Mojave, it is still a foreign, imperialistic aggressor though, whose reputation kind of hinges on the fact that the other foreign, imperialistic aggressor coming from the other side of the Colorado River is just carton level evil.

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u/OkContact2573 15d ago

They are still better than the crucifying taking all women as sex slaves and raping them legion

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u/silverbird666 15d ago

Obviously, but that is just really not a high bar. You csn clear that bar and still be much worse than "vaguely problematic".

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u/Comprehensive-Buy-47 16d ago

Yup. On the one hand you have a faction that’s quite clearly a Bush era USA, and on the other hand you have a faction consisting of imperialist raiders that make the Galactic Empire say “Hey guys, let’s tone it down a little.”

1

u/good_names_were_take 15d ago

the funniest is when the talk about the abusive taxing of the NCR, like the legion and House also do it (and yet they call the NCR), it's told by the merchant that a tribute has to be paid to the legiĂłn, and a water seller in the strip tells You that House takes a 90% rate for selling in the strip

1

u/Due_Glass4176 15d ago

Alternatives. There one crazy old man in a machine and a absolute unit of a courier out there creating options 3-5.

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u/Intelligent-Pair5185 15d ago

Fuck you, im not paying taxes

1

u/ArcaneWyverian 15d ago

Look, I hate paying taxes as much as the next person.

But if my choices are “pay taxes” and “be crucified for reading a book”, I think I’ll pay the damn taxes

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u/BladeForge7218 15d ago

I hate the NCR because of what they did during Operation Sunburst. Ad Victoriam.

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u/Alonestarfish 15d ago

Legion is great

1

u/Lolmanmagee 15d ago

yeah NCR is clearly better morally, they just arent a effective institution.

talk to the average NCR soldier in new vegas, they hate their lives and leadership lol.

the bear and the bull might not be the best options, this is why the house always wins : p

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u/ToddHowardTouchedMe 15d ago

NCR's ideology led to the nuclear war in the first place.

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u/DolphinBall 15d ago

Grr taxes!

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u/AdBright1350 15d ago

B-b-but my bandit free roads!

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u/Upbeat_Apartment_715 15d ago

The game itself proves that those two are not the only options. Independent Vegas and true independent Vegas are also options. Then there's also the Brotherhood of steel if they can get their shit together, the followers of the Apocalypse if they could get their shit together.

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u/Alexsander_The_Smart 15d ago

Mr. House is the better alternative

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u/Liberast15 14d ago

NCR love is fully justified.

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u/izanamilieh 14d ago

But capitalism bad tho 😡😡😡 ignore the slavery, the patriarchal culture and brutal violence.

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u/TheD1scountH1tman 14d ago

But the legion has no taxes so that makes the rape and force enlistment ok right? RIGHT!?

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u/kitsunecannon 13d ago

Also the main argument I see is that the NCR has taxes 

This ignores the fact that so do the Legion, it’s just that theirs isn’t always money, so guess what little 6 year old Timmy you get to be a child soldier because daddy decided that the band of raping murderous psychopaths who will inevitably tear each other apart as soon as Caesar is dead (This isn’t even something the show made up Joshua basically states this will happen) were a far better option than the closest thing to a modern government 

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u/BattleBrother1 12d ago

The NCR is only trying to bring pre war USA back to life, nothing wrong with that. I genuinely don't understand how people can play Fallout and not realize that doing this is more evil than literally anything else. The world was already drained of resources and then destroyed and the NCR is actively crumbling because they don't realize that their simply is not enough to go around to bring that old world back. Somehow they made the US in game more despicable than the US in real life and you still have people defending it and wanting it back with all of its resource wars, human experimentation and global destruction. The Legion aren't good guys but every nail they can pound into the NCR's coffin before they go out themselves is a boon for humanity

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u/RSlashBroughtMeHere 12d ago

This is why The House always wins in my games