like i get its a good game but cmon! its not that good. game is a buggy mess, it has proto-microtransactions (courier's stash), you cant play after the end, the endings are a literal political compass meme, and fallout fans are half chuds.

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The game really tried to sell this idea that the NCR is weak but it really doesn’t hold. They have the most modern military in the wastes, if they got their shit together they could hold the Mojave no problem. The game just writes the leaders of the NCR as the most incompetent dumb fucks as possible to try and explain away why an army with fucking artillery can’t take on some ripped dudes with spears.

      I think it's supposed to be an issue of logistics infrastructure and sheer numbers. Like the NCR has weapons manufacturing up and running and a proper (if small) military, but the Mojave is a long way from their bases of industry and agriculture, the rail line they were building got sabotaged, and caravans are being harried by the tribes they've been trying to genocide and/or subjugate. Meanwhile the legion has sheer numbers that aren't represented well in-game due to engine limitations, and they have an easier time keeping their army supplied because it doesn't need industrially manufactured parts and they have relatively safe roads back to their breadbasket and heartlands thanks to being a hyper-militarized death-cult that assimilates or enslaves everyone they run over.

      The NCR is portrayed as winning every pitched battle on account of having modern firearms, but they lack the resources and manpower to fully control the territory so they're being constantly bled by Legion raiders and having their hegemony undermined by their inability to protect the locals from the Legion.

      really all their trade will be dominated by the NCR meaning they’re effectively blockaded.

      I think the independent path there mostly relied on the NCR needing the electricity from Hoover Dam, and so an independent Vegas could retain autonomy for its people while still having enough of an upper hand to keep trade open with the NCR. It doesn't need to be unassailable, it just needs to be too much trouble to be worth invading and too valuable to not trade with.

      • aynranddouchebag [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        i dont like the independence ending because yesman seems like he's gonna go skynet on the west coast, like i find kicking out all the imperialist factions to be ideal but I don't think letting yesman reprogram itself to be more assertive to be a good idea. i would of loved a followers of the apocalypse ending, they are the only people in the entire game that seem to not be drug addicted, history larping, jerkoffs. hell a lot of the factions should of gotten their own ending if the legion got one, brotherhood, enclave, powdergangers, khans, and boomers could of gotten their own endings and then the game would be less of a political compass the game and more dnd alignment the game. and for everyone saying i hate new vegas, i dont, it was goty for the year it was relased and maybe a few after but i just got done playing it and i can confidently say i am never going to pick it up again.

        • RION [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          FWIW Josh Sawyer has confirmed that "more assertive" means not blindly obeying the first person who gives him an order when the Courier isn't looking. That's the authorial intent, at least.

        • aynranddouchebag [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          where did they get all the used sports equipment then? surely the number of guns in modern day america outnumbers the number of football helmets. not even joking here, the numbers just dont add up.

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          It’s also important to note the Legion aren’t AnPrims who hate guns,

          I thought there was a bit in the lore about them actively rejecting firearms as part of their martial death cult ideology. I think Honest Hearts goes into that, where the other courier tricked a tribe into using a cache of firearms to wipe out another tribe that was resisting the Legion, despite knowing that this would result in the Legion rejecting and enslaving or exterminating the tribe he manipulated?

    • RION [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The robots already lasted 200 years without their primary weapons, and unless the player destroys them there's a whole army of the things underneath Fortification Hill. Independent Vegas should have no issue from any invader that could be realistically thrown at them

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The NCR has a lot going on outside of the Mojave and without the threat of anyone else making their own incursion they don't have any major reason to fully incorporate the Mojave. They could provide whatever degree of infrastructure is necessary but their center is still Shady Sands in California and after taking Hoover Dam and its ability to generate electricity they have next to no reason to do much for actual people of the Mojave.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah, you're totally right on that. There really isn't any option that is actually good for the average person in the Mojave. That being said, I think the fact that we had this discussion disproves OPs point about the end being a PCM meme.

                • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  There isn't really a proletariat class for the most part on Fallout. It seems like somehow every manufactured good is either prewar or hand made with few exceptions. This makes absolutely no sense at all but we're gonna have to go with it cause that's the games. I could see more of a bourgeois revolution happening where alliances of rich traders would supplant the power of the NCR government. I think the raw means of survival are too scarce for the general populace to revolt, someone still has to handle the death claws.

                    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      I'd have to see some interior NCR during the time of New Vegas to be sure what the deal is, there are definitely proles but I wouldn't really say there is a proletariat majority, most people are still subsistence farming or in sort of a cross between an old West village and a small early agrarian society at the same time, and of course there's rudimentary trade. The Fallout world is almost totally predicated on everyone doing stuff that makes no sense so it's hard to get a full grasp on the situation.

                        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
                          ·
                          4 years ago

                          Could be, the rate things progressed between Fallout one and 2 it's a big maybe. With working pre war tech seeming to still be the best stuff around it's a bit of a weird scenario where salvage seems more valuable than actual production from raw material. The economics of Fallout make no sense whatsoever so it's hard to examine things this closely before there either isn't enough information or the world falls apart logically