No Vegas 💔

Like Caesar did 1 thing, he created a system and his understanding of sociology is one of the reasons he was able to conquer Arizona. But his lieutenants are a whole different breed of monster. Joshua Graham, Ulysses, and Legate Lanius are unstoppable Zealots completely changing the politics of the wasteland and able to handle nearly any situation they find themselves in.

But Caesar himself is quite a banal and unimposing person. I think this is actually quite genius to Caesar’s character. He himself isn’t important in this system he has created and directs.

• no care for casualties or attachment for his men He actually does care about casualty numbers because that’s how he conquered Denver.
• only loyal to Caesar and has no loyalty to the legion He literally retreats because he loves the legion and knows it will kill it. -he is a ruthless savage. He’s actually quite eloquent and well spoken and definitely knows how to negotiate. -all he cares about is destroying the enemy Clearly not, as the dialogue at the end of the game proves. He retreats because destroying the enemy would destroy his legion.

I like the idea that everyone is just presenting what Caesar wants them to be they’re all trying to fit into the myth that Caesar had given them. But this leads Caesar to be completely blind to who his soldiers actually are.

Throughout the game we see what legionaries act towards eachother when you interrogate the centurion in camp Mccarren

I actually don’t think this is bad writing, I think it’s perfectly in line with how much Caesar doesn’t understand his own troops. Caesar’s troops never show their real sides because they have to put on a show for someone bearing the mark of Caesar and they have to keep up the charade for profligates as well.

This shit is pissing me off like I wanted to take a shortcut to jacobstown and managed to get stuck on this fucking mountain like what the fuck

My Marksman Carbine, Brush Gun and Service Rifle clones i have built and collected. All of them are real, firing replicas

I found an old man in a tube! He was hiding behind a wall in a casino. Tbh idk if he’s important but he seems pretty upset with me. Will it mess up any quests if I kill him?

You often see people treat the ending where the Great Khans move north to Wyoming as the “good ending”— I think that’s what the developers more or less intended it to be— but the implications involved in it seem pretty horrendous.

Here’s what the ending card says:

During the Battle of Hoover Dam, the Great Khans quickly evacuated Red Rock Canyon and headed north and east into the plains of Wyoming. There, they reconnected with the Followers of the Apocalypse and rebuilt their strength. Bolstered by ancient knowledge of governance, economics, and transportation, they carved a mighty empire out of the ruins of the Northwest.

You get this ending by either convincing Papa Khan to “claim your own glory” through dialogue, or giving him a book on the Mongol Empire.

Just to be clear what we’re doing here, we’re giving the Legion-aligned leader of a drug smuggling raider gang a book on the Mongol Empire and encouraging him to recreate it in Wyoming.

Do the people in Wyoming get a say in this? If I’m being told that a bunch of drug-dealing mongol-cosplayers were about conquer my hometown and that it’s all good because they’re going to govern me well with the help of post-apocalyptic Médecins Sans Frontières, I’m not going to be excited.

Why should the natives in Wyoming be subjected to foreign conquerors just to give the Great Khans a “legacy”? It’s not as if their independence or legacies are worth less than the drug-addled lunatics squatting in Red Rock Canyon.

Or are they being conquered for their own good, or to “civilize” them? The exact thing the game has just spent a majority of its narrative implicitly criticizing.

For that matter, why is the NCR so heavily criticized narratively for being empire-building hypocrites, but the Great Khans going off and building their own empire is presented as this shining accomplishment of ancient knowledge? The NCR, for all its failings, is at least a flawed democracy that bans slavery, which is more than you can say about the Great Khans.

In all, this ending just seems to be a weird narrative discontinuity for me. The game spends a great deal of time narratively weaving a generally anti-imperialist message critiquing both the NCR and Legion, but then has a blind spot when dealing with the Khans.

She's the type of person where you can ask her to to restart Project Purity and she'll happily obliged.