Ramblings on playing Fallout New Vegas again

[Grizzly]

There’s an old 4chan meme floating around of “Sir Bearington”. It’s a re-telling of an older story that gets posted around the internet in D&D circles atleast once per year.

FNV is also 10 years now.

Let’s go!

For this playthrough I used the excellent Viva New Vegas mod guide as a baseline, as well as adding a few extra mods from PushTheWinButton, Miguick, and JazzIsParis on top. Last but not least, I installed the Brave New World mod, which revoices a lot of NPCs so they all sound a lot more varied now.

Tag Skills:
Speech & Sneak - Bearington has to pass as a human, which requires a lot of deception.
Survival - Bearington is a bear, and in the original myth a druid’s animal companion.
Traits:
Good Natured - Lady Bearington is a bear who is trying to adapt to society, Hermit and the Bear style, so the usual ursine solutions will not apply here. Constructive skills + 5, destructive skills -5
Heavy Handed - That being said, she is still a bear. +20% standard melee damage, -60% critical hit damage
Hoarder - FNV starts in October, which, although we are in a desert, does mean that that whole “stock up for hibernation” thingy is a concern. Extra carry weight, but -25% to AP regen when below a certain weight treshold.

Incidentally this ends up as a rather opposite build of when I first played and finished FNV: That build leaned heavily on “Sniper Nerd”, and during that playthrough I barely spoke to or interacted with the NCR at all. Now, becuase of the obvious connection between the character, the fashion and my personal brand, it seems inevitable that the NCR will be favored through this playthrough.

My reputation with RPGs is a troublesome one: I often end up fussing over tiny details, modding the game to hell and back, never being completely satisifed with my build, my chosen direction, or basically anything. I’ve been playing for a couple of weeks again, never really progressing past the midgame simply because there’s always been a thing I felt not ok with.

Now, by using a solid mod guide and writing down my progress, mabye I’ll do again what I did 8 years ago: Finish FNV. Once again, I find myself wandering into the desert…

[Grizzly]

I quite like Barton Thorn’s quest. It’s one of the first ones you get, it’s entirely unmarked, with you just following the directions he gives you. And…

Ah yes, the way humans live: Lies, trickery, gratitious violence and alcohol abuse.

[Grizzly]

Ugh, I really appreciate what the Brave New World mod tried to do here, but did they have to change the scripts?

[Grizzly]

FNV introduces its main factions quite well. The game’s first real quest has you choosing between the small town of Goodsprings and a couple of Powder Gangers*. Where in Fallout 4 the first people adhering to a cause are the Minutemen, who evoke the myth of American Colonialism and the patriotic ideals of the US, the first people with firepower you meet in FNV are the result of a US-style government’s incompetence and its own moral failures: The use of slave labour (yes, prison labour is slave labour and no I’m not going to argue this with you, it says so right there in the US constitution) is its moral failure, giving people with a violent past explosives without considering that they might want to use them is the other. When you meet the NCR proper, they have fallen back behind a bridge and can’t do anything except waiting for reinforcements to help them contain the tide of convicts their incompetence has released. When you help them they pay you not in money but in “lost supplies”. The NCR still upholds the values of liberal democracy, but it is clearly operating beyond it’s capability and it is both letting down the people it wants to help, and comes across as utterly overbearing to those who it can. This is supposed to be the good guy faction, and its failings are laid bare for everyone to see. Later you find out that the issues are in part because General Oliver is digging in at Hoover Dam at the exclusion of anything else.

If you get to Mojave Outpost, which you will if you intend to help Primm, you can meet a Ranger who can’t go and see what all those fires in Nipton are about, and as such has to ask you. If you don’t get there, you often just pass through Nipton anyway**.

Oh dear.
So yep, there’s the Legion.

The Powder Gangers that have given you so much trouble in the previous segment are all dead. Lashed to a cross, whilst the corpses of the town’s inhabitants lie everywhere. Where the NCR throughout the game presents itself as the compassionate yet inefficient fighting force, legion is brutal and (supposedly) efficient. There’s a lot of showmanship here too, ofc. Vulpes says that all the brutality here is to show the world that this is what the Legion does to criminals. If it were 2012, when I first played this game, I would be interested by this evil faction. I would be interested in hearing them out, see their motivations. But it’s no longer 2012. I tell Vulpes that his crimes are unforgivable.
His reply is simple: “As are all crimes. If you feel strongly about it, attack us and you soon won’t feel a thing”.

It should also be noted here that Vulpes lies to you: He has a long rant about how nobody resisted them, simply let themselves be executed without a sign of resisting, hoping that a lottery ticket that granted them their freedom would come up. Yet there are signs of resistance scattered throughout the town. Vulpes is simply so confident in the might of the Legion, in his own might, that he thinks himself untouchable.
Funnily enough, there’s a challenge for killing 20 named members of the Legion with NCR armenent, like the one I just got in a “lost supply package” alongside 72 rounds of AP.

Goodbye fascist scum.

Also, small spoiler: As soon as Caesar finds out you can do something very important for him, he explicitly forgives you for killing one of his top lieutenants. You can join the Legion after this and become its right hand. Even as Vulpes dies he may believe that ruin will come to those who opposed him, but… It doesn’t.

*Incidentally, why would you ever want to side with the Powder Gangers? Goodsprings’ doctor literally saved your life. It’s not as absurd as “Do I detonate a nuclear warhead inside a town full of people I have only just met for money” but damn.
** Although you can cross the extremely dangerous I-15 passage through the two stealth boys you can find in Goodsprings.

[Skalpadda]

I demand updates.

[Grizzly]

Updates will be infrequent, but did you know that nearly all quest names in Fallout: New Vegas are named after songs? This is one of them.

[sonson]

I wish the Legion were representative of the Hegelian Idelogy Caesar espouses and not just fascists in shite cosplay. There’s just no argument for siding with them besides “I’m a cunt”

[ToomuchFluffy]

Yes, but that is what I will do once I replay it. Hopefully I can get into the right attitude to actually have fun with it. I’m guessing it’s best to not take it too seriously and try to enjoy how you suddenly have a whole new aspect of the game open up. Though I don’t know how well FNV really supports “evil” playthroughs.

[Internet]

Ah yes, the way humans live: Lies, trickery, gratitious violence and alcohol abuse.

The Hobbesian argument that any sort of order is better than chaos will always win converts. I really don’t think that there’s nearly that sort of argument to be made once they’re fighting the NCR.

[Grizzly]

Fun fact: The dutch fascist leader Thierry Baudet also espouses Hegel from time to time, seems to be popular amongst the far-right to use philosophy as a shield for brutality. Atleast he knows how to dress.

[Grizzly]

Anyway I’m a cannibal now.

Rather then pushing on after Prim, I decide to loop back a bit. The Mojave Outpost’s personnel are extremely distraught by American Democracy the NCR being unable to formulate a response against the rise of fascism the Legion’s raids. Nobody really cares about Nipton which apperently was a “shithole”, they’re just mad that the Legion can reach out this far.

[Grizzly]

I’ve pushed on to Novac from Nipton, whilst generally settling things in favour of the NCR alongst the way. I dislike how doing so kinda ruins my own narrative about the NCR: It turns out they are surprisingly capable, they just needed the right person to come along and give them a push in the right direction.

That being said, Primm being under NCR rule is considered the “least good” outcome by the locals, on account of them having to pay taxes and all. And as much as the NCR prides itself on being a liberal democracy, (almost) all of your dealings are with its own authoritarian power structure: That of it’s military. NCR rule to primm is not the kind they get in California, it’s martial law.

[Grizzly]

Caught up with the Khans, in a standoff with the NCR. Since I’ve been dumping points into sneak and speech I could just negotiate a non-violent solution, which was… well, it’s a bit simple. Then again, I’m paying for that by not actually being any good in combat.

[Grizzly]

heh, I’m discovering the NCR camps around New Vegas and yeah, I’ve never really paid much mind to this before. There’s a whole lot of characters here that are interesting, I’ve never dealt with first recon or the fiends, and still haven’t been to Jacobstown (skipped Black Mountain too, actually).

[icemann]

If your still playing in a month. Add on the Frontier mod which should be out by then.

[Grizzly]

Not only do we have a fascist dictatorship looming over everyone, not only do we have a power-hungry democracy with all of its trappings, we also have a techbro who claims to have the solution to it all.
Meet Mr. House

And he’s not very happy with me.

The thing is, after my “peaceful intentions” play through got a bit interrupted by me first taking steps to support the prison-industrial complex by taking out those who stood up in rebellion of it (tbf they did openly proclaim that them just taking what they want from others was the way forwards) and a brief bout of anti-fascism where I save the aforementioned rebels from being enslaved by the legion…

… I ended up in the lovely town of Novac.

t has a few lovely locals, they even gave me a free motel room which I can use indefinitely (I didn’t have the dialogue option to tell them that doing that means it’s no longer a motel) because I helped out with some cattle problems. Look at this collection of bears:

Turns out that these lovely people have some more problems, apperently some ghouls have taken residence in the local Repconn factory that is the town’s main source of income. As the lovely Jeannie May Crawford tells me:

… Ok? That’s a bit agressive, but okay. I’ll go and see what the issue is.

Come fly with me is FNV’s first designed quest, and it does kinda show. Novac and the Repconn factory have a significant amount of characters that aren’t “Right in the head”, the resolution of the quest doesn’t tie into anything related to the game’s grander politics nor does it have any lasting consequences in terms of plot. It’s a very simple “Go from point a to b” quest, with player choice revolving around whether or not the player decides to use stealth - which is, well, also more or less down to whether or not the player decided to invest in stealth, although there’s plenty of stealth boys around. Anyway, I manage to get the ghouls to leave - which as it turns out was their entire point for being there in the first place! Everybody lives, everybody is ha–*

… sigh

This town, incidentally, has two murder mysteries to solve, which I promptly do. Ofc, there is now a third murder mystery as a result of me resolving the second, but errrrr
Look I didn’t pull the trigger it’s fine.
Also look at this collection of bears

Anyway, as you may have noticed, there’s been quite a bit of death and happenings around. People who want other people dead for petty concerns like “stranger danger” and “This lady keeps saying Vegas is a nicer place then this town!”. So when I finally catch up to Benny, after a long time of travelling where I have seen the worst of humanity, I … just can’t really find it in my heart to do anything to him. I let him go.

5 seconds later

sigh

Anyway, Mr. House isn’t happy becuase I let Benny go. He assumes that I still want the platinum chip becuase of ironclad reasoning:

Yes, Mr. House arguments to try and stop me from walking away is “You signed a contract”. Fucking Libertarians. He also makes a note of me visiting the world he has created, and see what it has to offer.

Incidentally it’s frustrating how Mr. House seems dependant entirely on the player character to actually get his plans along. The game leaves so much room for you as a player to change your mind and choose a different faction throughout the game, but that does mean that you are basically the entire agency that these factions have.

This is the outside of Vault 22. An entire community of people lived here. When Mr. House woke up from his 200 year long slumber, he had the entire community evicted and filled the place up with concrete. The only resident remaining, trying to make the best of what she’s got, is there because she suffers from agoraphobia and as such can’t easily just leave.

Back in Goodsprings, Doc Mitchell mentions “I know what it is like, having something taken from you”. He’s vague on the details, but this is what that is. His entire life was taken away, and it’s a gift shop now.

Oh, and the Legion told me this:

Cool, that means I can visit Legion encampments again. Useful, becuase I’ve been told that there’s a family being turned to slavery in Cottonwood Cove, and I can now get in close…

[Grizzly]

[Internet]

Thinking about Caesar again really put me in mind of the Fremen mirage series from acoup. It really shows Caesar’s hypocrisy through and through. Why would anyone consider a slave-holding society less decadent than a capitalist collection of semi-independent farmers?

I would love a follow up somewhere about the NCR slowly incorporating all of Caesar’s lands. Also, fuck the Great Khans. They’re shitty murderers with the pretension of nobility.

[Grizzly]

They’re shitty murderers with the pretension of nobility.

I would like to point out that this is true for almost all the factions , no matter how much Bitter Root says it was justified, plenty of civvie slaughtering and screwing people over that the NCR does.

[LexW]

Why would anyone consider a slave-holding society less decadent than a capitalist collection of semi-independent farmers?

To be fair, this is pretty much exactly what the actual Romans thought about societies which were less slave-centric than them - that they were decadent and hopeless, and probably in need of a good conquering. Also the Spartans were possibly the most slave-centric society that’s ever existed as it’s own thing (with something like an 1:8 Spartan:Helot ratio - the Romans never really went beyond 1:0.8 Roman:Slave - though specific places in the 1700s and very early 1800s weren’t far from the Spartan ratio - French Haiti was similar I think), and pretty much all the ever talked about was how “decadent” everyone else was, like all the time. Why? Because in order to keep control of a society where they were vastly outnumbered by slaves, they had to have an incredibly vicious military which trained almost constantly, and consisted of a very large proportion of their adult males which, ironically, lead to them giving women a lot more rights and generally a bit more respect than, say, the incredibly misogynistic yet somehow still hen-pecked Romans. Re: the latter the Roman senate once tried to enforce sumptuary - i.e. consumption-based - rules which limited what clothes people, especially women, could wear (to basically boring/cheap stuff). This lasted like, a month, before half the wives of the senators and women of Rome generally rioted and apparently literally beat up the senators (the Praetorian Guard refused to intervene, probably laughing too hard) until they revoked the laws and some other bad laws. Somehow the managed to get even more misogynistic and homophobic when Christianity took over too, which was kind of an achievement.

Plus, the Greeks in general were obsessed with how “decadent” the Persians were, who, by literally any rational measure of decadence, vastly less decadent than the Greeks.

I guess “decadent” is just some bullshit people pull out whenever they don’t like that a stable and civilized society appears to be doing as well as or better than them without doing the horrific things they’re doing.