FO: NV (Spoilers)

[Tale]

Caesar is anything but greedy.

[WorstUsernameEver]

What's so greedy about Caesar? Him and his Legionnaires certainly don't live in luxury or anything like that. His plan is pretty stupid, but you can't argue that he does it out of greed.

[Pop]

As I understand it, Caesar aims for a Hegelian synthesis. I haven't gotten the dialog, but the way it's been explained to me, Caesar surmises that by conquering the NCR, the Legion will gain its strengths but not its weaknesses - the rank brutality of the Legion will be tempered by the NCR's liberal Republican ideals, but unlike the NCR the Legion will be efficient, functional, and capable of holding territory and ensuring its safety (many characters, including Raul and the Arizonan / New Mexican trader at the Fort, emphasize how exceptionally safe Legion interior territories are). In this, the Legion is principled in a way that the NCR isn't - for all its high-minded ideals, none of the NCR brass seem terribly interested in living up to their promises so much as they are in building a territorial empire. Caesar's an idealist - he wants to purify the NCR, and it's hard to argue against the notion that the NCR needs purifying. Nearly everyone you meet in a position of power in the NCR (above the Rangers, who all seem fairly sensible but at the end of the day are soldiers under orders) is petty, shortsighted, or buffoonish. In the cases of the McCarran scientist and Fantastic at HELIOS One, you see how careerist dickheads ignore reason and take credit for other people's work and are rewarded for it. The top brass are cronies of the President, who himself is a stereotypical politician, advocating terrible policies and carelessly throwing the grunts of his army into the meat grinder while he goes around making treacly, pointless speeches and currying favor with idiot citizens who don't particularly know or care about how ****ed the NCR's situation really is (none other than Mr. House pegs the NCR as being primarily concerned with comfort and indulgence, and he's an astute dude). The Legion encroaches heavily into NCR territory and they don't even seem to notice. Such dysfunction in the Legion would result in crucifixion or worse, in a very short amount of time. Playing the game for the first time you get the feeling that the NCR is hopelessly outmatched unless you personally carry them to victory, at which point they will promptly forget about you and continue to gleefully make a mess of everything they touch.

 

Before I knew about Caesar's plan (if you can call it that), the Speech victory you can pull over on Legate Lanius when not fighting on behalf of the Legion seemed sort of abrupt and nonsensical, but in the proper context it makes perfect sense - you essentially challenge the dialectic and convince Lanius that contrary to what Caesar believes / believed, conquering the NCR will corrupt the Legion and all the systemic problems that the NCR faces will persist in the new order. So Lanius goes back to Arizona until such a time when the Legion is truly capable of bringing functional civilization to the wastes.

 

The character of Caesar is written by John Gonzalez but the dialectical reasoning is apparently all Sawyer's work. Positing the NCR as the Greece to the Legion's Rome is pretty damn clever, and I think outside of things like quest counts and the like, the Legion is pretty underrated as far as commentary about the game goes. As an ideological counterpoint to the NCR they serve their purpose and then some.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Pop

[MrBrown]

If I remember correctly, Caesar also aims to create a civilization that lasts. As he sees it, the NCR functioned best when it was still a de facto dictatorship under Tandi, and it's pre-war values of democracy and western individualism will eventually destroy it, like it destroyed the pre-war world. What Caesar is creating is a nation that values the whole over the individual.

 

I still gotta check that speech victory over Lanius, though.

[Starwars]

The problem is that very little of what the Legion wants bleeds over into A) what we see the Legion doing and B) even what NPCs have to say.

 

Basically all the "flesh" of the Legion is explained by Caesar in one speech to the player. Aside from that, all you see of the Legion are basically ****-moves, evil-ish NPCs and so forth. It's never really explained what the Legion is doing in the lands it has already conquered. We know it's "safe", that's all. Is it safe through the Legion instilling fear in its citizens or are the conquered lands less brutal? Also, I think a lot of Caesar's supposed wit and intelligence kinda flies out the window when it's revealed that Lanius is the successor should Caesar die. Really? Lanius?

 

We see only the warfront of the Legion, all the rest of it just does not get through to the player which makes it rather hard to make an informed choice at all. Aside from the Roman cosplaying, I think the Legion has fascinating parts of it (especially considering this is a wasteland) but it is just not explained *nearly* enough in the game. It really needed fleshing out.

[pmp10]

What's so greedy about Caesar? Him and his Legionnaires certainly don't live in luxury or anything like that. His plan is pretty stupid, but you can't argue that he does it out of greed.

Simple - he wants New Vegas.

He admits it himself that for all the territory he captured the legion still lacks a capital.

Apparently building one (like a proper tyrant) is out of a question.

In the end even tho he belives NCR is doomed he will fight it for New Vegas for the same reason NCR entred the area - greed.

 

As I understand it, Caesar aims for a Hegelian synthesis. I haven't gotten the dialog, but the way it's been explained to me, Caesar surmises that by conquering the NCR, the Legion will gain its strengths but not its weaknesses - the rank brutality of the Legion will be tempered by the NCR's liberal Republican ideals, but unlike the NCR the Legion will be efficient, functional, and capable of holding territory and ensuring its safety (many characters, including Raul and the Arizonan / New Mexican trader at the Fort, emphasize how exceptionally safe Legion interior territories are).

Except Caesar says nearly none of that.

All he believes is that it is inevitable for NCR to fall and legion to triumph due to superior morality.

There never seems to be any further planning on his part.

The character of Caesar is written by John Gonzalez but the dialectical reasoning is apparently all Sawyer's work. Positing the NCR as the Greece to the Legion's Rome is pretty damn clever, and I think outside of things like quest counts and the like, the Legion is pretty underrated as far as commentary about the game goes. As an ideological counterpoint to the NCR they serve their purpose and then some.

For legion to be ideologically opposed to NCR it would need to have an ideology. All that legion is presented in game is a martial society with absolute rule.

And if the in-game situation is a form of analogy to ancient battles between Greece and Rome then it's a very poor one.

To buy it you would need to believe that Greek influence irrevocably poisoned roman civilization but need to wait 1500 years for it to fall.

If I remember correctly, Caesar also aims to create a civilization that lasts.

The biggest problem with the legion is that it builds no civilization at all.

In essence they are a nomadic army carving an empire that will have absolutely no basis for existence save for the savagery of it's warriors.

Civilization is far more than armies, but we see no laws or institutions in the legion.

Nor is there any evident building of infrastructure. Ancient roman legions spent good deal of time building roads - do you honestly see Legate Lanius inspecting someone

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I think it would really have helped if the Legion were less 'graah har har we kill people and take slaves' throughout the game. Nipton at least had an eery sense of an invisible hand dictating what happened. One problem might be that you don't really get a lot of mouths for the Legion compared to the NCR, etc.

 

Civilization is far more than armies, but we see no laws or institutions in the legion.

 

We see very strict set of rules in the Legion, actually. Whereas with the NCR you have bureaucracy and knowing noncompliance.

[Humanoid]

I know I'm miles (or ~2.5 weeks) behind everyone else, but anyway - finally got into The Strip about 25 hours and 15 levels in. Sort of regret it now, out of momentum after executing Benny - I'd been playing it all Charles Bronson so now my character doesn't really have a purpose. "Killed" Yes Man for being complicit (being 100% unforgiving is an everpresent trait of almost all my characters), went up to see House and ended up killing him too for trying to rush my decision (I thought I'd be able to do the usual "I'll think about your offer" response).

 

 

So yeah, now feeling kind of aimless and tempted to start afresh with a different concept, probably a more self-serving one.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Humanoid

[WorstUsernameEver]

Yes Man can't die. Just sayin'.

[Humanoid]

That's why I put "killed" in quotation marks. But I assume that's just an 'out' to prevent an unfinishable state so not particularly relevant in terms of the denouement.

[Tale]

Caesar doesn't want Vegas out of greed. He wants it because he conquers, and he conquers for strength. Caesar believes in, if I were to slim it down, two things. Strength and an extreme collectivism. The Hegelian synthesis theory is pretty much exactly spelled out by Caesar. He says exactly that.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Tale

[Pop]

The problem is that very little of what the Legion wants bleeds over into A) what we see the Legion doing and B) even what NPCs have to say.

 

Basically all the "flesh" of the Legion is explained by Caesar in one speech to the player. Aside from that, all you see of the Legion are basically ****-moves, evil-ish NPCs and so forth. It's never really explained what the Legion is doing in the lands it has already conquered. We know it's "safe", that's all. Is it safe through the Legion instilling fear in its citizens or are the conquered lands less brutal? Also, I think a lot of Caesar's supposed wit and intelligence kinda flies out the window when it's revealed that Lanius is the successor should Caesar die. Really? Lanius?

 

We see only the warfront of the Legion, all the rest of it just does not get through to the player which makes it rather hard to make an informed choice at all. Aside from the Roman cosplaying, I think the Legion has fascinating parts of it (especially considering this is a wasteland) but it is just not explained *nearly* enough in the game. It really needed fleshing out.

That's kind of the whole thing about it, everything depends on Caesar. Marcus points out that the legionaries follow Caesar and Caesar follows his principles. His take on it is fairly accurate. If you save Caesar from his imminent natural death he should stand a chance of seeing his vision through.

 

Again, I think the Legion is a perfect counterpoint to the NCR. They're essentially the mirror opposite of the NCR - on first glance, the NCR looks pretty great, the only choice really, but the closer you look and the farther you get into bed with them, that greatness starts to become pretty uncertain. They're not white knights.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Pop

[Pop]

The character of Caesar is written by John Gonzalez but the dialectical reasoning is apparently all Sawyer's work. Positing the NCR as the Greece to the Legion's Rome is pretty damn clever, and I think outside of things like quest counts and the like, the Legion is pretty underrated as far as commentary about the game goes. As an ideological counterpoint to the NCR they serve their purpose and then some.

For legion to be ideologically opposed to NCR it would need to have an ideology. All that legion is presented in game is a martial society with absolute rule.

And if the in-game situation is a form of analogy to ancient battles between Greece and Rome then it's a very poor one.

To buy it you would need to believe that Greek influence irrevocably poisoned roman civilization but need to wait 1500 years for it to fall.

Rome's "Golden Age" was ushered in by the assimilation (and to some extent, adaptation) of all things Greek into a new, greater society. It was Horace who wrote, when Rome had usurped the mantle of power from Greece, "Graecia capta ferum victorim cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio", which translates to "Conquered Greece has conquered the brute victor and brought her arts into rustic Latium". What Caesar wants is for the conquered NCR to conquer the Legion through her more noble (and unrealized) aspects.

[Monte Carlo]

You're missing the point, The Legion is either (a) a hardcore LARPing / re-enactor cult gone badly wrong, or (b) a bunch of guys who like dressing in leather skirts, because that's how they roll or © the survivors of a vault where the only entertainment was a stack of holodiscs of old sword and sandals epics.

[Pop]

You've just described every standing army on Earth.

 

The notion that the Legion is too extreme for its core ideals to be taken seriously is a legitimate position to take, but you can't ignore the fact that they have those ideals. It's another one of the ways in which the Legion is a counterpoint to the NCR - The NCR would like to believe that a post-apocalyptic society can take on all the vestiges of the societies that directly predated the end of the world, whereas the Legion treats the nuclear holocaust as essentially a reset button on history. The Legion is a martial, imperialistic society made up of united or conquered agrarian / hunter-gatherer tribes, just as civilizations were thousands of years ago. It stands to reason that the Legion is more honest about circumstances than the NCR ultimately are - Marx and others posited that true liberty could only be realized in a post-industrial society, and the post-apocalyptic world is quasi-industrial - technology exists but it is scarce to some degree, and thus the NCR has to constantly expand in order to sustain itself. The Legion, on the other hand, is doing just as much with less.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Pop

[Monte Carlo]

Alternatively, they just really dig leather skirts.

[sorophx]

Alternatively, they just really dig leather skirts.

my caps on that

[Hurlshort]

Just beat it, siding with Yes Man. I was actually not happy with the choices I made, so I'll have to go back a bit. I wanted to stick with House, but he went aggro when I didn't kill BoS and I decided to pull the plug. At that point I was going to feel bad if I didn't use my army or robots. I'll probably go back and side with the NCR, I wasn't comfortable kicking them out of the area.

 

I also was upset that I couldn't convince the Khans to not side with Caeser totally. I was vilified with the legion, and part of that quest required me to go into the Legion camp apparently. I convinced everyone but Regis to side with me, so that was lame.

[LadyCrimson]

The NCR are definitely not white hats & the Legion are not complete black hats. Nothing about the many social structure options of the world/history is ever that simple. Everyone has noble ideals....and the ideals don't usually sound bad on paper. I can almost always admire ideals for they are, after all, ideals. But it's the actual methods of trying to implement/enforce those ideals that decide me. I may love real Roman history and other similar societies - they are fascinating on many levels - but I wouldn't want to go back in time and live under it.

[LadyCrimson]

Side question: Did anyone side with Mr House and like his motivations? When I first played, for a long time I thought he was supposed to be sort of the good guy...but it seemed all he was motivated by was keeping his precious city safe/the way he wanted. Like he didn't care about the rest of the world. That didn't appeal to me either. Did he have any more depth than that, that I missed/didn't notice?

[Tigranes]

Just beat it siding with Yes-Man as well, clocked in at exactly 40 hours. Went with NCR all the way until the end though, protecting Kimball and letting General Lee go. The ending slides with different voices are a bit jarring, and it felt like the wasteland didn't change much, but that could have been my goodie good quest decisions. All in all awesome and goign to start again with explosive-happy Legion man as soon as I work up an XP nerf.

 

A couple of faction quests bugged out in the end where I accidentally had Hardin take over BOS and then all the dialogues went a bit odd, and similarly got the Khans to live but they 'suicide bombed' the Dam instead. Walked through the final battle encounter in full power armour and modded sniper rifle, one-shotting everyone except Lanius, who looks damn stupid in his helmet and Final Fantasy sword.

[sorophx]

I also was upset that I couldn't convince the Khans to not side with Caeser totally. I was vilified with the legion, and part of that quest required me to go into the Legion camp apparently.

not really, you just need to disgrace the LEgion's embassador in front of Papa Khan (use his diary) and you're done. you also need to save one guy, who's crucified near a legion camp, but there are no patrols nearby.

Side question: Did anyone side with Mr House and like his motivations? When I first played, for a long time I thought he was supposed to be sort of the good guy...but it seemed all he was motivated by was keeping his precious city safe/the way he wanted. Like he didn't care about the rest of the world. That didn't appeal to me either. Did he have any more depth than that, that I missed/didn't notice?

when you talk to Mr.House, he goes on about how he plans to restore the wasteland, launch a space mission, blah blah blah. apparently, he only does so if you open his sarcophagus

[Cantousent]

The Legion is a sort of idealized Roman movement, by which I mean the Legion is self idealized. As I read it, the devs didn't really intend to suggest that the Legion represents Rome. Rather, as it seems to me, the Legion patterns itself after Rome. The Legion makes a caricature of itself. If the devs intended to create such a caricature from an outside view, it would not only be flat, it would be pathetic.

 

With that in mind, I think Marcus has the best take in game when he points out that Caesar has the misguided goal of changing human nature. I don't know what can change the nature of a man, but I do know what can change the nature of mankind... nothing.

 

I enjoyed the Legion somewhat, but it didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped. On the other hand, I sided against it and I'm hoping I have a better view after I play the game again working more with the Legion.

[Tigranes]

I love how House had been painstakingly updating his own eulogy, he is really the king of nerds.

 

The Khan quest is excellent in that there are a huge variety of ways you can solve it, and you don't need to go to the Fort. If only its excellent variety didn't lead to an equal variety of bugs.

[MrBrown]

With that in mind, I think Marcus has the best take in game when he points out that Caesar has the misguided goal of changing human nature. I don't know what can change the nature of a man, but I do know what can change the nature of mankind... nothing.

 

 

I really enjoyed Marcus in FO:NV, him being his usual self. Very intelligent, but not a man of many words. I wonder who wrote Marcus for FO2 in the first place.