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Hot take but I think New Vegas' overarching narrative post guy who shot you in the head is overrated at best, lib at its worst. Caesar's Legion is the worst written faction in the game and is basically your Bethesda edgy faction that you can pick for your "evil" play through (yeah I went there).
NCR is the best written faction in the game but the problem is that (probably due to the 18 month development cycle) they don't actually have any real opponents besides edgy skirt boys who enslave women and a geriatric computer screen with mega death robots.
If the people at Obsidian truly wanted to write a compelling anti-imperialist work they would have never written Mr. House and Caesar they way they did. If a work doesn't have communism as its answer to fascism then the work itself is fascist (liberalism is just the moderate wing of fascism). The easy fix for this would to not give the geriatric elon musk a mega death army of super robots and instead actually have him strategize and pit the two major factions against each other. Then whatever choices you made in his questline would be more meaningful than cleaning up trash since he would actually have a stake in them. Like stories need to have tension in them.
Caeser's legion is the dumb. Completely scrap that idea. No, having a purely "eeeevillll" faction in your post-post apocalypse sci-fi is a liberal power fantasy about "hooman-nature."
Just make the faction that competes with the NCR a result of blowback from their war crimes and corruption, that's literally all you have to do. Just make the story that the NCR bullied and oppressed ethnic minorities in Nevada (this is in the base game as well) and so they all banded together (a la, putting aside cultural differences and adopting 1 banner sorta like the legion) and sought help from a neighboring superpower in Arizona/New Mexico and Mr. House. Then you can write conflict about unresolved tensions within the united tribes or tension between their backers (regional superpower from abroad or Mr. House's ulterior motives). They feel trapped because they need the support in order to do intifada and push the NCR out completely so the player character has to resolve these tensions but since they are fighting for the underdog they wouldn't be as materially supported as they would be in the NCR + having to deal with NCR rangers trying to kill them all game.
You choose the liberal democracy NCR as the "bad/lazy" option where you have to pick up their slack for them (and also do some fun ethnic cleansing). The exchange is that you materially benefit from the NCR's projected power and resources in the region (making the game easier in a brutal way), but not much else while they do imperialism and try to replicate amerikkka and the game would force you to confront the consequences of the NCR and implicate you in their crimes.
The NCR's biggest enemy is themselves and the game does a pretty good job of telling you why and how. If the courier doesn't solo carry the NCR and do all it's dirty work it's assumed the Mojave chapter either gets owned or will likely spread itself wayyyy too thin. The NCR makes its own enemies and there's no need for a comparable faction to resent them.
There's a list of factions that NCR oppose (Khan's, Followers, BOS, the independent towns) mainly due to NCR's aggressive expansionism however writing them in a way to band together would probabaly be ridiculous but it can be done through an independent playthrough
The point is that it is ridiculous. That should be the driving conflict of the game and not american liberals vs. Retvrn Primitivst death cult vs. Donald Trump with robots.
The other regional superpower is used to legitimize the struggle and force the tribes to work together. But then the conflict arises from people worrying that this new superpower would just replace the NCR's imperialist ambitions.
New Vegas has lib brainworms that people just choose to ignore because its overshadowed by the world building and sub-narratives.
No, having a purely "eeeevillll" faction in your post-post apocalypse sci-fi is a liberal power fantasy about "hooman-nature."
no, its a way to lampoon fascism by showing how comically evil it is. and is especially effective in post-apocalyptic settings because fascists love talking about how everyone else would be "too weak" in that sort of situation.
Also just look at how many fuckers online fully bought into it and argue it's amazing because "human nature" and "best outcome for the wasteland"
I find that a weak justification for shallow writing. Like the writers couldn't think of a system beyond liberal democracy so they imagine a group that does genocide and slavery and think that's clever. Or just a capitalist with a soulless machine army.
Caeser legion type factions only work in post Apocalypse settings (like the super mutants in Fallout 1 who were better written because the goal of that game was to survive in a wasteland not meant for humans) but New Vegas styles itself as a post-post apocalypse narrative about imperialism so groups like the legion are borderline harmful. There were plans to more fully flesh out the faction by being able to go to their settlements so I think there's a possibility that the caricature of fascism that liberals dream about wasn't going to be in the final game.
I mean, yeah, It’s lazy writing when there’s no other alternatives so it’s portrayed as the only option other than liberal “democracy”, but if it was a setting that also had actually good factions like anarchist or communist groups, it would be a reasonable writing decision
I do agree to a point that the late game plot is kinda meh and lib, but generally expecting a pro-communist message, from Fallout? The series was at best anti-capitalist and sneering at McCarthyism, but NEVER actually leftist, just generally nihilist in an "everybody sucks, all systems are equally bad" way.
I love NV (and FO 1 and 2) but the writers have always been this particular flavor of "end of history" lib