yes there are factions, and yes you can "work with" each faction. But, realistically and honestly, the game plays you down an NCR path in a similar way to the way FO3 played you down a BOS path. There is the illusion of choice, rather than true choice, is what I'm getting at. Maybe you can turn against them later.. but for the early half of the game, at least, if you're not questing for the NCR, then you're not doing b***er all.

(imo the whole faction thing is just a better "karma" system, rather than an actual two/five/ten faction choice and storyline. That stuff that was way over-hyped as far as I can tell. )

I think CL should really be expanded, there really is no choice, I even had Cass get upset and storm off because I wasnt playing nice with the NCR. Yeah CL are "Evil" but for the most part its blown out of proportion, the 'atrocities' they use to try to make you hate CL with early in the game is only a tactic, a terrorist tactic to weaken the morale of the NCR but a tactic none the less, its not standard policy. Usually they conscript the men for service in the legion and enslave the women, they dont normally just slaughter everything.

I haven't finished the game, but essentially we see the game from the west side of the Colorado river. That is, the NCR side. CL controls the other side. So in Bizarro Fallout: New Vegas we'd all be playing on the east side of the river and complaining about how there's no NCR around.

Just because you don't see endless hordes of Legion doesn't mean they aren't over there.

Exactly.

And, the fact that there are relatively few Legion quests is balanced out by the fact that there are vastly more NCR enemies to kill if you go an anti-NCR route.

You also get much better equipped killing NCR in the early game than you do killing Legion.

The game doesn't play the same siding with different factions. The side representing order has lots of specific jobs for you to do; the side representing chaos just wants you to go and slaughter their enemies. This makes sense. Roll with it.

I agree that the Legion shouldn't have as big of a presence as the NCR, but so far I have only found three, THREE, quests to do for them outside their main questline. The first one was from Vulpes Inculta in Nipton, which barely counts, go tell some NCR dude that [censored]'s goin down. Second I found was from Dead Sea, wipe out Camp Forlorn Hope, very simple. The third, again from Vulpes, was to go and warn some woman in the vault hotel, again very simple.

I found some Legion hideout in a mine though, near Camp Nelson. Had a Decanus (I assume) named Alexus down there which I could initiate dialouge with, but the only thing I could say was "I have to go". So, bugged NPC or what?

The only thing i wish they would have done was maybe expand more on the legion and show a town or two that they control. Instead of just having military bases show maybe how they will run a town, so i can get a better feel for how they would rule.

CL isn't small. The game doesn't take place in their territory is all.

it is a pain but it is biased if your villanised by them they send like a hit squad after you which i think is out of order it was your choice for them to hate you and then get forced to be good with them again it don't work like that

I agree.

You have choices and with those choices are consequences. If you side with the perceived sociopaths, you'll have fewer allies/quests. You can make up the skill points by killing countless NCR troops.

Go straight to the legion at the start. Then it's NCR ass kicking time the rest of the game.

I think joining CL means more about killing and looting bases to get experience than quests. I don't know; I completely see why some people would hate not having as many quests, but you certainly have more targets and bases to take over. So my conclusion is CL is about killing NCR, taking over bases and towns, and a few quests. Joining NCR is about doing quests and killing a few CL and looting pitiful camps.

If CL had just as many quests, then CL would be the "virtually only choice" you can make because the experience and loot would be so much better due to many more corpses to loot and bases to plunder. I completely agree there should be a few more quests for CL, but saying you basically have no choice and that the game is anywhere near "linear" is just foolish.

This is what I was thinking. I would love to see the wasteland, roughly, split down the middle, with CL occupying one half (or maybe 40%) and NCR the rest. Then when you did quests for a given faction, you ended up helping them expand into new territory. That would be sick.

This sort of thing is exactly why I'm glad to be a PC user. The modders in Morrowind and Oblivion were awesome with adding quests and factions, and I'm sure the modding communities for Fallout can really beef up the Caesar's Legion side of things if Bethesda doesn't do it first.

That would be.............Saints Row. :laugh:

I get the whole It takes place in NCR territory bit but that is absolutely no excuse for more missions. Why? Because I dont see how the Legion wouldn't want to conquer more territory, thereby offering quests to help them capture bases and cities. I mean it makes no sense for a Ranger base almost on top of Cottonwood, meanwhile no one offers a mission to take it out. Or heck, you know, Spying Missions?

Most of these excuses seem like cop out answers from NCR fans. I realize the faction has a long and erm.. "distinguished"? History in Fallout Lore, but its just bad RPG Design to make the game so one sided, even being in NCR Territory, its a front line and its Wartime, hoover dam shouldnt be the only place with problems.

I really like this idea, maybe it can be added in a DLC, here is hopping.

Great Idea!

Do any of you remember Fallout 2? In that game, the second town you got to (The Den) had a faction that was simply known as The Slavers that you could join. Joining the slavers also meant you were given a nice brand on your forehead marking you as a slaver, which in turn meant everyone knew you were a slaver. It was possible to complete the game as a slaver, but you missed a lot of content because most civilized NPCs refused to talk to you.

Joining Caesar's Legion is nothing different from that. You are openly admitting that you want to join a faction relying on Survival of the Fittest-ideals, slavery and bigotry and you are doing this while most of the play area is located in an area they are wanting to take over. New Vegas is not Fallout 3 and is far closer to Fallout 2 when it comes to maturity and consequences. This means that the game won't stop you from joining Caesar's Legion, but it also won't go out of its' way to make it easier to be the evil, upstart coming. In the end, the game let's you play either side or neither. Sure, NCR has more quests but it is also justified in-game.

What am I getting at? Take a look at the map of the Mojave Wasteland and how the different factions are divided there. The amount of space each gets is about equal to how many quests they have tied to them. Caesar's Legion is not only getting a small portion of the map, they are also the main antagonist of every other faction in the game. Of course you'll have a hard time being a CL-supporter. But that doesn't mean you have to work for the NCR.

I agree - the NCR's presence is unavoidable in the Wastes. I take their missions where they're offered, but they definitely outnumber missions from any other faction. In the very least, we should be grateful they're not being shoved down our throats as hard as the BoS was in F3.

At the moment, I'm on an "Accepted" basis with them, which is fine. I'm still Neutral with the Legion, and I'd like to make it to the end of the game with as many allies as possible.

So I went to the vault and checked out all the FNV side quests listed there, the Legion has 4 while the NCR has... 22! That aint fair. :thumbsdown:

My view on this is simple; it's meant to reflect how the 'common man' sees the Mojave.

The NCR are everywhere. They're a bunch of land-grabbing [CENSORED BY NCR] with their heads up their [CENSORED BY NCR] and even though they spend all day pretending to help people they don't give a [CENSORED BY NCR] about anyone but themselves. Oh, and if NCR try to censor the truth again I'll [CENSORED BY NCR.... STILL CENSORED.... OH DEAR GOD THAT'S CENSORED!] with golf balls.

More seriously, the NCR do have their fingers in all the pies; many in-game discussions point out that they are stretched so thin trying to cover everything, they don't have the time, resources or manpower to do any one thing right. For good or ill, no-one in the Mojave can escape the NCR, you included.

I bought him a pardon.

The game isn't overly biased. It's a representation of an area in which the Legion have very little influence, they're not a big faction, that's just the way it is. They're an invading force, so their camps are fewer... it's obvious from the start. Siding with them is adopting the challenge they face of encroaching on hostile territories. Don't like it, don't side with them.

I think a future expansion (or as people say these days DLC - the more we say DLC the more acceptable it seems to make them smaller) will focus on crossing the river and seeing some real hellish Legion territory.

My first game was with CL... Bad choice. Quit after I beat it because exploring svcked because so many locations were NCR and I got attacked everywhere. Now I am 42 hours into my second character, and being NCR is A LOT better.

Seen this topic crop up several times now and it actually caused me to stop playing my first character, which was a Legion supporter.

The fun of the game has practically been sapped.

It is my strong opinion that the game should NOT have advertised the Legion as a major player-supportable faction. For that matter, there were some pretty bad design decisions made as it's quite easy to land your character into hot water very early on with the NCR, with no way to "repair" the game experience or continue on -- an example is if you stupidly decide you want to play a rebel-type PC, and then support the Powder Gangers. Three "go do this one thing right outside the door" type quests is not worth backing the group, since later it doesn't provide you with ANY sort of foot-in-the-door scenario into winning the Legion's hearts or branching off into other quest paths, but it DOES earn you the privilege of being continuously harassed by higher-level and much-better equipped hordes of NCR rangers while you're still level 6.

If their intent was to provide a player with the excuse to go on a murderous rampage and loot everything on Earth, then I am very disappointed in Obsidian. You can do that sort of crap even if you back the NCR or go independent. It's not hard to make Legion quests that are morally ambiguous or would help color the way you see them and their more average-type people -- an example of what I'd consider to be a SINGLE decent questline was the Brotherhood faction from Oblivion. Dark, shady, but fun and immersive.

That said, there is no reason on God's green earth that all the people in the middle of the crossfire (all those minitowns, Goodsprings, Primm, Novac, etc) should whole-heartedly back the NCR. It's made pretty clear at the start they want safety and to be left alone. At best, these areas should be NEUTRAL, and unwilling to go bat[censored] insane on you if you decided to back the Legion but were cordial enough to bring them trade, kill the ebil supermutants om-nom-noming their battle cattle, and run fetch missions for them.

They made NCR out to be good guys, but they are deceptively so. BOTH groups would draft people from their populations into armies, take supplies, and set up camp. If anything, I would think that the Legion would be a BETTER choice if gone into willingly -- at least they're not incompetent.

The problem is NOT that the area is NCR dominant.

The problem is that there is VERY LITTLE gameplay for the Legion.

If you only had 15% of the map be friendly towards you, but you had 50 hours of missions and an entirely in-depth, new way to approach new areas OTHER than "KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL LOOT LOOT LOOT" then playing as the Legion would be successful and fun. But it's not. It's a tacked on faction that beckons you to back it because it's sixy and a lot more interesting culturally than your average NCR "d00d" or moronic outlaw, but when you do, you find there's nothing to do for them and you've only managed to shoot yourself in the foot.



I will come out and say it. I think that making out that the NCR is all sunshine and puppies and out for the good of everyone in the wasteland is brainwashing pro-American bullcrap. It's like a public high school history book shoved into a video game.

You do raise a good point, but I have a counter; a good RPG is not one where you can do whatever you want without consequence, it is one where you can do whatever you want BUT MUST FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!

Let's take your Powder Gangers example - Goodsprings hate them, NCR hates them, just about anyone who isn't a Powder Ganger hates them! Ceaser's Legion is much the same. To use a real-world anology, how do you think people would react to you if you openly signed up to a terrorist organisation? Even if you didn't do anything to them, they would hate you purely because of the company you CHOOSE to keep.

Yes, the NCR are mostly scum, but the alternatives are, in the eyes of most people, a heck of a lot worse!