All evidence in previous fallouts suggests otherwise. The enclave "ancestors" engaged in corporate espionage and sabotage but they expected to get away with it while being prepared for the worst case scenario. The "Reds" started the war by attacking Alaska and the Reds launched the nukes first.

Oh really? Its never once stated who fired the first missile, its explicitly said no one knows who struck first. Also the Great War started and ended on October 23rd 2077, simultaneously ending the conflict with China and the U.S. The great war refers to the day the world ended.

I think the the Enclaves preparations, the oil rigs and other bases, the vault experiments is reason enough to suspect them of starting the war, wipe out everyone else and leave the pure humanity of the enclave to rebuild the world in "the American image". Why would China strike first? why would the public U.S Government strike first? I can't answer these questions, but for me The Enclave starting the war just makes sense, it could easily be a history lost even for them as that isn't the thing you tell people.

Double post.

That's not true at all. The war between America and China was not the "great war" it was the Sino-American war. The great war only lasted a few hours and nobody knows how it started or who started it. There's some evidence in Fallout 1 & 2 that it was started by bored and crazy AIs. When an advanced AI doesn't have any senses to comprehend the outside world, it quickly goes crazy (like a human subjected to prolonged sensory deprivation), and when an AI does have senses to comprehend the outside world (access to cameras, media, etc) it eventually becomes extremely bored at not being able to interact meaningfully with the world. It's a bad idea to give either of these access to nuclear arsenals, but apparently that's what various nations did.

There are holowtapes in Sierra Army Depot that describe what happened they state that China started the war. (FO2) Conversations with President Richardson also reveal that China lunched the nukes. (FO2) Operation Anchorage reinforces the data previously presented showing China striking first and gaining a lot of ground only to lose it all in the counter attack. (FO3) There was no point for US to launch the nukes, it won a decisive victory at Alaska and had total control of the only oil field left in the world. In FONV there is a computer terminal at black mountain (i think it was black mountain) where someone made an entry about detecting China launching nukes and US quickly responds.

Start from 7:25 to make your lives easier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J376ardIXvs

In my perspective neither the Enclave nor Ceasar's Legion are evil. They just do anything to achieve their own ends.
Though i have to say that when compared to the Enclave, Ceasar's Legion are nothing more than a bunch of amateurs.

LOL yeah he's a real trustworthy and reliable source. :whistling:

This guy is based on Nixon. Lies and propaganda, of course he wants to make the US look like the victims.

There is still the terminal at black mountain, but even without that there is no point for US to launch. They won a conventional war why bother with nukes? If the point was to start a nuclear war why waste resources on the conventional war instead of stockpiling the shelters?

Richardson told the truth about everything else so why lie about this one thing that happened one hundred years ago?

The Best two choices in my eyes are NCR and BOS. (Or Eastern BOS)

Reasons

1. The NCR may have corruption in there politics, but what form of government doesn't???. From what i have read on the wiki's they have to use some type of force to get there way or else nobody in the wasteland would care what they say??? In my eyes they are doing it for the greater good, (Which is a hell of allot better than CL or Enclaves ways of doing things.) you know how many people went into the wasteland saying they can help and fix things and most likely screwed over those people and lied about it. The NCR is almost like the Pre-war U.S government.

In my opinion thats not all that bad considering the U.S in the fallout universe had the last natural resources, just saying.

2. The BOS because they are the most similar to the NCR, other than there ruling system and certain ideals. They are remnants from the "U.S ARMY" and the only real major difference, i see between the BOS and NCR, is the western BOS want the tech for themselves not the people of the wasteland. The Eastern BOS are Even more similar to the NCR considering the fact they will help the people of the wasteland.

4. The Enclave are cool, i just think they need new leadership and should be trying to help other's instead of being selfish and designing the world in there vision. (Which is crazy after what Eden and the others before him tried to do.)

5. CL are crazy and there ideals so old fashion anyone who would honestly want to live there style is crazy, its not moral and its a very biased way of doing things. more like a dictatorship (Iraq Saddam Hussein? anyone???.)

These are just my opinions obviously and this is just a game, i just wanted to throw my point of view out there. :fallout:

The Sierra Depot GNN is actually considered non-cannon material, by Chris Avellone as it conflicts with other established timeline material, it in correctly dates the China's invasion of Alaska being in October 2077, when it was actually a decade earlier in 2066, [it wasn't liberated until early 2077]. The dates are all wrong, its been discredited by one of the lead designers for Fallout 1&2 and Vegas. So it can't be trusted.

Richardson can't be trusted either, and that's assuming HE even knows the truth, and the simplest way to get US to strike first would be to dupe the rest of the military into believing it was a retaliatory strike. I have not seen the black mountain terminal, but to me the simplest way for the Enclave to launch first strike is to make it look like the other guy has already launched the weapons.

Why would the Enclave do it? to wipe out there enemies, FO2 shows there perfectly willing to commit global genocide to achieve there ends, the vaults were never designed to save anyone but to simply help enclave personal achieve their goal. We only see China from the American propaganda

Couldn't disagree more, I didn't think the Enclave was evil at all (aside from Eden) in Fallout 3. Autumn wanted to rule the wasteland, which doesn't qualify as a good thing but I don't think it's fair to call him or any of the humans following him evil. What's evil about them having a mobile base? They didn't use it for anything but taking out Liberty Prime in self defense, they could have easily dropped another barrage on the Citadel, but didn't. I think that makes the actions of the ones who wiped them out more evil than the Enclave in the mobile base who were just minding their own business.

Caesar's Legion, on the other hand, is a believably evil organization that I love to hate. Though I wish they weren't quite so black in a game that is supposed to be grey, I'll forgive it since it only happens with one faction.

I think the Legion is actually too evil in the way they are portrayed in the game. I'm fine with their brutal ideals and all that, it makes for an interesting conflict with the NCR just who would be a better fit to rule a wasteland full of raiders and the like. But just in terms of their outward looks, the imagery of the faction. Nearly everything goes in red, CL voiceactors seem to have gotten directions to "sound as evil as possible", the sky turns an ominous shade of red when you're near their camp. Even their bloody dogs look evil. It's too overdone.

That said, the faction wins over the Enclave because you can actually side with them. In F3, you almost have to play the "chaotic good" type when it comes to the main quest for it to make any sense at all. If you try to create a more calculating, pragmatic character then the Enclave would've made a whole lot more sense but nope. And it's more bad for the fact that the BoS/dear old dad's plans aren't particularly well thought out.

But the Legion, yeah... An interesting faction but could've IMO really benefitted from A) being toned down in their evil outwards appearance and B) just having more flesh on them. More info on how they rule their conquered lands, more CL characters to talk to about the way they do things etc.

Are people forgetting that the Enclave wanted to wipe out everyone who had been exposed to radiation and the FEV? That means everyone in the wasteland who didn't just come out of a vault.

As for the Great War, don't forget that one of the main reasons why China invaded Alaska was because their efforts to tap the world's last oil reserve was sabotaged, probably by Poseidon and the Enclave.

I'd just like to point out for the benefit of the thread that there is no such thing as "objective good". Morality of all kinds is fundamentally subjective. You cannot take a ton of rock and refine out "good", it doesn't exist on the periodic table of elements or as a known mineral or compound. Morality is defined by thinking things, not by measurable constants present in the absence of thinking things.

This is quite obviously true. I guess I'm the one who brought up the concept of "objective good" and I was thinking of it in a utilitarian way. There's no universal "objective good," but subjectively, the idea can come close.. if you get what I'm saying. The "objective good" that I'm speaking of is not truly objective, but when it comes down to it, nothing is truly objective.

Of course the Chinese launch the nukes first, why would the God Blessed America do it?

Very inappropriate sarcasm aside, Morality is only functional if the society is functional.

Just wondering did anybody who hates Caesar's Legion actually talk to Caesar of did you just kill him.

I actually went in and talked to Caeser. While he came across as being intelligent, he also seemed like a borderline psychopath with a streak of paranoia about him. His logic was extreemly well thought out but twisted. Once he had figured out what to do, his tunnel vision logic couldn't allow for any out side the box thinking. He's easily one the best psychopaths I've seen portraied in a RPG game.

I wouldn't call the F3 Enclave eviler then CL. While the F2 ones were eviler, in F3 only President Eden and his robots seem to follow the Massacre plan while Colonel Autumn and the rest of Washington Enclave want to create a more tolerant society. Thats not to say that they are good guys but still nicer then the Legion IMO (I just wish we saw a Legion town in F:NW and that Enclave was better handled in F3...)

I think evil can be put anyway. People don't seem to think that we may be fighting with "God on our side" the other side believes that too. Al quaida thinks we are just as evil as we think they are so you can't say something is universally evil because it's not. In the 50s a woman and children were a mans property and if he wanted to beat them he could. Today that's bad, but I think as Americans we are very much our [censored] don't stink which it does because were human. Now I'm not saying slavery and subjecting of women is ok, but I haven't talked to ceasar yet but I liked their philosophy and there's no saying their views on women can't change, ours have. Black men had freedom before women did and we still have that. Americans like to think were so progressive but we are one of the most ignorant and selfish societies, so ending my rant, don't pretend like we weren't like the cl and we still are in some ways. Don't forget we torture people too.

I also wouldn't believe what any side said about the war. I would like to hear from a neutral party, maybe Switzerland.

All of the factions are basically "trying to make the world a better place" they just have different ideas of how that should happen. The Enclave in Fallout 3, I thought, was very nicely done in that they *weren't* just omnicidial maniacs. They had a plan. Their poison wasn't engineered to kill *everybody*, only those who had been genetically compromised. You could argue that it was in fact a repentant goal since they were the ones that caused the problem in the first place with the FEV. It was a plan with different priorities than most people would consider proper given that we know ghouls and mutants are intelligent reasoning beings, but consider this: the Enclave has air transport, satellite communications, high tech armor and weapons, clean water, and tons of other things. Their methods in achieving this strategy are questionable for people not officially part of the Enclave due to their reckless disregard for personal rights and property (and downright unsurvivable for mutants and ghouls), but the fact is that they have more functional technology and a higher standard of living than anybody else, and their plan is probably the most direct route to getting humanity on a road to what it once was. It's also worth pointing out that while the Enclave did build many of the vaults with radical scientific experiments running in the background, they did build many vaults that did exactly what it said on the box: protect the inhabitants through the war and beyond until the outside world was capable of sustaining them.

The Brotherhood of Steel, likewise. They are slightly xenophobic and bigoted and really don't have any time for everybody else, but they have a plan to save humanity. Just not their immediate neighbors. Their mission is to acquire and preserve as much technology as they can, and they are extremely pragmatic by recognizing that the only way they can take away powerful technologies from people that would misuse them is to have a bigger stick and use it freely. This goes more for the West Coast chapters, of course; the Eastern chapters have that whole schism that leads to the Outcasts. I've never seen the Brotherhood as evil in the slightest bit. If their strategy betrays a total lack of faith in humanity's ability to not blow up itself and the little that is left of the old world, it's understandable because humanity keeps proving them right.

The NCR can easily be cast as the inept, accidental villians of F:NV, since they were the ones that moved in for selfish reasons and attacked the Brotherhood, which has destabilized the region to the point that the Legion is now lurking on the flank. The Brotherhood was getting along just fine before the NCR moved in.

The Legion... From what we have *seen* of them, I don't like them at all. But like others have said, the only part of the Legion we have seen is the army, and from the perspective of a contested territory the invaders are always the Devil incarnate. How much of what we hear about them is actually true, and how much is the uneducated fears of the Mojave locals or the propaganda of the NCR (who, you will remember, is fighting an unpopular war against them). I would love to see more of their culture and give them a chance to make their case more fully before making any kind of final judgment on them. Caesar himself comes across as intelligent and charismatic....perhaps a bit tweaked, but that's hardly unusual. Trying to say that the Legion's empire as a whole is good or evil would be like trying to participate in European politics in the 1600's based on what you know from watching Jamestown.

Anyway.

Just the fact that we can even have discussions like this illustrates what a great job the designers of the Fallout games have done.

Momaw, you don't seem to realize that the enclave thing in the water would kill anyone not in the enclave or born in a vault, including humans because even though they aren't mutated, they'll still have some sort of mutation that the vial would kill.

Unless he gets injured or sick. The Legion kills the weak and infirm, not just among the military. Or if the trader is female, then it's not even a person to them.

They haven't abolished raiders. They just gave them uniforms.

Eh? Where did you get that from? When Eden handed over the vial he said it would kill things with mutations, whether caused by radiation or by the FEV. Not 95% of the entire world population. Unless you have some source where a character proved he was lying?