The FEV was airborne. Everyone not in a vault was exposed. For evidence, just play Broken Steel. Purified water with the vial will kill the player.

He wasn't lying. 95% of the population is mutated.

Damn it, Sierra Army Depot is the only place that offers a vast amount of data that is easy to piece together, but if the designers said its crap I do have to throw it out of my argument.

Can I by any chance get a link to it being discredited by the designers? If its too hard don't bother, I'll take your word for it.

Now about Richardson. Richardson is one of the highest ranking member of the Enclave if anyone knows its probably him. He told the truth about his plans to purge the world of mutations and about the vault behavioral projects, but clearly he lied about the start of the war because it doesn't support your opinion lol.

You also have to remember that the Enclave had total control of the US and was winning decisive victories against the Chinese. They had it made, why throw it all away with a nuclear war?

I think you get that number from talking to one of the lead enclave scientists in FO2

More power? That's a big motivator and usually you don't stop trying to get more power.

Except they became a lot less powerful.


Again no point in wasting resources to win a conventional war if you are planning on nuking the world anyways.

I definitely was under the impression that the fo3 Enclave was going to kill everything that wasn't *pure* human stock; anyone that had been exposed to the airborne FEV or radiation or anything, and that was literally everyone but vault-dwellers and the Enclave.


Very good point.

This. Look at Caesar's own explanations. Ask him about Lanius. The Legion doesn't abolish raiders, they assimilate them like the Borg. It's not "You will no longer raid." It's "You will raid who Caesar says, when Caesar says, how Caesar says or you will be destroyed." The legion are raiders, united and focused toward one man's narrowly-focused vision.

At least he has vision, the NCR is blind and misguided. But I'll quote Orion Moreno "Kiss America goodbye, boys". The Enclave was the wasteland's last chance at a government that would work and run efficiently. I'm going to say something that will likely piss alot of people off but Democracy does not work when you need to be constantly at war.

My objective of creating a deep conversation on this topic is complete. Have fun mingling! I love reading your ideas/opinions.

I just want to say this is the most civilized conversation about this subject I've had and I appreciate it. I like hearing others opinions without being demeaned for my own and to be able to throw out an idea and get another one back, even if it conflicts with my own.

Forums bring world peace. :vaultboy:


....Sometimes... :unsure2:

Intresting reading these theories..
Heh.

Indeed he does. So did Gandhi...but then so did Stalin. So did JFK...and so did Mussolini. So did Churchill...and so did Hitler.

The objective standard of our morality is actually a pretty loose, evolved-in sense of right and wrong that varies from person to person slightly, but on the key points most people would agree based on that internal sense. Don't steal, kill, or otherwise wrong someone.. unless they aren't in your in-group. The finer points of morality are largely subjective, but I don't think that it's reasonable to say morals are all entirely subjective, or that every person's subjective morals are equally valid. There is a reason people think of Hitler as 'evil'. Because Hitler was evil.

Well yes, like stated multiple times, what defines someone or a faction as "good/evil" is actually your own morals.
For instance, if you steal bread for your family because even though you are working and can't afford it, to you it is morally good, to an observer who actually has the money for the bread, it is morally wrong, or "evil".
Now if you steal a copy of New Vegas because you really want the game because you heard it was so awesome, and you feel guilt, then you, along with everyone else knows it was morally wrong.


In example of the Reputation and Karma, reputation gives every faction their own morals, Karma gives everyone the same moral views. :angel:

The Chinse would have had the most motivation for launching their nuclear weapons at the US and its remaining allies (if it had any, except Canada). With the US invasion of China being stalled only early on, it probably would have been an inevitable American victory.



So true! The Enclave, although genocidal, was the last chance for people to restore the nation to what it was. I doubt the NCR could unite the country (seeing as how just a band of "uniformed raiders" is slowing them down), or any other faction that is still "alive." The Enclave had a chance to though.

I'm still not sure how we can throw around the word "evil" as though it has a meaning. Even if we say that an evil person "harms others with an intent to harm without reasonable justification," what is a "reasonable" justification? If someone is genocidal because they believe a certain group poses a threat to the population at large does that make them evil, or are they just more focused on "the big picture" than others are? How can we prove that, at least in their mind, they aren't acting for the greater good? Even if the threat is completely imagined the intent is not malicious, and therefore not "evil."

To me it sounds like "evil" is a label reserved for a person, faction, idea, or act that in some way harms something I see as sacred or important or subverts some ideal that I hold up as sacred or important without what I see as a reasonable justification. The "I" is the important qualifier here. I'm having a hard time seeing the concept of "evil" as anything but highly subjective. The only thing that could possibly make the concept anywhere close to objective is the fact that I may share my definition with a large group of people, but that doesn't make it objective, it just makes it popular. Popularity of an idea, in some minds, makes that idea more likely to be a truth, but even the agreement of the entire population cannot make an idea an indisputable truth. Can millions, even billions of people be wrong? I say yes.

I think had I been able to meet Caesar on an equal footing, or had been around from the start I may have ended up supporting him. He's extremely charismatic and his (even twisted) logic is solid enough that I could have gone with it.

But in a way I'm glad to come in as a latecomer to the Legion party. I side with the NCR because it seems to me that they try and do the best for their people while maintaining a strong presence. They're expanding to the East so that they can obtain strategic military locations as well as securing resources for their people. They conquer the areas in which they come to, yes, but they're extending the same rights and privileges to the new territories. And they don't crucify people.


I don't remember who said it, but it was said the Legion follows Caesar, not Caesar's ideals, and that after his death (fifty, maybe a hundred years) the Legion would crumble back into the earth it sprang from, and I agree. Dictators always have internal dissension and people take any chance they can to "fix" what they saw wrong in the current/previous rule. So after a generation or two of that I'd be willing to wager that the Legion will only fall unless somebody virtually identical to Caesar was to spring up and renew the old ideals.

I think many of you are seriously over thinking the word "evil". I think acceptable behavior with in a group is very well defined in our psyche. Do not kill, do not steal, do not harm. Every organized society pretty much gets that down with in the first 50 years of its existence. The real problem arises when we are trying to define evil behavior when it is between two separate groups. This is when it becomes very difficult and confusing. This however is only true until most groups agree on a certain code of conduct, then it mostly becomes clear again.

The behavior of the legion with in their own group is awful thus they can easily be labeled as evil. Their own lives are a horror and they intend to spread it everywhere. I think the game would have been a lot better if the legion was not so black and was a shade of grey like NCR.

If this is the case then most civilizations did a lousy job of practicing their beliefs and a really good job of justifying their own "evil."


Do you think the real life Roman empire was "evil?" Why or why not? Do you think the Legion is intent on spreading misery without an endgame? What would be their motivation for spreading pain with no long-term plan for something else? What is Caesar's motivation?

The Enclave wants to re-build pre-war society and they see mutated and irradiated beings as a threat to that (subjectively admirable) goal. Therefore they are intent to remove them. Are they "evil?"

Well, the Enclave really didn't want to restore American democracy. They really didn't care about the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or any things that made the America unique. What the Enclave wanted to do was restore America as a military super-power. An Enclave dominated government would have been a sad caricature of the USA as we understand it today.

That's why I was never able to sympathize with the Enclave. They wanted to unify and restore America, but for all the wrong reasons. I'd rather have a democratic NCR that controls only a fraction of what used to be America than a fascist Enclave government govern all of it.

Major conflicts per years of existence make USA one of the most warlike nations in existence, yet it is also one of the most successful.

Representative democracies/Republics can be very flexible and award a lot of power to the executive branch of government in case of an overwhelming conflict that requires rapid decision making. This however, will not stop them from being democracies.

Well, it depends on who you talk to, I think. That was certainly President Richardson's intention, but I'm not so sure about Eden. He was genocidal toward FEV-infected beings, sure, but outside of that I got the feeling that he was more interested in a society built on pre-war ideals than those of the shadow government that inadvertently created him. Maybe it's just me.

No you are trying to make everyone have your definition of evil. During the crusades they stole, but were they considered evil. Hitler advanced medical knowledge years ahead but I'd that seen as good, do you see how it's individual ideals that says what's evil and what's not.

Did you know that hades from Greek mythology is not evil? He did not hate Zeus or want his kingdom, but people still think of himas the devil because the Greeks did not have and evil god. The closest would be Eris, but we put our own Christian ideals on other cultures. In hinduism the destroyer is not evil, it's necessary to destroy to create. So anyways people see things differently. The mayans sacrificed people and I bet they didn't say, how evil.

Well, as posted before, the Enclave is trying to rebuild America for the wrong reasons and how they wanted to wipe out everyone who wasn't born in a vault or in the Enclave, it reminds me alot of Nazi Germany and Hitler, obviously. But I think the Enclave is on the right track, they have more wealth, and more knowledge and more power than the NCR.
One small factor, that really stands out to me is, basic footsoldiers of the Enclave (F3) were fitted with the best of the best power armour, the best type of protection the NCR has, armour-wise is salvaged power armour from the BoS, which, shouldn't even be called power armour as it can be worn like normal clothes, and is not a machine, because it does not require the special training to wear.
Also, the NCR Rangers, as nail-hungry and fiery-breathed as they seem, have nothing on a standard Tesla equipped Enclave Power Soldier. The Rangers most likely have a better survivability and a bit more skill but, a trench coat and pre-war antiriot armour and a basic revolver, or maybe an old west rifle, vs. high tech power armour and energy weapons?
The Enclave is definitely the most powerful and capable force, fighting for the Wasteland, that or the BoS. It's a close call.