Anyone make a "Benny's suit" joke yet?

And I see some grayness to it all.

Mr. House and Yes Man options are extremely morally grey.

Caesar's Legion is black. You can try to justify it with his motives all you want, but actions speak louder than words. Wantom murder, genocide, slavery, sixism, torture, it's all there.

I've see people in other threads say "well but the NCR is corrupt and inefficient!". Right. Corruption and inefficiency are totally comparable to genocide and slavery. Yup.

Whether the NCR is white or gray depends on your point of view. They're basically the USA dropped into the wasteland, with all it's warts but also a lot of positives. Frankly by wasteland standards I think they're pretty white myself.

House is gray, I suppose. Depends on if you dig his vision or not. He certainly has no bones about using whatever means necessary to achieve it.

And of course the Yes Man route is completely player defined. It can be as black or white as your character is.

I won't disagree with that assessment, but I'm under the impression that the NCR has an alarmingly high tax rate they make everybody pay. Which wouldn't be so bad if all that tax money made their roads a bit more safer, provided more medical care, and enabled them to get food to everybody instead of using sharecroppers. But I didn't get that impression. I would personally more liken the NCR's citizens as modern day Americans (surprise surprise - it's still the US) but the government itself is more akin to... well, I don't want to get a political flame war started up. Let's just say "some other government of elected representatives that isn't American and has huge taxes that don't seem to be improving the overall shape of the country that much."

Hah. I won't even throw out a guess.

I didn't catch the tax thing actually. Though do we really know anything about conditions in the NCR proper at the time of FNV? With respect to road safety and medical care etc.

I think it's Cass who mentioned that, as a Caravan merchant, she got taxed horrendously in NCR territory. Then she, or someone else, compared the relative safety of being a travelling trader in the NCR versus Caeser's Legion territory - where she (or someone else) said you could still expect to be mugged in NCR territory whereas in Caeser's Legion territory they pretty much slaughtered anything that so much as looked like it might be dangerous to anybody. I'd have to reload a previous save of when I first recruited Cass to travel with me and go through that whole dialogue again.

A few other NPC's also bring up the subject of NCR taxes although I can't recall who every single one of them are.

Also, you find out about their taxes more directly in Primm:


There is also a possible ending that mentions a town in the game suffers under stifling NCR taxes that inhibits their growth, if I'm recalling correctly.

your first sentence pretty much nails it. and yes, the are way more civilized than the legion.
but as the legion, they are willing to overroll anyone who gets in their way.
furthermore they're very intolerant towards other groups like their treatment of the followers shows.
they also resemble the old usa in the way they are showing the khans their understanding of gratitude...
all in all i've been very fond of the ncr until i was introduced to moore(and learned about mclafferty).
i still went the ncr way on my first attempt, just for boone and hoping that moore's icecold, contemptuos and cynical personality would finally not be representative of the whole ncr.
when viewing the end credits, i was proven wrong.
so, bottom line, as a whole, i see the ncr as pretty gray, even though there are many noble souls among their lower ranks.

I think it's very black and white.

The NCR is the good option, even though it's not entirely presented that way. When people complain about NCR interference and aggression they are being selfish and don't see the bigger picture. Somebody has to defend people from raiders and other dangers, and that requires resources. Individual incompetence and corruption don't say anything about the values of the NCR, they're just unfortunate. The NCR can make mistakes, and their leaders can be corrupt, but the other groups are just as corrupt and incompetent, they are just being judged by a lower standard. The NCR is a democratic, egalitarian society. House wants his little autocracy a.k.a. hybris and the Legion are a bunch of raiders.

they pretend to be that, while actually being a good bit away from that.
it's pretty funny how you are deeming those as selfish who complain about the ncr, while at the same time, you seem to give the selfishness of the ncr a total free pass.
if you factor individual behaviour out of your judgement, fine.
there might be other people who prefer judging an organization by its actions, and not so much by the words, and this is the point where the whole ncr thing goes downhill...
in my opinion there is just no white way in this game, whatever you're coming to do in the end

The thing about taxes is...if you want services, you have to pay taxes. The money for those services doesn't come out of thin air and when the organization and area is large, the taxes are larger. All of the people providing services have families to support too. What's important is that it's done fairly and not greedily and I don't think people can evaluate that fairly because too much is unknown. All we know is that instinctively, we'd rather not pay taxes. That balking may be the only real thing keeping taxes lower.

My line comes at slavery. Caesar's Legion are pigs; they think slavery is great and women are merely breeders. House is a pig. He condones and allows slavery from the Omertas. No problem or gray area on that with me....my decision was simple and no amount of so-called justification will change my mind. It was a deal breaker.

I felt the NCR has leadership problems and not enough empathy at the top of command which I believe is because the leadership has hardened because of the many battles they've been fighting. The soldiers in the field care about the people they deal with according to their dialogue. Many of them are just tired of fighting and want to go home. Of all of them, this was my choice before my game glitched and I couldn't finish it.

And Yes Man? What makes anyone think my character would be a great leader? It's a much larger issue than just New Vegas and my character, and a robot army in one city, just isn't qualified for the leadership role it would take...and anarchy just brings back the raiders and fiends.

My two Septims on possible shades between black and white.

It's simple. Everyone is corrupt and everyone has a supporting rationale.

Vulpes isn't corrupt.

the thing is about the ncr's way of taxating people. it doesn't follow the route a modern society, where everyones' taxrate is relative to their respective income.
it's set up in a medieval manner, where everyone has to pay a certain amount, no matter he/she's earning money or not.
that was illustrated in the goodsprings section of the end credits, where it was mentioned that many people had to move away, since they couldn't afford ncr's tax demands.
that just added one more piece to my observation of the ncr as an organitzation is not giving rat s**t about the people.
with caesar the funny thing was, i almost agreed with all his anolysis of the ncr, it's just been his conclusions and related actions i could hardly agree with.
my ranking of endings would be the following

1. yes man
haven't played this to the end yet, but controlling things myself sounds best, even though i find yes man very entertaining yet scary as hell.
has somebody noticed his pretty strong sarcasm that is underlying each of his statements? he's also got pretty defined opinions on all the factions.
people with opinions usually have ambitions, too.
in a certain way, i'd be pretty afraid of being 'housed' by him some day

2. mr. house
the benevolent dictator. as much i mistrust that concept, i'd have him governing new vegas over folks like col. moore any day.
he's not a fanatic zealot, and his statement, he'd not care about what people do in their privacy is believable.
furthermore it can't be denied that he is indeed of intellectual brilliance.

3. ncr
they should sit down on their backs and re-evaluate the values on which aradesh and tandi founded the ncr.
other than that, they should try to consolidate themselves, rather than expand further than they actually handle it.
moore, mclafferty are strong signs of a wannabe empire dissolving before it truly existed


caesars legion is a no no.

I don't know about your character, but my character in the Yes Man playthrough turned out to be an amazing leader




Yeah there's definitely some old wild west USA style treatment of the 'natives' going on with the NCR which is pretty hard to defend. Actually I can't defend it, I'd have to retract my previous assertion that they're pretty close to white. But compared to everyone else it's a much lighter shade of grey.

This I agree with (I'll have to look at the lore) and I'd add that with better leadership, they should consolidate the alliances my character was arranging for them to secure the New Vegas area for everyone. It would be a step in the right direction to bring more people in, not run them off. Each faction had good people and that should be nurtured.

And I don't know about the tax structure...just taxes in general.

My thing about the NCR and taxes though: even the fact that our main gripe is about taxes is wonderful! Because in the context of a friggin' post apocalyptic wasteland that's huge progress over having arguments over whether we should eat or enslave people.

What did the NCR do at Helios One when they wanted it?

Did the NCR know they were being targeted from Helios One? That would make action necessary, wouldn't it?

They're all shades of grey. The only true evil in the Wasteland is me.

(and yet somehow, after robbing everyone blind, murdering them in their sleep and eating their corpses in public, I still have saintly Karma and everyone loves me. )

it is not my main gripe with them, though

They're all pretty bad. Since Tandi died, the NCR has become horribly corrupt. The politicians took over and immediately set themselves up in the lap of luxury like little kings. They appoint generals who are more concerned with happy politicians than with successful efforts, and then they micromanage them with no qualifications to do so. Thus why Mojave outpost is simultaneously being told to send out troops for things, but being told they have to keep a certain number of troops at the Outpost...which is precisely how many they have. Two orders that cannot both be followed. It's just a little example of the criminal mismanagement going on.

The head of their Mojave research department has been actively wasting lives and thinks nothing of it at all. The people he sent to that vault who died meant nothing to him. The woman in the next room cares, but not him.

The NCR doesn't know about the weapon system in Helios One, according to the Followers, so they attacked it (wasting a shocking amount of lives) just so the BoS couldn't have it. They didn't even send special units, they used the regular army infantry. NCR trooper armor and Service Rifles against Brotherhood Combat Armor, T51-b Power Armor, and the hideous array of weapons the BoS can field. Oh, and every BoS trooper is a highly trained soldier who's operations manual is built off of actual pre-war military doctrine, rather than the NCRs less polished methodology. No wonder they barely won that battle, even though they outnumbered the BoS at Helios One 20-1.

The Legion...they'd be tolerable if not for the things like slaving, [censored]...you know, the stuff they do on a day to day basis.

House? He's a bit of a hokerr. A very, very, very dangerous and brilliant hokerr.

Yes Man? I don't trust anything that was willing to let Benny be in charge.

The four sides are about as pleasant as Vault City (who would have made wonderful members of the Enclave, if they weren't on the Enclave kill-lists.)

Really, there's only one major player in the Mojave I'd say is overall a 'Good Guy'. Marcus. Hell, he named a whole town after his dead friend, Jacob...the BoS Paladin. He and Jacob founded Broken Hills, to show that there didn't need to be all the death going on. He's trying to give the remnants of the Master's army a chance at being civilized and peaceful. Overall, he's pretty good. Wish there was a way to put Marcus in charge.

No, they don't even know HELIOS One is a weapon now that they have it.

I got the feeling that NCR has been at war with the brotherhood before the Helios battle.

Spoiler Alert!!!!

If you unite the Mojave BOS chapter with NCR they will still be at war with other BOS chapters. Also, Cass points out that the annihilated caravans are BOS level of murder and the incident the currier experienced with Veronica supports that. Clearly NCR had some very negative experiences with BOS before Helios.

That said, taking a power plant from people you are at war with is fair game in my book.

I think a big problem is that they actively mentioned it being grey prior to release. I don't really agree that the game is all grey choices. Also, the Karma system really needs to die. It's been terrible from the day it came into the series and it only serves to fuel the stupid "what is good or bad" debate.

What you will find though is that the factions have their goals defined. The Legion are pretty horrible people I'd say but there are motivations there which makes them a step about the "moustache twirler". The NCR have the moral high ground, or at the very least it's the faction that will resonate with most people living in the US or other parts of the Western world (generalizing here of course). There are bad sides to this faction as well and I think it feels pretty realistic. But its juxtaposition with the Legion makes it really feel like "the good choice". And the Legion really don't feel developed enough inside the game, if you choose to side with them, it doesn't quite feel as informed a decision as with the NCR for example.

House and Yes Man feel somewhere in the middle I think.

That said, I think that even with the complaints above, NV has one huge one-up on the other games in the series. And that is, in this game you *can* choose. In most games, the Legion would've been the bad guys for every player. But here, it at least allow you to play a character (though maybe mad) that can sympathize with them.

This


Even the legion is still only dark grey. But every path will leave you with some minor regrets, and feeling like you just helped, but not in a way that everyone will love.