2house2fly said:
I don't get why they have to be an option. Frankly it's enough for me that they're well thought out enough to have a backstory and motivation that's understandable; I don't necessarily have to then go "yes, good, I will join you".
You can complain that they're unrealistically brutal, but then I'd have to ask what your basis for brutality is considering the vast history of real-world human cruelty which makes Caesar's Legion look like a theme park ride.
I can only talk for me, but if I don't have a feeling like the motivation INSIDE the faction makes sense, then they have really not much meaning. It is a question about verisimilitude, not realism. Thats why the NCR makes the most sense, not because being a "good" choice, which you could argue about, but thats the point, you can argue here, they are a system people know and are used with, they can draw parallels. Democracy, bureaucracy, corruption, incompetent leaders/generals, soldiers complaining about their leadership - yet still fighting for it. All of those are things that we know very well from our own experience or from the real world.
Caesars Legion is a slaver army, that would work, as very small faction where their main task is to conquer tribes and actually sell them to a bigger faction or town as cheap labor. Truth is, the way how they act doesn't make much sense for a faction of that size. Their motivation of doing things "better" then others falls apart the moment you see them in action asking your self, what they actually do better ...
Slavery is today simply such a high stigma, that its incredible difficult to sell it as a "positive" trait. No matter from which angle you look at it. Most people are simply not used with the historical meaning of slavery where the knowledge of most people actually doesn't go further then what they saw in django unchained. And Fallout vegas doesn't make a better job at educating people here as far as their own game world goes. Looking at slavery in Rome or Greece for example, it wasn't always as punishing like one might believe, same for the US in the early days of the colonialisation. Things could go so far even that slaves have been allowed to use weapons, for hunting, possessing land and houses, granted this also had something to do with the fact that the first settlers had no other choice. But Obsidian could have made a MUCH better job of crating a believable faction with the Legion by actually showing you something like that giving it more depth.
