Five Common Misconceptions about Fallout: The Series

[CT Phipps]

As has already been stated, the NCR is more than just Shady Sands, Shady Sands is merely the capitol from which a nation grew. Between the events of the first and second game, the NCR grew, ultimately incorporating small and large pockets of civilization as they did. Those very same civilizations would likely come to share the same laws and customs of the NCR as time would pass. The Shi and Vault City as civilizations (laws, customs, identity etc.), by time of New Vegas, are likely no more. They are probably just like most real life people, that want to go about their day to day lives, not caring what happened a few decades ago. Again, the NCR is not just one city, it is a full blown Nation incorporating the vast majority of three states.

Edit: Now I'm going to go piss and go to bed, because it's 3 AM

I mean I get your argument, I'm saying that Italy was part of the Hapsburg Empire for centuries and remained culturally and legally distinct. Shady Sands was the heart of NCR as an idea and economic ideal. There's no reason to think its component parts wouldn't feel the desire to go it alone after the end of its central government hub.

I'm not saying it did. NCR clearly exists in some form with the "President" and Moldaver both claiming to be its leader.

It's just there's no apparent central government and it has balkanized.

But in-universe it is presently disunited.

But didn't you earlier try to argue that Shady Sands isn't even the capital anymore and it moved prior to the nuking, and that's why the NCR isn't actually gone? Which then shifted to the NCR splintered into several people claiming rightful authority? Now it's "NCR is dead and here's why that's a good thing"?

Yeah, the show says Shady Sands was the "first capital" of NCR. I'm assuming the Boneyard became the capital at some point given the focus on restoring it.

Mind you, if the nuking of Shady Sands was not THE event that brought down NCR, we can assume there's a lot more shit going on behind the scenes too. Perhaps they definitively lost the War in the Mojave.

Edit:

A clarification:

Personal Feelings: I love shitting on NCR. I'm an Independent Courier supporter all the way then House then NCR. I often love talking about how awful it is even though the games always portray it as, at worst, slightly gray.

Show Observations: NCR is being depicted as a lost golden age of rebuilding that seems to have fallen into chaos after Shady Sands was destroyed. People seem still loyal to it as a nation and identity as well as there are multiple factions that seem to claim allegiance to it as well as claimed leaders. Basically, it's not so much "gone" as no longer centralized.

Possibly a collapse of the economy that was already on its last legs.

There's 700,000 citizens in NCR during NV and 30,000 of them die. Which is slightly less than 5% of the population.

That could easily have caused a collapse of government, economy, and cultural unity.

 

[R.Graves]

There's 700,000 citizens in NCR during NV and 30,000 of them die. Which is slightly less than 5% of the population.

>there were only 700,000 people across 3 states and parts of mexico

???

 

[Hassknecht]

>there were only 700,000 people across 3 states and parts of mexico

???

It's 700k during the time of Fallout 2, not NV.

 

[Bradylama]

If there was any indication of there being secessionist movements in the NCR you might be onto something, but you're not. The NCR was more than just a conquering empire, they're a nation-state whose explicit mission is to ultimately restore the United States and the old world. It's the most natural formation for building a state there is in a post-apocalypse: a restorationist one. There's no reason for people to give up totally on the NCR just because Shady Sands was nuked, and yet seemingly they have. The Boneyard is now more sparse and uninhabited than it was in the first game.

 

[Norzan]

Didn't New Vegas literally made the main weakness of the NCR the fact that they have TOO MUCH territory and this is why they will fail? So why does blowing up Shady Sands cause them to instantly collapse? That is dumb and makes no sense.

It's just weird the BOS *AND* Enclave *AND* Super Mutants are in the East Coast.

It is weird and lazy that ANY of these are in the East Coast to begin with. Making the Fallout setting only have the same factions and mutants over and over makes it horribly narrow and honestly boring as shit.

So again, Fallout IS NOT Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave, Super Mutants and the other shit that keeps getting recycled, Fallout is about the politics of the post-apocalyptic world. And that means being able to set games outside of the US and have nothing but new stuff and still be Fallout as long it captures its spirit.

The fact that you think every entry in this franchise needs to have every same recycled thing to "be Fallout" shows how really shallow your point of view of the franchise is and how you don't see beyond the surface.

 

[Bradylama]

Didn't New Vegas literally made the main weakness of the NCR the fact that they have TOO MUCH territory and this is why they will fail? So why does blowing up Shady Sands cause them to instantly collapse? That is dumb and makes no sense.

It does make sense that an imperial power collapses when its metropole is wiped out in an instant, since losing the locus of power creates a massive power vacuum that will end up filled by rivals and opportunists - yet nobody has filled the power vacuum on the west coast. The NCR collapsed and everyone went back to living in tin roof shacks and putting sand in water filters.

The NCR's big weakness is that they're stuck in a primitive accumulation cycle. Re-establishing capitalism requires enclosing lands which used to belong to independent interests or tribals, and privatizing them for exploitation by the market economy. Despite the NCR having some industrial power and crafting capacity, the overall economy is still heavily agricultural. It's why the brahmin barons pull the strings in the senate. Power in the NCR is invested into the landlords, and those interests need constant expansion to accumulate more power to themselves. If the NCR runs out of avenues of expansion, then it would have a massive recession and undergo a major political upheaval.

The lack of arable lands and the need to constantly accumulate more also creates a ceiling on how much the NCR can grow. Dr. Hildern mentions in New Vegas that the NCR will have food shortages if they continue growing at their current rate.

You can see all this playing out at the sharecropping farm. NCR landlords are already moving into the Mojave and setting up plantations worked by landless tenants. All of which is defended by the republican army.

 

[R.Graves]

It does make sense that an imperial power collapses when its metropole is wiped out in an instant, since losing the locus of power creates a massive power vacuum that will end up filled by rivals and opportunists - yet nobody has filled the power vacuum on the west coast. The NCR collapsed and everyone went back to living in tin roof shacks and putting sand in water filters.

The NCR's big weakness is that they're stuck in a primitive accumulation cycle. Re-establishing capitalism requires enclosing lands which used to belong to independent interests or tribals, and privatizing them for exploitation by the market economy. Despite the NCR having some industrial power and crafting capacity, the overall economy is still heavily agricultural. It's why the brahmin barons pull the strings in the senate. Power in the NCR is invested into the landlords, and those interests need constant expansion to accumulate more power to themselves. If the NCR runs out of avenues of expansion, then it would have a massive recession and undergo a major political upheaval.

The lack of arable lands and the need to constantly accumulate more also creates a ceiling on how much the NCR can grow. Dr. Hildern mentions in New Vegas that the NCR will have food shortages if they continue growing at their current rate.

You can see all this playing out at the sharecropping farm. NCR landlords are already moving into the Mojave and setting up plantations worked by landless tenants. All of which is defended by the republican army.

I think the getting to interact with mundane low/high level bureaucracy and history is why I loved fallout , new vegas and morrowind so much and it was this post that made me consciously aware of it.

CT or Graves? Neither are trolls.

"Graves isn't a troll" may be the hottest take I've ever seen but thanks.

 

[Traeger91]

The NCR's big weakness is that they're stuck in a primitive accumulation cycle. Re-establishing capitalism requires enclosing lands which used to belong to independent interests or tribals, and privatizing them for exploitation by the market economy. Despite the NCR having some industrial power and crafting capacity, the overall economy is still heavily agricultural. It's why the brahmin barons pull the strings in the senate. Power in the NCR is invested into the landlords, and those interests need constant expansion to accumulate more power to themselves. If the NCR runs out of avenues of expansion, then it would have a massive recession and undergo a major political upheaval.

I wonder if that can be partially blamed on the BoS? After all, the constant hoarding of pre war Tech could have led to less avenues for technological advancement in the NCR.

 

[Jogre]

I think the getting to interact with mundane low/high level bureaucracy and history is why I loved fallout , new vegas and morrowind so much and it was this post that made me consciously aware of it.

100%

I always say Fallout 2 is my favorite, and it's largely because I feel like it's the most Economically interesting - Like take Vault City for instance: A weaker game would have just made them an isolationist society, but Fallout 2 does something more interesting: It makes them actively open to trading to the outside world but from a supremacist position:

So you have it so most of "Vault City" is effectively a giant ghetto outside the walled city proper, built because of how vital VC is for trade, and heavily extorted by the outside. And then the inside is this society without crime, poverty, or even alcohol, that effectively becomes that way because it's citizens get everything they need from this extortionate relationship they have with the outside. And in order to hide that this is what's going on they take this fake meritocratic "Anyone can become a citizen of Vault City, if they pass these tests deliberately meant to keep outsiders out", and that way they can justify continuing this order, and use the fact that nobody passes as a "See, this is why it's in these peoples best interests to be our slave...uh servants"

And then you have it so the entire project is doomed to fail unless they make alliances with the outside world, because their nuclear reactor can't continually provide for a growing population, and they're starting to suffer problems with inbreeding, so the only way for them to not get annexed by the NCR is to open up more. Meanwhile, they are being actively sabotaged by the Bishops, who are a proxy Reno family acting on behalf of the NCR.

If you take into account everything that's going on in Vault City, it's an extremely complex society that I don't think a weaker team could have portrayed.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

And then you have it so the entire project is doomed to fail unless they make alliances with the outside world, because their nuclear reactor can't continually provide for a growing population

While I agree with your overall point, love Fo2's economic worldbuilding and Vault City specifically, though one thing always irked me re:it's population is how small it was. It's established in one holotape that the citizen is a mere 103, which is stupid given that the default Vault population is supposed to be 1,000. And even if the non-citizen population is 10x the citizens AND Vault City provides them all their power, why would a Vault reactor have any trouble supplying them with power?

They should have just left the population figures vague and let us imagine that it's an abstraction, 100 citizens is just far too small IMO.

 

[Jogre]

While I agree with your overall point, love Fo2's economic worldbuilding and Vault City specifically, though one thing always irked me re:it's population is how small it was. It's established in one holotape that the citizen is a mere 103, which is stupid given that the default Vault population is supposed to be 1,000. And even if the non-citizen population is 10x the citizens AND Vault City provides them all their power, why would a Vault reactor have any trouble supplying them with power?

They should have just left the population figures vague and let us imagine that it's an abstraction, 100 citizens is just far too small IMO.

Yeah, adding fixed numbers to population in a fictional setting is often a losing game IMO.

 

[Bradylama]

I wonder if that can be partially blamed on the BoS? After all, the constant hoarding of pre war Tech could have led to less avenues for technological advancement in the NCR.

The problem with the Brotherhood War is that even though the NCR won 15-1, their attrition rate was atrocious. NCR recruits soldiery from the general citizenry, and massive losses of manpower translates directly into losses of agricultural labor. Which means less food and fewer plant-based industrial inputs like hemp fibers or flax. So the NCR was already coming into the war in the Mojave with a big bloody nose, and they have to put out fires everywhere, including the imaginary ones, because they're overstretched from all the territory they had to expand into.

Kimball doesn't really comprehend the threat that Caesar's Legion presents because they were already beaten before, and they're a primitive faction of organized tribals who have objective material disadvantages. Yet the Legion makes up for its deficiencies with subterfuge and guerilla warfare. They infiltrate behind NCR's lines to strangle their supplies and are willing to render whole regions uninhabitable like with the incident at Camp Searchlight, just to stop the NCR from being able to move in on Cottonwood Cove to stop the Legion from inserting their infiltration teams. Caesar bides his time for the moment when the NCR is at its weakest before he can strike, and he has all the time in the world (ignoring his tumor) knowing that the NCR will continue repeating the mistakes it's compelled to make as a bourgeois dictatorship.

 

[CT Phipps]

100%

I always say Fallout 2 is my favorite, and it's largely because I feel like it's the most Economically interesting - Like take Vault City for instance: A weaker game would have just made them an isolationist society, but Fallout 2 does something more interesting: It makes them actively open to trading to the outside world but from a supremacist position:

So you have it so most of "Vault City" is effectively a giant ghetto outside the walled city proper, built because of how vital VC is for trade, and heavily extorted by the outside. And then the inside is this society without crime, poverty, or even alcohol, that effectively becomes that way because it's citizens get everything they need from this extortionate relationship they have with the outside. And in order to hide that this is what's going on they take this fake meritocratic "Anyone can become a citizen of Vault City, if they pass these tests deliberately meant to keep outsiders out", and that way they can justify continuing this order, and use the fact that nobody passes as a "See, this is why it's in these peoples best interests to be our slave...uh servants"

And then you have it so the entire project is doomed to fail unless they make alliances with the outside world, because their nuclear reactor can't continually provide for a growing population, and they're starting to suffer problems with inbreeding, so the only way for them to not get annexed by the NCR is to open up more. Meanwhile, they are being actively sabotaged by the Bishops, who are a proxy Reno family acting on behalf of the NCR.

If you take into account everything that's going on in Vault City, it's an extremely complex society that I don't think a weaker team could have portrayed.

Whenever I think of Good, Evil, and Neutral factions, I always think of Vault City as an extremely good example of Neutral too. Because there's a lot going on there that, if taken in the context of the Wasteland, makes a great deal of sense. While I think Caesar's Legion is absolutely awful regardless of its supposed merits, Vault City (and by proxy, the Institute) has a lot to argue in its favor.

For example, they get accused of slavery by outsiders but their second-class citizen status is still something people are falling over themselves to accept because cleaning floors and scrubbing toilets is better than having to deal with starvation and radroaches. They have an exploitative labor system but ACTUAL slavery is existing tight outside of the place in the Den.

The bad faith criticisms of their society by NCR are to justify annexation for their greater good.

 

[CT Phipps]

The problem with the Brotherhood War is that even though the NCR won 15-1, their attrition rate was atrocious. NCR recruits soldiery from the general citizenry, and massive losses of manpower translates directly into losses of agricultural labor. Which means less food and fewer plant-based industrial inputs like hemp fibers or flax. So the NCR was already coming into the war in the Mojave with a big bloody nose, and they have to put out fires everywhere, including the imaginary ones, because they're overstretched from all the territory they had to expand into.

Kimball doesn't really comprehend the threat that Caesar's Legion presents because they were already beaten before, and they're a primitive faction of organized tribals who have objective material disadvantages. Yet the Legion makes up for its deficiencies with subterfuge and guerilla warfare. They infiltrate behind NCR's lines to strangle their supplies and are willing to render whole regions uninhabitable like with the incident at Camp Searchlight, just to stop the NCR from being able to move in on Cottonwood Cove to stop the Legion from inserting their infiltration teams. Caesar bides his time for the moment when the NCR is at its weakest before he can strike, and he has all the time in the world (ignoring his tumor) knowing that the NCR will continue repeating the mistakes it's compelled to make as a bourgeois dictatorship.

I'm inclined to think Caesar was never going to be able to defeat a modern economic military with his forces but for the perfect storm of events that had occurred for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Kimball and Oliver sabotaged their own supply lines by concentrating their forces at the dam and allowing Caesar's Legion to use guerilla tactics to wear them down. Caesar is also violating his own rules by using WMDs with plans to gas the strip and also using a nuclear weapon against Camp Searchlight.

There's also the Powder Gangers, the Brotherhood of Steel battle that was a horrific nightmare at the solar plant, and having to deal with the Great Khans that are based in the Mojave.

And I think it's STILL questionable if Caesar would have won without the Courier tipping the scale either way.

Lanius is a Beast but my money is on the NCR Rangers--even with their leader on the side of retreat.

 

[Bradylama]

You're confusing terms. Camp Searchlight was hit with a dirty bomb, not a nuclear one. The point was to irradiate the whole area, not obliterate it.

I'm inclined to think Caesar was never going to be able to defeat a modern economic military with his forces but for the perfect storm of events that had occurred for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Kimball and Oliver sabotaged their own supply lines by concentrating their forces at the dam and allowing Caesar's Legion to use guerilla tactics to wear them down. Caesar is also violating his own rules by using WMDs with plans to gas the strip and also using a nuclear weapon against Camp Searchlight.

Caesar isn't violating any of his "rules," the Legion is willing to do whatever it takes to conquer the profligates because it's their obligate mission. Vulpes Inculta exploited Nipton's own corruption and moral degeneracy to bait them into falling in the Legion's trap. The point is that Caesar isn't just passively waiting for the NCR to be in a weakened enough state to be overcome, he's making it happen.

 

[Traeger91]

Lack of development time really screwed the Legion, I'd love to have seen their territories. While I don't agree with a lot of what the Legion stands for, I still enjoy them as a faction. I'd even go so far as to say that I enjoy them more than any other faction in New Vegas, for reasons that I might go into in a bit.

 

[CT Phipps]

You're confusing terms. Camp Searchlight was hit with a dirty bomb, not a nuclear one. The point was to irradiate the whole area, not obliterate it.

I mean, it's nuclear, not atomic.

Caesar isn't violating any of his "rules," the Legion is willing to do whatever it takes to conquer the profligates because it's their obligate mission. Vulpes Inculta exploited Primm's own corruption and moral degeneracy to bait them into falling in the Legion's trap. The point is that Caesar isn't just passively waiting for the NCR to be in a weakened enough state to be overcome, he's making it happen.

Even then, Vulpes is lying his ass off as you find numerous signs of people fighting back. But Caesar makes a point about how science like Power Armor, nuclear weapons, laser weapons, and so on are all weaknesses.

Lack of development time really screwed the Legion, I'd love to have seen their territories. While I don't agree with a lot of what the Legion stands for, I still enjoy them as a faction. I'd even go so far as to say that I enjoy them more than any other faction in New Vegas, for reasons that I might go into in a bit.

I dunno, I feel like the game keeps trying to find justifications for them that might only come across as apologia if they'd been double downed on.

 

[Bradylama]

I mean, it's nuclear, not atomic.

The reason we call them "nuclear bombs" and "atomic bombs" is because the destructive force is generated by a nuclear reaction that splits atoms. A dirty bomb would more accurately be called a radiation bomb. The objective being to spread radioactive material.

Even then, Vulpes is lying his ass off as you find numerous signs of people fighting back. But Caesar makes a point about how science like Power Armor, nuclear weapons, laser weapons, and so on are all weaknesses.

There isn't any sign of struggle anywhere else in Nipton other than the City Hall. It mostly went down exactly as Vulpes Inculta described. They were able to round up the entire town and the Powder Gangers to perform the lottery, then executed them one by one while crucifying the rest.

The biggest problem with the Legion is that they're undercooked because of time restrictions, but there's more than enough of the Legion to flesh out from context and NPC descriptions to fill in the blanks. The Legion just has an overall lack of content.

 

[Bradylama]

Look, even when we're trying to talk about the TV show all we can talk about is New Vegas. That's how devoid of substance the show is.

 

[Traeger91]

I dunno, I feel like the game keeps trying to find justifications for them that might only come across as apologia if they'd been double downed on.

You know what they say about opinions, all I'm going to say is that I find them interesting. As if I do go in depth, it'll just break down into me having to defend every single position, which I don't have the time or patience for. One thing I will say, is that I like the dynamic between how the Legion and NCR handle criminal acts, perceived or not.