Yeah I still consider Legion to be a very dark shade of grey, regardless of what he says. IIRC they said prior to the game's release that the Legion was going to be a dark shade of grey and they had planned for content on the other side of the river as well which had to be abandoned as they didn't have time to develop that side of the river (it's amazing what they managed to create with the time they had, imagine if they had had another year, then we might've been able to see the other side of the river as well). I also remember that they commented on how they planned to portray the two main factions, NCR and Legion. NCR would come across as being "the good guys" who have a few problems here and there but the further into the game you went the more skeletons started to fall out of their closet. Whereas with the Legion it was meant to be a big impact right off the bat, Nipton. Where the Legion is shown at their most brutal, vicious and cold-hearted but once you reached their lands (on the other side of the river) then you'd see them in a better light. You'd see that while the frontier is a hell-hole the lands they control are --in their own way-- pretty functional, stabilized, prosperous, and successful.
This just sounds like he's stopped caring. I remember him explaining things about the Legion way back, trying to make them seem like not so much of a pitch black choice on formspring or whatever it was called. I dunno, it just feels like he wanted to explain more about the Legion as much as he could without just going all fanfic about it way back but now he's stopped caring and he just goes "eh fuck it, they evil yo". Like, here's an example of when he used to actually 'care':
http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?198259-J-E-Sawyer-on-the-Legion-and-post-endgame-play And another good thing to explain would have been the "synthesis" Caesar wanted out of winning Vegas and establishing it as the new capital, they never went into detail what this was in the ending slides and that was a really bad decision on their part as it could've helped explain why Legion could be a proper grey choice. Instead, all we see is Caesar entering the strip and taking it, the end. So the least they could have done would have been to explain the synthesis of "taking the best out of NCR and Legion and shedding the worst to form a new society that can last" (paraphrasing here) post-launch in something like the link I just gave.
He can go on and on about how they represent this and how they're a metaphor of that and draw parallels between that thing over there but all I see is their failure at writing a slaver army that actually got a selling point as a morally grey faction and his admission to it. Sure, it can still be a metaphor or parallel or whatever of humanities capacity for cruelty and shit but that's 'all' it'll be.
I'm probably being too harsh. But the way I see it, if the Legion isn't a morally ambiguous choice then it isn't really a choice at all except for "EVIL!" characters. And "EVIL!" characters are just dumb. Let me put into context here; Let's say you have the option of helping a cat out of a tree for a little girl then you can either help the cat down and not agree to a reward (which is a reasonable choice), you could offer to help the cat down but you'd want a little bit of a reward for it as it may be a lot of work and you're taking the time out of your day to help a fucking cat down a tree (which again is a reasonable choice), you could explain to the girl that it is a freaking cat and that it'll come down from the tree when it feels like it and she shouldn't worry (which is a reasonable choice), you could even snarl at the kid and throw a rock at the branch it is sitting on to scare it down because your character is pissed off or frustrated or whatever (even this is a reasonable choice) or you could shoot the cat, handcuff the girl to something nearby, fuck the cats corpse and then force feed it down her throat.
That last choice isn't really a choice at all to me. It's the lowest form of writing to just be "EVIL!" as that offers zero nuance to anything. Sure, if you're RPing as a complete and total psychopath then that last choice would be great to have, but why encourage players to RP as either satan or jesus? Shouldn't RPing be more nuanced than that? Shouldn't moral ambiguity offer more than just a paragon of humanity or the devil's reject? Yes, Caesar is more nuanced than that. Yes, the Legion is useful as a metaphor of humanity but as a roleplaying option? As a roleplaying option there is barely a single character that would want to help the Legion reach power. There are tons of characters that would want to team up with House. Tons of characters that would want to see NCR stabilize the area. Tons of characters that would see the need for anarchy or want the power of a robot army to control this stretch of land. But how many characters actually want to help the Legion?
And I'm not saying every single faction or character have to be morally ambiguous. Some people are just downright evil pieces of shit. But to have an 'entire nation' like that --a nation which people willingly travel into to trade stuff with. A nation that 'protects' its denizens and travellers. A nation that even a ghoul like Raul points out how much better is now in Arizona and that the Legion ain't that bad-- just seems dumb to me. Oh no, we can't possibly make a slaver army led by a man with a god-complex a morally ambiguous choice, how ever would we be able to do that? If the entire nation was full of baby-eaters then 'no one' would be saying 'anything' good about it 'ever'. Yet there are characters that do comment on good things about the Legion or the land they control.
On that note, I don't consider goody-goody-two-shoes to be a real choice either. It's cartoonish.
So Legion isn't grey according to Sawyer. Yeah well his previous comments pre and post launch along with a bunch of hints in the game would beg to differ. For some reason he just doesn't care enough to try and defend it as a grey choice or try to expand on them any more. The Legion is a grey choice. All we need is to actually explore their lands first hand or to have a lead dev explain things about it in detail as they failed to do that in the main game for various reasons. But since it is too late for a DLC all we got left is a developer explaining things in detail post-development.
I ain't asking for The Legion to become all lollipops and rainbows inside of their lands. I'm just asking for better moral ambiguity. And for a studio so praised for it I find their final design on the Legion to be a failure on their part or just lazy writing (apart from Caesar and Lanius) if they never really wanted to portray them as anything but "EVIL!". Accepting the outcome rather than working towards something better is the easy way out. And the easy way out is not always the right way out.
Legion is grey to me, they just fucked up explaining 'how' they are grey for the general audience. Because of how they ended up there are tons of people that don't delve into the lore behind the Legion and just accepts them as being "the villains" and don't see anything but Nipton. Even I struggle at times to see why a character I'm RPing would want to join the Legion. So to me Sawyer is wrong on this. They are/should be grey, all we need is someone with merit explaining why. One easy solution would be a mod. I know Sawyer is busy with other things but he created a mod for FNV that altered gameplay with various tweaks and rebalancing. So why not create a mod that expands on the Legion endings and explain what the synthesis is? That could very well be enough if it is done right. And coming from someone at Obsidian that mod would carry a lot more weight than it would if I were to create it. If I created it it'd just be fanfic. Or he could just do something like Formspring, where he produces an official lore-update that is to be taken as canon (think of it as All Roads, All Roads is canon even though it isn't in any game) where he explains more about Legion, good and bad.
But I guess a super-evil faction is more interesting than a darker shade of grey faction. After all, he's Sawyer, the guy who was lead designer and director of the game so he what he says has far more merit than what I say. So if he says they aren't a grey choice then I guess they aren't a grey choice. Why bother asking for more when it is easier to settle for what we ended up with. It's not like it'd improve FNV if CL became a proper grey choice, even if said improvement would be needed to be found outside of the game... Like All Roads.
Yknow what sucks about being a fan of the true Fallouts? Being a fan of a faction that the majority despises, as that makes you a niche within a niche. I sure am glad that J.E Sawyer bestowed us this bit of information. I'm not bitter at all.
Whatever.
I guess my new favorite faction is the Boomers. Cause at least they can bomb all the other choices to death. Might go with a bit of Ulysses and fuck the world up with nukes too. Maybe Avellone was right, it's time to just start all over again if our choices are evil mc'evil yo, creepy guy in a tube, boring NCR and weird twitchy robot. I mean, I guess the Independence ending is anarchy too but it isn't anarchy enough. Gotta blast the world. Purge it of inferior choices. Boomers for life and Ulysses is my waifu. I don't even know why I'm still typing this shit. I'll stop now.
