What faction is the best choice for the Mojave?

[CT Phipps]

There's a self-fufliling prophecy there.

House wants to betray NCR because he suspects they will stand in his way.

NCR wants to stop House because they suspect he will betray them.

Part of the issue is that House seems to be operating with the viewpoint that he has to be harsher than he is and also that he mistakes nostalgia for Vegas to be equal to actually beneficial. He forces the White Glove Society to give up cannibalism (good), allows human trafficking psychotic tribals (Bad), drives out the Kings (Bad), Drives out the 21 Vaulters instead of employing them (Bad), and helps build an entirely functional infrastructure (Good).

New Vegas was a bunch of empty powerless ruins before House got a hold of it and he's building it into his Rapture-esque Utopia. A place that can actually have a functioning Vault City-esque advanced technology and civilization. In a very real way, House is doing what Caesar claims he's trying to do but is just being a pseudo-Taliban/African warlord. He's building a New Rome with aqueducts (Hoover Dam), roads, and electricity.

House's biggest issue is that he really doesn't have someone to reign him in and his god complex is only 90% of being the Smartest Man on Earth (the Courier can be smarter) just like Van Buren's ending where you can be the only person on Earth smarter. A Good Karma Courier gets the approval of House because while he is a Neutral Karma man himself with a dark ruthless side, he would very much like to see things GET BETTER. It's just he assumes that requires him to be cruel and unyielding.

I think House will be the best in the long term just because he'll turn Vegas into a New Vault City and that is something that everyone could use in the Wasteland. A place that can bring a lot to NCR when it does join.

 

[Jogre]

Part of the issue is that House seems to be operating with the viewpoint that he has to be harsher than he is and also that he mistakes nostalgia for Vegas to be equal to actually beneficial. He forces the White Glove Society to give up cannibalism (good), allows human trafficking psychotic tribals (Bad), drives out the Kings (Bad), Drives out the 21 Vaulters instead of employing them (Bad), and helps build an entirely functional infrastructure (Good).

I think it's a mistake to view Mr House, or any of the factions in New Vegas as "Good" or "Bad" as moral statements. I think what's more relevant is the reality of how they function.

Vegas is entirely structured around the Strip being an economic core, surrounded by Wasteland and Ghettos. House wants to use the Vegas Strip as his own personal fiefdom with himself as an autocrat, and as such he's acting in entirely self-interested ways.

He built his entire city on the back of neo-Colonialism, effectively forcibly settling local tribes, and like the British, selected specific ones he deemed to be worthy of being rulers and put them in positions of power, while ghettoising and exploiting the rest who are thrown in to Freeside and Westside. His endings only reinforce this behaviour as he carries it to the rest of Vegas, while also taxing huge amounts from independent towns

I don't care about House as a moral person, or what his long-term goals are. The problem is Mr House is literally practicing Imperialism: Firstly his entire city state is literally built on the idea of forcibly intergrating local tribes and selecting some of them as a ruling class, Secondly, his entire goal is to enrich a specific Metropolitan city, and is using the rest of the Mojave.

In the long-term, what happens to places like Freeside or Primm or Goodsprings?, They'll be more and more focused on economically serving a distant autocrat who rules over a city most of them will never get a chance to see.

just because he'll turn Vegas into a New Vault City

Vault City is actually a perfect example of what New Vegas under Mr House is:

A high-tech city built on the backs of an underclass made up of everyone except the residents of the main strip, who are othered and stomped on, but necessarily need to work for the good of the whole.

Like, you kinda unintentionally made my point for me.

A place that can bring a lot to NCR when it does join.

Putting aside the fact that this is a complete hypothetical. There's no guarantee Mr House will ever give up power to join the NCR, in fact I think it's incredibly unlikely.

To be honest, I don't really buy this logic that "It's ok for short-term imperialism because eventually it'll create a high-tech city that everyone can benefit from"

The truth of the matter is Mr House has made it very clear that he only cares about the New Vegas strip, and the rest of Vegas may as well be a self-governing open-air prison for all he cares. None of the endings imply he shares any of his technology with the outside world, or that they see any of the benefits of his rule: Rather it seems explicitly clear that he ONLY cares about Vegas. He taxes Primm heavily and turns it in to a Securitron police state, but it's never implied he gives them any of the benefits, in fact his rule of Vegas implies quite the opposite.

Realistically, I think what'll happen is Vegas will get richer and more high-tech, and the rest of the Wasteland suffers, because again, the entire structure of New Vegas, from it's initial conception by Mr House, is based off of neo-Colonialism and Imperialism.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Realistically, I think what'll happen is Vegas will get richer and more high-tech, and the rest of the Wasteland suffers, because again, the entire structure of New Vegas, from it's initial conception by Mr House, is based off of neo-Colonialism and Imperialism.

I think that as Vegas gets wealthier, places around the Mojave will also benefit in the form of increased tourism. Sure, Mr. House could do more to help the other settlements of the Mojave (and he almost certainly won’t), but at least some of Vegas’s wealth will “trickle down” from travelers going to and from Vegas/NCR without House having to bother.

The only way the Mojave Wasteland ends up worse than it is now under House’s rule is if House wants to exploit some resources. Other than the quarry there really isn’t a lot out there, so he could only do so much damage. Every town’s economy seems to be based off tourism and/or farming from what I can see.

 

[Morgan_]

Overall I would say the NCR. I don't really like NCR having total control as I think house is best suited to using the area to it's best technological outcome. The choice I go with as the courier usually is House winning Vegas with his robot army and then to make up for his humanitarian failings I build up the followers and free/west side while strengthening places like Jacobs town and Goodsprings. This keeps both the Legion and NCR in check in the area as well and results in the legion growing less effective after Caesar's passing.

I don't really like siding with a techno autocrat and my biggest point of contention was his stance on the BoS, but it seems that if we're playing the long game he is the best option for charting a path out of the wasteland existence. Other than that you can counter his negatives by doing the above listed things.

If I had to bite the bullet on a single faction I'd have to choose the NCR though. Realistically that is who I'd be siding with in that world if I weren't a superman courier that can do nearly anything.

 

[Norzan]

The faction that my Courier created called Blackjack And A Ton of Cocaine. It also has hookers.

 

[Alphons]

House is a good businessman and inventor, also pretty good analyst (despite making several mistakes and never learning from them), but he's not fit for ruling anyone.

Let's look at the Strip as an example of his failures as a leader.
Directly across the street from Lucky 38 people he chose to run Gomorrah are finalizing their terrorist attack and House knows shit about it.

Next to Lucky 38 in Ultra Luxe powerful businessman that supplies the entire Strip with meat had his son kidnapped and the detective looking into it was murdered. House doesn't care and a skillful Legion agent could use this opportunity to convince Mortimer to support the Legion (both Vulpes and Alerio can enter Strip).

And in The Tops a man he chose as his agent sits around sipping cocktails with a Platinum Chip in his pocket- literally House's most priced possession. What can House do about it? Nothing.

House tells the Courier that in a couple of centuries he'll have moved mankind into the stars, but his weak rule won't last even a decade.


Caesar's Legion is another weak faction. The moment Caesar dies (the man with a deadly tumor that nobody in Legion can cure) everything falls apart. They may kick NCR out of Mojave but they won't win in a long run.

So for me it's between Independent and NCR.
NCR may be incompetent on several levels, but they're stable. Unless someone can destroy their entire nation in one swift blow, they're just too big to be destroyed or fall apart completely.

I could see a competent Courier successfully going Independent and maybe starting another small nation that prospers thanks to trade with NCR and what's left of the Legion after Caesar dies. Eliminating Fiends and Powder Gangers, gaining support of all the smaller factions and towns in the Mojave, having access to technology of Big MT and the Think Tank, having allies in the Zion, a favour or two with Happy Trails and some powerful friends in the NCR (Gundersons, Senator Hanlon, Crocker) would all certainly help.
It would still be a major gamble.

 

[Atomic Postman]

House is a good businessman and inventor, also pretty good analyst (despite making several mistakes and never learning from them), but he's not fit for ruling anyone.

Let's look at the Strip as an example of his failures as a leader.
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It's an excellent point, often overlooked but people believe every word out of House's mouth when they really shouldn't. Maybe it's because I know buisnessmen like him IRL but I can easily see what is effectively a sales pitch spin. He's probably confident in the idea himself and he's not pulling some sort of con, but he's blowing a lot of hot air in order to get you on board.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of reality (and actions) don't line up with his words. He has supposedly grand foresight and meticulous knacks for probabilities, but his own protege betrays him (potentially twice) and each of his tribal families are breaking contract in some form or about to launch into outright armed rebellion, but he has no idea. He says he'll be a benign dictator to the Courier because he doesn't interfere in the lives of others, yet there's not a single person in the city of New Vegas that hasn't got a story about them or their tribe/family being fucked over by House in some form. He actually interferes with the people outside of the Strip, a lot (Massacring entire tribes/peoples, forcible assimilation, forcible removal, forcible servitude, perpetual surveillance) what he actually means about having no interest in that he's an autocrat who doesn't give a single shit about the welfare/wellbeing of his people unless it's directly relevant to his bottom line.

Why the fuck would I believe him about space travel?

Ulysses is also right about House in that the walls of Vegas (i.e his control) will just inflate to encompass the entire Mojave with likely not much time. Then more people will have to join House's way of running things or face destruction.