Like it feels like many of the events which happened (the Powder Ganger breakout and the consequences) feels like it happened recently while you were unconscious or before you were shot. Aside from that, the settlements feels like they were established only 15 years ago at max and while I suppose this is relatively minor in the whole scheme of things when Fallout 3/4 feels like they have barely changed in 200 years and I may be poking holes, but I was wondering this.
Why does everything in FNV feel so "recent"?
- Thread starter Ishan
- Start date
naossano
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
It has been a while since i've played it, so i don't recall the details, but in the broad lines.
House waking up was a recent event. Still years ago, but not centuries ago. (either waking up or activating the systems that would allow him to actually interact with the outside world, and be relevant)
He is the guy that rebuilt the strip and unified the tribes that lived there. If memory serves well, he also reactivated the hoover dam.
So the trip and the dam are the two things that attracts the most settlers, and some major factions like the legion and the ncr.
So while the area that you explore ingame had some marginal population before (the tribes that were later unified by House, for instance), the area didn't reach its shape, population and strategic value before House woke up.
On the sideline, the khans got there recently because they kept being pushed eastward by the NCR over the years, and the NCR current frontier is there. So, it still has an indirect connection.
What seem kind of random and are convenient coincidence.
A bunch of vaults opened recently and their dweller got their first taste of the wasteland in the recent years.
Some groups of nightkins/enclave remnants settled there relatively recently, which is convenient, as it allows you to learn about their lifestyle, but kind of improbable, considering how wide the wastelands is, and how little the ingame area is.
House waking up was a recent event. Still years ago, but not centuries ago. (either waking up or activating the systems that would allow him to actually interact with the outside world, and be relevant)
He is the guy that rebuilt the strip and unified the tribes that lived there. If memory serves well, he also reactivated the hoover dam.
So the trip and the dam are the two things that attracts the most settlers, and some major factions like the legion and the ncr.
So while the area that you explore ingame had some marginal population before (the tribes that were later unified by House, for instance), the area didn't reach its shape, population and strategic value before House woke up.
On the sideline, the khans got there recently because they kept being pushed eastward by the NCR over the years, and the NCR current frontier is there. So, it still has an indirect connection.
What seem kind of random and are convenient coincidence.
A bunch of vaults opened recently and their dweller got their first taste of the wasteland in the recent years.
Some groups of nightkins/enclave remnants settled there relatively recently, which is convenient, as it allows you to learn about their lifestyle, but kind of improbable, considering how wide the wastelands is, and how little the ingame area is.
TheAnimeHunter
First time out of the vault
I think it might part of the old west/new frontier feeling New Vegas had going on, though until any of the dev's confirm this is an intentional part of New Vegas' setting then we can't be certain about this. Just about everything naossano said is true.
The first battle of Hoover Dam happened in 2277 if I remember correctly, with everything else happening in the years prior. I think the powder gangers took over the NCRCF a month or so before the courier was shot in the head.
Lots of people from the NCR are migrating to the Mojave, either to get away from the society the NCR has created in favor of their own independence or because they've broken NCR laws or are part of raider gangs like the Khans/Vipers. Then you have the Jacobstown and Black Mountian super mutants who are targeted by anti-mutant senators in California.
I personally never thought about it until I found this thread, though since you mentioned it I can see where you're coming from.
The first battle of Hoover Dam happened in 2277 if I remember correctly, with everything else happening in the years prior. I think the powder gangers took over the NCRCF a month or so before the courier was shot in the head.
Lots of people from the NCR are migrating to the Mojave, either to get away from the society the NCR has created in favor of their own independence or because they've broken NCR laws or are part of raider gangs like the Khans/Vipers. Then you have the Jacobstown and Black Mountian super mutants who are targeted by anti-mutant senators in California.
I personally never thought about it until I found this thread, though since you mentioned it I can see where you're coming from.
Veers
Fire when ready.
The originals weren't too different. It feels like the Master is just now expanding his army and the Enclave is just now mobilizing as you go on your water/fever dream quest. Gotta have something going on to shake things up so the player feels like they can get involved. NV does a good job of setting up a background to things though, especially with the NCR-Legion War. It feels like a longstanding, protracted conflict of give-and-take.
D
Deleted member 98605
Guest
Because it is.
There's no 'ancient history' to Vegas, because it goes like this: House prepares for the Great War. Installs laser cannons in his tower. Great War happens, his laser cannons save vegas save for maybe a nuke blast at Black Mountain (air burst?) and the Devil's whatever out East and some other bombs far off. Everyone in Vegas celebrates for a hour but then die to rad storms (sic?) coming in. Vegas and the Mojave is a empty wasteland thereof, save for some tribals that'll become the three families.
Because the three families are utterly indoctrinated by House, we know nothing of their history other than that the Tops guys used to be nomadic (the boot riders), the White Gloves had a cannibal cave, and the Omertas were also nomadic, acting like the Indian Thuggees. The Jackals, Scorpions, Vipers seem to creep in between F1 and F2; the Khans creep in after F2.
The NCR follows them due to a mix of scouts reporting the dam and lake mead are fine, and to fight the raiders in the region, including the Khans. The followers come in at this time. BOS fled a bit before this, but not too much. House wakes up around this time and approaches the NCR at the dam after recruiting the three families, who seemed not to be directly targeted by the NCR.
The boomers left Vault 34 like 50? years before the game, Goodsprings is resettled by the NCR, Vault 3 opened up and was massacred, the Kings are less than 15 years old as well or so.
Jacobstown also seems to be relatively new, with Marcus setting it up due to the close but not immediate NCR presence. Everything else is boom-and-bust due to the NCR and the strip opening up again. Westside and so might have a bit of a older history but are really undercooked. The Highway man is here, implying the Chosen One came out this way, and the Vault Dweller technically? can comb the NV ruins in 1 or so but it's just urban terrain and urban random events.
It would be neat if we found the White glove's old cannibal cave, I guess, and a few more NCR bases along the main routes or that like, maybe ranger station charlie was a repurposed old base and stuff like that.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
I've expressed it elsewhere on the forum, but generally my biggest gripe with the story of the game is that it doesn't do enough to treat the "ancient" past of the setting. One of the best quests in the game, "Beyond the Beef," is one of the only ones that actually deals with the tension between the tribal past and modern LARP of the inhabitants of Vegas. Imagine if the other two families had a quest dealing with this tension.
Or if it was a bigger part of Free Side. All of these different people, most of the locals belonged to stone-age tribes less than a generation ago. We see hints of it in things like the Kings, which are essentially a messianic cargo cult, but more would have been great.
laclongquan
Boned Hunter of Sister
It feel recent because you the player get pulled according to story's pace and flow.
The peak of the pace is the FIRST hoover dam battle. Everything is built up around it: NCR force move to the Dam, NCR investment flow like water toward the desert to build up Goodspring, various farmstead from GS to Vegas and NCR sharecropper farm, Novac where they put several Ranger station nearby, the major battle at Helios One that sent BOS down ground, the massacre at BItter Springs,
Then BOOM, first Hoover Dam happened! then everything restart again, so it feel like something similar, something recent: more investment toward Sharecropper farm. NCR CF riot. Goodspring get half abandoned due to outbreak of cazadors up north. The massacre at Nipton etc...
Nothing wrong about that. You get pulled by the flow, or as we called it recently: deep immershun.
The peak of the pace is the FIRST hoover dam battle. Everything is built up around it: NCR force move to the Dam, NCR investment flow like water toward the desert to build up Goodspring, various farmstead from GS to Vegas and NCR sharecropper farm, Novac where they put several Ranger station nearby, the major battle at Helios One that sent BOS down ground, the massacre at BItter Springs,
Then BOOM, first Hoover Dam happened! then everything restart again, so it feel like something similar, something recent: more investment toward Sharecropper farm. NCR CF riot. Goodspring get half abandoned due to outbreak of cazadors up north. The massacre at Nipton etc...
Nothing wrong about that. You get pulled by the flow, or as we called it recently: deep immershun.
Clowncarcrash
First time out of the vault
It's recent because the events are recent. House only woke 10 years prior to the game, and thats when the NCR got there.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Well it's worth noting that the First Battle of Hoover Dam is itself very recent, like 5 yers ago
But of course you are right - part of the point of the setting is the rapid, perhaps unsustainable, pace at which modernity, both economic and ideological*, rapidly dissolves and develops everything solid in front of it into air
*NCR being both economically and ideologically modern, whereas Caesar is only ideologically modern
laclongquan
Boned Hunter of Sister
What do you mean "ideologically modern"?
Their damn system is a replication of a much older societal model, run way back to tribal alliance. The targeted tribe get attacked until destroyed and absorbed, their members started again as lowest societal position: (battle) slaves, working up. Their old tribal cultures get destroyed and forced to assume common Caesar's Legion culture. Their resumption of slave system is a one-century step back, because NCR only used slavery like a century ago in F2 days. Even then it's in fringe state like New Reno and the Den, and extremely under radar in Shady Sands (any exposure get attacked by Rangers).
They are not even Southern US slavery system, but more like really Roman system, circa 1st century AD, 2000+ years ago.
Their damn system is a replication of a much older societal model, run way back to tribal alliance. The targeted tribe get attacked until destroyed and absorbed, their members started again as lowest societal position: (battle) slaves, working up. Their old tribal cultures get destroyed and forced to assume common Caesar's Legion culture. Their resumption of slave system is a one-century step back, because NCR only used slavery like a century ago in F2 days. Even then it's in fringe state like New Reno and the Den, and extremely under radar in Shady Sands (any exposure get attacked by Rangers).
They are not even Southern US slavery system, but more like really Roman system, circa 1st century AD, 2000+ years ago.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Note that I was very careful to say that Caesar is ideologically modern, not the Legion.
Caesar's entire worldview is based in a modern work of philosophy, namely Hegel, the last of the great philosophical system builders. It is further informed by Gibbon, arguably the first of the great modern historians (note that historicism as such did not exist prior to the modern era).
In terms of the actual society that Caesar is building out east, arguably it's not really all that much like the Roman system, it's more the despotisms of Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, where every man is a slave to the despot, this being the predominant system centuries and millennia before Roman dominance. Caesar is only drawing bits and pieces from Rome to build an artificial society that will stand up decently well for his purpose, but that very project of artificially and self consciously creating society (itself a word that didn't exist before modernity) is decidedly a modern one, at least in the way Caesar goes about it.
It's also worth noting that Caesar does not see his Legion as the end state of society itself. Rather the whole thing has been created as a tool well suited to quickly knocking over NCR in order
To be ideologically modern is not the same thing as being morally modern. We might say that slavery in 'backwards' in some Whiggish sense, but recall that the Nazis practiced it, and they were decidedly a product of modernity.
The conflict of New Vegas reflects the conflict of the 20th century. On the one hand you have liberal society, NCR, against a tyrannical, Hegelian-derived ideology, with an abstract and exacting view of history that is used to justify vast amounts of suffering, lead by a single leader. Caesar fulfills the role of both fascism and communism simultaneously
laclongquan
Boned Hunter of Sister
Who give a flying fuck what a leader actually think or believe?
That fucker raise a movement to make tribal war, war feed war, much more intense than before. Before he set his damn foot onto that ground, they just make small skirmish wars. Brutal but localized. But he bringing his system into those tribal methods and they can make war after war without worrying about running out of manpower, so the menace of war blazing all over the midwestern. Nearly 90 tribes get destroyed, their remnant to be absorbed in the Legion, and for what? For a slavery system. For a one-century step back in historical progress.
We judge a man, or hell a leader, by what he did, what he lead to do, not by what he believe. Believe me, I dont give a fuck what Caesar believe. Even if he think he's Caesar born again, or God gift to Midwestern.
That fucker raise a movement to make tribal war, war feed war, much more intense than before. Before he set his damn foot onto that ground, they just make small skirmish wars. Brutal but localized. But he bringing his system into those tribal methods and they can make war after war without worrying about running out of manpower, so the menace of war blazing all over the midwestern. Nearly 90 tribes get destroyed, their remnant to be absorbed in the Legion, and for what? For a slavery system. For a one-century step back in historical progress.
We judge a man, or hell a leader, by what he did, what he lead to do, not by what he believe. Believe me, I dont give a fuck what Caesar believe. Even if he think he's Caesar born again, or God gift to Midwestern.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Who said anything about Caesar being morally or sentimentally good? Obviously that's the case from our standpoint. Morality is not the only rubric on which you can judge or consider a leader, especially in a work of fiction. Imagine how boring discussions of history would be if people just said, "Stalin was a bad guy," and left it at that.
I would also note as a matter of course that, for the regions and peoples Caesar conquered, the economic and social system he introduced (while not modern) was objectively more advanced than what came before. They were extremely primitive societies, not developed societies like NCR. That doesn't make it good, but it is historically progressive, in the same way the despotic hydraulic empires of the middle east were more developed than the tribal societies that preceded them.
It seems you're conflating historical progress with moral progress. The two are not the same, though it may often seem like they are sitting at what we believe to be its heretofore pinnacle. But in truth, an honest and objective assessment of history will find it to be a rather loose correlation at best.
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laclongquan
Boned Hunter of Sister
You dont seem to understand what your own hands just typed out? Lets put two posts of your side by side and see
I said, I dont give a flying fuck what Caesar think of belief, only in what he does. Whether he believe in Hegel or not, doesnt matter. Whether he say he being a moral man (hah!) or not, doesnt matter.
Slavery is as slavery behavior does~ A bunch of tribals from nearly 90 tribes, after get defeated brutally in war, get divided into two groups. The men and boys into battle slaves to fight as cannon fodders, luckiest or strongest can advance into lowest recruit rank, the rest die. The women and girls get subjected to brutal works and sexual exploitations. ALL genders are to wear explosive collar to be blown up by the whim of the trigger-holder. All can be bought and traded in slave market.
I dont give a fuck how you whitewash things, that's the slavery practiced by Legion.
I said, I dont give a flying fuck what Caesar think of belief, only in what he does. Whether he believe in Hegel or not, doesnt matter. Whether he say he being a moral man (hah!) or not, doesnt matter.
Slavery is as slavery behavior does~ A bunch of tribals from nearly 90 tribes, after get defeated brutally in war, get divided into two groups. The men and boys into battle slaves to fight as cannon fodders, luckiest or strongest can advance into lowest recruit rank, the rest die. The women and girls get subjected to brutal works and sexual exploitations. ALL genders are to wear explosive collar to be blown up by the whim of the trigger-holder. All can be bought and traded in slave market.
I dont give a fuck how you whitewash things, that's the slavery practiced by Legion.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
My posts are in no way contradictory, at least in no way that you have outlined.
I was not speaking to Caesar's personal morality. It seems to be what you're saying now is, regardless of what Caesar may think or feel, what the Legion does and the institutions it's introduced are bad, and therefore we don't need to make any further considerations, there's nothing else to discuss. That seems silly to me. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding and you're not even talking about the morality of the institutions introduced by the Legion, but if that is the case I'm really not sure what it is you're talking about.
So if morality is not a consideration for you, the question becomes - is that mode of production more or less developed than what came before? Are slave societies (or, more strictly, palatial/despotic societies) more or less advanced than tribal societies?
laclongquan
Boned Hunter of Sister
I think you got the gist of it. Caesar's Legion has performed many atrocities, real shitty things. Nothing can save that. Not even whitewashing personal moral of Caesar (heh!) and holding it high to cover all that badness.
Note that is the purpose of mine. I wont let the Legion apologists use that tactic (or anything else) to whitewashing their atrocities.
The imposition of ' White Man's ' morality, based on millennia of twisted belief systems killed millions of 'primitive peoples'.
Caesar' Legion are like some ' Monty Python ' depiction of righteousness.
Using Hegel as some base philosophy just encourages pseud debates.
Crucifixion is stranger than crucifact. Da
Caesar' Legion are like some ' Monty Python ' depiction of righteousness.
Using Hegel as some base philosophy just encourages pseud debates.
Crucifixion is stranger than crucifact. Da