New Vegas: Why Join the Legion?

[Connor Lonske]

(skipping to the last part to shorten post)
The NCR has little infrastructure.
The NCR has general custard to World War I to 1700s era level military style. They are all over the place.
The NCR has no actual end game, or actual strategy beyond a primitive form of imperialism.


On the other hand, the legion and house are strong men governments and those always fail when the leader dies. Their progress is lost because an incredibly centralized government runs that risk when all the power lands on a single man with a cult of personality.

So its either young upstarts who have no actual idea of what made the old world ideas work, or two strong men governments that won't last a single human generation. That's what it all boils down to.

your point on the NCR is really really good. basicly everything i think about them in terms of both expansion and holding themselves together.

but your point about the strong man leading the pack only works for the legion, as house is practically immortal. he just needs to be less easy about letting people wander into the lucky 38 because it's a huge risk the first time seeing how the PC can kill him. and seeing how he has the PC, by the time he gets old Vegas will be well established and successful, and it's likely he won't need a guy like the courier anymore anyway.

but i won't deny it's still a risk. it's just hardly at all comparable to the legion when it has it's poor leadership and such.

still, good points man.

 

[Tayh]

I think Obsidian had simply run out of time to make the Legion interesting and viable.

The game tries so hard to disfavor the Legion, I think it's weird they even bothered implementing them as a joinable faction.
Upset the Legion? Oh, here's a few legion assassins sporting melee weapons and shitty armor.
Upset the NCR? Have some power-armoured rangers sporting AM sniper rifles and assault weapons hunting you down, in most of the area where the interesting locations are.

Man, I wish you could have joined the Great Khans.
If the game had gotten just one more year of development and fleshing-out, I think it could viably have become one of the best action-rpg's ever.

 

[Saxnot]

Yeah. i agree. they had the chance to make the legion interesting, but they just didn't take it.
they should have portrayed the legion as more brutal but also more succesful than the NCR, so you have to make a choice between the side that's more practical and more suited to the post-tapocalyptic world, the legion, and the side that's more idealist but also much worse at dealing with the problems of the wasteland.

as it is, the legion was just a bunch of mysoginist, backwards, sociopathic primitives that nobody in their right mind would ever join because they make everything worse.
they don't even work as a post-apocalyptic equivalent to the roman empire, because while the romans were brutal they also brought culture, civilisation and prosperity for those they conquered, whereas the legion actually wants to stop using technology and revert to tribalism (under one ruler). Plus, since we never see any areas that are under their control, we have no idea what living under stable legion rule is like.

 

[Hagi]

For me what really makes it a tacked-on faction is that every single human companion either hates the legion or is hated by them.

Gannon, Boone and Veronica will all leave you if you follow the legion's quest-line unless you start jump through some weird loops to keep them (like never ever speaking to Gannon after you get a positive reputation with the legion whilst he's still following you).

Cassidy says she hates them but won't actually leave you for it. Lily doesn't talk about them at all, but considering the legion despises mutants she doesn't fit either. Raul is the only one that ever says anything positive about them but that's again completely nullified by the legion also hating ghouls.

There's of course the two non-human companions. But guess what? The legion also dislikes robots! So not even ED-E and Rex fit in with them!

There simply isn't a single companion in the game that fits with the legion. So not only are you barred from most of the interesting areas in the Mojave you're also barred from most of the interesting NPCs as well.

 

[Mordekaien]

Maybe I am overthinking it, but we never actually saw the Legion territories for ourselves and we had to deal with an advancing military line and camps basically- no normal cities. The legion settelement could be peaceful, if a little harsh clusters of civilization, yet the game never states that's the case, apart from the fact that legion territories are the safest to travel through.

I still tell myself that since you went basically in the middle of a warzone, you're bound to see atrocities on both sides of the conflict- but NCR hides them, whereas Legion uses them as warnings for all to see.

Or they are just murderous pricks, and I gave them too much credit.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

You've really got to be on your game to play for them, since it blocks out every NCR-allied base.

No it doesn't... I simultaneously had access to both the NCR and the Legion safe houses with high alignment with both. It's not even difficult to work for the legion without causing NCR to shoot you on sight

I beat the game last year, and this thought has been festering in my mind ever since: Why would you join Caesar's Legion?

Why would I? Or why would a person? Because I certainly wouldn't.

The only people on the Legion's side you meet that aren't legionnaires are slaves

This isn't true at all. Dale Barton(who has no official affiliation with the legion) testifies to the fact that trade in Arizona is great because of Caesar. He doesn't have to bother with caravan guards because there are no raiders, the taxation is extremely low, and he doesn't have to be on his guards all the time.

This seems major; after fighting raiders and mutant animals every step of the way across NCR-controlled Mojave, it would definitely make you notice if there was a place free from random encounters, where you could see citizens living outside of the fortified camps everyone else requires.

Why does seeing it make that much of a difference? The story isn't about Arizona, it's about Vegas and the Mojave. And you are told repeatedly by multiple non-biased and biased characters that Arizona does not have a raider problem.

You're also told repeatedly of the problems the NCR has back west. Did you ignore all that as well because you weren't allowed to go and physically talk to the politicians in Shady Sands?

Similarly, The NCR puts up farms, operates power plants, resurrects lost tech, and does all sorts of creative activity.

The NCR farms are plagued with problems. Their power plants are run rather incompetently to the point where they literally had to go door to door asking people how to operate a power plant; for which they ended up hiring a complete moron. The tech they are mostly interested in is military tech, which sets them on the same path the old world took to destruction.

Most of the NCR's non-military tech advances are from the only faction in the game that isn't filled with assholes, the Followers of the Apocalypse. And the NCR and the Followers are starting to really dislike eachother, with the Boneyard cutting a lot of its political dies to Shady Sands after they cut all funding to the Followers. There's even an ending where the followers get forced out of the Mojave by the NCR military forces.

Meanwhile, all the Legion seems to do is destroy (Nipton and Nelson being prime examples, as the first time you meet the Legion and the most obvious way to re-establish contact respectively).

Caesar's Legion is not Caesar's Rome. They are a military force with a tiny capital in Flagstaff. Basically they are more Mongolians to the NCRs China. They rove around in camps for the most part. This is part of Caesar's plan because he does not want to burden himself before he ends the conflict with the NCR. Because they are trying to maintain farms and build/maintain actual buildings he has been able to gain a military advantage. If you talk to him, he doesn't really believe his legion is a country. He wants it to become a country eventually, but he has to defeat the NCR first before he can start laying down the foundation for his new world.

While they build a nice base at Fortification Hill, their lack of high-tech equipment and rewards makes allying with them less appealing for the average player, who will be carrying as much tech as possible.

I wouldn't necessarily call any of the factions rewards to be high tech... you mostly have to buy that stuff. Well except for the brotherhood, but they aren't a major faction. And as far as normal rewards go, the legion gives them in abundance. You get tons of stimpacks, doctors bags and money if you just visit cotton cove regularly. They are easily the nicest faction in terms of player rewards.

Having Caesar mock those who... ...rely on guns rather than blades is a definite turn-off.

He acknowledged the importance of guns in the destruction of the first tribe and the actual founding of the legion. He just points out that finding people to maintain and create guns is difficult. And being as they are in the middle of a freaking desert with hundred year old weapons, jamming is likely and so he devoted a lot of time to fostering martial prowess. A large portion of the legion is still armed with guns in the final battle they have 50 cals, marksman carbines not to mention the freaking power fists that use sonic blasts to cause damage.

And the biggest problem is the most obvious: the Legion is barbaric. Slavery, misogyny, crucifixion, genocide; everything that makes the Legion stand out makes them seem terrible to modern eyes.

Most of those aren't that bad apart from the woman hating thing. Slavery in actual proper historical Rome wasn't all that much more horrible than being a citizen. In fact a lot of them led pretty normal lives and basically acted just like servants. My point is that living back then was difficult, just as living in the Mojave is difficult for the NCR citizens. The legion slaves probably don't have it all that much worse than the settlers struggling to survive in a land filled with drug crazed raiders and a massive escaped convict problem. I mean if you don't act fast enough during the tutorial someone dies just trying to draw water from a well. Life in the Mojave is not easy for anybody.

Crucifixion is pretty horrible but we do some horribly things in our modern society. We are force feeding hunger striking prisoners in Guantanamo which legitimately qualifies as torture under international law in a way that even waterboarding didn't. And face it, the United States loves torture. We glorify it in our movies. The good guys threaten the bad guys with all sorts of nastiness. Charles Bronson in Death Wish, Denzel Washington in Man on Fire, Batman. We keep it to ourselves of course, shhhh, but most everyone loves torture. We want to see the good guys hurting the bad guys. Go ask one of the millions of HBO watchers what they would like to see happen to Joffrey. You can argue that the people the legion does it to aren't bad guys but come on, don't argue that it's deplorable to the average modern person.

And I'm not sure what you mean by genocide. If you're speaking of the new definition, then the legion doesn't commit genocide. They leave part of the tribes alive and force them to join their legion.

So that's my take. What do you think, Escapists? Is there a reason to join the Legion? (I know some of you did) What makes them better than your other options?

New Vegas is very much about rebuilding the new world in the image of the old world the question is just what parts of the old world and why? Most of the major factions are built on this idea. The Followers and Independent Vegas being the only different 'options.'

The Kings worship a 1950s idea of coolness and manliness. The Khans were born from the idea of nomadic warrior tribes from Mongolia. The BoS is direct left over military heritage, trying to hold on to what they used to be with the idea that they can rebuild America from that tradition.

But let's talk about the major factions.

Robert House wants to rebuild in two separate ways. He wants the sleek mechanical corporate technological world back and he wants the specific idea of New Vegas and what it represents back. In my opinion this is pretty damn Orwellian with robots watching people who are then pacified by sex and drugs and gambling. He's far too controlling.

The NCR wants to build itself in the image of the most immediate old world. The United States of America. It set up a senate a constitution a president. It is organized in the same way the old world was. It prides itself on the same things but it makes the same mistakes at the same time. It is burdened by the same corruption, the same ignorant citizenry, the same military jingoism. They have the same got mine mentality. When NCR settlers when to Baja they set themselves up on a well and killed everyone who tried to get water, a direct parallel to the fights over oil in the prewar lead up to annihilation and the invasion of Canada. They are constantly on the search for bigger meaner weapons just like the old world had done. They have all the excess all the greed and all the excessive nationalism. They are a conquest based republic and they are pushing away and ostracizing the group trying the hardest out of anyone in the wasteland to make life better and to prevent a new world war. [Also speaking of the matter, a part of me would love seeing fallout come full circle in the same way as A Canticle for Leibowitz]

You see all the little people trying to make a difference often futilely and many of the hallmarks of our modern society. Even more than this it is offset by our inability to relate to the legion. And because of that gap and because you don't really connect the ideas in the game that readily with an actual apocalypse for a variety of reasons it's harder to see the problems with the NCR. The big one as I mentioned is that it's repeating immediate history and it's quickly making all the same mistakes that led to global annihilation in the first place. The NCR is the faction that has completely ignored "war, war never changes."

The Legion is different in a way. Oh they still support war of course. Caesar has decided that war and conflict are part of the human condition. But unlike the NCR, Caesar thought about the apocalypse that humanity caused and he wanted to prevent there being another catastrophe. This is why he is against technology. He saw even in the benefits of technology the dangers it brings(eg. Vault 22.) And more so he saw danger in the most dangerous weapons. The nukes, the lasers, the robots. Things that made killing too easy to quick and on too big a scale. So he tried to conquer the Mojave and lash it to a new philosophy a different one that wouldn't make the same mistakes as the old world. And that even if it didn't remember the lesson in the danger of war itself, it would at least find a way to keep it on a scale that wouldn't threaten humanity again on such a level. The slavery and the executions are more just byproducts of this system. He needed a way to bind people to his will and force them down the path he wanted them to go. He saw the dangers of giving people a choice as shown by the NCR. I can't speak for the misogyny though. Could be just a temporary thing until they get more established and start having actual cities rather than just being a military force. Seems to be part of a power building scheme that I would explain further if this post wasn't already so overblown.


IN SHORT:

I wouldn't say the legion is the best choice. The best choice is yes man(and hoping to God that yes man is actually who he says he is, and isn't a self aware robot who was playing you for a fool to gain power. Which the ending alludes to by his suddenly acting differently and going away to reprogram himself without your telling him to) and then supporting the Followers. But the NCR vs Legion is a lot more awash of an argument than you are making it be. The NCR will make the same mistakes that destroyed the old world, that much is obvious. The legion may be evil fucks, but they are at least trying to do something different in the hope that it will build a more stable and better world.

 

[Razmas]

Simple. You join the Legion if you're playing the most evil ************ in the Wasteland. There is literally no other reason.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Well keep in mind that lots of the legion content was cut.

But the reason to join them is because they are efficient. Sure they're evil but a group of people with swords and spears are probably the greatest threat the NCR ever faced. They did manage to unite all those tribes to the east. According to Raul things were worse before. NCR have good intentions but they are spread thin and plagued by corruption on top of being attacked by new upstarts. That's pretty much what led to the end of Rome. That said, fuck the Legion, sexist slaver assholes. I still support the NCR.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I haven't played New Vegas, but the gist I've gotten is.

Brotherhood, fanatics who are trying to do good but are ....fanatics.

NCR, normal idealism, corrupt, and ineffectual society.

Legion, survival of the fittest.

House, idealist, but keeps himself in power.

That about right?

 

[Headsprouter]

Well, you just basically summed up the massive problem with New Vegas. Being good gains the same reward as being evil, but being evil is far more destructive. Whereas in Fallout 3, being evil gets you, for example, and armoury of weapons and Callahan's magnum, whereas being good saves many lives and a stronghold, but no magnum.

Therefore being evil isn't in any way justified, you're just being a massive dick for no reason, not even for personal gain, just because you can. And that's not the way it should be. In a game where morals are handled well, Bioshock, you can kill the little sisters, and get more ADAM and get it faster, meaning you have greater survivability, whereas if you are good, you get less, and you gain it more slowly, but you gain some special plasmids and a warm, fuzzy feeling. Also the ending that doesn't say:

Spoiler: bad ending of bioshock 1

"You're a massive dick and we all hate you. We are glad you are gone and it would have been better if you hadn't existed at all. All you brought to the world was suffering. Go rot in hell you child-killing scum."

Actully, I know it's kind of off-topic, and spoilery, but I also want to say that that ending is awful. Even if you kill but one little sister and save the rest, you get the same ending with a slightly more mournful tone. It's horrible. Be good all the way if you want the full experience of the game. Bioshock 2 had endings (but not ENDING). At least if you had mixed relations with the little sisters you get a choice as to how things end.

Is there any good reason to join the Legion? No. And why would someone? I don't know. maybe because they have cool dogs. That's the only legit reasoning I can see behind it besides role-playing a complete bastard. Maybe I'm too empathetic too understand. I know it's kind of sad considering I'm empathising with NPCs, Fallout ones, no less, but that's just me. I like to play with good reasons for my actions.

 

[DEAD34345]

It's not supposed to appeal to a regular, modern way of thinking, but many people play characters very different to themselves. I guess it'd be there if you wanted to make a character with a "Peace at any cost" kind of mindset, or just someone who genuinely sees nothing wrong with slavery, sexism etc. The dislike of tech just adds more flavor, to make playing a Legion character different and therefore more worthwhile after you've done almost everything else.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Well, I was doing a somewhat evil playthrough, so I was going to join them.

But then I found out I could get a robot army and take the Mojave for myself.
Why help someone else take over the Mojave when I can claim it for myself?

 

[LaughingAtlas]

I think they make joining the legion look unappealing (to most people, probably) because it's the side with the character they wanted to be the final boss, the only way to not fight (or at least have to show you have 100 in Speech skill) him being to join their side.

So, perhaps to spite their intentions? Maybe wanting to be the assassin rather than defending from them in that one mission? A longing to make use of that artillery thing sitting uselessly in the The Fort? Maybe just to prove you can resist any and all urges to assault them like the designated bad guys they're probably meant to be?

I think I've only ever managed to play nice with the legion all the way through one time, the temptation to turn on them and slaughter The Fort's residents entirely too strong for me. I once dedicated a play-through to sticking to their ways, wearing legion gear that I did not pilfer from one of their dead after doing nothing at all to help him attack those random traders, fought with machetes, and did everything I could to please the anachronistic bastards. Once in their good graces, I murdered Caesar by making it look like something went wrong with his surgery, his men accepted me as a trusted member of the legion regardless. Then I purged the camp with the alien blaster.

 

[Iron Gix]

i had a real hard time playing in favor of the Legion and just couldn't do it,they were way to evil for my taste.

 

[kingpocky]

For me what really makes it a tacked-on faction is that every single human companion either hates the legion or is hated by them.

Gannon, Boone and Veronica will all leave you if you follow the legion's quest-line unless you start jump through some weird loops to keep them (like never ever speaking to Gannon after you get a positive reputation with the legion whilst he's still following you).

Cassidy says she hates them but won't actually leave you for it. Lily doesn't talk about them at all, but considering the legion despises mutants she doesn't fit either. Raul is the only one that ever says anything positive about them but that's again completely nullified by the legion also hating ghouls.

There's of course the two non-human companions. But guess what? The legion also dislikes robots! So not even ED-E and Rex fit in with them!

There simply isn't a single companion in the game that fits with the legion. So not only are you barred from most of the interesting areas in the Mojave you're also barred from most of the interesting NPCs as well.

I think I read somewhere that there was originally supposed to be a Legion-positive follower, but he got cut out of the original game. The ideas they came up with were incorporated into Ulysses from the Lonesome Road add-on

 

[Landshark1]

I think there was a conversation along similar lines a LONG time ago on this site about the differing morals of the factions, specifically NCR and Legion. Having never played with the Legion, I have no personal information to back up any of their claims, but the basic gist of it was that the Legion was trying to bring civilization back to old times with the Legion. Instead of trying to resurrect the old world, like the NCR and House, Caesar wants humanity to build great civilizations on their own by retracing their roots. Apparently, Ceasar even says that he expects the Legion's slavery and misogyny to disappear over time, and that he's perfectly okay with that since then civilization would be evolving on it's own path. If someone could verify this that would be great, but basically Caesar's belief is that it's better for humanity to form a new civilization, rather than have people impose Old World ideas onto others.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

The Legion is supposed to be based off of the "Make a wasteland and call it peace" mentality of Rome,

Make wasteland? No, to defeat all enemies, make slaves, burn and crucify some settlements to make an example out of them, or simply
"invade, conquer and rule with an iron fist" mentality.

While I admit that the Legion is probably the least-appealing of the factions you can join (and they have the hardest end-boss), I think it's at least an interesting addition, if nothing else.

When I went the Legion route for a playthrough, I took all of Caesar's dialogue options, and I found alot of his opinions to be fascinating. While I obviously don't agree with the slavery and misogyny, the actual ideals that Caesar built the Legion on are certainly food for thought. So, there's that from a story perspective.

From a gameplay perspective, the Legion route is probably best-described as the game's "hard mode". Definitely not the faction you want to choose as your first playthrough, but it's kinda fun after you've gone through the other endings. You've really got to be on your game to play for them, since it blocks out every NCR-allied base. It really forces you to play the game alot differently than you normally would, and like I said, it has the hardest (and most different) final stage.

So, I wouldn't say that the Legion is "better" than any of the other options, but it's definitely the most different. I'd say that gives it enough reason to exist.

Yes from a gameplay perspective, its you against the odds. That can be appealing, as I've gotten into Dark Souls, high difficulty is kind of appealing.

misogyny, slavery, and fears of technology taken out. This is pretty much my only complaint about New Vegas. I like the design of the faction from a villain stand point, the Legion is an awesome villain, but it's just not the Grey vs Gray mentality that Obsidian was trying to capture

Hmm, the point in their favor is the arena, machetes they fight with. And some Ceasars troops carry rippers..
So there is a small focus on melee weapons.
They should have added different kinds of unique melee weapons as the trade off, from a gameplay perspective,
for joining them. And you should get alot of money because obviously it is very profitable to steal everyone else's resources.
As it stands its clear that from a pragmatic standpoint theres no reason to join them, and from a moral viewpoint unappealing... unless random violence is your thing.