Is it any good? How did they handle the New Vegas stuff? Is Yes Man my beloved in it?
It’s good. They treat new Vegas poorly, which is annoying, but the show itself is good and does interesting things with the lore. It is obvious Todd Howard ordered them to shit on the ncr to spite me personally because I once cut him off on the highway.
But the show is good.Honestly the way they treat the NCR is weird. I say this as a controversial critical supporter of the NCR.
They valorize them they were Numenor or something. In the flashbacks they seem like utopia with fresh food growing, open street libraries, light rail etc.
Every single NCR survivor seems genuinely decent, the stay behind rangers give the ghoul and Lucy guns and medicine for free. The people in the mutant vault from NCR are very wholesome.
Crowds cheer for the NCR in New Vegas when Maximus wears the NCR Ranger/Riot Power Armour. Lucy defends the NCR to her father as only “vaguely problematic” in comparison to Caesars legion.
The approach seems like these guys were too pure and good to survive the harsh realities of the wasteland, where some random vaulttec fuck will nuke you.
Instead of hey it’s a bourgeois democracy with all the contradictions and issues of the old world recreated in miniature.
Yeah it’s part of my beef with it. I’m not mad it’s not around, I’m mad why it’s not around.
Edit: the Jerry-rigged desert ranger power Armor against the deathclaw with people cheering it on was pure fanservice for me though. I popped like crazy
Got to agree I was hooting and hollering to have Maximus in that armor fighting deathclaws.
THE BEAR ROARS! I was so hyped. Pure fanservice, but it got me. Saw someone say “that’s probably the first time the armour felt like it fit him.”
Maybe they’re going for Maximus rebuilding the NCR? That would be great man slop, but I’d still drink that garbage.
mmm manslop
Yeah I will admit the desert ranger armor is very cool, ngl
I’m still looking for a fan animation I saw about 4 months ago of the desert rangers storming a BoS bunker and being all around cool badasses. I thought it was Operation: Sunburst, but it’s not, because that’s just the NCR using human wave tactics :/
What is your stance on the NCR? I figured them to neoliberal imperialists, and I don’t personally like them. But I’d like to hear your opinion.
The NCR ingame is repeating the mistakes of old bourgeois democracies and is bound to turn out like they did. It was a good critique of our Western democracies, an investigation of how good intentions might still send a growing community down that path and how the contradictions of the system begin to emerge.
The NCR in the show is a flawed construction because of the things @[email protected] describes and the issues I describe in my linked comment. Sorry about the spoilers from both of us. It is revealed early, but still.
I simp for the desert ranger Armor (especially the Survivalists variant, forgive me mama) however, so the scene in season 2 episode 7 was a real
moment for meMy thoughts
So laying the cards on the table, since the first Fallout my favorite faction has been the Followers of the Apocalypse. They’re pretty much the best faction. The unambiguously best ending in Fallout New Vegas for them is the NCR ending. Even in Yes Man they get overwhelmed with casualities from the routine violence that occurs under a Yes Man regimen. So I started hold my nose and backing them.
But the more I thought about it I felt the NCR was the best ending of the 4, because Yes Man as an ending is only good IF the courier is some benevolent super-intelligent and charismatic dictator who hangs around enforcing the peace. And if you’re engaging in that sort of magical headcanon-ing why can’t an idolized War Hero Courier go back to the NCR and try to change things by any any means necessary? Electoral politics, military coup or revolution.
It’s not great man theory, in the way Lenin wasn’t a great man, but the right person at the right time could steer that new proletariat upset at Water Merchants and Brahmin Barons, win over the soldiers disillusioned by imperial misadventure and build something better.
I don’t think the NCR as it is, is good, it’s recreating capitalism right on top of the ruins of capitalism. But it’s a good foundation for something better, unlike pretty much every major faction in the games (BoS, Unity, Caesar’s Legion, Enclave, Institute, House etc). They’re creating food, fresh water and industry needed to build a new society. Fertile ground for a socialist society to spring board off. Also in Fallout 2 and New Vegas a lot of the folk in the NCR are just genuinely decent folk trying to help and make do, their beaucrats and leaders suck, but the scientists, doctors, rangers, soldiers etc are all pretty decent.
And in any match up with NCR and the Legion, I back the NCR. Lenin came up with Revolutionary Defeatism during WW1 and it was the absolutely correct assessment for that moment. However a generation later socialists across the world had to struggle with the fight against fascism, where revolutionary defeatism was not up to the task. Bourgeois democracies had to be supported against fascism albeit momentarily to deal with the crisis. (there’s something here too about how the western left has had to make the enemies of the American empire comparable to Nazis to justified foreign intervention, but Caesar’s legions are actually fascistic and evil).
Also as a trans person I think the NCR is one of the few places I might if I was thrust into the setting have a chance of finding someone who can synthesis estrogen for me (which is probably the Followers but they’ve got more time to do that if they’re not dealing with casualities).
I need someone IRL to talk about New Vegas it seems. It’s been on my mind a lot recently for some reason. This mirrors the conversation I had with @[email protected] about the game.
The ending of New Vegas is where it becomes clear that, while the writers are politically conscious and better than most of their colleagues, they’re still not “based” for lack of a better descriptor. Either that or the theme of “Old World Blues” they worked with constrained them.
The Yes Man ending for New Vegas has always bothered me, because the communities seem to be completely lacking for governance and leadership. It’s all The Courier and once the courier goes, so does the organisation. Despite all the work you can do to make disparate communities stronger and self-sufficient, despite how you can tie them together and make them work together - Or at least create a ludonarrative sense of connection - It’s all just you. I wish there was an ending that focused more on organizing an independent Vegas or creating a new faction within the NCR that could function as a launching ground for a post-post-apocalyptic spartacist group. That could be such an interesting setting too! Imagine playing in the wake of a failed leftist coup. Imagine “Auf auf zum kampf” getting the Bella Ciao treatment. Imagine what could be told in a fallout game set in a Weimar-style-NCR.
Definitely agree with everything you said. It feels like there should have been an ending that was like New Vegas Commune or something. Something ambitious and better if at risk of failure.
Bingo. Yes Man is kept less as an actual ending and more as a failsafe, despite playing best to the themes of rejecting failed old-war systems and creating something new!
I always end up going for either House or NCR ending, depending on my mood.
I still like independent thematically, and for the freedom it has, but it really depends on character.
Honestly the show has been vague enough that any of the endings could have happened and then gone wrong somehow.
First season was pretty good, in my opinion. This one feels disjointed, the narratives don’t really flow. They are doing the thing of having 3 or more parallel storylines but also have flashbacks/historical cutaways, and so even though an episode might be 40 minutes or so “the story” only progresses 10 minutes. And the stories are only okay imo.
Totally. Id say the plot design was good, but the execution felt disjointed. The twists and turns could’ve been told better.
I do feel like by episode 6 of season 2 it seems to hit its stride, but the first half does a lot of gesturing at things you might remember from New Vegas without interacting with them much imo.
Yeah it’s pretty good.
Honestly I try my best not to analyze the “canon” too much with the show. Frankly the Fallout canon has always been kinda wonky.
I don’t care if they mess with the canon as long as they keep the overall themes of “Manifest destiny, fascists, libertarians and jingoism are stupid actually”
Also cowboy robots please
I was worried they were going to jerk off the brotherhood of steel. But they really show them to be a pack of petty and murderous chuds.
Oh thank god, my biggest gripe with Bethesda Fallout is that they glorify the Brotherhood for some reason
Yeah the show really roasts them
Ok but I must say that the show BoS are just not the BoS. Like what the fuck is a “Cleric”? They do the post-Bethesda thing where the role of knight is absorbed by the scribes and knight becomes a rank under paladin but then they don’t have the fucking scribes. Which means what the fuck even is the BoS now?
Season 2 addresses that the Chapter lead by Quintus is weirdly religious with heaps of clerics.
They mention that it’s weird that the clerics are running the joint, but that everyone else also has clerics. What is a cleric in the context of the game BoS is the question. They don’t exist in the game. They’re clearly a religious caste and seem to my mind to be inserted to make the BoS more obviously coded to the contemporary American right wing.
Fair. I don’t think it’s a bad change compared to other huge changes. The BoS are always a bit different from game to game. I can see them developing a chaplain like figure in the clerics that one chapter goes hog wild on.
I like the way all the new chapters seemed bad in their own unique ways, Coronado being extra misogynistic, Grand Canyon sleazy, Yosemite’s leader seemed most rational but mercenary.
i’m pretty sure a cleric can be a scribe
They do also jerk them off though, making them these invincible super soldiers (except when the ghoul meets them) who have seemingly infinite Prydwens. I’m still holding my breath for them showing Elder Maxson or whatever his name is. It could easily be a case of “no these are the bad brotherhood guys! He’s a good guy!”
Fair, though Kumail Nanjiani’s Commonwealth BoS Envoy felt like a huge jerk too.
Also I agree the extra Prydwens are silly, but funny they immediately used them on each other in a civil war.
Oh right he was from that chapter, for some reason I’d thought he was from another. Yeah that guy does make it pretty clear they’re fascist psychos. Also Kumail did a great job, he’s awesome as a douchey jock with a little bit of nefarious mind beneath it all. Really sucks for the poor guy that he got shredded and mocked for it.
edit: The extra Prydwens are both silly and not silly. If the NCR they had shown had been an industrial powerhouse, then the Prydwens wouldn’t have been such an issue, because we establish the world as one of scale. But when the NCR - who was the main antagonist for most of the BoS-factions - is depicted as a bunch of smallholding farmers, then an armada of airships make no sense. These guys were not only held back, but pushed out of territory by an idyllic version of small-town America? How? They’ve got airships out the ass and fuel to spare, meanwhile the capitol doesn’t even have clean drinking water.
If they’d shown an NCR with power armor troopers getting it’s ass handed to it because the central leadership was gone, then that would make sense. But this archaic remnant faction having the supply lines to launch major assaults, while their enemy seems like some rag-tag militia? Non-sensical.I know I’m bitter, it’s just… logistics get to me I guess. It annoys me when internal logic isn’t holding up.
It is very funny and fitting that they just blast each other with those airships though.
infinite Prydwens
The writers of this show have no fucking sense of scale
The NCR had like, territory that stretched beyond just one fucking city. But oh, one nuke in shady sands and the whole thing is fucked
Same with the legion, they were supposed to control like, east of the Colorado river? but in this show it seems like literally 100 guys jerking off having a civil war 12 feet away from each other
Then, yeah, they have like, 8 ffucking flying aircraft carriers
How many REGULAR aircraft carriers, severely limited in speed and maneuverability compared to one that fucking flies, does the U.S. have? Google says 11, with only 6 in use at a time
The BoS having all those fucking carriers would basically make them the GLOBAL super power unless some Chinese remnants are left with anything comparable
Exactly my issue. If the NCR, a massive nation-state, can’t even muster the labour necessary to supply clean water in it’s capitol; then how the fuck does some group of constantly infighting nomadic fascists with more bullets than brains have the industrial capacity to supply not just one, but several, flying fortresses? The fuel is whatever due to sciencemagic, but food? Clothes? Armaments?
And if they have that, how the fuck was the NCR ever a threat to begin with? Or Caesars legion? Or the enclave for that matter?
The prydwen itself was a stupid addition to the game. I could excuse it for rule of cool, but several?
Okay, I can buy that. We’re making a show/world were that kinda stuff doesn’t matter. THEN HOW THE FUCK DOES THE NCR COLLAPSE FROM A SINGLE NUKE IN ONE CITY?? I thought that didn’t matter?
It’s that kinda stuff that makes me say it’s clear Bethesda has a hard-on for the BoS and despises anything Obsidian for making people realise what fallout isn’t.
The show is still good, it’s just… It’s very frustrating that the only good Fallout since New Vegas needs to shit on New Vegas.
Yeah I agree with all of that
Every single bit of media needs a factorio playing marxist, or someone whose special interest is some kind of spreadsheet videogame, who is also a fan of the source material, as a mandatory cultural commissar. This might sound like a joke but it isn’t
In my utopia there’s a civil engineer breathing down the neck of every author
It is probably the best of the shows I’m currently pirating
I stopped watching after episode 6 because it was so boring and contrived.
Season 1 was still slop but it wasn’t boring, the action sequences in this show are so slow that I really had to skip around.
The character writing also dropped off dramatically from season 1.
