The Factions of Fallout: New Vegas

The Fallout games tell stories about a lot of things. Fallout: 1 and Fallout: 3 tackle themes like the strength of the human spirit through tremendous adversity, Fallout: 2 is a story about self-discovery and the weight of expectations, and Fallout: 4 is a semi-successful statement about the worth of family and the failings of corruptible world powers.

Fallout: New Vegas, however, the fourth canonical entry in the series, focuses its narrative attention on a topic that is much more philosophical in its approach: the misinterpretation of symbols, and the lengths people go to for causes greater than themselves.

Before I jump into the meat of this dissection, some context for the world that the game is set in: (if in-game history isn't your thing, the article continues as normal after the italics:)

The Fallout games take place around 200 years after nuclear Armageddon has wiped out most of the civilized world. This so called “Great War” was brought on mainly by the rampant misuse and total depletion of natural resources, helped along by a minor, history-changing event that is missing from Fallout’s divergent timeline compared to ours: the invention of the transistor.

The transistor as we know it was developed in late 1945 by a team of engineers in New Jersey and allowed the world to turn to convenient, electrical commodities in a world currently obsessed with a Jetsons-like, nuclear-dependant future. In Fallout’s timeline, the invention of the transistor was unintentionally buried by the American government in a bid to intimidate Russia and other world powers with a show of nuclear nationalism that would eventually lead to the Great War.

From 1945 onwards, Fallout’s timeline alters from ours in a few significant ways: The Cold War never really ends, electric commodities are replaced with shiny, retro-nuclear versions, and China climbs to the top of the nuclear-powered food chain.

By 2077, nuclear materials like Plutonium and Uranium are all but gone, leaving a world dependant on their existence desperate for just a little more time with the lights on. Political alliances fray, and the world erupts into world-wide conflict, armed with nuclear-powered weaponry, armour, and nationalistic pride. The details on who launched the first missile are unknown, but the result is the same any way you hash it: desperation, corruption, and greed have plunged the world into another dark age and burned society as we know it back to square one.

A nuke detonates just outside Boston, Massachusetts, the setting of Fallout: 4

Cheery, right? It would be easy to look at these events and assume the games prod the worst of humanity. But at its core, the Fallout games aren’t about simplifying humanity’s past, future, or current failings: your experience in Fallout is a collection of stories about what we as a species do after our own, self-inflicted annihilation- and more to the point, the good that you, the player character, can achieve during your stay in Postapocalyptia.

And it’s in this wasteland where our theme comes into play. In Fallout: New Vegas, the atomic fire that scorched the rest of the world was prevented from destroying Las Vegas, Nevada, by a man named Mr. House, a genius inventor from before the war who’s still around and kicking during the time that the game takes place. The game revolves around a few factions pitting their might against each other to secure the preserved “utopia” of Vegas -and the nearby power source, Hoover Dam- for themselves.

The three main powers vying for Vegas that the player can aid are: the violent, slave-owning Caesar’s Legion, who are an army of conquered tribes fashioned after the Roman Empire, the corrupt, self-styled democratic military force of the New California Republic, and the savior of Vegas himself, Mr. House.

Each faction stakes its claim to Vegas by pointing to old-world powers to justify their evils:

The  New California Republic (NCR) laud themselves as ‘democracy reborn’ and have institutionalized a democratic format for their government. But just like the world that was, they are slowly overplaying their hand and running out of resources, forcing the NCR to colonize smaller, independent settlements to acquire enough resources to keep them afloat. Sound familiar?

Caesar’s Legion is headed by a man named Edward Sallow, and is a society that relies on the slavery and persecution of those seen as ‘unworthy’ to be a part of the new world. Sallow, or Caesar, as he calls himself, takes points from old regimes like ancient Rome to maintain his dictatorial power, but only seems to take one self-serving lesson from them: might equals right. Caesar, through his childhood in the wastes, has seen the horrors of what people can do to each other without control from an authority figure, and set out to bring order to the wasteland, ironically, through violence.

Mr. House is a relic of capitalistic might from before the war (and is an egotistical maniac besides). His unparalleled genius, paired with the fact that he has kept his mind preserved for over 200 years through world-wide Armageddon, have made him see himself and his achievements as the sole hope for humanity’s future. The governments and systems of the world before the war are gone because of their own mistakes, but here he is, still kicking, so why not become an undying dictator, bent on resuming humanity’s technological progresses? It was his technology that allowed him to live this long, after all.

Each faction is so embroiled in their own small successes, that they can’t see the eventual collapse that comes for each of them. The NCR is hurtling towards civil war and reliance on materialism, Caesar’s Legion is so dependent on Caesar’s unifying power that the moment he dies of the tumor eating away at his brain, his entire empire comes down with him. House’s reliance on technology over everything else has left him cold to what makes people human- progress has become the bottom line for him, and anyone who can’t contribute to his grand future isn’t worth the life they have managed to make for themselves in the wasteland.   

       

Eventually, the growing conflicts come to a boiling point so volatile that all it takes to shift the balance of power would be a single person; that person being you.

The wonderful thing about RPG’s (Fallout: New Vegas especially) is the ability to make your own story. Taking the side of any one of the factions presented to you makes for a fun playthrough and has room for the player character to adapt their own playstyle and sense of morality within the game that can constantly be evolving with the state of New Vegas’s world.

Maybe you feel like Caesar has a point, and that the best thing for the wasteland right now would be a strong leader to rally around. Maybe you can ignore the little evils, right up until you are sent on a mission to burn a town and crucify its residents for defying Caesar’s will. You’ve had enough, so you sell out Caesar’s battle strategies and troop movements to the NCR in exchange for a pardon to shift the tide against the Legion.

Or maybe you’re a bounty hunter fallen on hard times, and don’t take too kindly to having been stolen from and shot at the start of the game. You track down the one responsible, find out he’s working against Mr. House from the inside of Vegas, and join House to crush your enemies and usher the wasteland into the next age of technological revolution.

Maybe you feel that all the power of Vegas held in the hands of a single person is wrong, so you set out to broker peace between the factions. Caesar proves to be stubborn, so you call on Mr. House to send an army of robots to rout his military camp, and organize trade deals on Vegas’ behalf with the NCR to keep their democracy running smoothly?

The Fallout games have always been complex, but New Vegas hits all the beats that the other games do, and more. From involved side-quests, to charming character interactions, to political maneuvering, the game has everything it needs to create one of the most adaptable and captivating stories I have ever experienced in a game.