You don't get to be king of the world by trusting people..

[kibblesticks]

Just completed the House questline for the first time and I literally couldn't believe it when I had to activate the securitron army.

 

Courier: "Hey Caesar, I blew up Mr.House's bunker, no problem." :cool:

 

Caesar: "Really? That's super swell, I guess there's no point in checking that the place is destroyed, even though the door is now wide open..." :biggrin:

 

Courier: "Okay, bye then!" :turned:

 

Caesar: "You're going to be back to help the legion out some more right? Maybe I should put a slave collar on you, just in case.." :huh:

 

Courier: "Naah, come on C-man, this is me we're talking about! I'll be back, I promise!" :thumbsup:

 

Caesar: "Ha, go on then, get out of here you little scamp.." :rolleyes:

 

 

I don't usually complain about dumb writing in games as huge as this but Caesar is one of the most important characters! Was quite dissapointed that I wasn't forced to make a mad dash from his tent after he discovered my betrayal...

[ita]

Remember he's suffering from a brain tumor, maybe he's not thinking straight. :thumbsup:

[gsmanners]

Maybe the developers were suffering from deadline syndrome. That sort of thing happens. Then again, there are two important points that would deter Caesar from double-checking your work:

 

1) The place is flooded with radiation, and the legion doesn't strike me as savvy about that kind of thing.

2) He did hear something like an explosion, even when you activate the robots, so he just naturally assumes that that was you blowing up the bunker.

[Rossum]

I tend to rationalize it away by imagining that House put in some sort of fake self-destruct noises to go off while you work. So while you were on the other side of the bunker getting irradiated while upgrading the securitrons then House was playing a bunch of scary "Warning: Bunker Auto-Destruct sequence activated in 3... 2... 1... *boom* *ka-Pow!* Gahh! Curse you Courier! All my centuries and plans are ruined because of you! I'll get you if its the last thing I doooo!"

 

So the guys outside the bunker door heard a bunch of explosions, maybe peeked down and saw the rampaging robots and furious-looking guy on the screen, then checked their Geiger counters and suddenly realized why their testicles stopped working two minutes after entering the bunker, and decided to just get out as quickly as possible and get some cave fungus from the slave girls.

 

Ceaser: Did that courier do what I asked?

 

Legion Soldier: *hair starting to fall out* The bunker is flooded with radiation, robots are attacking everyone they see, there are loud explosions, a big angry face is on a screen inside, the Courier just stumbled out with numerous laser burns on their armor, and I can't feel my loins.

 

Ceaser: I'll take that as a yes, now get outta here before you puke on my carpet.

 

 

 

Actually, I don't think Ceaser knew that the bunker was shot to hell before you got inside (just that House couldn't activate it remotely) and might have interpreted the whole "the robots were shooting at you" thing as House trying to stop you from sabotaging the bunker. Heck, unless you shut down all the robots from the security station and/or destroy all the bots without being hit (while working fast to avoid the radiation) then when you return to him you'll probably have a few laser burns when you get out. He could interpret that as House not liking what you did.

[gsmanners]

The whole denouement of that story is not one-tenth as bad as the fact that Caesar lets you in there in the first place.

 

- Why not just forbid people from going in there? Caesar would just have to make sure one of his praetorian guards was in charge of that detail.

- To prevent anything from coming out would be child's play. Just fill the entry with concrete (or the post-apocalyptic version of it). Good luck getting robots out of that mess.

- The courier can "get things done," but that just makes you all the more suspicious. Why would Caesar overlook that in the first place? No ancient Roman would do that. First, they would conquer you and put you in chains. Then, after you prove your loyalty, they would offer you the chance to further prove your loyalty.

- Even a low-ranking legionnaire wouldn't permit you to enter the camp with a questionable reputation. Mark of Caesar or no, that's just being moronic. No telling where that thief got that mark in the first place.

- Revealing the location of Caesar's camp is a serious breach of strategic code. It's laughable that any aspiring general would make that mistake, let alone the strategic genius of a Caesar.

 

I could probably go on and on, but that whole part of the story reeks of half-baked ideas that they didn't quite analyze properly.

Edited March 26, 2011 by gsmanners

[Rossum]

Yeah, that and the atrocity of Nipton give me the impression that Ceasers Legion is just a bigger version of all the stupid gangs I run into in the wastes. They treat all women as slaves which is stupid because it removes about half your population (and potential experts) from whatever area of the economy or military you need. They have no knowledge of medicine and one woman who was training to be a doctor was enslaved and forced to use inferior herbal remedies to heal people. I have no idea how those knuckledraggers have so many guns unless they got them all from pre-war caches or looted/traded from others, you sure as hell can't make a gun with an anvil.

 

On most playthroughs my first contact with them is through Nipton where I see corpses everywhere, powder gangers on crosses, two surviving powder gangers who lived by playing by the Legions rules, and a bunch of guys in roman outfits chillaxing by the town hall while making no effort to post guards on the town entrance or loot the place or really do anything other than admire how they killed abunch of people.

 

If I wanted to kill everyone in Nipton I'd just get a gun and do it myself without pulling a stupid lottery, then I'd loot everything that wasn't nailed down and sell it (if anyone would do business with me), if I was a member of an army then I'd at least post guards or perhaps claim the town for myself or burn it down so my enemies couldn't use it. But no, they organize some big scheme and kill all except two people just to prove they can.

 

Mr. Foxhead: We drew a lottery and they watched as we dragged them off one by one, each clutched his ticket hoping it would set him free, even though they had us outnumbered they didn't fight back.

 

Me: You know what that teaches me?

 

Mr. Foxhead: What?

 

Me: That you're a bunch of sociopathic f*#@s, that any attempt at civil discourse that you make is both a waste of my time and a covert attempt for you to kill me, and that every single legionare should be exterminated on sight.

 

Mr. Foxhead: If you feel so strongly about it then you can fi...

 

Me: *whips out a plasma rifle and disintegrates him into a pile of goo. Then goes on to kill all the other legionares there with the help of ED-E*

 

 

Of course, nowadays I tend to skip most of the main quest and just head to Vegas by playing super mario bros with the scorpions near hidden valley. So my first contact with the legion tends to be either near Camp Forlorn Hope or at Cottonwood Cove where I rescue Anders or the family of slaves. The fact that most of my characters are female tends to encourage a "kill every one of these guys before they inevitably backstab me" attitude. All the reports on how they burned the mayor of Nipton alive on a pile of tires for helping them, how they betrayed and enslaved the tribes that helped them earlier, how their ambasador Karl keeps saying how great the Khans are while writing how they should all be killed or enslaved...

 

Basically I see no benefits whatsoever to siding with the Legion except perhaps to use them to weaken the NCR for when Mr. House or myself take over the Mojave with an army of robots. Adding a braindead leader to the mix doesn't surprise me much... I mean it is stupid and uncharacteristically moronic for someone who supposedly runs a nation but generally by the time I reach Ceaser I've been thinking of the Legion as a bunch of walking bullet sponges so I either ignore Ceasers stupidity or cut out the middle man by killing everyone in the Fort so I don't have to bother with this stuff.

 

Me: *walking through the empty town of Cottonwood Cove after I had murdered everyone there just days before because I don't like them*

 

Guy on the raft: I am *insert weird jumble of letters* and I'm taking you to the For *gah!*

 

Me: *After vaporizing his face* yeah yeah sure. *gets on the raft to go to the fort*

 

Guard: I'm gonna haf ta take yur guns and stuf *gah!*

 

Me: My only regret is that Cannibal is a waste of a perk so I can't eat your corpses for bragging rights! And that my favorite guns by their nature just disintegrate you into inedible ash... and I've taken Rad Child so any healing I take would be unnecessary. Ah screw it, I regenerate health constantly and my recharger pistol has unlimited ammo, I can toast your asses all day!

 

Legion soldiers start exploding.

 

Me: ...and also meltdown.

 

Ceasar in his tent: Hey... whats are those sort of yelling and panicking and exploding sounds I keep hearing? Ah well, I think I'll just sit here with a brain tumor instead of taking actions that might result in me getting to a doctor of fixing this broken auto-doc that my primitive backwards society can't maintain. *sounds of exploding people getting closer* Or maybe I should look into whats going on outside or consider working out an escape plan in case my enemy decides to storm the ramshakle collection of tents I call a fort.

 

...

 

naw.

 

Me: *bursting in with Pew Pew* I got yer brain disease tumor cure right here, pally! *Blows Ceaser away from across the room and then ducks out the door* So long sweetcheeks!

 

 

So... its less a case of him giving away his forts position (I think everyone else kind of knows where his fort is anyway) and more how he just has two or three guys guarding the magical doorway that the ramp in cottonwood cove leads to. It would be slightly harder for me to massacre the fort if there was a dozen legionares or those guys with the shotgun fists standing outside the door when I'm asked to disarm.

[kevkiev]

Lol, love the post Rossum. "Walking bullet sponges" - that's just priceless

[evilneko]

@Rossum: That's entirely the point of Nipton, and that's exactly what they are and what they're meant to be. Caesar's got the Roman thing partially, but either through ignorance (remember how far in the future this is, plus the whole war thing, details may be scarce so it's natural he'd miss things) or malice, has twisted it to something it's not for his own ends. He and his lieutenants have built themselves a fantasy world based on their own rules. Nipton wasn't a military wartime campaign, it was an act of terrorism--though they viewed it as simply taking out the trash. The whole lottery thing was just Vulpes toying with his prey like a cat, simply because he's a sick individual.

 

So, yeah--they are just a gang. They style themselves after the Romans, but they were never meant to be a faithful copy.

[drakeelvin]

Caesar did get a long wrong about the original Roman Empire, its true.

 

The NCR also gets a lot wrong. They have "high tech" lol. But if anyone in NCR military had half a brain they would have long ago triangulated the distance of Caesar's camp, then started converting missiles (that seem to be very abundant) to rocket propelled grenades with a big enough rocket to span the distance. Then they'd amass thousands of them on the western shore. Then one night they'd start a sustained bombardment of Caesar's camp. Darkness and confusion would add to the bombardment and take care of the rest.

 

Me, I don't try to make too much sense of the NV ecoonomy or technology tree, nor the strategy and tactics of how either side is implementing the war. I mean, the original Romans used thousands of ships to conquer Britain but the current bunch seem to have about 1 raft in total to ferry stuff across the Colorado. LOL.

[Seviche]

I like killing legion, but remember though, Caesar is a man used to getting his way. People fear him and with good reason. People die in horrible ways when Caesar is displeased. Why should you be any different? I see that as one of the good pieces of writing in the game. You choose right there, to serve a powerful man, or to tell him to stuff it (via your actions). Caesar trusts you because he expects that you'll respect his authority. He really doesn't trust you, as we would see it, but he does expect that you'll do what you're told. Why, because he's frikkin' Caesar and that's how things work on that side of the dam.

 

I always get a giggle out of people who don't filter context when playing an RPG such as this. The wasteland is not our land, it is not our society, and it cares not for our liberal thoughts and ideals. It is a rough place, full of rough people, not to mention chock full of giant frikkin' scorpions that think people are tasty, and people die all the time for little or no reason. So how, exactly, do you expect the over-educated morals of today's western civilization to have any relevance on the life in the wasteland?

 

Caesar considers himself educated, but it's not our version of educated. By our standards he's backwards, a brute, and a murderous thug who is (unfortunately) in charge of a lethal and powerful army. By the standards of the wasteland, he's a visionary, a leader, a man of great thinking and education, someone who brings order to chaos, and someone who gets things done despite horrendous odds. They're not things we like, but he gets things done anyways. We really know nothing about the areas of New Mexico and Arizona that he's pacified, or what they were like before he decided to go old-style-roman on the place, but we can see that our part of the wasteland sucks. It's lawless and harsh, and Caesar changed that in his realm. We can only assume that Caesar's realms were just as bad before he took charge and did what he thought had to be done.

 

We can judge Caesar by our standards... but it doesn't apply, really. That's what makes the writing in New Vegas difficult to parse; it's really not written for the player, it's written for The Courier. New Vegas expects you to get into character, to become The Courier (of which the amnesiac beginning doesn't help), and to filter your experience through the eyes of someone who lives in the wasteland. That's why people have trouble understanding Caesar and why he does what he does; they forget who they're supposed to be. Which, in the end, is what allows Caesar to be fooled by you; he forgets who The Courier is as well.

Edited March 28, 2011 by Seviche