And to think that an entire empire was born from some Jet-hyped raider shooting someone's dad. Ulysses was right - the entire course of history can be changed by just a single person's decision.
It's like the death of Franz Ferdinand, except it's more scary because it was some nobody's dad getting killed that eventually turned that nobody into a Roman Emperor living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
@Pferd Schild Yep. It was basically a powder keg. Some German politician even saw it coming. Otto Von Bismarck predicted that the Great War would come from something in the east. He was right.
Seems like Courier is the first man for a long time whom Caesar can talk freely about his believes & philosophies They should have added Intelligence checks where Courier knows those Latin phrases that Caesar uses.
***** That doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even if you have 10 Int, how would you know latin just by that? I agree on the matter of Int checks regarding Caesar's dialogue, but not for latin phrases, that would smell too much like Fallout 3.
isnt this early on in the questline? a bit too soon to be rattling off your secrets to a guy/gal who could be working with the ncr, house, or himself/herself.
Courier Six: What do you think of the Minutemen? Caesar: They hardly seem like something of a threat to anyone, let alone to the Legion. They hold on to old and outdated tactics that can't be used effectively in modern combat. Their forces are always spread thin trying to take care of the people of the Commonwealth. They will never last if they don't use advanced tactics. The greatest example is what happened to their Castle, it was overrun by Mirelurks of all creatures and their coward General hid away in a dungeon while the Minutemen were helpless to defend it. Courier Six: What do you think of their leadership? Caesar: What is there to say about it? It's unstable, too inclusive and no due process. Look at what happened in Quincy. They failed to defend a town after they were overrun by a group of common thugs like the Gunners. They were waiting for reinforcements to come and help defend the town, but they never came. Turns out it was one of their own that sold them out to the Gunners. What did they do after their general was killed in the battle along with the most of the Minutemen? They headed to Concord where they were attacked by common Raiders and given that Preston Garvey was only true Minutemen among them they had to take shelter in a museum. If not for the actions of one vault-dweller the raiders would have overrun them. And what does Garvey do after all this happens? He gives the title of general to the vault-dweller. A person he had just met. Does that like good leadership to you? It's another Quincy waiting to happen.
Never thought I'd see Hegel and Dialectics discussed in a videogame, let alone one set in a violent post apocalyptic United States. Bravo Fallout New Vegas.
American gamers are more obsessed with liberty in gameplay rather than derivatives. Caesar was an awesome character with an ideology that made sense and a motive built up with history. Caesar was the first idealist who took action. He's the brute, and the philosopher as Confucius would say. Awesome character, totally overlooked by casual fps gamers. The NCR was a satire on American capitalism. easily figured that out on my first play through. They kill, they reap, and the pawns get nothing out of it.
Dao Yang Well, it's in every western culture, actually. I'm from México and the same argument can be made with mexica empire (better known as the aztecs) vs Spain. Aztecs conquered a lot of small tribes to create his empire, destroying their culture and Spain was not a "democracy" but conquered the aztecs and started putting a royal burocracy in motion... after 300 years, the corruption was so hard to handle the territories started to separate from the weak Spain. Sounds like Fallout New Vegas and I bet you can make the same argument with other imperial cultures if you look right enough, Hegelian Dialects are a good way to understand war and culture.
@@insertnamehere001 Well, my Courier canonically worked with the NCR, but only because she knows they're incompetent twats. There was a lot of room for her to do good deeds and get popular, so she can run for president and oust Kimball one day. Then she'd turn the NCR into a military dictatorship like the Legion, only more advanced, since she has House, the Enclave Remnants, the brain trust at the Big MT, and the wealth and tech of the Sierra Madre in her possession.
It's funny. I've lived in southern Utah my whole life, and hearing Caesar talk about old small tribe they’ve taken out or absorbed while coming west is interesting. The Kaibab tribe in relation to kaibab mountain and the fredonians in relation fredonia Arizona. Let alone mentioning Zion and the Mormons, I like all the effort they put into this game.
When it comes to Christianity most people tend to only focus on the New Testament yet disregard the Old Testament. The Old Testament is filled with wars, terrors, plagues, suffering, affliction.. the prophet Elijah of whom my namesake is based off of, literally killed all his enemies. It’s pretty hardcore. In a practically post-apocalyptic world, filled with no morality, perhaps Joshua thought he was doing the right thing. Bringing civilization back to the world. And he wasn’t completely wrong, however he was misled. Regardlessly, we all make mistakes.. for we are not perfect, Joshua included. He recognized his mistakes, repented, and sought a better life afterwards.. There were tons of Christians in the British , United States, and even Nazi German armies..even amidst their violence and attrocities.. they just viewed it as doing their duty. Similar to how Joshua probably felt, if anything probably even more justified in a case like his. In an extremely cruel world, like in fallout you’re left with no choice but to be cruel in response. War is all hell.. and you can’t change that.. you can’t play nice when it comes to war.. and war....war never changes.
@@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012 Exactly. Edward is a huge narcissist. He wants to dictate the narrative and would rather it be free from the influence of others.
@@TheThing4444 I think it’s more of the fact he was enjoying telling his story and just forgot that Joshua was now forbidden to be spoken about. Remember they were friends for decades, best friends even. Caeser likes telling stories and debating with people that can understand his nuances, if you sell Arcade into slavery him and Caeser become intellectual sparring partners, and Caeser mourns his death for months.
@@JohnSmith-jz2ke I do think Edward is capable of truly enganging in intellectual conversation, but his ego ultimately act as a barrier and hinders him.
He understands that. But he still has conquered a large swathe of territory and rules over many cities such as Flagstaff. Now he returns home, to create a true Rome.
True, he asumes the Legion can make the leap from semi-nomadic raiding force into a standing army. If Caesar is following the Stationary Bandit hypothesis of government/army/police force formation, he forgets that the Legion’s soldiers have no ties to a real home beyond the idea of the homeland. While the idea of the homeland is a powerful mobilizer, Caesar has forgotten to ground the promise in emotional connections. If Legion soldiers are motivated by plunder, women, and power, a shift to a defensive, state-supporting army will cause splits among soldiers more willing to continue expanding and raiding, who don’t have emotionalties. Then we return to what the Courier outlines to Lanius, the splintering of the Legion along the borders, needing Eastern armies to put down Western rebellions, et cetera. Caesar failed to integrate the Legion’s military structure into a broader civilian society and kept them seperate to allow his forces to expand rapidly with minimal cultural/emotional ties to a region. He’s creating the same systemic failure the original Caesar took advantage of, where Roman soldiers are more loyal to their commander in the army then the society that spawned them both. Excellent and succinct analysis.
@@conorgleeson2453 Agreed. You put it very well though I will say being the literal Jesus figure to the Legion I'm almost assured once they switch from nomadic to stationery they will adapt. That is their greatest gift: above all else the Legion is adaptable.
His problem was getting lost in philosophical abstracts and idealism, instead of being guided by a more materialist understanding of history. I really wish that at higher leaves of INT you could pick apart his ideas more fully. It would be killer to ask him to reconcile Hegel's worship of the Prussian Monarchy with what Caesar's Legion had become. The legion isn't the natural antithesis of the NCR, hatched and sustained into the world by Caesar's genius. Instead, the legion survives because extracting the very meager surplus value (anything that is produced by civilization that isn't directly controlled by its producers/labors, you sit and are looking at various manifestations of surplus value right now) out of post nuclear war wastelands simply favor extremely repressive systems of exploitation. Caesar's just experiencing survivorship bias, mistaking the reality of just being the first with a brutal system for his success being the machine like workings of historical dialectics. Actually, he isn't the first, he was beaten by the Master by a hundred years, and will probably go down in history as a similar figure. If Casear had read some more of those old books, he'd learn that the closest historical analog for how bleak the material conditions and meager the societal surpluses are in the fallout world would have to be the late bronze age. Indeed, the times are much more bleak than the contemporary rich iron age civilizations Caesar is coplaying. These systems become so repressive that they exploded, nearly on mass and with a decade of each other, the first sign of effective competators appeared. That is the legion's fate if it survives its first transfer of power. Far from being an army with a state, the Legion appears to have abolished the idea of the civil state and society, having going as far to reduce women to a historical unprecedented low status. Lack of crime is often sited as a benefit of the legion, its actually a sign that money inside the legion would be useless (hence, why steal besides survival?) as commerce and other civil pursuits don't seem to take place. It is very hard to imagine what Legion cities look like, the production surpluses having to be so meager, and to what end would the legion even need a city? The NCR looks like it does because the material conditions of California simply offer more surplus at less effort than the high deserts of the post nuclear American west. The NCR can affoard the costs and reap the benefits of a civil society, if a meager and fragile one. The two, NCR and legion, won't because more like each other, after all, did the NCR start to resemble the fiends or other tribal groups after fighting them? All of Caesar theories are bad reading of philosophy he didn't fully understand, leading to a bunch of general and vague predictions meant to enable Freudian death drive nonsense. I will spare you my Caesar as a repressed homosexual theories, those should have been obvious the first time you saw one of these skirt boys in the game. Also, as noted, no one ever will speculate on the hidden sexual subtexts and motivations of a Fallout 4 character. I don't think I can name a fallout four character besides "Ghoul guy in a tricorned hat" and "Pissed off fisherman/gun guy from the cool island expansion".
@@SMFCNA Only a Materialist would say Caesar was lost in Philosophical and ideological Abstracts. Caesar and many other see these as the fundaments upon which civilizations are born and then made into reality by the material. It is why he has invested so heavily into both indoctrination and the creation of a new religion with him as the divine ruler and mandate. Caesar would probably say that Hegel should like the Prussian Aristocracy however that his fascination with a monarch is misguided because as Caesar would put it >a weak monarch cannot unite his people only lead his nation to develop a weak spirit and more importantly a weaker ability to care for itself. Also, Caesar is easily able to discern his current positions differences to that of histories. No the Legion isn’t the natural anti-thesis it is clearly manufactured by Caesar to be a rival power that he can transplant onto the NCR by moving a large formation onto it. Or increasing the stress on the NCR’s system until it breaks as it seems to be close to. Yes, extracting the surplus is the most efficient way of becoming increasingly rich. Though as we both know it is not the only way of becoming rich. We also see extraordinarily little of the Legion’s territory and or civil administration which we know from the devs that there is. So, I cannot tell you whether they are manufacturing or farming anything. You can say he is experiencing survivorship bias but then if you do so would you say Temujin Borjigin and Charles Martell experiencing survivorship bias for conquering large swathes of territory and setting up empires? Why do you think he thinks is the only person to come up with an authoritarian system in the Wastes when we know for a fact that the majority of systems in the wastes are repressive and Authoritarian? Next you bring up the Bronze Age collapse because that seems apt doesn’t it. It is not that the repressive systems caused the collapse but that a series of factors piling on top of one another caused the collapse. You also seem to think that you can determine the fate of newly born nation within its first leaders’ lifetime. Would you have said during Julius Gaius Caesars’(Augustus) life that the Principate would not last because it built on a flawed system that devalued tradition and was repugnant to the old system? If so, you would be considered foolish for the rest of time. Though I will concede that Caesar is entering a critical crossroads . First how do you know that the Legion has abolished the idea of a state? Have you experienced anything within legion territory besides a military camp? Also, a state can exist under military leadership we generally call it a military dictatorship. Caesar does not believe in a command economy we know that from Sawyer. He believes that if you are civilized individual or community you can be left alone except to pay tithes and to Follow the odd order form the Legion. Most of the infrastructure and projects are done by the slave cast of formal tribals and the rare slave from war zones (We know these are exceptions) (Sawyer). We know that some Authority is placed into governmental agencies called Consul Officiorum. We know that their currency is made from Silver and Gold which are inherently valuable. We know that there is little crime and that operating a caravan in the Legion is noticeably more profitably as referenced by Raul, Cassidy and explicitly said so by Dale Barton. We know that commerce does exist as referenced by said characters. We also know that the trade of Slavery is at the very least happening and probably on a large scale seeing as there is an entire Consul Officiorum dedicated to the facilitation of it. You can say the surpluses would be extremely low but why? Flagstaff, Phoenix, Denver are all major cities from which members of the Legion could easily scavenge. Not counting the massive amounts of natural resources in the area. All of that manufactured armor and guns must come from somewhere. Those stealthboys are not just appearing on trees for them. Clearly some manufacturing and some amount of scavenging is taking place on a large enough scale to rival that of the NCR at least in distributing weapons and even greater in distributing health items (Legionaries get Health items NCR Troopers do not). Caesar understand that the NCR won’t become like the Legion if he loses but it will change and adapt to synthesize. If he wins it doesn’t matter what the NCR wants it will become like the Legion. Also, yes Tandi did learn from the Khans that is a huge part of 2. You are an individual living in a hyper sexualized time and would attribute any form of masculinity as a “clear” sign that said person was a latent gae this is because you live in a hyper sexualized world. Cingulum or as you would call them “skirts” are more closely aligned with a longer tunic with frayed ends. It is ancient and probably something Caesar saw as overly Foreign and so necessary for his conquests as it with many other things such as the Latin remind the wasteland that they were foreign. You are clearly fixated on the sexuality of characters because have doubts about your own and feel the need to assume that everyone else especially characters that you think would be most humiliated by it must also share that deep seated doubt. That or you have a humiliation/revelation fantasy. Stop taking hyper sexualization and applying it to everything. (I honestly doubt you are any of the things I just said. But with how you speak I simply made that assumption. That or I am simply applying your logic to the situation.)
@@rw5120 I meant that it's a memorable one liner, not something to blindly use. I also wouldn't say that as I dislike Hagel, mostly due to his high level articulation of collectivism, which Marx and all other collectivist thinkers build upon (which ceaser is a perfect representation of, incidentally), but Dialectics in particular. As while it's something that can happen, it's parsed as definitional, which isn't true, and once again, is something rabid radicals, particularly marxist communists with Historical Dialectics, pounce upon ideologically to define all of history/existence as subject to their ideological claims. While it may be unfair to dislike certain ideas due to other people abusing them, inversely there's also something to be said when certain otherwise valuable and interesting ideas are most frequently used as a foundation for totalitarian extremism and totalizing ideological reduction. TL:DR, I just like NV's writing, and you're projecting so hard i could use you for powerpoint presentations.
Caesar selected Lanius to command the assault so that his Legionaries would never retreat - that they would be more afraid of the commander behind them than the army before them, and would rather face death than punishment at Lanius' hands. The fact that Lanius actually CAN be reasoned with says magnitudes about his character alone - if he truly didn't care about the Legion, only Caesar, he would have marched in regardless. He's still a brute, and a terrible Caesar, but by no means a savage.
Yet, but he is not an angel. The reasoning can fail sometimes as he can see through it. He may not hate word play, but it doesn't mean that he is going to be gentle as a flower next time should it succeed. As Ulysses says, he's not going to fight a battle he can't win. Even if he can't, it doesn't mean he is retreating, he is merely regrouping to the east to bring more troops. the Courier regardless of what side he's on, only stalls the inevitable return of the vaunted Legate with more troops. Caesar would understand this move as he understands that Lanius is not a man to "Retreat." If he regroups to the east, then it is not yet over even though the Legion were "defeated" on this day. Caesar understands if Lanius is in a pickle, he knows not to return to him unless his Job is done or he dies in battle. Lanius to some may appear to be non-smart, but he is the exact opposite of non-smart. He is the head Legate, he knows not to return to Caesar unless he is done. Lanius, sees his failures as short lived excuses.
@@rockshawen doesn't he retreat when you convince him that taking hoover dam would be stretching too thin? that shows that he values his own life below the legion's survival
@@bugdracula1662 thats the point they're making: Lanius does not want to risk the fall of the Legion over this battle and the supposed victory it would bring
Caesar mentioned that Lanius had no love for the Legion and would allow countless Legionaries to die if it could result in victory. Lanius disproves this by retreating on the basis that taking the Dam would kill too many soldiers. Lanius is also shown to be a man of honor, disapproving of Vulpes and willing to fight the Courier man-to-man. Sallow used Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico to form the basis for his Legion's structure - which in 2281, is an entirely military organization.
Lanius retreats because it would hurt his pride, Ulysses mentions this and is shown to work since if you bring up the history of Graham at the Dam, it’ll make him rethink trying to invade the Dam But if you ask him if he’s going to retreat, it’ll undo any negotiating you done because in the end, the idea that he’s retreating instead of simply never really starting the fight hurts his ego and pride
If you use the Speech checks, then he realizes that the Legion would just be stretched too thin as basically repeat the NCR's mistakes. He himself believes that stability in the East is more important. If you do the Barter check, he will realize that none of the towns in the Mojave could give his troops the necessary supplies and that even if he captured New Vegas and Hoover Dam, he wouldn't be able to hold it as eventually the strength of his army would wane due to insufficient supplies. This reminds him of his attack on Detroit where his men were starved and weakened due to a lack of proximity of any tribes nearby to supply the army with resources
Lanius is at least intelligent enough to realize his own limits. I don’t think his willingness to retreat has so much to do with worry for his men, as it does his realization that taking the dam and continuing west would ultimately set him up for a failure he would never recover from.
People use Caesar as the truth, but there's no reason he wouldn't be able to lie. My cannon is that without the courier, the Legion would win and conquer vegas. Caesar would die of a tumor, but Lanius would take control and push west, whereas other sects of the legion may have pushed further east, perhaps reaching texas or the bayous
This game is literally like taking a philosophy 101 course. It's a shame that other video games don't attempt to include such higher thinking dialogue and story. If a video game can make you love the supposed "villians" then that's damn good writing.
Nhat Lam NGUYEN I respect your opinion, but I just find that a good story in a video game is much more difficult to come across these days since the focus among devs in general is creating games with good amounts of crafting aspects. A lot of them turn out as DAyZ/RUST clones. Finding a game with a good story is difficult these days since thats not the market focus.
i fully agree! 1 and 2 were good games... for the 1990s... nowadays sure the story is still pretty good but if you are too young to have nostalgia-vision, the graphics and somewhat obtuse controls present huge barriers to enjoyment. new vegas has 1 and 2 level story plus you can actually see whats happening in adequate detail.
Something I noticed: Caesar is essentially taking credit for what Graham did in training the Blackfoot. While it is possible both of them trained the Blackfoot in combat, Caesar never had a background in combat, whereas Graham did. If you ask Graham about it in Honest Hearts, he explains it as if he was the one who trained them and not Caesar. Out of the two, I trust Graham much more than Caesar on this one. Caesar might have helped with the tactical aspect, but Graham was the hands-on person in the training of the Blackfoot.
This is nearly the exact story of Shaka Zulu, who used the tactics of the Roman legion that he read in books to unite the tribes of his homeland and turn them into a highly capable army. They met their match when faced with a British Colonial Army, who are superficially similar to the NCR.
Mannnn I also felt that connection, when Caesar was talking about how the tribes were playing at warfare, like raiding and pillaging, it was the same thing with how the african tribes had conducted warfare. Shaka taught tactics (such as the bull's horn formation) to his warriors and went full on during war and didn't hold back and expanded fast just like Caesar's legion. Honestly Caesar's legion is more like Shaka Zulu's empire than the Roman empire.
@@restitutororbis675 That’s not accurate, even before Shaka’s time monarches and large confederations were common in southern africa, Shaka himself was born into the Mthethwa empire, a large confederation of Nguni chiefdoms ruled over by a King at the time named Dingiswayo Alot of Shaka’s military strategies such as the bull formation had already existed for centuries The real innovations of Shaka were making the army more egalitarian (before rank was determined by nobility under shaka it was determined by ability) And the consolidation of power, instead of just extracting tribute from the conquered group, they were fully integrated into the Zulu society
@@AbdiHassan-jq2ln *The real innovations of Shaka were making the army more egalitarian (before rank was determined by nobility under shaka it was determined by ability)* Lmao..... tell me more how 'merit'='egalitarian'. No remotely competent military is 'egalitarian'. Claiming otherwise is just leftist propaganda that directly contradicts reality. Meritocracy is the direct opposite of 'egalitarianism'/'leftist orthodoxy like what you spew. You are lying, and lying poorly.
@@AbdiHassan-jq2ln Nah. Any military (or nation) that goes for 'egalitarianism' is worthless. He went for *MERIT,* which is the opposite of what you're claiming.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to make the connection to Shaka Zulu, but I don’t think Shaka Zulu got his tactics from the Romans. I believe he developed them independently.
Me seeing any of the legion soldiers: "these guys are monsters, they deserve to die" Me meeting Caesar: "we will march into California and crucified any profligate/degenerates who cross us. TRUE TO CEASAR"
Yes, that’s also what I thought. The Legions soldiers aren’t that nice, but Caesar, the leader of the Legion is good, I believe the Legion is the best option and I actually agree with them.
@@Tugboat1861 I think that's the entire point. And that's what I love in Obsidian's writing. They go at it this way: "Here is *1* and here is *2. 1* wants to help the bunnies cross the street by carrying them. *2* wants to leave the bunnies to do it themselves, so they'll learn to do it better. But uh oh, *1* also asks the bunnies to give him two carrots every time he gets them across the street, but the bunnies only have six carrots for the day, which means they give most of the carrots to *1. 2* doesn't like this and beats *1,* telling him to give the carrots back, so now the bunnies have to go across by themselves, but they don't need to pay carrots. Who is the bad guy?" Meanwhile Bethesda is like: Here is *1* and here is *2. 1* helps the bunnies across the street for free, and *2* stomps bunnies to death for fun while committing hate crimes with his best friend Adolf Hitler. *2* is the bad guy.
@@minihalkoja590 I think you missed the part where the second bunny also crucifies anyone that doesn't subscribe to their strict cultural homogeneity...
@@lagrangepoint9386 This is how all ideologies work... have you read anything by Voltaire, Thomas Aquinas, or any of the other philosophers who created western philosophy from the ground up? No. But you still believe in human rights, autonomy, a framework of morality, all derived from these philosophers and their initial inspiration, most prominently Christianity until the Enlightenment. That is just how it works. The philosophy, even it it is known in depth by only a few people, diffuses through the population over time due to the rhetoric of certain leaders, and the population take on a general and vague framework, which they are happy with. Likewise, if Caesar preaches to his lieutenants enough, they will take on the framework without understanding the reasoning behind it.
He's voiced by John Doman who plays Rawls on The Wire. I knew I recognized him the second I heard him and couldn't place it for ages. He even looks a bit like Caesar come to think of it.
Courier Six: What do you think of the Railroad? Caesar: What do you want me to say about them? Their ideas, their goals, their leadership, their tactics, everything in that group is all a fuckin' powder-keg! Courier Six: Why would you describe them as a powder-keg? Caesar: Because like the Minutemen their too inclusive and let many synths into their ranks. Since the Institute has the recall codes for all of their automatons they can turn them off at a moments notice while the rest of the human in the group are outnumbered and annihilate by the Institute's machines. Or even worse the synths could go haywire like the Broken Mask incident of 2229 and start killing everyone around from the inside and no one would be none the wiser. Selflessness isn't a bad thing, but focusing your selflessness for one group above all others will ultimately be your downfall. So yeah going on that the entire movement is a powder-keg with a short fuse just waiting to be ignited and the Institute and can light any time they want.
MartianManHunter2258 thats actually brilliant. Program 1 synth with a bomb inside it and have it "liberated" by RR and its a done deal. Man, this is what the Institute SHOULD have done.
In Fallout 4 Person I don't care about: Help me someone, did something to me Me: ok Person: yay Fallout New Vegas Interesting Complex Character: wanna here about how I created a civilization, and my philosophy behind it?
Meanwhile in Boston... PC: "Why are you kidnapping and murdering people and replacing them with human like robots?" Father: "Its complicated. You wouldn't understand." A few weeks later... Father: "I want you to be the head of the Institute." PC: "But you just said I wouldn't understa-" Father: "I think I want to sleep now."
Fucking Jesus, just let me watch New Vegas clips without someone needing to shit on Fallout 4. I still haven't finished it and you guys are just poisoning the well for me.
When I was listening to Caesar talking, felt like I was 10 years old again sat with my father as he told me stories. That's how awesome this guy is! It was definitely one of the best moments in the entire game.
At least in the context of a wasteland overtaken by barbarism (tribals) and corruption/greed (NCR), Caesar makes a fairly convincing argument that his Legion is simply doing what needs to be done. I'd still gravitate towards the NCR or small, independent communities, but after speaking with Caesar he didn't seem as evil as he was cracked up to be. Just utilitarian and ruthless.
@@mybutthasteeth1347 Like they get an opportunity. Since they are dumbasses needlessly torturing people, I would fight to the death regardless of the odds.
Obsidian should be the story writers for all future Bethesda ScrollOut games. They make much better characters, after playing Fallout 4 I am pretty sad the story is merely passable (and they force you to play as a pre-determined character that you can only alter slightly) You might not agree with Caesar, and by god you shouldn't. But he is someone who has thought long and hard about his reasons for his actions, he has seen the corruption of the NCR and fights for what he really believes in. With Bethesda, we basically get ''I'm an evil dragon and you're the chosen hero goodguy and can be evil if you want but uh.....you can still save the world! yay?''
+cronnoponno goddamn, caesar. it's a shame though, that caesar ideals aren't practical in the real world. only usable in post apocalyptic. but caesar ideals are becoming more and more practical everyday. Mr house had a quote that scared me to this day. "IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY, LOOK OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW"
+cronnoponno . Even Fallout 3 has more choices than Fallout 4....Very few characters are essential (aside from children) and even though you must join the Brotherhood to complete the game, with Broken Steel you can turn on the Brotherhood and destroy the Citadel. Not to mention you can join President Eden in poisoning the water supply at the end of the core game. Difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that New Vegas provides substance to every single action you do. Fallout 3....you kind of need to sort of find ways to justify your actions for any roleplaying to make sense and good luck playing any sort of morally neutral character in Fallout 3.
***** Ehh not really. Two completely different characters with completely different backgrounds, goals and personalities. The only thing they share is an adherence to what is essentially a lawful evil alignment. "I'm doing what I'm doing for the greater good". Caesar grew up with only a mother (he makes no mention of his father) who were both taken into the Followers of the Apocolypse. On a mission in what was Arizona I think, Caesar and his companion Graham were captured by tribals. In captivity Caesar taught the tribals how to wage war against the other tribes in the area. They won many victories and Caesar had taught them a concept of total warfare, uniting all the tribes of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Ashur was a knight in the Brotherhood of Steel during their early years in the capital wasteland when they ventured into the Pitt to scavenge for lost technology. Ashur was considered the only casuality, but in actuality he had survived and was taken in by the raiders in the area. He became a sort of leader towards the raiders and married one of them who was smarter than the rest. They had a child who was immune to the Trog Degeneration Disease. Details are sketchy, but Ashur intended to cure the Pitt of the Trog disease, while also building an army to eventually conquer and unite the capital wasteland. Both of them thought what they were doing was for the greater good in bringing an end to the chaos of post-apocolyptia.
I always kind of saw it as the NCR essentially being a return to the norm, with the hope being that society would learn from history while the legion represented a total do-over. So do you have faith that people won't repeat the mistakes of the past or do you think fuck it, do-over.
Caesar's plan is flawed. He created an army without a state, and then gave his army no ties to their state, just soldiers held together by him. What if he dies? Will it become Lanius' Legion? Given the man's lack of political abilities, and his many possible enemies, it's likely Caesar's legion will disintegrate into his own war of the Diadochi. He will not be a Caesar. He will be Alexander. Let's look more immediately, even if the Legion conquers the Mojave, what then? Will Caesar push into the far better defended NCR Homeland? Will he fortify east of the Sierra Nevada? Will he overextend himself and cause rebellions across his Empire? What will happen? There are so many unstable possibilities we just don't know, but the fact so many plausible theories exist for his Empire's immediate collapse, speaks volumes to it's weakness.
@@batrachian149 What's the alternative? even worse slavery under NCR? they're socialists like mustache man & stalinium..... hell no. Mr House best choice but failing that, Caesar's legion over NCR every time.
I see those two statements as the same, someone will and did fuck up the start over, multiple times. Hence the khans and other relatively diminutive tribes
It's incredible how Caesar's Legion consists of a bunch of zealous maniacal bred-for-war raving warriors while Caesar himself stands out as an almost nonchalant regular man. It's amazing how he's changed the behavior of everyone around him but in the end he remains an ordinary, albeit very intelligent, person.
he really is based off of jullius caesar, jullius was held for ransom when he was young and working on boats but he talked his captor into letting him go. I think that's actually true lol
Cringe take. Yes forming a conquering militia State takes a great deal of intelligence. He is also well versed in medicine, persuasion, and military tactics even if he is novice with philosophy.
@@buffawolf62 he isn't even a novice his philosophical out takes are so vanilla even a 2nd grader can understand them I know cuz I understood them when I was in 2nd grade playing through new Vegas
+MartianManHunter2258 They occasionally had personality. The guy on the radio was fun as was the legendary Sergeant Dornan. Fallout 3 had one humanising moment. In Raven Rock there is a mess hall with a weird floor. The people eating in there kept dropping knives and forks through the grating. You can find shit tons of them if you go underneath. It's hilarious.
To be honest I feel like a combination of the two types of government is really what the wasteland needs. The NCR has more of the societal aspects that would make room for advancement and redevelopment of the wastes while the legion has a strong centralized uncorrected government with a disciplined army backing it
The legion is seen as to brutal and enslaving woman and girls seems anti productive also he even implies that the nomadic army isn't gonna work out long run
@@seanmcclintock773 That's exactly what Caesar is aiming for afterall, once he takes Vegas in his words his ROME he will transform the Legion into a genuine empire, give it some time and the NCR would be decimated and assimilated into the Legion changing both factions creating the synthesis needed for the wasteland.
@@greengarnish1711 By magic or whatever, right? Because extremely complicated sociopolitical interactions can be so easily boiled down to "Mashing two things together always produces something better, with the flaws of neither."
@@batrachian149 that's the idea, removing the worst aspects in both factions while keeping the good virtues will give birth to a new civilization, Caesars vision fulfilled.
@@batrachian149 Ignoring your Reddit-tier pretentiousness, the Legion integrates the positive aspects of the NCR (antithesis) if they win the conflict. It creates a standing capital that serves as a permanent base of operations and decisionmaking body (NCR’s positive qualities). This is the synthesis that Caesar explains. But the bad qualities of NCR (bribes in the Senate, influence of barons, excessive bureaucracy) are removed from Caesar’s government.
It can actually be argued that the Legion is the best option for the wasteland, which makes them superb villains. It's literally all a giant process of "the ends justifies the means." Caesar has no intention to continue butchering incessantly. Considering the horrid situation humanity is in, and the harsh requirements for it to make a full recovering without repeating the mistakes of the past, a Legion victory may in fact bring about a brighter future for humanity in the very long run than any of the other options. It really boils down to your perception of morality and whether a brutal autocracy is worth future peace, and if you believe the Legion in capable of seeing its purpose through to the end. There is a glaring problem in the fact that when Caesar dies his ideal path for the Legion may be lost with him, but that aside it's essentially a question of "do you want to kill 1,000 people now to save 10,000 people later?"
Drachenjager what the hell is the key to building a lasting nation!! That seems to be the hardest question. How do you as a leader make sure things go in the right direction after you are gone? How do you make sure the sacrifices you all made are not in vain and the goal is met?
You can always fake Mr. House's death, have him lay low and pretend to be dead, then instill him as the new Caesar once Edward Sallow dies. Someone who can shoot down nukes and revive the high-tech sectors deserves to be Emperor.
It is actually speculated that caeser wants you as the new emperor/ quenn after he dies. Since he tries to teach you his ideals. Doesnt get you killed even if you kill vulpes ect.
3. People who hate the Legion always seem to turn to this piece of dialogue from Marcus like it's the fucking Fallout Bible. Once again, if Caesar is alive and the Legion win, he has plenty of time to groom a successor. Even Lanius, fucking Lanius, shows some indication of serving the Legion outside of Caesar, as he is unwilling to sacrifice so many Legionaries to take the Dam - losses Caesar didn't care about. 4. The Legion was founded on books of strategy. 5. Ad hominem, because you lost.
If Caeser is alive. If's are fickle things. He could die at any time. He leave leave no heirs, or to many heirs, and once he is dead his opinion means jack shit. To hold the West the Legion must give up the East, and their refusal of technology is dooming them. What happens if a new age plague runs through their camps? How do they defend against Power Armour and Gatling Lasers, against Rocket Launcheds and Fat Men? What happens if someone arms their slaves and they face a rebellion, what happens if the Praetorian grow loyal to money as they did in Rome?
Caeser has a brain tumour. Him being alive to finish the job of transitioning the legion from a nomadic group of rapists and slavers to some kind of standing army collecting taxes is a big damn if.
The problem with the Legion's ideology, is simple, once Caesar and Lanius are gone, the Legion will disintegrate due to infighting over who will lead the Legion
Other big problem are that the Legion army is unequipped for defending territories, as well as the fact that if you take out the Legion's chain of command, the Legionnaires will have no idea what to do in a combat situation, NCR 1st Recon exploited that during the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam
RAZORBLADEDALEJRBUCSFAN88 Look at rome for your answer. Their was a lot of civil war but it still managed to thrive for 250 years (or more if you count he Byzantines)
William Miller True, but Rome collapsed eventually and it will happen to the Legion. Rome's problem was not only cultural bigotry, but the fact that Rome just got too big to be sustainable, and it fell. Remember that history has a way of repeating itself
You know what Caesar actually makes good points, maybe if the legion wins it would absorb more civil characteristics from the NCR and actually create a proper "synthesis" of a nation instead of just a brutal dictatorship. Hell even the history of the USA is full of the thesis and the antithesis and the creation of a synthesis in the end. The thesis and the antithesis of course being a totalitarian rule of a monarchy and a state of complete anarchy where people are free. Both have flaws but the synthesis creates something new and powerful like the USA. I am really glad I watched this video, hats off to the guys who created the fallout series and put so much interesting details into it which even through fiction makes an interesting observation of the human condition.
***** That is not a guarantee. All human created systems of government have the inherent flaw of being corruptible no matter how "pure" the system. In this hypothetical case Caesar could either go mad with power and never actually allow the promised synthesis to happen OR he just dies and his ignorant followers are never able to achieve his vision which he meant to establish through raw military power. Human systems of government are a fickle thing indeed. The last time someone ACTUALLY won power through raw military strength AND for whatever reason gave up his power to allow the people to govern themselves was probably George Washington. One of the reasons I have mad respect for the American Founding Fathers.
***** Creating a powerful empire that would last through the ages and actually thinking that their descendants would be the same caliber as them to maintain what they had left behind. Recipe for disaster I say. Even a legitimate son born to these leaders for the purpose of inheriting the kingdom they leave behind might prove to be a ignorant weakling and nothing like their father.
Its ironic that Caeser uses an auto-doc to suppress his cancer but his legions are not allowed to use advanced techs like plasma guns and power armour.
There not luddites they use technology they have guns there just told not to rely on it it's why they ALWAYS have melee weapons on hand if the weapon jams or runs out of ammo
@@maleexile9053 that's the band aid response the idea of society is to grow not regress. If your society shuns technological advances are you sure you're going to grow more or less?
Ironic, that he was given free education and training as a result of the same ideologies he then sought to wipe out. He wouldn't have even understood what those ideologies were otherwise, and I doubt there will be many 2-year-old fatherless refugee children learning to read and write for free in Caesar's legion.
He does not want to wipe It, he wants the ncr to be their ultimate enemy, and in the end of the conflict, he wants the legion to absorb all the good of both ncr and legion, to create a better society
Your taking the legion as if it will never change, it’s called a legion for a reason and Caesar knows that well. it’s a military organization, with its *Rome* also known as new Vegas, the legion is a tool to reunite the wastes that will be put aside or reforged into a real civilization when Caesar finds it fitting to do so
it's really strange that he makes the controversial stories out of Lanius, that his face is just clean as contradicting to his explanation. what's more, Lanius isn't really that crazy maniac as he describes. whether you sided with Caesar's Legion or other factions, you can see this guy is being more like Fallout Darth Vader than bloodlusted barbarian(not trying to take all the glory by himself unlike the most of real history, or just withdrawing guards and duel with you if speech check was succeeded. although he would run away when he's almost dying but who wouldn't.).
It's pretty much fear mongering for his enemies and allies. It doesn't matter who Lanius is really, Lanius is just a symbol of the Legion and someone, knowing these stories you would not want to take a step back lest he stab it.
His criticisms of the NCR makes a lot of sense. The NCR has had what, two presidents that were related that together ruled for three quarters of a century? That's ridiculous.
AdorableShadow I am not charmed. He seems like a clueless jackass that read a bunch of books and sounds oh so smart now. Not to mention that existence of Legion is quite implausible, throwing spears in the gun age, yeah right.
This man has everything figured out,his plans make sense and his reasons are sound...it scares me that he can make an ideology as foul as the legion’s sound so...appealing.
i love that Caesar has no tragic backstory; he was too young to even REMEMBER his father being killed. He grew up with probably the absolute best group he could have in wasteland, had education, food, medicine. His life was as good as it could be. and then, one day, for no reason whatsoever, he just snapped.
I think the implication is that the followers failed to impart their own philosophy onto caesar in any meaningful way. They wanted Caesar to learn the languages of a bunch of cultures he considered backward savages, he only ever saw it as a waste of time which is why he saw fit to eradicate the identities of every tribe the legion conquered.
Caesar's legion is brutal and unforgiving, but it is exactly what a post-nuclear nightmare would require. When the entire world has been smashed into millions of shards, a heavy-handed approach is necessary to reunify those shards into a single unit once more. It is the only means to at least increase the chance of the species' continuation. Ethics and morality died with the old world, and though they may return, they may only return when some semblance of society is reestablished.
Muzzly1234 Slavery is fine, but crucifiction is not, extremely dishonorable and repulsive. And I am saying it is as someone quite bloodthirsty and violent. I count covid victims each day and every death makes me happier and happier!
Thats one of Caesers downfalls. He is an intelligent learned man. Thus, he assumes he knows all there is. He's clearly learnt of the Romans, but how much does he know really? What knowledge was lost to time? What knowledge of somewhere, but out of his grasp? He knows of Rome. But he doesn't seem to know their downfall, that they got to greedy, and soon enough the Emperor was whoever could bribe the Praetorian. He knows of Pre War America, but he misunderstands their downfall, blaming technology.
Most people do. They read the parts that interest them, the parts that agree with them, and the parts that help them understand enough about their enemies to undermine them. Education is sort of a self-licking ice cream cone that way.
@@andrewparker1622 Rome lasted a very long time. the western roman empire managed to stay in tact for thousands of years. The Roman Empire lasted over a thousand years and represented a sophisticated and adaptive civilization. Some historians maintain that it was the split into an eastern and western empire governed by separate emperors caused Rome to fall. Christianity and constantine played a huge role in the fall of rome. the eastern empire was vastly different from the western side. Western rome lasted until it was conquered by the turks hundreds of years after the fall of the east. The u.s had only been around for 300 years so you cant immediately assume the ncr would last longer than the legion. the ncr already has widespread corruption and problems with rampant crime and raiding. There is no crime in the legion. And when there is thats when the crosses come up
@@joeytoofly5139 Oh but there is crime. You just don't see it. Rome lasted a long time true. Caeser isn't Rome. He had bits and pieces of its history but never knows the full story. He doesn't know why Rome fell why it rose and what challenges it faced.
@@andrewparker1622 rome fell due to the same corruption that the ncr is going to fall too. The legion has like 1000 or so years of stability before anything catastrophic happens by that point the human race would be safe
Conversations with ceaser alone makes doing legion quests worthwhile. I don't think I've found a game that presents philosophy and history and make it so interesting.
It's a shame what happened to the modern dialogue system in fallout 4, because now we can no longer gain access to knowledge and backstories of interesting characters.
3:52 The real Rome did the exact opposite with the tribes and states it defeated. Historical Rome allowed its subjects to keep their traditions, identities and governments in exchange for taxes and military manpower. This gave Rome a network of allies and a vast pool of manpower, allowing Rome to survive horrific defeats like Cannae. The real Rome also had a habit of breaking apart everytime the guy in charge died.
When you ask the main villain in New Vegas why he does what he does he gives you an almost 15 minute lecture on Hagelian Dialectic, criticisms of democracies and republics. When you ask the main villain of Fallout 4 why he does what he does he tells you it's too complicated to explain.
@@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012 The original plot was that the Institute were trying to create a new type of being that they could transfer their minds into so they could become immortals. That's why Synths exist at all, but so far no Synth generation was advanced enough for their purposes. The reason they kidnap random people is for their continued experiments and to see if they can perfect the memory transfer process so no one could tell the difference anymore.
It could be related to his age, he's fifty five, and he has a brain tumor. I'm not sure how it would change his stats, but it would definitely hinder his ability.
God damn is the writing in fallout NV amazing. Fallout 2 is my favourite fallout game from a world building and gameplay perspective (the mental image of cruising around the wasteland in a beater sports car with a super mutant and a death claw never get old), but holy God does fallout NV have some truly incredible writing
Not many games can hold your interest for 13 minutes of uninterrupted dialogue.
Not to mention on every play through. Never gets old.
I'll be honest, as much as I liked Outer Worlds - the dialogue was nothing close to this.
@@Xzone256 even Fallout 4 is better than outer worlds...
Jonathan Denny watch the show Borgia for 3 whole seasons of John doman making intellectual conversations. He plays Rodrigo Borgia Pope Alexander VI
Or explicitly look for it on UA-cam
And to think that an entire empire was born from some Jet-hyped raider shooting someone's dad. Ulysses was right - the entire course of history can be changed by just a single person's decision.
***** I know that, but it still boggles the mind.
It's like the death of Franz Ferdinand, except it's more scary because it was some nobody's dad getting killed that eventually turned that nobody into a Roman Emperor living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
@Pferd Schild Yep. It was basically a powder keg. Some German politician even saw it coming. Otto Von Bismarck predicted that the Great War would come from something in the east. He was right.
@@HolyknightVader999 He even specified that it would be some "damned foolish thing in the Balkans".
@@phosphoros3050 Yep. Those were his exact words. And boy did it explode on people's faces.
Seems like Courier is the first man for a long time whom Caesar can talk freely about his believes & philosophies
They should have added Intelligence checks where Courier knows those Latin phrases that Caesar uses.
I thought the same thing when I played it.
*****
That doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even if you have 10 Int, how would you know latin just by that? I agree on the matter of Int checks regarding Caesar's dialogue, but not for latin phrases, that would smell too much like Fallout 3.
isnt this early on in the questline? a bit too soon to be rattling off your secrets to a guy/gal who could be working with the ncr, house, or himself/herself.
@@Duke0Forever I loved that part. Talking Latin to Silus really made him shit his pants.
swordfish1986 the courier speaks latin with high enough intelligence, it happens when you interrogate the centurion in McCarran and with arcade
"There's a lot of good information in old books"
***Reads Mein Kampf***
*Reads The Turner Diaries*
Still good.
**Reads Japanese Light Novels From Another Dimension (ours)**
Read the prince by nicolla machevelli
Courier Six: What do you think of the Minutemen?
Caesar: They hardly seem like something of a threat to anyone, let alone to the Legion. They hold on to old and outdated tactics that can't be used effectively in modern combat. Their forces are always spread thin trying to take care of the people of the Commonwealth. They will never last if they don't use advanced tactics. The greatest example is what happened to their Castle, it was overrun by Mirelurks of all creatures and their coward General hid away in a dungeon while the Minutemen were helpless to defend it.
Courier Six: What do you think of their leadership?
Caesar: What is there to say about it? It's unstable, too inclusive and no due process. Look at what happened in Quincy. They failed to defend a town after they were overrun by a group of common thugs like the Gunners. They were waiting for reinforcements to come and help defend the town, but they never came. Turns out it was one of their own that sold them out to the Gunners. What did they do after their general was killed in the battle along with the most of the Minutemen? They headed to Concord where they were attacked by common Raiders and given that Preston Garvey was only true Minutemen among them they had to take shelter in a museum. If not for the actions of one vault-dweller the raiders would have overrun them. And what does Garvey do after all this happens? He gives the title of general to the vault-dweller. A person he had just met. Does that like good leadership to you? It's another Quincy waiting to happen.
This is a excellent comment and it saddens me that I only just found it.
This feels like it came straight from Cesar himself.
man y'all really wanna praise an autocrat who takes joy in torture and rape over a local militia
@@casacara Yes.
now imagine this but instead with a former legionnaire that escaped changed his ways and decided to flee to Boston to live his days out there.
Never thought I'd see Hegel and Dialectics discussed in a videogame, let alone one set in a violent post apocalyptic United States. Bravo Fallout New Vegas.
American gamers are more obsessed with liberty in gameplay rather than derivatives. Caesar was an awesome character with an ideology that made sense and a motive built up with history. Caesar was the first idealist who took action. He's the brute, and the philosopher as Confucius would say. Awesome character, totally overlooked by casual fps gamers.
The NCR was a satire on American capitalism. easily figured that out on my first play through. They kill, they reap, and the pawns get nothing out of it.
Dao Yang
'B-But muh freedoms! Muh Democracy!': And that is the farthest in thought an NCR supporter can go and will go.
Dao Yang Well, it's in every western culture, actually. I'm from México and the same argument can be made with mexica empire (better known as the aztecs) vs Spain. Aztecs conquered a lot of small tribes to create his empire, destroying their culture and Spain was not a "democracy" but conquered the aztecs and started putting a royal burocracy in motion... after 300 years, the corruption was so hard to handle the territories started to separate from the weak Spain. Sounds like Fallout New Vegas and I bet you can make the same argument with other imperial cultures if you look right enough, Hegelian Dialects are a good way to understand war and culture.
@@insertnamehere001 Well, my Courier canonically worked with the NCR, but only because she knows they're incompetent twats. There was a lot of room for her to do good deeds and get popular, so she can run for president and oust Kimball one day. Then she'd turn the NCR into a military dictatorship like the Legion, only more advanced, since she has House, the Enclave Remnants, the brain trust at the Big MT, and the wealth and tech of the Sierra Madre in her possession.
@@HolyknightVader999 I like this human. She understands
It's funny. I've lived in southern Utah my whole life, and hearing Caesar talk about old small tribe they’ve taken out or absorbed while coming west is interesting. The Kaibab tribe in relation to kaibab mountain and the fredonians in relation fredonia Arizona. Let alone mentioning Zion and the Mormons, I like all the effort they put into this game.
One of the Best characters in fallout new Vegas, Joshua Graham, is a Mormon too.. god bless
They mention a ton of towns and cities up north too; like salt lake, Ogden aka new Canaan in game, Spanish fork
@@elijahgreybosh7882 I always wondered why if Joshua Graham was such a godly man did he partake and assist Ceasar in committing atrocities on tribes
When it comes to Christianity most people tend to only focus on the New Testament yet disregard the Old Testament. The Old Testament is filled with wars, terrors, plagues, suffering, affliction.. the prophet Elijah of whom my namesake is based off of, literally killed all his enemies. It’s pretty hardcore. In a practically post-apocalyptic world, filled with no morality, perhaps Joshua thought he was doing the right thing. Bringing civilization back to the world. And he wasn’t completely wrong, however he was misled. Regardlessly, we all make mistakes.. for we are not perfect, Joshua included. He recognized his mistakes, repented, and sought a better life afterwards.. There were tons of Christians in the British , United States, and even Nazi German armies..even amidst their violence and attrocities.. they just viewed it as doing their duty. Similar to how Joshua probably felt, if anything probably even more justified in a case like his. In an extremely cruel world, like in fallout you’re left with no choice but to be cruel in response. War is all hell.. and you can’t change that.. you can’t play nice when it comes to war.. and war....war never changes.
@@101trus funnily enough, it was a post-apocalyptic world after the bronze age collapse.
"I may have taken the torch part more literally than they intended......"
Caesar: “No talk about Burned Man or you ded.”
Also Caesar: *Names Joshua by name during the history lesson.*
Just because you cant, doesn't mean he can't say it too
@@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012 Exactly. Edward is a huge narcissist. He wants to dictate the narrative and would rather it be free from the influence of others.
@@TheThing4444 I think it’s more of the fact he was enjoying telling his story and just forgot that Joshua was now forbidden to be spoken about. Remember they were friends for decades, best friends even.
Caeser likes telling stories and debating with people that can understand his nuances, if you sell Arcade into slavery him and Caeser become intellectual sparring partners, and Caeser mourns his death for months.
@@JohnSmith-jz2ke I do think Edward is capable of truly enganging in intellectual conversation, but his ego ultimately act as a barrier and hinders him.
@@TheThing4444 yet who is there to match him? A man so great in such a bad time deserves to think highly of himself
The characterization in this game is incredible.
His error was in construing Rome as an army. Rome was a city. He has placed the cart before the horse.
He understands that. But he still has conquered a large swathe of territory and rules over many cities such as Flagstaff. Now he returns home, to create a true Rome.
True, he asumes the Legion can make the leap from semi-nomadic raiding force into a standing army. If Caesar is following the Stationary Bandit hypothesis of government/army/police force formation, he forgets that the Legion’s soldiers have no ties to a real home beyond the idea of the homeland. While the idea of the homeland is a powerful mobilizer, Caesar has forgotten to ground the promise in emotional connections. If Legion soldiers are motivated by plunder, women, and power, a shift to a defensive, state-supporting army will cause splits among soldiers more willing to continue expanding and raiding, who don’t have emotionalties. Then we return to what the Courier outlines to Lanius, the splintering of the Legion along the borders, needing Eastern armies to put down Western rebellions, et cetera. Caesar failed to integrate the Legion’s military structure into a broader civilian society and kept them seperate to allow his forces to expand rapidly with minimal cultural/emotional ties to a region. He’s creating the same systemic failure the original Caesar took advantage of, where Roman soldiers are more loyal to their commander in the army then the society that spawned them both. Excellent and succinct analysis.
@@conorgleeson2453 Agreed. You put it very well though I will say being the literal Jesus figure to the Legion I'm almost assured once they switch from nomadic to stationery they will adapt. That is their greatest gift: above all else the Legion is adaptable.
His problem was getting lost in philosophical abstracts and idealism, instead of being guided by a more materialist understanding of history. I really wish that at higher leaves of INT you could pick apart his ideas more fully. It would be killer to ask him to reconcile Hegel's worship of the Prussian Monarchy with what Caesar's Legion had become.
The legion isn't the natural antithesis of the NCR, hatched and sustained into the world by Caesar's genius. Instead, the legion survives because extracting the very meager surplus value (anything that is produced by civilization that isn't directly controlled by its producers/labors, you sit and are looking at various manifestations of surplus value right now) out of post nuclear war wastelands simply favor extremely repressive systems of exploitation. Caesar's just experiencing survivorship bias, mistaking the reality of just being the first with a brutal system for his success being the machine like workings of historical dialectics. Actually, he isn't the first, he was beaten by the Master by a hundred years, and will probably go down in history as a similar figure. If Casear had read some more of those old books, he'd learn that the closest historical analog for how bleak the material conditions and meager the societal surpluses are in the fallout world would have to be the late bronze age. Indeed, the times are much more bleak than the contemporary rich iron age civilizations Caesar is coplaying. These systems become so repressive that they exploded, nearly on mass and with a decade of each other, the first sign of effective competators appeared. That is the legion's fate if it survives its first transfer of power. Far from being an army with a state, the Legion appears to have abolished the idea of the civil state and society, having going as far to reduce women to a historical unprecedented low status. Lack of crime is often sited as a benefit of the legion, its actually a sign that money inside the legion would be useless (hence, why steal besides survival?) as commerce and other civil pursuits don't seem to take place. It is very hard to imagine what Legion cities look like, the production surpluses having to be so meager, and to what end would the legion even need a city?
The NCR looks like it does because the material conditions of California simply offer more surplus at less effort than the high deserts of the post nuclear American west. The NCR can affoard the costs and reap the benefits of a civil society, if a meager and fragile one. The two, NCR and legion, won't because more like each other, after all, did the NCR start to resemble the fiends or other tribal groups after fighting them? All of Caesar theories are bad reading of philosophy he didn't fully understand, leading to a bunch of general and vague predictions meant to enable Freudian death drive nonsense. I will spare you my Caesar as a repressed homosexual theories, those should have been obvious the first time you saw one of these skirt boys in the game.
Also, as noted, no one ever will speculate on the hidden sexual subtexts and motivations of a Fallout 4 character. I don't think I can name a fallout four character besides "Ghoul guy in a tricorned hat" and "Pissed off fisherman/gun guy from the cool island expansion".
@@SMFCNA Only a Materialist would say Caesar was lost in Philosophical and ideological Abstracts. Caesar and many other see these as the fundaments upon which civilizations are born and then made into reality by the material. It is why he has invested so heavily into both indoctrination and the creation of a new religion with him as the divine ruler and mandate. Caesar would probably say that Hegel should like the Prussian Aristocracy however that his fascination with a monarch is misguided because as Caesar would put it >a weak monarch cannot unite his people only lead his nation to develop a weak spirit and more importantly a weaker ability to care for itself. Also, Caesar is easily able to discern his current positions differences to that of histories.
No the Legion isn’t the natural anti-thesis it is clearly manufactured by Caesar to be a rival power that he can transplant onto the NCR by moving a large formation onto it. Or increasing the stress on the NCR’s system until it breaks as it seems to be close to. Yes, extracting the surplus is the most efficient way of becoming increasingly rich. Though as we both know it is not the only way of becoming rich. We also see extraordinarily little of the Legion’s territory and or civil administration which we know from the devs that there is. So, I cannot tell you whether they are manufacturing or farming anything.
You can say he is experiencing survivorship bias but then if you do so would you say Temujin Borjigin and Charles Martell experiencing survivorship bias for conquering large swathes of territory and setting up empires? Why do you think he thinks is the only person to come up with an authoritarian system in the Wastes when we know for a fact that the majority of systems in the wastes are repressive and Authoritarian?
Next you bring up the Bronze Age collapse because that seems apt doesn’t it. It is not that the repressive systems caused the collapse but that a series of factors piling on top of one another caused the collapse. You also seem to think that you can determine the fate of newly born nation within its first leaders’ lifetime. Would you have said during Julius Gaius Caesars’(Augustus) life that the Principate would not last because it built on a flawed system that devalued tradition and was repugnant to the old system? If so, you would be considered foolish for the rest of time. Though I will concede that Caesar is entering a critical crossroads
. First how do you know that the Legion has abolished the idea of a state? Have you experienced anything within legion territory besides a military camp? Also, a state can exist under military leadership we generally call it a military dictatorship. Caesar does not believe in a command economy we know that from Sawyer. He believes that if you are civilized individual or community you can be left alone except to pay tithes and to Follow the odd order form the Legion. Most of the infrastructure and projects are done by the slave cast of formal tribals and the rare slave from war zones (We know these are exceptions) (Sawyer).
We know that some Authority is placed into governmental agencies called Consul Officiorum. We know that their currency is made from Silver and Gold which are inherently valuable. We know that there is little crime and that operating a caravan in the Legion is noticeably more profitably as referenced by Raul, Cassidy and explicitly said so by Dale Barton. We know that commerce does exist as referenced by said characters. We also know that the trade of Slavery is at the very least happening and probably on a large scale seeing as there is an entire Consul Officiorum dedicated to the facilitation of it.
You can say the surpluses would be extremely low but why? Flagstaff, Phoenix, Denver are all major cities from which members of the Legion could easily scavenge. Not counting the massive amounts of natural resources in the area. All of that manufactured armor and guns must come from somewhere. Those stealthboys are not just appearing on trees for them. Clearly some manufacturing and some amount of scavenging is taking place on a large enough scale to rival that of the NCR at least in distributing weapons and even greater in distributing health items (Legionaries get Health items NCR Troopers do not).
Caesar understand that the NCR won’t become like the Legion if he loses but it will change and adapt to synthesize. If he wins it doesn’t matter what the NCR wants it will become like the Legion. Also, yes Tandi did learn from the Khans that is a huge part of 2.
You are an individual living in a hyper sexualized time and would attribute any form of masculinity as a “clear” sign that said person was a latent gae this is because you live in a hyper sexualized world. Cingulum or as you would call them “skirts” are more closely aligned with a longer tunic with frayed ends. It is ancient and probably something Caesar saw as overly Foreign and so necessary for his conquests as it with many other things such as the Latin remind the wasteland that they were foreign. You are clearly fixated on the sexuality of characters because have doubts about your own and feel the need to assume that everyone else especially characters that you think would be most humiliated by it must also share that deep seated doubt. That or you have a humiliation/revelation fantasy. Stop taking hyper sexualization and applying it to everything. (I honestly doubt you are any of the things I just said. But with how you speak I simply made that assumption. That or I am simply applying your logic to the situation.)
"It's hagalian dialectics, not personal animosity"
God damn that's a one liner to remember.
@@rw5120 I meant that it's a memorable one liner, not something to blindly use.
I also wouldn't say that as I dislike Hagel, mostly due to his high level articulation of collectivism, which Marx and all other collectivist thinkers build upon (which ceaser is a perfect representation of, incidentally), but Dialectics in particular. As while it's something that can happen, it's parsed as definitional, which isn't true, and once again, is something rabid radicals, particularly marxist communists with Historical Dialectics, pounce upon ideologically to define all of history/existence as subject to their ideological claims. While it may be unfair to dislike certain ideas due to other people abusing them, inversely there's also something to be said when certain otherwise valuable and interesting ideas are most frequently used as a foundation for totalitarian extremism and totalizing ideological reduction.
TL:DR, I just like NV's writing, and you're projecting so hard i could use you for powerpoint presentations.
@@rw5120 Do your own farts smell good? Because you're brown nosing the fuck out of yourself.
@@rw5120 Why be a dick?
Really. You already think you're smart. Why be a dick?
@@rw5120 that was just mean dude.
@@stev3548 The problem is that Caesar gets Hegelian Dialectics totally wrong. So he comes off as a pretentious pseduo-intellectual.
Caesar selected Lanius to command the assault so that his Legionaries would never retreat - that they would be more afraid of the commander behind them than the army before them, and would rather face death than punishment at Lanius' hands.
The fact that Lanius actually CAN be reasoned with says magnitudes about his character alone - if he truly didn't care about the Legion, only Caesar, he would have marched in regardless.
He's still a brute, and a terrible Caesar, but by no means a savage.
Yet, but he is not an angel. The reasoning can fail sometimes as he can see through it. He may not hate word play, but it doesn't mean that he is going to be gentle as a flower next time should it succeed. As Ulysses says, he's not going to fight a battle he can't win. Even if he can't, it doesn't mean he is retreating, he is merely regrouping
to the east to bring more troops. the Courier regardless of what side he's on, only stalls the inevitable return of the vaunted Legate with more troops. Caesar would understand this move as he understands that Lanius is not a man to "Retreat." If he regroups to the east, then it is not yet over even though the Legion were "defeated" on this day. Caesar understands if Lanius is in a pickle, he knows not to return to him unless his Job is done or he dies in battle. Lanius to some may appear to be non-smart, but he is the exact opposite of non-smart. He is the head Legate, he knows not to return to Caesar unless he is done. Lanius, sees his failures as short lived excuses.
The only reason lanius retreats is to preserve his honor and to regroup. He has no love for the legion, only for his warrior code and nature.
@@rockshawen doesn't he retreat when you convince him that taking hoover dam would be stretching too thin? that shows that he values his own life below the legion's survival
order 227
@@bugdracula1662 thats the point they're making: Lanius does not want to risk the fall of the Legion over this battle and the supposed victory it would bring
I like how Caesar almost knows how brutal and ruthless he is, and even jokes about it 1:18
The true enemy of Caesar's legion should be the great king Pyrrhus of Epirus/Hellenes not NCR . That would be a more badass war 😂
Caesar mentioned that Lanius had no love for the Legion and would allow countless Legionaries to die if it could result in victory. Lanius disproves this by retreating on the basis that taking the Dam would kill too many soldiers. Lanius is also shown to be a man of honor, disapproving of Vulpes and willing to fight the Courier man-to-man.
Sallow used Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico to form the basis for his Legion's structure - which in 2281, is an entirely military organization.
Lanius retreats because it would hurt his pride, Ulysses mentions this and is shown to work since if you bring up the history of Graham at the Dam, it’ll make him rethink trying to invade the Dam
But if you ask him if he’s going to retreat, it’ll undo any negotiating you done because in the end, the idea that he’s retreating instead of simply never really starting the fight hurts his ego and pride
If you use the Speech checks, then he realizes that the Legion would just be stretched too thin as basically repeat the NCR's mistakes. He himself believes that stability in the East is more important.
If you do the Barter check, he will realize that none of the towns in the Mojave could give his troops the necessary supplies and that even if he captured New Vegas and Hoover Dam, he wouldn't be able to hold it as eventually the strength of his army would wane due to insufficient supplies. This reminds him of his attack on Detroit where his men were starved and weakened due to a lack of proximity of any tribes nearby to supply the army with resources
Lanius is at least intelligent enough to realize his own limits. I don’t think his willingness to retreat has so much to do with worry for his men, as it does his realization that taking the dam and continuing west would ultimately set him up for a failure he would never recover from.
People use Caesar as the truth, but there's no reason he wouldn't be able to lie. My cannon is that without the courier, the Legion would win and conquer vegas. Caesar would die of a tumor, but Lanius would take control and push west, whereas other sects of the legion may have pushed further east, perhaps reaching texas or the bayous
I could talk to this man all day...
Watcher08121 345 I'm not to bad
He's interested and very persuasive, but I think that'd be like blindly walking around a minefield; one misstep and you're dead.
Arcade cannot agree
@@R41Ryan as long as you’re not disobeying his Orders,to help pretty much allow you to talk to him about anything it seems.
@@mitchellatticuswolfgang6554 especially if the person is smart and educated , imagine having to deal with uneducated morons all the time .
This game is literally like taking a philosophy 101 course. It's a shame that other video games don't attempt to include such higher thinking dialogue and story. If a video game can make you love the supposed "villians" then that's damn good writing.
+Rhsims The scariest thing in fiction is a villain you agree with.
+Rhsims If only Fallout 4 has this level of writing.
Ellijah De Leon Literally my one gripe with the game (and the lack of RPG elements). Otherwise Fallout 4 would have been better than New Vegas.
+Rhsims damn right, obsidian sure knows how to write good stuff. but FO4 got weapons crafting though, so yeah.
Nhat Lam NGUYEN I respect your opinion, but I just find that a good story in a video game is much more difficult to come across these days since the focus among devs in general is creating games with good amounts of crafting aspects. A lot of them turn out as DAyZ/RUST clones. Finding a game with a good story is difficult these days since thats not the market focus.
Daily reminder that Caesar's Legion only existed because some Jet Addicted Raider Psycho shot someone's father.
We can’t expect God to do all the work
Fallout New Vegas is legendary... best fallout ever...
yeah the story is very unique. Seems that the story now is dumbing down
i fully agree! 1 and 2 were good games... for the 1990s... nowadays sure the story is still pretty good but if you are too young to have nostalgia-vision, the graphics and somewhat obtuse controls present huge barriers to enjoyment. new vegas has 1 and 2 level story plus you can actually see whats happening in adequate detail.
It's also my first Fallout game. How ironic.
So it's all downhill from here?
@Pferd Schild A bit much, don't you think?
@Pferd Schild its complicated you wouldnt understand
Something I noticed: Caesar is essentially taking credit for what Graham did in training the Blackfoot. While it is possible both of them trained the Blackfoot in combat, Caesar never had a background in combat, whereas Graham did. If you ask Graham about it in Honest Hearts, he explains it as if he was the one who trained them and not Caesar.
Out of the two, I trust Graham much more than Caesar on this one. Caesar might have helped with the tactical aspect, but Graham was the hands-on person in the training of the Blackfoot.
This is nearly the exact story of Shaka Zulu, who used the tactics of the Roman legion that he read in books to unite the tribes of his homeland and turn them into a highly capable army. They met their match when faced with a British Colonial Army, who are superficially similar to the NCR.
Mannnn I also felt that connection, when Caesar was talking about how the tribes were playing at warfare, like raiding and pillaging, it was the same thing with how the african tribes had conducted warfare. Shaka taught tactics (such as the bull's horn formation) to his warriors and went full on during war and didn't hold back and expanded fast just like Caesar's legion. Honestly Caesar's legion is more like Shaka Zulu's empire than the Roman empire.
@@restitutororbis675
That’s not accurate, even before Shaka’s time monarches and large confederations were common in southern africa, Shaka himself was born into the Mthethwa empire, a large confederation of Nguni chiefdoms ruled over by a King at the time named Dingiswayo
Alot of Shaka’s military strategies such as the bull formation had already existed for centuries
The real innovations of Shaka were making the army more egalitarian (before rank was determined by nobility under shaka it was determined by ability)
And the consolidation of power, instead of just extracting tribute from the conquered group, they were fully integrated into the Zulu society
@@AbdiHassan-jq2ln *The real innovations of Shaka were making the army more egalitarian (before rank was determined by nobility under shaka it was determined by ability)*
Lmao..... tell me more how 'merit'='egalitarian'. No remotely competent military is 'egalitarian'. Claiming otherwise is just leftist propaganda that directly contradicts reality. Meritocracy is the direct opposite of 'egalitarianism'/'leftist orthodoxy like what you spew. You are lying, and lying poorly.
@@AbdiHassan-jq2ln Nah. Any military (or nation) that goes for 'egalitarianism' is worthless. He went for *MERIT,* which is the opposite of what you're claiming.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to make the connection to Shaka Zulu, but I don’t think Shaka Zulu got his tactics from the Romans. I believe he developed them independently.
Me seeing any of the legion soldiers: "these guys are monsters, they deserve to die"
Me meeting Caesar:
"we will march into California and crucified any profligate/degenerates who cross us. TRUE TO CEASAR"
*AVE. TRUE TO CAESAR!*
Yes, that’s also what I thought. The Legions soldiers aren’t that nice, but Caesar, the leader of the Legion is good, I believe the Legion is the best option and I actually agree with them.
@@Tugboat1861 I think that's the entire point. And that's what I love in Obsidian's writing. They go at it this way:
"Here is *1* and here is *2. 1* wants to help the bunnies cross the street by carrying them. *2* wants to leave the bunnies to do it themselves, so they'll learn to do it better. But uh oh, *1* also asks the bunnies to give him two carrots every time he gets them across the street, but the bunnies only have six carrots for the day, which means they give most of the carrots to *1. 2* doesn't like this and beats *1,* telling him to give the carrots back, so now the bunnies have to go across by themselves, but they don't need to pay carrots. Who is the bad guy?"
Meanwhile Bethesda is like: Here is *1* and here is *2. 1* helps the bunnies across the street for free, and *2* stomps bunnies to death for fun while committing hate crimes with his best friend Adolf Hitler. *2* is the bad guy.
@@minihalkoja590 I think you missed the part where the second bunny also crucifies anyone that doesn't subscribe to their strict cultural homogeneity...
@@PWN3GE Apparently the hares deserved to die.
Very few people in the wastes have even held a book, much less learned how to read one. Caeser read Hegel. That's what makes him revolutionary.
Which means the Legion falls apart after his death. Hegel-schmegel. You think Lanius has picked up a book ever?
@@lagrangepoint9386
This is how all ideologies work... have you read anything by Voltaire, Thomas Aquinas, or any of the other philosophers who created western philosophy from the ground up? No. But you still believe in human rights, autonomy, a framework of morality, all derived from these philosophers and their initial inspiration, most prominently Christianity until the Enlightenment. That is just how it works. The philosophy, even it it is known in depth by only a few people, diffuses through the population over time due to the rhetoric of certain leaders, and the population take on a general and vague framework, which they are happy with. Likewise, if Caesar preaches to his lieutenants enough, they will take on the framework without understanding the reasoning behind it.
@@holypaladin4657 > But you still believe in human rights, autonomy, a framework of morality
No.
@@lagrangepoint9386
Well, even if you don’t, the majority of western people do.
@@holypaladin4657the largely judaeo-Christian west
He's voiced by John Doman who plays Rawls on The Wire. I knew I recognized him the second I heard him and couldn't place it for ages. He even looks a bit like Caesar come to think of it.
Liam J I didn’t know this. But now that I read this that is fucking awesome!
he also plays a character in The Boys, I just couldn't un-hear The Caesar.
Courier Six: What do you think of the Railroad?
Caesar: What do you want me to say about them? Their ideas, their goals, their leadership, their tactics, everything in that group is all a fuckin' powder-keg!
Courier Six: Why would you describe them as a powder-keg?
Caesar: Because like the Minutemen their too inclusive and let many synths into their ranks. Since the Institute has the recall codes for all of their automatons they can turn them off at a moments notice while the rest of the human in the group are outnumbered and annihilate by the Institute's machines. Or even worse the synths could go haywire like the Broken Mask incident of 2229 and start killing everyone around from the inside and no one would be none the wiser. Selflessness isn't a bad thing, but focusing your selflessness for one group above all others will ultimately be your downfall. So yeah going on that the entire movement is a powder-keg with a short fuse just waiting to be ignited and the Institute and can light any time they want.
MartianManHunter2258 thats actually brilliant. Program 1 synth with a bomb inside it and have it "liberated" by RR and its a done deal. Man, this is what the Institute SHOULD have done.
MartianManHunter2258 this is so gread
In Fallout 4
Person I don't care about: Help me someone, did something to me
Me: ok
Person: yay
Fallout New Vegas
Interesting Complex Character: wanna here about how I created a civilization, and my philosophy behind it?
Meanwhile in Boston...
PC: "Why are you kidnapping and murdering people and replacing them with human like robots?"
Father: "Its complicated. You wouldn't understand."
A few weeks later...
Father: "I want you to be the head of the Institute."
PC: "But you just said I wouldn't understa-"
Father: "I think I want to sleep now."
This is what happens when you employ slimeballs as CEO'S
*_I K R !_*
Fucking Jesus, just let me watch New Vegas clips without someone needing to shit on Fallout 4. I still haven't finished it and you guys are just poisoning the well for me.
@@Limpshot_McGee Good.
When I was listening to Caesar talking, felt like I was 10 years old again sat with my father as he told me stories. That's how awesome this guy is! It was definitely one of the best moments in the entire game.
Your father told you he must fight for Hoover Dam, cross the Mojave and conquer Vegas?
@@lagrangepoint9386 Yes
Based.
Can Caesar be my History teacher?
Decamito is going to be 200% more terrifying and painful if powerfists are involved
@@d.n5287 Nah, powerfist causes quick death, also you wouldn't want to give proper weapons to army you are punishing at that moment. They could revolt
@@hannibalburgers477 You'd make a great legate.
@@AssasC49DT Thank you my liege
@@hannibalburgers477 Let me pinch your ear.
0:01 My dad a while after he tells me to get out of bed.
LMAO
69 years ago?
hahahahah
At least in the context of a wasteland overtaken by barbarism (tribals) and corruption/greed (NCR), Caesar makes a fairly convincing argument that his Legion is simply doing what needs to be done. I'd still gravitate towards the NCR or small, independent communities, but after speaking with Caesar he didn't seem as evil as he was cracked up to be. Just utilitarian and ruthless.
strangegloves What about the fact that barbarians are objective cooler than romans? Those dicks wear skirts!!!!!
@@nihilism6226 yeah you can look at their balls as they nail degenerates like you to a cross
@@mybutthasteeth1347 Like they get an opportunity. Since they are dumbasses needlessly torturing people, I would fight to the death regardless of the odds.
Enslaving people, treating women like cattle, brainwashing kids? That's the only way to maintain Order?
@@ShadowSonic2 It's a way to maintain order. For some it's better to live under the Legion than the anarchy that was before.
That was incredibly interesting. It scares me that I agreed with most of it.
Me too. It's the sign of fantastic script writing
Likewise. And the US is starting to look a lot like the NCR at this point.
I'm scared, too.
***** Couldn't help but notice that. _Especially_ nowadays.
***** Let's just hope the synthesis will be better rather than worse.
Cyru Sol Better to fight for a corrupt government that can be fixed than for a brutal bunch of misogynistic slave-warriors, really.
"There's a lot you can learn from old books."
Epic.
Reads Oswald Spengler
Reads george orwell once....
mein kampf
This short conversation has more depth and lore than all of Fallout 4.
True
That simply just isn’t true. New Vegas is easily the best Fallout but now you’re just saying shit that isn’t true to suck it’s dick for no reason 😂😂
@@ethanswingle8234 don't get your panties in a twist bubs.
@@elihernandez330 You did not just unironically say “bubs” 💀
Pfft, yeah, OK
Obsidian should be the story writers for all future Bethesda ScrollOut games. They make much better characters, after playing Fallout 4 I am pretty sad the story is merely passable (and they force you to play as a pre-determined character that you can only alter slightly)
You might not agree with Caesar, and by god you shouldn't. But he is someone who has thought long and hard about his reasons for his actions, he has seen the corruption of the NCR and fights for what he really believes in.
With Bethesda, we basically get ''I'm an evil dragon and you're the chosen hero goodguy and can be evil if you want but uh.....you can still save the world! yay?''
+cronnoponno goddamn, caesar. it's a shame though, that caesar ideals aren't practical in the real world. only usable in post apocalyptic. but caesar ideals are becoming more and more practical everyday. Mr house had a quote that scared me to this day. "IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY, LOOK OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW"
+cronnoponno . Even Fallout 3 has more choices than Fallout 4....Very few characters are essential (aside from children) and even though you must join the Brotherhood to complete the game, with Broken Steel you can turn on the Brotherhood and destroy the Citadel. Not to mention you can join President Eden in poisoning the water supply at the end of the core game. Difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that New Vegas provides substance to every single action you do. Fallout 3....you kind of need to sort of find ways to justify your actions for any roleplaying to make sense and good luck playing any sort of morally neutral character in Fallout 3.
Deniz Tulga but fallout 4 endings sux tho, despite the fun fallout 4 gameplay is. the endings. simply just... just...
+cronnoponno Except Bethesda already made a Caesar before Obsidian. He's called Ashur.
***** Ehh not really. Two completely different characters with completely different backgrounds, goals and personalities.
The only thing they share is an adherence to what is essentially a lawful evil alignment. "I'm doing what I'm doing for the greater good".
Caesar grew up with only a mother (he makes no mention of his father) who were both taken into the Followers of the Apocolypse. On a mission in what was Arizona I think, Caesar and his companion Graham were captured by tribals. In captivity Caesar taught the tribals how to wage war against the other tribes in the area. They won many victories and Caesar had taught them a concept of total warfare, uniting all the tribes of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
Ashur was a knight in the Brotherhood of Steel during their early years in the capital wasteland when they ventured into the Pitt to scavenge for lost technology. Ashur was considered the only casuality, but in actuality he had survived and was taken in by the raiders in the area. He became a sort of leader towards the raiders and married one of them who was smarter than the rest. They had a child who was immune to the Trog Degeneration Disease. Details are sketchy, but Ashur intended to cure the Pitt of the Trog disease, while also building an army to eventually conquer and unite the capital wasteland.
Both of them thought what they were doing was for the greater good in bringing an end to the chaos of post-apocolyptia.
I always kind of saw it as the NCR essentially being a return to the norm, with the hope being that society would learn from history while the legion represented a total do-over.
So do you have faith that people won't repeat the mistakes of the past or do you think fuck it, do-over.
Dan Rickard
Fuck it, do-over. People are greedy and stupid.
Caesar's plan is flawed. He created an army without a state, and then gave his army no ties to their state, just soldiers held together by him. What if he dies? Will it become Lanius' Legion? Given the man's lack of political abilities, and his many possible enemies, it's likely Caesar's legion will disintegrate into his own war of the Diadochi. He will not be a Caesar. He will be Alexander.
Let's look more immediately, even if the Legion conquers the Mojave, what then? Will Caesar push into the far better defended NCR Homeland? Will he fortify east of the Sierra Nevada? Will he overextend himself and cause rebellions across his Empire? What will happen? There are so many unstable possibilities we just don't know, but the fact so many plausible theories exist for his Empire's immediate collapse, speaks volumes to it's weakness.
And that justifies slavery, torture, rape, and mass murder. Right.
@@batrachian149 What's the alternative? even worse slavery under NCR? they're socialists like mustache man & stalinium..... hell no.
Mr House best choice but failing that, Caesar's legion over NCR every time.
I see those two statements as the same, someone will and did fuck up the start over, multiple times.
Hence the khans and other relatively diminutive tribes
It's incredible how Caesar's Legion consists of a bunch of zealous maniacal bred-for-war raving warriors while Caesar himself stands out as an almost nonchalant regular man. It's amazing how he's changed the behavior of everyone around him but in the end he remains an ordinary, albeit very intelligent, person.
It's almost inhuman in a way. Caesar is the one who does all the thinking, like a Hive Mind and his colony of ants.
he really is based off of jullius caesar, jullius was held for ransom when he was young and working on boats but he talked his captor into letting him go. I think that's actually true lol
He also went back and slaughtered them once he had power, they are both ruthless
Ceaser is how redditors think of themselves no disrespect to the big man himself tho
Caesar's a pretentious, pseudointellectual dumbass. He's not what Redditors think they are, he's what they are.
Cringe take. Yes forming a conquering militia State takes a great deal of intelligence. He is also well versed in medicine, persuasion, and military tactics even if he is novice with philosophy.
@@buffawolf62
4 INT
😏
@@buffawolf62 he isn't even a novice his philosophical out takes are so vanilla even a 2nd grader can understand them I know cuz I understood them when I was in 2nd grade playing through new Vegas
@@wawazaza1785 "not even a novice" you are just nitpicking now.
And this is why New Vegas>>>>Fallout 3
Caesar's legion is just as pissant as the tribes he conquered and as pissant as the NCR, the BoS, Mr. House, and the Enclave.
Yep,everything´s more gray not just "Brotherhood of Steel=Jesuschrist Enclave=The Devil" mentality from FO3
+Adrián Sandoval The Brotherhood were just as xenophobic in that game as they were in any other game.
+Adrián Sandoval And please tell how the Enclave were different than they were Fallout 2?
+MartianManHunter2258 They occasionally had personality. The guy on the radio was fun as was the legendary Sergeant Dornan.
Fallout 3 had one humanising moment. In Raven Rock there is a mess hall with a weird floor. The people eating in there kept dropping knives and forks through the grating. You can find shit tons of them if you go underneath. It's hilarious.
in fallout 4 their were never conversations with a character that were this long or interesting...
Fallout new Vegas was the last good fallout game
Yeah, because the game does a better job of engaging the player instead of making them listen to a talking head for fifty years.
get me a girl that would whisper "nationalist, imperial, totalitarian" to me
Clem?
@@lilben4184 😂
To be honest I feel like a combination of the two types of government is really what the wasteland needs. The NCR has more of the societal aspects that would make room for advancement and redevelopment of the wastes while the legion has a strong centralized uncorrected government with a disciplined army backing it
The legion is seen as to brutal and enslaving woman and girls seems anti productive also he even implies that the nomadic army isn't gonna work out long run
@@seanmcclintock773 That's exactly what Caesar is aiming for afterall, once he takes Vegas in his words his ROME he will transform the Legion into a genuine empire, give it some time and the NCR would be decimated and assimilated into the Legion changing both factions creating the synthesis needed for the wasteland.
@@greengarnish1711 By magic or whatever, right? Because extremely complicated sociopolitical interactions can be so easily boiled down to "Mashing two things together always produces something better, with the flaws of neither."
@@batrachian149 that's the idea, removing the worst aspects in both factions while keeping the good virtues will give birth to a new civilization, Caesars vision fulfilled.
@@batrachian149 Ignoring your Reddit-tier pretentiousness, the Legion integrates the positive aspects of the NCR (antithesis) if they win the conflict. It creates a standing capital that serves as a permanent base of operations and decisionmaking body (NCR’s positive qualities). This is the synthesis that Caesar explains. But the bad qualities of NCR (bribes in the Senate, influence of barons, excessive bureaucracy) are removed from Caesar’s government.
Has any body ever noticed that Ceaser looks like a spaghetti western roman.
So roman italian
I planned to fight for the NCR, but he actually conviced me to join the Legion.
It can actually be argued that the Legion is the best option for the wasteland, which makes them superb villains. It's literally all a giant process of "the ends justifies the means." Caesar has no intention to continue butchering incessantly. Considering the horrid situation humanity is in, and the harsh requirements for it to make a full recovering without repeating the mistakes of the past, a Legion victory may in fact bring about a brighter future for humanity in the very long run than any of the other options. It really boils down to your perception of morality and whether a brutal autocracy is worth future peace, and if you believe the Legion in capable of seeing its purpose through to the end.
There is a glaring problem in the fact that when Caesar dies his ideal path for the Legion may be lost with him, but that aside it's essentially a question of "do you want to kill 1,000 people now to save 10,000 people later?"
Good point.
Drachenjager what the hell is the key to building a lasting nation!! That seems to be the hardest question. How do you as a leader make sure things go in the right direction after you are gone? How do you make sure the sacrifices you all made are not in vain and the goal is met?
You can always fake Mr. House's death, have him lay low and pretend to be dead, then instill him as the new Caesar once Edward Sallow dies. Someone who can shoot down nukes and revive the high-tech sectors deserves to be Emperor.
Fascism has done that to under mussolini
It is actually speculated that caeser wants you as the new emperor/ quenn after he dies. Since he tries to teach you his ideals. Doesnt get you killed even if you kill vulpes ect.
3. People who hate the Legion always seem to turn to this piece of dialogue from Marcus like it's the fucking Fallout Bible. Once again, if Caesar is alive and the Legion win, he has plenty of time to groom a successor. Even Lanius, fucking Lanius, shows some indication of serving the Legion outside of Caesar, as he is unwilling to sacrifice so many Legionaries to take the Dam - losses Caesar didn't care about.
4. The Legion was founded on books of strategy.
5. Ad hominem, because you lost.
If Caeser is alive. If's are fickle things. He could die at any time. He leave leave no heirs, or to many heirs, and once he is dead his opinion means jack shit.
To hold the West the Legion must give up the East, and their refusal of technology is dooming them. What happens if a new age plague runs through their camps? How do they defend against Power Armour and Gatling Lasers, against Rocket Launcheds and Fat Men? What happens if someone arms their slaves and they face a rebellion, what happens if the Praetorian grow loyal to money as they did in Rome?
Caeser has a brain tumour. Him being alive to finish the job of transitioning the legion from a nomadic group of rapists and slavers to some kind of standing army collecting taxes is a big damn if.
The problem with the Legion's ideology, is simple, once Caesar and Lanius are gone, the Legion will disintegrate due to infighting over who will lead the Legion
***** But another key problem is that Lanius is not loyal to the Legion, just Caesar
Other big problem are that the Legion army is unequipped for defending territories, as well as the fact that if you take out the Legion's chain of command, the Legionnaires will have no idea what to do in a combat situation, NCR 1st Recon exploited that during the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam
***** The thing is that the NCR or Mr. House's Securitron army are nothing like the tribals the Legion conquered before
RAZORBLADEDALEJRBUCSFAN88 Look at rome for your answer. Their was a lot of civil war but it still managed to thrive for 250 years (or more if you count he Byzantines)
William Miller True, but Rome collapsed eventually and it will happen to the Legion. Rome's problem was not only cultural bigotry, but the fact that Rome just got too big to be sustainable, and it fell. Remember that history has a way of repeating itself
Caesar’s biggest weakness was assuming everyone else was dumber than he was
Isn't this a weakness of basically all leaders though?
@@ilnur9973 Only the bad ones
dumber than he was? Except for misogyn and extreme punishment he was the smartest them of all dumbasss shut fuck up :D
How is that any different from everyone else?
@@kronkrian100arguably it isn’t, that may well be the point.
You know what Caesar actually makes good points, maybe if the legion wins it would absorb more civil characteristics from the NCR and actually create a proper "synthesis" of a nation instead of just a brutal dictatorship. Hell even the history of the USA is full of the thesis and the antithesis and the creation of a synthesis in the end. The thesis and the antithesis of course being a totalitarian rule of a monarchy and a state of complete anarchy where people are free. Both have flaws but the synthesis creates something new and powerful like the USA. I am really glad I watched this video, hats off to the guys who created the fallout series and put so much interesting details into it which even through fiction makes an interesting observation of the human condition.
***** That is not a guarantee. All human created systems of government have the inherent flaw of being corruptible no matter how "pure" the system. In this hypothetical case Caesar could either go mad with power and never actually allow the promised synthesis to happen OR he just dies and his ignorant followers are never able to achieve his vision which he meant to establish through raw military power. Human systems of government are a fickle thing indeed. The last time someone ACTUALLY won power through raw military strength AND for whatever reason gave up his power to allow the people to govern themselves was probably George Washington. One of the reasons I have mad respect for the American Founding Fathers.
***** Now thats essentially what ALL historic great leaders had in mind. Quick example: Alexander the Great OR Akbar the Great (of the Mughals).
***** Creating a powerful empire that would last through the ages and actually thinking that their descendants would be the same caliber as them to maintain what they had left behind. Recipe for disaster I say. Even a legitimate son born to these leaders for the purpose of inheriting the kingdom they leave behind might prove to be a ignorant weakling and nothing like their father.
DavidAkhter thanks
"You know what Caesar actually makes good points"
"Makes good points"
That's how you make a good villain. Writing 101.
"There's a lot of good information in old books." Epic.
Anyone else get the feeling of Darth Vader and the Emperor when he describes Lanius and his relation to the legion
Jarred Hope yeah
This comment section is Caesars Hegelian Dialectics playing out in all its glory, but without any synthesis.
How to say a lot without saying anything at the same time
I love the way he describes ancient Rome!
Wtf I love Legion now
Its ironic that Caeser uses an auto-doc to suppress his cancer but his legions are not allowed to use advanced techs like plasma guns and power armour.
Interesting how he was also trying to work out an arms deal between the Van Graffs, who deal exclusively in laser and plasma weaponry.
There not luddites they use technology they have guns there just told not to rely on it it's why they ALWAYS have melee weapons on hand if the weapon jams or runs out of ammo
They're hypocrites, literraly used a boxing glove thats build to shoot shotgun bullets
@@maleexile9053 that's the band aid response the idea of society is to grow not regress. If your society shuns technological advances are you sure you're going to grow more or less?
I'll forever be pissed that Obsidian was forced to rush this game
Ironic, that he was given free education and training as a result of the same ideologies he then sought to wipe out. He wouldn't have even understood what those ideologies were otherwise, and I doubt there will be many 2-year-old fatherless refugee children learning to read and write for free in Caesar's legion.
goddamn....it's frighteningly true....
It's because he thinks he could do better.
He does not want to wipe It, he wants the ncr to be their ultimate enemy, and in the end of the conflict, he wants the legion to absorb all the good of both ncr and legion, to create a better society
Your taking the legion as if it will never change, it’s called a legion for a reason and Caesar knows that well. it’s a military organization, with its *Rome* also known as new Vegas, the legion is a tool to reunite the wastes that will be put aside or reforged into a real civilization when Caesar finds it fitting to do so
No wonder he developed a tumor
it's really strange that he makes the controversial stories out of Lanius, that his face is just clean as contradicting to his explanation. what's more, Lanius isn't really that crazy maniac as he describes. whether you sided with Caesar's Legion or other factions, you can see this guy is being more like Fallout Darth Vader than bloodlusted barbarian(not trying to take all the glory by himself unlike the most of real history, or just withdrawing guards and duel with you if speech check was succeeded. although he would run away when he's almost dying but who wouldn't.).
It's pretty much fear mongering for his enemies and allies. It doesn't matter who Lanius is really, Lanius is just a symbol of the Legion and someone, knowing these stories you would not want to take a step back lest he stab it.
His criticisms of the NCR makes a lot of sense. The NCR has had what, two presidents that were related that together ruled for three quarters of a century? That's ridiculous.
Based
Yet even his own wording implied the people wished for it to occur, so they were continuously voted in
I know that this man is (in most eyes) the antagonist of the game, but man, his thoughts are brilliant. He's a goddamn charming genius.
AdorableShadow
I am not charmed. He seems like a clueless jackass that read a bunch of books and sounds oh so smart now. Not to mention that existence of Legion is quite implausible, throwing spears in the gun age, yeah right.
The last great game before the fall of Fallout. When all the choices mattered, and even the bad guys had good characterization.
When the "bad guy" makes a whole lot of sense
This is good writing for you. He doesn't neccesarily needs to be right, but he is convincing.
In an illiterate society, the one who can read has the power.
In a society where everyone can read, the one who reads history will have power.
Now if only understanding it was mentioned at all
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat because understanding the lessons history teaches, manifestly, has little impact on whether you will have power or not.
I will do something like this when the civil war starts
BASED
“I showed them total warfare. Like I said, there’s a lot you can learn from old books” NOW THATS GOOD WRITING, BETHESDA. TAKE NOTES
Pfft, yeah, ok.
@@optimaltt6070 He's right tho.
Man never heard of imperial Japan I guess, could’ve learned plenty of “do nots”
Can there even seriously ever be a game with such good writing again?
Fet Gucked
Yes, but it will probably sell poorly
True to Caesar
I wish they would make a fallout in which the legion won and synthesized with the NCR. That would be so interesting
^ this
Now imagine if he reads Mein Kampf
The biggest mistake of Ceasar's policy that he forgot to read a book about Biggus Dickus
Getting deputy commissioner Rawls to play Caesar was just... chef's kiss.
I wish there was more quests for the Legion.
When you get a call from the based department, this is the guy you’re talking to.
Ive heard "dross" used twice in my life. Both were in Fallout: New Vegas
1:18 That's my favorite line in ALL of Fallout, next to Mr. House's "This is important, attack this!"
This man has everything figured out,his plans make sense and his reasons are sound...it scares me that he can make an ideology as foul as the legion’s sound so...appealing.
Based Caesar
me: I promise not to get political
me after 4 drinks: 5:49
Based
i love that Caesar has no tragic backstory; he was too young to even REMEMBER his father being killed. He grew up with probably the absolute best group he could have in wasteland, had education, food, medicine. His life was as good as it could be.
and then, one day, for no reason whatsoever, he just snapped.
I think the implication is that the followers failed to impart their own philosophy onto caesar in any meaningful way. They wanted Caesar to learn the languages of a bunch of cultures he considered backward savages, he only ever saw it as a waste of time which is why he saw fit to eradicate the identities of every tribe the legion conquered.
See, this is how you make good villain.
I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely interested in a video game conversation before this.
Ave, true to Caesar
Caesar's legion is brutal and unforgiving, but it is exactly what a post-nuclear nightmare would require. When the entire world has been smashed into millions of shards, a heavy-handed approach is necessary to reunify those shards into a single unit once more. It is the only means to at least increase the chance of the species' continuation. Ethics and morality died with the old world, and though they may return, they may only return when some semblance of society is reestablished.
@JamesHLanier the NCR's old world ideas have already failed the wasteland needs absolute control
@JamesHLanier yeah right the wasteland is such a hell scorched cesspool it needs strong leadership in order for its denizens to live decent lives
@JamesHLanier we have a profligate
@@deffientllynotjalenbutler1736 well, you can side with Mr.House, he seems to understand the importance of both diplomacy and strong leadership.
Muzzly1234
Slavery is fine, but crucifiction is not, extremely dishonorable and repulsive. And I am saying it is as someone quite bloodthirsty and violent. I count covid victims each day and every death makes me happier and happier!
Based
He must have done a lot of very selective reading...
Thats one of Caesers downfalls. He is an intelligent learned man. Thus, he assumes he knows all there is. He's clearly learnt of the Romans, but how much does he know really? What knowledge was lost to time? What knowledge of somewhere, but out of his grasp?
He knows of Rome. But he doesn't seem to know their downfall, that they got to greedy, and soon enough the Emperor was whoever could bribe the Praetorian.
He knows of Pre War America, but he misunderstands their downfall, blaming technology.
Most people do. They read the parts that interest them, the parts that agree with them, and the parts that help them understand enough about their enemies to undermine them. Education is sort of a self-licking ice cream cone that way.
@@andrewparker1622 Rome lasted a very long time. the western roman empire managed to stay in tact for thousands of years. The Roman Empire lasted over a thousand years and represented a sophisticated and adaptive civilization. Some historians maintain that it was the split into an eastern and western empire governed by separate emperors caused Rome to fall. Christianity and constantine played a huge role in the fall of rome. the eastern empire was vastly different from the western side. Western rome lasted until it was conquered by the turks hundreds of years after the fall of the east. The u.s had only been around for 300 years so you cant immediately assume the ncr would last longer than the legion. the ncr already has widespread corruption and problems with rampant crime and raiding. There is no crime in the legion. And when there is thats when the crosses come up
@@joeytoofly5139 Oh but there is crime. You just don't see it. Rome lasted a long time true. Caeser isn't Rome. He had bits and pieces of its history but never knows the full story. He doesn't know why Rome fell why it rose and what challenges it faced.
@@andrewparker1622 rome fell due to the same corruption that the ncr is going to fall too. The legion has like 1000 or so years of stability before anything catastrophic happens by that point the human race would be safe
Fallout is my favorite game. The story telling is unbelievably brilliant and the fact it teaches you about the past and how it WILL affect the future.
Conversations with ceaser alone makes doing legion quests worthwhile. I don't think I've found a game that presents philosophy and history and make it so interesting.
It's a shame what happened to the modern dialogue system in fallout 4, because now we can no longer gain access to knowledge and backstories of interesting characters.
3:52 The real Rome did the exact opposite with the tribes and states it defeated. Historical Rome allowed its subjects to keep their traditions, identities and governments in exchange for taxes and military manpower. This gave Rome a network of allies and a vast pool of manpower, allowing Rome to survive horrific defeats like Cannae.
The real Rome also had a habit of breaking apart everytime the guy in charge died.
When you ask the main villain in New Vegas why he does what he does he gives you an almost 15 minute lecture on Hagelian Dialectic, criticisms of democracies and republics.
When you ask the main villain of Fallout 4 why he does what he does he tells you it's too complicated to explain.
Why do people keep saying that? The Institute explains why it does what it does, just not in one big monolog.
@@ShadowSonic2 i never played fallout 4 so then why they turn people into synths
@@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012 The original plot was that the Institute were trying to create a new type of being that they could transfer their minds into so they could become immortals. That's why Synths exist at all, but so far no Synth generation was advanced enough for their purposes.
The reason they kidnap random people is for their continued experiments and to see if they can perfect the memory transfer process so no one could tell the difference anymore.
@@ShadowSonic2 well that explains it, thanks
@@ShadowSonic2 thanks!
True To Caesar
Why Institute kill people?
"You wouldn't understand"
Caesar has a certificate in War & Peace Studies
9:07 The US right now....
Emperor Rawls would "cleanse" McNulty.
Veronica: "They mount each other as much as they mount their women."
How does Caesar only have [Intelligence] 4?
It could be related to his age, he's fifty five, and he has a brain tumor.
I'm not sure how it would change his stats, but it would definitely hinder his ability.
Kyle Broflovski yeah definitely
Because stats don’t effect canon (Lanius has 10 in all stats)
Slaire Awesome Legate lanius doesn’t have 10 spec the only people who have 10 spec are Frank horrigan, Ulysses, Colonel royez, and gaius magnus
He has a brain tumor.
It's dialogue and stories like these that makes this Fallout game the best one.
my gf friend is making me listen to this and im regretting all life decisions
I wish I had a fasci GF
@@maleexile9053 it must be hard to find someone to rival your idiocy while ALSO coping with your persona.
thank you so much Obsidian for this amazing gem I love this game so much its a work of art I am so thankful to have played this in my formative years.
God damn is the writing in fallout NV amazing. Fallout 2 is my favourite fallout game from a world building and gameplay perspective (the mental image of cruising around the wasteland in a beater sports car with a super mutant and a death claw never get old), but holy God does fallout NV have some truly incredible writing