Fallout: New Vegas

Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas is my favorite game of all time. After playing through it a few times I think the reason I love it so much is that has a pretty sophisticated philosophical underpinning and some pretty neat historical parallels for a post-apocalyptic revenge game.

The plot revolves around you, the nameless Courier, hunting down the man who shot you in the head and stole the platinum chip you were hired to deliver. As you make your way through a post-apocalyptic Mojave desert, you find out what the chip does and how it fits into the machinations of the three main factions fighting for control of the Hoover Dam, and consequently, the Mojave desert as a whole: Caesar's Legion, the New California Republic, and the enigmatic ruler of New Vegas, Mr. House.

What really draws me to this game is just how deep the game draws from Roman history and its various political eras. The most obvious is Caesar's Legion, who use football gear and red shirts to do the best they can to mimic the Legionnaire image of yore. They're led by a man named Edward Sallow who calls himself Caesar and who claims to have structured the marauding army and its principles after the ancient Republic/Empire after he found a history book detailing the accomplishments of the society. The only problem is that the Legion resembles exactly none of the aspects of the Rome it claims to.

See, the Legion isn't really a state, or a government. They have no civil or legislative power structure to speak of, their hierarchy is strictly military. Why this clashes is that even in the death throes of the Roman republic, a.k.a when real-life Caesar was in his prime, the whole point of getting to the top of the Roman power structure was to be Consul, or, the chief executive of the state. Commanding your own legions was prestigious, no doubt, but command over a military unit was still just the means to the commanding the civil state. 

There's also the issue of how the Legion treats the people they conquered. The republic, and even the Empire for most of its run, sought to incorporate and integrate the people they conquered into the Roman system. They took a massive amount of slaves (the only legacy the Legion faithfully continues), but for anyone left behind the deal usually was they could keep their own customs and traditions as long as they didn't interfere with or cause any trouble for their new overlords. 

The Legion, by contrast, annihilates the culture and tradition of every tribe they conquer. Any tribe "incorporated" into the Legion is purged of its adult fighting men, the women are forced into sex slavery while the children are put into chattel service or brainwashed into becoming new Legionnaires.

At its heart, the old Roman system that the New Vegas Caesar claims to be so inspired by is a system designed to direct every aspect of society towards optimizing itself to function under a civil, republican state. The Roman Republic is specifically designed to push ambitious Romans into serving the wider goals of the state with an extreme deference to tradition through complex networks of patronage while the Cursus Honorum provided a clear, if cut throat, proscribed path to climb the civic ladder into greater positions of of power. The Legion being a strictly military operation with no civil state to speak of with a general acting as a permanent dictator sort of makes them antithetical to the legacy they claim to carry on.  But, it does line them up pretty well with a later imperial dynasty, the Severans.

The Severan dynasty was started by a man named Septimius Severus. Proclaimed Emperor by his legions after the death of Commodus in 193, Severus fully established himself as Emperor in 197 after, for Rome, a light period of civil warring. The man Sallow has the strongest analogue to though is Septimius' son, Caracalla.  

Caracalla, born Lucuis Septimius Bassianus, was Severus' eldest son, and when his father died control of the empire was split between Caracalla and his younger brother, Geta. Septimius' parting advice to his sons was "be harmonious, enrich the army, scorn all other men." Given that Septimius died in February of 211 with Geta following him in December of that year, you can see which parts of that motto Caracalla was more interested in following. To be fair, the parts of his father's creed Caracalla was committed to he carried out in spectacular fashion, killing up to 20,000 people who had supported his brother after Caracalla assassinated him, he let his soldiers plunder and murder the city of Alexandria to their hearts content after the city staged a play mocking Caracalla's story that he killed Geta in self-defense. Caracalla spent most of his short reign campaigning against barbarian tribes in Germany and gave the army such a significant raise he debased the currency with the all the money he was creating to pay them.

Sallow, likewise, pays no heed to anyone or anything that isn't directly related to his army, and is constantly keeping them on the move conquering and plundering so they don't get antsy and revolt against him. And since Sallow wants to bring as much of the world as he can under the yoke of his slaving and raping army, I think it's fair to say that he can also inherit Edward Gibbon's characterization of Caracalla as the common enemy of mankind on top of everything else.

Ironically enough, if you want to see a truer representation of the Roman Republic, you just need to look over to the Legion's archenemy, the New California Republic. The NCR is actually a better analogue to Rome in pretty much every way; it started out as a small, independent city-state that grew, through military prowess and diplomacy, to become the dominant power of its state. It is also endlessly expansionist as the late Republic became, and unlike the Legion, works to fully incorporate the territories it conquers into its wider political system. (Before I go further, it should be noted that the creators of the games based the NCR on the early version of America in the games.  Since the U.S. follows a similar pattern to the republic as well, the transfer isn't much of a fuss.)

But the NCR is very much the end stage Roman Republic, so while they have a very high value on political enfranchisement and democracy, the actual voting process is driven and manipulated by small, powerful interests groups, most noticeably the brahmin (basically cattle) ranchers, and the various trade companies looking to establish monopolies on trading routes new and old. While the NCR does for the most part let their new territories do as they did before, most of those territories are acquired by force because they have something the NCR finds desirable or they are simply "along the way" to a goal of the NCR, like control of the Hoover Dam or New Vegas. There's also the problem that their expansion is drawing in abundant resources that filter primarily to the elite factions I mentioned earlier, making the system more reliant on the spoils of conquest to function and funneling the wealth and power from said conquests into narrower segments of society.

This, in a greatly overstuffed nutshell, is exactly what happened to the Roman Republic after it started its era of major expansion after they defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War. As they were able to bring more and more of the Mediterranean world under their control, they brought in raw materials (gold, silver, timber, and slaves) and all the material wealth of the people they conquered back to Rome.  The problem was that since only men of Senatorial (already the richest men in the country, by default) could command legions, all that wealth went straight into the very top of the Roman world.

Since Rome didn't have a professional army at this time, all their soldiers were citizen farmers (you had to own land to be eligible to serve), but since the campaigns were lasting for years at a time, these soldiers farms went fallow while they were off fighting Rome's "enemies." Their families, in order to not starve, would often be forced to sell their land to richer Senatorial citizens, who then incorporated those farms into ever increasing estates. When all the wars were over and the soldiers came home, they found they had no home to return to, and instead of being able to work what used to be their farms under the auspice of the new landlord, they found their land being worked by the hordes of slaves the brought back from the places they conquered.

Naturally, this created something of a problem among the Roman citizenry. Tiberius Gracchus and then his younger brother Gaius would be the first to try to reform the Roman system and try to make sure the spoils of Rome's wars trickled down to the people who fought them, but they were both murdered on behalf of the Senate, and the question of who should have what and how much power in Rome would eventually lead to more people like the Gracchi's coming to power who were also murdered by the Senate, to civil wars, to finally a point where Octavian could kill the last vestiges of the Republic dead and start the Empire we all know and love.

The NCR stands right on the precipice of that whole, sad story. The expansion has made them more reliant on the success of the military to maintain the government's legitimacy, they need the resources that would come from controlling Hoover Dam and the money generated from New Vegas to recoup the expenses of winning the war, and since they are becoming more militaristic, the focus of governmental power shifts away from the amorphous blob of the legislature to the more dynamic, singular personalities of the executive. If the NCR wins, they'll have no other rival to focus on, and all their political and military machinations, like Rome's, will turn inward, until there's so much chaos that the people will be happy to forget their republican roots just to have one, singular personality in charge of everything if for no other reason than that one person will be able to restore some semblance of order to their lives.

Which brings us to Mr. Robert House, billionaire, ruler of New Vegas, and robot-builder extraordinaire. House is actually one of the characters I'm most impressed by in the game since it would've been easy to make him the obviously evil overlord looking to crush everyone under his heel for his own gain. House survived the nuclear apocalypse that made the Fallout world into what it is and has spent the 250 years or so since the bombs fell trying to reestablish his Vegas as the Old World getaway it once was. He is unabashedly in favor of autocracy, doesn't think of anyone outside of how he can use them to advance his own agenda, and casually disposes of anyone who becomes a hindrance or useless to him. Instead, he's an interesting exploration of a Benevolent Despot and, in our Roman analogues, fits best with Octavian and a lesser known emperor named Diocletian. Octavian, of course, was the first proper emperor of the newly established Roman Empire.

Just a side note here, I'm not using the name Augustus as is convention because I think it's important to remember that while Octavian took on a seemingly more noble and softer approach to his rule than his wild and ambitious younger days which saw him killing off literally every enemy he could think of in the proscriptions or his sacrilegious break in to the vaults of the Temple of Vesta to read Marc Antony's will so he could expose Antony's even bigger crime of disinheriting his Roman children for the ones he had with Cleopatra. The softer, subtler, more mature strategy Octavian used in his later years is based off the same ruthless philosophy he used from the very beginning; adopting the name Augustus was very much a strategy to make people forget the bloodletting of his youth, that he had left all that thinking behind, but it's important to understanding the man himself and his place in Roman history to take whatever steps are necessary to not let that strategy work. Hence, Octavian.

Anyway, Octavian learned from his adoptive father Julius Caesar that going around openly acting like a king while your enemies are very much alive and well is a good way to get yourself murdered and not much else. So, to solve that problem, he made the previously mentioned to-do list of everyone he wanted dead, and then went about acting like the Republic was thriving and he was in no way, at all, a king or an emperor.

After Octavian beat Antony in the last civil war of the Republic, Octavian went about propping up the old Republican order in public as much as he possibly could. He had the Senate "award" him powers and privileges that by sheer coincidence made him the head of the army, the civil government, and the religious order. This wasn't so hard to do, since most of the people on Octavian's old kill list were prominent Senators, so all the ones still breathing were doing so because they either didn't possess the capability to pose a threat to Octavian's power or were very dedicated to appeasing him. The second prong of Octavian's strategy was still holding Consular elections and elections all down the line to maintain the illusion of the old Republic; he portrayed himself as nothing more than just the first citizen among equals, or Princep. It was a beautifully orchestrated and executed lie; plus the Romans loved him for ending the constant civil wars and bloodshed that came with them. As a result, all the honors that placed every aspect of Roman life under his direct control where seen not as a tyrannical seizure of power but rather as rewards justly and honorably earned by Rome's most prestigious citizen.
 

 Where Octavian sought to hide his autocracy, Diocletian openly celebrated it so he could use that power to completely remake the Roman world. Diocletian coming to power ended what is now known as the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of fifty years where, after the end of the Severan dynasty, Rome was plagued by famines, invasions, and even split up into three separate entities at one point. Diocletian came to power in 284 A.D. and went about crushing every problem the Empire faced at the time. He beat back the various Germanic tribes attacking the Empire from across the Rhine and Danube, he defeated Sassinad Persia to the East them negotiated a peace treaty with them, he established what became known as the Tetrarchy, where he and co-Emperor Maximian, along with two junior emperors, split the Empire into four areas each was responsible for. He changed the borders of the Empire's various districts and how the army was garrisoned in them so they could better respond to threats (this also made them smaller so no ambitious general could have enough military power to proclaim themselves emperor, which happened a lot in the 3rd century). Put simply, Diocletian is the number one reason the Empire survived long enough to collapse a hundred years later.

Like I said earlier, House is a mix-and-match of the two emperors, and takes what I think are the best aspects of each. From Diocletian he takes the sheer will and capability of taking a shattered and broken patch of the world and rebuilding it brick-by-brick into something vibrant again while his ruthless pursuit of his goal using all avenues available is pure Octavian. 

House's main goal requires that the world be functional enough that the people in it have enough the income to make New Vegas rich and have enough protected infrastructure to get them there safely to deposit said income. It makes no sense to him to wage a war against the people who he wants as customers, so he entices them instead, with all the glamour and allure that Vegas can provide.  But he is adamant that Vegas is his, and anyone wanting to business with it or in it is going to do so on his non-negotiable terms. In his ending, he uses his robot army to kick the NCR out of New Vegas and its surrounding areas. Well, the military branch of the NCR, anyway, the civilian population is welcome if not encouraged to make their way to New Vegas whenever they see fit. House also does away with the two main flaws of his inspirations; he doesn't have any desire to enact any morality laws like Octavian did and he pointedly refuses the divine aspects of power that Diocletian brought into the Imperial fold with its accompanying religious persecutions.

Underpinning all the historical notes is the theme that mindlessly clinging to old ideas will doom us to the ennui and destruction their adherents want to save themselves from. In the DLC Dead Money, the phrase "Let Go, and Begin Again" is hammered home at every possible moment just in case you don't pick up on the fact that it's the theme of the entire game.

Seriously, if you want to find the best solution to almost every single moral conundrum in the game, figuring out to best apply the phrase "Let Go, and Begin Again" is gonna be the way to go.  The game is rife with examples of how when people don't do this it ruins every aspect of their lives and the people around them. We've already gone over how the Legion using the edifice of Rome but without any of Rome's actual governing philosophy makes them less an agent of governance and more a force of tyrannical brutality. But the poster child for obstinate, damn-the-consequences adherence goes to the Brotherhood of Steel.

For non-players, the Brotherhood is a paramilitary organization that follows a rigid Codex whose primary purpose is hunting down and collecting technology - specifically weapons technology - so that people in the wider world can't use it. They do this because they believe that the unfettered pursuit and use of technology is directly responsible for the destruction of the Old World and humanity can't be trusted with that level of technology ever again. Like pretty much every faction in Fallout, they have a point, but pursue it too far. By the time of New Vegas, the organization is going through a rough time. They're quarantined in an underground bunker that only a select few can leave. The actual strength of the chapter is dwindling; they lost most of their forces in a disastrous pre-game battle under their old leader and they don't have enough people left to replenish their numbers. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that the Codex also forbids them from admitting people into the organization who weren't already born into it.

One of your companions, Veronica, is a member of the Brotherhood and her personal quest is about you trying to convince the new Elder that they need to modify how they do things or else their entire way of life will literally die out. In the end, the Elder recognizes the necessity of adapting how they do things and the ultimate futility of strict adherence to the Codex, but he refuses. The only outcomes for Veronica is to willfully go into exile or stay and suffer in silence as everything she holds dear suffers a long, slow, pointless death.

This theme of being stuck in limbo between difficult choices isn't unique to Veronica. Almost every quest of the sentient members who can tag along for your journey through the wasteland involve putting something from their past behind them and moving on with their life. Whether it's helping Boone overcome the guilt from a lifetime of killing in the NCR, including having to kill his wife to save her from a fate of sexual slavery in the Legion or helping Cass wreck bloody vengeance on the people who destroyed her family's caravan business, to convincing Raul that it's still worth it to fight for things in the world even, especially, when you've lost something precious before, or getting Arcade to finally come to terms with his father's legacy in the Enclave by helping him put together his father's old team and realize that he can exist on his own terms.

The game does give you the chance to use the past as inspiration, as well. One of the factions you come into contact with is a tribe called the Great Khans, a Mongol-inspired outlaw tribe that's existed from the very first Fallout game. They're currently courted by the Legion to attack the NCR in the upcoming rematch for control of Hoover Dam. You can break the alliance by convincing the leader that the Legion won't treat them as equals if they win but will make them all chattel slaves instead. But even with that, it's still not enough. Papa Khan needs something, a path for his people to follow to stave off extinction. And you can give it to them, by finding a book detailing the history of the Mongols, which inspires the Khans to head to Wyoming and create a pretty respectable empire of their own by incorporating the forgotten social sciences back into their society.

While this theme is a through line in the vanilla game, the DLC's go out of their way to make it as explicit as possible. In Honest Hearts, you meet Joshua Graham, a former general in the Legion who was banished and burned alive after he failed to win the first battle of the Hoover Dam. Graham is a brutal and terrifying warrior, and again, to get the best ending available, you have to convince him to let go of all the anger that fuels his violence so he can have a sense of inner peace and tranquility to finally put his blood-lust and shame behind him. In Dead Money, you have to convince your three heist companions to put aside their own vendettas or literally all of you are going to die.  There's even a chance of you dying a humiliating death locked in a vault if you don't resist the temptation of greed that's driven everybody to the casino in the first place. Old World Blues has you convince a conclave of mad scientists to stop using their passion for Science! as an excuse to cut things up and put them back together for no reason and instead use their discoveries to positively shape the future of mankind.

But it's the last DLC, Lonesome Road, where the game uses this theme to best effect. In this DLC, you are drawn to a place called the Divide by another Courier named Ulysses (as in the general, not the Greek hero). As the story goes on, you find out that Ulysses used to be a member of the Legion as well, his role as a courier was a cover for him to be an advance scout and a spy. You also learn that his breaking point came when he helped a tribe called the White Legs wipe out the settlement of New Canaan, a refuge of Mormons who had rebuilt their culture after the bombs fell. The guilt he faces over wiping out a culture that survived for so long and against so much breaks something inside Ulysses, who, to put it lightly, is obsessed with symbols and their meanings

If you pick up all the audio diaries he left behind in the Divide, you can talk him down from his plan to use nuclear warheads to wipe out the NCR and the Legion simultaneously. Why I think this DLC uses the theme of letting go of the past so well is that Ulysses wraps himself up in the ideologies and symbols of worlds and places that are dead and gone and the conclusion he draws from this is that since symbols and the people who give them meaning all inevitably die, well, then it doesn't really matter if that end comes sooner rather than later. But by collecting his history and using it to tell him that he can and has grown out and adapted the beliefs he has out a variety of symbols and experiences. And by doing so, you get him to realize that while ideologies don't always survive intact, they don't really need to, they can be molded into something new and used in more ways than anybody knew they could be.

And that, at its core, is the point of the game. It's actually what makes it an optimistic game. The past shapes us and we're never really done with it, but we aren't beholden to it. We can move on, we can choose to be something other than what our pasts have made us into. It's painful and always more work than we thought, but it can be done. More importantly though, if you do everything right in the game, you can heal pretty much every wound you come across and make the world a better place than you found it.

Which, think about that.

The game is saying that no matter how broken, how terrible the world is, if you do the work, you can still fix yourself and the people around you. But you have to do the work to make that happen. You'll have to give up a lot, and do a lot of things for a lot of people that you will probably hate doing, but, in the end, it can still fix the world for the better.

Which, all in all, is a pretty comforting thought, right now.


Notes:

If you want to dive into the history of Rome a bit more, my suggestions are read The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan, Rubicon and Dynasty by Tom Holland, and check out Duncan's History of Rome podcast and Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic.