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Oct. 31st, 2019 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feotakahariThe closest thing to a villain faction in Fallout: New Vegas is called Caesar’s Legion. In brief, they’re what happens when you stop trying to prevent all of the horrible things people do to each other, and start regulating and legitimizing them instead. We can’t stop people from robbing and killing each other, so let’s build our economy around robbing outsiders and prevent all robbery of citizens. We can’t prevent bigotry, so let’s make it into multiple legal and cultural institutions based in racism, sexism, and homophobia. We can’t prevent class divisions, so let’s bring back slavery. Every citizen rules over the people below them while taking abuse from the people above them, and in this way, the Legion has developed into a society where lawbreaking is at almost unheard-of lows. It’s just that they constantly do things that would be illegal in a society that wasn’t so horrifically evil.
Within the game itself, the question around the Legion is “how long can they keep this up?” By stealing from other societies instead of building up their own tech base, they’ve locked themselves into an inherently unstable economy that will fall apart when they run out of weak enemies to loot from. Coupled with their leader’s poor health and the emphasis on his cult of personality to keep the masses pacified, there’s a high chance of civil war once he finally dies.
To me, the more interesting question is “Is survival actually worth this?” If there’s ever been an argument for anti-natalism, it’s the idea of being born into the Legion. And for that matter, if your only way to keep living is to surrender to the Legion’s invasion, might it be preferable to stop living entirely?
Within the game itself, the question around the Legion is “how long can they keep this up?” By stealing from other societies instead of building up their own tech base, they’ve locked themselves into an inherently unstable economy that will fall apart when they run out of weak enemies to loot from. Coupled with their leader’s poor health and the emphasis on his cult of personality to keep the masses pacified, there’s a high chance of civil war once he finally dies.
To me, the more interesting question is “Is survival actually worth this?” If there’s ever been an argument for anti-natalism, it’s the idea of being born into the Legion. And for that matter, if your only way to keep living is to surrender to the Legion’s invasion, might it be preferable to stop living entirely?
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Date: 2019-11-01 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-01 06:58 am (UTC)