A pretty excellent DLC mostly carried by Joshua Graham being one of the most interesting characters in the series.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of the tribal politics this spends its time exploring. My knee-jerk reaction was a bit of suspicion, as it really seems to lean into the idea of noble savagery, where the tribes are good and innocent, only pushed to violence when they get caught up in the conflicts of "civilized" empires. They seem to have little agency, and even with the player's intervention there (as far as I know) isn't a way to defer to what they want to do. It's "which New Canaanite do you think is right?" With the companions asking naive questions about the Mojave, it really does seem like the game's pushing childlike innocence upon these groups, falling into line with a lot of the American mythmaking that came in the era of the "vanishing Indian".
However, because this is New Vegas I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, as I can hardly think of a game more solidly and thoughtfully anti-imperialist. My guess is that they really wanted to address the far-reaching effects of imperial squabbling and how it manages to influence and destabilize communities entirely disconnected from the core conflict. That stuff is all great, and every mention of the Legion in this expansion had me glued to the dialogue. The thing is, with this being an intimate first person game that places you with these tribes and emphasizes player choice, it makes an easy mistake. You're with these people, but never get the sense they see the full picture or get to make choices for themselves. These people are being jerked around in the wake of a struggle between much stronger empires and are ultimately at their mercy, but that doesn't mean the final say in their struggle had to come from a courier who stumbled in on a caravan one day.
I sided with Graham in the end, as relocating an entire people as an outsider didn't sit right with me. Without much to work with, I figured standing their ground would be a truer response to what they'd actually want. I got Graham to calm down at the very end not because I thought the leader deserved to live (they were trying to join literal fascists, after all), but because I was afraid of him acting as a military leader beyond what was necessary to end this conflict. I worried that he'd fly off the handle and hurt more people.
Played through Proton on Linux. I'm going to start putting this message on things unless/until an option is added to Backloggd.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of the tribal politics this spends its time exploring. My knee-jerk reaction was a bit of suspicion, as it really seems to lean into the idea of noble savagery, where the tribes are good and innocent, only pushed to violence when they get caught up in the conflicts of "civilized" empires. They seem to have little agency, and even with the player's intervention there (as far as I know) isn't a way to defer to what they want to do. It's "which New Canaanite do you think is right?" With the companions asking naive questions about the Mojave, it really does seem like the game's pushing childlike innocence upon these groups, falling into line with a lot of the American mythmaking that came in the era of the "vanishing Indian".
However, because this is New Vegas I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, as I can hardly think of a game more solidly and thoughtfully anti-imperialist. My guess is that they really wanted to address the far-reaching effects of imperial squabbling and how it manages to influence and destabilize communities entirely disconnected from the core conflict. That stuff is all great, and every mention of the Legion in this expansion had me glued to the dialogue. The thing is, with this being an intimate first person game that places you with these tribes and emphasizes player choice, it makes an easy mistake. You're with these people, but never get the sense they see the full picture or get to make choices for themselves. These people are being jerked around in the wake of a struggle between much stronger empires and are ultimately at their mercy, but that doesn't mean the final say in their struggle had to come from a courier who stumbled in on a caravan one day.
I sided with Graham in the end, as relocating an entire people as an outsider didn't sit right with me. Without much to work with, I figured standing their ground would be a truer response to what they'd actually want. I got Graham to calm down at the very end not because I thought the leader deserved to live (they were trying to join literal fascists, after all), but because I was afraid of him acting as a military leader beyond what was necessary to end this conflict. I worried that he'd fly off the handle and hurt more people.
Played through Proton on Linux. I'm going to start putting this message on things unless/until an option is added to Backloggd.