Fallout: New Vegas lead writer John Gonzalez worries he did too good a job writing the fascist Caesar’s Legion.
Part of what made Fallout: New Vegas so appealing – and ultimately the best Fallout game – was the sheer number of factions and powers vying for your messenger’s attention, and as a result, you can have a ton of different variations on the game’s ending depending on who you sided with throughout the story. And while many of these options present a ton of shades of gray when it comes to morality, it’s pretty clear that Caesar’s Legion – a group of slave-holding authoritarians with whom your first interaction takes place in the aftermath of a massacre they carried out in the town of Nipton – are supposedly evil.
However, speaking to PC Gamer, Gonzalez says: “If you want to write a story where one of your main themes is actually freedom, like freedom from tyranny, you can’t just make your tyrants cardboard villains. You have to make them as substantial as possible in some way. That was really the driving force behind Caesar, but every now and then I wonder if it wasn’t done a little too well.”
When you finally meet Caesar himself, who seems like an idiot cosplaying the aesthetic of the Roman Empire instead of the intimidating brute you might expect from his actions, you have the opportunity to discuss his philosophy with the player. González says:[I had] writing a character who attempted to make a strong argument for authoritarianism.
“One of the things about writing fiction, if you’re trying to write it in a way that isn’t a sermon to a choir, or that isn’t propaganda,” Gonzalez continues, “is that you have to try to make your opponents as strong as possible.” And while you don’t really see many New Vegas fans proudly identifying with Legion, it certainly has its fans, which might prove Gonzalez’s point.
Bethesda was afraid to create Fallout 3, but by Fallout 4, it had calmed down: “we don’t have to be so respectful anymore.”
