Obviously that is the only logical reason to come to...

Josh Sawyer responds to this thread: www.formspring.me/JESawyer

He indicated that the Legion is more patriarchal than out and out misogynistic-a fine line to be sure, but interesting nonetheless.

Wow, I never would have thought J.E. Sawyer would ever pay attention to anything I write or start a topic on. I'm kinda dissapointed he didn't expand on the Ashur vs. Caesar part.

I'm new to this forum, registered after seeing JE Sawyer get asked about this thread on formspring, so forgive me if this thread is the norm around here, but the question is whom do you think has better lore? Is it even possible for any videogame character or faction to have worse lore than a character or faction in Fallout 3? I'm one of the many, many people to commit the unforgivable act of playing Fallout 3 before any other Fallout game, so I know what it's like to think that Fallout 3 is actually a good Fallout game. Don't get me wrong, it was a decent game, just not a decent Fallout game. I know all too well how it feels to walk through a vault in Fallout 3 and think to myself how interesting the vault experiments are. To think how cool it is to see big groups of raiders that seemingly worked together to create big forts and hideouts. I know what it's like to explore the Capital Wasteland just dying to find that next settlement - that next group of unlikely survivors scrounging up a meager existence in the desert.To be wowed by how a pretty simple narrative about finding your dad can turn into a struggle to save, or destroy, thousands of lives. To see the Enclave, and their leader, and remark about how nobody does that, have a robot as their leader, in games. And then I played the first Fallout and Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas and read the Van Buren design documents, and let me tell you, after that, I felt sick to my stomach that I played Fallout 3 first.

Every single thing mentioned above; the raiders, the settlements, the Enclave, the finding your dad, they were all either done extremely poorly or ripped right out of Fallout 1 or 2 and then redone in a really Fallout 3, read: poorly, kind of way. Sure it's nice to explore and find little towns in the nooks and crannies of the wasteland, but does Girdershade really make sense? Is it explained how its two residents make a living or stay alive? Did Bethesda even make an effort to explain how Girdershade was founded or how its two homes have electricity? Those raider strongholds are fun to explore and one or two of them, most likely just the one that I'm thinking of right now though, have some backstory, but who are these raiders? Just some random lunatics that all banded together one day and started calling them selves "Raider"? Why did they bother making a fort out of cars? How did they move those cars in the first place? And most importantly, if they have the knowhow and the numbers to capture a Super mutant behemoth alive then why haven't they taken over the whole damn wasteland?! Or at least one of the major towns and worked from there. Really, one Super mutant behemoth can wipe out everyone in Megaton so so could those Raiders. And that narrative, wow. The first part, find your good ol', well meaning liar of a Pa, is the part that was done poorly. The part that was ripped off was the whole water thing... And the super mutant problem. And the Brotherhood's involvement with the previous two things. And the Enclave's involvement with everything. Could the meeting with Eden been any worse? What was that line the wanderer used? "You can't live, you're an abortion of science"? And the Emmy goes to... Bethesda for having the best writers of all time? He's a super computer with a master plan to capture the hearts and minds of the entire wasteland but he can't take a little criticism? Geez, to kill the Master without firing a bullet you at least needed some points in the speech skill. Eden just rolls over. And what about his master plan? Capture project purity and put the modified FEV into the water to kill the ghouls and the mutants? In the ending slide show, if you can even call that two minute cringe-fest that, it's said that the virus killed a whole lot of people, then, and heres the kicker it shows them to you. A bunch of people. In at least two of the major towns - all on the ground, dead. But what happens when you load up Broken Steel? Maybe five NPCs in the whole wasteland suddenly come down with a tummy ache. Take that, mutant scum. (Not to mention ALL the ghouls are still alive.)

So, what does all this explaining and writing stuff that Bethesda's so bad at have anything to do with lore? Well, that's what lore is; explaining things. The Pitt and Ashur's backstory have decent lore. As in, the bare minimum is explained. The player is told that the Pitt was hit hard by the war and that three irradiated rivers met and created some kind sickness that gradually turns people into Trogs. Which is similar to high levels of radiation poisoning that turns some people into ghouls. Copy/paste - great lore, Bethesda! The player is told about the scourge and how Ashur was left behind and got some raiders (again, no explanation or who those people were beforehand. just one example of bad writing/lore) together to then get some slaves together so they could work the mills because making steel somehow leads to rebuilding society or at least build the society that he wants... Right. Obsidian, on the other hand, have a very talented group of people working for them. They have a very interesting past, always seeming to get some other dev team's sloppy seconds. When in reality they always improve upon what the other dev team has done. New Vegas is no exception. Caesar isn't some stranded soldier that thinks he knows how to rebuild society. He's an educated man that knows how to build a society in the exact way that he wants. Caesar's origins are explained, his intentions are explained and the player has ample opportunity to speak with him on various topics to learn both of those things and more.

Honestly, how it is even possible for anyone to think that Fallout 3 has better lore than New Vegas? Bethesda can make a fun game but they couldn't write themselves out of a paper bag.

TL;DR - Bethesda has terrible writers that didn't manage to add a single meaningful thing to Fallout lore or canon. The Pitt and Ashur included. Obsidian is made up of many, many talented human beings that have a history of making sequels that are head and shoulders above their predecessors. Caesar and New Vegas blow everything that is Fallout 3 out of the water.

EDIT - The leader of the Enclave in FO3 was Eden? My mistake. Post has been changed to reflect this realization.

My personal issue is that there wasn't more opportunity to flesh out Ashur, but his gist was do bad things to do good things. In a sense, inspirational and it's possible to see him as still having much personal honor and it's easy for me to like and respect him. I think had he needed to play a larger role in the game, he'd have outshined Caesar.

Caesar, I can't like. He has an agenda, but it seems warped to his grey-black logic, and involves killing way too many innocent people. The whole crucifixion thing really bothers me, too, but not for religious reasons - it was because the only mercy I could give his victims was a bullet.



At least Ashur knew, cared about, and tried to alleviate as many pains as he could. I wish he would have done more to increase the standard of living in the slums (if you played FO3 with a Primary Needs mod, you probably ended up eating Trog slop, like I did.) Better food and a bit more of a leash on the crap the Raiders could do, and that would have went a long way with me.

Caesar...kills too many innocent people. Kills slaves. Kills everything. No discernible reason for this, to me. Nipton should not have happened the way it did - if he wanted to prolong his petty crap with the NCR, he should have done it like a man and attacked an army or NCR outpost, instead of slinking into a settlement and murdering everything like a bloody coward. It seems justified that he wears a skirt.

Ashur, on the other hand, willfully neglects his slaves, which is odd since he's supposed to have some compassion for them. I mentioned Trog slop, right? Trog is people. Like Soylent Green is people. No matter how mutated someone gets, it doesn't put them on the dinner table. How much would it have hurt to ship out some of the ammunition they made to the Capitol Wasteland, and trade ammo for food with the established caravans? Even though they're slaves, it doesn't mean their health concerns should be entirely ignored, because a sickly and frail, near-dead workforce that runs off tangible fear doesn't operate as well as the same workforce that's well fed.

I didn't linger in Caesar's camp, but aside from the ign'ant killing of slaves, they seemed to be better treated. Slave owners probably had some degree of decency towards their slaves, because a well-treated slave doesn't spit in your food as often, and it's likely that slaves had a chance to work out of slavery. It's also possible that female slaves might even be able to marry out of slavery. If they aren't indiscriminately killed first, of course.

Ashur is the lesser of the two evils in my eyes. Caesar willfully slaughters and destroys everything in his path, while Ashur at least considers the whole moral scope while making decisions. Ashur would be a better leader, if he could have more resources and could fix some of the living conditions his slaves lived under. Also, Ashur's system had at least one way out of slavery, while Caesar's slaves only have hypothetical escapes.

Things are getting better by the day. The cure is there, we know it is there and it can be extracted from the kid. It will take a few years but the child will provide an antidote against the Trog disease. And, on a more idealistic view, cure for mutations altogether.

Heavy industry is absolutely needed to rebuild a nation. Any nation destroyed in the Second World War, mainly the Axis powers, got a new start when they rolled their factories back on track. The claim industry is not needed to build a nation is absurd. You can build a society by farming potatoes, but you can't build a nation without industry.

Again, Ashur clearly implies that he is going to release the slaves once the cure is found. The entire reason he brings in slaves is that children simply cannot survive in the Pitt. Once the cure is put to use and once people of the Pitt get antidotes for Trog disease, the slaves can be freed as Ashur no longer needs to steal his people.

Caesar is building a nation because he is proving a point. They both started off the same - felt bad for a bunch of tribals - but Ashur did not forge a blind war machine to destroy everything around it. Ashur builds a successful nation and leaves it at that. If Ashur's plans go right the Pitt will be something like House's Vegas: isolated, effective, free.

@ Tiberius67
Exactly. The NCR has industry, it uses its resources wisely and the result is a prospering democracy that had to wait a hundred years before meeting a foe that could match it - formed by one of their own people no less. Stagnation and forcing yourself to rely on traditional medicine, foraging, hunting, whatever Legion does is not going to help the world one bit. Living in a corrupted democracy is IMO a small price to call myself free.


Exactly. Caesar's whole plan relies on delusion and swiftness, his regime relies on making sure all those below him are illiterate, uneducated degenerates who question nothing. Ceasar's Legion is a direct copy of everyone's favorite dictatorships from mid-20th century.

Ashur.. The Pitt choice of loyalty was one of the only ones in Fallout 3 where I didn't know whether I was making the right choice helping the slaves; Ashur is one convincing man.

Wasn't this thread meant to be about lore? It seems to have been turned into a popularity contest. It doesn't matter if you like Caesar less than you like Ashur. If he was written better than Ashur, which he most certainly was, then he has better lore.

And there you pretty much invalidated your own post.


Speaking your opinion as if it was a fact is probably the most idiotic argument known to man.

To a large extent - it does matter on what people think of him. Ashur had more depth crammed into such a short time, while Caesar has more lore behind him but he feels shallow. It is up to us, as with many other things, to mentally flesh them out and share our opinions in order to get a fuller picture of each. There are things that some of us know that others do not, and sharing personal opinions on it helps to gain a fuller picture of the respective character, which does indeed expand upon the lore.

And remember - lore is sometimes reliant upon what the players think.

I said he was written better because he was. I don't think you can debate it. You speak with Ashur one time. Once. That's it. You get to speak with Caesar, what? Half a dozen times with each encounter revealing new things about how he thinks and views other tribes. Sure, it is my opinion that he's written better, and I guess you could say that that's only my opinion, but the amount of time and thought put into each character, and the results of said time and thought, count as well. And Caesar has more of both of those things, not to mention way better results, than Ashur does.

Mentally fleshing out the character? So you think that having a half written character that requires the audience's discussion and speculation is better than having a character that's fully written and realized but that you happen to find shallow? That's ridiculous, the audience doesn't take part in creating the game or characters so they don't create lore.

And what's shallow about him? His intentions? What does that even matter when it comes to lore? He wants to conquer. That's what dictators do.

Gotta goto bed now. Will check back later today if anyone replies to me.

Poll statistics indicate otherwise. Caesar feels shallow, almost one-dimensional grey-black. Your point of "more Caesar = more lore" isn't exactly valid, either. Ashur leaves a more remarkable impression on people - as evident in the poll, that one conversation was enough to sway personal opinions.

Ashur is mufti-dimensional in depth, has purpose, has a calling, has charisma. Caesar has none of these things.

---In regards to the added in post---

For someone who felt the need to join just to post in this one thread, you sure have a way of pushing your opinion as the only one. Caesar is a soulless bad guy. He fits no special criteria that a thousand other personalities couldn't. They did nothing special with him. He is a replaceable, weak character who only has one draw - he's actually in this game.

Caesar is just another Three of Spades. Nothing is special about him except he's black in character. We have to flesh him out mentally because there is so little to physically grasp onto to call a real personality. A dictator is a dictator is a dictator. His motives? Power. His means? Killing. His goal? More power, more land. This is the same as thousands of soulless dictators that have risen and fell in the real world - Ashur is a shining light in that he is unique, has a unique take on his situation, has more to him that mindless killing and nonsense.

Caesar is aptly named so - at some point his house will crumble and leave only his name behind - because he embodied history's stereotypical bad guy dictator. A name to be hated and nothing more. We remember Brutus more for the knife in Caesar's back than most remember about Caesar's actual doings.

By the way - you're quite wrong about audiences not having a say in games or development. We have directly influenced Elder Scrolls and at the very least Fallouts 3 and New Vegas. In fact, it's common knowledge that some of NV's core features were taken as a draw from the modding community's efforts. I'd offer you a Fishy Stick but you'd probably not get that reference.

Caesar. He raised one of the weakest tribes and conquered all their rival just by simply training them in Old World tactics, Caesar was just a simple Follower who has not turned into the leader of one of the biggest factions.
Ashur is just a left for dead BoS Troop who was lucky not to have been killed by that family of scavengers that saved him and has now got a title of Lord Ashur :rollseyes:, he is a slaver just like Caesar on a much smaller scale with much less power and brains.
Ashurs people are diseased and don't seem to be growing at any rate since their slaves just die off or become Trogs, Ashur has only managed to hold one place, The Pitt, and he can barely do that with the threat of mutation and Trogs attacking his people.

'
Since most people are taking this as a who do I like better contest than I'd say the statistic prove nothing other that Ashur is a more likelable character.


Ashur certainly one of the better characters of Fallout 3, but you this statement has several flaws.

1) Having Charisma is non indicative of having better story and lore.
2) Caesar has purpose and a calling.
3) I haven't played a lot of Legion, but I don't think you can say Caesar has no depth.

All in all the OP should have not made this about lore or story. Clearly most arguments and voters are about popularity and likeablity.

Having thought it through, overall Caesar is the one with more lore and story and though I like the story behind Ashur and the Pitt, it seems a lot more thought went into Caesar and his Legion.

We don't know anything of the sort. We know a child with natural immunity to the Trog disease has been born but that's a far cry from having a vaccine. We've known about and studied people for years who have a natural immunity to HIV. Yet we don't have a vaccine for HIV. There's a long way to go in that process and finding a vaccine is far from guaranteed. What if it turns out you can't get a vaccine from the kid? Is Ashur going to abandon his plans? No because he started them before he had the kid. Even before there was even the slightest hope of finding a cure Ashur was determined to build in the Pitt. He's obsessed and simply does not have a realistic grasp on the situation.

Civilization wasn't destroyed in Germany. It took a heavy beating but it was in no way bombed back to the Stone Age the way the world was in Fallout. Ashur doesn't even have the basics in place like agriculture yet he wants to get a steel mill working? Again not a realistic path.



And I'm sure he would do that. But that assumes the cure is found, which is really not certain, and it doesn't change the fact that freeing the slaves isn't going to wipe away all the tensions that exist in the Pitt. You really think the raiders are just going to give up their privileged positions that easily?



If Ashur's plans go right is a huge if and not worth all the sacrifices that will be needed to be made. You can a build a nation in Fallout without starting off with working heavy industry. There's no excuse for Ashur's obsession with it.

Please assure me that your kidding when you say your sure he'll free his slaves when a "cure" is found :confused:

I just need to call BS on anyone with the idea that Ashur is the great saviour of the Pitt....He has no idea what he is doing, to me he is on a little power trip since being dragged from the rubble.
He has absolutely no way of extracting a cure for the Trog Virus from that little girl, look at the lab, there is nothing advanced enough in there to suggest proper research can be done.
The idea that he would free his slaves after finding a cure is complete crap, they were all made slaves because they had the disease and thus couldn't reproduce...Now if they were magically cured of the disease do you think Ashur is truly just going to free all these healthy slaves that can now reproduce more slaves ? NO he'd be a moron to even think it.
His whole idea of settin up in the Pitt is absurd, the place is infested with Trogs and radiation but yet he thinks it's great to become the first town in Post-War America to start producing again....and of all things its steel :facepalm: He has failed to see how a culture can grow, first he should have been building farms, clean flowing water or atleast just water.
Looking at the conditions of The Pitt, trogs, rads and the weather notice its always cloudy with black clouds and a red sky, that just shows how polluted it is and gives a damn good reason why you shouldn't set up a tribe there all for the sake of some new metal <_<
I also call him a tribe because that is all he is, he's not even worth being called a faction like Legion or the BoS, he has a wrecked town, most of which isn't even populated, his tribe doesn't even have leader, military ranks, a real source of income (food/water), they are cannibals (trogs are former humans) and they lack the capacity to expand beyond what they are without enslaving any nearby wastelanders.

JE Sawyer said - "Through Legionaries, it is portrayed as misogyny, which was never the rationale I had in mind for Caesar's motivations. Caesar wanted women to stay out of battle because he wanted to produce as many Legionaries as possible as quickly as possible. It wasn't about the fighting (or other) capabilities of women, but the simple fact that women are the only ones who can bear children, so he wanted them doing that as much as possible. Unfortunately, I don't believe Caesar ever says anything about this directly, so the player is left with the very misogynistic statements of various Legionaries. It's still reprehensible, but for a different reason. "

I had always seen it this way, but not having him address it, especially with a female courier, is kind of disheartening. Still, there's a lot to dislike about Caesar.

The Pitt did send me for a couple of ideological loops. Ashur is very convincing in his arguments, and the people who want to liberate the slaves now want you to steal a baby from it's mother and release the monsters on their enemies. As my current F3 Playthrough is for a character who is basically Kenshiro, I want to say he'd side with the slaves, but for a character who is genuinely good, what they ask of him may be too much.

That's your opinion, and frankly, I don't agree with it.

I find that Ashur and his raiders was better written than Caesar and his Legion.

I agree with many of your point about the problems with Fallout 3 (like the FEV turn-around.....grr), but I don't believe that Fallout 3 didn't add a "single meaningful thing to lore" and I also don't think Fallout 3 is necessarily a bad Fallout game. Bethesda has troubles with writing, for sure, but they also did many things right in my opinion.



Just a side point, but actually the Shi in Fallout 2 were the first faction to have a "robot leader" in the Fallout series. The Shi Emperor after all, was a ZAX computer just like Eden.

I'm sure he'd free the slaves if a cure was found. There's no real reason to doubt his word on that point. Like you however I find it highly unlikely that he'll ever find the cure.

Between him and Werhner though, Ashur definitely has a better shot.


Werhner's got absolutely no chance of finding a cure in my opinion. Media is not a scientist.

Yup. But I'd rather put an end to the Pitt than allow Ashur to keep enslaving people and ensuring the deaths of hundreds in the off chance he finds the cure.

Quality, not Quantity.

Ashur is a well written character with noble goals, and has come to using slave labor out of desperation. Even as slaves, their lives are better than before Ashur ruled the Pitt.

Caeser is a bit-villain who is hypocritical, misogynist, and head of a group that could easily continue on with out him. He's only a slightly better choice then his murderous, nearly in-human second in command. for somereasn, the sevs try to paint him as intelligent and charismatic, but he comes of as a self important jack-off who is trying to rebuild a empire that fell 1,500 (1,780?) years ago, somehow convinced that it is "better" than pre-war america.

And he's doing a poor job of it at that. The Roman Empire would never have held some sort of ridiculous policy of shunning medical advances and other types of advanced technology. Indeed, they were often the ones to develop it or adapt technology from other civilizations for their own purposes.