President John Henry Eden. President of The Enclave, President...of your heart. This ZAX AI is made of a collation of the personalities and histories of most of the previous American Presidents. I think therein lies a flaw in his character, that he is made of the personalities of 50 of America's Finest or Worst. He might have the genocidal tendencies of Andrew Jackson, or the prejudices and hypocrisy of Jefferson, and there might be even more than that. With that in mind, I definitely don't think he would have been a wise piece in leadership and with that in mind could have opened up oppurtunities to work with the Enclave to destroy him and perhaps bring peace to the Wasteland through Autumn's more human views.

I don't think he was a bad character, I'm just bringing up another way people could have convinced him that he was flawed in his reasoning, in a more Ulysses-esque fashion (Who are you that do not know your History?), and of course there is also the objection that we had with the Courier's Brain, that since he lacks most of what made him human, he cannot make nearly the same decisions that his predecessors made, thus he is unfit to lead.

What are your views on this critique, and what did you think of Eden? Perfect image of Pre-War Nationalism gone wrong due to short scope, or perfect villain?

Well for one he's never referenced as President of the Enclave, ever. He has also studied the personalities of Presidents since the Great War, namely President Richardson and his predecessors on Control Station: ENCLAVE. It's also clear from the game that Eden has created a cult of personality around himself, when killing Enclave soldiers they sometimes say "For Eden..." and "I've failed you..." etc, I also believe "For the President" is one of their cries during combat; they are immensely loyal to Eden as a figure.

That being said, Eden is a despicable entity, with a short-sighted plan, a self-aggrandising radio-station that serves no function (I may have said it existed to placate Autumn but it pre-dates the period when Eden was pretending to agree with him) and he guns down his own soldiers for the sake of the Lone Wanderer. As a machine his mind is ultimately an unknown, consciously processing things at speeds we cannot even imagine and with permanent, in-fallible access to volumes of information; who's to say that one-day, in what to humans is the blink of an eye, he couldn't just become disillusioned with the whole thing.

I can't place any faith in something like Eden that is completely alien and truly un-predictable; oh yeah and he shoots his own men, I can tolerate many a bad thing from a villain obviously, but not a betrayal of your own men.

EDIT: Quite frankly I also find it disturbing when people quote that radio-show, considering it's set-up as a deliberate lie and everyone must surely know that it's flowery, psuedo-inspirational, content is supposed to svcker you in. There's also the fact that it's entirely bewildering to it's target demographic, so much so that's referenced by two [eople, Nathan who's made out to be the fool for liking it, and Nova in the bar who thinks that it's a pre-war station on a loop because it's nonsense about: rural Kentucky, baseball, politicians and the like has absolutely no bearing on any of their lives. Eden made it for himself, because he's a deranged construct; either that or it's staggeringly terrible propaganda and personally I can't contend that because Eden, again as a super-computer, must surely be able to predict that the content of his radio show has cannot possibly be understood by anyone else.

The only reason he shot his own men is because the Colonel ordered the Lone Wanderer shot on sight, which was contrary to Eden's order. Eden wanted to speak with the LW about

He could never have spoken to him if he was dead, which made it necessary to stop the attacking troops.

Doesn't he call himself President of the Enclave? I believe he says "This is John Henry Eden. President of the Enclave, President of America, President of your heart." in one of his monologues.