Exactly, which is the point of Colonel Martyr; that the Courier taking out House and placing himself in-charge is no more "independant" that having House in-charge. Interpreating the Independant ending as removing "imperial powers", as you said, would equally imply that House is one of them that you are "freeing" Vegas from. As I said, I read independant as the Couriers affiliation... as indeed the NCR, Legion and House endings are all named after the Couriers affiliation now I think of it.

i didnt say it was canon, just that i had heard it was by many people, and no one has actually argued with them until now. THANX.
And yeah he really doesnt care for people, he cares for progress. Ask anyone. He is a man of business, and he cares about humanity and its survival in whole, many people hate him cause he kicked them out, and indeed he′s securitrons have killed people that didnt do anything (well some tried running into the strip, but if this was real i would do anything to get into Vegas)

Seriously, stop nitpicking my words. I simply meant that you were toppling House's regime. House's empire, though small, has enormous influence. That said, I never said 'freeing'. Personally, I don't see it as freeing, but ruining whatever chance Vegas had of long term survival.

Yes his goal is progress but that doesn't mean he's some ruthless dictator that will kill anyone for progress, he loves vegas and wants to make a better future for humanity, which means he wants to improve people's lives.

I'm on your side you fool!

EDIT: I was refering to my own previous post. Believing that the Independant ending is called that because you are liberating Vegas doesn't make sense because you would be installing yourself as the new House, i.e., exactly what you said.

I thought you were being a dike about my use of Imperial, since I used it in sense of Absolute power. (After being here a while, I'm used to dikes playing the smarmy person over other's uses of a word. If it has three or more meanings (Like Imperial), they'll play the 'Oh why would you use X to describe Y'. It's a pet peeve. Guess I misunderstood your intent.

That's kind of where I was going with my earlier post: Independent is literally a "change in management," just like the appropriately named quest when you install Yes Man and kill House. If you're going for a system that doesn't have any form of dictator and that isn't the NCR, then you're not going to find one in this game, or anywhere really, something is always going to fill the power vacuum. The main question for me is how much do you trust Mr. House? Do you trust him enough to make him an absolute ruler of the Mojave for a (relatively) "infinite" amount of time? I don't think I do, so that's where the independent ending comes in. The Courier cannot live forever, so while he/she may have taken House's place, there is still a time limit there to keep his/her power in check, and then when the Courier dies the power vacuum will have to filled again, and so on.

Personally, I don't like either system that much, which is why I'm still undecided as to which system I stand behind as the best option in the game.

If unchecked power is your concern, then Yes-Man might actually be worse than House. Sure, the Courier's eventually going to die, but then, who takes over after him? Yes-Man's still around, he has control of all the Securitrons, and he no longer has you to answer to. So what does he do? Find some other guy to rule the Mojave, or does he do the job himself thanks to his "assertiveness upgrade?" House may be long-lived thanks to the life support he depends on, but he can die like any of us. Yes-Man's a self-replicating computer program. The only way to actually defeat him is to destroy Vegas' entire network, which is harder than killing one man.

One thing I'd like to put forth for your discussion is what happens if House starts losing it. He's well over 200 years old, suffered a coma for decades, etc. His character is also based off of Howard Hughes, the famously brilliant but dangerously eccentric American inventor (who, hilariously, at the end of his life, would only deal with Mormons, because he considered them the only trustworthy people, even though he wasn't mormon himself) Yes Man, through all of his dialogue, has only expressed concern for preserving the peace of New Vegas and establishing security in the region. He may not have the noble vision of House, and the goal for long term prosperity, but what happens when House's mental ability starts to degrade? We've seen no indication that the man is immortal by any meals. When House decides to do something wacky, how does anyone stop him? I feel we have to worry about that much less with an AI concerned with merely preserving security in New Vegas.

Also, for your consideration, the Followers of the Apocalypse give the exact same ending for House and Independence, that New Vegas becomes more anarchic than before. Food for thought.

No yes man wont find another man, he isnt programmed to be going around looking for people to answer to.
He is not doing it for the good of mankind, he clearly doesnt care about simple people lives, only to improve humanity in general. Im not saying another word to u as i dont want to continue arguing last time it got me warned. hate when i get warned.

We shall agree to disagree then!

Ask anyone. many agree

You can be independent from a foreign power and still live with a lack of liberty under a tyrant. This isn't a contradiction at all like you seem to think. Post-colonial Central Africa is a case in point - while they became independent of foreign imperialist control, if you think about it they still went from being governed by constitutional monarchies and republics to autocratic warlords. Conversely being an imperialist democracy is not an oxymoron - look at the major imperialist powers of the last two centuries.



This is a good point. Yes Man is so deferential and non-threatening for the duration of the game that I forget about his assertiveness upgrade at the end. Probably the most persuasive argument against the Yes Man ending, I think.

But (puts devil's advocate hat on) is the player's role to choose the best option for the long term, i.e. next hundred years plus? Or can the player just choose the best option for the moment? Given that the point of Fallout is that "war, war never changes" surely whatever option we choose is going to lead to conflict at some point in the future, based just on human nature?

I remember in one of the trailers for new vegas where they talked about factions they mentioned the independent rout, and said that you are either making yourself the ruler of the city or declaring anarchy, so it seems to me that indy means you can become the new "mr. house" or just have no one in charge, thats why the ending says "the courier was long seen as the man/women who brought independence to New Vegas." So it seems to me that arguing for or against the yes man ending is very hard because there are almost infinite possibilities of what could happen to vegas (i.e. anarchy, democracy, dictatorship, being conquered NCR/Legion one week later, etc.)

I think that the morality for ALL factions is good. They all truly believe thier best for the Mojave. Its which one helps people the best thats the real kicker.

Thank u now we agree.

That's nice and all, but generally these things don't work out so well. "Responsible" self-governing doesn't really exist imo because someone will always try to take total control of some small faction and turn it into something corrupt. Then they'll try to take more power and cause more problems. Also, Vegas is always going to be the most powerful and wealthy section of the Mojave, so while Novac might self-govern itself pretty well, the Strip families will probably try to take more power by stealing from smaller settlements, rigging all of the gambling games, using force to threaten people, et cetera. Then there's the question of what to do with Yes Man. He'll still only listen to the Courier unless the Courier tells him to listen to someone else, so wouldn't that still make the Courier the most powerful guy in the Mojave (in other words it still boils down to the Courier replacing House)? If you say that the Courier should use his power to keep the families in check, then, well, you just have another Mr. House.


Actually, the devs said a little while back that the "assertiveness upgrade" wasn't supposed to suggest that Yes Man was going to start acting on his own and carrying out plans himself. It was only there to suggest that Yes Man won't let just anybody who happens to be in the Lucky 38 walk up to him and tell him what to do; he'll only listen to the Courier unless the Courier tells him otherwise. So basically it just means that someone can't do to you what you did to Benny.

While I believe that to be true, the devs certainly presented that idea poorly. They should have explained it better.

When I heard Yes Man talk about his "assertiveness upgrade" my thoughts immediately wen to the idea that Yes Man wasn't just going to sit back and let you run the show all on your own.

I agree, I didn't like how they presented that information at all. It was pretty misleading, and until they explained it themselves, I too thought it meant that Yes Man was going to start making his own decisions. I'm glad it isn't that way though, it would've been kind of annoying if they left some big detail like that until the ending slides.

So whats wrong with the courier becoming "House" you take over and police the streets with securitrons, keep hoover dam up and running, maybe even take a cut of the money made on the strip, so ya you could become the ruler of vegas, after all you do say to yes man "what if i want to TAKE OVER NEW VEGAS instead of benny." The only difference is now your pursuing your own vision for vegas that no other faction represents, the possibilities are endless.

Well, yeah, that's the point. The Indy route is basically where you make all of the decisions yourself without having to listen to anybody else. Read my first post to see the problems with that system, I mainly wrote about House but it was meant to show potential problems with both House and the Courier, so the flaws that I wrote about apply to both the Courier if you take the Indy route and House is you follow his quest-line.

You made some excellent points, but i think this all goes back to my earlier post where i mentioned it's difficult to argue for or against yes man because we simply don't know what will happen to vegas since each person probably has a different idea of what an independent vegas would look like. The courier may go mad with power, but also could build up the entire city into something better than any other faction, it depends on who you are and what you want for vegas.

That's also a very good point, it depends on each Courier's view of how to run Vegas. So it could turn out to be horrible or it could turn out to be great for the Mojave, it all depends on who the Courier is. That is, of course, one of the reasons why I personally like the Independent quest-line, I get to do things my way. And another interesting point is that the Indy route is really the only main quest option in the game where we really can't say as a general rule exactly what is going to happen when the Courier is in charge -- it's up to each individual player. We know Caesar's philosophy, we know the NCR's philosophy, and we know House's philosophy -- but the Courier's philosophy? That's up to the player.

No cause House was no better then the families, pushing everyone around. If the courier really cares, he would actually lead Vegas to a prospoures future, so you got a much better version of House.

You want to do something right you gotta do it yourself. Story of fallout, running around a huge wasteland with bigass weapons doing everything yourself, making some tough choices. Always makes me come back to buy the next game.