I always ending up siding with Joshua Graham. Mainly because it seems like the other guy (david?) is just doing a really basic “noble savage / white saviour” routine. Like his “solution” is to just pack up and leave in order for the people to preserve some inherent quality of “innocence” he thinks they possess. He would rather have them hounded for the rest of their existence, than do something that challenges his perception of them.
On the other hand Joshua Graham is a mormon
On the other hand Joshua Graham is a mormon
i miss when games used to have these compelling moral questions
Truly a quandary for the ages
I always side with Graham but I think Daniel is a solid choice as well.
The White Legs devolve into raiding parties or are wiped out regardless of the ending. The reason why Daniel is correct is that the increasing militancy leads to conflicts between the Dead-horses and the Sorrows, the two tribes friendly to you. As long as there are two war-like tribes in Zion, it will be a place of war. Getting the Sorrows out of Zion isn’t necessarily good, but it leads to both of the tribes avoiding conflict.
The problem with leading the Sorrows in war is not that destroying the White Legs is bad, it’s that you doom them to same warish behavior of all the other factions. Is land worth killing for if you can live without warfare somewhere else? Even if it is, is it worth the risk that the tribe will view war and violence as a solution to all future problems? We very well could have created the next White Leg faction by giving the Sorrows a reason to use violence.
Don’t the Graham ending have a caveat that the dead Horses explicitly don’t become the next white legs? I remember something about them preserving their innocence or something
Nope, and the Dead Horses are already war-like. The Sorrows are the ones that are relatively peaceful.
Here’s the quote from siding with Graham about the Dead Horses:
And here’s the quote about the Sorrows:
Of course it changes a bit depending on whether Salt-Upon-Legs is killed by the courier, spared, or let go. But it’s absolutely canon that Sorrows and Dead Horses fight and become more brutal.
I remember something about them preserving their innocence or something
Daniel mourns the loss of their innocence in the Graham ending and that’s the only ending that mentions innocence.
I honestly really like this dlc and I understand why many would not. It takes the self sufficent tribes you see in the og fallouts and gives it to the modern fallouts. With all the moral ambiguity of the og fallouts too. But yes I agree that Joshua seems to be the only one willing to help the tribes and he is who I always choose even though he is pretty edgy with all the religous stuff
haven’t played in a while but i usually skip that dlc because it sucks, in part because of the points you raised.
It’s one of the weaker DLCs but just wandering around Zion is so much fun, it’s by far the prettiest location in the game. Even if the story sucks I always make time to visit every play through just for the scenery
Joshua Graham.cause he was a character. The other guy was just the other guy. Not really compelling
I forget how many tribes there are but I remember siding with the Sorrows because I like their blue-green style, and I think something to do with a bear? Anyway the White Legs are dead as fuck
Personally I think that DLC is purely about Joshua Graham and everything else is a set piece
I always side with Joshua Graham, it’s just the better option even if the ending slides try to shame you for it. I’m not a massive fan of that DLC but at least it’s pretty.
Lonesome Road < Honest Hearts < Dead Money < Old World Blues (Dead Money and Old World Blues are almost tied for 1st, both are excellent while Honest Hearts is just okay and Lonesome Road is garbage trash)
Lonesome Road is garbage trash
many people are saying this
WoolieVs in a Bane mask babbling endlessly about “the buuulllll and the beeeaaaarrrrrr” was funny though.
Do you not like nuking both the NCR and the Legion and then getting completely forgiven for it because you visited Benny?
they really hate mr bing
Dead Money was my favorite story but some of the game-play was just annoying.
Old world blues never really did it for me. Too many bullet sponges and the hours long infodump in the beginning sucked too much energy
Graham is easily the more interesting route because he’s the more interesting character and you get the usual Fallout player-assisted character arc with him but I think Graham’s role in HH gets a little misunderstood, I think because the DLC doesn’t do a great job of presenting it. He’s former legate of the Legion and founded the Legion alongside Caesar. His intent is killing the entirety of the White Legs, Daniel warns you of that and then when you choose his route Graham tells you to your face that’s what he wants. He’s the last guy you would ever want to teach someone war. And he’s so dead set on this not because he actually cares strongly about the Sorrows but because the White Legs want to be part of the Legion, and he sees going against them as sort of going against the Legion by extension, basically the DLC is choosing which Mormon’s baggage you want to enable. You also can draw comparisons between what Sallow/Caesar and Graham did to the tribes in Arizona by teaching them “real” war and forming the Legion out of them, and what Graham is doing to the Sorrows and Dead Horses.
Really I wish the Dead Horses and Sorrows were characterized more and that you could have actually talked to them about what they wanted to do, instead of having to deal entirely through Joshua and Daniel.
I think a big issue is also a limitation of technology/scope. As with any piece of fiction, not everything can be described (characterisation of sorrows for example) and so some stuff must be left up to ones own interpretation/imagination. How one fills in the blanks heavily influences how Joshua Graham is perceived. It’s a very good point about him using the Dead Horses as nothing more than a tool for his own salvation, I hadn’t really thought of that.
I think I’ve also been very dismissive of the games critique of Graham’s methods, because it reeks of “both sides” centrism to me, but that is in large part me treating metatext as text and that’s not really fair.
They’re both Mormons though.
Anyways, Joshua because:
- Reason you listed
- Zion is fucking beautiful so I’ll be damned before letting some legion bootlickers have it
- Joshua deserves a happy ending
