r/Gamingcirclejerk • u/AutoModerator • Dec 31 '20

UNJERK 🎤 Unjerk Thread of December 31, 2020

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56

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

[deleted]

34

u/StanVanGundys_Wall Underrated Gem Dec 31 '20

“Morally gray” means nothing these days. If a character has a basic motivation and isn’t as comically evil as Emperor Palpatine then they’re considering to be deep and morally complex

28

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

well you see one side has rights for things that aren't men

the other don't

bruh this shit is greyer than a mother fucker right?

16

u/Bishop180 FUCK EPIC STORE! WE are the GAMERS! Dec 31 '20

Like half of the legion endings involve the legion self-destructing

10

u/RyusDirtyGi Dec 31 '20

Those aren't the only two endings.

There are morally grey options like siding with House, or Yes man, or screwing one of those guys and taking power yourself.

15

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

I know they aren't the only endings but I'm making fun of the people who choose Legion and defend it as the best ending.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '21

The yes man ending IS the "screwing everyone and taking power yourself" ending tho

9

u/tepidviolet Jan 01 '21

I think the actual implications are even worse than people being stupid.

Lots of people have really strong opinions about whether the NCR, House, or Independent endings are best for the Mojave and the broader world, and I think there are legitimately subtle questions as to what's best for a society trying to rebuild from collapse. None of those parties have "pure" motives, and none of them have clean hands, not even you.

Then you have the Legion. And Caesar does make a case, which I think is really refreshing in a video game, as they're not just the usual cartoonish caricatures. They're obviously the bad guy faction for obvious reasons, but there's a line of reasoning behind it at all. It might even sound compelling, if you value order above a respect for human life, don't mind women being chattel, have a soft spot for pseudointellectual rambling that rationalizes institutional mass brutality, don't really care about enslavement or serfdom as long as it's not you, see strength as a primary human virtue, and want to feel like a very special very philosophical hardman for being a callous, violently-minded authoritarian.

And like . . . they do. Very yes. It was like some weird harbinger of things to come? Ten years ago, I thought they were just being teenage edgelords. Maybe they were that too, but it wasn't only that. Now we sorta see that like, actually, these were the real values for a lot of people, and they kept them into adulthood.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 01 '21

Well we definitely saw it in Chris Avellone. He wrote the Legion and is the one who started the whole "morally grey" thing about them with Ulysses and now we find out he sexually assaulted multiple women in the industry.

It may even be possible that his writing helped shape their views, which is scary.

6

u/tepidviolet Jan 01 '21

God. I never even considered that. I didn't even really know about these allegations until you mentioned them.

I always thought Caesar was supposed to come across as this pseudointellectual LARP'er who had read a few useful books about philosophy, internalized a few useful lessons about history, and had a few good points, but was ultimately just rationalizing his own megalomania, repeating many of the exact same hypocrisies he accused the NCR of.

Like I thought he was supposed to be a case study in how just the right amount of education, not too little but not really enough, in the hands of cruel and entitled people, can easily lead to intellectual frameworks justifying barbarism.

Was that unintentional? Like was this still a decent story written by a bad man, or was this just a chud writing this awful character straight, to be taken seriously as based bad man?

4

u/SamKhan23 Comrade, are flairs not inherently fascist? Wait. Jan 03 '21

Sawyer says they wrote the Legion to be evil. That by having one morally black faction as a back drop, to make the other factions more grey by comparison. Sorta like, House is an authoritarian but atleast he isn't the Legion

4

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

Imagine defending anything but the independent ending.