...okay, yeah, all of those things are true, but I don't own any of those Swedish sharks so I'm not a COMPLETE basic white tgirl cliche.
(this art is from the game idk who made it
Anyway, this isn't going to be a post glazing the NCR. They're already at least the second most popular faction in the franchise and only the Brotherhood keeps me from saying they're the first. This post also won't be me putting down any other Fallout games, because the only other two I played are 1 and 4 and I enjoyed both. However, I do prefer New Vegas on a gameplay and narrative level, even if it falls very flat on the "not crashing every 2 seconds" level.
Enough disclaimers. We're talking about how this game embodies the concept of a "twilight western" and thus embodies the thesis statement of Fallout best.
The Wild West had to end eventually. It did end eventually. Not only did the Wild West end, but people's interest in Wild West movies also waned. Some of the movies deal with the idea of "the Twilight of the Old West," taking place during the time when this period of US history was slowly coming to a close.
STOP! Important clarification. The whole idea of the American frontier was a racist and colonialist lie that relied on the subjagation and destruction of both Native Americans and the land we stole from them, so what I am about to say DOES NOT APPLY TO REAL LIFE, it is merely an analysis of what the Wild West is in the zeitgiest, not what it actually was.
Anyway, Westerns as a concept play on the idea of the American Southwest as a place of freedom and independance, beginning wth the initial colonization of the New World and ending as the settlers started running out of land to settle, and the country was heading towards an industrialized future. The "twilight westerns" I mentioned before are set during this end of the Wild West, and carry a certain melonchalic weight to them.
Important clarifiaction. I have not as many Wild West movies as I'd like to have, and I haven't seen any that specifically deal with this trope. The idea of the Old West's twilight is something I've learned about secondhand. I don't feel fully qualified to talk about this subject? But if I get something wrong, womp womp. World'll keep spinning.
Fundementally, I think the life of a cowboy is romanticized for the freedom and independance we have been convinced the gunslingers had that we didn't. Wandering from town to town with nobody but our horse to keep us company, and not letting anyone tell us what we should do or what's right. You are perfectly free to wear the black hat as long as you're good enough with your gun, taking whatever you want and hurting whoever you'd like. Which makes those who wear the white hat, those who selflessly defend others and risk their lives for what they think is right, seem more noble and brave in comparasion. In a time where we're alienated from each other, from the natural world, and worst of all from ourselves...sometimes that distant world seems worth the price of thirst and dysentery.
Was that world ever real? Why don't you go do down to a graveyeard in El Paso and ask? It doesn't matter whether it's real. The hat, the horse, the big irons on our hips. These all symbolize liberation for Americans, even if it was the Italians who made a lot of those movies.
Fallout, taking place in a post-apocolyptic America, dips its toes in many genres. A general theme among all the games is pulpy sci-fi and zombie tropes, with the older games also delving into body horror and even psychological horror at times. (The latter for of horror is mostly the original Fallout.) All of the games take inspiration from American history, but only New Vegas delves headfirst into the cowboy aesthetics. Taking place in Nevada, centuries after the nukes fell, three major post-war communities have developed into proper civilizations and are all battling over hegemony of the Mojave desert.
All three of these societies have what the game calls "old-world blues," a fixation on a forgotten past. The New California Republic tries to emulate American liberal democracy, Caeser's Legion tries to emulate the ancient empire of Rome, and Mr. House tries to emulate the libertarian American dream. All of these factions are trying to develop the Mojave n their own way, the population of which composes of a few independant communites like Goodsprings and Primm, along with several smaller factions who can be allied with the larger onesi like the Great Khans or the Boomers.
You can side with any of these three factions and bring them to power. The thing is, the Legion is objectively the worst option. A band of many tribes forcefully assimilated into a Rome-esque culture, the Legion is effectively just a large cult of personality, centered around one dying man. Young boys are groomed into a life of pillaging, slaving, raping, and murdering. Weakness is punished by death.