Fallout’s NCR reveal hurt — even if it was inevitable

polygon.com:

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for season 1 of the Falloutshow, specifically around the NCR.]

The ghosts of nations haunt the Wasteland of Amazon’s Fallout. The ruins of once-mighty American cities are the backdrop for the series, but we also see wrecked Soviet satellites, failed homesteads, Vaults filled with the corpses of those who hoped to outlive the apocalypse. There’s one ghost that stands out to me, though, one that I and other long-term Fallout fans in particular will mourn: the ghost of the New California Republic. Killing one of Fallout’s most beloved factions is a tough blow for die-hard fans, even if it might be for the best.

Now, I’ll admit something up front: I was never that big of a fan of the NCR. When I first met them in Fallout: New Vegas, they seemed to me to be very much the default good guys. It’s a centrist, pluralistic democracy that has become a stabilizing force in the Wasteland. It has paper money, an organized bureaucracy, and, naturally, a standing army. Unlike the brutal authoritarian primitivists of Caesar’s Legion or the xenophobic, pseudo-religious technophiles of the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR is pretty close in attitude to a nation of the modern world. Whether human, ghoul, or super mutant, everyone is welcome in the NCR. Pay your taxes, keep your nose clean, and the NCR will protect you to the best of its ability. You even get to vote for your leader, instead of just letting the local giant psychopath in a skull mask take the job!

But over time I lost my dismissive attitude toward the NCR. They are a complex, nuanced people: They dealt the death blow to the fascistic Enclave (or so they thought), abolished slavery, created a tolerant society, and resurrected the best systems of the old world. But they are also inefficient and susceptible to corruption, and they struggle to provide for their soldiers on the most dangerous front lines. They’re also complicit in genocide, and at one point brutalized the Brotherhood so