Caesar’s Legion is one of the main factions in Fallout: New Vegas, and one of the best realized factions in the entire franchise. When the game was first announced, few fans could have guessed that it would heavily feature an army of raiders styling themselves on ancient Rome.
Caesar’s Legion crucifies people, forces prisoners into hard labor, wipes out entire towns in life-or-death games of chance, and worships a god-emperor who claims to be the son of Mars. However, the Legion is also one of the most creative factions in the entire series, and one that future Fallout games should learn from. With rumors circulating about the potential for a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas, here’s what makes Cesar’s Legion so great from a worldbuilding perspective.
When fans find out a new Fallout game is in the works, the game’s setting is always one of the first pressing questions from the community. Fallout: New Vegas made a great choice with the Mojave Wasteland, allowing Obsidian Entertainment to experiment with genres from Westerns to Mafia films throughout Fallout’s post-apocalyptic America.
What makes Caesar’s Legion so special, however, is the developers went out of their way to create a faction which would seem totally out of place in the wasteland. Obsidian then totally integrates the Legion into New Vegas‘ world to make it a believable, if over-the-top, political player. Obviously there was no Roman Empire in the Americas, and the choice undoubtedly sticks out in a franchise so deeply invested in Americana. It’s hard to imagine a Fallout game set outside of the former United States. When players first see the Legion in New Vegas’ opening cinematic, they might be forgiven for initially feeling the faction is out-of-place in its world.
However, as the world reveals itself to the player, the role of Caesar’s Legion becomes clearer. Obsidian Entertainment ingeniously turns the battle over Hoover Dam into a version of Caesar’s famous Crossing the Rubicon: The river of which the forces of Julius Caesar crossed as their point of no return before seizing Rome itself and taking control of the empire. In New Vegas, Caesar’s men seem alien from the get-go, using an antiquated but accurate Latin pronunciation of their leader’s title, among other phrases. The Legion has a penchant for adorning themselves in animal skins, generally acting like they’ve stepped out of the distant past instead of an apocalyptic future.
The Caesar’s Legion faction’s inclusion risked being a ridiculous addition, and yet the Fallout: New Vegas faction is executed with such stylistic commitment that it quickly becomes intriguing, rather than humorous. One thing is clear – whatever appeal Caesar’s Legion has in a post-apocalyptic world, his men are completely dedicated to him and the mythology he has created around himself.
There’s something nebulous about the Legion. Their main opposition the New California Republic is far more understandable, simply modelling itself off of America’s pre-war democracy and military. Ceasar’s Legion feels as much like a reactionary cultural movement as a military one. In fact, Cesar’s Legion draws attention to the fact that most of New Vegas’ major players, from the NCR to the Brotherhood of Steel, rely upon appeals to the past despite the terrible destruction it directly led to. Ceasar’s Legion simply takes that mindset to its logical conclusion.
Future Fallout games need to learn from the creativity and commitment Obsidian showed off when designing the Legion. The regional factions of Fallout 4 like the Minutemen may be connected to Boston’s local culture, but end up far less interesting than the Legion overall. There’s no mystery as to what the Minutemen are doing in the Commonwealth, or what the developers were thinking of when they decided to include the faction in the game. In contrast, the initially baffling presence of Caesar’s Legion makes a huge contribution to New Vegas’ worldbuilding by radically subverting expectations, and not wavering despite the risk of seeming silly.
Caesar’s Legion may draw upon the most ancient past more than any of Fallout’s major factions, but it’s also one of the few factions to show how Fallout’s world has changed after the Great War of 2077. Ceasar’s Legion draws upon Roman aesthetics but has none of the governmental institutions, instead relying on assimilating other tribes and a system of mass slavery. While many other factions make appeals to pre-War America, Caesar’s Legion explores just how intensely different a post-apocalyptic culture could be from those that existed before the bombs dropped.
The Legion shows the value of experimentation and risk-taking in worldbuilding, turning away from the obvious parts of New Vegas‘ setting. As a result, the Legion helps transform the Mojave Wasteland from a rough approximation of the Las Vegas area, into a totally unique character in its own right. The Mojave Wasteland doesn’t simply make references to pre-war America, but contains vast unknowns that require player engagement to understand well. Whether the next Fallout game is a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas or simply Fallout 5, the developers need to take risks with the world’s principal players.
There are areas in which Obsidian’s portrayal of the Legion could have been improved. Developers have talked in the past about the difficulty communicating the advantages of Caesar’s brutal rule due to development time constraints. Only players who are intentionally being evil have much incentive to side with the Legion in the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. However, the Legion ultimately adds far more color to the Mojave Wasteland than it subtracts.
As an example, if the next Fallout is set in New Orleans, its factions shouldn’t just be based on Jazz-singing swingers and Mardis Gras-mask wearing elites. If the next game is set in the Pacific Northwest, its factions shouldn’t just be Bigfoot hunters and mountain men. The next game can’t just rely on a caricature of its setting if it wants its world to feel truly worthy of exploration. While the Caesar’s Legion faction in Fallout: New Vegas has a simplistic design, its unknown power and alien culture adds a stranger-than-fiction feel that’s helped keep the game a fan-favorite, more than a decade after its release.
Fallout: New Vegas is available now on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.
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