Discussing CBS censoring Stephen Colbert's James Talerico interview

 So....CBS decided to blackball the James Talerico interview that Stephen Colbert did. Colbert didn't give a crap and put it on his youtube channel. Now, I'm gonna be blunt, if CBS didn't censor this, i wouldn't care. Quite frankly, James Talerico is boring, and I can't stand listening to the guy drone on about religion all the time. We get it, you're liberal AND Christian. Not saying you cant make that work, but as a secular humanist, I kinda WOULD prefer a more secular candidate! 

BUT....censoring it is kinda Streisand Effecting the crap out of this. In a way, it's kinda backfiring because it's like, okay, CBS decided they didn't want you to see this. What are they hiding? Well, I'll put it this way. There is a very real chance, at least according to current polling (see the election update from the other day), that the republicans will lose the Texas Senate seat. You heard that right, TEXAS! FRICKING TEXAS is under threat by democrats. Now, do I really believe the dems will seal it? No. Because I've seen texas turn pink quite a few times...and then the result ends up a lot redder than it should be. Texas is a tease for democrats, we all like to get our hopes up that we can flip it, but we never do. if I had to guess, it goes republican by 5-6. The polls say R+1...but again, not like I haven't seen THIS before. I'm just gonna say, dont get your hopes up. Error generally favors republicans there.

It's kinda like pre 2020 Georgia. Like it's always within range, but then it doesnt flip. Will Texas one day become the next Georgia? Sure, demographically it's been shifting left for a while in theory...but then republicans always seem to pull it off anyway, and 2024 showed that dems have a long way to go before we can reliably flip sun belt seats. 

Anyway, the GOP is kinda freaking out, and the FCC is applying pressure to networks to try to push them in a conservative direction, and then CBS seems to be trying to go in a conservative direction in general under the Trump administration. So...don't expect fair conservative coverage. It always amuses me liberals freak out about the media trying to suppress mainstream dems...but where were these guys when the dems were suppressing Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang in the 2016/2020 primaries? Corporate media is just crooked. It always has been. it's just more blunt now that Trump is trying to turn us from a two party state to a one party state that it's having a chilling effect on half of the spectrum that WAS considered acceptable. But let's face it, the media always were the gatekeepers, and they always did shut out people they didn't want to talk about. Sometimes this is unintentional. I mean, you can only cover so many stories in so many days. And much like this blog, youre gonna talk about what you wanna talk about. BUT....let's not act like some of it isn't intentional too. And that media doesn't somehow put their finger on the scale to ensure only "acceptable" opinions are properly discussed. People are just getting upset now that their opinions are being pushed out.

I know, I'm being salty, and let's be honest, is this morally okay? no. It isn't. But....I've been calling this crap out for years, and many of the same people crying now were the same people okay with seeing my opinions pushed out of the spectrum during 2016 and 2020. So...I'm just calling that like it is.

Anyway, I encourage people to watch the interview, if only to give a finger to Trump and the right's attempt to censor a perspective they don't like. 

And...to be frank...again, it's James Talerico. The whole discussion is about fricking religion and how Christianity influences his politics. I dont endorse his views. People on the left seem amazed by this guy because he's Christian AND left of center. Like wow, how novel! That's also why the right seems to fear him. He might actually be able to flip some Christians to the left. Ya know, blah blah blah. 

But again...me personally? Bleh. I just dont vibe with the guy. And yes, I know I sound like an edgy reddit atheist, I've been called that before on this subject, but as someone who literally developed my current political ideology through edgy reddit atheism....guilty as charged, and I'm not changing on that. My views are based on the battle lines of the pre 2016 world, which means my progressive politics inevitably have a secular bend. Some people might like this guy because he's Christian and left wing, but I just see that brand of politics as cringey.

Still....if it wins us Texas, it wins us Texas. Just...again, not a fan of those specific politics.  

Note to conservatives: MAGA isn't your dad's conservatism!

 So...I've kind of bristled a few conservative feathers recently in calling out MAGA. Got into a debate about Biden's immigration policy in which I defended Biden's position as the reasonable moderate position, while condemning MAGA's position as "fascist" and referring to those prisons he's building as "concentration camps." They genuinely think that's disrespectful and hyperbolic rhetoric. I fundamentally disagree.

 The fun fact is, I have all the reason in the world to call this stuff out. I used to be a Reagan/Bush conservative back in the day. I know their arguments. I know what they were for. And I know that the party has changed. Our overton window has gotten so far right that apparently being a mild social democrat is unthinkable, but then people who outright call for authoritarianism and building a series of camps for minorities who they want to deport is "disrespectful." Well, as I told said conservatives, I'm not changing my rhetoric. While a lot of the fascists tone police saying "STOP CALLING US FASCISTS", my own response is "stop doing fascist things." I don't use the term lightly, nor do I think all conservatives are fascists. As I've explained before with my 7 point Likert scale of political ideologies, I tend to view the 2-6 ideologies as compatible with liberal democracies, but then the 1 and 7 are so beyond the pale that they're fundamentally incompatible. MAGA is around a 6.5 right now and kind of edging up to 7. They're not as explicit or overt as the nazis of old (well, at least most of them aren't), but they're definitely dog whistling in that direction.

But first, I wanna discuss Reagan conservatism. For most of my life, conservatives have been so called "constitutionalists." They worshipped the constitution and the founding fathers to an annoying degree, arguing that any interpretation that doesn't align with their 1789 idea of what the United States is is bad, while rule policing the left to ridiculous degrees and screaming that WE'RE the authoritarians (remember when Obama was the "imperial president" who was overstepping his executive authority?), and arguing for things like states rights because we wanted black people to have civil rights, gay people to get married, people to be free to get abortions, and people to have healthcare. Remember that? Pepperidge farms does. As does anyone over age 30. 

And again, the rule policing was annoying, but I kinda understood it. At the core of their ideology was a fear of tyranny. As they saw it, we broke away from England to do away with monarchy and dictatorship, and to have a constitutional democracy based on constitutional rights, rule of law, and limited government. And they really, REALLY loved the limited government, because they feared that if we gave the government too much power they would use it tyrannically. 

The problem is, over the course of my lifetime, the GOP has become increasingly radical. Even if we use the 2000s as a baseline as it's MY baseline, and it's also before all the modern crazy crap, the modern GOP is barely recognizable on this one dimension. The tea party started this process of radicalization, and then Trump realigned the GOP into something much darker. And yes, 2016 was a realignment, it just wasn't the one I was hoping for.

The fact is, the populace started clamoring for a strong leader. In some respects, i get it, when your politics are weak liberals who dont wanna do anything, and conservatives who basically invoke the constitution any time liberals even try, people get tired of the status quo, they get desperate, and they want change. i was right there with the populace. But I never wanted a dictator. I wanted another one of those many strong executives who we've had throughout history, who kind of bent the rules, but never broke them, changing the system in beneficial ways, but then ceding power back to the people when they were done. Abraham Lincoln got a lot of criticism for his authoritarian measures during the civil war, but it was also...the civil war. FDR got screamed at a lot for imposing a New Deal and trying to pack the court when they tried to mess with him. I'm down for a leader who is willing to get down and dirty with the other branches if need be. But again, I never wanted a dictator.

Trump is a dictator, or at least a wannabe dictator. he's a dude who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was never told no, who can't handle being told no, and wants to be in charge. he wants to run the country like he runs his businesses, and keep in mind, businesses are basically mini dictatorships. He hates dealing with the press, with his approach to them similar to Hitler calling them the "lugenpresse." Internationally, he aligns himself more with the likes of Kim Jong Un and Putin, rather than other liberal democracies. He hates dealing with congress. he hates dealing with advisors in his own party. And during his first term, he was contained. But then when he lost the 2020 election he called it "fake news" and incited his followers to LITERALLY STORM THE CAPITOL. And it took Mike Pence, an old school constitutionalist conservative, to tell him no to his plans to steal the election. I might not like Mike Pence, or agree with him on much of anything, but you know what? He is a PATRIOT. He is NOT a fascist. he is a conservative. And what he did helped save democracy that day. Which is why the trumpers wanted to hang the guy on literal gallows that they brought outside of the capitol building. Again, not all conservatives are fascists. Nor do I claim them to be. But MAGA is going that way.

After 2020, Trump plotted his revenge, and came back in 2024 with a new agenda, enshrined in project 2025. He claimed project 2025 wasnt indeed his agenda, but as of writing this he's implemented like half of it. Key to that theory is basically unitary executive theory, which is a maximalist position that as much power should be concentrated in the executive branch as possible. But oh wait, i thought that republicans hated presidents who strongly used their executive powers? Guess that changed. And yeah. Trump has done as much as he can to purge the federal bureaucracy and install it with loyalists, many of whom arent qualified. His cabinet is unqualified, and full of idiot podcasters and the like. He's scared and intimidated congress into going along with them and fearing to step out of line. Those that do face his wrath. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned after invoking his wrath, and Thomas Massie basically recently had a tweet suggesting if he randomly "commits suicide", he didn't actually do it. Yeah. MAGA is not all right. 

The Supreme Court has given him broad executive immunity, claiming we can't prosecute the president as long as what he does is within his job. A dissenting member of the court mentioned that this potentially includes him killing his political opposition.

Trump is literally the most dangerous politician our country has ever seen. Again, we've had leaders who kind of overstepped for all the right reasons but never really went against the SPIRIT of American democracy, but Trump is just consolidating power under him. He's targetting the media, trying to pull licenses of shows who go against him. He's trying to undermine and threaten educational institutions. He's putting people who have progressive views on terror watch lists. He recently arrested Don Lemon for terrorism when in reality he was just doing journalism. He's sending armies of national guardmen and ice agents to swarm american cities, but only in blue and swing states. he's intimidating them into giving up their voter data. He's working with palantir, which is building a massive 1984esque blackmail database on all Americans. He's claiming voter fraud to try to make voting more restrictive, which is just intended to disenfranchise the opposing side. I mean, he's trying to be a dictator. HE'S TRYING TO BE A DICTATOR.

And let's be blunt about his immigration policy. Biden WAS a moderate. The conservatives I was arguing with were saying he let too many people in because of his refugee policy.  He let in refugees because of international law. We have a moral duty to let them in and process their claims. They claim there's too many claims to process. I shot back that we seem to have all of this money for concentration camps, but we can't seem to process the claims? What?

Which brings us back to the problem with MAGA. It's not that he wants border control, or whatever. As I said I'm flexible on immigration, I have no dog in the fight. I go where the political winds blow. You can only really piss me off if you either go full fascist, or full open borders, and MAGA is full fascist.

It's not about the law for them. They're just rounding people up, racially profiling, putting people in camps, deporting them to concentration camps in other countries with no due process. Then creating more of those camps here. People bristle at calling them camps, but they are. When you dont follow proper legal procedures, you're just arresting people willy nilly, and locking them up with no due process, often racially profiling while doing so, they're camps. This is Hitleresque. And as I like to tell people. Hitler didnt start with gas chambers and crematoriums. he ended with them. He started out by deporting people. Then he invaded other countries, took them over, and put them in camps. And eventually, the mass death began. We're not at that stage yet, but we seem to be building toward some dark, authoritarian crap.

What should a sane immigration policy look like? If you ask me, it's following rule of law and proper legal procedures, arresting people who shouldn't be here, giving them hearings, and then deporting them if they qualify. He isn't doing that. And he's also doing stuff like going after naturalized citizens, there were stories of him arresting people after the judge let them go and said they can stay. Yeah. Crazy stuff. I mean, these are lines we should never cross. Again, it's the lawlessness and indiscriminate nature of this stuff, and when you operate this way, what's to stop him from delcaring a national emergency, and putting all those people on his little terror watch list into these camps? Seriously. You see the danger. A constitutionalist conservative, a principled one, would say "yeah this isn't okay." But that's what Trump is doing, and the GOP is just going along with it. 

I'll say it again. Donald Trump is perhaps the greatest internal threat to this country that I think we've ever had. Maybe you can argue the civil war was worse with the confederacy. Idk. But barring possibly that, yeah, his presidency is a massive constitutional crisis. His actions are consistent with leaders who have tried to break democracies and establish dictatorships like Putin, Orban, or even Hitler or Mussolini. And at this point, I dont shy away from the references. Again, if you dont wanna be called a fascist, stop doing fascist things. It's that simple. I'm going to call a spade a spade. And if you're offended by it, I encourage you to read this again, and if a leftist was doing this to conservatives, what would you think? Because I look at it a lot like the end of democracy and free society and the start of an authoritarian dictatorship. 

And btw, i didn't even touch on how the DHS is nazi posting on social media, how more and more conservatives are outing themselves as fascists that wanna end democracy, or all the concentration camp jokes they're making in group chats. Seriously, I had another discussion with another guy who quoted ronald reagan claiming when fascism comes to the US it will come from the left. I asked for his argument to which he responded cancel culture. Which...I aint a huge fan of cancel culture because I do care about freedom of speech, but then when I agreed with him cancel culture goes too far, suddenly he's like 'well not all authoritarianism is bad", and then started saying we should be more like Victor Orban's party in Hungary, and how communists deserve to be cancelled. Assuming he means tankies, I'm not opposed to "cancelling" people with outright illiberal opinions, but that includes fascists and even this guy. hell, the whole justification for cancel culture is the so called "paradox of intolerance" and how we cant tolerate the intolerant. While the left is overreactive with that stuff, having a zero tolerance policy toward unpopular personal opinions, I am becoming increasingly okay with "cancelling" through informal means of course, not state sanctioned punishment, people with opinions fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy.

Hell, if we really want to start putting people on terror watch lists, those are the people that belong on them. Not normal lefties critical of christianity, maga, or white nationalism, but the most extreme and illiberal elements that pose a serious threat to our way of life. Again, the 1 and 7 people on my political scale. 2-6...youre fine. 1 and 7....not fine. Even then, only arrest them if they do wrong and respect their rights as much as possible. Just pointing out the FBI and DHS are going after the wrong people. Go after the people who literally want to destroy our free and open society. Not the people trying to protect that society from those people through peacefully expressing their first amendment protected views.

Again, if you cant see how MAGA is an authoritarian movement at this point and an actual legit threat to national security and our constitution and our actual important values, idk what to tell you. All I know is i aint shutting up as long as I still got my rights left.  

Which New Vegas Faction is best?

So...in light of the Fallout TV show, which had its first season free on youtube, and with there being relatively thorough recaps of season 2, the subject of New Vegas comes up again, and which faction is actually best for the Mojave. It's been a debate that's been raging since the game came out, and I've been on multiple sides of the debate over the course of my life. And now the TV show basically canonized one of these endings, which leads to...even more questions about which ending is truly the best, given my preferred one ended up being the canon one and it...not turning out so great as we saw from Season 2 of the show. With that said, let's get into it.

NCR

 The NCR is a faction I want to like, but am repulsed by. In a way, it reminds me of the modern democratic party. You wanna like them, but then you look at the details and you're just like "this ain't it dog." So...the NCR stands for the New California Republic. They're basically a liberal democratic faction based around bringing the old world back. In principle, they stand for freedom, democracy, rule of law, universal rights. All the good stuff. I mean, they're just about the first faction you come across (if you don't count Victor as being part of Mr House's faction, since you dont know that at the time), and they seem to be the good guys.

But then you start learning more about them. And here's the problem. Much like the modern democratic party, they're weak, inept, bureaucratic, slow to react to crises, spread too thin, and generally incompetent. Their presence in the Vegas area seems neutral to even negative. They can't properly defend their borders. Legion soldiers are regularly infiltrating their territory. You can't get law and order in primm because they're spread too thin. They got all those powder gangers (prisoners) escaping and it requires a whole subplot just to get them to retake that. And that's kind of the thing. Despite being an army, they need you, a courier with no ties to their paperwork and bureaucratic nonsense to do ENTIRE QUEST LINES just to get anything going. Nipton burned on their watch, and when you tell them about it the soldiers freaked out. Speaking of which, their morale is lower than a democrat in 2025. At least some of them still got some fight left in them. These guys? They dont. "WE'RE SCREWED, WE'RE SCREWED" seems to be the general vibe, and again, did I mention they seem completely and utterly paralyzed and unable to do ANYTHING unless you do it for them? It's like the represent the absolute worst aspects of liberal democratic ideals, while you never really see the best.

Then you got their actual downsides. Much like the real democratic party, and the real United States, despite being weak AF, they still seem surprisingly capable of...committing atrocities and doing black bag CIA crap that destroys their good will. Dont ask the Great Khans what they think of them because....well...they mightve massacred them a few times. And then the entire NCR quest line makes me feel dirty, like you're some CIA agent doing their dirty work like assassinating people who seem relatively benign and innocent in reality, like members of the Kings, that gang of elvis impersonators in vegas who actually seem to be trying to improve things in Freeside for the people there.

Meanwhile the NCR? Oh, we can't do anything, our hands our tied, we're spread too thin, you're on your own! But make sure you pay your taxes?

And yeah, a lot of libertarian types complain that these guys make you pay taxes. With law and order comes...taxes. And it's fine if you feel like youre actually getting security and a better life out of it....but you're not. Because again, much like modern democrats, these guys dont actually DO anything. They're overburdened, and spread too thin. 

And yeah....I mean, while i didnt think of it like this during my first play through, I have developed left libertarian tendencies since first playing the game, and in subsequent play throughs, I've kinda become turned off by them. I mean, taxes, civilization...in the fallout universe, are we actually better off bringing that back? I kinda prefer my freedom, to be left alone, to do my own thing. You can probably figure out where I'm going with that and who I've actually sided with until now, but idk...the bombs falling seems to have reverted things to the state of nature, and while nasty brutish and short for many...let's face it, the NCR is so useless it isnt making things better, and quite frankly, I dont really want to be put under their rule so....yeah. I never really cared for these guys. Even if I'm sympathetic with them in practice.

Caesar's Legion

Okay, so...while there's a lot of debate about the other factions and who is best...one thing all iterations of myself would agree with is that the Legion is BAD. If the NCR are democrats, these guys are MAGA, a cesspit of regressivism and everything evil and unholy in the world. Caesar is a Roman cosplayer who is a dictator who rules over 86 tribes. He rules by force, and basically burns, oppresses, enslaves, and crucifies all who get in his way. He tries to come off as some ancient bad###, with views steeped in the pre enlightenment era, but in reality I just see him as another petty strong man dictator. I hate these guys, and go out of my way to just blow them up and attack them repeatedly. It's a good source of caps and gear. 

Much like MAGA, their entire society is dominated by the cult of personality with one man. And when that one man dies, the Legion crumbles. Legate Lanius, his alleged successor in game, is just some meat head who likes fighting with swords. heck, the entire roman aesthetic goes too far. They kinda reject a lot of modern ways of fighting like...snipers, believing they're cowardly, and like to get up close and personal with melee guns, which are a semi viable option in game but in the real world, very much...aren't. In the first battle of hoover dam, they lost because they didnt have snipers. They believed them to be cowardly. Again if it doesnt meet their strong man bravado aesthetic, they dont do it. 

And at the end of the game, as you face down legate lanius, you can have political debates with him if your charisma is high enough. The general gist of your argument is even if the Legion can hold the dam, they'd overextend to do it, and lose their rear flank to the east. So they kind of give up their ambitions and walk away if you can convince them to surrender. if not they'll fight you to the end.

This brings up a core problem with both the NCR and legion. The NCR's home base is in California. And in extending themselves into New Vegas, they overextend, and its unclear if they can even hold the territory if they win. They arent doing much for the people of New Vegas because they lack the resources. Legion is the same. But unlike the NCR who at least have the ideals and pretense of being "the good guys", the Legion is just pure evil. Again, instead of democracy, rule of law and....taxes, you get authoritarianism, tributes, slavery, and crucifixions. They're big on crucifying people they dont like. They even did it to the TV show protagonist in season 2 for pointing out just how stupid their whole rip off roman culture was and how inauthentic to the real thing it was. Well that and she wasn't a virgin so they couldnt just marry her off to someone. These guys hate women.

Speaking of gender roles, I think the Legion is a good example of why "masculinity" is bullcrap. In the real world, the NCR gives off "virgin" energy, while the Legion are "chads", but these chads are stupid muscle heads who wont embrace technology and sound battle tactics due to their code of honor, and they also seem to...well....hate women. They tend to play well into that "hurr durr Im a big strong man and that makes me alpha" mindset though. But it's dumb. it's just so dumb. I mean....no matter what faction you like...can we all agree that it shouldn't be this one? 

Mr. House

So....full disclosure. My first play through, I was a Mr. House stan. It was 2010, I was still a republican/libertarian, and he really seemed to impress me. I mean, he was the man with the plan. While the NCR was overextending into Nevada from California, and the Legion was overextending from Arizona, Mr. House WAS vegas. He WAS nevada. He knew the bombs would happen. He had the technology and resources to save vegas. But...he was old and locked in a pod and attached to a computer and is 200 years old...and kinda needed a little help. Which is where you come in. You're a courier, your job was to deliver to him a platinum chip which would upgrade his army of securitrons with new firmware that made them more powerful. And he had an army of these things. Just a handful guarding the New Vegas strip seemed capable of blowing up any threats. And him interfering in any battle over Hoover Dam between the NCR and Legion would seem easy. HE'S not overextended this is his home turf. He can defend it well and has adequate resources to do so. So of the three factions discussed so far, he seemed to be a shoe in. I didn't even think of the downsides. I was just his loyal employee who helped him achieve his goals. 

So what are the downsides? Well....let me put it in terms we can understand in 2026. This dude is elon musk, basically. Ya know, tech billionaire, super smart and savvy, but also kind of an ###hole. He ruled vegas with an iron fist. he provided security, sure, but he also only let wealthy patrons who would spend money into vegas itself. The areas around it? Left to fend for themselves. Free side was in poverty despite vegas being all lit up. Ya know, kinda like having a rich area surrounded by a slum.

Of course, back then I was a right libertarian/republican. And I was like....well....was House entitled to help out others with his wealth? No, not really. But at the same time, he largely left people alone. Like really, outside of the strip he minded his own business, and was mostly using his forces to fight the other factions. So basically, he was a right libertarian. Super big on protecting "his properteh", but otherwise he kinda just left people alone, even though they lived in poverty, and struggled to get by. He provided law and order in his immediate vicinity, but also did F all for the people of vegas too. 

Again, I'm kinda selling myself on him here again. Because in my first play through, I was like "he's clearly the best steward of New Vegas." And...idk, maybe he still is. But then you gotta ask, should tech billionaires really be trusted with a private robot army? It's debatable. 

Also, apparently my own take was oversimplified, in watching other peoples' takes, I learned that in the ending, Mr House does actually kill people in freeside himself in the ending. Removing factions like the kings and all. Everyone seems to hate the kings, even though they're a bunch of elvis impersonators just doing the best they can in this messed up world. Rubs me the wrong way. 

House also seems to KINDA want the NCR to win, as they're his customers, but keep that in mind, he wants them to be HIS customers. NCR wants Hoover dam so they can run it and use the power for themselves. House wants it to sell the power back to them and make a profit off of it. What does profit matter in a nuclear apocalpyse? Apparently a lot according to House. Ugh. I swear, capitalism is a disease. And yeah, apparently his power rates are MEGA predatory. He can help you regain civilization, but at a very high price. This also rubs me the wrong way, as being a greedy ultracapitalist exploiting others isn't really ideal for me either. 

Anyway, despite this, I'm kind of talking myself back into the house ending, but then not really. let's look at the 4th option. 

Yes Man

Okay, so hate the NCR and how...decadent they are? Hate the Legion and all that they stand for? Hate Mr. House because he's basically in game Elon Musk warts and all? Well...I have a faction for you. What about NONE OF THESE?! You see, you know that guy who shot you in the head at the beginning of the game? Benny? He wanted to dethrone house and run vegas himself. He had a hacked securitron know as "yes man" who would help him do it...and after you kill him, his bot will help YOU. How? Well, you just take our mr house, upload him to house's computer, and BOOM, that massive securitron army? All yours! And then you basically choose what to do from there. Wanna get factions to ally with you? Take them out? Ignore them? Anything is possible with this ending.

Honestly, given how bad all the other options are, I go with this in more recent play throughs. Because let's face it, I'm a strong independent courier who dont need no faction telling me what to do. I kinda hate them all and want them to go away. I figure...if we just remove all three, we kinda get a status quo type option where the NCR Fs off back to California, the Legion Fs off back to Arizona, and then Mr House who is mr right libertarian dictator disappears too, and the wasteland just goes where it goes.

In my own head canon....the securitron army would still protect vegas, but you'd end up deciding what it does and where to go. 

Now...a common criticism of this choice is that this will leave much of the majave wasteland...a wasteland. There will be no real civilization, people will just have to make it in a lawless area...and I'm kinda fine with that, in theory. I mean, they already kinda are. How are any of these factions helping? The NCR is supposed to establish law and order but lacks the resources to do anything. The legion is just psychotic. Basically just a glorified roman cosplay raider gang that ended up becoming the top dog in their region. Mr House is just interested in ruling vegas while doing F all for anyone else. Why do we need these guys? We dont, or so I thought.

Anyway, as I said, this has been my logic up until season 2 of the new TV show. What has changed since then?

How the TV show changes things

The TV show takes place around 20 years or so after the events of the game. The Yes Man ending is the canonical ending. The courier killed Mr House, and neither the NCR nor the legion took over the area, although both seemed to kind of circle it like hungry wolves, waiting for the prime opportunity. 

With Mr House gone, the strip went to crap. Freeside is in ruins, overtaken by raiders and then...deathclaws. The strip...overrun with death claws. Yes man, still offline after it said it was gonna reprogram itself to be more assertive. Mr House...well....he had another backup plan. He uploaded his consciousness to the cloud basically but needed power to turn it on. Why not use Hoover Dam to power himself if he was gonna use the dam to sell power to the NCR? Who knows? But apparently he needed cold fusion from season 1 to reboot himself. And yeah, in the show....it looked like the BOS guy and the NCR cleaned up the deathclaws, the NCR is likely to take over the strip and people are cheering because they're actually bringing law and order this time instead of the area being dominated by raiders and deathclaws. There seems to be some debate of where the deathclaws came from. Early on it seems like it was said they came from Quarry Junction, which makes sense...in game quarry junction is overrun by the fricking things and it could be a good in world explanation that they just migrated north and turned vegas into a big deathclaw nest. But it's also argued the enclave brought them or something. Apparently the enclave is doing evil stuff behind the scenes. They're the remnants of the US government and unlike the NCR NOT the good parts. More the worst parts. And death claws appear to be created by them to kill their enemies. We see this in game too like in FO3. 

Anyway, so...the Yes man ending kind of sucked. It left the strip in a state of disrepair and just caused more pain and suffering for residents over time. Which begs the question. If I assume Yes Man is a bad choice...what makes more sense? NCR or house?

NCR vs House

NCR seemed very incompetent in game. They were weak, overextended, and unable to do anything. And yet, when they did do their black bag stuff, it always gave me "US government overthrowing people they dont like in shady ways" vibes and I always just ended up just....NOT finishing the NCR quests as a result. They left a bad taste in my mouth.

But at the same time, while Mr House could keep the peace and serve as a buffer between the NCR and Legion, turning the area into a no man's land for the other factions and making vegas relatively independent, it's always been a soft NCR win. Because he doesnt truly want the NCR to go away. He wants them to patronize his casinos. And sell them electricity...which...he could use to power his brain in a computer, but doesnt...because the idea didnt exist yet and that whole idea feels like a plot hole the more I think about it, just a way to justify bringing him back. But yeah.

So it's kinda like...does NCR run things, or does house?

Well....in a way this ALSO is like republicans vs democrats. Do we want the rich business people who are techno feudalists in charge? Or do we want an actual democracy that is, in theory accountable to the voters, as grossly imperfect as it is?

And I guess when I put it like that...I guess I'm more sympathetic to NCR? I think they'd do more good than house. House might have delusions of grandeur about how he'll eventually send people to space but who gives a crap if the people of freeside are starving? Let alone the rest of the wasteland. I like NCR based on their ideals. I just understand they're a very weak and ineffective faction in practice that regularly falls short of them. Much like certain real world equivalents I keep alluding to.

One thing I gotta say, by the time we get to the NCR retaking the strip in the TV show, they seem to be welcomed as heroes. People are cheering for them and they seem to be like FINALLY SOME LAW AND ORDER AGAIN. I guess life without a government really is nasty brutish and short, especially in a wasteland full of mutated abominations that otherwise kill the native populations. I guess anarchy isnt viable here and we kind of NEED a government after all. And it's best we get the democratic one.

But what about the Brotherhood of Steel?

So...one thing that always bothered me about New Vegas was the BOS being relegated as a minor faction. They're normally a MAJOR player in these faction fights. But in New Vegas, they're a minor faction. Apparently they had more substance at one point, but then they fought the NCR over helios one, another power plant, and they lost. And they retreated through scorpion gulch to establish their base in the hidden valley as a result. And they kinda just sit there....doing nothing. Many factions fear them. Youre expected to destroy them in a lot of the quests because they're otherwise expected to F you up. I think only NCR gives you an OPTION at peace, although Yes man faction is just...yes man faction.

But for a while, after FO3, I kinda wanted to be a BOS guy. I liked the BOS after 3 and I'd choose them over the other three at one point. Mainly because they're technologically advanced, and in FO3 were very humanitarian. However, at the same time, the BOS didnt have the ability to project power in New Vegas. Hence why they were a minor faction. However, let's say they connected with the other factions and we could make it work. Would I want them?

That's gonna be a resounding NO. 

So...the Brotherhood of Steel...they come off as humanitarian and the good guys in FO3, fighting the enclave, trying to bring clean water to the wasteland, but the BOS under Elder Lyons there was a branch that betrayed the core values of the brotherhood and was excommunicated from the rest of the organization. The normal BOS are much nastier. They're obsessed with scouring technology from the wasteland, believing its dangerous and they're the only one allowed to have it. So they are these technologically superior super soldiers while everyone else lives in squalor because they cant be trusted with tech. Lovely. 

And apparently Elder Lyons in FO3 was kicked out for...being the good guy? Yeah so...let's rethink that.

The fact is, that same faction under Elder Maxson in Fallout 4 is exactly what the BOS always was. A more technofascist organization that massacres mutants, even like...the ones that dont try to kill you, they're pure human supremacists. Theyre militaristic. And again, obsessed with hoarding tech. Tech for me but not for thee. 

And if another faction has tech, as we saw in FO4, they'll go to war with them. Not saying the institute is perfect (although I am an institute stan tbqh as far as 4 goes),  but yeah, they really seem to operate out of fear of everyone who isnt them and are quite militaristic as a result. And they kill those they dont like. And they're basically very authoritarian in a militaristic kind of way.

I dont vibe with the military command structure for one. One reason I never liked joining them in 4. And second....yeah. Again, all of the above. 

The fact is, the TV show doesnt make me like them any more. I mean, that raider lady ended up being the good guy wanting to give cold fusion to everyone. The BOS wanted to hoard it. And vault tech...well...they're basically enclave and evil by this point. But yeah. And the way they treat Maximus doesnt rub me the right way either. Anyway, they seem like they're in the middle of a civil war by season 2 of the show as all of the different factions are now trying to kill each others, and the new vegas faction doesnt even seem to exist by the TV show....probably because destroying them was canon. So...not really a good option. Not really helping here. Again, I kinda view them as techno fascists. Maybe preferable to the legion, but that's not saying much. MAYBE preferable to the yes man ending but even then...are they really? Not really. 

Conclusion

So where does this leave us? Well....F the legion. They've always been the worst faction to take over.

BOS...if we count them I'd put them above legion, but below the others.

The Yes man ending, anarchy, was my preferred option but seeing it 20 years on it doesnt seem to be working out. 

Mr House and NCR both have flaws, but at least the NCR has accountability to the people...so I'd go for NCR. 

They're decadent, corrupt, slow to act, overextended, a bit shady, but they still seem like the least bad faction. As Lucy said once, the legion is trying to enslave you and the other guys are just...vaguely problematic. And yeah, vaguely problematic indeed. They have flaws, but much like the democrats they're the lesser evil. Kinda in a "ugh are they REALLY the lesser evil" kind of way...but yeah...they are. So that's my analysis of New Vegas and its factions. I guess the TV show shifted me from "none of the above" (yes man) to being a reluctant NCR stan. 

Im tempted to play new vegas again, but I kinda got outer worlds 2 sitting there and havent played it yet. So I'm probably gonna do that instead.  

Election Update 2/13/26 (Midterms)

 So....I've been building my 2026 forecast system. It's not perfect so far, but I do have enough to discuss the house and senate somewhat.

Senate

So, where do things stand? Well, it looks like we're likely not gonna see much progress at all here. I dont have data for all states, but right now, it looks like we're gonna end up with another 47-53 Republican result, but with us trading Michigan for North Carolina. 

Now, to discuss individual results though, this is where things get interesting. 

Michigan is weird and the result depends on who wins the democratic primary. While for most races I just went with the most likely candidate to win, the race between Stevens and McMorrow is in a dead heat. If Stevens is the candidate, dems win with 1.3%, but if McMorrow wins, republicans win with 1.5%. And keep in mind these guys are pretty close to each other in the primary. So I averaged the two together and I basically got R+0.1.

However, we seem to have a soft lock on North Carolina to make that up.

Maine is another contentious one. If Mills wins, the republicans keep the seat. If Graham Platner wins, the democrats win. Mills is currently ahead in the primary, so the republicans are more likely to win. It's a lean R for me. 

Ohio and Texas are surprisingly squishy here given how strongly they went for Trump and are de facto tossups. In Texas, there's uncertainty as there are primaries on both sides. For simplicity's sake, I went Paxton on the republican side, and that gives us R+1 for both Crockett and Talerico (both of them are tied in the dem primary currently). 

Honestly, I think the polling for Ohio and Texas is too good to be true. I think its weird they're so squishy while Maine and Michigan are so uncertain themselves. Even if we did flip 8 points since 2024, we're still looking at R+5. Still, to keep my own opinion about what way the polling error is likely to go out of it, that puts all 4 seats in near tossup territory, where the GOP only has a 60% chance of winning the senate, the dems have a 31% chance, and there's a 9% chance of a tie.  

House

So, before I post the house forecast, I want to explain what I did here, and what its methodology is. First, here's the full unredacted version of it. I wont lead with this in future updates because look how small it is, and how hard to read it is, but I at least wanted to post a screenshot of it so people know what I'm looking at when I make these things.

 So, here's what I did. I realized using Cook PVI scores themselves are kinda misleading. I know in 2024 I had a system where I used the actual PVI score in lieu of polling data, but the PVI scores dont necessarily translate that way voting wise in practice. So instead, I took their ratings for individual districts, excluded the safe ones, looked up the 2024 election results in each of them, and put them in the above spreadsheet. This gave me 60 districts to look at. And then...I took the generic congressional vote from 2024, the ACTUAL results, btw, not the polling projection (it was R+2.7), I looked up the current generic congressional vote for 2026 currently (D+5.2), and then I shifted the above 60 districts the net difference (7.9 points) to deduce how I would expect people to vote if the public actually did shift the 7.9 points it appears that they did (and I believe this is actually accurate, given I saw something else recently suggesting the public shifted 8 points on biden vs trump). 

Will this be accurate? To some degree. I mean, individual districts very, and I know gerrymandering attempts in some states are throwing a wrench into things. However, when I actually looked at what districts are likely to flip from gerrymandering, I find the GOP is stealing 5 districts which can be seen above. Dems are stealing 2 back. And then there's a bunch more that are accounted for among the safe districts where the dems are getting a net 2 more. So, the GOP is taking 5, the dems are taking 4 back, and the net difference is R+1. 

Which....brings me to the results. Here's the short version of the above chart with only the important stuff I need for an overall forecast:

So....as I said, we're seeing a shift of 7.9 points from the 2024 result. And keep in mind, the GOP only won 220-215 under such conditions and I actually thought the house was a tossup in 2024. But with this shift to the left, we're seeing a 97% chance of democratic control. As for the margins, the model spits out 235-200 Dem, but again, keep in mind the net effect of gerrymandering seems to currently be 1 seat, so we're talking 234-201 Dem. 

That's my current prediction, that's what the data says and I think it's fairly accurate. It's basically a repeat of the 2018 results. That sounds about right. And yeah. Expect the GOP to lose a lot of seats. 

Conclusion

I may make a governor map at some point, but I'd like to see more data come in. I also might switch to a more conventional house election chart later on. However, for now, this seems to be what I can do this early and with limited polling data (to be fair congressional races are horrendously underpolled). 

But yeah....2026 is shaping up to be a bloodbath for the republicans. Assuming free and fair elections they will almost certainly take the house assuming polling is accurate. Their margin will basically be a repeat of 2018's midterms. 

The senate is more interesting. While I still give the edge to the GOP, it's shaping up that there is a real and growing chance the dems can just win big enough to flip states I previously saw as near untouchable like texas and Ohio. However, there's a lot of "ifs" at work here, and there's a lot of data that doesnt make sense. Michigan should be near solid blue if texas and ohio are in play, and if we applied the same trick I did to the 2024 senate results, i think the odds of the dems flipping those states is a lot lower. I'd expect more like R+5 in them honestly. Even though I think winning maine, north carolina, and michigan are plausible. 

Still, keep in mind it is early. These are very early predictions with very limited data. Nothing about these projections are final, they're about as valid as this prediction from 2024. Although that one actually did get it right...

Hmm...

Well, we'll see. Just take it with a grain of salt.  

Vaush is sounding like me, and I'm sounding like Vaush

 So...2024 broke the left. And...it's weird. Now people who were die hard Biden bros are now radicalizing into anti establishment progressives (to be fair Vaush has always been a leftist...), and people like me who were anti establishment progressives are turning into "democratic party shills", kind of. I mean, I'm not really a shill. I'm kind of in that Vaush territory of obviously being to their left but arguing to vote for democrats because of harm reduction, while these guys are like HELL NO I AINT VOTING FOR GAVIN NEWSOM. 

So what's Vaush's argument? Well, it's still harm reduction.  It's based on the idea that he advocated for people to vote for Biden in 2020 and 2024, people didn't in fact vote for him, and then the democrats turned around, did nothing, and then Trump came back in 2024 FAR WORSE than he was in 2020. Like...if Trump won 2020, he would've been a lame duck, would've been an ineffective president and then left office, but the democrats winning put their own gross incompetence on to such a blunt display that it caused Trump to win again. Meanwhile, Trump started out relatively tame, went bonkers when he lost 2020, been on the big lie ever since, and now he's morphed into full blown authoritarianism and fascism. Basically, if Trump won in 2020, we'd be in a better timeline.  

Now, to be fair, this is the same argument I've been making since 2016. in 2016, I figured I didnt want clinton to win because she'd do nothing with her power, and then the GOP would come back in 2020 and win big, possibly establishing a mandate. It would be better for Trump to have a relatively ineffective presidency because the dude was a moron who didn't know what he was doing, had no real agenda, no real means to materialize his agenda, etc. But he would be bad enough that people would look at that and go "yeah let's never do that again." And then we'd come back, run Bernie (hopefully the democrats would learn their lesson) and then we'd be in the GOOD timeline.

However, I must admit, I did make some miscalculations, some of which I was warned about.

1) The republicans were able to fill 3 SCOTUS seats. To be fair, part of this is the dems being their own corrupt mess of incompetence too. RBG shouldve resigned during the Obama era instead of dying of cancer under trump. And then they filled scalia and kennedy's seats. This has shifted the courts to the right, leading to an era of right wing judicial activism that largely benefits trump. This isn't fatal in and of itself since I do believe we have a shot with thomas, alito, and roberts have their seats up for grabs in the 2030s some time, but right now, SCOTUS can't be trusted to contain this trump administration in his second term. It would be one thing if they acted like legit constitutionalists, but they're not. 

2) The democrats never learned, tried the same 2016 playbook in 2020...and 2024...and probably in 2028....

3) That trump would be fundamentally unpopular after his first term. He hasnt been. He only narrowly lost 2020 and in 2024 he still had a coalition behind him. Even now, with the authoritarianism and concentration camps, politics has only shifted about 8 points to the left, which is substantial, but not like, coalition breaking. His coalition is still viable, and will remain viable for some time to come.

4) Knowing the future of MAGA and the GOP is tenuous, the GOP sees their future in voter suppression and radically changing the demographics of the country by purging and disenfranchising certain demographics hostile to its interests, and they are in a very real position with a very real danger to do this. This could head off any Obama era "coalition of the ascendant" that would otherwise happen. 

I'm not saying that we'd be in a better timeline had Clinton won in 2016. I do believe Vaush is right in that democratic incompetence and unwillingness to fight would get us in some variation of total GOP domination one way or another. If clinton won in 2016, she'd lose 2020 in a landslide, giving the GOP an in that way. But I am just pointing out that I thought like Vaush back in 2016 and 2020, and how the solution was to refuse to vote democrat to force them to change. But the GOP is doing unimaginable damage now, and the dems still havent learned, and quite frankly dont seem interested in learning. These are very dangerous circumstances.

And honestly? The fact that Trump is now so dangerous is why I sound like Vaush. In 2016, I'd argue we had the luxury of being able to pull off a protest vote. Trump wasnt that dangerous. He was just a normal politician at that stage as far as I'm concerned. While he always had some authoritarian impulses, it seemed clear that we had enough checks and balances to contain him if he tried anything. I mean, back then the GOP were so called "constitutionalists", and I believed the GOP itself would support those principles enough where they would push back against anything too crazy and authoritarian. And you know what? They kinda did. Trump tried January 6th, he failed, in part because of Mike Pence, his own VP, and the system worked. The system worked. it stopped trump's attempted coup. 

But things are different now. He went insane with the big lie since losing 2020, and in 2024, he morphed into something much darker. He wasnt just getting normal republicans in his cabinet, he was getting loyalists. He had the heritage foundation write project 2025. He had a plan to consolidate power. He had a cooperative congress, a cooperative supreme court. And he's GOING FOR IT. He's trying to dismantle our democracy.

Look, for years, I've criticized the democratic party for being useless. And I still do. Their uselessness is on full display during the trump era. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are a joke. They are not vigorously opposing Trump. And most 2028 candidates are establishment lightweights who won't be able to deliver better than Biden. Even if they win in 2028, and if we still have fair elections, they should, quite comfortably, we're at a D+8 scenario right now give or take based on more recent polling projections, they're gonna make the same mistakes Biden did and then lose again.

And the next wave of MAGA? Hooh boy. We're already seeing outlines of what they could be. If you think these guys are bad? The next wave WILL be worse. They'll be the Nick Fuentes types, the MTG types, ya know that anti establishment "America first" faction that sounds more and more like outright fascists. Trump is fascist lite. He has authoritarian tendencies but lacks the ideological commitment to the bit. he only cares about power. The next wave are gonna be the true believer types who are ideologically committed to the bit and who are openly fascist and white supremacist. That's where we're going. 

And I would agree with Vaush, the only way to head off this fate is if the democrats themselves change. But that's probably the worst thing about all of this. it seems quite clear that they have no intention of being responsive to the voters and will just come back every 4 years and demand we support them to avoid the fascist, and we're in a tough situation where we're darned if we do, but also darned if we don't.

In 2016 and 2020 I saw through their behavior, and I responded with their threats with my own that if they dont appeal to my politics, I aint gonna vote for them. It's a reasonable reaction in a world where democracy is assumed as a constant. You vote for a third party, the democrats lose until they get the message, and then they change. But that CAN take a few cycles of repeated losses to actually make it sink in. Here's the thing. We no longer have that luxury. Trump and his administration is too dangerous, and I'm worried about us having free and fair elections THIS YEAR. All it would take is a few congressional bills making it to his desk and him being able to implement strict voter ID laws, or destroying mail in voting, or reducing the number of polling places, or having the federal government (his people) counting the ballots, or him declaring a national emergency that allows him to suspend elections. And none of these are all that unthinkable. All he needs is 218 house votes (or whatever a majority would constitute these days, 214? 215? 216?), 50 senate votes, vance voting as the tie breaker in the senate, the bill reaching his desk, him signing it, and when challenged, SCOTUS either rules in his favor or he just ignores SCOTUS and does whatever he wants anyway since he also controls the justice system via pam bondi and kash patel. 

And that's what has me so freaked out. We dont have the luxury of forcing the dems to learn their lesson over a certain period of time of F-ing around and finding out.  We need these guys out NOW. 

However, Vaush is also right. If the dems truly learn nothing, they'll just make the same mistakes again, and we'll have a worse iteration of MAGA come back in 2032 that will not just finish what this one started, but worse. 

It's as if...the democrats really need to learn not to push wishy washy centrists, and I'm with Vaush, stop putting these people up, no one likes them, give us fighters. it's what I said since 2016. BUT....again....can I really embrace third party voting when the consequence is the guy who wins is literally Hitler? 

And that's the rub. Vaush is right. He's late to the party, or I'm early but he's right. BUT...maybe he's too late. I've been thinking about this, and I thought, okay, dealignment in 2016, maybe a realignment by 2028? (mirroring the new deal dealignment in 1968, but reagan winning in 1980) But with the 2028 candidates looking to be more Gavin Newsoms, and Kamala Harrises and Pete Buttigiegs and them running the party, I'm not seeing a progressive bench. bernie Sanders was our once in a generation realigning figure, and we blew it. And the democrats left are just...the same uninspiring clinton types I've been opposing all along. AOC is in there sure, but she's 4th and not well positioned for a win. We need a whole new candidate to come out of nowhere and win people over. 

Idk...2016 might've been the realignment, and now we're screwed. The time to fight was 2016, and 2020, and now, it's too late. The current alignment seems locked in and I dont see a way out. It's just the whigs vs the jacksonian democrats again. An ineffective opposition party opposing a crazy populist. It didn't have to be that way, but that's the way it went. 

So...idk. I'm kinda resigning myself to a vote for harris or newsom right now. That's where 2028 seems to be going. I hate that it's going that way, and by rights, these MFers should NEVER get our votes....but when I think about it...what would it take for me to vote democrat under those circumstances? It's basically that they'd literally need to run against someone like Hitler. And that's....precisely where we are. I hate to say it, but that's where we are. 

Maybe I'll change my mind after 2026 if we win big. If we can get checks and balances in and get this national emergency that is the trump administration and MAGA cancelled, I'd be willing to behave more normally. And maybe it would be better for the GOP to win in 2028...ASSUMING we have checks and balances from congress and the courts to contain their worst impulses. 

But right now, given that the trump administration is literally working on breaking elections and building concentration camps and terrorizing americans (not just illegal immigrants, but americans) with his ICE gestapo thugs, well....I can't afford to be picky. Democrats are sleeze balls, but at least they're not outright fascists. 

Still doesn't mean I wont be critical of the party. I'm very much gonna be critical of the party. And thats the thing. Centrist dem apologists hate you just for criticizing them. I had some biden bro type trying their weird pam bondi esque talking points (see the hearing the other day?) about how biden was the most progressive president ever and youre dumb if you didnt like him and blah blah blah. F off. I mean, you can maybe force me to vote for someone like that given the alternative is a fascist, but you'll never get me to actually speak more positively about them than they deserve. Biden sucked. harris sucks. Newsom sucks. Democrats suck. DEMOCRATS SUCK. 

I just understand that we're reaching levels of evil with trump that even I cant like...refuse to vote for them. So yeah, I guess I will support voting blue no matter who until this crisis passes. But like I said in 2024, this is a tactical retreat based on the circumstances, not a surrender. I dont like these people, and my principles have not changed. by rights, these people dont deserve a vote. But...again....if we dont back them, we might lose our democracy altogether. So let's not be stupid about this.  

ELECTION RED ALERT: Trump's plan to steal the 2026 midterms

 So, this one comes from Kyle Kulinski, who had a pretty thorough video on Trump's plan to steal the 2026 midterm elections. Basically, Trump wants to coerce Maduro (ya know, THAT one, the one he kidnapped from Venezuela) to claim he helped Biden steal the 2020 election so he can seize voting machines and have ICE do the counting. It sounds kinda crazy, but to be fair, it's Trump, and he's done crazy stuff already, so...

He also wants to disenfranchise mail in voters from voting by claiming voter fraud, and kyle is encouraging people to vote in person. I get the logic, but I also just mailed by mail in voting request for the year the other day, so that's already set. And I doubt my family would want to vote in person either given their age/physical conditions. Still, if you can manage to do it, it, it would help.

But yeah. As far as I'm concerned, this represents another possible attempt/scenario that Trump might weaponize to steal the elections. You are now aware of it, plan your vote accordingly. Just passing the info along since I plan on covering anything that could disrupt the 2026 midterm elections if I can. As I've been saying it's kind of essential for the future of the country for elections to remain free, and Trump is gonna try to break them. 

Responding to the post: "The problem isn't DICE, it's the community"

 So, I came across this post on reddit, but didn't get to it fast enough in time to respond to it and it got locked. And given this is very much...blog material given my blog at this point extends to gaming discussion if it has some deeper intellectual merit, and given I've posted on several adjacent topics, I wanted to give my thoughts here. 

 You can read the full post on the above link, but I'll copy the TLDR, as while I agree with the premise of the discussion, I very much don't think he made a positive argument for modern gaming, and I would actually hit the red button here to some degree.

 TL;DR: BF6 maps take longer because they’re way more complex. Paid DLC doesn’t fix that; it only adds paywalls. You won’t get BF4-style map quantity unless you accept BF4-level simplicity. You can’t have 2026 fidelity and 2013 output speed. The end.

 So...first. Let's discuss the obvious. DLC. This post was made in response to the myriad of whiners in the community going on about how paid DLC was SOOOO much better than live service. Hard disagree. Even if we got more content, it was more expensive. people are complaining we'd be on our way to getting our 3rd DLC if we were on BF4's release schedule, and how we got so much more content back then. The argument is live service is worse because the content is free, which disincentivizes businesses from making it. I would actually somewhat agree with the premise, but you know what? FINE. 

I HATED DLC. I HATED season passes. I'd rather get 1-2 maps free every few months, than have to pay almost double for a game to get the full experience. And from what I understand the business model wasnt that successful anyway, since only a small minority actually bought and played the premium maps. IIRC, origin actually gave a lot of them away later for free just to get people playing them again. 

But yeah, DLC sucked. I hated it, I'm glad it failed as a business model and largely disappeared. I'd rather get half the content for free, than to get 2x as much but then have to also pay 2x as much. I paid $90 for BF4 back in the day with the premium. It was one of the few games I ever bought with it since i despised the model, but I just loved BF so much I shelled out for it. I paid $40 for BF2042 and $50 for BF6. I paid as much for BF4 as I paid for 2 BF games, and that's with inflation. F premium. Even if BF4 was a very good game in part because of the strong level of support. 

Now, with that out of the way, let's address the post. Basically, this guy is saying even if we changed the model, we couldn't get more content now because gaming takes more time to make maps. Okay. Well...I am VERY opinionated on 2020 gaming and think that games being too ambitious is part of the problem. I've previously discussed my idea of peak gaming, and how the ever increasing complexity of games is making development cycles more expensive, last longer, and also require increasingly ridiculous hardware demands while the price of computing is also going up due to moore's law. Basically, this guy is saying we can't have 2013 level content output any more because of this complexity. 

And...you know what? Go back to 2013. or, more specifically, 2016-2018. Still gen 8, still beautiful looking, better than 4, but not as good as modern games in theory. Because let's face it, I barely notice the difference these days. As I've said lately, I hate how modern games look anyway. Developers in modern game play cycles make games have such good fidelity on paper that gamers can largely no longer play them at native resolution, and the games tend to try to scale down using TAA, or FSR/DLSS by default. This makes the games extremely blurry. And you know what? I dont care how good your lighting and other effects look if the game is running at fricking 720p just to hit 60 FPS on low on a $250 GPU. I really don't. It looks like TRASH. And I keep feeling like, playing my new 2025 era games that I'm like, whats wrong with me? Why is everything so blurry, is my eyesight going back? And then I see some old game from like 2007 and it looks so much clearer even with lower graphical fidelity and I'm like "oh, it's not me, it's the game." I HATE THIS, DEVELOPERS! STOP DOING IT! I don't give AF about your art style, if games look blurry AF on reasonable hardware. I swear, we are seeing the downfall of gaming with this stuff. And I almost kinda wish for a video game crash like the 1980s, where these big budget blockbuster games fail because they bite off more than they can chew and their business model becomes unsustainable, so that the market resets to something that works.

I don't want to wait until 2029 for TES6. I don't want to wait until the 2030s for fallout 5. It used to be in gen 7 that you could pump out a new game every 2 years or so. Don't believe me? Oblivion, 2006, Fallout 3, 2008, Fallout New Vegas, 2010, Skyrim, 2011. Now it takes 5-10 years just to make one. I'd rather have more content at lower fidelity....than to keep doing this 2020s era BS.

Btw, since that post from last month about modern games being blurry, I looked into modern AA methods and why we dont use the old ones like MSAA. And it's the same arguments this guy is making above. The technology of modern games is different. It's supposed to be better, but in terms of anti aliasing, I think it's markedly inferior. Because it DOES basically impose blur on the player. TAA is horrible. It's such a joke this is the default. It's SOOO BLURRY. AMD's suite of ideas like FidelityFX CAS and FSR are better, but not perfect. Apparently DLSS and its AA version, DLAA are great, but you need to buy nvidia which is overpriced for that. And yeah I know some are gonna say I should've bought nvidia, but I shouldnt have had to pay 50% more just to get games to be less blurry. I just want good old native resolution. I HATE this new tech. Again, if we could go back to like 2016 or so, that would be great. I always hated this modern tech, it's always been forced on me, and when you're like "oh but you see, you gotta go back to like 2013 to not have these issues with modern gaming" like it's an own I'll say DO IT, DO IT NOW! SLAM THE RED BUTTON, SLAM IT! Because to me, those games still look good. Again, ideally I'd go like 2016-2018, but the point is, I would go back to before this modern crap existed. I dont think games in the 2020s look appreciably better than that stuff, if anything, they look WORSE because of this stuff. While being more demanding. Again, peak gaming. Learn about it.

So yeah. The 2010s can keep their crappy DLC business practices, but if the problem really is the 2020s era tech being so hard to use, yeah, go back to the previous gen and stay there. I'd rather have my games look reasonably good and get content in a reasonable time frame than for it to take months and years to make content only for the games to look like crap at the end of the day anyway. That's my take at least.  

As for the community...is OP right about the community? Yes. And I've stated my own thoughts already on this. This community is in a state of collective delusion and bashing the best game we've had in a decade. Now they're screeching over content release cycles (which are pretty standard and reasonable tbqh) and going on about how DLC is better. I think it's wild we literally got a group of people defending DLC as a model. It sucked then, I'm glad its gone. And again, if the devs listen to these people, they're gonna ruin the game. Their views arent based on reality but on some weird sense of nostalgia about how great the game used to be while not living in the same reality as the rest of us. I like the classics too but I aint completely and utterly delusional about them either.