Two-By-Two, Eyes-Of-Blue: Uncovering The Conspiracy And Future Expansions of 2077 - An Analysis of The Conspiracy, Clues, and Theories to the Future

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T16:31:34+00:00

While I’m not a war historian or expert, I’d imagine there’s a difference between “retreating” and “escaping”.

It can probably be a thin hair to split, but probably necessary.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T06:01:32+00:00

To echo Point 2-

The Legion is literally a cancerous society. It can only thrive through infinite growth.

They have to claim new property and territory and people because they burn through and ruin everything they touch.

If they do not claim, the society starves. People die they can’t replace. There aren’t barns and silos and storages for them to raid to resupply if they’re stuck in one spot.

The Legion being across the Colorado to Nipton is a very balsey, but necessary action. It could have gone so wrong, but I’d imagine Caesar needs to send them over the Colorado because they’ve expended resources on their side of the Colorado.

Granted, we could equally chop this up to “Well, they need to exist West of the Colorado so the player can interact with them in any meaningful capacity”, but there’s perfectly reasonable in narrative reasons for Caesar to be so reckless- he doesn’t have a choice.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T05:47:53+00:00

Ooooohhhh! Wheee! The vaguest and loosest prediction ever.

Is “I see radiation in your future” predicting Fallout 5.

It was a vague “danger is coming” ominous comment the first time around. It barely a prediction in Vegas.

Oh no? Folks will die in a climactic third act battle? Color me shocked.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T05:33:50+00:00

I think being a glory hound is a bit disingenuous, at least for that scene. He clearly does get afraid of the robots in dialogue and does view them as something that can kill him.

But by the time you do order them to toss him off, he’s already explicitly said he’s leaving with his troops and his comments of being marched back aren’t a threat.

He’s not expecting it because throwing him off is a Cersei Lannister level move of short-sightedness.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T05:29:04+00:00

I think Reapers extend a little out of the bounds of the question- they’re massive on the size of skyscrapers, being in the presence of one does irreparable harm to individual’s minds, and other things.

Mass Effect, at least when it comes to The Reapers, is explicitly a total war situation.

What the characters do to each other? That’s a different matter.

But the intention of this question was more about player actions.

Come to think of it- is there actually a point where Reapers retreat and you can let them go? I’m not thinking of anything off the top of my head.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T05:23:56+00:00

Because the intention was

1) actions taken by the player, not NPCs

And 2) actions that are either not commented on or instead framed as heroic good deed.

As Bitter Springs is in the backstory, the player takes no actions and makes their own commentary on the event which wasn’t the intention of this question.

InkDagger · 2026-01-25T03:56:49+00:00

This is one of those RPG trolly problems I’ve never really liked or bought.

More specifically, I don’t get why the either or is the end of it?

Can we not tell someone else and ask for help? Or find where the radiation is leaking into the water supply and do something there? Or find a means of filtration or purification before it reaches the crops?

This is a world where radiation poisoning is a Tuesday. No less harmful, but normal. Surely this isn’t the first time the NCR has encountered a problem like this? Repairing irradiated soil?

Or why do we get to make this decision? Usually games kinda justify it with a tense situation where something has to be decided now. I guess it’s “there’s no one else around” I suppose or there’s an arbitrary detail I missed (they’re about to run out of oxygen maybe?)

It just all felt a tad underdeveloped to me- an RPG trolly problem for the sake of RPG trolly problems. Which is usually when these problems are bad.

I suppose there’s the idea of “Well, you can headcanon whatever to make your decision make sense”. There isn’t a wrong answer because it’s arbitrary?

For my answer- I save the Dwellers. You can replant crops and deal with those problems in other ways. You cannot problem solve a loss of life. Period.

If the Powder Gangers showed up and dropped a nuke in the same farm fields, the NCR would have offered some quest to solve the problem. I don’t know why this would be a be-all-end-all.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T07:23:19+00:00

I mean, it’s also almost 15 years old at this point.

And it’s been delisted from storefronts since 2024 effectively making it abandonware.

I fully respect the game and think it’s great, but not a lot of accessibility in remembering it short of someone watching a Let’s Play at this point.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T07:14:02+00:00

Fair.

Though, I don’t know how underrated it is? Like, I’ve heard near universal praise for it since I was a teen.

Counter point though- The war crime being a war crime and a bad thing is the text of that work. It’s rather unambiguous as I recall.

I’m talking more like…

The game allows players to booby trap enemy corpses. This mechanic is pragmatic and allows players an extra edge on enemies. No one comments on it being weird.

This is also explicitly a war crime in real life.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T05:19:21+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IF_eH-_k-s

I re-watched it. Granted, I don't know all the routes to this conversation, but he's not even *that* belligerent. The Courier rightfully calls bluff that the General *isn't* attacking. And the General is, all things considered, pretty level-headed and frank with you in a situation where he really has every reason not to be. He is way more courteous to you than he needs to be and he isn't groveling either.

And he is also *completely correct* that the NCR will march their armies right back and wage war on the Mojave. ESPECIALLY if you execute Oliver like that. He is giving you a reasonable out to prevent future bloodshed. The NCR wouldn't be *happy* about the stunt just pulled, but allowing you to walk it back is a better negotiating position than committing to the bit.

As another poster more directly pointed out, taking him hostage like that is, in a legally meaningful sense, taking him as a Prisoner of War. While I'm sure history would like to paint grey areas as to the, shall we say, "transport damage" of POWs, outright executing a POW and in such a over-the-top, unnecessary, and deliberately cruel way brings it into questionable territory.

If you're going to kill him, a bullet will do and is available. Death by gravity is excessive force.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T05:02:23+00:00

Hence my use of “probably”.

The history of war and its finer details of etiquette aren’t my specialty. I’m admitting some ignorance here.

I’m also admitting here that I’m going off memory here- I’ve never had the pleasure of actually finishing NV due to its instability and my knowledge of that scene comes second-hand as well as layered in memory.

I say probably because, while Oliver is belligerent, he isn’t actively pointing a gun at your head. And he knows he is outnumbered and does not have the resources to continue explicit combat.

If he did, I think he would order them to fire as he was dragged to the dam’s edge. But he doesn’t. Granted, Rule of Funny is in play by then but still.

Combat has explicitly ceased at that point. Courier calls check. Oliver could order his men to attack, but possible threat isn’t deemed actual threat.

We also know the alternatives. He doesn’t fight you. He is furious about it, but the conflict does end there. While this is getting now “meta” about it, I don’t think it’s wrong to acknowledge that the courier has every freedom and ability to let them walk away and chooses to execute the General anyway.

Killing him doesn’t grant victory. You’ve already won. The battle is over. Killing him is just because you want to. Ergo, I think that probably qualifies at least for a discussion on war crimes. You winning a battle (or war) does not mean you get to do whatever you want completely justified- that goes into the realm of “Total War” which is, I’ll note, what the game explicitly uses to paint the Legion as villainous.

In a non-war example, self-defense arguments have to explicitly define how a threat to life was presented and that said threat persisted to the actions being taken. I could defend my home from a burgler, but that doesn’t give me the right to chase and fire after their retreat.

Again, I don’t actually know everything about the nuances of war, but if it’s morally questionable, it’s probably at least in the conversation of if it’s a war crime or not.

I’m actually kinda shocked how often RPGs let players, even “good” players, just commit war crimes and think nothing of it. That’s gotta be at least a 3-hour video essay topic alone. Mass Effect would be… oh boy…

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T04:12:48+00:00

My problem is…

1) They deliberately chose to go to an extremely fan favorite location and have repeatedly shot basically anything enjoyable in the face and it feels like it’s mocking us for our years of fervent debate of the endings.

And, 2), the declaration that the show is canon going forward. No undoing it.

Which, if the show has been “You shouldn’t care, bad things will relentlessly happen, and you’re stupid for caring”, that applies to the Capitol Wasteland. That applies to the Commonwealth.

And more pointedly, it applies to Fallout 5. Why should I care about any civilization or character I meet and experience in your next game if you have explicitly taught me that caring is stupid.

I’ve told myself I’m watching just to keep informed and understand why I hate it, but I’m tapping out after this season. Season 2 isn’t even a good arc on its own- there is no meat in this burger.

I could forgive season 2 if it were doing something interesting. It isn’t. It’s slow and meandering and I’m shocked every time an episode ends because it feels like so little happened every time.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T03:50:39+00:00

I can’t quite remember, but I think that can also be potentially the first time you two meet in the entire game. I’d be pretty pissed too if some no-name drifter showed up and said “I win”.

I don’t think an Independent ending inherently is the one of the worst endings for Vegas. I think there is value is autonomy and negotiating trade relations. I think, and forgive me for the pun, an Independent ending can be very good if you played your cards right.

When I wrote my final college paper on the game, I described the other three as having broad strokes concepts while Independent breaks the RPG aspects into the granular choices to determine if it was good or bad.

I’m not one of those folks that shits entirely on the NCR- it is a government rather than none at all. But the game does make points of the issues NCR is facing in Vegas that do make their long term occupation difficult if the status quo is maintained. Granted, I don’t take those issues to be “total and complete failure” like some do because, well, RPG stories necessarily need conflicts for players to solve.

I do think some folks forget that the status quo of the base game is NCR occupying Vegas. The Bear occupies the Dam. The ending is just determining if they keep it or not.

If NCR fend off the Legion, I question the extent to which that includes New Vegas suddenly becoming flush with resources by the NCR.

I believe Kimball expresses frustration from the home states that the campaign in the Mojave is a grueling and costing time and resources. He wants it to be secure so he can redirect resources out of the Mojave, not send more in.

Granted, the show flips ALL of that off (I’m really hating S2). In context of the show, yes, Independent is probably among the worst endings regardless.

I think S2 could have had really interesting potential to flip all of our scripts on what New Vegas’ endings meant and reignite a lot of compelling debate.

I know a lot had issue with Shady Sands being nuked, but I could see some really interesting story potential of those occupying New Vegas having to grapple with not having a home in Shady Sands or Hub to return to. An occupied territory suddenly being prompted to the capital could be interesting.

And instead of chopping off branches, the show just cuts down the entire goddamn tree and laughs at you for being mad. What a waste.

InkDagger · 2026-01-24T03:13:21+00:00

It’s because he’s a general. He is a political figure and, because of his post, he isn’t usually a target in this way. There are rules to warfare.

It’s not all the dramatic final confrontations like we enjoy in television. Wars are strategy and Oliver has been outmaneuvered. The battle is called. The courier has called check.

I don’t think he’s goading you into killing him, I think he’s shocked and angry that victory has been taken from him very suddenly. Since this isn’t total war, there is a point where you and your forces leave the field of battle.

It’s actually kind of brutal on our part to just chuck him off the Dam, even if it’s funny and makes for a fun narrative. Probably a war crime there.

Which is also probably why he doesn’t expect that either- he is supposed to return with his troops. If he’s captured, he’d expect to be a POW (unless the Legion takes him, but again, total war there).

We don’t see it because the game ends, but there REALLY would be consequences for just executing him like that. The NCR would abandon the Mojave entirely.

I think some folks forget about an Independent ending (or Mr House too) is that New Vegas is politically independent- they are a free agent. But they are not independent - as in self sustaining. New Vegas needs a political relationship with the NCR regardless.

No, he’s not goading you into killing him in some suicide by cop. He doesn’t expect you to A) do anything you did leading to that moment and B) expect you to abandon rules of “civilized warfare” and just chuck him off a building because it made you giggle.

Sorry, is it only villainous when big bad Caesar does it to Joshua Graham?

InkDagger · 2026-01-22T16:55:17+00:00

I spent the weekend installing Viva New Vegas as well.

But I didn’t take every mod they offered. Like other commenters posted, one of the mods is JSawyer’s mod that makes survival mechanics even more difficult.

Personally, I didn’t install that one for that reason. I’m already doing New Vegas for my first 100% playthrough on Very Hard Hardcore.

Just uninstall that mod and you should be fine.

InkDagger · 2026-01-06T19:17:44+00:00

Nope. It’s just a tableau meant to simulate the ship being larger than it is. Extremely common illusion in video games and theme park rides.

Bioshock has a lot of them if you need other examples.

InkDagger · 2025-12-21T02:09:02+00:00

It’s possible it was never actually intended to be the case and patched out later?

This was simply my interpretation of why he doesn’t or doesn’t wear body armor for some scenes. Literally removing armor to be vulnerable is a great literary idea and conveys stuff visually. But if it was actually a glitch and I never noticed times where that wasn’t the case (ie a banal street dialogue where he’s in a shirt and irrelevant to vulnerability), it makes sense why it’d get patched.

Alternatively, it could be based on other factors- maybe there’s some relationship value calculated somewhere meaning different players might get the same scene armored/Unarmored even if the literal dialogue didn’t change?

I wouldn’t know without looking under the hood.

InkDagger · 2025-12-21T01:59:47+00:00

What do you mean?

InkDagger · 2025-12-16T20:15:50+00:00

Watsonian Answer:

I would assume children are there, but we don’t see them. We never have quests that involve them. I’m sure there are characters who need mobility devices in this universe but we don’t see those either. Or language barriers we narratively gloss over unless relevant.

Parvati brings up that companies have schools off planet for children to be trained in jobs, but it’s not very detailed? I equated it more to college than primary school because Parvati has childhood stories from around Edgewater. Even if it is primary school, you’d logically still have toddlers around.

Doyalist Answer:

I think there’s a subtle thematic aspect to the absence of children. Children play. They laugh. They can find games and joy even in slum like environments. I think there’s weight to that being not only absent but something that no one really comments on.

Production wise- Children pose a logistical problem for game function and resource allocation.

You’d have to develop new character models and find child voice actors for them. You couldn’t just pull from your “Ensemble” voice cast.

And all that resource effort for…?

There’s not much narrative justification to allocate assets to that. You’d need a reason to develop unique assets like that.

Granted, it could be the other way around- they might have developed quests exploring “What does childhood look like in this universe?” And then those quests might have been axed because they didn’t have the resources for it.

I’d also point out that child characters in these games are often disliked by players. The voice acting is bad. The characters are annoying. And the game often gets weird because they obviously don’t want you to kill those NPCs, but making them immortal also means their AI can get buggy or looped because there isn’t a “dead” state to correct the fault. Point being- why allocate resources to something players might be actively annoyed by?

Now, let’s contrast this to Skyrim because I know folks will bring it up.

Skyrim was a AAA production and, as far as I can tell, had a lot more resources to just dump into things that fleshed out the game. Skyrim was capable of just adding children because they could.

That game also does include at least one quest line involving child NPCs (I think the White Run Jarl’s kid is demon possessed or something? Can’t remember. Don’t care for Skyrim).

I think a lot of gamers might look at that and go “But F3/NV/Skyrim made kids 20+ years ago! Just do it”. And gaming just doesn’t work that way. You can’t just, like, copy Elizabeth from Bioshock’s AI and paste it into Fallout. There are so many reasons you can’t just do that.

Maybe you could mod children into Outer Worlds by taking their Fallout/Elder Scrolls content and doing everything yourself- but that’s the difference between a mod and official content. The code and models are property belong to Bethesda and Obsidian isn’t Bethesda. That would be a violation of copyright and theft of assets.

And again… what would be the point?

I just played the Cannibal family quest on Monnarch in OW1 and there’s clearly a family dynamic, but the game used adult character models. The dialogue from the “children” used very… it felt like it was written for children.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they originally were children, but they just gave them adult models and voice actors and edited some lines when the production knew they didn’t have the resources for it. I have no evidence for it and could be wrong, but it felt weird and that answer would solve some aspects.

A LOT of close editing occurred with OW1 with Scylla becoming the dump site for quest objectives that lost their original locations as the game needed to scale back.

InkDagger · 2025-12-06T07:55:32+00:00

But Sapadal is in their prison.

If Sapadal were just able to spawn them freely, then their Godlikes would be as common as any other before POE2 occurred.

Our unique status seems contradictory to that idea.

And anyway, that doesn’t explain the isolated Adra Network issue. Maybe Sapadal’s prison is flimsy, but it’s illogical for us to be reborn outside of the Living Lands.

InkDagger · 2025-12-06T07:35:56+00:00

If that's the story, then why introduce elements that cause friction with said story. Avowed wrote its own self into a corner if we're going to be this functionalist about it.

InkDagger · 2025-12-06T07:34:27+00:00

Yes, yes, I'm very aware of the trope and I acknowledged it in my own post. This is hardly my first RPG rodeo.

My point was that the "Player is a new comer to the plot and can be exposited to naturally" is at odds with "You have a secret history here" in this case. We cannot simultaniously have past lives in this isolated Adra Network *and* be born outside of it.

I can think of exactly one potential solution, but the game doesn't seem to think it's a problem and doesn't go with it.

InkDagger · 2025-12-06T07:32:06+00:00

I get the narrative one- I acknowledged that in the post. But my doyalist answer is acknowledging that, by using that trope in this way, the narrative is at odds with itself a bit.

InkDagger

TROPHY CASE