According to the game’s director, the members don’t see eye to eye.

That’s what makes Fallout: New Vegas such an incredible game, and its factions are the best part. The New California Republic (NCR), Caesar’s Legion, and Mr. House’s Securitrons are prevalent in the Mojave Desert. There’s hardly an NPC who doesn’t shed light on one of these factions. Much of the interaction in New Vegas revolves around the factions because that was the goal. In the latest episode of The Examined Game podcast, Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer explained that one of his and his team’s primary goals was to make faction members feel like they belonged. Sawyer cites the NCR as a specific example of this design philosophy in practice:

“When a faction feels monolithic, every member is just like, ‘I’m this guy. I believe in this thing, and this is the thing that everyone believes in.’ One, nobody’s like that. Two, it paints too simple a picture for the player and their decision-making. One of the things people wrestled with regarding the NCR is that it’s composed of many different people. Some are extremely virtuous and well-meaning, some are well-meaning but do bad things, and some are actually malicious and petty. That’s a democracy, right? That’s what being in a republic is like.

You have to come to terms with the fact that it contains multitudes. Then there’s Caesar’s Legion. It’s as if they’re saying, “Well, there is an ideology here.” Caesar himself has a certain intellect that makes a certain amount of sense from a certain perspective. But then you have his rank and file, who are, for the most part, repulsive and abhorrent in their beliefs and outlook.” I like it when factions and people are complicated, and when, over time, the player has to keep thinking not just about the people they’re talking to, but also about their place in it because they’re a participant. When role-playing games are at their best, you feel like you’re really at the center of these decisions. You can’t control everything, but you can control a lot,” said Sawyer.

Canyon Runner is a slave driver in Caesar’s Legion and is nothing more than a minor character overall. At the same time, he embodies many things. No matter how much he boasts about the Legion and his loyalty to it, he constantly and subconsciously makes mistakes revealing that he has not yet completely shed his former tribal identity. Caesar’s entire argument—that he will recreate the world from scratch by molding the inhabitants’ identities into a unified and homogeneous form—is exposed as a complete lie during a conversation with a minor character.

Moments like this make it clear that the game did not win over Fallout fans by accident.

Source: PCGamer