Dealing with the Canyon (minor spoilers)

[Consigliere]

So I am at the Canyon, at the point where I gotta decide between suicide bombers and well armed/organized raiders (this is how I perceive the situation), and this is my first playthrough.

I know there is disarming or giving the nuke away, and deciding who ultimately controls the area but from where I stand I don't want EITHER group to remain in power, as the Desert Rangers we don't make alliances with raiders of any kind and the DBM was a lost cause to me when I found out they stole from water merchants and left them to die. I know that canonically, the Rangers themselves have done some questionable things, but AS a Ranger I feel like this is exactly the sort of situation for which the Rangers exist to prevent, and punish. (if this were a Fallout game, I would have an ENTIRELY different disposition lol)

So not knowing what the actual outcome might be for any of the choices, I REALLY wanna just....shoot everyone, I don't usually do that in RPG type games but again I feel that returning to the lawless wastes - just like everywhere else - is a better choice than having religious nuts with nukes or an armed militia basically running an extortion racket.

But I don't know how that will affect things, for instance at least two of my followers complain if I shoot people unprovoked, and its in my interest to keep them happy, and as a representative of the Desert Rangers I don't want to smear "our good name". So I was wondering if anyone has tried extermination of both groups, and can tell me if that is an okay way to go, mainly I don't want to remove any big future quests by killing/angering the wrong person but also if it affects how later characters react to you?

Thanks =>

[Gillsing]

In order to kill the DBM you just have to walk armed into their hidden base. Don't know if that'd let you then mess with the computer in the silo, which normally turns the monks against you, but it could be worth an attempt. This is without shooting peaceful/innocent people, thereby keeping your NPC recruits content.

Disarming the nuke and/or killing both sides would let regular raiders take over the canyon. In the end I don't think anyone outside the canyon cares about what you do to the people fighting over it. But I haven't finished the game. There could be ending slides that say something else.

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Consigliere:

I know that canonically, the Rangers themselves have done some questionable things[...]

Actually... canonically, the Rangers have been pretty decent all-round!

The most "questionable" deed was the supposed-murder of Bobby in Highpool, but the canonical events were that Bobby was upset that they killed his rabid dog Rex (which they had no choice but to do), and they mistook his BB gun for a deadlier weapon so they shot him in "self defense" in the confusion. The fact that he managed to survive his wounds doesn't change the nature of the altercation, but the nature of it WAS a mistake, not cold-blooded murder. Plus, the rangers who were part of that group feel bad about it to this day. So they were hardly bad people by any stretch.

Now in WL1 you have tons of freedom to do whatever they hell you wish, including wanton destruction, if that's what you want! You can take job to assassinate mob boss Faran Brygo, then turn on your untrustworthy employer when he refuses to pay and instead lures you into a trap. You can slaughter an entire encampment of savages and steal their surprisingly-valuable arsenal. You can kill off then entire Topekan tribe during your visit to the nomads' camp. But again, canonically, the Rangers didn't do ANY of that.

Originally posted by Consigliere:

AS a Ranger I feel like this is exactly the sort of situation for which the Rangers exist to prevent, and punish. (if this were a Fallout game, I would have an ENTIRELY different disposition lol)

I'm curious by what you mean by that!

I mean, modern Fallout is a FAR CRY from original Fallout, and I am an OG fan of the series. And those games never really encourage you to be a bad person. But they let you BE a terribly, TERRIBLY evil bast*rd if you so choose, and then suffer the consequences. But the modern games just treat it like a joke, and worse, FO3 treats being saintly just as punishingly as if you were the antichrist himself, so combined with the terrible writing and the unrelatable characters and the godliness of being able to commit mass-genocide effortlessly, and naked, completely rendering any sense of morality as a game for you to toy with, I can understand having no compunctions towards needless slaughter in the modern games (save FONV).

But I dunno if that's what you mean...

Originally posted by Consigliere:

So not knowing what the actual outcome might be for any of the choices, I REALLY wanna just....shoot everyone
[...]
But I don't know how that will affect things[...] So I was wondering if anyone has tried extermination of both groups, and can tell me if that is an okay way to go, mainly I don't want to remove any big future quests by killing/angering the wrong person but also if it affects how later characters react to you?

What happens in Canyon of Titan, STAYS in Canyon of Titan!

But seriously, no, you don't really suffer any long-term repercussions from your decisions in the region. You may or may not get the opportunity to temporarily conscript some followers (not Recruits) at a certain point in the game, and the region will obviously experience different ending slides during the credits... but that's about it. Now, in-game is a different story. Whatever you choose to do will have lasting impacts on the region.

SPOILER ALERT: If you deliver the nuke to the monks, an agent from the bad guys inside the ranks of the organization will set off the nuke, against the monks' wishes, destroying the region. If you deliver the nuke to the DBM, they secure the region with a fierce stranglehold, just as you surmised. If you disarm the nuke, the region is destabilized and overrun by raiders, leaving both sides SOL and scattered. No matter what you do, bad stuff will happen.

So most players like to traverse the canyon, do all the errands for the monks, then kill all the raiders and monks, take the job from the DBM, then "disarm" the missile in the temple, then exploit the new DBM trader for some free scrap, then kill all the DBM, then head to the Silo and disarm the nuke. It yields the most exp BY FAR, and it's sorta the most neutral or least-terrible ending, not to mention you get praised for it by Vargas when you speak to him afterward.

[Consigliere]

My response upgrades the title from minor to major spoilers to anyone who is worried

Before I answer (and I should make clear I DID NOT play the first Wasteland, I only know what WL2 characters tell me ) I will say what happened in my game, I told both faction leaders I would do their thing (mainly so I wouldn't get shot at until I was ready) and went from that to the silo, made a hard save and disarmed it without ever really *helping* either group...as I come back through the temple area, the Monks are all dead, there are (now dead) raiders everywhere, and the Lieutenant lady that guarded the DBM base and took my guns was there, and attacked me on sight - I have made it to...uh...part 2 of the game (helicopter ride) and I never heard mention of the DBM leader again, the preparation-h guy - so really the outcome I wanted came about, just with far less XP/loot and I never got to explore the underground area of the Temple, which kinda sucks but I will have to do another run to see Highpool as well, more to look forward to

Now, for the fun stuffs =>

For me, while the Rangers operate like a military outfit, their ultimate mission - as I see it - are as the Wasteland Police, and the police would see the DBM as both encroaching on their authority (or at least their self-given monopoly of authority) and, given some of the militia's underhanded methods, would more likely view the DBM as a mafia-style racket, or the nuclear apocalyptic version of it. Raiders are bad but no match for organized Rangers, so that situation could easily be rectified with Ranger patrols and goods/people/information could flow freely, or at least, under Ranger control. If their goal is order and stability, typically such ideologies lead to one group or individual in charge, because multiple groups or individuals inevitably disagree, fight, cause instability and disorder (again, all this is from the viewpoint OF a Ranger)

If I were playing Fallout I would see the Rangers as no different from the other two groups most likely, or at the very least the lesser of evils - sort of a "no authority" vs "MY authority" situation, as a Ranger obviously I want to expand our - MY - influence/control/authority as far as possible, as the common wastewalker I want none of these groups getting too much power, because they will inevitably either cause new problems or repeat the mistakes of the old world =x

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Consigliere:

I should make clear I DID NOT play the first Wasteland, I only know what WL2 characters tell me :pleased:

Yeah, the game plays with this in mind. It's why you're told so much about the Rangers' enemies from the first game, so their reappearance actually means something to you. You're told about Bobby when you speak to Bergin in Highpool (regardless of which settlement you save). You're told about Brygo from Vargas' journals. You hear about the Cochise AI A BUNCH.

The game plays like a masterful "whodunnit" mystery from start to near-the-finish regardless of whether you played the original or not. Tracking down Ace's killer gets the ball rolling, and if you pay attention to the subtle cues about what's going on, the story will unravel before you without the characters needing to explain it to you.

I beat WL2 before I beat WL1, and I can say that playing the original helps you appreciate the Easter Eggs and the attention to detail, but it is not necessary to get fully invested in the goings-on of the game world. For that, there's great writing, and the game's got it! =D

Originally posted by Consigliere:

I never got to explore the underground area of the Temple, which kinda sucks but I will have to do another run to see Highpool as well, more to look forward to :47_thumb_up:

What you missed out on was a lotta exp, and a lotta cash, but the biggest thing you missed was unique rewards for fully exploring. Skill Books. Toaster items that can be turned in for things like Skills Books. Etc etc. It is rather poorly communicated that the monks will never not be hostile inside the temple and you can get away with killing them without upsetting the surface-dwelling monks at all. So most players avoid the temple when they're unsure how to proceed.

A keen eye if you DO enter the temple and go along with the DBM will point out that they were out to betray you from the start, which would add to your distrust of the group. What's funny is that despite their duplicitous and extreme nature, they actually DO end up being a half-decent peace-keeping force in the long-term. But you wouldn't think it to observe their actions. Regardless, they still harm the people in the region because of their strict tithes killing the once-vibrant trading route.

Originally posted by Consigliere:

If I were playing Fallout I would see the Rangers as no different from the other two groups most likely, or at the very least the lesser of evils

Didn't quite address my curiosity if that meant you were looking at this from the perspective of GOOD Fallout writing or lazy Fallout writing. I can't say that the originals ever characterized groups as neutral by default. It was a very thorough study of post-apocalyptic societies vastly ranging in terms of morality, and beyond a cursory glance you could deduce them fairly simply. The most complicated group were perhaps the Regulators from FO1, which came off as a strict peace-keeping force, but if you paid attention you would pick up on that they were a martial law dictatorship, and keeping an open mind while you do the quests for the area would confirm that they were a bunch of evil people. Originally the power struggle in Junktown was meant to be a moral-grey situation where the mobster taking power would lead to the town flourishing because of his business-minded approach as opposed to the mayor taking power would lead to a stifling dictatorship. But that was removed from the final game to make it more black-and-white, and it kinda felt more cohesive as a result.

But the Bethesda titles? Yeah... that's another story. That's a bunch of toddlers running around pretending to be adults... in terms of quality of writing.

[Consigliere]

The Regulators are a good comparison for the DBM now that you mention it, trying to brute force their way to power and killing anyone who gets in the way, and they stand between you and the gunrunners/satellite dish ^^ I don't think I ever got a good ending for the Boneyard......

In the Bethesda games especially, there would probably be a unicorns and rainbows choice where everybody hugs and gives me a unique shotgun, I haven't seen nor expect that so much here, but at the same time I am hoping, if (for example) Option A are the Mad Monks and Option B is the Militia, I would like an Option C of some kind, even if it devolves into, as you say, needless slaughter (and I don't need for that choice to be the obvious correct choice), it isn't exactly unicorns and rainbows but I would probably have found plenty of weapons, possibly uniques if I had done it the way you suggested x.x

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Consigliere:

The Regulators are a good comparison for the DBM now that you mention it, trying to brute force their way to power and killing anyone who gets in the way, and they stand between you and the gunrunners/satellite dish ^^

Eh, I don't think they're that comparable. The Regulators had history with the inhabitants of Adytum, as most of the Boneyard was populated by settlers descended from the Hidden Vault residents. The Regulators didn't come out of nowhere to wrest control from another group, they simply used worse and worse means to put an absolute stranglehold on their power in Adytum. They didn't even have any aspirations for the greater Boneyard area, so they were probably content with sitting on their laurels and reaping the benefits of controlling a small farming town till the end of time...

Originally posted by Consigliere:

I don't think I ever got a good ending for the Boneyard......

You can never save the life of the mayor, if you topple the Regulators. But other than that, you can free the town of their reign, help the Gunrunners expand by clearing out the Deathclaws and simultaneously arm the Blades by brokering a deal between the two groups, so when the Regulators get offed, the Blades can protect the region more fairly. You can even get the well-armed Blades to join the fight. I'd say that's a pretty happy ending! =D The ending slide itself is bugged, but canonically the Boneyard has this exact happy ending, since we know the Gunrunners go on to hit it big, and that the Followers weren't wiped out, so the default slide didn't really happen.

Originally posted by Consigliere:

I am hoping, if (for example) Option A are the Mad Monks and Option B is the Militia, I would like an Option C of some kind, even if it devolves into, as you say, needless slaughter

There are for sure no less than 3 choices that determine the outcome of the Canyon of Titan. You're even closer to what they are than you might think.