i'm sorry for even still thinking about fallout: the frontier in big 2026 because we all know Mod Bad but its depiction of the NCR Exiles is fascinating me again because while so much has been said about how logic-defying it is that this so-called scrappy splinter group of defects and deserters can maintain, fuel, and operate a fully functional air force of vertibirds and vehicles and a fucking helicarrier, it's amazing to me that it all exists in contrast to their conflict with "scavs" (scavengers), who lived in "the frontier" before the NCR Exiles got there, who are stuck salvaging for sustenance and jury-rigging contraptions together in comparison, and who the NCR Exiles routinely eliminate with extreme overkill just for the delight of it. the way the scavs exist as essentially an inhuman infestation pest to be regularly exterminated, like cockroaches or kudzu, the way they only exist to recreationally stand in the crosshairs of the NCR Exiles's massive and badass technofleet, might be the single most blistering example of the very common RPG trope where "scavenger" "raider" "bandit" etc are just ontological types of some itinerant creature that's simply born to die, and all of the implications and baggage that that has are blown up to eleven. the fact that this is a mod, and therefore had the chance to subvert or correct the failures of the base game in this regard but instead doubled if not tripled or quadrupled down, is a conscious choice. because the frontier does completely away with even the paltry amount of humanization that base New Vegas itself afforded its own shallow raider types, like the jackals and powder gangers and fiends, but when even that little morsel of effort is taken away like it is in the frontier, all that i can say is that it's genuinely insane to see it actually happen on-screen-- and yet it lays bare the vulgar reason for the existence of basically any and every single other character of its type, in any and every single other video game like it. they exist because you, the player, need entry-level humanoid mobs to have firefights with while walking around so that there's combat gameplay to be had, and when the frontier not only refuses to pay lip service to humanizing this group at all but grotesquely exaggerates the disparity between them and the "good guys," it parades about naked and proud where others would hide their shame with clothes. it is here where its influences from Call of Duty and its use of conveniently evil and invariably hostile "terrorists" is most apparent, but even the most disgusting propaganda game at least affords terrorists an ideology that they aim to enact. "scavs" have no such thing. they are locusts eating the crops and rats chewing on the wires and overgrown hedges that need trimming. it's so fucking perverse that it's fascinating.
