Out of nearly 2 dozen playthroughs of New Vegas, I cannot bring myself to side with anyone other than NCR.
I can't side with the Legion, because the Legion is a faction of Nick Fuentes clones. They wear football pads and skirts. San Francisco is less faggoty than that.
I can't go independent, because I don't give a shit about the Strip or Outer Vegas riffraff. It only benefits niggers like the fiends and Khans.
Mr. House? Fuck him.
Say what you want about the bureaucrats and politicians of NCR. I side with them because I want to alleviate the burdens of the troops suffering under them, not because I care about Muh Democracy or anything.
Oh boy, is it Fallout Faction sperging time?
Obligatory:
House is the only decent ending for the game that makes sense. Everything else is some flavor of inferior or bad: Independent path is either a chaotic or lawful anarchy but still inferior to what House regulated Vegas would be, best case scenario is that the region doesn't tear itself apart overnight and Vegas becomes New Reno 2.0.
Legion would keep the roads safe, but then everyone would become a slave.
NCR would just drain the resources dry and fuck over the people, then move on and do the same to the next communities they meet while keeping all the water, power and wealth for themselves. Literally ruled over by corrupt politicians and ranchers, so that's where all it is flowing into, not the average citizen or trooper. Let's also not forget that without the Courier being a miracle worker, they're canonically doomed to fail anyways.
I have never met anyone who tried to argue House ending was bad that didn't devolve into some womanly talk about their fee fees, such as "House is BAD because crapitalism is BAD!" or "House is just LYING to you, don't you get it?"(he doesn't, via endings)
Same goes for Institute, they're the only faction that makes sense since there is a chance to rebuild Commonwealth with their tech and scientific progress, especially with you in charge. Every single flaw they have is invalidated by the fact that you can potentially build a utopia with their advancements AND you get to become their leader, meaning you can change what you don't like about the faction yourself. Every other ending has you give it all up for retarded reasons and don't come anywhere to filling in the massive nuclear meltdown sized hole they leave behind:
Minutemen are just incompetent farmers that will likely fall apart again(there is one guy who quite literally tells you to your face that your rank of general doesn't mean he has to take orders from you).
Railroad are just tumblerites that will let the entire Boston fall apart to raiders or worse just so that a few synths can escape the Institute(and then likely get killed/raped/enslaved the moment they reach the surface because they have no life experience).
BOS are the only other faction that makes sense, but even then they don't really have an end goal once they win. As the game portrays them they're just highly organized raiders, no nuance that the F3 Lyons or MidWest Brotherhood had.
Not sure if they even count, but Nuka World raiders do the whole thing with the roads being safer but everyone being a slave that Legion does but without the Roman larping and replaces it with edgy/furfag larping instead(depending on which one you choose). Not sure if Operators even count as raiders, they're just glorified mercs in literal suits.
Aside from the Railroad, none of these are straight up bad, they're just inferior to the one logical choice that will actually get humanity moving forward again and are entirely based on your roleplaying/fee fees. We can debate this for the next 15 years but these are just the facts.
Honestly, I did wish the Enclave was a playable faction in these games, without mods. That would really get people asking "Would you accept rebuilding your country and civilization at the cost of a genocide and unchecked government", because that's what the Enclave path would come down to if it was playable. America Rising 2 mod does a good job showing how that would look(spoiler warning, pretty much everyone has to go or capitulate to the Enclave and they do some horrific shit once they get in power, at least Institute are just some basement dwelling virgins jacking off to their synth waifus or whatever).
