As I replay through New Vegas, I keep coming back to the TV show and what it did.

Regardless of intent, it still feels like the uniqueness of the West Coast was cast aside via deus ex machina and the wasteland reset to zero. I think there’s a brilliant opportunity, though, for the second season to tell the story of the fall of the NCR and explore its aftermath. I talked about how the new thing can affect the perception of the old thing in my previous post, and that absolutely applies here.

A vault dweller would never have been able to casually wipe out Shady Sands when the Republic was at its height, but it wasn’t at its height, it was corrupt, impoverished, weak, and full of gaps to exploit. We didn’t see much of the old NCR because we were in a part that was recently nuked and was never fully rebuilt to begin with, but when we venture out, our heroes will start running into remnants of the old state, maybe even a rump government somewhere.

That’s all just wild spitballing, though. We’ll have to wait and see what they actually go for.