#And this extends to their treatment of anarchism in the game more broadly.

[media-illiterate]

@averagepsychouser Hi, those are my tags.

I acknowledge the original post was about Arcade and not the Independent ending, but Arcade's disappointment with independent Vegas is part of the writers overall intensely cynical take on the Followers, the Wildcard ending, and anarchism in general.

No matter what actions the courier does or does not take, the independent ending remains for the Followers the exact same. You can be a member of the Followers, do all their quests, and dump loads of supplies on them, but it changes nothing for their ending. You'd think they'd get a hand, at least from a good-karma Wildcard courier, but no; they remain overwhelmed and underfunded, despite one of their members literally running Las Vegas!

Its actually one of their worse endings, which is saying a lot because all their endings suck. The singular "good" ending for the Followers where they aren't overwhelmed, exiled, or outright destroyed is the one where they become subservient to the NCR. It's a pretty negative take on anarchists to say the only way they can succeed is by making themselves subservient to the state!

And while its fair to say that the courier probably doesn't have the skills to run a city-state by themselves, in a better written ending the Followers would be a solution to that. They are actually canonically capable of it: in one of the Great Khans' endings, the Followers help them build a quite successful government in Wyoming! You'd think they'd be able to help one of their own do the same, especially on a much smaller scale like a single city!

Independent vegas ending specifically

Nothing is more heartbreaking than trying to get Arcade’s personal quest, finishing it, having him LEAVE YOU PERMANENTLY, and then find out like 10 minutes later when you’re done with the battle of Hoover Dam that he’s actually not even happy about Vegas being independent.