I always ending up siding with Joshua Graham. Mainly because it seems like the other guy (david?) is just doing a really basic “noble savage / white saviour” routine. Like his “solution” is to just pack up and leave in order for the people to preserve some inherent quality of “innocence” he thinks they possess. He would rather have them hounded for the rest of their existence, than do something that challenges his perception of them.
On the other hand Joshua Graham is a mormon
I always side with Graham but I think Daniel is a solid choice as well.
The White Legs devolve into raiding parties or are wiped out regardless of the ending. The reason why Daniel is correct is that the increasing militancy leads to conflicts between the Dead-horses and the Sorrows, the two tribes friendly to you. As long as there are two war-like tribes in Zion, it will be a place of war. Getting the Sorrows out of Zion isn’t necessarily good, but it leads to both of the tribes avoiding conflict.
The problem with leading the Sorrows in war is not that destroying the White Legs is bad, it’s that you doom them to same warish behavior of all the other factions. Is land worth killing for if you can live without warfare somewhere else? Even if it is, is it worth the risk that the tribe will view war and violence as a solution to all future problems? We very well could have created the next White Leg faction by giving the Sorrows a reason to use violence.
Don’t the Graham ending have a caveat that the dead Horses explicitly don’t become the next white legs? I remember something about them preserving their innocence or something
Nope, and the Dead Horses are already war-like. The Sorrows are the ones that are relatively peaceful.
Here’s the quote from siding with Graham about the Dead Horses:
And here’s the quote about the Sorrows:
Of course it changes a bit depending on whether Salt-Upon-Legs is killed by the courier, spared, or let go. But it’s absolutely canon that Sorrows and Dead Horses fight and become more brutal.
Daniel mourns the loss of their innocence in the Graham ending and that’s the only ending that mentions innocence.