New Monarchy and Dead Orbit: But we have teh crazy guns and power and we shall rule forever Future War Cult: We have a Praedyth. We shall rule your "forever".

Lore-wise, None of the above. New Monarchy wants to install a dictator...Yeah, not going to work out well because power corrupts! The rest of NM is fine, except for the sole dictator... Dead Orbit wants to run away. They have the best ships, and arguably the best scout rifle, but their whole M.O. is to get off Earth and flee the Darkness. Now how I want my video game characters to act even though it's probably the most logical. Future War Cult. Best weapon inventory over all, and armor stats for me, though the garish colors are a bit of a turn off... They are focused too much on time jumping and looking for the future. They need to fix what's happening now and get some stability. Honestly, it's got to be the Vanguard lore-wise. Protect the city, grow in power, and stay alive. It's very much in the now. Though the Vanguard only deals with the defense of the city instead of the politics. I would love in the future to see how the politics of the game spread and fan out among the factions. We're still waiting for a clan war!

Well, let's look scientifically. [b]New Monarchy[/b] is just a bad choice in general. Even if we beat the darkness and heal the Traveler, there's still centuries to go before another "Golden Age" can be founded. That's even assuming the Traveler stays with us (more on that later). That, and a monarchy sounds like a bad idea. [b]Future War Cult[/b] is arguably a good option. Though not much is known, it's assumed they're using a Vex-tech machine to go through timelines and/or see the future to shape it to their liking. The Exo Stranger is also assumed to have some kind of alliance or such with them. This is all speculation. Taking into the account of story, they arguably [i]could[/i] have the most impact on the story, [i]if[/i] we ever learn their motives. Heck! We don't even know why they're going through the timelines. It's all speculation and I have learned not to trust shady and nondescript people [quote]*cough cough* Speaker *cough*[/quote] Finally is [b]Dead Orbit[/b], and sue me if I'm biased. This goes back to the roots of the Traveler. The Traveler is known (Fallen, Hive, other unknown planets in Book of Worms) to up and abandon it's Golden-Age-ified planets when the Darkness comes. Rasputin was clever and stopped the Traveler from running by shutting down all defenses. This essentially forced the Traveler to stay and fight for it's own safety (some argue that Rasputin physically crippled the Traveler, but I doubt it). So, now that we've got that, who's to say the Traveler will stay with us when it wakes? It is weak and we are now militarized, so why stay? Dead Orbit has the right idea. For example, the Fallen had a very similar history to us. They had a unified golden age, and then split into [i]factions[/i] after their collapse. Sound familiar? And which Fallen houses survived the Darkness? The ones that ran to space, thus enabling their species to live. That's my say on the best faction. Edit: Holy crap! I was not expecting such positive feedback! I'd recommend looking at CommanderHawk8's reply, as it covers a few things I may have missed.

FWC because they understand the solution to life's problems. [spoiler]Shoot it.[/spoiler] "But what if the enemy has a hostage?" [spoiler]Shoot it.[/spoiler]

I love how war cult and monarchy people come to together to take on dead orbit, but lore wise our two factions hate each other lol. Still im war cult and my brothers monarchy and we agree on one simple thing:[spoiler]it doesnt have to be black to be cool[/spoiler]

gonna have to go with Future War Cult. War is the Answer

Would anyone stay Dead Orbit if their shaders didn't exist? Didn't think so.

FWC. They know what's going to happen, and know what to prepare for. By TTK, the faction got even better. We got vanilla faction gear, insane weapons, and our own exotic gun. But then again, everyone always picks the faction based on color.

OK .. All that info being said. Does it make a difference with the game or is it just a preference?

FWC. And to all the DO Guardians, when the Darkness came for the first time we got our asses handed to us because well…there were no Guardians! And look at all the Guardians have done! We've cleansed the Black Garden! Looted the Vault of Glass! We slew three gods! Slaughtered thousands of our enemies! And we have done so much more! If you believe that we have no chance to defeat the Darkness look at what we have accomplished! And you will see what we are capable of!