Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Let's Play New Vegas - Old World Blues

grotsnik

Arcane
Joined
Jul 11, 2010
Messages
1,671
Cheers, 'veryone, and Happy New Year! Here follows the penultimate hungover update.

1-11.jpg


Moving up along a slanted office building infested with Tunnelers, the Courier finally emerges out onto a rooftop, only to find-

2-10.jpg


Oh, good. You again.

Out of Ulysses' five conversations with us, this is, let it be noted, one of two that doesn't open with a sentence about the fucking NCR.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Before you lies the edge of the Divide. Ahead lies your work, the history you burned into the earth. What you brought to the people here.

dweller-1-1.png
I had nothing to do with this.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You delivered a package. Had markings that match those in the Divide. Not all...but enough. Military markings, from some place the Bear had savaged in the West. Maybe seeing those markings reminded you of home...made you carry it.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
It was a device, a detonator. One I'd never seen before...or heard before. You carried that thing to the Divide. I know because I watched you do it, followed you as you walked the road. You brought it here, to the community you built. And you are responsible for what happened after - when the device started to speak.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
When it did, the Divide answered back. Those missiles you've seen, buried in their silos. They exploded in the ground, cracked the landscape. Sand, ash, the dead...the Divide skies became a graveyard.

When Metaphors Go Wrong: the skies became a graveyard.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Should've died there...the machines here saved me. I was the only survivor, or thought I was. Your package, the message inside, awoke medical machines...close to the one that shadows you...began to build themselves, then others. They only take what parts they can find in the Divide, never roam beyond it - can't even leave the silos without a human to shadow, like hounds. Maybe they saw the flag on my jacket, thought I was of America. If so, history saved me. A sign.

dweller-1-1.png
I'm not responsible for this: there's no way I could have known.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
If you had been there when it happened. If you had seen the Divide break, you would know it.

Ulysses here uses the fallacy of appealing to emotion and sensational experience. He's also fond of indicating guilt by association. Asshat wouldn't last five minutes in a school debating club.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You carry death wherever you go - if the Mojave doesn't know it yet, it will. What happened here can happen again. You've already proved it, what you did in Ashton. The silo there.

I'm a big fan of the practice of calling the player out on their actions. But this (in case you've forgotten, Ashton is where we set off a nuke in the last update) is forcing the player to do something highly contrived and completely unnecessary in order to complete the challenge they've been set and then calling them out on it, which is just a cheat. It worked (arguably) in shit like Shadow of the Colossus because the player's monster-murdering acts were originally put to them as a heroic quest that they wanted to complete. Here we wanted to get through a door, the game made us press a button, and something ridiculous happened. It's not butterflies flapping their wings to create hurricanes because nothing about the consequences to our actions felt natural.

dweller-1-1.png
I didn't intend to set that missile off.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Didn't stop you, though. Like carrying the chip to New Vegas, Old World death in your hand. Pieces of the Old World just need someone careless enough to take them where they need to go, to do their killing.

Like the crooked postman who steams open your Christmas card from Auntie Ethel and takes the twenty quid for himself, Ulysses firmly believes that not to open the package you're supposed to be delivering and check out what's inside for yourself is 'carelessness'. It makes sense as a metaphor for the dangers of NCR et al., using historic technology and symbolism without ever really understanding it, but it makes fuck all sense as relates to the Courier's 'guilt'.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You could have stayed in the Mojave. But you chose to come, couldn't let it be - not in you to let go. Came for no other reason than you were curious, restless, always have been. Had to know the why of it - now I'll show you.

I think these comments about compulsive restlessness are a better reflection on the nature of the open-world player character, but they're still fucking detached from the subject of player responsibility.

dweller-1-1.png
So you're angry because I accidentally brought an explosive to the Divide?

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Accident? Ignorance is a choice - the Chip, a choice. As for anger, it is what I carry for the dead, and all that come here.

3-9.jpg


The last line's a cracker. But let's try to pin down his elusive motivations.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
The community that was once here, and the package you brought, both had markings of the Divide. Markings of America. Markings like the flag on my back. An Old World symbol. Strong, to survive here - its people, strong. Outlast the Bear, the Bull. Promise of something better. Caesar was right to want it dead. NCR was right to rake their claws into it.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Seeing it changed me, just like Hoover Dam changed Caesar and the NCR. Seeing it end...changed me too.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You gave life to this place. I followed your road here, saw the Divide. You led me here, so that I could see. Then you brought it to an end.

dweller-1-1.png
And that's why you want me dead.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
My history isn't about revenge, or hate. It's about the message you carried - the one in your package, whether you knew it or not. The message that one can kill a nation. Can kill a symbol. And all who gather beneath its flag. I don't blame you for the Divide. I blame you for what you made me see. Now you will see what you brought to the Mojave, and that will be my message to you.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
There is no future in the Bear or the Bull. Killing one will end both. And you made me see how one could do it. Your ignorance, carelessness - can be used with a purpose. I'll start with the West - let that burn. Then if the East falters after, I'll bring the Divide there as well. Burn away the flags. Begin again.

4-9.jpg


There's a lot in there to chew on, so the Courier mulls it over as he descends into the shattered land.

dweller-1-1.png
Okay; so Ulysses hates me because unwittingly I alerted him to the fact that one man can make a nation, or break it, on the simple condition that he happens to be handed the triggering mechanism to nuclear missiles. So it's very much like spending your life trying to kill the butterfly that caused the hurricane.

dweller-1-1.png
Or maybe he hates me because he was already obsessed with me; he followed my road, watched me build a civilisation that had the makings of greatness, and then was disillusioned when I accidentally destroyed it. But if this civilisation was so great, and sought after by NCR and the Legion, then why has nobody mentioned it up till now, and why wouldn't he understand that I was a pawn and explain the matter to me, maybe enlist my help in taking down whoever in the NCR was responsible?

dweller-1-1.png
Fuck, why hasn't he spent his life obsessively tracking them down instead of me, since they were consciously responsible and therefore the true culprit? Didn't he watch Minority Report?

6-9.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
Okay, so maybe the civilisation itself wasn't important, it was the symbol of America, risen again, that made Ulysses hope that our country could be reborn, since he's into symbols and history. He hates me because he loved the idea of a new, powerful civilisation, based on an Old World symbol. ...wait, like NCR. Why did he hate NCR in the first place again? Because they're over-stretching themselves? Because they use a pre-war flag without understanding its significance, much like the people at the Divide he cared so much about?

dweller-1-1.png
He hates me because he believes I was 'ignorant' or 'careless' in doing my job as a Courier, which as already stated doesn't make sense. Ignorance is only a choice when it's a question of educational ignorance, not a lack of available information. He thinks I 'carry death' wherever I go, which is an abstract nonsense particularly as I apparently spent a long time carrying life to the Divide.

dweller-1-1.png
He views me as a symbol of the NCR, which he hates and wants to destroy. Which is fine, but suddenly setting up the Courier's backstory in which he used to be a known and thoroughly-travelled agent of one of the game's main factions completely bollockses up all interactions in New Vegas vanilla, since nobody in NCR or elsewhere reacts towards the Courier as a reliable old friend of that republic. ...so why the hell is he obsessed with me, other than that it would be cool, and flattering to have it so?

It's not all illogical, exactly, but it's muddled as hell, especially as expressed in Ulysses' dialogue, and I think it comes back to the fact that Ulysses' relatively simple plan (blow up NCR and the Legion and hopefully better civilisations will rise in their place) is seriously messed around by the requirement to involve the player's past intimately in it.

7-9.jpg


Once again, the game requires us to set off a nuclear warhead, mysteriously still unexploded after the two successive nuclear explosions that we now know to have taken place here, in order to proceed.

8-7.jpg


Doing so causes a building to collapse, blocking the way.

dweller-1-1.png
DEAR GOD ULYSSES WAS RIGHT DOING WHAT THE GAME FORCES ME TO DO CAN HAVE CONSEQUENCES WHAT KIND OF THOUGHTLESS MONSTER AM I?

As we scout around for another way through, it's time for another ED-E memory glitch, this one apparently from somewhere on his road to 'Navarro'. A burst of cheerful music - then gunshots.

10-11.jpg


Remember that NV trailer which opened with an Eyebot jittering merrily along a road to the sound of music, before it got shot? You're listening to it - it wasn't just a random teaser, it was part of ED-E's story. Nice touch.



11-9.jpg


14-8-1.jpg
(Beeping)

13-10.jpg


Looks like the only path is (sigh) an underground area, charmingly named 'Cave of the Abaddon', which is curiously enough part of the main level and not a separate one. Bet there won't be any TUNNELERS down here, eh?

14-10.jpg


Whaddaya know, there are - including a particularly vicious Tunneler Queen. Fortunately enough, in the screenshot below she's actually used her melee attack to accidentally knock us up onto a too-high-to-climb piece of rubble, so we exploit that for all its worth and cheerily shoot them all without having to actually get hit. It's, er, a perfectly valid use of strategy. Yes, strategy.

15-8.jpg


16-10.jpg


We emerge out into another office building, where - oh, for fuck's sake.

18-9.jpg


If you hadn't picked up on it already, ED-E's adventurous spirit has been influenced by the old videos of the heroic RALPHIE the Robot he used to watch. There are twenty identical posters of RALPHIE scattered about the DLC, and we're challenged to press 'E' on them all!

Another slightly less monotonous time-padder challenge involves tracking down ten Old World diary entries in the Divide. I quite liked this snarky one from the perspective of a soon-to-be-horribly-experimented-on peaceful protestor:

24-8.jpg


25-8.jpg


Back out into the Divide. Uh-oh, this must mean-

19-8.jpg


fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Knew you'd survive...but no need to go any further. You've brought me what I need - that machine with you, sealed in the Hopeville silo. Needed someone to unlock it for me, bring it home. Now the signal's strong enough, no need for you to carry it any more. I can call your machine to me.

dweller-1-1.png
What? ED-E?

Finally. You two fuck off together and maybe I can have a little peace.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You gave it a name. What was it to you? Companion, slave, weapon? All of that nothing, compared to its primary function. It's a messenger. Like us...and it shares our history. If you feel its loss, remember, you could have turned away at any time. Gone back home, and none of this would have happened. But you had to make one last delivery, and that's why I knew you'd come, Courier. Couldn't stay away, it's who you are.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
All the machines here, made of wreckage from the Divide...and all that was brought here. Inside its frame, it carries the message you brought here - and it'll do whatever it was programmed to do, whatever it can to get home. The giants here will listen to it. I'll bring the Divide to your home, your nation. Let its flag burn, just like you let the Divide burn. Big Mountain access code...Ulysses. Command override...

21-7.jpg


And ED-E takes off on command, a loss we feel most painfully due to the fact that all the guns and armour we'd been keeping in his inventory are now transferred to us.

More confusingly, it now seems that Ulysses wasn't as much interested in the Courier as he was in getting his hands on an Eyebot, any Eyebot, and it turns out that luring us to the Divide for the sake of this long masquerade was much easier than just repairing the one he would have seen in Primm or letting this one out of its container in the silo at the start of the DLC, an act which required no skill check. Instead he hung around there for a while painting 'Courier You Can Go Home' on all the walls, then left. He also doesn't seem to mind that he's made an enemy of us, who wished him no harm, and left us to our own devices a short distance from his unlocked front door.

23-6.jpg


Naturally, since we now know that Ulysses is minutes away from destroying our home, this final Divide area has a number of sections to explore, including a cave containing a gigantic Deathclaw named 'Rawr':

27-6.jpg


Nuclear warheads are now drilling through cavern faces, I see.

28-5.jpg


The clifftops ahead prominently display the red flashing lights we've seen all through the adventure, so on my first playthrough I assumed I'd have to make my way up the canyon cliffs in a sort of Where Eagles Dare attack on Ulysses' fortress, but there's actually a handy door visible and easily accessible at the very bottom. Boo.

29-7.jpg


30-6.jpg


We re-recruit ED-E, who's presumably served his purpose in setting up the nuclear missiles for launch.

And having gunned down the one robot guarding Ulysses' secret base, we finally come face-to-face with the man himself.

31-7.jpg


32-6.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
Wait, those are...four Eyebots! You had them all along? But...why did you need ED-E if...I don't...even...

33-6.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
I am going to murder you.

The options for killing Ulysses here occur from the start - one particularly appropriate one is to tell him he's 'wasted enough of my time'. Anyway let's try talking to him instead. (Don't worry, he can still get what's coming to him later on.)

dweller-1-1.png
What happened at the Divide, what I did, it was an accident. This is madness.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
No, now there is purpose. I believe you when you said you were...careless. The Divide...the Chip...the machine you brought here...many messages can be taken from that, intended or not. What I do now is an act of conviction.

dweller-1-1.png
o_O

34-6.jpg


fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Blame you? No. Learned from you. Both the weapon to kill a nation, and the strength to do it.

But you just said you know he never meant to do it, so how can the Courier be 'strong'? You're saying you admire the Courier because he taught you, an obsessive student of history and pre-war America, the valuable lesson that nuclear bombs can blow up countries?

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
You showed me a road, a way to carry my message. You've already answered for what you've done. Now the flag you follow will answer for it.

dweller-1-1.png
So, what, you intend to bomb the Mojave?

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
No, not the Mojave. The West, all that's been built since America died. Same symbols as before the war, now a flag carried by a tribe of children. You walked the West, didn't stay. You know the reason, the Bear grows without structure, follows a symbol without knowing its history. And knowing that you believe in the Bear's sickness and have given it strength...then that gives more reason to lay waste to your homeland.

Legion-oriented players, it should be noted, do have lots of dialogue options throughout the DLC where they point out that they're actually followers of the East now, but I don't think it actually makes Ulysses shut up about the NCR - he'll just complain about how they're both diseased.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
After this, only one flag will remain over the Mojave. Let it fly, or destroy itself.

dweller-1-1.png
You can't destroy the West, even with all of the bombs here.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
No need to destroy the Bear, just cut its throat. You taught me that at the Divide - only need to cut off the supply line, the road, to watch something greater die. I'll turn the Long 15 into miles of fire, cut off the Mojave. NCR will fall back, lose Hoover Dam, and leave their throats exposed to the Legion.

dweller-1-1.png
Even if you have no faith in the NCR, I do. My actions have proven it.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
If you speak for the two-headed Bear, I'll hear your words. Even if I'll be the only one to hear them. If you believe it should not die this day...then tell me why.

Damn, the Courier's going to have to come up with some compelling reasoning to convince Ulysses...

dweller-1-1.png
(Speech) One can build a community, make it stronger. You saw it at the Divide, blamed me for it.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
(Succeeded) History has proven this. Our history.

Wait, that's IT?

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
And you think that you have this strength? For all of the NCR? The West is not the Divide and nothing you can do can prevent the missile's launch. Convincing me - changes nothing.

Actually, preventing the missile's launch is a simple case of turning it off at the missile controls behind us, but we'll get to that.

35-5.jpg


fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
It may be that...as much destruction has been written in the earth here, you may build something else, as you built the Divide. You have spoken truly; there is a shadow of a nation behind you, the hope of a people. Yet it may not matter. The Divide stands against us.

So now it's 'us'; he's on our side. That's all it took. (If we'd found all his holotapes, we could also have convinced him that his 'lessons' from history were all wrong, which is a better way through the conversation). All we had to do was say, 'Hey, Ulysses, did you ever think that a flawed society could be made better? And as the ignorant, careless idiot who carries death with him wherever he goes, surely you'll admit I'm the right man for the job.' And then he won't care if we decide to nuke it all afterwards all the same. Bah.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Our enemies gather outside...shadows of the Bear and Bull...they will have found their way in, just as you did. It was always my intention, if I could not kill you, that the Marked Man would flood this place, cut off your escape. If we cannot prevent what comes, then let us make our stand here. Two Couriers, together, at the Divide.

36-5.jpg


Quite a long battle ensues, with lots of Marked Men, energy weapons, explosions, and a general lack of understanding on my part about who's shooting who.

38-4.jpg


39-4.jpg


And then, suddenly, it's over. Ulysses has vanished, as quickly as he came...and it's just us, and the missile controls.

44-2.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
So I can set the nukes off, target NCR and the Legion, set the gameworld back a few years and wreck their expansionist plans, help MCA feel like he's taking Fallout a little bit back towards the harsh survivalist Mad Max 2 experience...

dweller-1-1.png
But on the other hand...

dweller-1-1.png
Is he right to want to do this? I mean, sure, New Vegas felt more 'civilised', more advanced and some distance from a truly survivalist post-apocalyptic setting. But it's the sign of some of the care put into the gameworld that it has developed as the series has gone on, surely, that it hasn't remained in stasis...well, apart from Fallout 3, as it happens . Can you actually maintain that simple, 'crossing the wasteland with two bullets while things try to eat you' tone in a series like this, when you're adding in new factions and locations all the time, new weight and detail to the lore that'll need to be referenced in future (and you've got the facilities for mass-production of robots and super-technology to begin with. Seriously, if anything, I'd nuke a few of those.)? One of the series' big themes and concerns is about rebuilding, so how can the effects of that rebuilding be ignored in favour of a return to the old wasteland days, just because MCA thinks it's cooler?

dweller-1-1.png
Codex, it's your choice. To nuke, or not to nuke?

45-2.jpg
 

Brother None

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
5,673
Nuke both, obviously.

The other dialog path is indeed better, because you have to have listened to Ulysses and figure out the right dialog options yourself. No autowin speech check in that thread! 1But Ulysses is an irredeemable character regardless. Absolutely terrible.

Apropos, a lot of the reference to torn skies and the like are pretty closely in reference to Zelazny's Damnation Alley, where the challenges come primarily from the stormwracked environments, though giant beasts roam around as well. It's not a bad book.
 

thesoup

Arcane
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
7,599
The right thing to do would be to abort the launch because, well, the world is already irradiated enough.

We should accept that the world is changing and progressing. Nuking it for coolness or nostalgia is kind of breaking the fourth wall and selfish.
 

grotsnik

Arcane
Joined
Jul 11, 2010
Messages
1,671
Nuke both, obviously.
The other dialog path is indeed better, because you have to have listened to Ulysses and figure out the right dialog options yourself. No autowin speech check in that thread! 1But Ulysses is an irredeemable character regardless. Absolutely terrible.

I know, I couldn't remember where the last damn one was! Found them all last time.

Anyway, I think if anyone ever did use a disaster to significantly set the Fallout clock back, I'd rather it was a disease, something like Van Buren's plague - just to make it feel less openly arbitrary and repetitive. God knows how long the series will go on for, but I don't particularly ever want to hear Ron Perlman say,
'And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilisation struggled to arise. And then another bunch of nuclear bombs fell, and the exact same thing happened all over again.'
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,013
Go full Avellone.:yeah:

Nuke the retarded Fallout 3 setting, the dream of every true Codexer.
 

metzger

Educated
Joined
Dec 25, 2011
Messages
42
Nuke NCR and Legion, don't kill powder gangers and fiends, then go for independent ending and you'll get total fucking anarchy and chaos, awesome world of rape and murder. Damn them all to hell.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
Ulysses is clearly Andhaira, what if his constant "bear" and "bull" metaphors and general inanity.
 

thesoup

Arcane
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
7,599
Nuke the bear and the bull.


2deep4u
4 all of us
Not really. From what I understood, he will set the warheads to target your favorite faction out of petty revenge. He even says how he'll destroy your home and hopes just like you destroyed his when The Divide blew up.
Basically, he's obsessed and wants revenge, no matter how much bullshit he spouts about that not being the case.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
So, Ulysses is nothing more than a madman that's obsessed with the player character, due something he accidentally did... I say that we troll him one last time and don't use the nukes.
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,592
It's not even that the player character did it, the courier had done it way before NV started.
I dig MCA's idea of small things having huge consequences, especially if the player is not suspecting anything but Ulysses and his pretentious faggotry just wasn't done well.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Use the nukes and the best you get out of that is a petty sense of achievement: lookee I nuked them all.

Dont use the nuke and forever you will be tempted to nuke any region stupid enough to annoy you. You know you can, but you will be debating yourself whether to destroy them. Choice choice choiceeeeeee!

I say not use them.
 

thesoup

Arcane
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
7,599
Using the nukes will make the world slowly die which will result in you going to hell no matter how much good you do the rest of your life. You'll have to strip away your mortality in order to get around that which will lead to all sorts of trouble.
 

grotsnik

Arcane
Joined
Jul 11, 2010
Messages
1,671
The people have spoken.

7-10.jpg



6-10.jpg


As the missile launches, the base suddenly realises just how accurately it resembles Blofeld's lair from You Only Live Twice and reasons, accordingly, that it's probably supposed to explode at this point. The Courier is forced to make a mad dash for the exit!

8-8.jpg


And, as he reaches the doors...blackness overtakes him.

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
Well, that was...an interesting experiment.

Tim-Cain_BIO-2009boxart_160w-1.jpg
In the end, despite what you'd put him through...the Courier had faith in you, Chris. He really thought you knew what was best for the Fallout setting.

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
Either that or the people of the Codex just like the idea of starting another nuclear holocaust.

Tim-Cain_BIO-2009boxart_160w-1.jpg
Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, (sigh) I think I hear Matt and Trey calling for their foot massages.

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
Could I...get Trey this time? Matt's got...cankles. Don't ask me how.

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
You know, Tim...we could just slit their throats while we were washing their hair for them. Dump the bodies in a ravine, say they never got here. It'd be perfect publicity for the game - 'Obsidian Will Finish South Park In Memory Of Its Creators'. Feargus would love it!

Tim-Cain_BIO-2009boxart_160w-1.jpg
Fuck it, let's just drug their cocaine. Worked in that problematic hybrid game with the sometimes offensively nonsensical storytelling and the obnoxious protagonist, er...

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
You mean Alpha Protocol?

Tim-Cain_BIO-2009boxart_160w-1.jpg
Yeah. Let's do that.

Chris-avellone_BIOboxart_160w-1.jpg
Tim, my friend...I think this could be the start of a beautiful double homicide.

4-10.jpg


fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
The missiles rained down like spears on the land, burning flags and communities alike, destroying all they struck. The history of the West was erased for the second time, thorough and complete...and America slept once more.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
ED-E, given second life by the machines of the Divide, freed by the Courier, continued his quest West to Navarro. It may be the journey meant more than the destination - just as his counterpart in the Mojave had learned. Before leaving, he sent a coded message to the Mojave original, passing along what the Courier had taught him in the Divide. And no matter what, he knew there would be a second home to return to, Navarro or not - and that his creator would be proud.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Hopeville burned lightless in the night, invisible fires of radiation scorching it from within and without. It is said a man still walked its streets, with a tattered jacket, an Old World flag etched on his back. He remained there, perhaps as a punishment for the scars he left on the wastes - or a reminder of the history he could not forget. For Ulysses...his journey was over. The Courier had been the end of his road.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
As for the Courier...he turned his back on his home for the second time and made his way back, navigating the treachery of the Divide. Tunnelers and Marked Men avoided the lone figure, as if recognising the Courier's right to passage...or out of fear.

fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
The Courier walked until he stood again on the edge of the Divide, the last road he would walk before the second battle for Hoover Dam. There, beside his feet, was a final package, from one Courier to another - a footlocker, bearing a gift, and a message. But that message - it is something for Couriers to carry, and them alone. The lights flickered across the Divide, reminders that the Old World histories persist, and find meaning in the present.

5-9.jpg


fallout_new_vegas_ulysses_face_by_felixsoapmactavish-d4aki3t-1.png
Men do, through the roads they walk. And this road...has reached its end.

And so, two famous lines from two great games from just before the turn of the century colliding with another, the DLC comes to an end. Overall it's another good bit of endslide writing (partly if it's just a relief to hear Ulysses being forced to speak more plainly) but as you probably noticed, there are a lot less meaningful variables/explicit consequences than in any of the other DLC. ED-E lives/dies (he'd have died if we'd tried to stop the bombs outright), Ulysses lives/dies, bombs go off/don't go off. I think that may be it.

10-12.jpg


If we'd averted nuclear armageddon, we'd have gained rep with the Brotherhood of Steel and the Followers of the Apocalypse instead.

9-12.jpg


Ulysses also bequeaths us a 'Courier's Duster', which looked fine on him but utterly ridiculous on us. No man wants to go into the final climactic battle of Hoover Dam looking like a penniless Lynyrd Skynyrd groupie.

We also get to visit two new areas, as stated, to see the effects of our devastation firsthand, a trade-off for the fact that the consequences of our actions couldn't really be integrated into the vanilla game. It's not perfect, obviously, but I appreciate the fact that they bothered.

11-10.jpg


Anyway, my game crashes every time I try to go to Dry Wells, but from Youtube it appears it's in much the same condition as the Long 15, so let's head to the NCR station to the south-west of the map and check that out.

12-10.jpg


13-11.jpg


As the Courier strolls through the small-to-medium, irradiated area, with a bit of fighting maddened survivors and a little looting, too, he begins to become sentimental, and wax lyrical about these four DLC.

14-11.jpg


Sure, none of them were perfect - in fact, all of them had what were, depending on your tolerance, some serious flaws. At times they could even be described as 'a bit shitty'. But dammit if they weren't made with the intent that, if such a hideous creature as DLC has to exist in this modern world of ours, all story DLC should be aiming for.

15-9.jpg


They weren't constructed by a B-team just hashing together a couple of new dungeon-crawling levels with some loot at the end. They weren't cynical or cheap. Each of them had its own ideas, style and themes, and sometimes they even made a serious effort to be creative with gameplay, too. And the Ulysses storyline, while it didn't lead to a really thrilling climax in its own right, actually was a clever way of tying all four them together; making them feel more like a short-story collection, as it were, than Random Bullshit #1, Random Bullshit #2, and Random Bullshit #3: Setting The Scene For The Sequel. In fact-

16-11.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
Hang on, hang on, hold the fanboy masturbation. I keep feeling like I've forgotten something...one final loose end that hasn't been tied up.

dweller-1-1.png
Er...lessee now...what could it...

dweller-1-1.png
Oh, shit.

1-12.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
Hey, Ulysses, buddy. Listen...you've done a lot of talking, and...well, maybe it's my turn to talk. And unlike you, I'm going to keep it on-topic.

dweller-1-1.png
You see, I don't think it was conveyed well at all exactly why you wanted me dead. I think the writing got your motivations against me tangled up with your motivation to nuke the setting and both of them were too heavily influenced by what MCA wanted you to accomplish as a function of the plot and a stand-in for his own attitude towards the setting. I think having a villain who repeatedly and repetitively lectures the player character in a prolix, incoherent sort of way isn't as involving as it is irritating (and goes against the entire stated intent of flattering the player's ego). I think Elijah, who had pretty much exactly the same goal as you but whose motivations were simpler and even more cartoonish, actually worked out far better as an antagonist. But that's okay. None of that's a fucking problem. In the end, I don't need to understand why you were trying to kill me.

2-11.jpg



20-8.jpg


21-8.jpg


dweller-1-1.png
Sometimes people just fall out.

30-7.jpg



THE END.



And...that's it. Thanks very much for reading!
 

metzger

Educated
Joined
Dec 25, 2011
Messages
42
this is, let it be noted, one of two that doesn't open with a sentence about the fucking NCR.

He talks about NCR because you sided with them in the main game. So he's discussing with you your choice. It's, um, like a consequence. In my walkthough he talked about Vegas and Mr. House.
 

Brother None

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
5,673
Triple brofists of fury.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom