Since New Vegas is apparently such a great game with brilliant writing, can someone give me a clear motivation for the courier to do anything in the game? Thanks
That's the dumbest critisism ever leveled at New Vegas.
Especially if your such a fan a Fallout 1 (I am too, but thats beside the point).
Giving your charachter too much backstory hurts role-playing. You had dialogue options to define it more, but that was never forced upon you. Fallout 1 was exactly the same way. You were send out into the wasteland, but your motivation was up to you. You didn't have to play a charachter that says *Oh, yeah. Gotta help that vault*, you could just dick around and come up with your own.
Fallout 3 for example was the complete anthitesis to that. It spilled out your entire fucking childhood. One of the many reasons it sucks.