This Woman.....

[JimboUK]

 

The main game doesn't, it's only the DLC that seeks to do it. It's not uncommon for RPGs to leave the backstory to the player, it makes sense, it lets you decide exactly what the character is like.

 

Well......Fallout 1 tells you you're someone who was born and raised in a vault, Fallout 2 sets you as the tribal grandchild of the Vault dweller, and Fallout 3 has you as an 18 year old who was born outside but raised in a vault. New Vegas and Tactics were the most lenient when it came to possible backstory (Well....If it werent for FOT being non-canon and Lonesome Road.......)

 

 

I'm well aware of that, what i'm saying is NV didn't and it was better for it.

[kkk122]

Isn't LR kind of vague about Courier's backstory anyway? I mean, we already knew that he/she was a Mojave Express courier. Now we found out that he/she was a badass Mojave Express courier, who once delivered something that should never have been delivered to the Divide sometime around 2277 (not sure if the date is ever given but it was supposed to have some effect on the Legion-NCR war after the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam). I never really paid much attention but Ulysses always described the Courier's role in creation of the Divide settlement very vaguely. You are still free to interpret it however you want or even not believe Ulysses at all.

Edited November 1, 2013 by kkk122

[Relios]

Isn't LR kind of vague about Courier's backstory anyway? I mean, we already knew that he/she was a Mojave Express courier. Now we found out that he/she was a badass Mojave Express courier, who once delivered something that should never have been delivered to the Divide sometime around 2277 (not sure if the date is ever given but it was supposed to have some effect on the Legion-NCR war after the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam). I never really paid much attention but Ulysses always described the Courier's role in creation of the Divide settlement very vaguely. You are still free to interpret it however you want or even not believe Ulysses at all.

I thought it was pretty straightforward....Except for one thing; I never got why the NCR would want to destroy the Divide.....I know that Caesar wanted to get rid of the NCR's supply line from CA to the Mojave, but why would the NCR want to do that themselves?

[kkk122]

They didn't. I don't think so at least. They wanted it as a supply line. They simply found the package, recognised the markings, had it delivered and boom. How were they supposed to know that it would blow up? And I have read about several versions of Courier's involvement in the settlement's creation - apart from wikia explanation (seems a bit off to me) there is one in which the Courier was tough enough to walk through it and live and others followed and settled there. And, of course the 'Ulysses' words do not match the truth' version. I agree though - the destruction part was pretty straightforward.

If you think about it this kind of supports the memory loss theory (or Ulysses is full of crap theory) - a badass survivor, who was able to walk the Divide and live suddenly barely knows how to light a campfire and his/her knowledge concerning guns is limited to 'which end has bullets flying out of it'.

Edited November 1, 2013 by kkk122

[charwo]

FOT is quasi cannon, and there's some hint that broadly speaking the Midwest Brotherhood does exist, As for the Fallout games, there is a lot that is left up to the player, but you can get a sense of what kind of person each would have o be. The Vault Dweller would have to either be trained as a survivalist or someone from security or otherwise knew how to handle a gun (it’s too late to vent an unliked incompetent out in the Wasteland), the Chosen One HAS to be someone who is smart and well spokn enough not to be confused with Grampy-bone talking tribals, and generally wouldn't act too much like a rube. Any child of James would be well educated and well adjusted, barring a personality disorder of brain damage. The courier could be anyone over the age of 30, given Lonesome Road. My courier is a vampire and I could dump her story into the Courier’s dialogue with no problem.

 

As for Cass….even taking in the Green world I play in, its pretty clear that she’s from the California Mohave and not well educated in a school sense. She has practical training, but no academics to speak of, and never had to learn what I was. Never underestimate how plumb ignorant a human being can be.

[Fistandilius]

I thought a major point of the Lonesome Road plotline was that the divide blew the hell up when/after the courier went through the first time. Just because the Divide changed, didn't mean it was always there. So just because Cass was familiar with the Divide doesn't mean it wasn't before it changed.

[Uragan907]

Do not underestimate Cass!!Or she'll woop your @#@@!! XD

[MarchUntoTorment]

I'm taking the 'unreliable narrator' approach above.

 

Make no mistake, I love Ulysses to death (favourite Fallout character of all time alongside Christine), but even I wouldn't believe a word the bastard says. He's an absolutely fascinating character with really interesting ideology (and, in my opinion, he was actually onto something - my last couple of playthroughs, I've spared him via a speech check and launched nukes at both factions).

 

But despite that, I'm pretty damned sure that he doesn't see the world the way the rest of us do - I'm not saying he's insane (well, not necessarily), but he has a very different picture of the world; his philosophical views lead to him having a very odd and not-necessarily-accurate picture of reality.

 

So I wouldn't bet that any of what he says is true.

[Fistandilius]

I don't know. I didn't see anything "straight forward" on the first play through and I'm doing the area again now and still learning different things. The part where you exit Sunstone Tower is pretty informative, but still pretty cryptic. Depending on your dialogue choices, Ulysses mentions that the Courier's package had markings on it, markings that matched those of the divide. Then he goes on to say they match those on his jacket and those of the community that the Courier built. He says that it could have been a place to "bridge the east and the west like Hoover dam". It sounds like whatever he was carrying, whether or not it was from NCR, was enclave tech, and also that someone was trying to rebuild a new community behind a version of the old American flag (or at least the fallout world version). It doesn't give a definitive amount of information to say whether the Courier intentionally built this community, or if it sprang up there just due to him breaking the trail.

 

He also said earlier on that the package spoke and the divide answered. I thought this was a metaphor, but then when he has his dialogue at the roof of the tower, he mentions that the package couldn't speak until it was hooked up to machines and that it kept voicing commands all the while the bombs were going off. It makes me think of the eyebots themselves, but of course if that's what it was, Ulysses would know, but it must be something of similar tech?

 

Then when you get a little further down the tower, ED-E has dialogue. A kid discovers him and asks his dad if he can keep him, saying he's "hurt" and mom can fix him. But the voice actor for the father is the exact same voice actor that voices the scientist who was upgrading and defending ED-E to the enclave. Is this lazy voice actor/authoring by Obsidian, or is this supposed to be the same Dr. Whitney/Whitley/whatever (too lazy to look it up) ? And if so, then is this before he became a scientist since his wife apparently knew more about the tech than he did? So then you could say that ED-E was his inspiration for becoming a scientist and perhaps joining the enclave? Then what REALLY puzzles me is that the courier's dialogue says, something like, "so that's why you have the Illinois plate? The other you I mean." I'm still not clear on the whole two ED-E's thing. It's never really explained in a manner I'm capable of understanding. And why if ED-E's destination was the enclave in Navarro does the courier not have any dialogue to tell him that the oil platform was destroyed?

 

Also, more specific to this thread, Ulysses mentions in Hopeville, that the Lonesome Rd. wasn't always the Divide. There was another place called the Divide before. So Cass could be talking about the other place, or this one.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Fistandilius