Still,no matter what you do,you end being someone only killing Mr. House and usurping Vegas.Otherwise,the NCR,Legion or House took over the Dam and you in the end were just a minion.The problem with new vegas is that in the end,evertyhing you did don't make a difference because you only helped a faction take over,that is bad writing because it you could say the story could progress without the Courier ever existing at all.

I've always been more interested in the journey than the destination, if you know what I mean. The main quest is just a sort of backbone for games like this. You don't really need to ever pursue it unless you want to see the endings.

But you said something interesting - what would happen if the Courier never existed?
Benny would have the chip and Yes Man but could he implement his plans?
Mr. House has the protectron army but how could he activate it?
The NCR has the dam but their resources grow thinner and thinner.
Caeser's army waits and grows. His successor is an even more capable, ruthless ruler.
I think, without the courier, the Legion would overrun Vegas and go on to destroy the now-powerless NCR in California. Without the PC to galvanize events (whoever he supports) the West would fall into a ruinous dictatorship.
If the PC supports the Legion he's just hastening the inevitable.

This makes the courier the most important person in the wasteland and as the game is designed for the player to determine motivation and allegiance I don't agree that the writing is bad. Not to your taste, which is perfectly acceptable, but not bad by any means.

Very true. Things would still happen if the courier was never there, but, HOW would things turn out? Mr. House would not get his upgraded securitrons, NCR, or , the legion, or whomever, would not have the help of the Boomers, etc. The courier isn't all important, just a cog in the machine. The point is, the courier has an INFLUENCE on how things turn out, he isn't REQUIRED to be there for for events to progress. If he was never there, things would happen anyway.

As for why folks pursue Benny.... have you read the contract for the delivery job? YOU can be held financially accountable for failure of your mission. Not to mention that with failure, you would be out of a job..... and debt collectors in the wasteland aren't constrained by current laws....... debtors prison? ANOTHER bullet in the head?? Not exactly pretty alternatives.. It is in your best interests to find Benny, recover the chip, and complete your mission.

The courier became influentional because he entered the Lucky 38,if House invited someone the same would have happened the same way and the story progress would be the same...

I think you're severely downplaying your accomplishments as the Courier. It's nostalgia goggles I bet.
You "only" usurp Mr. House and take over New Vegas.
You were "just a minion" to the NCR/Legion/House.
You "only" helped a faction take over.

Here's another way of looking at it all:
You were an incredibly resourceful enough individual to wrest control of New Vegas from the incredibly powerful and intelligent Mr. House.
You became a legendary hero of the NCR/Legion/House army that will go down in the history books.
The battle of Hoover Dam hinged entirely on your intervention, bringing victory to those you sided with because of your actions.

Now here's another way to look at all the games you seem to be placing on a pedestal:
You "only" blew up some bunker full of chemicals and some building with a ugly mutant in the basemant in Fallout 1.
You "only" blew up an oil rig in Fallout 2.
You were "just a minion" to the Overseer in Fallout 1
You were "just a minion" tribal follower in Fallout 2
You "only" got a water chip Fallout 1.
You "only" got a GECK in Fallout 2.

Wow,this comment actually made me think that my previous comments contain biased opinions,and i am not being ironic.
I think i will replay it on other faction and see what happens. :mellow:

That's the problem- the character is not as blank a slate as possible. Finding Benny is an assumed motivation placed upon the character whether or not, in the player's mind, she would actually want to do that. Ergo, there is no reason, other than the fact this is a game to be played, for the courier to start exploring if she doesn't want to go find Benny. Even helping Goodsprings doesn't do anything to necessarily compel the character forward besides giving her clues on finding Benny. That's a poorly handled start.

The other Fallout MCs were really blank slates. In FO1, the adventure starts when you get booted out of the Vault. In FO2, it's when you get booted out of the village. In FO3, it's when you're more or less forced out of the Vault. In none of those instances does the game or the writing decide anything about your character; all it does is create a situation where your character must move or die, without doing anything to say, your character has traits x, y, or z. Anything decided about your character by then has been based on your play/conversational decisions during the little prologue. NV is actually a step back in this respect.

Let me be clear- once you get to Nipton, which is pretty early, this starts to change. You learn about the sides being drawn up in a massive conflict, and given that you're already exploring and probably beginning to choose sides (NCR or Powder Gangers), it makes sense that you're going to get more deeply involved. What I'm talking about is not an issue that permeates the entire game. But the start of any story is critical, and this one needs more, even if it's just dialogue options that let the character explore the idea of staying in Goodsprings and end up rebuffed by the townsfolk, given reasons why she has to move on. It can't be assumed that's what she would do.

Also, in slight defense of people frustrated by the sense of only being a minion, you are clearly less important as a person in NV than in the other Fallouts. If you get the water chip, you're the vault savior. If you get the GECK, you're the village savior. Blowing up the Enclave in 2 and 3 makes you a Wasteland savior. In NV, you're just a tool to Mr. House and a soldier in the NCR or Legion armies, which is what makes the Yes Man thread so appealing (even if you end up not getting what you want).

Like I said, though, it's only a slight defense. The factions in the Wasteland are growing; thus, logically, a single person stumbling into a conflict will be more of a cog than in previous games. The way it's all designed is sensible given the situation. I would only say that, in my opinion, the Wild Card story should have been that savior ending, so you can choose between being THE HERO or just a very important part of someone else's designs.

This.The main problem is that at the end what you did was not so rewarding.I sided with Yes man and i want to see how it ends.

I think someone already mentioned that in the Mojave Express note you get at the beginning of the game, you're obligated under contract to go get the Platinum Chip. That's one motivator. Or you just want revenge on Benny. That's another motivator. It's up to you exactly why you started pursuing the Platinum Chip. Granted, in FO1,2, and 3 you got booted from your home and that's a strong motivator to get things done, but in New Vegas you're about to get booted from your job and a sizeable amount of caps - right up until you discover the bigger picture going on and opt to leave your Courier days behind you. I will grant you it's not as strong a motivator as being kicked out of your lifelong childhood home, but it's a motivator nontheless.



Oh that's simple: No work to be had in Goodsprings. Also, see above about being contractually obligated to go get the chip while in the meantime you are dirt-poor. Or you could indeed just lie low, find a place to stay (Easy Pete has a spare bed he'll let you use), and spend the rest of your life hunting nearby geckos and selling their meat and hides.

True. But you could also argue that you only saved one Vault, whereas in New Vegas you had a dramatic impact on an entire major populated city (New Vegas), surrounding areas, and even affected entire state-spanning governments.


True, and that village even grows into a major city if the ending screen is any indicator. But again: New Vegas is also a major city that you either chose to save or deliberately plunge into chaos.


You can choose to decimate the brutal Caeser's Legion which also arguably makes you a Wasteland savior.


We're going in circles at this point:
You can argue you were a tool to the Overseer in FO1, which resulted you in becoming Vault 13's savior.
You can argue you were a tool to your tribe's elders in FO2, which resulted in you becoming the tribe's savior.
You can argue that you were just a tool to Mr. House, which potentially results in preventing mass slaughter and enslavement of the region by Caeser's Legion, thus becoming New Vegas's savior.
You can also argue that you're just a tool to the NCR, which also potentially results in driving off the barbaric and brutal Caeser's Legion, preventing them from further conquering towns further west of New Vegas, thus becoming a savior to the people of the entire NCR.
Then of course there's Yes Man where you personally take the reigns to protect everybody in the region and become their savior.


The Wild Card story has the potential to be a savior story, if you play your cards right. Of course, there are birthing pains of an independent state, but judging from the narration I got, you just know everything is eventually going to turn out all right. :celebration:

You're a stubborn cuss, ain't ya?
I won't bother arguing with you except to point out that I'd have been really bothered if the ending of the game was watching Mr. House invite someone else into the Lucky 38. Now that would be bad writing.

The 'just a minion' thing really is a cop out.

Ulysses S. Grant was 'just a minion' of the USA.
Georgy Zhukov was 'just a minion' of Soviet Russia.
James Bond is 'just a minion' of MI6.
Luke Skywalker was 'just a minion' of the Rebellion.

I could go on about famous people, both fictional and real, who work for someone else. People whom history in their respective senses was written by their actions. The assassin who killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand plunged the world into a war that everyone thought was going to be the last war ever due to it's size and horror. One man who did one thing.

Determining who controls the Hoover Dam and New Vegas, being two of the very few INTACT bastions of Pre-War anything in the Fallout universe? Big, big, big deal. I just wish there were two more options (that are almost as cruel as handing it to Caesar - hand it to the BoS or rebuild the Enclave with the Dam as a base.)

Sojur... ok, you're coming up with more potential motivations, and some of them could force the character to move on. But the point is that none of them actually happen. No one ever says there's no room in Goodsprings for another resident. No one says- and either Victor or Doc Mitchell would have been good for this- that you should really look into the missing item because the courier service will be all over your ass if you don't, and Goodsprings isn't going to let you stay with that hanging over your head. When you get to Primm, Johnson Nash doesn't put any pressure on you. In fact, there's no sense of pressure on the character whatsoever.

Say I'm the courier. I get fixed up and handed this note. I say, very reasonably, "[censored] that chip, [censored] that guy in the suit, and [censored] the courier service. I'm going to shoot geckos with Sunny, buy a bighorn, and start ranching. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

You and I, as players, can sit here outside the game and come up with very viable reasons. But none of them exist in the game. That's the problem.



Can you explain this? I did the Wild Card story, and what I saw was this:

-Yes Man shows up after the final battle and says he's going to become more assertive.
-The representative ending slide says Yes Man runs the Securitrons all over New Vegas and environs, cleaning up all the chaos very quickly.
-Further slides, especially regarding the Followers, suggest Vegas continues to be run for the benefit of the Strip and the Strip only.

This seems, to me, like New Vegas ends up independent, but under the control of Yes Man. This strikes me as not substantially different than working for an independent Vegas under Mr. House. Is there the potential for this to turn out differently?

What are you talking about? How are the previous games different? FO1 wants you to find a water chip. FO2 wants you to find the GECK. FO3 wants you to find your father. The other FO main characters aren't blank slates at all. FO1 assumes that you care about the Vault, FO2 assumes you care about Arroyo, FO3 assumes you care about your father. You don't get the choice to say [censored] Vault 13, [censored] Arroyo, or [censored] James in those games. You fail the game if you kill everyone in Vault 13 or Arroyo, and James can't be killed in FO3. You get the obligatory "where can I find a water chip/the GECK/my father" dialogue everywhere you go.

Eh, you can just chalk that one up to another case of player preference. I seem to remember a lot of players complaining that they didn't like being forced by the main quest to go after Dad since they might have reasons not to (such as abandonment). So in New Vegas they probably intentionally adopted a "softer" start like that is a more gentle signal of "just get around to this when you want to." :shrug:


I got a different ending. What was your karma?

You're missing the point. I'm only referring to the start of the game. Your character can say "screw this" to her initial goal in each of those games but still be compelled to move forward by fear of death via hunger/dehydration, which would occur if she just sat down and didn't move. The game assumes you probably care, which is reasonable, but you're still pushed to move if you don't.

Again: Characters require motivation to act. That doesn't change just because this is a game where you choose your character's rationale. The game should, and in just about every other instance does lay out different options so you can decide your character's course. To make it as open-ended as possible- to make the character as blank a slate as possible- the only assumption the writers should make is that your character doesn't want to die. Everything beyond that should remain open. And at the start of the game, that's not the case. The game assumes you want to find Benny and/or the chip, and gives your character no other reason to act. So if you decide that your character doesn't care about Benny, or the chip, or repercussions from the courier service, there's no character motivation. That's a flaw in design.

If you grasp this point, you still might say, well, then you just come up with a reason. My opinion is that's poor writing. We should not have to kickstart the character. There doesn't need to be anything deep or complex pushing them along, but there needs to be something. If you think it's perfectly acceptable, then we'll just have to disagree.

(For the record, even later in the other games you're still not necessarily compelled to care about the main quest as designed. I don't know if you can continue should the water chip not be retrieved in FO1, although the way the story plays out it should be possible. It would seem that, at minimum, you can hunt down the Master and the military base regardless. If that's not possible, it's disappointing. In FO2, you don't have to care about Arroyo one iota. Everyone gets kidnapped when you enter Vault 13, so you don't need the GECK for that to happen, and I don't think you need to return to Arroyo at all to access the Enclave base. Going back gets you the location of Navarro, but you can find that regardless. And in FO3, not only don't you have to care about your father- there are dialogue options that show you don't give a damn about him, and there are pragmatic reasons for hunting him down- the main quest is a fairly insignificant portion of the game. Granted, that's due to the atrocious writing, but you can still have a very full experience without ever touching the MQ. All you lose out on is the ending.)

That would be sad, because in FO3 you absolutely don't have to go after Dad because you care. You can do everything else in the Wasteland and have a ball. Having to find him because you want to fix the water purifier is another story, though.

However, this doesn't really get at my criticism. Finding Benny and finding your father are both "get to it whenever" kinds of quests. Even if you don't view them equally, finding Benny isn't so much a softer start to the game as a softer start to the main quest. There should be something concrete kicking you out of Goodsprings and down the road. There isn't.



Very Good.

Okay. I think I'm done with this argument because, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I generally don't like to argue something as heavily subjective as how good a story/movie/song/entertainment is compared to others, especially video game storylines. Everyone has their personal tastes - you don't like New Vegas's beginning and I can live with that. What prompted me to post at length is that I thought the OP was severely downplaying everything done in New Vegas while getting his vision clouded by nostalgia goggles at FO1 and 2, as well as misinterpretation of events as they are presented in New Vegas.


Did you recruit the Followers of the Apocalypse into helping support an independent Vegas? Did you upgrade the Securitrons or destroy them? Did you activate them at the Dam or destroy the Dam's ability to produce electricity? How did you distribute power at Helios One?

I honestly don't know for sure if we both got different endings, or we're both interpretting what the narrator told us differently. But I was also Very Good as well and I didn't really pick up anything that my character or Yes Man locked down New Vegas and became very self-serving, if that's what you're indicating.

Not sure how to get the Followers to support Vegas, upgraded Securitrons, activated them at the Dam (or had them at my disposal, anyway), did not destroy anything about the Dam, distributed power evenly at HELIOS.

According to the wiki, the only faction the Followers can support where it makes a difference is NCR. I'm guessing we saw the same stuff. My logic goes like this (endings are c/p'd from the wiki):

-When Yes Man says he's becoming more assertive, that implies, or at least opens up, the possibility that he's not going to be your lackey anymore.

-The Yes Man ending goes, "The Courier, with the aid of Yes Man, drove both the Legion and the NCR from Hoover Dam, securing New Vegas' independence from both factions. With Mr. House out of the picture, part of the Securitron army was diverted to the Strip to keep order. {Beat, slightly lower}Any chaos on the streets was ended, quickly. Chaos became uncertainty, then acceptance, with minimal loss of life. New Vegas assumed its position as an independent power in the Mojave." This could go either way, with the courier remaining a force in the area or Yes Man taking control.

-The courier's ending is, "Supporting the ideals of independence, the Courier was recognized as the woman responsible for a truly free New Vegas. She ensured that Mr. House's tyranny was broken and that neither Caesar's Legion nor NCR would ever gain control over New Vegas." This is probably where our opinions diverge. It says right here that everyone goes, yay courier! There's a definite hero aspect. However, while it says she's responsible for Vegas' independence, there's nothing about her having any sort of control or influence once that independence is achieved. If that's the correct conclusion, that means she essentially worked on behalf of Yes Man.

In that vein, I'll mention the NCR ending (which I also saw): "The Courier, fair and even-handed in her dealings throughout the Wasteland, was honored by the NCR for her support of the military at Hoover Dam. She was presented with the Golden Branch, the highest civilian decoration given by the Republic." Again, she's a hero, but clearly working in the service of the NCR.

The courier is the one responsible for who wins in the end. That's not in dispute. But in each case- in my view, including Yes Man- the actual victor is someone or something bigger than the courier. That's not the case in the first three Fallout games. So, while you get the hero treatment regardless of who wins, and the structure of the story makes perfect sense, I think it's understandable if someone plays through and ends up feeling like a minion. Going by the basic definition of minion- an underling or subordinate to a greater force- that's exactly what you are.

Actually it is: you can't get the followers to forge alliance until "For the Republic, Part II" like the Khans.

Become idolized with them, become a member of them, then go talk to Yes Man about starting the final battle. You will be given the option of talking to Julie Farkas at the Old Mormon Fort about supporting an independent Vegas.


I thought it was established that Yes Man has to do anything and everything you (The Courier) says? That's how I arrived at the conclusion I did. New Vegas now belongs to the Courier because Yes Man will obey his/her commands. That bit about becoming more assertive at the end was just done for comic value and to ensure NOBODY ELSE can tell Yes Man what to do.


Here we go for another spin around the circle I guess:
FO1: Minion of the Overseer.
FO2: Minion of your tribe.
FO3: Minion of your Dad and the BoS.
Fallout in general: Go do something for somebody.
RPG's since time in memorium: Go do something because somebody else or something else wants you to.
How many more laps would you like to do on this track? :bonk:

Yes, I understand your argument is trying to explain to me why a player MIGHT FEEL like a minion, but my argument is the same: they've always been minions, so how is this any different from the first three games?

Siding with House doesn't turn the NCR hostile, only siding with Caesar does.



No. That is not what roleplaying is about. Roleplaying is about creating a (hopefully realistic) character with a personality, backstory, motivation, and then playing through the game as that character. Most real people aren't white knights.

No, that isn't a poorly handled start. No matter what, Benny shoots you in the head, but the game doesn't force you into following the main story. There are lots of really easy ways to give a variety of characters a good motivation to follow Benny and care, but they don't force you.




I don't think you understand what a 'blank slate' means. In Fallout 1, you can't choose your back-story for your character, your back-story is chosen for you. The same applies, though more loosely, to Fallout 2. And in Fallout 3 the writing decides loads about your character, contrary to your claim. The writing establishes that you have no combat training and have to come from a specific place, which writes you into a pretty small corner.



It would be out of character for the people in Goodsprings to push you out. They don't tell you not to stay in Goodsprings because there is no reason you can't, it would just bring the story to a halt. If you want to play a character who lives in Goodsprings you can, just sleep in Victor's house and hunt Gecko's and Powder Gangers for a living.

So you start as a Fed-Ex person who gets a package stolen from him and receives a bullet to the head...

There are a thousand different ways you could have stated this game better in order to draw the person into more of an Role Playing adventure.

I paid my $60.00 for this game. I bought it primarily due to the incredile game Fallout 3 was. I should have paid more attention to the reviews of "More of the same," then I did. Oh well.