Fallout: The Frontier - Released!

My Ulsyess hot take:

Spoiler

Like honestly, I respect people who argue back and forth about Ulsyess's motivations: "He was motivated by vengeance", "Actually he specifically doesn't blame you", "He's deliberately written to be a hypocrite". I do not have the patience to properly become an Ulsyess lore expert.

If the writers wanted us to take this character seriously, IMO, they shouldn't have made him have the most annoying speaking style of any character in any Fallout game "A Metaphor...Message is conveyed...Talks in clipped sentences"

Which would be bearable if it was actually conveyed in some way other than walking through a road shooting deathclaws, and occasionally being stopped for a half hour to listen to a man rant at you. That is a very bad way to commuicate a character's underlying motivations and philosophy, and tbh, the game didn't do a good enough job convincing me that it's worth understanding him as a character.

 

The first time I played Lonesome Road I thought Ulysses was really cool. The second time I played it was a few years later, and by then I realized how pretentious his manner of speaking is, like he’s trying really hard to sound cool. I like his backstory and all but yeah, he isn’t very well-portrayed ingame.

 

I like Ulysses a lot but I have no illusions that his good writing is conveyed very poorly. The sheer fact that ten years later 90% of players actually don't understand what is going on and just think he's mad at the mailman is testament to that.

I like his way of speaking as an idea because it's very tribal and builds into the mystification of post-nuclear america, however it really needed to be cut down and not be his usual intonation. Because yeah, it comes off as too much otherwise.

 

i think alot of the issue is people just see him at face value. so to alot of people he is just some mad man hyped up for 4 dlcs that blames you for something you never did.

 

I like him vicariously through posts other people have made about him:

When I hear it explained through other posts about his hypocrisy, his internal struggles with what he's doing, his ideology about the desire for a new civilisation and his anger at the destruction of Hopeville, ect., I think he actually makes a compelling character.

Problem is it takes a lot of digging through layers of metaphor and hours of dialogue to find this. Like usually I'm a massive Fallout Nerd who spends ages trying to dig through the lore to make up my own interpretations, but with Ulsyess I often feel that this effort is not worth it for a single character.

Ulsyess is one of those characters I'm more than happy to appreciate through other people's interpretations.

Apparently the original goal behind Ulysses was that he was meant to be a companion in the base-game who was sympathetic to Legion, but could through the Courier's actions be convinced that the Courier could act as a unifying symbolic figurehead for a future civilisation in the Mojave, and rally behind other endings instead.

I feel like this actually makes a lot more sense for his ideology and the way he's written. By listening to Ulsyess the player would get an interesting nuance about the future of the Mojave beyond short-term material gains.

I think putting him front and center of a DLC and the overarching antagonist of all three games kinda weakens him because they need to put a lot more mandatory BS in to justify his existence as a major antagnoist.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2020052..._writer_and_former_unlucky_schlep__Part_3.php

 

I still think he was good as an antagonist, Lonesome Road itself just needed a thorough edit. However, I also think that the game also needed a pro-Legion companion that wasn't a meathead.

 

Even butthurted, he's still lying. Pathological liar, pants on fire. His nose is longer than telephone wire. Some nexus community modder died after suffering a heart attack with no 4chan Sneedclave squad involvement. But Xilandro has different intel again.


RENT! FREE!!!

 

Yeah, good a writer though he is Avellone has a big problem with self indulgence. Lonesome Road is one of the few times when the common Bethesda apologist refrain of "Show, not tell" is a valid criticism of NV - but then, if you take out half of Ulysses's dialogue, that might reduce the length of the DLC by half.

 

Someone needs to grab that overworld map of Portland and do something better with it because in all honesty The Frontier's city map seems like it has a lot of potential. Even if released as a modder's resource like someone did with their recreation of San Fran.

 

Not a fan of this idea a lot of people have about Fallout where nuclear apocalypse happened but most of the cities in the United States all have to somehow be largely intact, honestly. They obviously had to do it in New Vegas but there's at least a pretty satisfying explanation for why it is that way.

A more recent example of this would be the two companions he wrote in Pillars of Eternity

Not at all. Fascism is a pretty specific ideology contrary to what people (both on the left and right) tend to think and it was pretty much a very obvious response to some of the stuff that started happening as Europe really started to emerge into what we define as modernity. It isn't really something that would be compatible with any of the political thought you were dealing with as far back as Ancient Rome.

 

I feel it works for 76 too a bit. No one really cares about the West Virginia countryside. I think they say everything in that game is just backblast and radiation from the areas that actually got hit. Probably referring to DC and Virginia. And yeah I know DC isn’t all crater and rubble, but whatever. Still a good looking world map. For 76 though it works imo.

 

It’s been said before but, compare that to Randall Clark’s experiences in the Zion Canyon immediately post war. Same basic idea, an area that didn’t get hit by nukes but is absolutely devastated by the environmental consequences of full scale nuclear war. I think that’s a much better way of portraying a place like West Virginia.

Also, if West Virginia has all these missile silos then why wasn’t it hit by Chinese nukes?

Yeah I heard about that and his character would’ve fit much better into the game as a companion rather than antagonist, but I’m glad he still made it into the game eventually.

 

Oh no, terrible TERRIBLE news

Wolf7000 was a dear colleague, he was super enthusiastic about my Arizona Slave Army and Knightmare Fiends mods and took lots of good pictures to post on my mods' pages. I loved it when he did that.

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/130/images/66081/66081-1589126354-1118198735.jpeg
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/130/images/69569/69569-1596795100-363893575.jpeg

We even chatted a bit via Steam chat and Nexus private messages. The guy was a real New Vegas lover.

Rest in peace buddy.

 

Yupppppp. Most major US cities (In particular state capitals) should be like Randall Clark describing Salt Lake City - just concrete and twisted girders. Nothing left but foundations, rubble and blast craters. The Boneyard is called that for a reason. I never pictured towering skyscrapers there, I pictured a concrete and asphalt cemetary. You could maybe excuse some places that got air-blasted.

Besides, even if they remained intact the majority are going to hold zero strategic value outside of salvaging - there's no reason anybody would form community or give a shit about Portland after the Great War unless it had specific technology. Again to call on the Boneyard example, the Boneyard in the grand scheme of NCR is actually pretty unimportant.

 

Some of my favorite parts of the Fallout 3 map is when you exit a metro and emerge to nothing but rubble and building frames that you can see all the way into the distance.

 

I seem to remember the Boneyard being described as having skeletal skyscrapers towering all around, but perhaps I’m mistaken.

Edit: Never mind, I believe I was misremembering this part of the Vault Dwellers Memoirs: “The LA Boneyard stretched forever, the skeletons of buildings lying under the hot sun.” I guess he specifically describes the skeletons of buildings “lying”, rather than standing upright.

 

The only place in classic FO we know for sure still has skyscrapers is Bakersfield

 

https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/ulysses-is-kind-of-a-moron.204063/

 

Honestly, while writing the stuff on Ulysses I did actually vaguely remember you posting some stuff about him from when I first read it 5 or 6 years ago(Jesus Christ it's been that long, time is scary), though I didn't remember the specifics.

It gave me a chuckle back then, and I have constantly used your "Crazy guy leaving casette tapes talking about countries in metaphors" description when describing Lonesome Road to friends who loved New Vegas but have never touched the DLC.

I guess the reason I remembered that post is because it kinda perfectly encapsulated the feelings of simultaneous relief and frustration at realising you don't have enough patience to obsess over Lonesome Road.

 

There is this thing.