is the courrier amnesic or not ?

mkba

mkba

First time out of the vault
trought the mountain of reading that i've done about new vegas , one thing is perpetually changing . a lot of people think that the courier is amnesic due to the bullet in the head , and others like i tought the opposite .
so once for all is the courrier amnesic or not ?

ps : excuse me for my english i try to get better on it ...
 
He is if you want him to be.

He's not if you don't want him to be.

The game never provides any proof either way, because the Courier is a blank slate character. What your character knows and doesn't know, as well as what they are thinking, and what there backstory is, is supposed to be entirely up to you. Establishing the Courier as being either amnesic or not completely defeats the aim of having a blank slate character.
 
Jogre said:
The game never provides any proof either way, because the Courier is a blank slate character.
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Actually, the game provides many options and opportunities to establish whether or not your Courier remembers something from the past, like when the male Courier can say he's impregnated a woman from Montana, or when it's been a while since he visited Salt Lake City (or something else? Can't remember the exact thing).
 
The Vault wiki cites a quote of Sawyer that claims the Courier is not an amnesiac: http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Courier#cite_note-6
"The Courier is not an amnesiac. Questions about the NCR, Legion, local goings on, etc. are present so the player does not stumble around without a clue. We can't assume any given player is familiar with these factions."
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I think it is up to the player to decide honestly though based on the dialogue options, you could interpret it as an amnesiac recovering memories as the game progresses or follow Sawyer's quote to the letter.
 
Many people get confused over the fact that when you wake up in Doc's house, you seem to remember nothing. The idea that Courier is amnesiac is not wrong, since it seems like that at first, but after talking with some NPCs over the course of game it becomes apparent that Courier isn't an amnesiac. He/she is often clueless though.
 
If I recall correctly, there isn't even one dialogue option that we can pick that says anything like "I don't remember", "I can't remember", "I lost my memory", "I have memory loss", etc.
Even when Doc Mitchell asks the character's name there is no option of saying "I can't remember my name". And the Courier doesn't mention anything to the doctor about not remembering things (which one would do).

If the Courier has any kind of amnesia (there are more than ten different types) it would probably be lacunar post-traumatic amnesia, which would be the loss of memory concerning the whole shot in the head incident. But since we watch the intro video through the Courier's eyes, it gives the idea that he was dreaming/remembering/reliving it right before he woke up in Doc Mitchell's house.

I think the Courier does not have amnesia because we have no dialogue option about him not remembering things (which a person who lost his memories would be asking or talking about a lot).
 
Nah, atmost he might suffer a bit of a concussion or trauma. Which is a good excuse for several possible plot-holes. A low-INT Courier very might well have become a retard, but then you have Couriers in fine shape, so it's just a fun point to play with for role-playing.
 
Although J.E. Sawyer stated that the Courier is not an amnesiac, it looks like the original idea was that he or she is, in fact, an amnesiac, at least to some extent. This is evident by the following dialogue with Sunny Smiles:
  • Sunny Smiles: But maybe that's just something folks in the NCR cooked up to make themselves seem more useful here. Less uninvited.
  • Courier: NCR?
  • Sunny Smiles: The New California Republic. Bunch of settlers and soldiers coming in from the West, fixing on making Nevada their own.

There is also the following unused but voiced dialogue with Lieutenant Hayes:
  • Courier: What's the New California Republic?
  • Lt Hayes: Where do you come from that you haven't heard of the NCR? Nevermind, it doesn't matter much. If you haven't heard of us, you must not be from the Legion. Put simply, the NCR is the greatest nation currently functioning.

There is also a discussion titled "The Courier's Amnesia" on reddit that brings up additional points:

Quote by Joshua Sawyer: "The Courier is not an amnesiac. Questions about the NCR, Legion, local goings on, etc. are present so the player does not stumble around without a clue. We can't assume any given player is familiar with these factions."

Okay, I can buy that. Or rather I could buy that if it didn't end up causing more problems.

The Courier asking these questions means, in the universe of the game, that they have to have some form of amnesia. No if's, and's, or but's. No normal person asks a question they know the answer to.

If the Courier is asking these questions so the player can become educated, this breaks the fourth wall. The amnesia explanation would've made so much more sense in-universe and served the purpose of educating the player.

EDIT: Another way of doing this would be to have the Courier ask Trudy "what do you think of the Legion/NCR" instead of "tell me about the Legion/NCR". This would establish the Courier remembering the Legion/NCR and would allow the players to be clued in as to who they are.

[. . .]

The Courier had to deliver packages directly from the NCR and traveled all around NCR territories. Certainly, there would be some knowledge of what the government was like.

Things about local goings-on make sense from both perspectives. The Courier wouldn't necessarily know about those and so we learn as they learn. But when the main character is in NCR territory, they should know who the faction is.

[. . .]

Yeah, it's a game and some creative liberties are taken. . . . However, when it comes to my character's backstory, I am forced to assume the dialogue options provided are canon. So when they ask about a certain group, it's implied the character knows nothing about the group.

[. . .]

When you're asking someone to tell you about a group of people, you clearly don't know who or what that group is. If you wanted to know another person's take on a situation, you would ask them their opinion on the situation.

[. . .]

It only makes sense that you would have some sort of amnesia and Lonesome Road backs that up. How else could the Courier forget about the Divide when they made so many trips there? The only other argument is the Courier just sort of blurred it out as part of the job.

[. . .]

You can't write in something that can be construed as memory loss and then turn around and say it's not. Especially since there's a whole DLC that would imply amnesia. The only other explanation is bad writing and I doubt they would want to acknowledge that.

[. . .]

It's in a dialogue tree which means it's part of a conversation two characters are having.

[. . .]

Why can't it be both, the Courier forgets what these things are and that's the mode of delivering information to the player. Why is a character having amnesia such a problem?

Also, the Courier had made several trips to the Divide before New Vegas. Why would they not remember a place they had been to frequently?

[. . .]

One dev said the Courier doesn't have amnesia. But if that's the case, then Lonesome Road has [sh**] writing because a major point of Lonesome Road is the Courier not remembering the Divide and what happened and Ulysses holding them responsible for everything. Considering the devs and writers are saying Lonesome Road is canon, the amnesia has to be canon as well.

Call it memory loss or amnesia (there are differing degrees of amnesia), but something has to be there even if we discount the dialogue options.​
 
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I don't think you understand the idea behind a blank slate character.

Blank Slate Characters are supposed to be entirely your creation. There backstory, past, what they know, what they don't, where they've been is entirely up to you. There is no canonical backstory for the Courier, there's what you choose to be the backstory for your courier.

When you have the option with the Lonesome Drifter to say "Idaho, you aren't 18 are you?", that doesn't confirm the courier slept with a woman in Idaho, it's just a suggestion on a certain piece of information to add to your courier's backstory if it suits them. If you do not think a certain dialogue option suits your courier, you don't pick it.

The same can be assumed of the questions about what the NCR is. If your character doesn't know about the NCR, pick those options, if your character knows all there is to know about the NCR, choose different options. New Vegas has very few mandatory backstory options, and the dialogue is optional solely if it suits your character.
Tiamin said:
  • Sunny Smiles: But maybe that's just something folks in the NCR cooked up to make themselves seem more useful here. Less uninvited.
  • Courier: NCR?
  • Sunny Smiles: The New California Republic. Bunch of settlers and soldiers coming in from the West, fixing on making Nevada their own.
There is also the following unused but voiced dialogue with Lieutenant Hayes:
  • Courier: What's the New California Republic?
  • Lt. Hayes: Where do you come from that you haven't heard of the NCR? Nevermind, it doesn't matter much. If you haven't heard of us, you must not be from the Legion. Put simply, the NCR is the greatest nation currently functioning.
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You realise those are optional dialogue options, not mandatory right? The Courier is not one established character, it is whatever character of whatever backstory the player decides.

Those options are included there for players new to the game so they can learn about the backstory. They are entirely optional and you have no obligation to choose them if you don't want to.

If you want to play a Courier who knows about the NCR don't choose those options. How much the character knows is entirely up to you, since it's your character.

Not every Courier asks those questions, and it's up to the player to decide whether there character would know that or not.
The Courier had to deliver packages directly from the NCR and traveled all around NCR territories. Certainly, there would be some knowledge of what the government was like.
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The only confirmed places the Courier has been are Primm, Goodsprings and The Divide.

Everything else is optional.


Also, unrelated, but your posting style really reminds me of that of Brycen. The way you separate quotes via the [...] is very similar. If you are him, I'd recommend sticking to one account, having alts is against the rules.
 
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Jogre said:
Also, unrelated, but your posting style really reminds me of that of Brycen. The way you separate quotes via the [...] is very similar. If you are him, I'd recommend sticking to one account, having alts is against the rules.
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Unrelated but if it is Brycen, would the moderators be able to recognize that the account is an alt based on the IP address or would VPN get in the way? The way Tiamin brought in an entire Reddit discussion (with some cherry-picking) to justify their statement does remind me a bit too much of Brycen.

Tiamin said:
The Courier asking these questions means, in the universe of the game, that they have to have some form of amnesia. No if's, and's, or but's. No normal person asks a question they know the answer to.

If the Courier is asking these questions so the player can become educated, this breaks the fourth wall. The amnesia explanation would've made so much more sense in-universe and served the purpose of educating the player.
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Not exactly. The questions have been confirmed by Sawyer to be for the player's benefit though since the character is a blank slate, players can choose to interpret it as amnesia. But really, there is no point trying to prove that the Courier is amnesiac since the Courier can be whoever the player wants them to be.
 
mkba said:
trought the mountain of reading that i've done about new vegas , one thing is perpetually changing . a lot of people think that the courier is amnesic due to the bullet in the head , and others like i tought the opposite .
so once for all is the courrier amnesic or not ?
Click to expand...

I can't remember.
 
I can't say either way, but what I can tell you is that my courier is a sociopath.
 
My Courier is The Lone Wanderer so amnesia-ism needs to go out the window and die in a fire. Although Rycon did a roleplay of it where his is amnesiac and still The Lone Wanderer so I guess it works but not for me. If Wanderer can get a piece of gray matter scalped out and all it gives him is a headache then getting double capped certainly won't do it.
 
Jogre said:
TBH, the backstory added in Lonesome Road isn't too intrusive.

Lonesome Road establishes you've been a Courier for at least a few years, and had regular deliveries to Hopeville. That's really not that much extra from "You are a courier"
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It's still a tad annoying, definitely not my favorite DLC of the game.
 
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