The Courier: Amnesia or what?
- Thread starter Bishop999
- Start date
Alphadrop
A right proper chap.
Walpknut said:
Ooh Fable 3 just got buuurned.
Canakin said:
I disagree. The writing is at the very, very least decent and personally I'm not at all disappointed with the DLC itself. It's just the little issue between player-character knowledge I think they handled terribly.
A quick, ambiguous note -at any point before entering the divide- saying: "FYI: You ran a few deliveries between between the NCR and Divide a while back and eventually heard about the place blowing up. Wonder what that's about. " and I could've enjoyed the trail and Ulysses' whining because it would've made sense without really imposing on my character, however I want to play him.
The way things turned out I just played it out wondering if I'd missed something, hence the thread. On the contrary, I generally think Bethesda does the whole ambiguous-pc-backstory very well throughout the Fallout series, though the 'Elders Scrolls' jail-fetish feels a bit more dynamic.
Concerning DLC in general it could be true, but as a rule you don't actually have to engage them in every playthrough just because you bought them, making it a moot point whether or not they really disrupt the atmosphere since you can just ignore them if they don't fit your character story. When it comes to quality and entertainment value you risk ten times as much buying the game in the first place anyway, so optional DLC is all right by me.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
Wasn't the divide destroyed at the same time the Legion was retreating from the first Battle of Hoover Dam? I think the Courier wouldn't think much about a palce he ran delvieries for being destroyed right after a big confrontation between the guerilla tactics using Legion and the trigger Happy rangers of the NCR. It ocudl pretty much be chalked up to them, the only one that knows who was responsible was Ulysses because he was te only one that retained some little semblance of sanity after surviving.
Josan
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Bishop999 said:
Really? Interesting considering Bethesda has only done FO3.
They have? Funny, it says "BETHESDA" on the covers of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but I've never played the others, so guess I'll have to take your word for it. Ahem... and who cares? The point still stands.
And whether or not the Courier knows exactly what happened is irrelevant. If the game assumes that my character's repeatedly traveled somewhere before out of the blue then I want to know before they base an entire plot line on it, to avoid confusion.
And whether or not the Courier knows exactly what happened is irrelevant. If the game assumes that my character's repeatedly traveled somewhere before out of the blue then I want to know before they base an entire plot line on it, to avoid confusion.
NV was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda published it.Bishop999 said:
1 and 2 were developed by Interplay/Black Isle.
How did Fallout 3 do it any good in that regard? You're 19 years old and you search for you dad. That's actually pretty restricting when you do some serious roleplaying.
Anyway, the Courier has no amnesia. He probably lost his skills and all that due to the massive brain trauma and recovery time.
But yeah, I don't really like how LR imposes some background on the character.
It's restrictive in the specific sense, the prologue allows quite a bit of freedom RP-wise as long as you don't mind the age thing. And as prologues come, it's still a good one.
But yeah. Bad example. Sorry.
Gotta agree though, aside from LR, New Vegas' premise is pretty nice.
But yeah. Bad example. Sorry.
Gotta agree though, aside from LR, New Vegas' premise is pretty nice.
Stanislao Moulinsky
Vault Fossil
Bishop999 said:
Ehm, so how did you know that they did the ambiguous-pc-backstory very well throughout the series?
DoubleRubix
First time out of the vault
You are talking about. If you were a businessman or woman and had to go from city to city every day for say 10-15 years. Would you remember every tiny bit? Combine that with the fact that people get slaughtered in his/her world all the fucking time. Super mutants deathclaws. Even boone makes a statement that despite blowing someone's head off the town's people would shrug it off because it happens! Living with maybe 12-13 people in one town and one of them dying and no one seems that affected by it. 100's of faceless soldiers being lost in a war? No one cares unless they were celebrities which I doubt. So unless you can recall every single moment you ever had in perfect detail instead of a vague memory unless it meant something to you then of course there are gonna be some blank spots in your life that you can't recall. Just some of you are spoiled by Fallout 3 since he lived 99% of his life in a vault and you basically saw his entire past before he made a future. The Courier is a far departure from the fallout 1 2 and 3's protagonist. The first 3 had fairly bland pasts. Living in vaults in a village their entire life and then made something of themselves. The Courier already lived a good portion of his/her life without the player being able to guess it. And unless you are the kinda persons that has internal monologues about your past you aren't gonna be told it by the courier. Just little bits like."Hey I've been to New Reno" "I've had a bastard child in Montana" All the Courier is to me is a man or woman that suffered a gunshot wound probably lost some cognitive abilities and has to slowly "relearn" what he/she lost
A businessman takes a 2-10 hour flight to and from wherever he goes for work, experiencing nothing to make the journey worth remembering, while the Courier would have to travel potentially thousands of miles on foot in the wasteland, running into slavers, monsters, allies and enemies every step of the way. Would you just forget that? And as such the Divide itself is described as having been a pretty remarkable place even before it went to hell.
I'm not saying he should feel a magical connection, just that the game should've made a clear note of him having been there before and remembering it.
I'm not saying he should feel a magical connection, just that the game should've made a clear note of him having been there before and remembering it.
Navigation, trading seasons, weather conditions and supply control in a post-apocalyptic world? For a "Courier", keeping track of where you are, where you've been and what you know about the destination at any given point would be crucial.
Just because you can blind-walk or fast travel across the desert in 10-20 minutes in the game doesn't make it realistic for your character to forget his earlier routes, and again, it's not about the trip having mattered to him, I just want an indicator that my character knows he's been there before.
If they want to impose on my character-background and base an entire DLC on it then they better make it clear, rather than having a dude ominously hinting at something that we both should have known from the get-go throughout the whole thing.
I mean, really, the whole point of a past is to remember it! If they start editing and don't tell me before it's "revealed" by someone else then how can I adjust to it beforehand? It's the basic principle of roleplaying that your character can't possibly know more than you do, and to break that is to proudly shit on the player's immersion in an otherwise wonderful RPG.
Just because you can blind-walk or fast travel across the desert in 10-20 minutes in the game doesn't make it realistic for your character to forget his earlier routes, and again, it's not about the trip having mattered to him, I just want an indicator that my character knows he's been there before.
If they want to impose on my character-background and base an entire DLC on it then they better make it clear, rather than having a dude ominously hinting at something that we both should have known from the get-go throughout the whole thing.
I mean, really, the whole point of a past is to remember it! If they start editing and don't tell me before it's "revealed" by someone else then how can I adjust to it beforehand? It's the basic principle of roleplaying that your character can't possibly know more than you do, and to break that is to proudly shit on the player's immersion in an otherwise wonderful RPG.
Bishop999 said:
I'm pretty sure nobody implied that the courier forgot that the Divide exists. It's more that the courier would be at a loss as to figure out why it's pertinent to what s/he's doing at the moment. Just because I know a bunch of smuggling routes from Canada to Washington state doesn't mean they're prominent on my mind when I'm on a job in California, for instance.
And as for making it clear what the courier knows about the world, the problem is still that the courier is ill-defined as a character, where the player fills in all the gaps. It's not like we're playing Geralt, where his entire background is filled with actual books in print, or Shepard, whose pre-history is brief and selected when you begin the game. The designers essentially have to break it to the player softly that there are guiderails in existence and that his self-image has to include having spent some time in California at an indeterminate point in the past.
Not the point. If you've repeatedly navigated to and from somewhere through in-numerous dangers and hardships at any time then the experience should make enough of an impression that you wouldn't disregard it completely upon return.
The entire DLC still hinges on the Courier actually having visited the Divide previously, a fact which we, as the players, for some reason only find out about two thirds into story, when obviously the Courier would know and remember the moment Ulysses calls him/her to it. That doesn't make sense, and it can cause unintended confusion throughout the whole thing.
They wouldn't impose on your personally defined character at all by ambiguously, but very much definitely, stating beforehand that somehow, at some point, on some kind of delivery, you've Been. Here. Before.
The entire DLC still hinges on the Courier actually having visited the Divide previously, a fact which we, as the players, for some reason only find out about two thirds into story, when obviously the Courier would know and remember the moment Ulysses calls him/her to it. That doesn't make sense, and it can cause unintended confusion throughout the whole thing.
They wouldn't impose on your personally defined character at all by ambiguously, but very much definitely, stating beforehand that somehow, at some point, on some kind of delivery, you've Been. Here. Before.
...It's got a goddamn name. And it doesn't matter whether his practical experiences with the place are still valid or not, he would remember them, and if he knows he's been there already then so should we.
To roleplay, we have to be aware of what our character does and doesn't know. Basic understanding of Latin, or geological knowledge outside of the Mojave, as found elsewhere in the Courier's dialogue options, is O.K. as long as it really is optional. The second you forcibly impose on my character beyond the obvious premise of the game without clearly informing me on the spot you've already torn a rift between the hypothetical universe where I created my character and the one where your DLC takes place, a rift I can't roleplay across.
Ehm, obviously this isn't a problem now where I know the scores in advance and can play the game with an adjusted character, but it's a stupid, thoughtless oversight to make when writing a DLC, and it can really wreck the first playthrough.
It would be a horrible disgrace towards the RP-Genre for this to become a trend in any way.
To roleplay, we have to be aware of what our character does and doesn't know. Basic understanding of Latin, or geological knowledge outside of the Mojave, as found elsewhere in the Courier's dialogue options, is O.K. as long as it really is optional. The second you forcibly impose on my character beyond the obvious premise of the game without clearly informing me on the spot you've already torn a rift between the hypothetical universe where I created my character and the one where your DLC takes place, a rift I can't roleplay across.
Ehm, obviously this isn't a problem now where I know the scores in advance and can play the game with an adjusted character, but it's a stupid, thoughtless oversight to make when writing a DLC, and it can really wreck the first playthrough.
It would be a horrible disgrace towards the RP-Genre for this to become a trend in any way.
Bishop999 said:
Perhaps because they wrote themselves into a corner by giving the Courier way too little background in the original game and then had to ease themselves into establishing a canon one?
At least "at at least one point in time the courier made a few FedEx trips to a crossroad in the mountains before heading out west" is a minor tweak to one's background and as such not the most egregious of offenses.
If you ask me, far more egregious is the sort of undue reverence the narrative suddenly gives to freakin' package delivery men.
Ah, we are agreed. But as I've been saying, what made the tweak such a bother wasn't it's existence itself, but the fact that I was kept guessing throughout the first two hours before they made it totally clear.
It could've been in any of the text-messages you receive from the file is loaded till you step into the Divide, but no, only after hours of Ulysses' incessant whining is it confirmed that you've been there previously, which turns what presumably should have been a personal and engaging dilemma into a weird "reveal" moment that should've never been necessary.
As for the Courier thing, I don't know. Compare the revered postal service among rural communities before automated transport and digital communication came to. Someone cunning and resourceful enough to consistently survive in the wasteland, esteemed enough to entrust with potentially dangerous material and impartial enough to reliably deliver freelance would be pretty cool in my opinion, given the circumstances. But yeah, they probably overdid it a bit with the dramatics.
Actually, now that I think about it, reliable communication across territorial borders was the ground-stone of modern civilization, so the focus on a "Courier" should make perfect sense in a context where humanity is picking itself up from the floor and trying to restore it. I never realized that.
What I wonder about is, if we're the only means of long-distance communication the Wasteland has, why don't we ride one of those awesome motorbikes scattered everywhere? There could be ten times as much wasteland in the game, five times longer to travel between locations, and all would still be forgiven if they let us drive one of those all the way.
It could've been in any of the text-messages you receive from the file is loaded till you step into the Divide, but no, only after hours of Ulysses' incessant whining is it confirmed that you've been there previously, which turns what presumably should have been a personal and engaging dilemma into a weird "reveal" moment that should've never been necessary.
As for the Courier thing, I don't know. Compare the revered postal service among rural communities before automated transport and digital communication came to. Someone cunning and resourceful enough to consistently survive in the wasteland, esteemed enough to entrust with potentially dangerous material and impartial enough to reliably deliver freelance would be pretty cool in my opinion, given the circumstances. But yeah, they probably overdid it a bit with the dramatics.
Actually, now that I think about it, reliable communication across territorial borders was the ground-stone of modern civilization, so the focus on a "Courier" should make perfect sense in a context where humanity is picking itself up from the floor and trying to restore it. I never realized that.
What I wonder about is, if we're the only means of long-distance communication the Wasteland has, why don't we ride one of those awesome motorbikes scattered everywhere? There could be ten times as much wasteland in the game, five times longer to travel between locations, and all would still be forgiven if they let us drive one of those all the way.
Bishop999 said:
At the same rate, the idea that Mojave couriers are not just reliable neutral parties but are in fact spies, intelligence agents, assassins, statesmen and kingmakers all at once is a bit much.
Bishop999 said:
That would certainly be more true-to-form what with the obvious Mad Max references in the Fallout series.
Also, it would make gasoline (or ethanol) almost as important as water.