The Courier: Amnesia or what?

B

Bishop999

First time out of the vault
Right, I started playing New Vegas wondering, if my Courier is such a well-traveled ranger-mailman, why doesn't he seem to have the slightest idea what the f*ck is going on in the Mojave desert, where ANYTHING is located or how any of the local factions work?

Wasn't much of a problem, really. Maybe he just landed in the Mojave recently from somewhere else, and was hired by the Express for that one job before orienting himself. And during subsequent playthroughs, where I, as a player, knew the basics, it wouldn't matter at all.

Then along comes the 'Lonesome Road' DLC where a dude, hinted at to actually know his stuff, tells me explicit details about my past and my responses can vary between "You crazy?" and "Funny, I don't remember."

At no point can I ask "Why the hell don't I remember this?", and the fact doesn't even seem to surprise him all that much, leading me to believe that either this is a horribly written case of "Here you go, imagine the rest yourself", or my character is actually, in-universe, suffering from amnesia, which the game just didn't bother telling me beforehand.

To get any roleplaying-value at all out of this scenario, i kinda have to know: Which is it?
 
It's been stated many times that he is not suffering from amnesia, this is further backed up by the New Reno singer in Novac and the Courier's conversation with him about remembering him playing in the Shark Club.

In Lonesome Road, the reason the Courier doesn't remember/give a shit is because it was one of the many insignificant deliveries that have ended with him being paid money and that's it. It wasn't important to him at the time so why should he bother to remember it?
 
My Honest Medical Opinion: Memory loss from brain damage on account of the two bullets that found themselves logged inside your skull come the intro to the game.
 
Theorize away, but we know the Courier did not suffer from amnesia. It's been confirmed time and again.
 
It's not amnesia, just a case of..............

140744533_038205ce69.jpg
 
Well, Ulysses outright states that the Courier has some pretty personal connections to the Divide. My problem is that the Courier can't actually respond to confirm this, and a few dialogue options really do imply that s/he doesn't remember anything about it.

Is there anything definitive in the DLC that clears it up?
 
Bishop999 said:
Well, Ulysses outright states that the Courier has some pretty personal connections to the Divide. My problem is that the Courier can't actually respond to confirm this, and a few dialogue options really do imply that s/he doesn't remember anything about it.
Click to expand...

For Ulysses it was the most important day of his life. For the Courier it was just Tuesday (or another fetch quest).
 
It seems pretty clear that Ulysses' opinion that the Courier has personal connections to the Divide stems from Ulysses' obsession, not the Courier's past.
 
In my mind it was a case of selective amnesia: seeing a town full of people getting torn up like that did an even bigger number to his/her psyche. I've read about cases where survivors of Dresden would acknowledge that they were there when it happened, but couldn't recall hard details about it because of the trauma. There was even an outstanding movie about an IDF veteran who was trying to remember details on the massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon during the 1982 War called "Walts with Bashir."
 
The Courier doesn't have amnesia, he is not from the Mojave, he seems to come from NCR territory, he never asks what is the NCR but rather what people think about them, the Divide destruction could have happened after he was already on another city making another delivery.
 
I'm leaning toward "acceptable break from reality fitting in with the blank slate concept and also to allow the player to explore shit".
 
Well, if that's the case then I would have preferred for the game to inform me that yes, I've been to the Divide multiple times on errands before and heard rumors that the place went to hell subsequent to my last delivery there beforehand, rather than leave me guessing as to what the hell Ulysses kept hinting at throughout the entire DLC when it realistically should have been obvious to the Courier all along.
 
Well, I think this thread sums up everything wrong about modern rpg gaming. Take this question, try and rationalize all you want but at the end of the day this is just bad writing. A simple case of throwing a unrelated DLC, which makes no sense, into the plot, making profit and letting fans sort 'em out. Sure I like Mr. Chris Avellone as much as the next person and this one DLC you guys are discussing here is one of the relatively better ones but this does not redeem it, it just shows how Fallout franchise gone down the shitter along with the other pieces of shit they are passing as Rpgs nowadays.
 
Canakin said:
Well, I think this thread sums up everything wrong about modern rpg gaming. Take this question, try and rationalize all you want but at the end of the day this is just bad writing. A simple case of throwing a unrelated DLC, which makes no sense, into the plot, making profit and letting fans sort 'em out. Sure I like Mr. Chris Avellone as much as the next person and this one DLC you guys are discussing here is one of the relatively better ones but this does not redeem it, it just shows how Fallout franchise gone down the shitter along with the other pieces of shit they are passing as Rpgs nowadays.
Click to expand...

So, how would you have handled it? The cold, hard fact on the matter is that it is extremly hard to let the player character be a blank slate while also giving them some decent background. Obsidian still did it pretty well, hinting at the characters background while also giving nods in the direction that maybe you don't remember the Divide because there wasn't much to remember about the Divide. It isn't an optimal solution but it is far better than forcing the player to read several slides of background history for the character they are playing.
 
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