Why Wasn't Ulysses the Main Antagonist?

DwayneGAnd

Look, Ma! Two Heads!
In my opinion, Ulysses is the most memorable character in the entire game. Yet I feel that he should have been the game's main antagonist. For starters, it's because of him why we were in the position of carrying the platinum chip until we are ambushed by Benny and the Great Khans, and we all know how that went. He also scouted Hoover Dam for the Legion, trained the White Legs, and played a major unseen role in Old World Blues, responsible for helping Christine out.

He is referenced throughout all the DLC's and near the beginning of the game by Johnson Nash, but it isn't until the end of the last DLC Lonesome Road where you finally come face to face with him.

He is a major driving force of the story and would be a much more fitting antagonist of the game than either the Legate, General Oliver, or Mr. House. At least that's my opinion.
 
Because in the end Ulysses doesn't affect CIVILIZATION as much. I'm one of those of the 'Fallout is about mankind rebuilding' camp and thus he's not as powerful as an army, he's not capable enough to change anything.

Even the Courier nuking the Divide didn't do much to the world. Against the forces at work with House, the Legion and the NCR, Ulysses is at most a footnote. His actions and wants are secondary in almost all aspects. The DLC are very small and very personal affairs. Say the Courier doesn't go to Zion - New Canaan and some tribes die. Courier doesn't go back to the BIG MT - the brains just keep playing in their sandbox, and the longer they play, the weaker they become as the world around them is more capable to deal with them and their own resources and materiel wither. Courier doesn't go to the Divide - Ulyssess gets lonely and eats deathclaws for the rest of his life, crying over his dream home. He doesn't even activate the nukes, the Courier does that, and if the courier doesn't go, he evidently doesn't find a way to turn em on.

The biggest DLC to affect the wasteland is Sierra Madre. Father Elijah who wants to weaponize the cloud and fuck over civilization outright. But even then, the Courier is the one that unlocks it for Elijah. Courier doesn't go...Elijah, Dog/God, Christie and Dean bang their heads at walls and pound the floor but they'll apparently never get in.

Why thus should Ulyssess steal the spotlight? Because he made the courier his spotlight? The game is bigger than that. DLC are smaller and can tie him in as one big mastermind but in the end, he's not important. You can do all the DLC right up to meeting him and then turn around.
 
People didn't like Ulysses in Lonesome Road, because he is crazy man who talks like a 14 year who just took a Intro to Philosophy class. He hates the Courier for failing to be omnipotent. Because the Courier was somehow to supposed to know that the package held a detonator and that the Divide was built on a nuke site. While he intentionally destroyed New Canaan.

If he was the main antagonist, New Vegas would have suffered a lot from it.
 
I actually liked Ulysses, if only because he reminded me of my high school emo phase. But therein lies why he wouldn't have made a good main antagonist.
 
My takeaway from this DLC is the Courier definitely lost a good chunk of her brain after getting patched up by Doc Mitchell. I doubt she's visited enough places in her life to completely forget having done the Hopeville/Ashton/Divide run.
 
I pretty much wrote him off as a madman in every playthrough, and there have been many lol. I just wasn't impressed by him and the forced backstory he tried to present. TBH, Lonesome Road was my least favorite DLC in general.. but back to the original question, I prefer that the game didn't have one obvious "main" antagonist because it let the player decide who, if anyone, their character saw as their antithesis. Having several opposing ideologies as potential "antagonists" was invaluable to the roleplaying experience IMO.
 
Back
Top