The Politics of Ulysses | Connor W Goode 

It also explains why he starts sentences in his unique way.

Yeah, i love the way he pronounces strength, really emphasizes the N

Man is eloquient in his strange way every word drips with meaning symbolism and metaphor.

He is inspiring

Yes,I had this point of view when debating on it with my older brother, Ulysses holds English as a 2nd language at least maybe even 3rd considering his position as a frumentarii,he's had to learn and experience other cultures well enough to infiltrate in a relatively short time in his life that it's easy to understand why he'd have that pause,I myself have at at times,I speak Spanish, Portuguese and English, I've had moments when I slip up and answer at times in a different tongue because I find myself speaking those languages constantly,so to imagine in a post war scene with a new assortment of dialects, Ulysses would feel a Similar tug,to time himself as he speaks to fit his own ,like as he speaks he'd probably be translating his thoughts in his tribal tongue to English in a exact form,lacking the flow and more nuance in English as historically some language types lacked these,so to us it feels odd.

Mhmm

Imagine a priest offers their holy book and the local tribes twists and defiles the meanings of the myths and stories of said book. The stories, myths and overall meaning of the holy book would relate to Ulysses' knots having meaning in their twists and turns. The level of disgust they feel. Not the best analogy, though.

@@muffinman2546 No its quite fine.

yes and like not that they stole it, but that it had no meaning, no history to them except that they wanted to make a homage to Ulysses

U can hear the anger and silent fury when he brings up the subject

Yup, I could never kill him because of those stupid bloody medical eyebots

@@Shadow0-2 same

@@Shadow0-2 Sneak Attack headshot, Anti Material Rifle with AP rounds, confirmed kill. Just shoot him the moment you enter the temple.

Yup did both options it's more rewarding to keep him alive and nuke both NCR and Caesar's Legion and if u don't agree it's understandable

He could merc you quick if you don't lob some mini-nukes 😅

and yet I always keep listening. His dialogue + voice + history all make up for one of the best characters I ever saw in any piece of media.

@@zeynaviegas5043 Yeah, your right. It is interesting, I just said it for the meme.

@@anothertexasboi3146 lol revisiting this comment I realized how weird my response was

To be honest the divide is one of the best DLC in a meta context (i prefer old world blues overal because its zany as fuck) because in the end ulysses is dissing the 2 factions by their obvious flaws wile the way to disuade him from his plan is actualy by aserting the courrier agency ober the sitation.

Nah it’s the bear, the flag, the bull, the road, our path, Bull, tribe, flag, the bull, the bear

Same. Or a dictionary.

Eight. Trifecta. Nil. Jackpot. Snake eyes. Quadro. Quadro.

10 Hour Ulysses ASMR

I could get it done.

so you like numbers then?? Ulysses read this man Infinity..... Ulysses: [stares]

Ur not wrong

dude sounded like he was a sjw triggered over culture appreciation. He can be upset about it, but it's up to him for himself to feel however he wants. What they did was sincere and that makes all the difference.

@@gpheonix1 He's more upset about the White Legs misrepresenting his dead tribe's culture rather than them appreciating it

@@dashua1735 exactly. Offense is taken not received. It’s ridiculous.

@@gpheonix1 And offense is sometimes done without intent

Makes playing Lonesome Road last even better knowing that even if this is the first time we actually speak and meet Ulysses he still had his marks in all the others and even the main game.

learn how to spell, jesus. I love how obsidian made all their DLC stories connected to each other.

@@wallten194 English is probably not his first language.

@@wallten194 English isn't everyones first language, retard.

​@@wallten194 okay elitist

It's not even his second language. Ulysses presumably speaks fluent Latin as his second language.

America's feet

Joshua Baker oh no

Americas Feet Pics 😛😜😝😋

Same here. I had a ton of fun playing through all of FNV content, but never really understood the more nuanced aspects. Especially Ulysses, because his holotapes were so hard for me to understand when I was younger, because his grammar was strange to me. The tapes were very piece-meal, because they're kind of like short bullet notes. It took this vid for me to better understand what the heck he was doing, and what he stood for

Lol I remember the first time I played new Vegas was in 2012 at my brothers house. Got stuck on the vigor tester for an hour and gave up.

@@Idontwannashutup How did you get "stuck" on the vigor tester of all things?

@@geraldchurchill5576 I was 11. I got all the way to the like finalization screen where it displays all the stats but I couldn’t find out the fuckin right d pad let you actually play.

@@geraldchurchill5576 don’t judge me you black neighbor

Mr. house is the only faction with a future, a vision, and the long life to see it through.

@@seemeno1 Even then, House is like Caesar. He's just using an army of metal instead of meat. He, much like caesar, brought the other "tribes" to heel and amalgamated them into a singular unit. He, like Caesar, wishes to rule over the Mojave and if he dies, his legacy disintegrates. If you ask me, Ulysses would want the truly independent ending with Yes Man.

@@SSD_Penumbra Mr House could live centuries, and his ideas won’t fizzle out with his death, neither would Caesars. With Mr House that’s especially true as entire generations will have lived and died under his libertarian ideology. And Mr House also has incredibly different and smarter ruling tactics than Caesar. He obliterates tribal identities for the better, instead of turning them into slave soldiers, he turns them into customers and service providers.

@@seemeno1 Except the Brotherhood, who he destroys because, as he put it, "can't be reasoned with". He also doesn't care about The Boomers, saying you can "do what you want with them". Wouldn't it make more sense to keep them on your good side, seeing as how a heavily armed population who is your ally tends to be a good thing. The Brotherhood value tech, and most of it is useless pre-war stuff, so why wipe them out? They don't want Vegas. He's a Libertarian in name only. He still would rather be on the NCR's good side and if that means turning a blind eye to their settlers taking over in the sake of profit, so be it.

NCR is the best ending

It's internalizing, so that people don't need to, say hurt each other much anymore, kill each other online, I say, live in relative peace otherwise, I sure love a good brawl every now and again, though you shouldn't forget yourselves.

It's also beautiful, the potential is truly infinite, and who knows it could be someone in this comment section that changes everything

I said something similar when i was little in school and the teachers were shocked "Could you win a fight with me?" Some one asked "Anyone can hurt anyone" i replied I continued saying "any one can hold a knife anyone can pull a trigger anyone can throw a punch"

It's too idealistic, however. Ulysses wants a wasteland with no rulers. That's simply not achievable. Even if the Courier were to wipe out every big name and faction out there (which, first of all, would be nothing short of mass genocide), new rulers would simply spring up after the Courier left or died. Like it or not, humanity can't survive without rulers. Someone has to be in charge. If there isn't, someone will rise to the task. You can understand exactly where Ulyses comes from, and empathize with him deeply, but at the end of the day, a Mojave with no gods or kings is a doomed Mojave. It's simply resetting the board - but the same game will just play out again.

​@@bugjams I agree with your take on how human beings as a species will tend to organize themselves when starting from a blank slate without leaders. I'm not an evolutionary biologist or an anthropologist, so this isn't coming from a place of expertise, but we know what the turning point in the history of Homo sapiens was, that took us from existing like any other species in that genus and delivered us into our pre-history of modern humanity as we understand it. What it was, was specializing, allowing different people to dedicate their time to things _other than_ hunting or gathering all day. So with that in mind, doesn't it make perfect sense why we'd naturally want to organize into groups with leaders ensuring that all of our survival tasks are being completed, allowing others to comfortably spend time passing on their knowledge (teaching), inventing, building settlements, being creative, etc.? And just speaking from personal experience, I don't want to lead anything. Nothing within the fiber of my being wants to worry about what other people are doing. I will always want someone else to do the task delegating in a group, and that feels DEEPLY instinctual to me, like it's a sense that was being passed down long before I inherited it. About Ulysses, I don't know that he wants no gods or kings perpetually though. In my interpretation of his actions, especially when he's being grilled in conversation with the Courier, he wants more than anarchy, he wants a new society, which includes new leaders, and he's gotten this idea into his head that none of the symbols of active societies (that he knows about) will end up passing his vibe check (not Caesar, not the Brotherhood of Steel, not the New California Republic, not Vegas) at any point, but that SOMEHOW, if he resets it all back to a clean slate (which can never be clean if any humans survive, and they will, because even mass genocide with nukes leaves survivors, but I digress lol), whatever shows up AFTER he topples NCR with nukes, and then Caesar after that (if necessary), will be a symbol worth rallying behind, worth calling *home.* But we can convince Ulysses that it's psychotic to think that whatever comes after his intentional deadly intervention will inherently be better than anything that came before it. We can convince him of the virtue of allowing the conflict of ideas to play out on its own, to allow "failed" symbols to prove their failures on their own without a single individual deciding that they're wrong and have failed. And he gets it, allowing us to talk him down.

I liked the part when he said "It's Bear&Bull-yin' time" and the Beared and Bulled all over

@@amadeusagripino6862 That was the secret ending if you upgraded ED-E and found all the posters

Let's not try make what happens in America relevent in other countries in the fucking apocalypse too

​@@omarma7815 You seem to understand very little of what the game is presenting. Cesar founded a Roman empire out of the ruins of the American Midwest. Ulyssesus wants the world to move on WITHOUT that, to truly start a new. It's exactly what would change the world.

@@amadeusagripino6862 UYAHAHAHAHAHAHHAhAHAHAHHAHA 🤡

He aint based, but he aint exacly cringe either

He’s just a man

@@Prototype9871 so a pleb🤢🤮

Ulysses was woke before it was a thing

@@b3nl555 He's just woke

The followers are sketchy too

@@WM-gf8zm how so?

@@voldendream they will kill you sometimes and have weird schisms. Its better to put them aside.

@@WM-gf8zm bro everything i encountered them they never once tried to kill me unless I attacked them

@@voldendream i mean lore wise

Sounds like vague gobbledygook to me.

@Sįzïjï Spartans don’t fight in formations? Lol okay

People need to stop using terrible intellectual wannabe lingo.

@Bob Bob gang gang

I wasnt expecting the words max stirner said here

Wether that is really true doesn't change the conclusion. In fact it would bolster his original conclusion of destruction. If war doesn't change man must. Without the spirit of cooperation man is doomed the fate of explotation and destruction.

@@9volt65 are you saying everything is political?

I think politics is just a part of the Big Picture to Ulysses. He seems to care about humanity’s future, but it’s been corrupted by war. He thinks that instead of trying to help communities, societies, civilizations grow, they must be “tested” in the most extreme manners, or they are not worthy, like he and The Courier, to live and go on in this world.

@@bbluva20 Every monologue Ulysses makes screams of him saying it more to himself than the courier, to convince himself that there was a deeper meaning to everything that happened to him and those around him. With him trying to cling to something, anything that can soothe his trauma and justify what he is trying to do.

@@adamm2091 Yes. Politics is a fact of life where everything can be related back to it. The computer you type on is built with the resources stolen from other countries. The shows you watch are geared precisely to cause enough outrage for views but not enough to provoke genuine discussion of deeper topics. The food you eat is completely based on what is perceived as rich, poor, white, mexican, american, canadian, etc. Even the air you breath is polluted by centuries of industry. People, though, only take issue with "politics" when it involves them not being catered to by new media.

@@RaeIsGaee k

True on all accounts but I’d say it’s less that Ulysses is wrong than just say that he is simply stating what he observes. As the courier we get to have in-depth conversations with the heads of all the factions about their philosophy. Ulysses did not. But I’d say that as far as the legion and NCR that them changing is kind of a pipe dream. The legion is full of too many people indoctrinated into their beliefs and Caesar is dying so I doubt he will have the time needed for such a change. And the NCR will always be open to corruption Tandy attempted to stop it but her decisions were over turned by a future ruler. So stopping it now won’t stop it later.

Mr. House is certain to repeat the problems of the old world. He is possibly the smartest man on the planet, but he's also arrogant. He was a member of the ruling class created by the neo liberalism, and doesn't realize that he was the problem. He says that if you want to see the fate of democracies look out the window. That wasn't democracy, it was capitalism, taken so far to the extreme, that the democracy of the old world was compromised. The same level of capitalism that house wants.

People forget that ulysses is very emotional in his decision making. He says a lot of things that are from his blinded perspective. He is so eat up with rage at the Courier he wants to nuke the NCR just to hurt the guy.

You are very ignorant and immature in your perspective on the different factions.

@@parkerbair7303 Mr house already was repeating the same mistakes that the old world did. He enriched Vegas to the detriment of everyone else.

Exactly he did what he could with his resources.

The point is, House knew what was coming and chose to save *no one.* Even if he'd shot down all the nukes, he would only protect the infrastructure, as the survivors would quickly run out of food and water, and thus be forced into the wastes regardless. The thing Ulysses misses is that House's end game was to simply leave Earth and find a new planet altogether, which would leave most of the people on Earth to die in the end regardless.

He straight up said he said he didn't want to save the world. He only cared about vegas

@@BlownOutSpeakers He also states that vegas was the best hope for saving humanity, he knew that the war was going to happen and nothing could stop it, not even him

@@Pyromancer_ so? He could have warned other cities and built defenses like the ones protecting vegas. He had 30 BILLION dollars to his name, clearly he could have done it. He was heartlessly apathetic, and millions died because of it.

Sometimes the best stories dont have an ending, sometimes we have to write it ourselves.

Considering the fuckers get scared by a simple flare gun, they'd at most would become a problem in dark caves, or during dark nights. Probably not as catastrophic unless a certain, completely unhinged, scientific genius of a Fascist Elder would get his way, which would cover the mojave in a fog so thick they wouldnt have any problems hunting at daylight

They also fear the courier by the end of the lonesome road so probably don’t wann go to his home turf either

A thousand spears from the sky. Elder Elijah represent.

The answer: use a gun. If that don't work, use more gun.

That and the original Fallout are super fun, but I personally enjoy New Vegas' characters more, and I've yet to play Fallout 2

@@pittraider1221 what are you on about? Alot of the quotes in this video come from uylsses dialogue himself, where was any marxism inserted?

@@pittraider1221 you're one of those "human nature is to exploit" kinda folk ain't you?

@WarCrimeGaming consumption and exploitation are not the same thing. You're just too capitalist to understand the difference. It is not human nature to exploit others.

@WarCrimeGaming overconsumption is not human nature. It started as a side effect of exploitation from monarchy and was brought to the commoners by advertisement. Communal societies that have not developed wealth hierarchy do not exhibit overconsumption, even when it is within their means. Not only are you wrong, but you're confidently ignorant.

I feel you, its sad to wake and see everything you work to build end up in ashes and to see all your ideas made meaningless. I can only say in hope that maybe those who come after can find a way to learn from those ideas and build something stronger, something worth it.

Somebody is attention seeking

That’s what I kind of like about Ulysses and is my strongest pull to him. He’s just a dude who wants what’s best but the only tool of change he has is a bunch of nukes. He’s like a artist trying to fix a painting but all he has is a hammer.

why you skip through all the dialogue??

@@omnical6135 Because I thought I already knew everything when I finished my first playthrough. I just wanted to get Beagle, reprogram Slimm, repair ED-E and be on my merry way.

@@pittraider1221 All art is interpretation, and for you to diminish and dismiss one’s interpretation as pushing an agenda is missing the point entirely-this is only one interpretation.

@@pittraider1221 so you want to dismiss facts as narrative ?

@@pittraider1221 called it. You ARE one of those "human nature is to exploit" folk. You make deus vult memes unironically don't you?

Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I felt an anarchistic line of thought, more so from the Conquest of Bread, could be applied to the Divide but after finishing the video I felt I should have expanded it just a little bit more. I definitely see what you say that couriers, in Ulysses' eyes, bridge divides between communities and reconnect them. Wished I phrased it that way now.

Same here

Well for me i would bomb both but then i remembered that there were innocent people on both sides

I still nuked the legion.

Just send the nukes EVERYWHERE!

M.A.D.!!!

He didn't need to. The legion isn't a sustainable society. their only purpose is war, without it, they cannot survive

@@parkerbair7303 the same thing can be said of Sparta and Rome, which lasted quite a while

@@andrewbowen2837Not really. Rome did become a war-based economy during it's transition from Republic to Empire with slaves and new lands funding its continued expansion but originally it was a fairly normal society if a bit more martial then others and so it could transition back to just a society with a standing military force. Again Sparta was super-miliaristic but it didn't require expansion to live, it had a massive slave-based economy in the form of the helots to uphold it's militarised ruling class and that was sustainable even without conquest cause the Helots would continue to breed to produce new slaves. Both had a strong focus on military matters but war was not their sole purpose. The Legion is different though. It was born out of conquest and assimilation and that has always been its purpose. When they lost at Hoover dam they didn't recover by demobilising their forces and rebuiding over time like most societes do. They recovered by conquering lots of more tribes for fresh recruits to fill the army, their entire strength comes from continual military conquest for slaves and recruits (though in a way even the recruits are slaves to their indoctrination under Caesar). The Legion has no civilian infrastructure, they have plenty of civilians in their territory in the cities but they aren't really part of the Legion and as far as we know don't even pay taxes while all the tribals outside the cities become slaves and recruits for the Legion. Basically the Legion is an army without a country and when it runs out of room and/or capability to expand it will die. It may even just die with Caesar himself, he talks a big game about the whole synthesis but who knows if he could actually acheive it because if he dies before then the Legion will devolve into civil war within a few years. Sorry for the rant, I just really love talking about New Vegas.

Nicely said

My top 5 favorite fallout characters are all from the Legion LOL

(Sorry if my english isn't perfect, it's not my first language) He carries the Old World Flag and the name Ulysses because of Ulysses S. Grant, in his mind Grant "fought to unite two tribes under one flag.".

@@ivoazevedo1667 thorny subject, but you can trace much of current day america's problems back to the union victory (an over-centralized govt for instance). Ulysses had to be atleast somewhat aware of this when he said grant wasnt built for peace, roughly quoted. Imo, he believed in what america once was, the ideals it stood for. Folk governing themselves. Not a dictator like caesar (house to an extent as well), not out of touch politicians in the ncr, if that makes sense. Dont really know how to condense this w/o going into a wall of text lol

Given the divergent timeline between Fallout and our world, Ulysses may be pining for America before it became the dystopian nightmare it was at the time of the Resource Wars.

@@mfspectacular I can sort of see that, he was into like the abstract idea of what America claimed to be about (liberte egalite fraternite type sentiment) rather than the actual way it was.

@@mfspectacular Thank you for pointing this out. I get so sick of slavery beong the only point brought up about the war. It was a shit situation but Americans on both sides saw the folly of both sides amd tried to fight for what they thought was right. My great grandaddy was a confederate private... and first generation immigrant from swedan.

to become one with the machines.

@@mithos789 ah so the fisto ending.

Well if its an idea that isn't from the past then it must be from the future, so if it exists now it defeats the purpose dummy. But nah, personally you could argue that the game is marxist and is pushing for a Socialist utopia in the wastes. You could also argue that the only way to not repeat the past is tribalism, as the past few thousands of years of development only led to nuclear war. You could also argue that the message of New Vegas is a Marxist one, and that the followers are the best option since the game just shit-talks just about every other ideology.

@@baneofbanes we must push forward. we musnt fear the future.

I think you hit the nail on the head head for what the writers were going for. This is why I've come to the conclusion that the courier taking over New Vegas with good karma is the true canon ending. By the end of the courier's journey they realize what has been lost at the divide (a chance at something greater than bear or bull or house) thanks to Ulysses and then works to recreate that which was lost. Making New Vegas into the new Divide and creating a new nation, a new symbol. If one man can destroy a whole nation than one man can raise one as well.

@@billygrantham5380 I think house is canon(or well most likely to become canon) as his diplomatic approach leaves the other factions to be usable on the future. We could see the long term effects of the Brahmin Barons in the NCR. We could also see Caesar potentially forced to make the transfer to a less militarized society early, without Vegas, which while it would disappoint him not to have his Rome, he would also not have anywhere to really fuel his tool anymore

​@@baphomets_clussyYou know there's a difference between a piece of fiction being political and injecting your own politics into, right?

After Old World Blues, I choose Brotherhood.

Wasn't the whole point of the DLC's to let go and the consequences of not letting go?

@@iskwewpannekoek yeah, letting go of your ingroup.

@@renaigh Not the only thing to let go off I was referring to, but true

That's linked to capitalism though. Capitalist regimes will only fight in wars that benefit them economically, they rarely if ever will fight a war for humanitarian reasons. I'm not sure if the anti-capitalist critique applies to Ulysses' ideology, but your point doesn't really debunk it.

Man he literally said he didn't plan to save anything but Vegas.

@chris mcd he figured it out fifteen years before the Great War. The only reason saving vegas didn't go exactly to plan is because the delivery of the platinum chip was off by a day. He had *fifteen years* to get crap done, and yet he chose to only save vegas.

@chris mcd man, him "having to put in lasers for a whole city" isn't a big deal, honestly. He didn't do that, he paid people to, which would be no issue as he was, in his own words, "a billionaire thirty times over". And doing the same process in even a single other city could have saved millions of lives, which he didn't even attempt! And don't be a stuck up ass pretending you're smarter than me, or that I somehow just don't get it. If he had the logistics for one city down, it'd need only minor alterations for other cities, and those could be prepared and built at the same time as vegas.

@chris mcdlmfao

he's just a pretentious idiot

We do not know what the divide was and by that we can only guess what it was but I would guess it was probably a highly educated

Fuck House, he kicked out everyone in Vault 21 and filled it with concrete

He chose to save himself and hoped to become a dictator

@@TheWunderWaffelShow Autocrat. There is a subtle but important difference. Would you not save yourself from the Apocalypse if you could? He Also saved Vegas, an entire city

​@@joaocarvalho6336 the difference between autocrat and dictator is just the word itself. pure semantics to sidestep the charges with "but akshually"

Its like really my dude? you are in no position to be shit talking anyone else for their decisions when your arguably the single worst one to do that, i just personally find Ulysses pretentious and massively hypocritical, great video my guy, just hate this particular character.

Yeah, because a mormon missionary who manipulates tribals into believing in his religion is more "mature" than someone who seeks vengeance for a destroyed community that could have been a real beacon of hope for the world rather than a blind faith experiment

@WarCrimeGaming At least your username is honest

vaguely lol

There won’t be any colony ships.

That you are. Glad you enjoyed the video.