Honestly people crap on the NCR at times but as a faction lore wise they're the Soviet union in WW2 of fallout. They can just throw men with rifles, mortars/light artillery and solve all their problems.
The funny thing is that they had to make a DLC to properly explain how the NCR is realistically losing to a bunch of roman cosplayers who prefer spears and melee over guns. They had to basically say that the NCR is under supplied because of the divide getting nuked.
Probably not gonna happen but I hope in a theoretical New Vegas 2 they allude to a Legion victory in the Mojave because that could lead to interesting story opportunities. Either in a full on Legion NCR war or a collapsing Legion with fragmented successor states
My problem with giving a canon ending to NV is that it kind defeats its purpose. Let me explain.
All fallouts have a conclusive canon ending. Master is destroyed, Enclave is destroyed twice, I doubt the institute ending will be canon but I digress.
Fallout endings never had too much open endedness on their ultimate conclusion when it relates to the main quest.
FNV is different because the endings are radically different. I legit dont think Obsidian ever intended a canon ending for NV. I think what they intended was for a "conclusion" for the west coast "saga" of sorts. Sort of a swan song for that side of the Fallout universe since its unlikely we will ever go there again (at least back then).
So giving a canon ending to FNV is sort of counter-intuitive to its very narrative nature.
Oliver is literally the reason the ncr's position is so fucked at the beginning of the game he's so obsessed with gaining personal glory in some decisive battle that he just all the problems of the Mojave run roughshod over them because he'd rather just throw waves of soldiers at the dam in an attritional slugfest with the legion than attempt to press or leverage literally any advantage, fucks overt his most effective fighting force in the rangers out of petty spite and even his pet project heavy troopers are too busy acting at the whims of cattle barons to deal with all 5 raiders who are still active in California by now one of the options to talk lanius out of fighting is convincing him this must be a trap because there's no way hoover dam could be this incompetently defended when the actual truth is just that general Oliver is seriously that fucking terrible at his job
Im rather surprised we cant get rid of Oliver one way or the other. He is clearly weighting down the NCR out of his own hubris. You can get rid of the president and hope someone more competent takes over but you cant "replace" Oliver with someone more competent (which the NCR has quite a few suitable replacements).
Is Ulysses meant to be such a melodramatic hypocrite? Because I just finished replaying Lonesome Road and I forgot how long and rambling Ulysses was on the war and how tragic the fate of his tribe was at the hands of the Legion (despite inflicting that fate on others, like the New Canaanites)
pretty much he's basically like that crazy conspiracy schitzo that insists nothing can be a coincidence and that "it's all connected man!" when in reality he just can't accept the idea that shit happens sometimes you even have the choice as a player to deconfirm that you were even the guy to deliver the detonator if you want
Lonesome Road is odd to me because it felt contradictory to how the Courier was set up in the base game to have as little a backstory as possible to allow the most roleplay potential only for it to try and give the Courier a backstory. Glad the player has the option to reject it just in case they don't want that as apart of their characters backstory but it felt like a bit of wasted effort, especially seeing how all the other DLCs were building up to it.
I guess it is funny now in most of my playthroughs Ulysses is just some schizo who's accusing my character of something he didn't even do and my character is just confused the entire time. Mind telling my friend how I played Lonesome Road and he went "You gaslit Ulysses lol."
I think thats kind of the genius behind Lonesome Road and Ulysses.
Depending on how you play/see, Ulysses is either this philosophical complex warrior poet or just an insaned hypocrite incapable of taking personal responsibility, not unlike Elder Elijah. Its all about your playstyle and if you are willing to play along with the backstory that is being offered to you.
Tho Ulysses is admittedly almost a self insert from the writer so maybe some of his cringy aspect and loving the sound of his own voice could be atributed towards that.
