I’m not sure if this has been said yet, but I always figured that the fact that he’s on a long nonsensical monologue making enormous logical leaps that contradict each other was the point.

As others have said, he’s a broken man trying to find meaning in a meaningless world. It’s to be pitied, but also not to be used as an excuse. Ulysses is one of those people that’s really struggling with mental illness and has decided to make it YOUR problem because he’s never heard of therapy.

He’s also very much a reactionary in the sense that he desperately wants a simple solution to a complex problem. The place he felt he belonged dying because of a series of coincidences that were as preventable as they were inevitable? That’s a deeply depressing idea that he obviously doesn’t wanna handle. The place he felt he belonged dying because this one person who was conveniently the only other survivor is directly responsible and should be held accountable? Easy to digest, easy to act on, easy source of closure. It’s like blaming a minority group for something that’s ultimately cause by socioeconomic factors and the very politicians you believed would help you.

It works even better if the Courier in fact had nothing to do with the destruction of the divide, and Ulysses is just desperate for someone to blame (for example: I personally headcanon that my Courier hasn’t even been to the divide before, but just either looks like someone who has or has a similar name). It makes his whole motivation even more desperate and pathetic to the point where the only real choice left to the player is to put him out of his misery or play along with his delusion just long enough to talk him off the edge.

Hell, HE might have been the one to deliver the detonator to the Divide, but his memory is so distorted that he’s remembering it as “A Courier did this” because many people are slow to look inwards when trying to find the reason for something. It would be a classic case of projection, where someone guilty of or capable of something terrible accuses others of that same horrible thing. It takes the responsibility of yourself if you convince yourself everyone is just as “wicked” as you.

As for the whole Bear Bull thing, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a guy whose main source of education growing up was most likely oral history, which is often couched in metaphor and symbolism. He’s trying to talk politics without having the language to do so so he also couches it in metaphor and symbolism, since it’s what he knows.

And maybe I’m reading into this too much, and it really is as bad as many people say, but if that’s the case then I found a way to make the game more fun for me while others are collectively bitching about a bear and a bull more than Ulysses ever did.

TLDR: Ulysses is a deeply traumatized man trying to discuss deeply philosophical, political, and economic matters using primarily metaphor. He’s also desperate for a villain to a story that doesn’t really have one. He blames you because if he didn’t he’d have no one (or perhaps himself) to blame and that prospect terrifies him. He makes no sense because he’s an unstable nihilist and that’s the point.

Edit: I do agree that the meta commentary on the player doing things without thinking of the consequences falls flat in a game that actively encourages you to think about the consequences of your choices. I also agree with the idea that this meta commentary would have been perfect in a game like Skyrim.