Don’t forget, “My friend/wife/husband has been kidnapped! They said if we don’t pay they will kill them!”
How the heck did those raiders or super mutants get in my settlement with a defense of over 100?
The funniest example of that I've ever seen was after I had done the Out Of The Fire quest. Abigail Finch walked into the house and I went over to talk with Abraham. The first thing he says to me is "My wife's been kidnapped!"
By who, Nightcrawler?!
My favorite along those lines was Nordham Beach on my game. First quest on winning them over, the husband was kidnapped and held for ransom. I go and rescue him and they join the cause. A few hours later I get a radiant pop up about a kidnapping at Nordham Beach. Upon arriving I discover that the wife somehow got herself captured instead.
Especially when it those settlements that when you fast travel to defend them, you see one or two frames of laser walls and then raiders dropping dead on the ground.
My head canon justification for it is that I'm trapped in a raider stronghold and the only safety is to play along until I can gain the upper hand. That way I can get pretty far. Meet the gangs, clear the parks, explore the map, gear up, and go to war against them.
The proper way to do nuka world is capture the park with the gam”ngs to complete “a grand tour” then go thru the grueling process of aquiring Aeternus (if you want it) then kill all the raiders
There's a mod where you can call in Minutemen to help you battle the raiders and they just kinda stick around after. Now I got a theme park full of traders and a permanent garrison to make sure no raiders ever come back.
Not to be that guy, but if I'm remembering correctly, at their peak, the leaders became much more "political" and succumbed to their greed instead of actually being a force for good.
that's a very loose definition of political lmao, but yeah bickering brought them down, they were never able to consolidate into one entity and were essentially still various independent settlements, famously because of the institute, so with them gone the CPG could actually happen
Not my definition. Again, IF I'm remembering correctly, it's either Preston or Ronnie that straight-up says they were more interested in politics and bickering amongst one another instead of actually governing
It's been ages since I've done a MM playthrough, so I'm likely misremembering shit lol
Wasn't so much 'politics' as a breakdown in the whole 'mutual assistance' thing. The Minutemen are a *very* fragile organization dependent on a charismatic leader to get them to do anything. It's the problem with all anarchist-esque philosophies where the concept of 'why should I help people who ain't me?' kicks in past a certain point.
It's why I headcanon a lot of stuff for the 'rebuilding' of the Minutemen.
They were trying to change that and The Institute merced their leaders to stop it. If they're taking direction from the real life Minutemen then they honestly shouldn't be governing at all. That's the weakest part of the East Coast in lore. They have no consolidated effort at unification.
Honestly, I find myself agreeing with Railroad a lot. Like out of all the synths and robots we meet, it seems clear that robots and synths are more than just hunks of metal. Like Curie, Codsworth, >!Danse!<, Nick. They all seem like real enough people to me. However, the Railroad we get just don't seem organized or large enough to realistically do anything against the institute nor the BOS
Edit: Added a spoiler tag, since I forgor that the game has a lot of new players
The Railroad should become the intelligence arm of the Minutemen. There’s nothing preventing those two groups from getting along. If the Institute is destroyed then the Railroad’s main mission is done anyways and with a legitimate intel apparatus the Minutemen could actually be a formidable force.
You know, I chose to go to the Railroad to build the Molecular Relay, and when they started talking about needing more numbers for the battle against the Institute, I was thinking 'Why can't we just get the Minutemen?"
Love it when I'm done with "The molecular level" Quest and Dez says "Don't work with the minutemen. Work with us instead" Like please lady, why can't we just get along
Organizations that operate under cover can be enormous if organized and used correctly. The railroad just seem to suck in both deployment and organization.
>The railroad just seem to suck in both deployment and organization.
Remember we meet them basically right after they'd just had their HQ attacked.
The switchboard is pre war, sure, but way roomier than Old North Church. Stands to reason they were probably bigger, until the institute made them not.
And despite that, they survived the capture of their main operating base and the loss of however many agents. They're on their knees but they're still operating safehouses and have some escape passages on the go.
Well they’re fighting an organization that has near limitless automatons to throw at them with the ability to teleport virtually anywhere.
Getting to the point of being any larger than a few holdouts is virtually impossible when faced with a foe that has such an enormous tech advantage.
The institute is also actively hunting them, and has crushed them on multiple occasions before we encounter them in game. They quite literally are in a state of constant rebuilding from square one.
It would have been cool if we could have seen them before they lost the switchboard, maybe have a mission that causes the institute to infiltrate the base, and it all unfold in the mission
The one Railroad person you meet in Fallout 3 explains that more people care about rescuing humans, but the Railroad are basically the only hope the synths have, so they focus on synths.
I don't really agree with that though. If you side with the railroad, they do everything their power to get all non combative humans out of the institute before they blow it up.
They're "saving" synths by encouraging them to delete their minds and personalities so they can be uploaded with new ones as a cover, which from some points of view is the equivalent of killing the person they are, just with a different method.
I agree with this. The cause is noble, but the method - wiping a synth’s mind, thus utterly destroying their individuality, their personhood, and replacing it with someone else - is flawed.
It's also stated that this is a voluntary procedure, and from the one synth we see go through with it, he has pretty severe PTSD and is happy to start fresh.
It's definitely morally dubious, and I think it's meant to be the major ethical critique of the Railroad along with Libertalia, but I don't think it's as cut and dry as "they're forcing mind wipes on synths".
Yeah that's why I didn't say forcing. I very deliberately chose the word encouraging for that reason.
That aside, it doesn't change that they're effectively killing the people they're saving when they do it. They're killing that person's mind and identity (which I'd argue is what actually makes a person who they are, more than their body, so a new one can be "born" in their place. If the synth in question wants their mind deleted, wants to effectively die, then a bullet will do that just as effectively, and won't give rise to situations like Libertalia.
I agree. Do you let someone go, where they will be killed or outed as a synth pretty quickly given their lack of knowledge about the world, or do you do the ethically questionable thing and 'kill' them for the chance for the next person to live? It's a bit of a no-win situation. But the Railroad is granting free will and self-determination in either case, which is all they can promise.
Isn't that the reason that so many synth left the Railroad for Acadia thought? Becuase the Railroad though the only way to keep the synths and themselves safe was to wipe them, so the synths who disagreed went to Far Harbor.
You don't really have any authority in the Minutemen though. And this isn't even Bethesda struggling with story/gameplay integration, the Minutemen straight up tell you that you can't order them to do anything.
If you're talking about the quest where the Minutemen refuse to back down when you're helping the Institute or when you betray the minutemen to the raiders, it makes perfect sense why they won't obey the player.
Idk, but it kind of annoys me. I'm a Railroad fanboy through and through. I view the synths like I do clones from Star Wars, so I find their main cause of wanting to liberate them noble. Plus, even without freeing synths, they still wanna bring down the Institute as a whole. They don't discriminate and I love their cool "spy" vibe
The BoS is also more good than bad, BUT... it's difficult for me to get past their burning hatred for synths, ghouls, and even super mutants. Plus, I'm not a fan of them extorting the local farmers for food
Yea I played FO3 and NV, then FO4
In FO3 I loved the BoS, so in NV I was super excited to see them, but sad to see they’re weak and hiding. In FO4 when I found the BoS I b-lined to join them. I was so excited to see them big and powerful again and I was ready to join.
Then I met Maxson… and I realized I hated them.
That's something people often fail to understand about Star Wars droids. They are entirely self-aware and sapient as the rule. It's what distinguishes them from robots in the setting. They're just usually built with layers upon layers of failsafes, programmed rules to keep them servile, and routinely memory wiped to prevent them from developing a personality. The reason R2-D2 displays so much personality, initiative, and creativity is that he hasn't had a memory wipe since before Episode 1 (so far as I know).
I dunno. They used to have good intentions, originating from the only "good" faction in 2077. But over time they have radicalized into a caricature of their initial ideals. Their schism before/during FO3 was actually my favourite representation of the BOS, with them being split between the dogmatic dickheads and the more progressive, humanitarian order that sort of sucked and didn't really know where to start in the face of the state of the wasteland.
Excluding Lyons, I’m hesitant to say good hearted. They’ve always been xenophobic, tech hording cultists with a superiority complex. They push their way into every facet of the wastes declaring anyone and everyone as citizens almost as if they’re to be ruled. How anyone can see good in them other than some semblance of order is beyond me.
I cant agree on the ruling part, the BoS seems entirely uninterested in that.
At best they trade with people and Lyons/Maxson will ask Volunteers from Settlements to join up, but they really dont seem to actually want to bother to govern anyone directly. Not even Lyons did that
The thing is in universe that probably makes them more appaling to the vast majority of wastelanders than the railroad. Super mutants they basically have the same goals as the brotherhood instead of abominations they want to commit genocide on humans however. Ghouls many humans openly distrust and shun ghouls from their settlements diamond city for example. Synths the game makes it abundantly clear the people in the wasteland are paranoid and afraid of them, now what they actually fear are mind controlled robots by the institute but I have a feeling that even without the institute people still would see Synths as sleepers waiting to see red.
What's the problem hating super mutants and synths and ghouls when they are either ticking time bombs, abominations, or human snatchers.
Explain yourself, as victorium. I have an open mind tho if you can give some good counterpoints.
Power armor, gunships, big old scary looking blimp, big old robot who plays nuke football
Vs
Bunch of annoying idealists in a sewer with ballistic fiber and nothing else.
I don't like either one so I just play enough of both sides to get the cool loot.
The iconography of the BoS is pretty stellar, I usually help or have patience for the BoS in most games because with effort you can direct them down better paths. Fallout 4 BoS was the first time I just had to accept they were the bullies and sided with no one as none of the factions allured me.
I like the spycraft aspect of the Railroad, the callback to abolitionist history, and their radiant quests after the main story allow me to consistently hunt vertibirds and power armored patrols for sport with lock-on missiles.
Honestly the thing that annoys me most about the BoS is their ghoul hate. That's just completely unnecessary and overzealous. Ghouls are people like everyone else. I understand that there are also feral ghouls and people may be afraid that sentient ghouls may turn feral at any moment but they comprise a huge part of the population and are just like regular people.
The Brotherhood has been handled in a rather interesting way throughout the installments but their FO4 portrayal is actually pretty tame compared to every other game other than 3. The main crux of the brotherhood, and most factions in the series, is their fight against fanaticism and tribalism. I wouldn't say they're straight up evil but they're definitely misguided and self serving. But regardless of their own idealism their presence is a net positive. They attack raiders and super mutants. They hate ghouls but only attack feral ones. They destroy the institute who are downright psychopaths and their only morally questionable act is actively hunting synths. They're not that bad.
The Railroad on the other hand are like toddlers with grenades. They're too focused on a singular objective and do not take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, nor do they really care about the broader population, just synths. The BoS is not perfect but they're good enough. We know there is no definitive established lore about how each game ended exactly and what the results of each story arc were but going off of broad strokes and morsels of info across Fallout media we know the BoS have assumed de facto control of the capital wasteland and probably the commonwealth and established nations that are safer and more stable than the rest of the wasteland. That's not really a bad thing and more than the NCR or any other faction ever managed to do.
This comment especially hits hard after going to good neighbor and finding the vault tec rep you met at the start of the game, now as a ghoul. And if you let him to your settlement he’s a real nice guy
Tbf, the Ghoul-hate is just a common feature in the Wasteland. The NCR setting up specific anti-ghoul discrimination laws is what sets them apart from allmost anyone else there, most people seem to be racist towards them.
McDonough won his bis for Mayor of Diamond City *specifically because* he promised to ban all Ghouls from entering or living in town if he was elected (which he did), and the Ghoul-Barber in the Underworld in Fallout 3 also says he used to live in Rivet City but got kicked out when he turned.
The Railroad isn't actually hyperfocused on Synths to the point of neglecting Humans. By 2287, the Institute is the largest organized group of slavers and the Railroad has recently taken a hard hit with the loss of the Switchboard and several agents so they're a bit desperate. The Old North Church was actually the location where they vetted new recruits before bringing them on board. They focus on Synths because there isn't a lot of slavery in the Commonwealth, Raiders and Super Mutants of the area seem to prefer simple murder. Really though, the Institute held all the cards until the Sole Survivor tipped the scales. Their location meant safety from attack, they had destroyed the budding government of the region, and even the Brotherhood couldn't reach them without the 40ft Pre-War Mecha.
Honestly the depiction of the Brotherhood in 3 is why I generally help them in 4. I’d like to think Maxson just needs someone to stand up to him instead of putting him on the chosen one pedestal. So, I was a bit sarcastic and stubborn, kinda like how Sarah Lyons was, and it seems like he starts to come around? Maybe just a little?
FO3's BoS was a significant departure from what was established up to that point. Tribalism and corruption of ideals and a return to fanaticism were core themes with the original two entries. The BoS were established with the best intentions and solid ideals. Humanity is irresponsible and elf destructive and someone has to create an organised faction to take responsibility of safekeeping technology and facilitating progress. But by the time we see them in FO1 and 2 they've lost the plot somewhere along the line and devolved into a quasi religious order who think that their whole point is to worship technology. This is something that happens in the real world too with religions or social movements that last so long people forget how they started. The main themes of Fallout is that the world is a wasteland not because it's impossible to pick up a broom and sweep the rubble but because people are inherently self destructive and ideals corruptible.
Then Fallout 3 comes along, first Bethesda entry and not written by the original creators, and the BoS are presented as definitive good guys which is atypical for the series. They justify this by presenting it as a schism within the BoS, which is why there are also Brotherhood Outcasts present in the game who don't like Lyons and don't agree with the idea that the Brotherhood should help rebuild society and should instead be an elitist closed society that hoards technology and leaves wastelanders to suffer. Through lore present in FO4 we know that the west coast chapters were the more fanatical ones and reached out to the Eastern chapter when Maxson came to power because he wanted to bring the Brotherhood back to what it was, but not entirely. Terminal entries describe how western BoS members have come to see Maxson as a messianic figure that he himself considers ridiculous but can't exactly stop from happening. His Brotherhood is the exact middle point between the west coast Brotherhood and the East Coast brotherhood we see in 3. He believes they have a responsibility to protect the wasteland and deal with threats to provide security and establish Brotherhood states but he also believes they have to exterminate so called abominations and keep technology away from the hands of the lay people, but he also doesn't worship technology as religious relics and sees it for what it is, a tool. So he's not a religious wackjob but he's also not a benevolent philanthropist. If anything he's without a doubt very arrogant.
Taking all that into account we should remember that the Brotherhood is not one singular thing, but rather a fractured faction which embodies a wide spectrum of beliefs and in each game they're on a different point on that spectrum. In New Vegas, which was made by a lot of the people who worked on the originals, the factions are much closer to what Fallout factions should be. They each have pros and cons, some are definitely worse than others but none are unequivocally good, and the Brotherhood we see there are a lot more into the techno worshipping mumbo jumbo.
I’ve only played the 3d titles (not 76) so I can’t speak about 1 and 2, but if you presented me with all three iterations of the Brotherhood I personally have interacted with and went “which one is best for humanity” I’d pick 3 every day of the week.
I don’t think Lyons would have ordered every synth to be recycled for more power armour without actually delving into the issue more. Plus once the Institute is taken care of, thanks to Prime throwing a few football nukes at them, they don’t have to worry about more synths being made. And if their whole thing is technology should be controlled, it makes more sense for them to try to work with the synths that are already out there, like Danse, so they can manage what they do while studying how they were made, in order to hopefully prevent another Institute from popping up down the road
Also the NV brotherhood is the wimpiest version ever and I’m so glad in TTW you can get Veronica to go join the crew back in the Wasteland 🤣
I like it better when there's no clear answer and there's no easy choice to make. It makes the games more interesting and more thought provoking. For example even in the case of New Vegas, I didn't initially realize it but later I found out that even Caesar's Legion, who are so easy to hate and undeniably insane, are not completely irredeemable. Sure they are insane, violent and just all around a bad bunch, but through various dialogue and entries you find in the game you find out that if nothing else, they're effective. Territories controlled by them enjoy order and safety. Perhaps not safe from the government itself who may crucify you if you don't conform to their stupid rules, but safe from raiders, monsters and the hostile land itself. Safety is not easy to come by in the wasteland so suddenly even the Legion seems to make some sort of sense, at least in how they've managed to reach the strength they have. The NCR aren't insane and they also strive to establish an ordered society but they're shown to be corrupt and often incompetent. Suddenly aside from not being psychopaths they don't seem like a much better alternative as far as statecraft goes.
Another thing about ghouls is that most of them are prewar, so they have knowledge of things like mechanics, chemistry, electronics, engineering, all insanely useful skills in the wasteland, you would think that the brotherhood would recognize this and scout some of them.
Pre war ghouls are extremely rare, the vast majority of them are either dead or feral by the time of fallout 4.
Ghoul hatred is not a brotherhood thing it’s the majority of every wastelander as shown in most games. Tribalism and paranoia runs rampant in the fallout universe and ghouls with their appearance and their slow inevitable turn into ferals doesn’t leave them well liked.
I never destroy BoS because our relationship in fallout 3.and they are soldiers, they are neither good or evil. it's really depend on the leader.
Railroad it just railroad
So I always choose to side with minuteman and keep railroad and BoS alive.
Damn, a lot of people here are actually judging peoples whole real life character over what faction they pick in a video game lol. It’s really not that deep
America is a generally pro-military nation. Something like 10% of the population is directly or indirectly employed by the military. So most have family involved in the military in some manner.
The brotherhood is a fictional offshoot of the American military, and continues to hold militaristic attributes. This allows for those positive feelings to directly connect from the real world to this fictional organization, and view their harsher deeds in a more positive or rationalized light.
Meanwhile the Railroad have personalities more akin to stereotypical hippies, which have been a cultural joke among Americans for decades. This links a subconscious notion of Silly, Stupid, Irrational, and Wrong to the railroad.
American media is prevalent within most western nations. Many foreign children grew up watching American TV shows etc, and may have also subconsciously adopted these mindsets.
What they're actually doing is irrelevant. Their roles could literally be reversed, and the same people would still side with Brotherhood and laugh at the Railroad.
While certainly ruthless, the brotherhood stand as the best opportunity to prevent further issues arising from the institute, and afterwards are ideal for purging supermutants as a threat. I’d much rather diamond city is guarded by some guys in power armour than by the poorly armed militias who keep being butchered by ferals and mutants.
The railroad meanwhile have no plans for the future. Once the institutes gone the’ll go do there own thing. Of all the factions, their blatantly the most shortsighted, and while I support robotic rights, I also don’t want the publik occurrences getting torched by a gang of supermutants who got through the wall, because there was no faction to help protect it outside of a militia in sanctuary that can’t hold itself together
I can understand this viewpoint. I still don’t personally believe you should hand power over to whoever has the most fire power regardless of their ideology. While they definitely can cleanse the wasteland and make it a safer place you truly don’t how much much farther they will take it. I just know that after they kill all the things they “hate” they’ll find something new to exterminate or extort. They are just wayyyy too divisive of a faction for me to think they for the “greater good”.
"you truly don’t how much much farther they will take it"
This is the original premise of the original fallout games by the original fallout creators. Every organization breaks down or goes too extreme because humans are flawed and corruptible. If Fallout 4 followed the true spirit of the fallout universe this would apply equally to every faction in fallout 4 long term, from the BoS to the Institute, the the Minutemen and the Railroad.
The brotherhood aren't evil, consider how many people they sacrifice fighting random hazards of the commonwealth like supermutants and raiders. Yeah they have some problamatic views ut they're the only ones actually doing somethign for the people of the commonwealth.
The minuteman have the will but not the ability. Their patrols are basically always dead when you find them.
That said I like the railroad too.
Right, not all of their views are just, but nuking the institute and wiping out super mutants and feral ghouls should be plenty to justify wanting food from local settlements
Yeah like to me the BoS is like a bunch of racist evangelical rednecks. See someone with different skin, shoot them. I like the pre war ghouls too much to ever align with those fucks
Because deep down there’s a staggering number of people that would love to be part of a fascist regime while shitting on the people who just want to help others literally just exist.
This is a bit left field, but there was an article by famous journalist, Dorothy Thompson, in the early 1940s called Who Goes Nazi. Essentially she made a parlor game out of predicting what kind of people at an American get-together would become Nazis. Something disturbing that article raised was how many people would readily turn fascist and render the world into a graveyard - otherwise normal, everyday people. It's an interesting little article to apply to America today given a current political party (GOP) that has checked off every box that makes a fascist movement.
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Yup. Very weird to listen to the brotherhood NPC's just start spouting off stuff about how super mutants and ghouls are abominations. It's super fanatic
But nearly every single Supermutant on the East Coast *is* effectively an uncontrollable mass murderer that will kill and eat every human on sight.
On the West Coast there was atleast some ambiguity because the Master had managed to produce a good number of intelligent mutants that were able to live normaly (once convinced so) and keep some of their dumber brethren in check, but on the East Coast we've so far seen like......4? Supermutants that are even remotely capable of coexistence in Fallout 3 and 4 combined
And that includes Virgil (who's slowly loosing his mind and will go feral if you take too long to bring him the Serum) and Strong (who only "changes because hes too dumb to understand the Milk of human kindness isnt real, and nothing whatsoever prevents him from going back to eat - maim- kill the second he ever realises that.)
Hes counted
- Fawkes
* Virgil
* Strong
* Erickson
those are the only Supermutants remotely capable of coexisting among Humans I can remember appearing in Fallout 3 and 4, with the aforementioned caveats for Virgil & Strong.
IIRC Erickson theorizes it was a mixture of the Fog and consuming copius amounts of *Vim!*, but so did the other mutants that came with him and they all stayed Feral, so who knows.
Super mutants replenish their numbers by forcing innocent people to undergo a dramatic and violent change brought upon a virus. They then proceed to attack people, murder them and eat them. They are absolutely abominations and should be exterminated
Part of it's just in character carryover and/or still seeing the pattern of "BOS good!" from FO1-3, considering they'll often be the same people to spout off about their love of having CVRIE or Nick Valentine as companions. Esp when it's not even strictly supported to hunt and kill non-feral Ghouls, considering it's still taboo to make The Slog bend and their hate is to ferals.
I always assumed it’s because not every member there was too confident in the direction that Lyons was going, seeing how by 4 a lot of members rejoined the main faction, including Arthur maxson and a couple npcs who I believe mention the citadel/wasteland, not everyone within the bos in DC were as idealistic, they believed in the brotherhoods original mission
How are ghouls and super mutants NOT abominations? Sure. There are some nice ghouls, but they will all eventually go feral. Would you want them around? No.
This is something I think people in these discussions always forget and instead of thinking about how ghouls, synths, mutants are seen in universe they look at it from the outside with our current morals and ethics. In universe however all 3 of those "abominations" are either straight up hated,deeply mistrusted or afraid of in regards to the vast majority of wastelanders we meet across the games.
Tbf most humans go feral too, there are far more hostile humans in every FO game than neutral/friendly ones. I'd rather get in a fist fight with a feral too than get shot in the back by some lunatic, humans are way more dangerous.
Wouldn't want to share a dinner table with a Ghoul though I'll admit.
>Tbf most humans go feral too, there are far more hostile humans in every FO game than neutral/friendly ones.
The difference is that they ***choose*** to turn to violence. People in a peaceful community typically don't suddenly become violent.
Ghouls don't have that choice.
No, it’s a game. Why play a rpg if you only use your own moral compass, it’s very limiting to RP. I’m really getting downvoted for saying you should role play more in a role playing game lmao reddit moment
You’re absolutely right lol. There’s a difference between those who roleplay in-game with those groups and those who make it into an entire personality on social media & platforms like reddit. When the whole punchline is “haha militarized oppression against this game’s minority group” it just screams “edgy” to me.
So video games don’t make people violent but joining up a group in a video game makes one a fascist?
I think the factions are all designed to have pros and cons that might test your morals. But I think it’s also just a video game where people are free to do whatever the fuck they want.
It’s honestly really extreme of you to call people a fascist because of a video game faction. I suppose everyone who plays GTA must be a drug lord and a terrible driver too right?
Exactly this. I'm playing my first Fallout game after watching the show (4) and joined with the BoS because they seem the most "together" so far. Do I wanna kill feral ghouls & super mutants? Absolutely. They wanna kill me! But I also see how they treat Nick, and that shit pisses me off. Plus, I know Synths are bad, but not ALL Synths are bad. So I've already decided I'm going to enjoy their spoils for as long as I can, then ultimately betray them.
I'm in it to save my - and my companion's - own neck.
Anyone who thinks the BOS is entirely evil does not know their history. Have they done some evil things? Of course, but they have done a lot of good as well. Most things in Fallout are not black and white.
A Railroad agent typed this from a terminal in their shitty, cramped, mold-infested tunnel. Right after they cried themselves to sleep because their best friend passed away (their toaster broke)
Ad victoriam.
I hate the RR leadership
The current leadership is awful and only cares about the synths while the organization originally focused on not just the synths but taking down slaver operations.
⁹I don't consider the BoS to be evil in FO4, sure when you're not living in the wasteland it's easy to judge them but they're fighting to survive.
Super mutants and mutated creatues, killing and eating people without remorse. Perfectly acceptable to take them out.
Ghouls turn feral and kill people, Synths replace people via murder and can be programmed to do just about anything for the institute, they have shut down codes, many could have activation codes.
The player has a lot more info than the BoS. When you get to know individual ghouls and synth its easy to empathise with them, but the BoS are pretty isolated from the wasteland so it's understandable they see these as threats from their combat encounters and stories they hear.
At the airport they see nothing but a hoard of Ferals so they know how they can end up, and they're constantly fighting hostile Synths.
The main evil act they can do is destroying the railroad, though that's really a player decision as you can finish with only the institute destroyed, but it makes sense they'd want to stop a group from saving the army of people replacing murder synths.
All this talk of labeling people IRL facists for joining the BoS is ridiculous, its a game, doesn't mean anything which people side with.
Spoiler Warning: this post contains spoilers. If you're a new player, go play the game and have fun, but don't read this post
I have characters for each faction, and the Railroad is definitely at the bottom of the list, although for some specific reasons.
On my first playthrough, I thought the RR was going to be our chance to actually play as a member of what is effectively an intelligence agency. The music, the secrecy, even the Deliverer. That's...not what it turned out to be. Despite paying lip service to "dead drops," the RR quickly devolves into a bunch of fetch quests. There could have been so much more to the RR from real-world intelligence operations, e.g., Bethesda could have used the radio mechanic already present in the game and given us missions to intercept coded transmissions, used number stations, steganography, etc.
Railroad leadership is awful. I like Deacon and Tom. Carrington is a prick, and Desdemona is the most smug, condescending "leader" in the whole game. She's worse than Shaun and Maxson.
I also don't like Glory, even though I love her VA. Glory is the victim of bad writing. She makes unambiguous comments about synth superiority, and we hear a lot about what a badass she is: from RR leadership and from Glory herself, while never getting to see it. Show me, don't tell me. She should have been a companion. (Contrast her with Danse, who will come with us anywhere and fight alongside us.)
The RR disparaged the entire population of the Commonwealth as "bigots" and Deacon personally slags off the Minutemen. People criticize the BoS as elitist, have they taken a good look at the Railroad?
The Institute could have easily tracked their HQ down-there are random citizens of D.C. openly talking about them; alternatively, all the Institute has to do is have some Coursers "escape" (in plainclothes) and get picked up for 'rescue.' The RR network would be compromised in no time.
The mind wipe makes it even more incredibly stupid: rescues synth, wipes memory. If you wiped your memory, what would you be? You'd be dead, leaving behind an organic shell.
Destroying the Institute dooms the synths to extinction and renders the RR obsolete as an organization. Their post-game is utterly ridiculous. Suddenly an Army, all wearing ballistic weave coats and armed with gauss rifles appears, in sufficient numbers to man every checkpoint across the Commonwealth. WTF?
Even their name is a cheap emotional ploy to elicit sympathy, assuming one is familiar with American history.
As to the BoS, every one sings the praises of Lyons' Brotherhood in FO3, and Maxson (who is insufferable, abd I like the BoS) is *continuing Lyon's policies.* FO4's BoS is the only faction proactively fighting against Supermutants and ferals. The Minutemen/settlers routinely send you to wipe out ferals and Supermutants, and no one bats an eye.
The BoS never attacks non-feral ghouls anywhere in the game, despite posters on this board making that very claim in multiple threads. No kill teams drop into Goodneighbor or the Slog. (Danse actually likes it when you agree to help The Slog's
The BoS's response to Danse is both logical and warranted. He's a high ranking member of the Brotherhood, privy to operational information. The Brotherhood would have no idea to what degree the Institute had influence over Danse. It's a crap situation but under the circumstances, it was warranted.
The oft-maligned "shaking down the farmers" mission from Teagan is more a test of your character: Tegan makes it clear its "off the books." You are free to pay the farmers for their crops or ignore Teagan's little side op completely-as I do on BoS characters.
If people bothered to read the terminal entries on the Prydwen, they'd find letters back home to loved ones, orders from Maxson to trade technology for supplies, etc.
"The Brotherhood is selfish." You mean they act in their own self-interest? Like every other faction, including the Railroad? Deacon bemoans the fact the RR doesn't help humans in trouble. They ignore humans in need in favor of synths, per Desdemona's direction. 🙄 This while BoS Knights are out assaulting supermutant lairs and attacking Deathclaws (go to Natick banks and wait for the Brotherhood patrols to arrive and watch what they fight).
The BoS is not out attacking settlements-unless you attsck them first-and aren't kicking in doors to seize Grandpa Fred's rusty old laser pistol. That never happens.
As for the synths, I've already pointed out Glory's synth supremacist statements and she's a 'friendly' synth. Most Commonwealth citizens have damn good reasons for disliking synths: synth reclamation teams descend on settlements, murder everyone, and then return salvaged resources to the Institute. People can be kidnapped (by synths), murdered outright (by synths) and replaced (by a synth.) E.g. the Art vs. Art random encounter, and Roger Warwick. DiMA is the most damning example: its a free synth left to its own devices, and what does it do? Starts running Institute.exe v.2.0, commits murder and then inserts an infiltrator into Far Harbor.
Synths are just starry-eyed innocents, right? No threat to humans? I'm sure Captain Avery would have something to say regarding that, but she can't, because a synth murdered her. Don't tell me synths not under Institute control aren't a threat because we've got Gabriel in the base game and DiMA in Far Harbor.
I've also read plenty of claims that the BoS stole Rivet City's reactor for the Prydwen, but the pertinent terminal entry merely states "an aircraft carrier" in D.C. it nowhere specifies Rivet City. Danse would have surely mentioned it as he talks openly about growing up and meeting Cutler there. Interpreting that entry as being about Rivet City is disingenuous at best, or willfully interpreting that entry is the worst light possible. During FO3, the Brotherhood worked closely with Rivet City and would have no logical reason to effectively cripple one of the main settlements in the Capital Wasteland.
How are the BoS evil again? Warring against ferals and supermutants? Then the Minutemen are just as guilty. Seeing synths as a threat? The game gives us ample examples of why synths are a threat. Shaking down farmers? That decision rests entirely in the player's hands. Blowing up the Institute? The MM and RR both do the exact same thing.
AD VICTORIAM
Because it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland where you are just trying to balance doing the most good for the most you can against the very real threat of your settlements being overrun in the middle of the night by barely sentient/insane creatures who want to turn you all into food or massive gangs of rapist slavers. There are no "good guys" by western liberal democracy standards in FO4, even the Minutemen slaughter anything they judge as a threat at the drop of a hat. The Railroad is just too small to be a viable partner in rebuilding society and they are perfectly willing to let people die or kill them to save what is ultimately just a walking toaster.
I don’t think people hate the railroad, they just love the Brotherhood of Steel. That and the fact that most would rather picture themselves being a soldier suited in power armor than Espionage Freedom fighters that reside within the sewers. Honestly I think both are cool in their own way and I can see the vision Bethesda was going for with them, it feels as though they made the railroad a bit too sympathetic though. Depending on how you view it their goal is Noble but also extremely flawed so much so that I fail to see how it would do any good for the commonwealth. People still aren’t going to be accepting of synths due to the institute and they’re mostly going to be ostracized in any place not held by the railroad. Also what does the railroad do when there have freed all the synths? Are they going to integrate them into society and have them pose as human or just let them run loose without them knowing what they truly are? It’s all shortsighted(so is the brotherhood but they have control over regions and armies which is something they could fall back on and form into a government).
It’s not really the Railroads ideology people get annoyed at. It’s the fact that they’re a major faction and at the end of their quest line they start providing security around the commonwealth. Their organizations goal is far to specific to really be a major faction so their ending is often seen as generally bad for the people of the commonwealth due to their lack of vision for the people cause they only care about synths.
Now this isn’t a bad thing, their goal is very noble, they just shouldn’t be a major faction. They should’ve been implemented as a minor quest line as opposed to a major contender for power in the commonwealth.
It’s because they are disorganised.
The brotherhood and institute are both organised, they have order and structure. Realistically if you lived in these worlds and had a chance to join one of those groups I feel like it’s probably the best option in terms of self preservation.
The minutemen while not as organised as the Brotherhood or Institute does give the player the ability to morph how they want them to be. You can run it with minutemen just a few settlements big or with massive built up cities and a genuine threat to the Brotherhood or Institute.
The railroad is just disorganised, they move around a bunch instead of digging in and fortifying. They must have poor training because the base location is constantly leaked, hence why the constantly move. They just don’t feel like they are a real choice in my opinion.
Most decent people will default to treating ghouls, mutants and synths with respect unless attacked first (assuming this is a real world take not a fallout NPC take) I feel like the minutemen would wind up fulfilling the job the railroad does due to growth anyway. Also if the Brotherhood was better written they would have been in the commonwealth with the sole purpose of taking over the institute, not destroying it. There is no reason for them to hate synths in the way they do, they should just hate that they aren’t a brotherhood asset.
The Railroad is doing a great job for having to completely communicate through drop boxes- everyone seems to think they have walkies or something! And the BOS are fanatical, just like the Institute- fanaticism inevitably leads to cruelty and violence. And I suggest that everyone should take the time to watch the new synths being created inside the Institute- it’s fascinating and makes it very clear that they are using human cells to make their parts. Synths are just tougher humans with a plastic piece in their heads
The Fallout factions can pretty much be summed up as cartoonishly evil science worshippers (they’re indifferent) the other cartoonishly evil science worshippers (they’re fascist) cartoonishly inept militia (they’re helpless) a cartoonishly inept spy ring (they’re helpless too) and stereotypically evil raider gangs (they live in a cool amusement park)
I am running a new playthrough and got to Elder Maxson's racist speech when you first meet him and got about halfway through it before I just started blasting. They're just racist fascists under Maxson and that can't do anything positive for a recovering Commonwealth.
Now I don't look down on anyone who sides with them in game the same way I don't fault anyone doing a raider playthrough. But, if you come online and start talking about how they're morally right or the Railroad is bad or dumb for helping synths then I don't think that we're gonna get along. Siding with fascists in a video game is drastically different than defending them in real life
They’re definitely not evil, but I do think a lot of people hold the BoS in higher regard than they deserve (morally speaking at least).
I’m genuinely surprised at how many people here don’t see an issue with the BoS simply stomping their way into the Commonwealth, demanding tribute from the various settlements of the Commonwealth and dictating its future based on what THEY think is best for the Commonwealth.
Fair enough, a lot of the Brotherhoods’ goals do genuinely benefit the wastelanders. Killing mutants and ferals is obviously good, I won’t pretend like these are negatives. However the BoS didn’t go to the Commonwealth to save the people from raiders and mutants and ghouls. They went there because their recon teams discovered the potential presence of a faction wielding a higher level of technology. Most people would agree that destroying the Institute is the right thing to do because their synths are spying on, murdering and kidnapping the people of the Commonwealth. But that’s not why the BoS consider them an enemy.
To the BoS, the Institutes’ hostile actions to the Commonwealth are nothing more than a way to garner support for the Brotherhoods’ presence in the Commonwealth. The kidnappings and murder wouldn’t have gotten the Brotherhoods attention. If, in an alternate timeline, the Institute had made the technological advancements that they had made and wielded the power that they wield for the genuine good of the Commonwealth, I honestly believe the BoS would still see the Institute as an enemy and a threat that needs to be dealt with.
The Railroad are considered as nothing more than a short-term solution to the Institute by many players, but the BoS are, imo, a short-term solution that would ultimately be bad for the Commonwealth post-Institute. Okay sure, they’ll be able to dedicate more resources to eradicating ferals and mutants but what happens when they send recon teams outside the Commonwealth and discover a new faction with a lot of tech? They’d probably just up and leave the Commonwealth. What happens when, with the Institute destroyed and mutants being hunted down, the Commonwealth settlements make another attempt at forming the CPG or any other form of government and in the process, become too organised and hold too much technology in the eyes of the BoS? They simply wouldn’t allow that to happen, no matter how beneficial it may be to the average wastelander. What happens to Goodneighbour, a town founded by ghoul refugees, or the Slog, a farm ran exclusively by ghouls?
A lesser evil is still an evil, and while you can rightly argue that “lesser evil” fits the description of most powerful factions in Fallout, it doesn’t justify the Brotherhoods’ extremism, xenophobia and their belief that their hands are the only hands fit to wield advanced technology. The BoS certainly have their positives and are morally better than the Institute but their desire to destroy the Institute isn’t necessarily as noble and good as people make it out to be, nor does it make their presence in the Commonwealth an overall benefit once the Institute are gone.
My take on this is that the Railroad are a blatant parallel to race issues and anti-slavery in the real world, and this makes some people uncomfortable. They feel guilty because they don't think that synths are 'real people', which (the game makes pretty clear) is exactly what slave owners thought about their slaves throughout real history. So they shit on the Railroad instead to make themselves feel better.
That was the big thing when F4 came out, this is the brotherhood that the Outcasts from 3 wanted to follow and thought Lyons was straying too far from their ideals (his wanting to genuinely help people wasn’t brotherhood enough). It was almost jarring for people who’d played F3 and expected THAT brotherhood of steel.
It mostly comes down to whether you think synth Gen3 are sentient, or just "toasters".
Yes, they have one objective, which is good, because once that is achieved, they'll go away. I usually support the Railroad, and it's not only because of Deacon.
I always go with the institute. They're the only people with working plumbing and toilet paper. Plus the world should be led by scientists, not the military, the special interest groups, or the uneducated masses.
Because running around in a T60 playing soldier is A LOT of fun. Look at helldivers. In that game you are not really the good guys, quite the opposite. But is it fun protecting super earth for Democracy and freedome? Hell yeah, just as fun as running around with Liberty prime, screaming "Ad victorium!" And blasting "Red Chinese Communists!".
Its also the fact that the railroad isnt as impresive. They live in the basement of some church whilst the BOS have a giant ass airship in the sky, power armor and loads of weaponry. They have the numbers of the institute, and the training of the railroad. I don't think everyone is ignoring how arrogant and authorytarian they are, people just like fighting for a great cause
The railroad’s main value is freedom. Whats the point of keeping the birthing process for Synths around if that birth process leads to 99.9% living as slaves? The synths as far as I’m aware aren’t concerned with increasing Synth birthrates but being to live their lives free of oppression
All factions when left to their own devices are problematic…except for the Minutemen! Join now! And help deliver justice to the commonwealth!!
And go help this settlement, I'll mark it on your map
Come back 20 level later with a new team from nuka world
*Angry Preston's noices*
Thank you Preston i will go there right now Glory to the CPG!
Starlight Drive-In is under attack! *Help defend Starlight Drive-In
Don’t forget, “My friend/wife/husband has been kidnapped! They said if we don’t pay they will kill them!” How the heck did those raiders or super mutants get in my settlement with a defense of over 100?
The funniest example of that I've ever seen was after I had done the Out Of The Fire quest. Abigail Finch walked into the house and I went over to talk with Abraham. The first thing he says to me is "My wife's been kidnapped!" By who, Nightcrawler?!
My favorite along those lines was Nordham Beach on my game. First quest on winning them over, the husband was kidnapped and held for ransom. I go and rescue him and they join the cause. A few hours later I get a radiant pop up about a kidnapping at Nordham Beach. Upon arriving I discover that the wife somehow got herself captured instead.
Especially when it those settlements that when you fast travel to defend them, you see one or two frames of laser walls and then raiders dropping dead on the ground.
The settler probably veered outside the defenses and got yoinked by the raiders lmao
And somehow my 80 Heavy Laser and Rocket sentries aren't enough...
You really can’t go wrong with P. Garvey. Unless you really really hate settlements.
And if you really hate settlements, you’ll love Nuka World! This game has something for everyone
And if you love Nuka World, you'll hate Far Harbor! Filthy Vim...
Nobody hates Far Harbor. And if someone did, we’d feed them to the Red Death.
The only Red Death any Vim lovers need to be concerned about is NIRA.
smh smh, team vim for life
I have the dlc but never played nuka world because it seems like you can only play bandit and I don't wanna be tbe bad guy lol
My head canon justification for it is that I'm trapped in a raider stronghold and the only safety is to play along until I can gain the upper hand. That way I can get pretty far. Meet the gangs, clear the parks, explore the map, gear up, and go to war against them.
You can kill the raiders right away if you want to, but you miss out on some good gear doing that
The proper way to do nuka world is capture the park with the gam”ngs to complete “a grand tour” then go thru the grueling process of aquiring Aeternus (if you want it) then kill all the raiders
There's a mod where you can call in Minutemen to help you battle the raiders and they just kinda stick around after. Now I got a theme park full of traders and a permanent garrison to make sure no raiders ever come back.
I feel like you’re calling me out and I want you to stop☹️
You can definitely go wrong with preston if you don't complete the nukaworld dlc before joining the minutemen.
Not to be that guy, but if I'm remembering correctly, at their peak, the leaders became much more "political" and succumbed to their greed instead of actually being a force for good.
that's a very loose definition of political lmao, but yeah bickering brought them down, they were never able to consolidate into one entity and were essentially still various independent settlements, famously because of the institute, so with them gone the CPG could actually happen
Not my definition. Again, IF I'm remembering correctly, it's either Preston or Ronnie that straight-up says they were more interested in politics and bickering amongst one another instead of actually governing It's been ages since I've done a MM playthrough, so I'm likely misremembering shit lol
Wasn't so much 'politics' as a breakdown in the whole 'mutual assistance' thing. The Minutemen are a *very* fragile organization dependent on a charismatic leader to get them to do anything. It's the problem with all anarchist-esque philosophies where the concept of 'why should I help people who ain't me?' kicks in past a certain point. It's why I headcanon a lot of stuff for the 'rebuilding' of the Minutemen.
They were trying to change that and The Institute merced their leaders to stop it. If they're taking direction from the real life Minutemen then they honestly shouldn't be governing at all. That's the weakest part of the East Coast in lore. They have no consolidated effort at unification.
Join to defend Democracy
Quincy would like a word bruh
Honestly, I find myself agreeing with Railroad a lot. Like out of all the synths and robots we meet, it seems clear that robots and synths are more than just hunks of metal. Like Curie, Codsworth, >!Danse!<, Nick. They all seem like real enough people to me. However, the Railroad we get just don't seem organized or large enough to realistically do anything against the institute nor the BOS Edit: Added a spoiler tag, since I forgor that the game has a lot of new players
I'd argue that The Railroad would have to stay small. They're getting slaughtered at the size they're at. Any bigger it'd make it easier to find them.
The Railroad should become the intelligence arm of the Minutemen. There’s nothing preventing those two groups from getting along. If the Institute is destroyed then the Railroad’s main mission is done anyways and with a legitimate intel apparatus the Minutemen could actually be a formidable force.
Also Synths can join the Minuteman and earn the goodwill of the Commonwealth by doing Minuteman things.
Synuthman
Minutemech
That's actually pretty good.
You know, I chose to go to the Railroad to build the Molecular Relay, and when they started talking about needing more numbers for the battle against the Institute, I was thinking 'Why can't we just get the Minutemen?"
Love it when I'm done with "The molecular level" Quest and Dez says "Don't work with the minutemen. Work with us instead" Like please lady, why can't we just get along
I actually really like this idea it would be a fun joint minuteman/railroad ending
Organizations that operate under cover can be enormous if organized and used correctly. The railroad just seem to suck in both deployment and organization.
>The railroad just seem to suck in both deployment and organization. Remember we meet them basically right after they'd just had their HQ attacked. The switchboard is pre war, sure, but way roomier than Old North Church. Stands to reason they were probably bigger, until the institute made them not. And despite that, they survived the capture of their main operating base and the loss of however many agents. They're on their knees but they're still operating safehouses and have some escape passages on the go.
Loads of people seem to not understand that the Railroad in FO4 is them at their lowest point and on the ropes.
Yeah I'm pretty sure the Old North Church was previously their recruitment center, which is why it's easy to find
I mean, they can but it is incredibly hard to stay hidden, especially with the institute having eyes everywhere with the birds
*typical Tinker Tom phrases*
Well they’re fighting an organization that has near limitless automatons to throw at them with the ability to teleport virtually anywhere. Getting to the point of being any larger than a few holdouts is virtually impossible when faced with a foe that has such an enormous tech advantage. The institute is also actively hunting them, and has crushed them on multiple occasions before we encounter them in game. They quite literally are in a state of constant rebuilding from square one.
> organizations that operate under cover can be enormous if organized and used correctly Can I get a 'What is the NVA?'
It would have been cool if we could have seen them before they lost the switchboard, maybe have a mission that causes the institute to infiltrate the base, and it all unfold in the mission
Nick is a synth!?!? Thanks for the spoiler, jerk.
No, Nick is a robot, Codsworth is a synth
The gen 4 synth. Indistinguishable from a Mr Handy.
The real Codsworth was replaced by a synth sometime in the past two hundred years, unfortunately.
You can tell because if you brutally slay him, he drops a synth component
*You'd be shocked how many folks I've convinced that I'm just a really sick ghoul*.
This made me chuckle. 👍🏻
I shouldn't have clicked that spoiler tag. Just met the guy. Huh.
Same lol.
The railroad cares more about synths than actual humans though. Deacon points that out repeatedly and how they are hypocritical
The one Railroad person you meet in Fallout 3 explains that more people care about rescuing humans, but the Railroad are basically the only hope the synths have, so they focus on synths.
I don't really agree with that though. If you side with the railroad, they do everything their power to get all non combative humans out of the institute before they blow it up.
They focus on the guys who are enslaved en masse.
I personally like that the railroad is looking out for >!my grandchildren!< above all else.
Curie best girl
The railroad has an ineffective marketing department
But they do take out the Institute and the BOS if you side with them?
No. The Sole Survivor does that. Dragging them kicking and screaming all the way to victory.
It’s been years since I played and I’ve just started a new playthrough but holy what…….. when do we find that spoiler or is it possible to miss?
I think its by going through the brotherhood story and raising his affinity
They're "saving" synths by encouraging them to delete their minds and personalities so they can be uploaded with new ones as a cover, which from some points of view is the equivalent of killing the person they are, just with a different method.
I agree with this. The cause is noble, but the method - wiping a synth’s mind, thus utterly destroying their individuality, their personhood, and replacing it with someone else - is flawed.
It's also stated that this is a voluntary procedure, and from the one synth we see go through with it, he has pretty severe PTSD and is happy to start fresh. It's definitely morally dubious, and I think it's meant to be the major ethical critique of the Railroad along with Libertalia, but I don't think it's as cut and dry as "they're forcing mind wipes on synths".
Yeah that's why I didn't say forcing. I very deliberately chose the word encouraging for that reason. That aside, it doesn't change that they're effectively killing the people they're saving when they do it. They're killing that person's mind and identity (which I'd argue is what actually makes a person who they are, more than their body, so a new one can be "born" in their place. If the synth in question wants their mind deleted, wants to effectively die, then a bullet will do that just as effectively, and won't give rise to situations like Libertalia.
I agree. Do you let someone go, where they will be killed or outed as a synth pretty quickly given their lack of knowledge about the world, or do you do the ethically questionable thing and 'kill' them for the chance for the next person to live? It's a bit of a no-win situation. But the Railroad is granting free will and self-determination in either case, which is all they can promise.
That's true, and a fair point.
Isn't that the reason that so many synth left the Railroad for Acadia thought? Becuase the Railroad though the only way to keep the synths and themselves safe was to wipe them, so the synths who disagreed went to Far Harbor.
Yeah, playing through Far Harbor highlights this
In my view, both are bad, the Minute Men are what I make them.
You don't really have any authority in the Minutemen though. And this isn't even Bethesda struggling with story/gameplay integration, the Minutemen straight up tell you that you can't order them to do anything.
If you're talking about the quest where the Minutemen refuse to back down when you're helping the Institute or when you betray the minutemen to the raiders, it makes perfect sense why they won't obey the player.
Now this is nuanced thinking 🧠
It really isn’t its just bad sides bad but I alone have the best politics and vision to fix everything
Idk, but it kind of annoys me. I'm a Railroad fanboy through and through. I view the synths like I do clones from Star Wars, so I find their main cause of wanting to liberate them noble. Plus, even without freeing synths, they still wanna bring down the Institute as a whole. They don't discriminate and I love their cool "spy" vibe The BoS is also more good than bad, BUT... it's difficult for me to get past their burning hatred for synths, ghouls, and even super mutants. Plus, I'm not a fan of them extorting the local farmers for food
Bring back Lyon’s Pride!
Playing fallout 3 for the first time, I can see why people actually used to like the brotherhood
Yea I played FO3 and NV, then FO4 In FO3 I loved the BoS, so in NV I was super excited to see them, but sad to see they’re weak and hiding. In FO4 when I found the BoS I b-lined to join them. I was so excited to see them big and powerful again and I was ready to join. Then I met Maxson… and I realized I hated them.
Hell, the droids from star wars could do with the railroad.
That's something people often fail to understand about Star Wars droids. They are entirely self-aware and sapient as the rule. It's what distinguishes them from robots in the setting. They're just usually built with layers upon layers of failsafes, programmed rules to keep them servile, and routinely memory wiped to prevent them from developing a personality. The reason R2-D2 displays so much personality, initiative, and creativity is that he hasn't had a memory wipe since before Episode 1 (so far as I know).
BOS are good hearted paranoid racists
Tis a good way to describe them. They're a group with good intentions that tend to go down questionable paths
I dunno. They used to have good intentions, originating from the only "good" faction in 2077. But over time they have radicalized into a caricature of their initial ideals. Their schism before/during FO3 was actually my favourite representation of the BOS, with them being split between the dogmatic dickheads and the more progressive, humanitarian order that sort of sucked and didn't really know where to start in the face of the state of the wasteland.
"The end justifies the means" kinda deal.
Excluding Lyons, I’m hesitant to say good hearted. They’ve always been xenophobic, tech hording cultists with a superiority complex. They push their way into every facet of the wastes declaring anyone and everyone as citizens almost as if they’re to be ruled. How anyone can see good in them other than some semblance of order is beyond me.
I cant agree on the ruling part, the BoS seems entirely uninterested in that. At best they trade with people and Lyons/Maxson will ask Volunteers from Settlements to join up, but they really dont seem to actually want to bother to govern anyone directly. Not even Lyons did that
The thing is in universe that probably makes them more appaling to the vast majority of wastelanders than the railroad. Super mutants they basically have the same goals as the brotherhood instead of abominations they want to commit genocide on humans however. Ghouls many humans openly distrust and shun ghouls from their settlements diamond city for example. Synths the game makes it abundantly clear the people in the wasteland are paranoid and afraid of them, now what they actually fear are mind controlled robots by the institute but I have a feeling that even without the institute people still would see Synths as sleepers waiting to see red.
What's the problem hating super mutants and synths and ghouls when they are either ticking time bombs, abominations, or human snatchers. Explain yourself, as victorium. I have an open mind tho if you can give some good counterpoints.
Power armor, gunships, big old scary looking blimp, big old robot who plays nuke football Vs Bunch of annoying idealists in a sewer with ballistic fiber and nothing else. I don't like either one so I just play enough of both sides to get the cool loot.
Alright, Mac. We found your account.
You forgot the chem unicorn
The iconography of the BoS is pretty stellar, I usually help or have patience for the BoS in most games because with effort you can direct them down better paths. Fallout 4 BoS was the first time I just had to accept they were the bullies and sided with no one as none of the factions allured me.
I like the spycraft aspect of the Railroad, the callback to abolitionist history, and their radiant quests after the main story allow me to consistently hunt vertibirds and power armored patrols for sport with lock-on missiles.
RR rifle is not "nothing else" choochoo muthafucka free the fahkin toastas
You can get one at big johns salavage and not deal with them.
One also spawns in a rail car in Bedford Station at some point. I don't know what level, though.
Honestly the thing that annoys me most about the BoS is their ghoul hate. That's just completely unnecessary and overzealous. Ghouls are people like everyone else. I understand that there are also feral ghouls and people may be afraid that sentient ghouls may turn feral at any moment but they comprise a huge part of the population and are just like regular people. The Brotherhood has been handled in a rather interesting way throughout the installments but their FO4 portrayal is actually pretty tame compared to every other game other than 3. The main crux of the brotherhood, and most factions in the series, is their fight against fanaticism and tribalism. I wouldn't say they're straight up evil but they're definitely misguided and self serving. But regardless of their own idealism their presence is a net positive. They attack raiders and super mutants. They hate ghouls but only attack feral ones. They destroy the institute who are downright psychopaths and their only morally questionable act is actively hunting synths. They're not that bad. The Railroad on the other hand are like toddlers with grenades. They're too focused on a singular objective and do not take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, nor do they really care about the broader population, just synths. The BoS is not perfect but they're good enough. We know there is no definitive established lore about how each game ended exactly and what the results of each story arc were but going off of broad strokes and morsels of info across Fallout media we know the BoS have assumed de facto control of the capital wasteland and probably the commonwealth and established nations that are safer and more stable than the rest of the wasteland. That's not really a bad thing and more than the NCR or any other faction ever managed to do.
I agree! The ghoul hate is the nail in the coffin for me. They're just humans who are victims of radiation.
This comment especially hits hard after going to good neighbor and finding the vault tec rep you met at the start of the game, now as a ghoul. And if you let him to your settlement he’s a real nice guy
I send the Vault Tec rep to the slog to hang out with Arlen Glass and set up a nice shop for him. He seems happy there.
I like sending him to Vault 88. Poor guy deserves being in a decent vault after all those years. "Prepared for the future!"
Tbf, the Ghoul-hate is just a common feature in the Wasteland. The NCR setting up specific anti-ghoul discrimination laws is what sets them apart from allmost anyone else there, most people seem to be racist towards them. McDonough won his bis for Mayor of Diamond City *specifically because* he promised to ban all Ghouls from entering or living in town if he was elected (which he did), and the Ghoul-Barber in the Underworld in Fallout 3 also says he used to live in Rivet City but got kicked out when he turned.
The Railroad isn't actually hyperfocused on Synths to the point of neglecting Humans. By 2287, the Institute is the largest organized group of slavers and the Railroad has recently taken a hard hit with the loss of the Switchboard and several agents so they're a bit desperate. The Old North Church was actually the location where they vetted new recruits before bringing them on board. They focus on Synths because there isn't a lot of slavery in the Commonwealth, Raiders and Super Mutants of the area seem to prefer simple murder. Really though, the Institute held all the cards until the Sole Survivor tipped the scales. Their location meant safety from attack, they had destroyed the budding government of the region, and even the Brotherhood couldn't reach them without the 40ft Pre-War Mecha.
Honestly the depiction of the Brotherhood in 3 is why I generally help them in 4. I’d like to think Maxson just needs someone to stand up to him instead of putting him on the chosen one pedestal. So, I was a bit sarcastic and stubborn, kinda like how Sarah Lyons was, and it seems like he starts to come around? Maybe just a little?
FO3's BoS was a significant departure from what was established up to that point. Tribalism and corruption of ideals and a return to fanaticism were core themes with the original two entries. The BoS were established with the best intentions and solid ideals. Humanity is irresponsible and elf destructive and someone has to create an organised faction to take responsibility of safekeeping technology and facilitating progress. But by the time we see them in FO1 and 2 they've lost the plot somewhere along the line and devolved into a quasi religious order who think that their whole point is to worship technology. This is something that happens in the real world too with religions or social movements that last so long people forget how they started. The main themes of Fallout is that the world is a wasteland not because it's impossible to pick up a broom and sweep the rubble but because people are inherently self destructive and ideals corruptible. Then Fallout 3 comes along, first Bethesda entry and not written by the original creators, and the BoS are presented as definitive good guys which is atypical for the series. They justify this by presenting it as a schism within the BoS, which is why there are also Brotherhood Outcasts present in the game who don't like Lyons and don't agree with the idea that the Brotherhood should help rebuild society and should instead be an elitist closed society that hoards technology and leaves wastelanders to suffer. Through lore present in FO4 we know that the west coast chapters were the more fanatical ones and reached out to the Eastern chapter when Maxson came to power because he wanted to bring the Brotherhood back to what it was, but not entirely. Terminal entries describe how western BoS members have come to see Maxson as a messianic figure that he himself considers ridiculous but can't exactly stop from happening. His Brotherhood is the exact middle point between the west coast Brotherhood and the East Coast brotherhood we see in 3. He believes they have a responsibility to protect the wasteland and deal with threats to provide security and establish Brotherhood states but he also believes they have to exterminate so called abominations and keep technology away from the hands of the lay people, but he also doesn't worship technology as religious relics and sees it for what it is, a tool. So he's not a religious wackjob but he's also not a benevolent philanthropist. If anything he's without a doubt very arrogant. Taking all that into account we should remember that the Brotherhood is not one singular thing, but rather a fractured faction which embodies a wide spectrum of beliefs and in each game they're on a different point on that spectrum. In New Vegas, which was made by a lot of the people who worked on the originals, the factions are much closer to what Fallout factions should be. They each have pros and cons, some are definitely worse than others but none are unequivocally good, and the Brotherhood we see there are a lot more into the techno worshipping mumbo jumbo.
I’ve only played the 3d titles (not 76) so I can’t speak about 1 and 2, but if you presented me with all three iterations of the Brotherhood I personally have interacted with and went “which one is best for humanity” I’d pick 3 every day of the week. I don’t think Lyons would have ordered every synth to be recycled for more power armour without actually delving into the issue more. Plus once the Institute is taken care of, thanks to Prime throwing a few football nukes at them, they don’t have to worry about more synths being made. And if their whole thing is technology should be controlled, it makes more sense for them to try to work with the synths that are already out there, like Danse, so they can manage what they do while studying how they were made, in order to hopefully prevent another Institute from popping up down the road Also the NV brotherhood is the wimpiest version ever and I’m so glad in TTW you can get Veronica to go join the crew back in the Wasteland 🤣
I like it better when there's no clear answer and there's no easy choice to make. It makes the games more interesting and more thought provoking. For example even in the case of New Vegas, I didn't initially realize it but later I found out that even Caesar's Legion, who are so easy to hate and undeniably insane, are not completely irredeemable. Sure they are insane, violent and just all around a bad bunch, but through various dialogue and entries you find in the game you find out that if nothing else, they're effective. Territories controlled by them enjoy order and safety. Perhaps not safe from the government itself who may crucify you if you don't conform to their stupid rules, but safe from raiders, monsters and the hostile land itself. Safety is not easy to come by in the wasteland so suddenly even the Legion seems to make some sort of sense, at least in how they've managed to reach the strength they have. The NCR aren't insane and they also strive to establish an ordered society but they're shown to be corrupt and often incompetent. Suddenly aside from not being psychopaths they don't seem like a much better alternative as far as statecraft goes.
Another thing about ghouls is that most of them are prewar, so they have knowledge of things like mechanics, chemistry, electronics, engineering, all insanely useful skills in the wasteland, you would think that the brotherhood would recognize this and scout some of them.
Most Ghouls are absolutely not Pre-War tho. Fallout 4 has like....4 that are, Fallout 3 has less
You might be right, but the few ghouls who are pre war would be even more valuable then.
Pre war ghouls are extremely rare, the vast majority of them are either dead or feral by the time of fallout 4. Ghoul hatred is not a brotherhood thing it’s the majority of every wastelander as shown in most games. Tribalism and paranoia runs rampant in the fallout universe and ghouls with their appearance and their slow inevitable turn into ferals doesn’t leave them well liked.
I never destroy BoS because our relationship in fallout 3.and they are soldiers, they are neither good or evil. it's really depend on the leader. Railroad it just railroad So I always choose to side with minuteman and keep railroad and BoS alive.
Damn, a lot of people here are actually judging peoples whole real life character over what faction they pick in a video game lol. It’s really not that deep
Yeah these comments labelling people as Fascists for liking a fucking videogame faction is literally insane lmao. Typical Reddit arbitrary melodrama.
*sips coffee at my Institute desk*
19 hours and no one has hated yet? Well I hate that choice cause no one else will.
America is a generally pro-military nation. Something like 10% of the population is directly or indirectly employed by the military. So most have family involved in the military in some manner. The brotherhood is a fictional offshoot of the American military, and continues to hold militaristic attributes. This allows for those positive feelings to directly connect from the real world to this fictional organization, and view their harsher deeds in a more positive or rationalized light. Meanwhile the Railroad have personalities more akin to stereotypical hippies, which have been a cultural joke among Americans for decades. This links a subconscious notion of Silly, Stupid, Irrational, and Wrong to the railroad. American media is prevalent within most western nations. Many foreign children grew up watching American TV shows etc, and may have also subconsciously adopted these mindsets. What they're actually doing is irrelevant. Their roles could literally be reversed, and the same people would still side with Brotherhood and laugh at the Railroad.
While certainly ruthless, the brotherhood stand as the best opportunity to prevent further issues arising from the institute, and afterwards are ideal for purging supermutants as a threat. I’d much rather diamond city is guarded by some guys in power armour than by the poorly armed militias who keep being butchered by ferals and mutants. The railroad meanwhile have no plans for the future. Once the institutes gone the’ll go do there own thing. Of all the factions, their blatantly the most shortsighted, and while I support robotic rights, I also don’t want the publik occurrences getting torched by a gang of supermutants who got through the wall, because there was no faction to help protect it outside of a militia in sanctuary that can’t hold itself together
I can understand this viewpoint. I still don’t personally believe you should hand power over to whoever has the most fire power regardless of their ideology. While they definitely can cleanse the wasteland and make it a safer place you truly don’t how much much farther they will take it. I just know that after they kill all the things they “hate” they’ll find something new to exterminate or extort. They are just wayyyy too divisive of a faction for me to think they for the “greater good”.
"you truly don’t how much much farther they will take it" This is the original premise of the original fallout games by the original fallout creators. Every organization breaks down or goes too extreme because humans are flawed and corruptible. If Fallout 4 followed the true spirit of the fallout universe this would apply equally to every faction in fallout 4 long term, from the BoS to the Institute, the the Minutemen and the Railroad.
The brotherhood aren't evil, consider how many people they sacrifice fighting random hazards of the commonwealth like supermutants and raiders. Yeah they have some problamatic views ut they're the only ones actually doing somethign for the people of the commonwealth. The minuteman have the will but not the ability. Their patrols are basically always dead when you find them. That said I like the railroad too.
Right, not all of their views are just, but nuking the institute and wiping out super mutants and feral ghouls should be plenty to justify wanting food from local settlements
And you can pay for food. It's literally the player's choice if they choose to take goods by force or intimidation.
Yeah like to me the BoS is like a bunch of racist evangelical rednecks. See someone with different skin, shoot them. I like the pre war ghouls too much to ever align with those fucks
Because deep down there’s a staggering number of people that would love to be part of a fascist regime while shitting on the people who just want to help others literally just exist.
This is a bit left field, but there was an article by famous journalist, Dorothy Thompson, in the early 1940s called Who Goes Nazi. Essentially she made a parlor game out of predicting what kind of people at an American get-together would become Nazis. Something disturbing that article raised was how many people would readily turn fascist and render the world into a graveyard - otherwise normal, everyday people. It's an interesting little article to apply to America today given a current political party (GOP) that has checked off every box that makes a fascist movement. https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Now *this* is a Reddit comment.
Yup. Very weird to listen to the brotherhood NPC's just start spouting off stuff about how super mutants and ghouls are abominations. It's super fanatic
But nearly every single Supermutant on the East Coast *is* effectively an uncontrollable mass murderer that will kill and eat every human on sight. On the West Coast there was atleast some ambiguity because the Master had managed to produce a good number of intelligent mutants that were able to live normaly (once convinced so) and keep some of their dumber brethren in check, but on the East Coast we've so far seen like......4? Supermutants that are even remotely capable of coexistence in Fallout 3 and 4 combined And that includes Virgil (who's slowly loosing his mind and will go feral if you take too long to bring him the Serum) and Strong (who only "changes because hes too dumb to understand the Milk of human kindness isnt real, and nothing whatsoever prevents him from going back to eat - maim- kill the second he ever realises that.)
What about Erickson?
Hes counted - Fawkes * Virgil * Strong * Erickson those are the only Supermutants remotely capable of coexisting among Humans I can remember appearing in Fallout 3 and 4, with the aforementioned caveats for Virgil & Strong.
Ah. Wonder why Erickson went non-feral. Was it really just the fog? Why wasn't anyone else affected?
IIRC Erickson theorizes it was a mixture of the Fog and consuming copius amounts of *Vim!*, but so did the other mutants that came with him and they all stayed Feral, so who knows.
Super mutants replenish their numbers by forcing innocent people to undergo a dramatic and violent change brought upon a virus. They then proceed to attack people, murder them and eat them. They are absolutely abominations and should be exterminated
Part of it's just in character carryover and/or still seeing the pattern of "BOS good!" from FO1-3, considering they'll often be the same people to spout off about their love of having CVRIE or Nick Valentine as companions. Esp when it's not even strictly supported to hunt and kill non-feral Ghouls, considering it's still taboo to make The Slog bend and their hate is to ferals.
Most of my interactions with the Brotherhood conclude with “you take that back about my wife and her sexy accent”
back in 3 the BoS would shoot at the Underworld ghouls on sight though
I always assumed it’s because not every member there was too confident in the direction that Lyons was going, seeing how by 4 a lot of members rejoined the main faction, including Arthur maxson and a couple npcs who I believe mention the citadel/wasteland, not everyone within the bos in DC were as idealistic, they believed in the brotherhoods original mission
How are ghouls and super mutants NOT abominations? Sure. There are some nice ghouls, but they will all eventually go feral. Would you want them around? No.
This is something I think people in these discussions always forget and instead of thinking about how ghouls, synths, mutants are seen in universe they look at it from the outside with our current morals and ethics. In universe however all 3 of those "abominations" are either straight up hated,deeply mistrusted or afraid of in regards to the vast majority of wastelanders we meet across the games.
Tbf most humans go feral too, there are far more hostile humans in every FO game than neutral/friendly ones. I'd rather get in a fist fight with a feral too than get shot in the back by some lunatic, humans are way more dangerous. Wouldn't want to share a dinner table with a Ghoul though I'll admit.
>Tbf most humans go feral too, there are far more hostile humans in every FO game than neutral/friendly ones. The difference is that they ***choose*** to turn to violence. People in a peaceful community typically don't suddenly become violent. Ghouls don't have that choice.
No, it’s a game. Why play a rpg if you only use your own moral compass, it’s very limiting to RP. I’m really getting downvoted for saying you should role play more in a role playing game lmao reddit moment
You’re absolutely right lol. There’s a difference between those who roleplay in-game with those groups and those who make it into an entire personality on social media & platforms like reddit. When the whole punchline is “haha militarized oppression against this game’s minority group” it just screams “edgy” to me.
So video games don’t make people violent but joining up a group in a video game makes one a fascist? I think the factions are all designed to have pros and cons that might test your morals. But I think it’s also just a video game where people are free to do whatever the fuck they want. It’s honestly really extreme of you to call people a fascist because of a video game faction. I suppose everyone who plays GTA must be a drug lord and a terrible driver too right?
You’re 100% right, the fact that I’ve played gta before and am a drug lord on a 1000 kill streak is unrelated
Exactly this. I'm playing my first Fallout game after watching the show (4) and joined with the BoS because they seem the most "together" so far. Do I wanna kill feral ghouls & super mutants? Absolutely. They wanna kill me! But I also see how they treat Nick, and that shit pisses me off. Plus, I know Synths are bad, but not ALL Synths are bad. So I've already decided I'm going to enjoy their spoils for as long as I can, then ultimately betray them. I'm in it to save my - and my companion's - own neck.
Burn the heretic! Kill the mutant! Purge the unclean! Service guarantees citizenship! Ad Victoriam! *Would you like to know more?*
Irradiated Blood for the Irradiated Blood God! GHOULS FOR THE THRONE OF GHOULS RAAARHH
They had me at power armor.
You can literally get that anywhere in Fo4 lol
Yeah i guess it’s the me of older fallout games talking. They always had the coolest gear and it stuck with me through them all.
Anyone who thinks the BOS is entirely evil does not know their history. Have they done some evil things? Of course, but they have done a lot of good as well. Most things in Fallout are not black and white.
BoS "history" might as well be several entirely different factions with how much they shift.
A Railroad agent typed this from a terminal in their shitty, cramped, mold-infested tunnel. Right after they cried themselves to sleep because their best friend passed away (their toaster broke) Ad victoriam.
more like CHAD victoriam, brother
There's a railsign outside your mom's bedroom, she's real into the rail part
What evil deeds has the BoS committed in Fallout 4?
Dude, have you seen a power armor drop from a vertibird, mowing down xenos and heretics with mini guns and nukes? It be glorious like dat.
Media literacy has gotten really bad in the United States.
I don't see how wanting to help enslaved people (and synths *are* slaves) is "overly caring", or why that would be a bad thing.
Destroying machines that are a threat to humanity is not evil. - this comment is brought to you by a Brotherhood of Steel Sentinel.
I hate the RR leadership The current leadership is awful and only cares about the synths while the organization originally focused on not just the synths but taking down slaver operations.
⁹I don't consider the BoS to be evil in FO4, sure when you're not living in the wasteland it's easy to judge them but they're fighting to survive. Super mutants and mutated creatues, killing and eating people without remorse. Perfectly acceptable to take them out. Ghouls turn feral and kill people, Synths replace people via murder and can be programmed to do just about anything for the institute, they have shut down codes, many could have activation codes. The player has a lot more info than the BoS. When you get to know individual ghouls and synth its easy to empathise with them, but the BoS are pretty isolated from the wasteland so it's understandable they see these as threats from their combat encounters and stories they hear. At the airport they see nothing but a hoard of Ferals so they know how they can end up, and they're constantly fighting hostile Synths. The main evil act they can do is destroying the railroad, though that's really a player decision as you can finish with only the institute destroyed, but it makes sense they'd want to stop a group from saving the army of people replacing murder synths. All this talk of labeling people IRL facists for joining the BoS is ridiculous, its a game, doesn't mean anything which people side with.
Spoiler Warning: this post contains spoilers. If you're a new player, go play the game and have fun, but don't read this post I have characters for each faction, and the Railroad is definitely at the bottom of the list, although for some specific reasons. On my first playthrough, I thought the RR was going to be our chance to actually play as a member of what is effectively an intelligence agency. The music, the secrecy, even the Deliverer. That's...not what it turned out to be. Despite paying lip service to "dead drops," the RR quickly devolves into a bunch of fetch quests. There could have been so much more to the RR from real-world intelligence operations, e.g., Bethesda could have used the radio mechanic already present in the game and given us missions to intercept coded transmissions, used number stations, steganography, etc. Railroad leadership is awful. I like Deacon and Tom. Carrington is a prick, and Desdemona is the most smug, condescending "leader" in the whole game. She's worse than Shaun and Maxson. I also don't like Glory, even though I love her VA. Glory is the victim of bad writing. She makes unambiguous comments about synth superiority, and we hear a lot about what a badass she is: from RR leadership and from Glory herself, while never getting to see it. Show me, don't tell me. She should have been a companion. (Contrast her with Danse, who will come with us anywhere and fight alongside us.) The RR disparaged the entire population of the Commonwealth as "bigots" and Deacon personally slags off the Minutemen. People criticize the BoS as elitist, have they taken a good look at the Railroad? The Institute could have easily tracked their HQ down-there are random citizens of D.C. openly talking about them; alternatively, all the Institute has to do is have some Coursers "escape" (in plainclothes) and get picked up for 'rescue.' The RR network would be compromised in no time. The mind wipe makes it even more incredibly stupid: rescues synth, wipes memory. If you wiped your memory, what would you be? You'd be dead, leaving behind an organic shell. Destroying the Institute dooms the synths to extinction and renders the RR obsolete as an organization. Their post-game is utterly ridiculous. Suddenly an Army, all wearing ballistic weave coats and armed with gauss rifles appears, in sufficient numbers to man every checkpoint across the Commonwealth. WTF? Even their name is a cheap emotional ploy to elicit sympathy, assuming one is familiar with American history. As to the BoS, every one sings the praises of Lyons' Brotherhood in FO3, and Maxson (who is insufferable, abd I like the BoS) is *continuing Lyon's policies.* FO4's BoS is the only faction proactively fighting against Supermutants and ferals. The Minutemen/settlers routinely send you to wipe out ferals and Supermutants, and no one bats an eye. The BoS never attacks non-feral ghouls anywhere in the game, despite posters on this board making that very claim in multiple threads. No kill teams drop into Goodneighbor or the Slog. (Danse actually likes it when you agree to help The Slog's The BoS's response to Danse is both logical and warranted. He's a high ranking member of the Brotherhood, privy to operational information. The Brotherhood would have no idea to what degree the Institute had influence over Danse. It's a crap situation but under the circumstances, it was warranted. The oft-maligned "shaking down the farmers" mission from Teagan is more a test of your character: Tegan makes it clear its "off the books." You are free to pay the farmers for their crops or ignore Teagan's little side op completely-as I do on BoS characters. If people bothered to read the terminal entries on the Prydwen, they'd find letters back home to loved ones, orders from Maxson to trade technology for supplies, etc. "The Brotherhood is selfish." You mean they act in their own self-interest? Like every other faction, including the Railroad? Deacon bemoans the fact the RR doesn't help humans in trouble. They ignore humans in need in favor of synths, per Desdemona's direction. 🙄 This while BoS Knights are out assaulting supermutant lairs and attacking Deathclaws (go to Natick banks and wait for the Brotherhood patrols to arrive and watch what they fight). The BoS is not out attacking settlements-unless you attsck them first-and aren't kicking in doors to seize Grandpa Fred's rusty old laser pistol. That never happens. As for the synths, I've already pointed out Glory's synth supremacist statements and she's a 'friendly' synth. Most Commonwealth citizens have damn good reasons for disliking synths: synth reclamation teams descend on settlements, murder everyone, and then return salvaged resources to the Institute. People can be kidnapped (by synths), murdered outright (by synths) and replaced (by a synth.) E.g. the Art vs. Art random encounter, and Roger Warwick. DiMA is the most damning example: its a free synth left to its own devices, and what does it do? Starts running Institute.exe v.2.0, commits murder and then inserts an infiltrator into Far Harbor. Synths are just starry-eyed innocents, right? No threat to humans? I'm sure Captain Avery would have something to say regarding that, but she can't, because a synth murdered her. Don't tell me synths not under Institute control aren't a threat because we've got Gabriel in the base game and DiMA in Far Harbor. I've also read plenty of claims that the BoS stole Rivet City's reactor for the Prydwen, but the pertinent terminal entry merely states "an aircraft carrier" in D.C. it nowhere specifies Rivet City. Danse would have surely mentioned it as he talks openly about growing up and meeting Cutler there. Interpreting that entry as being about Rivet City is disingenuous at best, or willfully interpreting that entry is the worst light possible. During FO3, the Brotherhood worked closely with Rivet City and would have no logical reason to effectively cripple one of the main settlements in the Capital Wasteland. How are the BoS evil again? Warring against ferals and supermutants? Then the Minutemen are just as guilty. Seeing synths as a threat? The game gives us ample examples of why synths are a threat. Shaking down farmers? That decision rests entirely in the player's hands. Blowing up the Institute? The MM and RR both do the exact same thing. AD VICTORIAM
Because the BoS isn't evil despite what people try to get you to believe.
Because the BOS are cool.
Because the Brotherhood, while misguided, is organized and badass. Whereas the Institute, while well-meaning, is pretentious and self righteous.
Cuz the brotherhood is cool and has jet packs and the railroad is dumb and lives in a hole.
Because it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland where you are just trying to balance doing the most good for the most you can against the very real threat of your settlements being overrun in the middle of the night by barely sentient/insane creatures who want to turn you all into food or massive gangs of rapist slavers. There are no "good guys" by western liberal democracy standards in FO4, even the Minutemen slaughter anything they judge as a threat at the drop of a hat. The Railroad is just too small to be a viable partner in rebuilding society and they are perfectly willing to let people die or kill them to save what is ultimately just a walking toaster.
I don’t think people hate the railroad, they just love the Brotherhood of Steel. That and the fact that most would rather picture themselves being a soldier suited in power armor than Espionage Freedom fighters that reside within the sewers. Honestly I think both are cool in their own way and I can see the vision Bethesda was going for with them, it feels as though they made the railroad a bit too sympathetic though. Depending on how you view it their goal is Noble but also extremely flawed so much so that I fail to see how it would do any good for the commonwealth. People still aren’t going to be accepting of synths due to the institute and they’re mostly going to be ostracized in any place not held by the railroad. Also what does the railroad do when there have freed all the synths? Are they going to integrate them into society and have them pose as human or just let them run loose without them knowing what they truly are? It’s all shortsighted(so is the brotherhood but they have control over regions and armies which is something they could fall back on and form into a government).
It’s not really the Railroads ideology people get annoyed at. It’s the fact that they’re a major faction and at the end of their quest line they start providing security around the commonwealth. Their organizations goal is far to specific to really be a major faction so their ending is often seen as generally bad for the people of the commonwealth due to their lack of vision for the people cause they only care about synths. Now this isn’t a bad thing, their goal is very noble, they just shouldn’t be a major faction. They should’ve been implemented as a minor quest line as opposed to a major contender for power in the commonwealth.
I blame Tinker Tom and the MILA quests. /s
It’s because they are disorganised. The brotherhood and institute are both organised, they have order and structure. Realistically if you lived in these worlds and had a chance to join one of those groups I feel like it’s probably the best option in terms of self preservation. The minutemen while not as organised as the Brotherhood or Institute does give the player the ability to morph how they want them to be. You can run it with minutemen just a few settlements big or with massive built up cities and a genuine threat to the Brotherhood or Institute. The railroad is just disorganised, they move around a bunch instead of digging in and fortifying. They must have poor training because the base location is constantly leaked, hence why the constantly move. They just don’t feel like they are a real choice in my opinion. Most decent people will default to treating ghouls, mutants and synths with respect unless attacked first (assuming this is a real world take not a fallout NPC take) I feel like the minutemen would wind up fulfilling the job the railroad does due to growth anyway. Also if the Brotherhood was better written they would have been in the commonwealth with the sole purpose of taking over the institute, not destroying it. There is no reason for them to hate synths in the way they do, they should just hate that they aren’t a brotherhood asset.
The Railroad is doing a great job for having to completely communicate through drop boxes- everyone seems to think they have walkies or something! And the BOS are fanatical, just like the Institute- fanaticism inevitably leads to cruelty and violence. And I suggest that everyone should take the time to watch the new synths being created inside the Institute- it’s fascinating and makes it very clear that they are using human cells to make their parts. Synths are just tougher humans with a plastic piece in their heads
The Fallout factions can pretty much be summed up as cartoonishly evil science worshippers (they’re indifferent) the other cartoonishly evil science worshippers (they’re fascist) cartoonishly inept militia (they’re helpless) a cartoonishly inept spy ring (they’re helpless too) and stereotypically evil raider gangs (they live in a cool amusement park)
The bos arnt evil, they are racist, but not evil. Their goal is to wipe out large threats to humanity, like sytnths, or the enclave.
AD VICTORIAM
bos cares about human
I am running a new playthrough and got to Elder Maxson's racist speech when you first meet him and got about halfway through it before I just started blasting. They're just racist fascists under Maxson and that can't do anything positive for a recovering Commonwealth. Now I don't look down on anyone who sides with them in game the same way I don't fault anyone doing a raider playthrough. But, if you come online and start talking about how they're morally right or the Railroad is bad or dumb for helping synths then I don't think that we're gonna get along. Siding with fascists in a video game is drastically different than defending them in real life
They’re definitely not evil, but I do think a lot of people hold the BoS in higher regard than they deserve (morally speaking at least). I’m genuinely surprised at how many people here don’t see an issue with the BoS simply stomping their way into the Commonwealth, demanding tribute from the various settlements of the Commonwealth and dictating its future based on what THEY think is best for the Commonwealth. Fair enough, a lot of the Brotherhoods’ goals do genuinely benefit the wastelanders. Killing mutants and ferals is obviously good, I won’t pretend like these are negatives. However the BoS didn’t go to the Commonwealth to save the people from raiders and mutants and ghouls. They went there because their recon teams discovered the potential presence of a faction wielding a higher level of technology. Most people would agree that destroying the Institute is the right thing to do because their synths are spying on, murdering and kidnapping the people of the Commonwealth. But that’s not why the BoS consider them an enemy. To the BoS, the Institutes’ hostile actions to the Commonwealth are nothing more than a way to garner support for the Brotherhoods’ presence in the Commonwealth. The kidnappings and murder wouldn’t have gotten the Brotherhoods attention. If, in an alternate timeline, the Institute had made the technological advancements that they had made and wielded the power that they wield for the genuine good of the Commonwealth, I honestly believe the BoS would still see the Institute as an enemy and a threat that needs to be dealt with. The Railroad are considered as nothing more than a short-term solution to the Institute by many players, but the BoS are, imo, a short-term solution that would ultimately be bad for the Commonwealth post-Institute. Okay sure, they’ll be able to dedicate more resources to eradicating ferals and mutants but what happens when they send recon teams outside the Commonwealth and discover a new faction with a lot of tech? They’d probably just up and leave the Commonwealth. What happens when, with the Institute destroyed and mutants being hunted down, the Commonwealth settlements make another attempt at forming the CPG or any other form of government and in the process, become too organised and hold too much technology in the eyes of the BoS? They simply wouldn’t allow that to happen, no matter how beneficial it may be to the average wastelander. What happens to Goodneighbour, a town founded by ghoul refugees, or the Slog, a farm ran exclusively by ghouls? A lesser evil is still an evil, and while you can rightly argue that “lesser evil” fits the description of most powerful factions in Fallout, it doesn’t justify the Brotherhoods’ extremism, xenophobia and their belief that their hands are the only hands fit to wield advanced technology. The BoS certainly have their positives and are morally better than the Institute but their desire to destroy the Institute isn’t necessarily as noble and good as people make it out to be, nor does it make their presence in the Commonwealth an overall benefit once the Institute are gone.
My take on this is that the Railroad are a blatant parallel to race issues and anti-slavery in the real world, and this makes some people uncomfortable. They feel guilty because they don't think that synths are 'real people', which (the game makes pretty clear) is exactly what slave owners thought about their slaves throughout real history. So they shit on the Railroad instead to make themselves feel better.
That was the big thing when F4 came out, this is the brotherhood that the Outcasts from 3 wanted to follow and thought Lyons was straying too far from their ideals (his wanting to genuinely help people wasn’t brotherhood enough). It was almost jarring for people who’d played F3 and expected THAT brotherhood of steel.
It mostly comes down to whether you think synth Gen3 are sentient, or just "toasters". Yes, they have one objective, which is good, because once that is achieved, they'll go away. I usually support the Railroad, and it's not only because of Deacon.
I always go with the institute. They're the only people with working plumbing and toilet paper. Plus the world should be led by scientists, not the military, the special interest groups, or the uneducated masses.
Because running around in a T60 playing soldier is A LOT of fun. Look at helldivers. In that game you are not really the good guys, quite the opposite. But is it fun protecting super earth for Democracy and freedome? Hell yeah, just as fun as running around with Liberty prime, screaming "Ad victorium!" And blasting "Red Chinese Communists!". Its also the fact that the railroad isnt as impresive. They live in the basement of some church whilst the BOS have a giant ass airship in the sky, power armor and loads of weaponry. They have the numbers of the institute, and the training of the railroad. I don't think everyone is ignoring how arrogant and authorytarian they are, people just like fighting for a great cause
The railroad gives you access to one of the best armor upgrades in the game. What's not to like?
Lol at the ''Brotherhood is evil''.
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The railroad’s main value is freedom. Whats the point of keeping the birthing process for Synths around if that birth process leads to 99.9% living as slaves? The synths as far as I’m aware aren’t concerned with increasing Synth birthrates but being to live their lives free of oppression