Fallout 4

Also, that. Even if you think the Brotherhood's anti-technology stance is right, their xenophobic isolationism is too self-destructive to continue. You'll note that Maxson's Brotherhood recruits outsiders quite heavily. In fact, I think every named Brotherhood character in 4 besides Maxson himself is a recruit, instead of having been born into it.

Armies in general are simply not designed to sustain themselves solely with their own children. Even medieval knights recruited outsiders.

edited 26th Sep '17 3:26:42 PM by Discar

Then they're not meaningless to you. They are killing people and are mostly held in check by the large NCR presence in the area. Even then, they slaughter people who even might learn some of their precious secrets and actually use them to help anyone and are itching to go back to full-on technoraider, like they do in almost every ending where they're still alive.

They're mostly isolationist instead of openly mugging anyone with a laser pointer because they're no longer strong enough for that. If they had the kind of manpower Maxson does, you can bet your ass the Mojave BOS would not just be operating in the open, but also making their own play for domination of the Mojave.

Out of curiosity, is your personal moral position to wipe out the Mojave BOS?

We were talking about Fallout in an OTC thread yesterday and some people like Unsung said House's unwavering desire to eradicate the BOS was a "deal breaker" for them. I've seen similar stuff in the past. "I don't like the BOS but wiping them out to a man is going too far."

But, taking your stance to its conclusion, wiping them out is the only just thing a Courier can do.

I was asking Balmung, sorry.

edited 26th Sep '17 4:09:43 PM by Nikkolas

I don't murder a bunch of people for what "they might" do, so no? Especially when there are better alternatives.

Unless you're doing the NCR ending, do it. Left to their own devices, the BOS does nothing but cause suffering. They do it both in-game and in the ending slides.

I see little reason to feel any worse about them than any conventional raider you gun down.

Even without meta knowledge, it's pretty well know on thr west coast that the BOS is generally pretty bad news. Ban news that can sometimes be pointed at even worse news (eg. The Enclave), but still bad news.

edited 26th Sep '17 4:37:46 PM by Balmung

I find that an agreeable position. People do gettoo worked up over that kind of thing.

What's your take on the Great Khans, then? Same as BOS/"don't feel any more pity for them than you do other Raiders"?

Pretty much, plus I hate the imperialism Double Standard they get. It's treated as bad that they've been on the wrong end of NCR imperialism (never mind that this is the third incarnation of the Khans, and each time, they poke the bear until they get smashed), but them going off and imperializing other lands is treated as their Golden Ending.

I would have destroyed the Khans had I not been invested in getting the best outcome for each faction. They aren't a serious threat, but they are a bunch of hippie drug runners — there's not a lot to salvage there.

The Brotherhood varies in its depiction by game. I never played FO1 (and have no desire to — I don't idolize those 16-bit 2D isometric graphics) but in FO2, they seem pretty reasonable, being your only effective ally against the Enclave. In FO3, they're more or less the canonical good guys. In NV, they're a bunch of pricks, but you can reach a deal between them and the NCR if you take out the most virulent of their leadership. In FO4, they're literally a military dictatorship, and must be wiped out unless you side with them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

What's wrong with being hippie drug runners?

That would be the least of the reasons I'd wipe them out.

Is there no major faction that wants to destroy the Boomers? Now they deserve death. Fucking maniacs sitting on top of artillery are a bigger threat to be dealt with than some drug dealers.

Looking back, I kind of feel like the only reasons the BOS is good in Fallout 3 are force of will on the part of the Lyons family and the Enclave being far worse.

They're still an invading power that slaughters ghouls without regard to their feralness and would almost certainly have the same loathing of synthetics that they do under Maxson. They at least allegedly are less insistent on rounding up technology, but there aren't a whole lot of energy weapons or non-BOS power armor to confiscate due to what a shithole the Capital Wasteland is.

---

The Khans aren't hippie drug runners, though. They're more like Klingon drug runners.

The Boomers get something of a pass because they actually do not go out murdering random people. They drew a line in the sand, said "none shall pass", and enforced it. They're still kind of dicks, but they're easier to get to open up, much more self-sufficient (no running off to steal food), and don't turn into raiders the moment they stop being afraid the NCR will wipe them off the map.

Well, I should note with the Khans, it is possible to get them to peacefully disband. Though, yes, the Khans are ultimately not that much of a real threat. At the end of the day, both they and the Mojave Brotherhood are fundamentally outdated, their current livelihoods no longer really sustainable. Assuming you don't get them to seek a new life elsewhere, the endings where the Khans survive in the Mojave have them 1) given an "isolated, barren reservation, well north of NCR trade routes", victims of the NCR's expansionism; 2) forcibly integrated into the Legion, their women enslaved and "sold as wives to ranking officers", their elderly and sick murdered to the last man; or 3) driven north into the wilderness by an angry NCR for assisting Caesar.

If they don't leave, I'm pretty sure all non-NCR and Legion endings have them virtually wiped out in the Battle for Hoover Dam.

edited 26th Sep '17 7:13:27 PM by Lavaeolus

To be fair with NCR, anyone familiar with Fallout 1 and 2 knows there's a good reason they won't put up with the Khan's shit. These guys are basically the series' original raiders.

I liked the BOS in fallout 3 and as a result hated the fallout 4 BOS , in addition why are they so fanatical? None of them were born into it like in the west coast and Maxson has only been in charge for 4 years yet Danse and others act like they grew up with brotherhood teachings.

edited 26th Sep '17 7:20:51 PM by Kaiseror

Zeal of the convert is a thing so their fanaticism isn't unrealistic.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Yeah, they're kind of pathetic at this point. Despite the absurdly high body count I rack up in my playthroughs of these games, I do consciously try to salvage as many situations as possible through diplomacy (or science, or whatever) before resorting to mass murder. So when there's the opportunity to convince the Khans to give up their production of nasty homemade drugs and to leave the area so that they don't end up in camps or killed, I take it.

edited 26th Sep '17 7:26:18 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yeah, a charismatic dictator will do that. Also, the teachings aren't that changed, he just put confiscating technology and crusading against innovation back on the table. Beyond that, he's a charismatic dictator, which is often all you need to get such fanaticism.

Plus he has that badass coat.

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.

x6: I've always found that interesting. So if you've played the original Fallout, when you see the argument that the Khans essentially have no great legacy — well, you know that's not really wrong. The Khans (just 'the Khans'; no 'Great') started from a group of random raiders. They didn't really have any bigger delusions, but for their leader who was an over-the-top jackass. They continually raided Shady Sands (the nearest proper settling), took slaves, and tried to get the player to kill said slaves to prove they were tough enough to join their gang. The Vault Dweller wiped them out, but for one man who ran away.

The Khans origins are known, and they're not noble, or even impressive. When Papa Khan speaks of returning the Khans to glory, he's wrong. "The glory of the past is an empty dream." At the same time, it's hard to think the game is saying that the Khans aren't a bit more than just "some raiders". Although they sprouted from nothing much, they now have a genuine culture. They're scarred by the massacre the NCR inflicted on them, they have a shared unity, they do think of themselves as something more. In the end, the Khan positive ending has them moving forward, in a sense, rather than calling back to their own past. "Your tribe is proud and strong - claim your own glory!" They do draw on history, but that of the actual Mongols, and of other knowledge of governance granted by the Followers.

As someone mentioned, there isn't really much to "salvage" from the Khans. They really haven't done much that's genuinely noteworthy, they don't have that much going for them. But the game sort of reads to me as saying, maybe, for good or ill, they can still change that going onwards. Maybe I'm overanalysing.

edited 26th Sep '17 8:28:00 PM by Lavaeolus

People like Born-Again Christians tend to be far more devout and zealous than someone actually born into Christianity. Plus, I imagine the Brotherhood on the East Coast have a "savior" image. People are grateful to their saviors, for obvious reasons. A lot of people in the Brotherhood rightly think they'd be dead or starving if they hadn't been taken in.

The really funny thing is how the Khans and NCR both share roots. Both are descendants of Vault 15. One led to the rebirth of Civilization in the Wasteland. One is a blight on it whose most benign form is as a source of chems and dreams of a glory they never had.

As much as I hate the Fallout 4 BOS, I still have to give them credit for researching things like agriculture and other non-military sciences unlike their west coast progenitors.

edited 26th Sep '17 7:39:42 PM by Kaiseror

Any and all goodwill for the BOS goes straight out the window when they start saying that my boys Nick and Codsworth deserve to die. Codsworth alone has more humanity in one buzzsaw than that dickhead Maxson ever has.

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.

A lot of you seem to forget Maxson's heritage. Go look it up. I'll wait. Oh you're back? Good. Of whom is he descended from. Why, only the guy who founded the Brotherhood of Steel in the first place, of course. Also go look up Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, who came to the throne of Rome in similarly shady circumstances. He was a kid too, when he came to the purple, and I defy anyone to say that the Rome of his time wasn't as dangerous as the Capital Wasteland, if not more so. And yes, we do know him more from his nickname than his actual praenomen, nomen and cognomen. Here's a clue - something something diminutive footwear something something like military issue something something he spent lots of time in military camps as a kid.

(Like young, ickle, innocent, baby Arthur Maxson. Now there's a thing.)

Who knows what young, ickle, innocent, baby Maxson grew up with listening to, or indeed who whispered in his ear, saying, "All this can be yours, and we can make that happen, if you like? Surely you don't want this disunity and betrayal of your ancestor's heritage to continue? It's not our job to help these savages in the Wasteland like Lyons and his idiot of a daughter are doing, to the continued cost of our Paladins and Knights. No, it's our responsibility to make sure that the technologies that led to the Wasteland happening in the first place don't fall into the wrong hands and cause this all to happen again. It's YOUR responsibility as a Maxson to take the lead and stop it." Because that shit's really easy to do if you keep things on the downlow at first. It's what I'd do as a senior Paladin or Scribe who's really pissed at the Brotherhood falling apart in the Capital Wasteland, and wanted that stopped, but didn't want the power on my own shoulders, and saw in young, ickle, innocent, baby Maxson a future leader. One I could manipulate. While I stood in the background and watched in glee. Of course that could come back to bite me in the ass, later on down the line, but it's a credible plan nonetheless.

But really, the abscence of Sarah Lyons due to what I consider to be murder for profit on behalf of Maxson, as there's really no evidence to suggest otherwise, isn't what stinks the most about Fallout 4's Neue Enclave Ordnung. No. That would be "Where the hell is the Lone Wanderer? Why is he or she not involved in the pacification of the Commonwealth Wasteland, because they'd only be, at most, 29, and a full member of the Brotherhood of Steel, and also one of their most combat experienced representatives given what they went through in the Capital Wasteland during the events of Fallout 3 and Broken Steel?"

Because, really, those have been my driving questions since Fallout 4 came out and the Maxsonhood replaced the Enclave as the real villain of the game in my view.

The Institute are just technocrats who've been isolated so long that they've went more than a bit batshit insane. ( I know all the goofy stuff they've done. So thanks.) That's why Shaun was kidnapped and why his mommy or daddy can be the new Director - some of its members realise that things could do with some sort of change.

The Maxsonhood are just actively evil, bigoted, racist, chuckleheaded bullet magnets.

I'll take that challenge. Italy was unified. He didn't have giant yellow kill crazy cannibalistic creatures, 8 foot tall murder lizards and regular cannibals to deal with the moment he stepped out of the imperial Palace. Which, ya know, is the case if you lay a foot out of the Citadel in the wasteland.

While he had shit to deal with, Rome of 15 BC to 19 AD was nothing to the Capital Wasteland.

edited 26th Sep '17 7:52:31 PM by Ghilz

Maybe Behemoths, ghouls and Deathclaws time traveled back in time and they're the monsters that feature in Ancient Greek/Roman epics.

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.