Does Fallout wants to kill it's own 50-ish atmosphere?

[Moraelin]

Other than in the loading screen, I'm not entirely sure when. The first contact with the institute was the Broken Mask incident, which COULD have been a glitch, but it's irresponsible at best to test a combat robot by just sending it armed in the middle of a major population centre and see if it ends up murderizing everyone. The next contact was the massacre of all the delegates trying to establish the Commonwealth Provisional Government by an Institute synth, which, tbh, doesn't sound exactly like trying to help.

 

Not to mention, well, exactly when would that have happened? Some 60 years before present, the Institute was sending Kellogg not just to kidnap a baby for the DNA, but with explicit orders to murderize every single resident of the vault, except for the baby and the backup. It's something which, as you probably recall, even Kellogg was questioning in his memory why the hell couldn't they just refreeze those people instead of murdering everyone. He ascribes it to the "old man" (presumably the previous head of the institute?) wanting to tie up loose ends. Which doesn't really indicate a benevolent attitude.

 

In fact, I'm sorry, but when one's attitude towards the rest of the world includes wanton murdering two dozen innocents just because you wanted something they had (the baby), and it doesn't do to leave witnesses alive... that's not trying to help, that's being worse than even the Raiders or Gunners. I mean, the raiders might shoot you to make a point if you stand up to them (a la, Abernathy's daughter), but otherwise there's a common theme that they tend not to kill anyone if you just give them what they wanted.

[Aintiarna]

Other than in the loading screen, I'm not entirely sure when. The first contact with the institute was the Broken Mask incident, which COULD have been a glitch, but it's irresponsible at best to test a combat robot by just sending it armed in the middle of a major population centre and see if it ends up murderizing everyone. The next contact was the massacre of all the delegates trying to establish the Commonwealth Provisional Government by an Institute synth, which, tbh, doesn't sound exactly like trying to help.

 

Not to mention, well, exactly when would that have happened? Some 60 years before present, the Institute was sending Kellogg not just to kidnap a baby for the DNA, but with explicit orders to murderize every single resident of the vault, except for the baby and the backup. It's something which, as you probably recall, even Kellogg was questioning in his memory why the hell couldn't they just refreeze those people instead of murdering everyone. He ascribes it to the "old man" (presumably the previous head of the institute?) wanting to tie up loose ends. Which doesn't really indicate a benevolent attitude.

 

In fact, I'm sorry, but when one's attitude towards the rest of the world includes wanton murdering two dozen innocents just because you wanted something they had (the baby), and it doesn't do to leave witnesses alive... that's not trying to help, that's being worse than even the Raiders or Gunners. I mean, the raiders might shoot you to make a point if you stand up to them (a la, Abernathy's daughter), but otherwise there's a common theme that they tend not to kill anyone if you just give them what they wanted.

 

I wasn't trying to say that I agreed with them, simply that their actions and attitudes are not inexplicable. The difference is important.

 

We also have the complicating factor of the Railroad. When a synth goes crazy and starts killing people was it under the control of the Institute, or one previously freed by the Railroad like Gabriel? Layers and nuances. I think the story is better than a lot of people give them credit for.

[Moraelin]

I don't think the railroad ever freed a gen 2, which is what the Broken Mask synth was.

 

That said, I'm not saying the story is bad, or anything. If I didn't like the game, I wouldn't be here long, much less digging into binary files with a hex editor just to hang new pictures on the walls.

 

All I'm saying that, well, the Institute has had a rather evil attitude towards the rest of humanity for a very long time. Definitely before Shaun was at the helm. Hell, really before Shaun was even thawed. We're talking something to the effect of 4 generations or so. If they ever had any intention to cooperate with the world above, as per that loading screen, that must have been an awfully long time ago.

 

And, really, too long ago to matter. Humans have finite attention spans, and above ground they tend to also have very limited life expectancy. Whatever initial falling due to mistrust could have been mended long ago, if the Institute wanted. Hell, probably everyone remembering it would have died off naturally already, or be that old geezer that everyone goes, "geesh, that was last century, get over it already" at.

 

Hell, all they had to do was have their representative sign the CPG charter, instead of killing everyone and plunging the Commonwealth back into chaos. There's a lot to be said even for having open diplomatic relations for normalizing relationships, so they didn't even have to provide any assistance or anything.

 

Or even less than that, don't send their robots to kill people just because they may have something the Institute wants. Sometimes apparently just the scrap your settlement is made of is enough to have some Gen 1s show up and murderize everyone there.

 

Maybe 100 years ago they actually wanted to help. Maybe the mutual mistrust at first was the problem. But the institute chose to directly escalate it all the way to eleven. And really, that IS their current problem, not the original mistrust.

 

Loosely paraphrasing Lindybeige from memory, people tend to escalate the violence gradually and give the other a chance to back off. If someone shoves you on the playground, maybe you shove back, not be that kid who escalates directly to stabbing them with a pencil. And if someone just doesn't play with you, I'd add, even more so, you don't directly escalate to stabbing them and taking their toys. If you do, well, THAT is the real problem.

[nonoodles]

They're just soldiers. The Institute is small and populated by people who wouldn't last five minutes in post-apocalyptia. If the Institute wishes to be the future of mankind, it has to exert its influence beyond a hole in the ground. The only way it can achieve that is through technology and synth soldiers in particular. Obviously, gen 3 synths are a step too far and some of them seem to realise this. But without synths of any kind, they'd just be stuck in their bunker like the BOS in New Vegas, scared to interact with the Commonwealth. The loading screens suggest that they did at one point try to help the Commonwealth with their technology, but it wasn't received very well. I get the impression at this point that most of them see the surface and its inhabitants as largely disposable as far their long term goals are concerned. It's somewhat understandable given their prolonged isolation from each other and all the reports they must be getting from the surface, even if it may seem inhumane to our modern western sensibilities. It's remarkable what humans will support being done to other humans they don't know personally, provided they don't have to do it themselves.

 

 

I do get all of that. What I want is a clear explanation from the writer/s for the mutual mistrust, and why the Institute apparently believes the extreme, drastic and ludicrous plan of replacing the humans above ground makes sense at all. They could have easily retreated into their underground city, sending synths out to collect resources and retrieve data (which they are, in fact, doing anyway) and never made contact again with the rest of the world.

 

Okay, I'll approach my dissatisfaction with the MQ premises from another angle and put it briefly because it's all going off topic now. Bethesda went to some lengths to provide us with a better main quest than in FO3 and sure, the effort does show. For this player at least, everything they did ended up achieving the opposite effect. I had absolutely no emotional connection to my spouse or the baby, the big plot twist (Father is Shaun is your son) had no resonance and thus the whole pre-war set up didn't pay off.

 

However, in choosing an anti-Institute ending, I felt my first real sense of anguish because all I could think as we went from room to room mowing down scientists and synths alike, was that I was destroying some of the best and brightest minds extant in the wasteland. Unfortunately, an anti-Institute ending is probably destined to be the canonical one as they are quite obviously written to be the evil faction. Had the plot not been so warped by the whole Shaun twist, the narrative may have worked out in a very different and more coherent and ultimately less nihilistic way. Let them suffer grievous loss, be driven out of their hidey hole, anything. Anything except wiping them out like this. For all this talk about rebuilding the wasteland, we seem to have missed a great opportunity to turn the Commonwealth into a real beacon of hope and revitalisation....and then we get a crummy shanty town building feature in exchange, lol.

[Aintiarna]

Bethesda's take on the Fallout universe is very much science-is-crazy-evil. Everywhere you go, from Grayditch to Cabot house, it's the same thing. Mad scientists with little conscience. At least with Obsidian we got the Followers of the Apocalypse who were trying to use science and knowledge to make things better. The whole vibe in both FO3 and FO4 is very regressive and anti-intellectual.

 

Also, have you noticed how the BOS in this game is hard to distinguish from the Enclave in FO3 in terms of their goals and attitudes towards the wasteland, mutants, ghouls, synths, etc.? Interesting.

Edited December 28, 2015 by tirnoney

[flipdark95]

^ Well, yeah, those are actually the traditional Brotherhood of Steel goals and attitudes towards anything but pure humans. They kill mutants on sight and despise the same kind of abuses of technology that led to the Great War. The Synths are a genuine threat because if uncontrolled they can easily create more of themselves and wipe out the remains of humanity.

[nonoodles]

Yes, it's becoming very apparent that Bethesda's knee-jerk reaction to signs of intellectualism is to kill it because it's evil. Even Hollywood has progressed beyond that sort of simplistic thinking.

 

"I'm the Sole Survivor and I helped sabotage the future of the Commonwealth. I may have also set back the advancement of humanity from the rubble of the Great War by fifty years, and this is a conservative estimate. Go me."

 

:confused:

 

Seriously, Beth, more dialogue options would have been nice? Rather than fudging over the motivations of the Institute.

 

This being a thread about FO4's visual design- as the plot unfolded, I was rather hoping the Institute could be redeemed and end up cooperating with the people of the wasteland, and this would be the ultimate good ending. It might have offered a springboard for future designs introducing new elements and so forth, thereby rejuvenating the look and feel of the franchise. Didn't happen, so okay.

[SayinNuthin]

 

Okay, I'll approach my dissatisfaction with the MQ premises from another angle and put it briefly because it's all going off topic now.

 

 

Go as far off topic as you want buddy, There is no topic because there is NO plausible MQ. I suggest a quest is something you can achieve or fail, you can't fail the main quest by, for instance responding to Father's dialog by going bat-s**t crazy, killing him then getting to one of those balconies and nuking the place with a fat-boy (not a reasonable reaction but not an implausible one either given your character's experiences).

 

That's to say you can do that (I just did it!) but.. nothing.. report back to the Railroad and Desi tells you to hook up with the Minutemen because the RR can't take on the Institute.. "What Institute, I just nuked them, tracked down every straggler and gunned them down then just for good measure cast a [tilde killall] spell on the way out.. they're dead sweety!" Should I jog over to the Brotherhood? Let them know I've just wiped a major problem off the map.. or will it be more of the same?

 

So.. you can't fail, you can't change what's going to happen, that's not a quest and this is not a game.. it's just whack-a-mole with fancy graphics..

 

Still clever folk like Someguy2000 will almost certainly make something worth doing in this dogs breakfast eventually.

 

[EDIT] responded to the wrong thread (it's late here) and thought I was writing in the 'What is the date' thread. Apologies in high embarrassment mode.

Edited December 29, 2015 by SayinNuthin

[Warmaker01]

At least with Obsidian we got the Followers of the Apocalypse who were trying to use science and knowledge to make things better. The whole vibe in both FO3 and FO4 is very regressive and anti-intellectual.

 

Also, have you noticed how the BOS in this game is hard to distinguish from the Enclave in FO3 in terms of their goals and attitudes towards the wasteland, mutants, ghouls, synths, etc.? Interesting.

Obsidian did not make the "Followers of the Apocalypse" for the Fallout universe. That was with 1997's FO1, developed by Black Isle Studios.

 

Technology had always been desired and feared in the FO universe. Fancy tech is fancy tech. But in the IP, it had also had reasons to be feared:

 

 

- FEV. Anything and everything related to FEV. From it's Pre-War development, to the harnessing of it by The Master in FO1 for his Supermutant Army, to the Supermutants and other monsters that still plague the wastelands.

 

- Super Viruses that could be released into the environment and kill everything. This was part of a grand plan to cleanse the wasteland of all life for the return of "pure humans" from the Enclave to return and take over. This had been attempted TWICE by the Enclave and each time the player character and Brotherhood of Steel stopped them.

 

- The appearance of the Enclave, first shown in FO2, who uses their superior technology to kill everything. Not just supermutants, feral ghouls, raiders. EVERYTHING. They have even opened up sealed, fully intact Vaults with perfectly fine populations and have either slaughtered them or used them for their experiments. Everything from their superior weapons, power armor, rich collection of scientists... It was all bent towards killing everyone in the wastelands.

 

- How many times have our characters in FO games run into some bunker, laboratory, or vault where science had gone rampant? This persisted even before FO3 under Bethesda. Hell, even the basic, hidden intent of the Vaults was a massive scientific experiment on unknowing people.

 

- In FO4, we have the Institute using their Synth technology to sow chaos, death, mistrust, kidnappings, infiltration, replacing real people (by killing the original person first, of course).

 

I get how the Followers of the Apocalypse want to use technology to help the average wastelander. But in the IP, technology had also been horribly abused before and after the bombs fell.

 

 

You are also completely off with comparing the BOS in FO4 compared to the Enclave. If the BOS were the Enclave in FO4, they'd start slaughtering everyone or have a secret project that will kill everyone (and not just restricted to the Commonwealth). The BOS in FO4 is a cross in attitudes with FO1/2 and FO3 depictions.

 

 

- They always were enemies of Supermutants (All FO titles)

 

- They still prize the collection of technology (All FO titles)

 

- They have a disdain for the average wastelander (All FO titles... when you try to join them in FO1, they jokingly send you on a suicidal mission. But when you actually come back alive and successful, they promptly get you in on the BOS)

 

- They don't care about regular Ghouls (showed even more in FO3 by the BOS and Ghouls you meet)

 

- In FO1 and FO2, the BOS did not want anything to do with the average wastelander. However, they did take action when the entire wasteland was threatened (Enclave produced Virus)

 

- The big change: Unlike the BOS in FO1, FO2, and FONV which tended to be a bit isolationist, the BOS changes in FO3 & FO4. In FO3, Elder Lyons was controversial when he had the BOS conduct patrols to help protect the Capital Wasteland and clear Supermutant clusters and other dangers. Many within the organization resented the wastefulness and deviation of the original goals of the BOS, some even broke away to go back to the original goals (The Outcasts of FO3). Yet in FO4, Elder Maxson does the same "charitable" action in the Commonwealth. Yes, the #1 goal was to defeat the Institute, which was a real threat. But the BOS conducted the same patrols they did in The Capital Wasteland: They took on Supermutants, Gunners, Feral Ghouls, Raiders... All the dangers that plague the average wastelander, operations only they could do because the Minutemen were, even with player assistance, a shadow of their former selves. And they still pursued the collection of technology as before with FO1.

 

The Enclave is NONE of this. The Enclave worries about their people only, their "pure humans" and has tried several times to kill everyone else. Even people sealed away in intact Vaults are not safe from them. They do not lend a hand to anyone. They will however try to kill everyone.

 

Edited December 29, 2015 by Warmaker01

[Aintiarna]

Wow, that's a lot of text for what was a throwaway comment, but alright. I wasn't trying to suggest Obsidian created the Followers of the Apocalypse, merely referring to New Vegas. Should have worded it better.

 

 

 

Secondly, you're dredging the lore to find differences, I'm talking about how the BoS comes across in game and the rhetoric from Maxson. He has all the hallmarks of a zealot, no matter what way you try to dress it up. They want to wipe out every synth, mutant, etc. and if presented with a wholesale way of doing it I've no doubt they would take it.

 

When Maxson discovers that one of his best soldiers is a synth, does he re-evaluate his attitude towards what are effectively flesh and blood thinking beings? No, he declares him an enemy of the BoS and orders you to execute him. That is how a zealot behaves.

 

Virgil, an intelligent scientist living in a cave who has the potential to cure FEV. Maxson's approach - he's a mutie, kill him. That's the anti-intellectual side of his zealotry.

 

The Railroad - he orders you to wipe them all out, not because they are a direct threat to BoS military operations in the Commonwealth, but because freeing synths and treating them like people is an "abomination".

 

The difference between the Enclave and the BoS in FO4 is that their definition of what constitutes "pure human" includes wastelanders, whereas for the Enclave it did not. The zealotry however is much the same.