Minutemen 3 faction neutral ending or Railroad ending?

[JoeOllie]

Hi there,

I'm still yet to complete the games story as i'm in two minds about who to join and was wondering if anyone could offer any advice/if i'll be missing anything post game with my decisions?

I'm leaning towards the Railroad as i'm against slavery and quite like synths + robots. However, i've also seen that you can get a neutral ending where the BOS, minutemen and railroad all survive. I'm curious about which is more fun/the positive and negative outcomes of each decision/what other folks have done. Are the BOS missed if we get rid of them? Is it better post main story to leave them all alive etc?

Thanks

[Wunderbot]

The only real difference between the two is that if you go for the Railroad ending, you can save a couple synths before the inevitable attack on the Institute. For the Minutemen ending, you need to fail your infiltration of the Institute and the Railroad's plan will of course fail then. They're perfectly fine with you then using the Minutemen to continue the mission though, as long as you sound the evacuation alarm within the Institute. They'll continue to give you radiant quests after the Minutemen ending.

 

BoS are asshats, but I left them alive because you do have to blow up or shoot every single one of them, including the child squires and the many good people they have, like Scribe Haylen and Danse. Taking them out doesn't have that big an effect though. You'll simply no longer be able to do their radiant quests or earn easy bottlecaps from the technical documents and blood samples. And you won't receive help from the random vertibird or patrol anymore, instead you'll have to fight them.

[Blacksage81]

To get the Minutemen ending imo "the complete" ending there are a great deal of ways you could pull it off. If you want Paladin Danse, and destroy BoS, its a bit more tedious. However taking out the BoS allows the Minutemen to have vertibird fast travel. (assuming your second defend the castle doesn't bug out) The Institute ending is kinda boring, but you can branch out the monologue to "good" or "evil". I never ended the game with the Railroad(Once I got Deacon and Ballistic weave they were meh) or the BoS, Proctor Teagen, and Elder Maxon sealed their fate in my game.

[CyrusAmell]

Here's the thing with the Railroad ending that might make the Minutemen General in you grumpy: it's their flag over Diamond City, their agents manning key checkpoints, and they are the ones getting all the credit for destroying the Institute. If you're all gun-ho about being a General this might grate on you in the end game.

 

Right, so the best way to get a good Minutemen ending is to work with the Railroad (because screw the Brotherhood), but turn to Sturges for the teleport device. Then, do everything for Railroad untill you need to speak to Father on top of the old CIT ruins. Here, simply tell him that you freed the synths and you don't like the Institute and will not follow any longer. After this, Father will banish you, teleport back to the Institute, and an attack will soon commence on The Castle.

 

To my mind I find this the best way to go about it as you can roleplay that you just couldn't psychologically handle the strain of dealing with the Institute undercover and just wanted to give Father a piece of your mind before taking the gloves off. After that, just make sure to stay on the Railroad's good side which should lead to you having to wipe out the Brotherhood later.

[Wunderbot]

I'm against the Railroad ending because really, freeing the synths is their end-game. They don't have plans for the future of the Commonwealth. They actually never seem to care a whole lot about anyone but the synths. They're not going to help rebuild, in their ending they even outright say they don't even plan to go public. They're going to stay underground and the only thing they'll continue to do is rescue stranded synths and kill Brotherhood soldiers. Bigots as the Brotherhood might be, it seems pretty shitty that in order to save synths, who are questionably human enough, they seem to have absolutely no issue killing humans who are very much human enough that you should probably at least try to avoid killing them if you have the choice.

 

Heck, even the Brotherhood and Institute endings seems better in that regard. It might be in a dogmatic and dominant way, but at least they give a s*** about rebuilding the Commonwealth to some extent. Railroad just doesn't.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Wunderbot

[CiderMuffin]

The Brotherhood isn't even really about rebuilding the Commonwealth but protecting the people, trading and taking any unclaimed technology while taking out mutant-infested lairs. That's why I like BoS-Minutemen ending the most. Either complete the main story as the BoS or Minutemen and build up settlements. Minutemen on the defensive, BoS on the offensive.

[CyrusAmell]

While it may seem a good alliance, there is a lot of friction between the Minutemen and the Brotherhood. It's so bad that the Minutemen, on the radio, actually thank the freaking Institute for taking out the Brotherhood. You can see the reason why in conversations between Preston and Danse, where Danse discounts the Minutemen and Preston reminds him that the Commonwealth belongs to all. The Brotherhood is basically a foreign army that rolled in and started acting like they owned the place (in the case of some farm quite literally). One can easily imagine a local militia resenting the Brotherhood for their arrogance and lack of rapport with the region.

 

With the Railroad it's a pretty good deal. Let the Minutemen focus on establishing a working government while the Railroad keeps to itself and eventually disbands after saving all of the synths they could or else finds another purpose. If some of their agents end up joining the Minutemen then they can lend some much needed expertise.

Edited June 27, 2016 by CyrusAmell

[CiderMuffin]

The BoS aren't really there to stay. Even Boston Airport isn't set up to be a permanent location. At most there would probably be a skeleton crew to set up a chapter while a majority of the forces go home. I see it as a similar thing with the NCR-BoS relations before the NCR-BoS war broke off. The NCR considered the state of Maxson as their territory but BoS held locations like Lost Hills remained in BoS control and influence. Edited June 27, 2016 by CiderMuffin

[robhartman9]

Blowing up the Prydwin is fun to watch. Killing the railroad isn't very spectacular. BOS ending revives the big ass robot for a nostalgic stomp across the wasteland.Getting banned from the institute by killing people and fighting your way out through hoards of synths is fun if your game for some mindless destruction. You can always load a previous save if you don't want to deal with the consequences.. The good guy ending is probably the best but its fun to explore the options

[JoeOllie]

Is the minutemen considered the 'good guy' or 'cannon' ending? I'm currently on the way to do that but after doing a few BOS quests, i'm realising how much I dislike them, IMO the wasteland is better off without them. Very tempted to go Railroad but dislike that they just blow up everything to do with the BOS, they don't even try to evacuate the kids/give the option to surrender to those who want it.

If you use the mod which unlocks the cut dialogue for the BOS post minutemen ending, the leader says that destroying the institute was only their first step, they have big plans and a priority is to hunt down and kill all the super mutants, synths and ghouls. It's voiced etc so was original content just cut from release. Therefore, having them all together still means that the brotherhood are actively hunting down synths and some ghouls.

Urgh I seriously dislike the story and factions in this game. I loved the Witcher 3 and it's decisions but all of Fallout's seem terrible :/ What is the 'nicest' or 'best' ending in your opinions?