Yes, the glorious leader and the archivist that works for him.

Why do you think Maxson is so selfless?


He had a personal airship built for himself and named it after King Arthur's ship that took many years and a large amount of resources to build.


Maxson insists upon getting Liberty Prime up and running again because it's another status symbol.


Quinlin is writing Maxson's biography and helping to build the legend of Arthur Maxson. After the string of leaders that failed, Quinlin has all of the reasons in the world to make sure that Arthur has all of the support that he needs; including a heroic backstory. It was even brought up in Fallout 3 that many of the soldiers tell Arthur that his soul is forged from eternal steel because of his lineage.


Quinlin's hopes are that his entries will be printed in book form to be distributed as basically propaganda material and goes so far as to call Maxson the perfect human specimen. Clearly it's not a dispassionate historical text.


The DLC for the Brotherhood will be going door to door throughout the Commonwealth on bikes distributing the Book of Maxson.

*Knock knock* "Excuse me, but do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, the perfect human specimen, Elder Maxson?"

"Oh God, its those Brotherhood of Steel kooks again. Just close the shades and pretend we aren't home. Maybe they'll go away."

Yes because there is no use a huge airship can have, you know like transport, a mobile garrison or to act like a carrier for vertibirds oh and the only use a big death robot that is near unstoppable is clearly for a symbol, you know not as a way to defeat an enemy. Nope both of those ideas are completely absurd if they have any use beyond a symbol. /Sarcasm

Seriously, again, the straw grasping done is bad.

I like to see a DLC where you choose the future of BOS. Whether they continue with the feudal expansionism or return to Lyon's view maybe with Sarah Lyon not actually died but fake her death to reform selection of the BOS to be less like the Outcast in FO3,

Also, worshiping Maxson as he is a living god is also bad and bad for your mental health.

That would be a huge mistake, Lyon's way of doing things was heavily criticized and were facepalmingly stupid. His entire deal was "We should help the wasteland for nothing in return nor should we accept settlements into our cause nor should we let in recruits on mass in order to bolster our forces from a disastrous war that is driving us downward." He wasn't as good of a leader as the few people who supported him claim, everything he did was pretty bad.

Keep Sarah dead along with the bad white knight society that doesn't know how to fight a war or survive for that matter.

Maxson also has a girlfriend but you've like... never met her, she lives in Canada. She's totally hot though and completely real. Just like that Deathclaw he killed on his own that managed to cut his face without taking his head off.

Haha you're so funny and original.

Seriously, if you think that two valuable assets to the BoS is purely for imagery when they have so many more uses you're really pulling the blind over your eyes just to make a bad point.

It's not a matter of them not having any value. It's the cost versus the value.


They had to steal the reactor from Rivet City to make the Prydwen capable of making the flight to the Commonwealth. Where does that leave Rivet City? That was after spending 2 years gathering resources and 4 more years to build it. Even with all of that, the reactors are in danger of overheating and they're running out of coolant.


They have a fleet of Vertibirds they could have used instead but that's not nearly as epic as a Zeppelin just like the West Coast used to have!


Wait, used to have? Oh yeah, they all crashed so they stopped using them.


Liberty Prime didn't need to be rebuilt, it wasn't necessary for beating the Institute. Maxson just demanded that it be rebuilt. If you do the Institute ending, Father even intentionally uses Liberty Prime to destroy the BoS as a way to insult them while eliminating them.


There's just a tiny bit of hero worship going on in this thread so I totally understand why some can't see what's right in front of them.

And yet that was the original formation of the Brotherhood, IIRC. The Brotherhood formed after seeing what their own government and super-corporations were doing to people and formed into a neo-knightly order to help instil a sense of nobility to their troops, that this wasn't just a self-serving mission, but one intended to stop the horrors of nuclear war and prevent such technology falling into the hands of any number of the petty warlords popping up in the newly-irradiated Wasteland.

Over time, they turned into a organisation that considered themselves 'above' all others because of the 'nobility' of their mission and refused to share all but the most basic technology with outsiders, and even refused to accept outsiders into their ranks until things got so desperate that they had to allow it in order to survive.

They are the 'good-ish' faction at their best, and at worst they were an outright threat to life in the Wasteland if you didn't bow down to them immediately. That said, in the Wasteland, mercy and compassion are in scarce supply and carefully hoarded since betrayal and theft are common amongst the starving, desperate people on the surface, let alone the shortage of untainted food and clean, drinkable water. The Brotherhood's 'descent' into the current incarnation is sad, tragic but an all-too-logical progression of their story.

A Commonwealth under their control would be safe, certainly, but personal freedoms would be harshly limited, and from the terminals on the Prydwen, they're not shy about stripping locations of life-sustaining tech to furnish parts for their own equipment. While this certainly helps them keep the peace and protect the people, it also makes like even harsher for the people they are protecting, and from the missions you can get from the Quartermaster that basically tell you to get the crops no-matter-what, even rewarding beating people into line, the BoS is not shy about taking what they need by force or at gun-point if they believe is necessary.

Deacon openly says that the Capital Wasteland under the rule of Maxson has become a terribly oppressive place to live, and just about every Follower you can have remarks that having the Brotherhood coming to the Commonwealth is a terrible thing.

It's sad, but without the Enclave, the Brotherhood seems to have become their own worst enemy, with the people of the Wasteland now living in fear of them as much as the Raiders and Super Mutants. They're amongst the least of all the available evils in the Commonwealth, and I freely admit I throw the Minutemen and Railroad into that list given their actions and recent history vs their stated desires and intentions, but ultimately I think I'm going to leave my own BoS run till last, simply because I find Maxson's rhetoric and inflexible mindset to be uncomfortable as an individual and In-Character reminds me too much of the grand-standing Glorious Leader routine of the Communists the Male Sole Survivor would have faced when fighting the invading Communists.

This is what I love about the Fallout Series. No faction is 'inherently good'. Yes, Faction A might honestly be the best logical choice, but they're a moral mess that can drive you to despair doing their quests, while Faction B might be the longest shot imaginable, but their quests are less controversial and less likely to lead to wanton bloodshed. There's no 'right' answer with how to progress, there's no obviously 'correct' choice.

For me, In-Character, the question is not only 'how to find Shaun', but 'how to make a world that Shaun can grow up safely in', and sadly none of the available options provide a decent fit for that question.

And then you hit the Institute and that question becomes a whole new moral, logical and emotional quandry to wrestle with ...

Rivet city didn't do anything with it, they moved in like scavengers and it's better off that death trap just not be a reliable settlement. Not only is the ship collapsing on itself but the air is filled with rust, it's a breeding ground for a ton of diseases, it's surrounded by poisonous water and it has no strategic value nor does it have any trade value. The idea of rivet city was stupid in general.

The Airship acts as a carrier to station the vertibirds and refuel them, vertibirds don't run on infinite power as proven by the fact the Enclave needed to build vertibird refueling stations.

Liberty Prime is a very valuable war asset, AGAIN IT'S A LITERAL GIANT DEATH ROBOT. It has lazers for eyes, it can pick up a behemoth and squish it's head and throw it away like nothing, IT CAN THROW NUKES. How do you refuse to see how valuable of an asset and a weapon Prime is? it's like saying none of the Gundam series needed mobile suits because they had guns.

Seriously, this isn't even hero worship it's common sense lol


Again, Rivet City was a really stupid idea for a settlement. If it wasn't the radiation filled water that would kill them it would be the Mirelurks, the breeding ground for rust and numerous diseases and the cost to actually make it livable wouldn't be worth it and collapse under them, one half of the ship was already broken off and the entire rust bucket was decaying. It's actually better for the people that the BoS took the reactor and probably moved them to a safer place.

No settlement lives in fear of the BoS, no one even hints that in Fallout 4. Do they not entirely trust the BoS? Sure because it's strangers saying they'll fix problems coming out of nowhere but that's not fear, that's just questioning the new police who were brought in to a city to help solve problems.

He isn't too keen to make Quinlan write about his miss-steps that he ought to have had in ten years. He can be badass, but no badass is made without old shames. Sure, people don't like the embarrassing parts of their past bought up, but a leader that doesn't care about his personal glory wouldn't mind it, in the name of humility. Or in case of Quinlan, in the name of truth.


There's also not many Lyons sympathizer found on that giant airship of his. No mentioning about the previous rulers, or their achievements, and absolutely no mentioning of the Lone Wanderer. It's arguable, that Maxon only took the most loyal and politically correct BoS members with himself, but still, it's pretty much feels like they'd like to edit the history and make one that serves the current leadership better. It could be of course argued that it's because the outcasts, that wouldn't like to hear about the hated Lyons regime, but giving in to them and editing their story, the story of Maxons childhood crush and his father figure and his friends, is still doesn't make him look as righteous ruler. And for the stuff about his achievements having roots in reality: The things that we read are more fitting to another Capital Wasteland character. Namely the Lone Wanderer, that also person non grata as a Lyons sympathizer, and therefore, an acceptable target to unperson. His achievements however could have been used to glorify the leader. Honestly: Is the things on that terminal fit that clumsy kid from FO 3 or the previously BoS ally LW better? Sure that still np way evidence one way or another. But as a skeptic I think Maxon isn't the person his personal cult wants us think he is.

Lmao, the biggest mistake you make is expecting consistency from Bethesda. Jet in Vault 95. LMAO. It doesn't surprise me that they turned a 10 year old doofus into a last action hero.

Yes because people totally don't change! I knew a girl that was clumsy throughout 3rd grade that ended up getting into acrobatics by high school and was damn good at it. That clumsy kid that Maxson was was his past, now he is a bad-ass leader that goes into battle wielding a Gatling laser, Gatling lasers being very very effective against deathclaws.

I'd say its likely that Maxson's Legend has grown in the telling, but you can say that about any heroic warrior type, he certainly show no hesitation in leading from the front (without Power Armor) straight into the heart of his enemies stronghold. I don't think that we can make the claim that it is totally fabricated simply because its not like we are dealing with a case of historic hero worship, his followers have seen him in action and hold him in high esteem and its unlikely that he could have achieved so much within the Brotherhood without being a genuinely talented individual.

The idea that he wasn't coordinated as a 10 year old and therefore he cannot be that good as as advlt is a little bit foolish.

So i'd say its a mixture of the two, well trained talented soldier and a legend that grown in the telling, helping to cement the newly re-forged East Coast Brotherhood.....single handled killing of a Deathclaw sounds like he broke one over his knee, leading one into a minefield or shooting one from cover etc might be more likely for a Squire, still a notable act of gallantry without making him a superman. The death of Sarah and the following years of turmoil where probably the years that forged the advlt Maxson, its not hard to see that the deaths of both of the Lyons and the following years could have turned Maxson into a very different character from when we last saw him as a 10 year old.

It's more then foolish, it's the most stupid point people have made yet in this thread lol. Oh and it's also stupid that the whole founding of him being "clumsy" is from ONE incident. That's it, wow he accidentally shot someone, the child ACCIDENTALLY SHOT SOMEONE. Wow how clumsy, he messed up once as a kid I guess all of you were perfection embodied as children that never dropped anything or messed up with something.

Seriously, if you can't come up with good points stop trying to make bad ones that make you look foolish.

I agree on that people can become better. He surely isn't the clumsy kid he was, and he is likely have done things to raise his reputation. He deserves the benefit of the doubt. But he is likely had a huge amount of support from the West coast BoS, and also had the benefits of being the blood of the founding father of the Brotherhood. I'd like to point out that I dont see it has to be that he is either a total hero with everything that says he is great true or he is a total sham, there plenty of place in-between. I think we best keep in mind that he is still 20. He has huge expectations to fill. He is the leader of a group with a, to say, well established ideology. (It is hard to question if nothing else.) His path to leadership however was pretty much railroaded, and he still doesn't have much freedom of choice to form his organisation. I actually doubt however that he wouldn't be able to get to be the leader, unless he would be an absolute sham. To get to the point: He is apparently isn't a absolute sham, as he is the leader. And he isn't a powerless puppet. But he surely isn't the ideal human specimen either. We should try to figure out who he really is instead of shoehorning him into one of the two extreme categories.

I'm not sure how much support the West Coast BOS could have supplied to the East Coast BOS, certainly the vocal support of West Coast Elders probably played a huge part in the successful peace with and reintegration of the Outcasts back into the Brotherhood (while also apparently ending their opposition to recruitment of wastelanders), but physically the East Coast BOS was and is pretty much on its own. Of course being the descendent of their founding father, who's words are pretty much taken as holy writ gives Maxson a huge boost in the eyes of the West Coast BOS (who aren't in the best of shapes) , his heroic deeds are obviously going to be embellished so that the heroic act of killing a Deathclaw as a Squire is portrayed as a hand to hand combat rather than the more probable use of mines or long range weaponry. So while he is venerated by his troops who know the man, he is beginning to be worshipped by the West Coast BOS population who desperately need a saviour.

I'd also say while he was being groomed for power under the Lyons, there was then a succession of poor leaders (so bad their names aren't even mentioned) so at some point the EC Brotherhood turned to the very young for the role Maxson and apparently he was by any measurement a success, reuniting with the Outcast but retaining the policy (which goes against the teachings of the codex) of recruitment of Wastelanders, indeed since they can apparently both hold the CW and project power into the Commonwealth I'd expect that that recruitment has actually grown larger under Maxson.

Maxson for me is far from the Ideal human specimen, but I'd say he has been the right choice for Brotherhood........there is some question over which faction ending will be canon and I personally don't think that Bethesda has finished with Arthur Maxson yet, either as a future bad guy for the protagonist to face, leader of BOS (with perhaps a migration of West Coast BOS eastwards) or perhaps as the father of a new nation (which will probably turn out to be screwed up)

That wasn't my point.

Its the fact that he went from being a ten year old who accidentally shoots his crush, and appears by all accounts to be a pretty average boy, to suddenly two years later becoming an action hero at age twelve who saves an experienced squad of Brotherhood soldiers that were supposed to be guarding him. Then at age 13 he kills a deathclaw by himself.

Hell of a two years he had. Now like Motsie said, maybe its just Bethesda being inconsistent and lazy with their writing. Or maybe we're intended to find it a bit questionable.

I'm not doubting the fact that he's a capable man. I am doubting whether or not all the aspects of his biography are 100% true. Especially those which seem a bit embellished in order to fit Quinlain's narrative of him being the "perfect human."

He's such a good leader that he decides to create a second Glowing Sea right in the middle of Boston, a stone throw away from Diamond City and Goodneigbhour.

Sure, it's not like we have any other instances of young people doing amazing things. It's not as though we have an instance of a 19 year old vault dweller whose only training with weapons is a bb gun who went on to completely wreck the Enclave, not to mention all the other possible quests completed in the CW. Oh wait, yes we do.

19 years old is a young advlt. Not a pre-teen. That's military age.

Besides, the protagonist has always been a demi-god. If a single NPC all of the things the protag does, we'd be calling it bad writing.

MM and RR do the exact same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeswYJgf5mM

Maxson never does everything the main protag does. He fights a Deathclaw.

Not moving the goalposts. I never said he did anything the protagonist does.

But just because the LW does some amazing things at age 19 doesn't mean Maxson saved his squad at age 12 and killed a deathclaw by himself at age 13 either. I didn't bring up the LW first.

Like I said, not doubting he's a capable guy. But I believe parts of his biography have probably been embellished.