I have seen alot of hate and unflattering comparisons made when people discuss Elder Maxsons. I don't understand this, because i think Bethesda has really captured the essence of a good leader.





Elder Maxsons is:





* Charismatic and an inspiration to his troops


* Driven and committed to the goals of the Brotherhood


* Capable of making hard decisions and setting emotions aside


* Strict and demanding, but knows also when to let things slide


* Willing to get in the trenches and fight along side his soldiers


* Able to see the big picture, a good strategist and a capable tactician





Even the order regarding Danse is logical. The safety of the Brotherhood needs to come first to its leader than personal attachment. What we know to be true about


Danses loyalties is irrelevant, because there is no way to verify and so little is know about synths. He could be transmitting info, he could be lying, he could have a programmed kill switch that


could send him to take out the BoS leadership when no one is expecting it. So taking him out is the most prudent option a Brotherhood leader can make.





I personally like Danse very much, but i also like Elder Maxons. Too often, "good" leaders are portrayed as these benevolent and fatherly types, especially in games. I think


Bethesda really nailed it with Maxons.





If someone disagrees, i would really like your perspective.



A continuation of Rass0305's 'Elder Maxson is the leader we need' thread.


Maxson is a badass. That is all. Ad Victoriam.

Danse is my husbando, so killing him makes me never want to side with Maxson-senpai.

j/k

On a serious note, I like Maxson's character, but my character can't stand him, so that's the difference there. Plus, it's very inconvenient to have Danse around if you side with Maxson since they set up posts everywhere after the ending.

On the issue of synths. I wouldn't die for ALL synth's freedom just as I wouldn't die for any human. I'm on MacCready's philosophy, I only look out for people I care about, screw everyone else since they would look out for themselves if given the chance, so I would protect Danse and Curie regardless of whether they're synths. It's not because they're synth but because we're friends.

Maxon is a skilled leader, and in that sense is good, but he's not a good person and not good for the Commonwealth.

I could honestly care less about morality in a post apocalypse world, it's more important to look at whether that person can restore order to the world. RR is straight out the window with that. Between the BoS and Institute, one could bring order, the other could restore the world back to what it was. Basically whether you want to maintain order or restoration is up to your playstyle, I guess.

Giant_Neckbeard, on 31 Dec 2015 - 11:25 AM, said:

This is my view as well.

Not going out of my way to free Synths. Also not going out of my way to free human slaves. I've sided with The Institute, I've also sided with Ashur.

^^ spreading misinformation with speculation. Hardly any facts.

I think he has tremendous potential to be a good leader, but he is so blindsided by *specific* facets of BOS ideology that he tends to throw other aspects out the window. He is over-correcting for Lyons, just as Lyons was over-correcting for the West Coast BOS.


The fact he is 20 gives me cautious optimism he can become better, however. I chalk much of his gung-honess up to the fact that he really is charismatic and intelligent and has achieved a lot and when you add that to a typical 20 year old male's already inflated sense of power and immortality, you can get over-zealousness. Age I hope tempers it. Until then I think he mostly errs on the correct side of the path but he bears considerable watching. If he falls, he will fall hard, and he will likely take a huge part of the Brotherhood down with him.

I agree with this assessment. People often forget he's only 20 years old.

I'd say he was the Leader the Brotherhood needed on the East Coast, since he successfully pulled together a divided and listless group and turned them into a military powerhouse who could first the first time project power outside of the Capitol Wasteland.......in the short term he should be good for the Commonwealth, eradicating Raiders, Ferals, Super Mutants, Hostile Creatures and the remnants of the Institute to provide a bedrock of stability and security to allow the citizens of the Commonwealth to build a better safer future........whether the Brotherhood can successfully govern the Commonwealth is another matter, I'd really like the DLCs to add some info on how life is in the Capitol Wasteland, military rule or autonomous communities, beloved and held in high esteem or regard as brutal dictatorship. Beyond the continuing recruiting of CW locals, we really don't have much knowledge of day to day life in the CW.

I don't think even the Legion got as much hate as the BOS gets now.

The Legion wasn't hunting down sixbots with the potential to become Skynet.

The Legion is so obviously evil that it doesn't really need the playerbase to actively hate on it. The Brotherhood's evil is more narrowly focused, to the point that certain people in the fandom think it's okay, which naturally attracts its own backlash.

I like you. Too few can differentiate from the two.

Which is weird, since you can point at actual things about the Legion, while the Brotherhood seem to based around....

"their racist", against who?

"erm....Super Mutants", almost everybody hates Super Mutants its the whole cannibal thing,

"Ghouls", you mean Ferals, since the Brotherhood has zero history of persecuting Ghouls, Ferals are shoot on sight for everybody who isn't a Ghoul.

"Synths", I guess you mean Gen-3s, since most people couldn't less about the Robots and Synths Gen-1 & 2.......anyway there is whole campaign of kidnapping, infiltration and murder that make most people hate Synths, so really the Brotherhood is simply in touch with the views of the vast majority of the Commonwealth.

"Raiders", Seriously "Yeah, they should give them hugs".........O K A Y .

Seriously though, the whole case against the Brotherhood revolves around the Gen-3 Synths, if you believe they are the same as humans then the Brotherhood are the bad guys slaughtering an enslaved race. If you think they are no difference between them and any other synthetic 'life' form then the Brotherhood look less bad, as there is a clear and present danger from Synths to the people of the Commonwealth, of course its true that the are being used, but from the outside the Synths are the ones committing these acts and the majority of people have no idea who or what is running the Institute.

Of course then there is the Railroad who is also infiltrating Synths into the Commonwealth, inevitably messing around with their memories sometimes leads to human casualties which are in turn blamed on the Synths and Institute.

I think you'll find a good portion of us Maxson-haters aren't opposed to what he is as a character and the writing surrounding him. At least I'm not.

Hell I enjoy having him in the game. He's a great antagonist to my Institute Director. Our final showdown at Logan Airport was a battle to be remembered.

Just won't find me in his fan club.

I don't really recall too many Legion supporters back when New Vegas came out. They were a bit like what the Railroad is now. A few people here and there who like them, but not an ardent supporter base.

I just remember most people mocking them for their football pad armor. They were pretty universally despised.

I remember a lot of support for the Legion, of course that could have been a small number of very vocal supporters and most were over the top supporting the enslavement of women etc.......how much of that was simply people egging on the Legion haters I cannot say, although I expect most of it was like the Enclave supporters, mostly tongue in cheek.

Ah, I totally missed that other thread and only noticed it after it was up to 215 posts, so I'm kinda glad you made a new one so I can join in.

I will just be honest: I dislike most if not all the characters in the BoS. We got off on the wrong foot I think. I just found Danse to be such an arrogant, ungrateful [censored] and even after he lauded me to Rhys and Haylen I had a hard time getting past it. Rhys insulting demeanor and Haylen's "I'm just trying to fit in; Oh God I made such a BAD decision joining these goons!" didn't help.

I did a quick "check it out" trip up to the Prydwen once, not meaning to play it through, but just to have a look. Actually what happened was a I spoke to Danse and it started that whole rollercoaster ride, so I just went along with it. However, the whole time I'm in that vertibird I'm just thinking to myself (do these punks even REALIZE what they have here with these machines!? If I have even SIX of these Power Armor clad bozos, two of these vertibirds and enough support troops to hold ground, I'd have this whole damn commonwealth cleaned up in about a week! Instead, these jokers are just cruising around taking potshots and getting shot down by raiders with pipe weapons!?

The interesting thing here is, I'm not the least bit an "anti-militaristic" type. Scipio Africanus is one of my greatest heroes, as is Augustus Ceasar, and in his own way Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Dwight Eisenhower, Ulyssess S. Grant, William T. Sherman, even to some degree some of the great military leaders of the Axis and Soviet powers . . . The difference with all of these great leaders (if not conquerors) is that they were CAPABLE, EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT, and deserving of respect. Whether it is intentional or just a happenstance, the BoS in my eyes does not fit ANY of these criterion and I place Maxson as the primary party responsible. I understand that the East Coast branch of this "Holy Military Order" was a generation previously, on the verge of extinction and that this young man (who could quite rightfully be called a "Whipper Snapper") managed to save the organization. So he saved them, got the blimp rebuilt and has them on the move to flush out the bad guys and blow up heads. So WHAT!? If he was a "great leader" the SS would be completely unneeded, completely inconsequential, and if the SS thwarted him, completely dead. In contrast, I find that the way the BoS is portrayed: their patrols routinely have been cut to shreds by common Wasteland critters that "I" a lawyer woman who was frozen for most of the last 210 years, and who barely knew how to shoot before I went in the deep freeze, routinely massacre single handedly.

Part of this is that it is a game of course and the needs to be a role for the SS, but given the BoS are ALSO portrayed as being so proud, so headstrong, so dogmatic, so uncompromising, so vainglorious, and arrogant, the net effect is that it is VERY difficult for me to relate to them as anything except ridiculous incompetent boobs in metal suits who wouldn't even be able to find their eject lever with both hands if I didn't point it out to them.

So before I even MET Maxson, that is how I, a person with great respect for great military leaders and for the epic brilliance of some historical military organizations related to the Brotherhood of Steel . . . "Seriously? You wearing Power Armor and you need ME to save you from some friggin' ferals!?"

Dismiss it as "it is a game" all you want, but THAT is how the BoS are portrayed: their vertibirds blow up, their "Knights" are apparently ineffectual, their patrols are mostly "lost" and unaccounted for, their supply lines are stretched thin, their blimp is running out of gas, and they are basically a basket case of poorly managed military operations. No amount of charisma or determination can make up for lack of training, lack of organization and lack of planning.

This is not even getting into my issues with the underlying philosophy and goals of the Brotherhood which I find to be dense to begin with. Oh right, you want to save humanity by preventing powerful technologies from falling into the "wrong hands," you know, people who are too stupid to use such technology wisely or evil or something. Okay, so, explain to me how you figure that --> YOU'ZE GUYS! <-- ARE the "right hands" for all this tech you have looted!?" They are the essence of hypocrisy from the very beginning!

And then we get Maxson . . . oh boy, what a goon. Did you notice that hairdo he sports, what it is called in the Face Gen applet?

I'm guessing that it was quite intentional that Bethesda made the BoS exactly how they are.

It was what the BOS fans wished for yes

This really sums up the whole thing. If you couldn't have six with Curie, Danse, or Magnolia, no one would care.

Pretty good one!

I can differentiate. I would actually love to play a BoS playthrough. But I think I'd get to a certain point and just give it up.

Two issues define the BoS for me:

Do the BoS stay & consolidate power after taking down the institute? I don't actually know the answer to this. Does anyone have solid facts to offer? Because if they go away, they are no threat to the commonwealth.

Synths -- are they actually all that dangerous? This I feel I know the answer to. Yes, they are that dangerous. They can be controlled remotely and can infiltrate human society. The production of Gen-3s must stop. I tend to believe the director cannot stop their production without imposing martial law on the 'Tute. (Which may or may not be possible, especially without Gen-3's programmed to absolute obedience.) On the other hand, if the scientists of the 'Tute are spared, they can still improve the life of the commonwealth, only with fewer black projects like the pointless FEV experiments.

Whether you see A.M. as cuddly or spikey doesnt change who the BoS are. Or what the Tute is. Or the RR.

The simplest way to evaluate A.M. as a leader is to see that the BoS are far more effective under him than previously. By that pragmatic standard, he is a good leader.

The Brotherhood stays behind and hunts the [censored] out of Super Mutants, feral ghouls, raiders, and synths. They've saved so many of my settlements repeatedly. Including Starlight Drivein, which gets hit all the damned time.

If not a full DLC about the topic, then just a few capital wastelander immigrants, or BoS recruit from around there, that could be asked about the area would be justified, and nice to have. (The BoS ending unites the two area under their rule, the others wreck their state so refugees would likely like to come to the prospering commonwealth.) But a DLC if like Broken Steel comes out showing the aftermath, we could see their ways of forming the seized land firsthand.

Not all BOS fans