As for the "not Fallout 3" assertion, read up on "Richard Moreau" / "Richard Grey" / "The Master".

Considering they

I beg to differ.

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention. In the context of the overall series, it's [censored] groundbreaking.

That character is from Fallout 1, not Fallout 3, which is why I was wondering if you meant Fallout 1.

I wasn't criticizing you. I'm sorry if I gave off that impression.

You can join the brotherhood who wants to wipe out all synthetic humans, that's pretty evil. You can also join the institute who planned the kidnapping of your own son and killed everyone else in the vault on purpose for no reason and replaces people they kill with synths just to spy, that is pretty evil as well.

The BoS and the Institute are morally grey, neither are fully evil.

How is whipping out a species morally gray?
How is killing everyone in a vault and killing random people to replace them with robots morally gray?
They are both unethical, I'll be at the railroad where they don't do either of those things, thank you.
The Institute claims to have good intentions but all of their actions are immoral while the brotherhood just comes out and says they want to wipe out all synths.
The railroad wants to save the synths that want to live in peace with humans and stop the institute from making more to kill people, they are the only moral choice, and they have done the absolute least immoral acts in order to do it.
Look the brotherhood not only wants to wipe out the factory, they are going to track down and kill all synths, the instatute wants to track down all the synths who excaped and make them kill innocent people against their will, the railroad wants to shut down the factory and give all the synths an identity and live with us in peace, their is no gray about it, their is right, wrong, and wrong.

They do bad things but they also do good things, which makes them not 100% evil, thus morally grey. The Railroad don't do anything evil but they're stupid, they see the Institute solely as the source of synths, basically a sciency Paradise Falls and want to completely destroy it, even though most people in it are actually nice enough and they have several other branches working on very beneficial stuff. The Minutemen are the only faction you really can't fault for anything, they just want to protect helpless people and they only decide to war with another faction if you as their leader order them to.

More on topic, if you want to be the most evil possible within the plot, side with the BoS. They want to kill the few Super Mutants who are actually ok people, they want to kill all non-feral ghouls, many of which are ok people, they want to destroy one of the biggest sources of scientific progress in the world just because they don't like it and/or because it's not theirs, they sanction mass murder of settlers if it'll get them a farm to get crops, etc. They're a big bunch of dumb bigoted [censored]s who thinks they're officially entitled to everything they want.

Yes the Nazis were also not 100% evil, they just said one thing and did another terrible thing like forcing people from their homes and making them fight like the institute forces synths to kill people against their will to the point that they want to excape and killing people in vault 111 in their cryogenic chambers. and the nazis also tried to commit genocide like the brotherhood of steel

Eh, the issue with the Railroad is the Institute is a slaver NATION.

So, it's a bit like nuking Haiti to get rid of the French slavers there.

Obviously, the most moral option is the Evacuation Order for the Institute in any anti-Institute mission.

Albeit, that WILL create an entire bunch of mad scientists out to get you.

It will also liberate all of the Synths who survive, though.

There's some definite Nazi overtones to Elder Maxson but I feel uncomfortable comparing the two.

The big issue being it's more like Warhammer where 90% of the people being destroyed are evil or a threat to mankind.

It's just murdering the 10% which is horribly evil.

Yes the railroad are not perfect but they are the least morally disturbing ones, they did not enslave the robots or try to kill them all and have not killed a bunch of people on the way like the instatute

Exactly my point. This post and this topic is created specifically for fallout 4 discussion. You are here to be off-topic in discussion of things OTHER than fallout 4.

The fact that you are here to intrude and blame people for 'seeing it as a fallout 4 discussion' is dumb founded. If you want to discuss the idea of games 'not specifically' fallout 4. Then go somewhere else!

There is a off topic section.

Oh, good. So even when told "you're wrong" you're not wrong. Protip: The world will respond much better to you once you accept and admit that you've made a mistake or spoke out of turn. An unwillingness to do so will not win you any awards, on the internet or in real life. Here's a list of stuffies:

1. This is not my thread, despite you trying to tell me it is my thread.
2. Although this is not my thread, I was interested in the discussion.
3. I became involved in the discussion because a much broader issue was raised which was not specifically about Fallout 4, but games in general.
4. This is "ok" because human interaction and discussion is not a static thing, it is an ever-evolving thing.
5. Conversations evolving into nebulous, multi-faceted discussions is "ok".
6. Please refrain, if you could, from telling me not only why I'm here, but from telling me to go somewhere else.
7. Thanks.

I didn't call the Railroad evil, I called them stupid.

Allrite, I have just read through 5 pages of comments and here are my thoughts.

Note: My character (I hate the term "toon", this is WoW speak, and MMOs svck) is lvl 45, and I have about 150 hours of gameplay. I have *not* completed the main storyline. I am currently on the cusp of choosing between the Institute and BoS.

I agree that the game overall does not cater as much to a charicature of "evil" as FO3 and FNV did. Especially the first 2-5 hours of gameplay is you being a goody-two-shoes familyman/woman. But as the game goes on, it grows far more complex. In the beginning I was annoyed at what I felt was shoehorning from Bethesda. But now I am starting to think otherwise. Since most people here have hundreds of hours of gameplay in FO3, FNV and Skyrim, we react instinctively to any changes to the game dynamics from those games. My argument would be that we shouldn't.

As many gamers on here have explained, you have a multitude of options in how you wish to play the game. Here are some examples:

Spoilers:

- You can wipe out the Railroad.

- You can join the Institute

- You can spend points getting the perk to eat human flesh, and murder your settlers in order to feed your hunger.

- You can choose an angry/hateful dialogue option in most dialogues (not just the sarcastic or "good" option).

Now, it is also very important to remember that FO4 is not the digital post-apocalyptic version of D&D. I notice many people complain how one cannot be "lawful evil"/"chaotic evil"/"chaotic good"/"lawful good"/etc. These are purely D&D classifications on character traits. They are extremely black & white and forces your character into a straight-jacket. Humans do not act or think like that. At all. Ted Bundy, the world's most famous serial killer, was very nice to his co-workers and his friends and family. He was a passionate Republican and volunteered a help-line. Does this mean he wasn't an evil son-of-a-[censored]? No, he murdered over 30 young women (he claimed towards the end that his score was more like 130), often torturing his victims first. But that was not his entire being.

In this regard, F04 is far more realistic than FO3/FNV/Skyrim. You can make grey, nuanced choices and you can make good choices. But you can also be a serial killer and a power-hungry madman at the same time, but maybe under different circumstances. Also, the further into the game you get, the more options you are given. I view this as very realistic. Here is why:

In the beginning of the game, you have just exited the Vault and are confused. You are not a hardened psychopath, jaded to the realities of the Wasteland. You are a family-man who's just lost his wife and son. And from the pre-war intro, you were a very nice and caring husband and father. So the game more or less forces you to be like that in the very beginning. I like that. It was uncomfortable to start with, but the more I play the game, the more I get it. Because, as you play the game more and more; your character actually developes. The environment and situation makes him adapt, and you can increasingly choose in what way.

Now, some criticism:

The settlements/workshops. This feels very artificial and forced. It doesn't influence the game-mechanic in any meaningful way; other than a way for you to get constant naggings about useless settlers being overrun by raiders/ghouls/super-mutants or having someone kidnapped. You do not get more caps the more settlements you got (and this bugs the hell out of me, because I have spent insane amounts of resources and caps building the damn things), you do not get more or less influence (i.e. increased chance to persuade someone in dialogue) and you do not get any experience- bonus (you only get that from building stuff, not actually succeeding in creating thriving communities). More to the point:

- If I build 10 settlements/workshops with 1 settler, no water, no food, no defence each = exactly the same in-game result as:

- If I build 10 settlements/workshops with 20 settlers, oodles of water, oodles of food, 50 in defence (only that this option results in me spending all my acquired resources).

The settlements should have a way to influence the settlers. As it is, they all either a) farm man the shop/security post or c) wander aimlessly about. Imagine how cool it would be if one could (if one had a high enough score in the Leadership perk) order the settlers to go out and attack the neighboring settlement, raider-camp, mutant hide-out? And if they died, okay, cool! And if they survived, you got a big cut (i.e. caps) as a reward (and maybe a portion of the xp too). This should be totally possible to do game-mechanic wise as well. Already the settlers defend the settlement/workshop from attacks and you can outfit them with your own armor and weaponry. Also, you constantly see BoS choppers going rogue and attacking raiders and super-mutants and synths. Why couldn't you, as the budding dictator you are, be able to order people out on similar raids?

But all in all, this is one hell of a game. Top marks from me.

From the sounds of Virgil's holotapes and notes finding the cure was not part of Shaun's agenda. That was part of Virgil's plan for escaping the Institute. So yeah they cured it... for the wrong reasons. Whatever their plans with the FEV was I can almost guarantee it wasn't good seeing as one of their scientists traded the lap of luxury underground for the wasteland in order to keep his research out of their hands.

I can confirm after playing much more, that there are indeed plenty of questionable decisions the player is allowed to make. OP Is mostly wrong.

p.s. This changes nothing in my general argument about what constitutes playing "good, neutral or evil" in an RPG though.

Precisely, you can be a real psychopath, it's just there is no feedback for it like in the other fallout games, no signal telling you that you lost Karma or whatever. but the freedom is indeed there. You don't need to speak with people or dialogue with them, a bullet in the head is just as good and you can go about your business normally. It's not as diverse as it could be, but you can pretty much do what you want still.

most RPGs don't though, heck, look at bioware, in none of those games can you play anything but a good-goody, goody good with an attitude...or Chaotic Stupid, and that last one is only in a couple of their games.

The Institute killed a lot more people. Ask around. They are responsible for a lot of death.

Now to the OP.. you can't be evil in the game. You can't even be ruthless. The best you can do is be rude.

Not evil. Ruthless, yes. Which is more than what you can do in this game. IN DAI you can be a major ruthless [censored] where most of your companions will either leave or hate your guts. Even in ME, you can be ruthless. Granted the ending was all roses no matter what you did.. but still.

I don't know, dude. I did some shady [censored] in Diamond City that I'd be hard-pressed to call anything BUT evil.

I still think the main problem is that barely anyone (if anyone at all) acknowledges it... Back in FO3, if you blew up Megaton Three Dog and dad chewed you out. If you had evil karma, the slavers welcomed you. In New Vegas, once you invested enough time into supporting Caesar's Legion, the NCR would shoot you on sight.

Here? It seems no one cares. A companion or two might express some disappointment once, but afterwards they're fine with you for the most part. It just feels... unsatisfying.

Actually, your companions will leave permanantly if you piss them off too much.

Honestly, I prefer the moral greyness of Fallout 4 to the previous games' choices between being a saint and being a cartoon villian.