Spoilers ahead for quest Out of the Fire.

If you have not done that quest and want to go do so now. I will still paraphrase and keep info generalized, but still.

So I just did the quest Out of the Fire and it started off okay.

"My son ran off with some raiders and took my grandfathers heirloom that is so cherished and dear to us. Can you bring it back?"

'Sure thing.' - Get heirloom, optional get son back.

So you go and fight the Forged. Bunch of raiders obsessed with fire. Anyway you get to the top and there is the big boss and his goons trying to get Goodboy son to murder a settler and kick them into a pit of fire.

Bigboss says as you enter:

"Who the hell are you? How did you get past all my forged goons?"

'I heard you were having a barbecue and you didn't invite me.'

"HA! You see Goodboy, this is my kind of person. You could even be Forged material."

(That line there sparked a glint of hope in bad guy story)

"You have to the count of 3 to kill that settler Goodboy. 1... 2..."

At this point I ran the options through my head. In past games, FO:3 and New Vegas, we have seem missions like this before. Raider boss was impressed with my killing ability, so what if I kill the settler? By the logic of passed games boss was impressed and said I could have what it takes, I kill prisoner, boss offers me place with them, new bad guy quest line opens up! I was convinced this was going to happen!

Spoilers, it didn't.

Boss just aggros as soon as you kill them.

"How dare you murder the prisoner that I was just now trying to have murdered. I'll murder you!"

* sarcasm *

tl:dr

Mission Out of the Fire was a missed opportunity for being bad guy because FO:4 is GOOD GUY ONLY! You can be an angry jerk, but no bad guy like in past games.


Oh almost forgot!

"Thank you for getting our grandfathers most treasured heirloom that we cherish so much in his memory back... I give it to you as a reward."

'Yup. That' wonderful.' - Drops it immediately in front of him.

I did not like his attitude. So I pulled out the Stunning Super Sledge and wandered up the ramp to beside him. About half way through his last speech I tried to knock him into the molten pool. Oh well, I beat him to death, twice. It was anear thing the first time.

Straight to spoilers with this one.

Yeah, that's pretty lame. Missed opportunity for sure. I'm sure Beth has seen videos of which paths people have chosen in their previous titles, which makes it even weirder that you can't actually play the bad guy in FO4.

Ya I thought you could be a bad guy when I was like "do it, kill him" but no you don't get a bad guy quest line from the forged guy after you do that >.< I would be so useful for him taking out other raiders who wouldn't join us, maby an ending to take out all the factions and have the forged pillage the Commonwealth.

Possibly something in the future to add to their story? They did come from outside the Commonwealth. Unless it says otherwise, they might have just been a branch.

The Forged belong at The Pitt

Wow, I did the exact same thing the first time I went in there. Not for any expectation of getting invited into the group, but because I sniped and snuck my way through the facility at MUCH too low a level and was CLEARLY about to get my rear end handed to me in this standup fight with a guy in Power Armor and his goons. I was hoping to just shock them into some kind of state that let me talk my way out of that room. But no dice; the Raiders are too one-dimensional in this game for stuff like that. They aggro'd and creamed me immediately, and I went back two or three saved until I hadn't been inside the building and didn't come back for 20 more levels.

I was surprised- besides the remnants that still spawn at Saugus, I ran into a group of Forged walking the roads in Malden, close to the blast-zone where you find the melted wiped out BOS unit on that quest.

While I would have liked to see darker choices in the game, it's not really weird because they have chosen to give you a pre determined narrative in this game, so it makes more sense than a pre war lawyer waking up from cryo, trying to look for son and then suddenly decide to go crazy and become a forge worshipping psychopath. That is definitely an area for mods.

"Do what you want, be who you want."

The biggest problem is that siding with the Forged or any other Raider-esque group, even the Gunners, would make it very difficult to rise up against the Institute (Minutemen, Railroad and Brotherhood endings) or questionable that the super-callous basemant nerds of the Institute would have anything to do with somebody who engages in the wanton looting and murdering (and torture, and [censored], and kidnapping, and so on and so forth) that the Raider-type groups engage in.

As has been mentioned, the Sole Survivor is either a retired Soldier of some description, or a lawyer, possibly a army-aligned lawyer (J.A.G.-esque?) and is firmly rooted in a per-war mentality as well as being driven by finding their son.

The question is not just 'how to find my son' but 'what kind of world will I bring him back to'. Unlike a Wastelander who grew up in the dog-eat-dog world of the Wasteland, the Sole Survivor's memories of freedom, justice and kindness are still strong, if tested and twisted by the new world they find themselves in.

Now, if the Forged or Gunners had any insight into who or where Shaun was, or could provide at least the same level of co-ordination and social 'power' that the Minutemen or Brotherood can provide in polite society (or the wealth of information-gathering and spying that the Railroad lives and breathes) then they could have been an interesting option, if only for the fact that joining them would make anywhere from 4-6 of your Companions flat-out hate you.

Do what you want, be who you want...except for Forged...or other raiders...or Gunners...or Slavers..or a mobster...or an assassin for hire, but otherwise we offer you all the freedom of choice you desire!

Pretty sure that is the motto for TES and especially skyrim though. Fallout 4 says:

Be whoever you want with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. character system. From a Power Armored soldier to the charismatic smooth talker, you can choose from hundreds of Perks and develop your own playstyle.

"Do what you want, be who you want." as long as it's a pre war lawyer waking up from cryo, trying to look for son.

But TH could not say that last part because of SPOILERS, haha

But you can't charismaticly smooth talk your way thru this game. You learn to fight or by god you die.

[censored] you Son, you are the Reason why i cant be evil!

Yep. There is no support in this game for RPG'ing anything or anyway other than what Beth has preconfigured you to be. So many missed opportunities, indeed.

Remember how in New Vegas how at the very end if you fight Caesar's Legion you come to the final boss of the Masked One who is one tough nut to kill, HOWEVER if you were a smooth talking max charisma, barter, intelligence, confirmed bachelor then you could actually TALK you way through that whole thing instead of fighting him. Some dame good dialogue too from memory. That was play how you wanted to play.

I still don't understand what the Minutemen even do if you get them to help you. What does Sturges even get from the terminals? Raiders don't have to be as one dimensional as they are right now. Maybe one of the raider bosses you first tumble across offers you to join them because the Institute stole his son too and together you can find and take them down.

All the while you help to take down all the other raider gangs and rise up to become the one and only commonwealth gang and collect your taxes from the little folk. Its sort of bad, but at the same time organised so there is only one raider gang so people know and respect them maybe?

I dont know.

A lot of missed opportunities in this game. The Forge was no more than a bobblehead and a statues magazine.

Raiders don't even have to remain raiders if you choose to lead them elsewhere to a settlement and show them a better way - like have a handful follow you if you'd give them some Addictol or something. The FO world is full of ex-Raiders like Jericho, Rowdy, Tessa (ok, she joined the Gunners, but that still means cleaning up your health issues) and if only there was a way to lead your own little band to redeem themselves. I used console commands to recruit a raider companion, and the things she says over time as we adventure (all the raider radiant speech) show that beneath the wild and violent exterior, they're not that far gone. Some of them are, but some of them aren't. I believe one was even forced to become a raider through rat-bite torture - surely that guy would be a candidate for leaving if he could...

Crime (pointing up) They all wanted to join the forged.

Sentence Fed to the forge.

What did we learn today,

(heheh)

But the Sole Survivor isn't automatically a paragon of virtue and morality. Throughout the game you can still engage in shady/morally grey dealings and quests, and even pre-war you could have been the grizzled soldier/lawyer willing to do whatever it takes to achieve results and not afraid to get their hands dirty. And opposite to being the last remnant of pre-war civilization and law, maybe you shrug off your former inhibitions and embrace the savage new world free of repression and most judgement.

You certainly can't go around slapping slave collars on children anymore.

Given the way the Raiders have a very effective graqevine keeping tabs on each other, it would be nice that after you take out a few big Raiders like maybe the Forged, Corvega and East Boston School, you could get a perk like "Wasteland badass" and some of the smaller gangs may recognize that and automatically stay non-hostile.

That could be the alternative to the Minutemen. Take out a few Raider Camps without agreeing to become the new General of the Minutemen, and get approached by the Gunners, who like your style and wonder if you'd be interested in making some caps with them ...

After stating you just want to find your son/have a mission to accomplish as well as do their jobs/various small talk with named NPCs, the Gunner leader(s) might point out they've had contact with the Institute over the years and could put out feelers for you. After all, by that stage you're one of their biggest earners, keeping you happy and on their side is just smart business sense. As McCready says, Gunners are all about the profit.

Track down Kellogg either via everyone's favourite clockwork dike, or through the Gunner's own intelligence services and you finally get to have your show-down with the bastard who shot your wife/husband to death and stole your child, get the do-hickeys and seek out the relevant NPC to get it translated. If Nick isn't available because you never rescued him and/or he refuses to have anything to do with you because you've chosen the 'dark' route, que going out to capture a Gen-2 Synth to be the hardware to get the info and pow, off to the Glowing Sea.

As a Gunner, you can go out and claim settlements where people who owe a debt to the Gunners (IE couldn't pay their debts) come to work for the Gunners as farmers, traders and scavengers, thereby filling the role of settlement expansion, or negotiate with existing Settlements to have the Gunners protect them and build up their fortifications in exchange for food, caps and resources.

Being amoral mercenaries, they won't care if the Railroad lives or dies so long as they aren't losing caps or can't make caps off the whole 'free the synths' angle, or if another faction offers them enough caps to warrant digging out and exterminating the group if necessary. Likewise they won't care much about the Institute unless they get double-crossed or offered ludicrous amounts of caps for the job. The Brotherhood would inevitably be a showdown, given a Brotherhood-controlled Commonwealth would see the Gunners rapidly pushed out of business, but I can't see the Gunners wanting to blow up the Prydwen, they'd be more interested in capturing the crew, taking the tech and ransoming them back to the Chapter still dwelling in the Capital Wasteland.

Of course, they might also have to deal with a revived Minutemen movement if Preston Garvey can get his chops in gear and reform the Militia, meaning you could have running battles between Minutemen and Gunners, with both factions fighting for control of Settlements, with the Minutemen trying to 'save' Gunner-Aligned settlements (shoot the place up and 'free' the Settlers, whether they wish to be or not) or assaulting Gunner-held fortifications, and the Gunners in turn laying waste to Minutemen-Aligned settlements and burning Minutemen-held fortifications to the ground, culminating in a mass-assault on the Gunner's home-base by desperate Minutemen, with a counter-attack by the Gunners on the Castle itself, under heavy mortar-fire by a desperate Preston.

Hell, given their habit for saluaging military tech to increase their 'expression of power', there's about a half-dozen downed vertibirds in the Commonwealth even before the Brotherhood shows up in their giant explodable balloon that the Gunners could go out and salvage, along with all those suits of Power Armor to claim for their elite and officers to use to kick ass and collect caps.