Yeah, but Vault 87 super mutants have been dipping people for 200 years, there could easily be tons of them from two centuries worth of dipping, or "gassing" as I should say since FEV in Vault 87 was gas based, that could have made thier way to Boston.

Probably after Lyons routed them from the D.C. area.

Could even be the reason Lyons BoS is in Boston to begin with, ala Tactics, they are hunting down the remnants of the super mutant army across the country.

And with (alot) of help from TLW, the BOS's war with the vault 87 mutants likely will mean they will no longer be much of a threat.

And, do we even know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is indeed the DC BOS who is in Boston right now, Or are we still guessing that it is them?

Maybe, maybe not.

No, but the Boston super mutants show types, such as behemoths, only the Vault 87 strain has produced.

One thing that confused me about Fallout 3 was how big a threat are the supermutants to the capitol wasteland? Were they a major threat to the bigger settlements of people or not really? I know the brotherhood was constantly fighting them, so it would seem they are a pretty big problem.

If they are enough of them to be so dangerous they can easily be in boston. Which would mean they also infest Jersey and our lesser neighbors NY.

FEV was a originally something exclusive to West Tek(take a guess where they're from) and all research pertaining to it was moved over to the Mariposa Military Base. So it doesn't make much sense that Vault Tec is handling it, much less on the other side of the coast.

More or less something along those lines I might be remembering wrong.

Ah, well there it is. I guess they had to break the lore if they wanted Super Mutants on the east-coast.

No, but unless there's yet another FEV strain out there somewhere, it would logically still be the Vault 87 variant mutants would it not?

I wonder if Bethesda cares enough, about the lore behind the intelligence and other differences of the two strains, to try to explain or rationalize it.
I would not be surprised if they were suddenly intelligent with no explanation. They're already a different size and color, but to be honest it's really not that big of deal to me if they change things up.

Problem is, Fallout Tactics set them up to include lore-friendly super mutants with Gammorin's faction. They were very numerous in Missouri by the end of that game, and a canon Barnaky ending would've given them the perfect reason to have fled all the way to the coast.

With 200 years and long life spans, I reckon that the EC muties could be pretty numerous by now. After all, it seems as though they only recently ran out of FEV. We know that most of them have stuck around D.C. but who is to say that many others haven't wandered off long before Lyons even showed up? The ones in Boston may have left the Capital Wasteland by choice, and have never even encountered the Brotherhood.

the supermutants have never been dume just agresive they have forts and take prisoners. i hope in fallout 4 they show more of there war nature like them planing ambushes i dont see that at all breaking lore

Fawkes and Uncle Leo both pretty much spell out that they are exceptions, and that the others are simple dumb. If you sneak up and listen to their conversations with one another, you'll find more evidence that this is true.

The thing about them that people call lore breaking isn't their aggressiveness or stupidity, it's their existence in general. As of the first Fallout, there was only one source of FEV, and it was on the opposite coast. Fallout 3 retconned that and added a second, despite it making little sense.

They retconned it because supermutants make for a fun relatively interesting enemy. So instead of coming up with something new they added more of them and said to hell with the FEV being a one off.

Its one of those things I dont mind honestly. Though some new enemies would be nice too.

This is the part that bugs me, really. They're more than capable of making something new, like the hillfolk and trogs, so I don't see why they couldn't do this. Or, better yet, utilize the lore they've been given and say that Gammorin's super mutants continued east. New fans would've gotten their super mutants and old fans wouldn't have complained. As a bonus, they wouldn't all be generic dumb-as-rocks trollish enemies, and would even have had plenty of good reasons to wage ware against Lyons and the BoS, so their role as antagonists would've still worked.

My point is that there were better ways to fill the role of "fun relatively interesting enemy" without just ignoring what has been established. I don't see the point of buying the franchise just to tear it down and remake it the way you want it to be. Especially when it left so many easy-to-use alternatives that honestly would've pleased everyone and made for a better story.

But eh, no point on complaining about what could've been done.

Trogs were actually taken from Van Buren, though modified.

The trogs of Van Buren were meant to be so different that I don't really count that. They're really only similar in name. I actually like the old concept better, but at least the Pitt ones are an example of Bethesda creating something new for Fallout.

The VB trogs are more akin to the Swampfolk of Point Lookout. They don't really share anything in common with the Pitt trogs other than the name.

Edit: Ninja'd by the Good doctor.

True. I think Bethesda just wanted their own source of FEV.

Including Gammorin's Brood would require Intelligent Mutie dialog and writing Sub-plots... Too much work for little Beth.

Brutes were stupid only when it came to voice lines, though.

And I can't say Tartarus was not a pain in the butt to kill.

If they aren't making any new ones, the ones that would survive would likely be more intelligent. That said, I don't mind most of the enemy super mutants being dumb. I just don't want to be stuck with a dumb one as a companion, and I found the voice of Fawkes to be extremely grating. sixy Michael Dorn-esque voice, please.

no even if they made new enemies and scrapped super mutants people would still complain hell they would probably complain at the lack of super mutant.

Why is that? Fans of the old games wouldn't complain because they know that super mutants don't exist on the east coast. And new fans wouldn't even know what super mutants are, so they wouldn't miss them. If they went back and played the old games, they would see why it makes no sense. And besides, I gave a good, lore-friendly way to include super mutants in Fallout 3, and Bethesda didn't take it.

And 'fans would complain' is a pretty silly argument anyway. Bethesda can't design an in-game rock without fans complaining. It's a pretty polarizing series. Hell, fans are complaint that they did include super mutants in 3.

The funny thing is, every time they try and introduce something new, people complain that it's too new and argue that they're not lore friendly.

On topic, I have a soft spot for the Dumb Dumbs. There is...just something so adorable about them. I rather prefer the Dumb Dumbs to the more intelligent Super Mutants, so I have my fingers crossed for more of that majesticness.

Not every time. The Pitt and Point Lookout are almost universally praised as good examples of Beth bringing something new to the series. Unfortunately, most else that they've brought to the series so far hasn't been new, and they had to jump through hoops to explain why it had all shifted from the west coast to the easy, which is why many people consider it lore-breaking. The only things I can think of that they themselves introduced and people complained about as lore-breaking were the androids and non-Easter egg aliens (though people considered the latter more theme-ruining than anything).

I think people overthink the whole migratory thing at times.

I still think a lot of people in this fandom are fickle, and at times afraid to see the franchise evolve and develop. They say they want new, but at the same time they don't want it so new it's suddenly not Fallout 1 or 2 in spirit. Some I've talked to around here seem so paralyzed by that that any new conventions are horrifying to them. Some men, aren't looking for anything logical.

Actually, it makes perfect sense that Vault Tec would have access to the technology of FEV. It makes much less sense that they wouldn't. Vault Tec is a huge company creating some of the most advanced technology in America and they have direct ties to the government, including military tech development. It would be reasonable if they acquired the tech honestly, but it is more probable that they simply acquired it through the time-tested method of industrial espionage.

There is no such thing as an industrial secret and 100% security is a myth.

There are probably other ways to look at Bethesda's development of the lore, but this approach makes perfect sense to me.

As for Bethesda's offerings in Fallout 3, people need to keep in mind that they were rebooting a failed franchise that many of them personally loved even if it was originally a failure from a business viewpoint. They spent millions acquiring the rights to do it. They wanted a franchise that they could develop in alteration with TES installments and the consensus among the team was to try to get Fallout as a good choice for this goal (which they did, of course). In order for a reboot to be a success, they had to compromise somewhat on their stance of developing each game as a "clean slate" because they wanted to attract both fans of the original as well as greatly expand the consumer base with new fans. They had to expand the original lore. Todd originally wanted to simply make a new installment set on the West Coast but Emil and others argued/persuaded him that the East Coast would be a better setting, particularly since it would allow them to develop lore that didn't exist due to the entirely separate location. He eventually saw the value in this approach and now is quite happy with it, at least from everything that we know. Still, they had to include various elements of the original games in some way as an homage as well as a launching point for their vision of the franchise. They did not "break" any lore because they are developing lore in a different location, lore that never existed in the first place.

Fallout 4 will be the first BGS installment where they are truly free to develop Fallout with their own lore, vision, etc. Fallout 3 had a great deal more limitations due to being a reboot, but since it was very successful (and Skyrim after it, of course), Todd now has "freedom to do whatever the hell he wants" as Pete Hines stated in a interview after Skyrim's release. Until we actually have FO4 and play it, we cannot know exactly what vision they have and how the have done in presenting it in-game.

As for the Super Mutants, I think that it is fairly obvious that the Overlords operate as a sort of "Leadership Caste". I also think it is obvious that some of them, particularly the Overlords, have decent intelligence due to the equipment they use (Tri-Beam Laser Rifles, explosives, Assault Rifles, etc.). Their intelligence tends to vary inversely with the evolution of their physical size and strength. Just because their speech sounds "dumb" doesn't mean anything just as it doesn't mean anything for a human. It is their actions and philosophy that "might makes right" and that they are a superior evolution to the non-evolved humans that tends to influence their actions. In other words, we can't really say that certain Super Mutants are literally low intelligence as much as we can say that they are not going to use their intelligence in sophisticated, tactical ways (as opposed to using more of a "brute force" method to achieve their goals). It's more of their choice in reaching their goals rather than an inherent liability they have, at least from what we know.