I'm partial to the hypothesis that the Vault-Tec FEV strain was engineered to impart intuitive understanding of things like military tactics and training into its subjects, not unlike how the Ork Mekboys of Warhammer 40k possess the intuitive knowledge of how to create and maintain Ork technology.

they weren't idiots, they were more like stereotypical orcs really.

Which is ironic given that Bethesda totally reversed the Orcs in TES from stereotypical orcs.

Is it just me or do the Super Mutants from the F4 footage look different from their D.C. brethren? I mean, obviously they should look a little different because it's a new game but they just seem like they are built differently to me.

They seem a bit smaller, and more green.

However, they were originally going to be smaller in Fallout 3, especially the Behemoths.

Beth cleaned up the East Coast Mutants, getting rid of that sickening yellow. So they're likely still East Coast, just retconned to be green. Just like Behemoths were retconned to be smaller if F4, than in F3, because they were far too large in F3.

Bethesda might as well retconn needing FEV to make supermutants, and come up with some nonsense about them being able to reproduce sixually. Beth seems intent on having them be a staple enemy in the series and them evolving to be able to re produce seems less far fetched then FEV(which is supposed to only exist in very limited amounts) being all over the place.

Super mutant six *vomit*

Hush, just don't think about it.

Bethesda has already retconned FEV, to have Super Mutants be a staple in the series. FEV was originally meant to be just on the West Coast, as a small military experiment at Mariposa, pre-war that was never sent anywhere else in the country, or known about. But then suddenly, for Beth's purposes and needs, it was somehow interlaced with Vault-Tec knowing, and getting what we got, which was Vault 87's experiment revolving around FEV exposure.

So Beth including Super Mutant evolution, isn't beyond their abilities to make something work for them, by retconning whatever it might be.

Easy to solve. The Institute before the war was a repository for knowledge across the US. THey had access to the files from the original ZAX computer operating in the Glow.. sorry West Tek centre. That ZAX had the genetic coding for the Pan Virus (precursor to FEV) and thus the Institute was capable of making Super Mutants with their own Twist. Im guessing maybe the experiment went outta control. To me though it seems too close to the story of FO3. I really just think the Mutants wont be the threat they were in FO4. Numerically there wont be as many.

To me the biggest thing lacking in FO3 RE Vault 87 was the SM leadership. Was there a named SuperMutant there apart from Fawkes? They didnt seem to have a leader that I ever found. I always found that weird. Even the generic assed Talon Company had their leader.

Thing I don't get is why FEV is always treated like its some sort of non-renewable resource when basically the only thing that viruses do is replicate. One would think the super-smart West Coast mutants would have been able to cultivate the virus in their bloodstreams to make more. As mentioned before, 87 mutants occasionally produced smart individuals. With the right equipment, there should be no problem for the same reason. Though, I guess both Fawkes and Leo were good so maybe with the 87 strain intelligence and evil are mutually exclusive.

About FEV, Scott Campbell says, "I tried to greatly hint that this research had gotten out, and that this information leak is possibly the catalyst that caused the missiles to be launched" (http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60791).

Vault-tec being in the know never bothered me. I always imagined the Pre-war U.S. as an oligopoly where the delineation between private enterprise and the government was essentially non-existent. Capitalism was lauded as superior to communism but free-markets weren't really around with largely a few mega-corporations competing for or working together on government contracts. The current U.S. military-industrial complex is an anologue for how I envision the entire falloutverse economy. The real-world f-35 is the result of multiple corporations coming together (Lockheed-Martin and Northrop-Grumman, for example). Robco and General Atomics partnered for Prime. For that reason, West-tec and Vault-tec working together wouldn't be completely crazy. Neither would FEV being beyond one research facility. Good science requires external validation.

My guess is MIT play some role in the Boston Super Mutants

The master could of given a sample of the FEV and the info to replicate it to a few groups of smart super mutes and told them to start setting up FEV vats around the U.S.

Off topic, but from my childhood days, I recall in the Ork codex there was a little lore about Imperium engineers trying to use and understand Ork salvaged tech. Long story short, the tech would not work, no matter what they did. I think they surmised it as each Ork having some level of psychic ability which let them use technology on the belief that it would just work. Essentially, just believing a gun would shoot bullets would cause their makeshift contraptions to function.

Anyways, story times over.

probably stealing it from defunct research labs and barring that well tons of wasteland creatures have been altered by FEV theres gotta be some circulating in there veins as well as in the veins of there own vault 87 super mutants. I imagine those of there ranks they deem to be weak or they just plain don't like are exterminated and there FEV is repurposed so it can be used again on some poor wastelander that's big enough to be useful more as a brother than a meal.

Really the orks are probably the most similar thing I can think of to east coast super mutants (minus the psychic powers).

the mutant in the combat preview reminded me a bit of some of Adamowicz's more grotesque mutant concepts (it looked a little more asymmetric), kinda like this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/47857688@N08/6877201005/in/album-72157629320774861/

Yep. That's also why vehicles painted red go faster.... because that's what they believe. Red = fast.

(That said, I'm not fond of GW's retcon that Orks are a fungus that grows from spores. )

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Aaaaaaaanyway. How do the East Coast Super Mutants keep producing more? The devs include them in the enemy spawn lists, and the game spawns them.

It should't be too difficult to contrive a reason for FEV being in multiple locations. To take one of the most secretive scientific endeavors as an example, the Manhattan Project wasn't limited to one location. http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/manhattan_story.html

Just hope they explain and justify things a little bit better this time.

I've always found that funny because red also means "stop" lol

Transporter accident. New supermutants keep getting beamed in from the buffer pattern.

What?

Seriously, I think that somebody, somewhere must have developed a variant of the FEV to build a supermutant army. I always wondered where they came from when I played FO3. I did not know the story of the Master at the time. I'm not sweating the details. They are a good, mindlessly aggressive race. Between them and raiders, I have plenty of guilt free spree killing options for my play style. There are, of course, canon and lore reasons to wonder, but I am not a FO purist. For all I know, the Master sent a small detachment Eastward as scouts. Maybe along the way they ran into somebody that extracted genetic samples for the purpose of reproducing the FEV or maybe even cloned a bunch of them. I actually see them as a Fallout staple and would have been sad to see them not make an appearance.