spoilers all through this, you've been warned-

Well, after over 300 hours of tinkering and playing about, I finally decided to ride out one of the obvious paths to end the story.

I had planned to finish the Railroad synth-escape plan, but what that turned into was basically a.) go blow up the prydwen and then b.) kill off a ton of people in the institute and then blow it up too, with the ending being "the railroad wins".

Given the game's varying options for attitude in dialogue (kind, mean, sarcastic, etc), I had hoped for a possible blended outcome.

Then I looked at how many hours I spent finishing up that one story ending, and decided to just go read the wikia on all the possible endings.

There really isn't a "free a bunch of synths, and then in your role as leader of the institute, change their attitude about synths and their freedom".

Bummer. I didn't hate it, but I was a little surprised that there was no way to have a sort of happy ending.

And the BOS were a bunch of arrogant dangerous warmongers, but even they had hints that they might be won over to cooperate in some ending where we don't kill off half of the population.

But then again, war... war never changes.

What did you think about the ending?

I have ~600 hours in the game done 3 of the 4 endings and did not like any of them.

No plans to do the 4th (RR)

Bottomline I am the worst thing that ever happened to the Commonwealth other than the original bombing 200 years ago.

The geck can't come quick enough for me. I just hope the mod community can fix this mess.

I found the bos ending being identical to the ending of f3 incredibly lazy.

There was never supposed to be a pleasant ending - the closest you can get is blowing up the Institute and setting off the evacuation order from Father's terminal. Of course, unless you're ending with the Minutemen you'll have to destroy other factions, too. They're all completely opposed to each other;

The Brotherhood sees synths as an abomination and a threat to the human race, which means they want to obliterate the Institute and take down the Railroad for helping synths. The Railroad are willing to put their lives on the line to give synths the same rights and freedoms as regular humans, and that means protecting them from the Brotherhood (in fairness, the Railroad only takes them out after the Brotherhood storms their HQ). The Institute opts to destroy the Brotherhood before the Brotherhod destroys them, and same for the Railroad to a lesser extent.

The Minutemen pretty much just want to protect the commonfolk of the Commonwealth - they'll only go after a faction if you become enemies with them. Becoming enemies with the Institute (which is really easy) is how you get the Minutemen ending in the first place, and then there's another small set of quests after that to deal with the Brotherhood (if you're enemies, anyway).

The good ending is where you take over the institute and reassure everyone that they will be protected.

I'm fine with the endings, mostly - what I love about the main quest is that doesn't just have to be "follow this faction's questline to the ending" - you can go through most of the faction quests as you please until you're asked to destroy an enemy, and there are plenty of options to betray your faction to the enemy. It gives me a lot of room to tell my own story. My only problem is, I just don't like the actual cutscene at the end, or the one at the beginning - between the silhouette and equipment and everything not matching my character, I just feel like it's got nothing to do with what I actually did. Same goes for the opening cutscene, which loses extra points for defaulting to the male dialog before I get a chance to choose my character's six. On the plus side, this makes it easier for me to just completely disregard the cutscenes anyway.

And I just don't think having the player-characters voice the monologues worked. I think they would have been better off sticking with Ron Perlman. To be clear, though, it's Perlman I care about, not the slideshows. I never really thought much of the slideshows.

i love you guys , for you're ability to roleplay a leader of the institute that frees the synths

gl when the BoS come back around

(Bare in mind I haven't played ME3, but I've heard a lot about it) In my opinion, FO4 ends pretty much the same way as Mass Effect 3 did; either side with the Institute or blow it up (and choose who does it). Very unsatisfying.

I have played both the BOS and the Institute, enjoyed them thoroughly. Tried the Railroad, realized they were a bunch of loons whose deaths are very nearly a mercy killing given the baggage they're carrying. I want to like the Minutemen, but they just get annoying after a while.

What bothers me is that every faction has what I refer to as "Micheal Bay Disorder": every ending has to result in some over the top explosion and complete destruction of the other faction thus locking you out of those areas forever.


Now before you hit the keyboards, I'm not proposing that there should be some ending where everyone sits around and sings kumbaya. That's not the point. The point is that every faction wants to destroy the institute despite it being both strategically and materialistically wasteful. You have the greatest source of scientific research and the only working factory in history. It is the biggest strategical resource in the whole east coast... SO LETS BLOW IT UP BECAUSE AD VAHCKTORIUHM HUR HUR.

I could give the Failroad a pass on this since... well, they're single-minded loons. Doesn't make it less foolish, but it is understandable. The BOS on the other hand should definitely know better than to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A better idea would be to... oh I don't know? OCCUPY the institute? Take it over, round up the scientists at gunpoint, say "Now listen, we're in charge now. You're going to do what we tell you, or we shoot you." If you must blow something up and want to end the source of synths that much, just take a fatman to the giant 3d printer and grease the defenders (by the time they reach the core they've done this anyway). Then you get to keep the institute as a base, have access to its tech and personnel, and not only that you are probably in a better position to do so.

Otherwise they come off as little more than religious fanatics with technology. Something that should never mix for reasons that hardly need explaining. And with the Minutemen it's no different.

It's like with Broken Steel: Why do we need to blow up the crawler again? Everyone inside is dead. Just get some BOS Soldiers inside and take it over.

THE ENDING I WANT

?- I take over the Institute, Danse takes over the BoS (cut content suggests this could have been an option).

-Between the 'tute, MM and BoS, the RR is brought to the table. A treaty is drawn up, uniting all factions.

-The MM form the basis of a new civilian government (by the ppl, for the ppl, etc.). The BoS become a *proper* military, with a State to serve and everything! No more pseudo-religious crap. The RR take their natural place as a spy/intel service.

-The Institute's tech is diseminnated throughout, improving the lives of all (as it always should have done). Gen 1 & 2 synths join the ranks of the protectrons & Mr. Handys/Gutsys. Gen 3s are freed, any "hidden" programming expunged, with the OPTION of a RR mindwipe. The 'tute itself, and the learn-ed folks within, become the finest health & education systems the world has ever seen (even by pre-war standards).

-This new nation-state is named "Canada".

With the exclusion of the Canada joke at the end, I would definitely prefer this ending to the ones that were given.

Fallout 4's ending seems too much like the original Mass Effect 3 ending. The exact same ending for each faction except the Institute ending is missing the first few seconds. The ideal ending IMO would be how Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and New Vegas did there endings with having a slide for each major choice. So there would be at least 4 ending slides for the Art vs. Art encounter, you kill human Art, you kill Synth Art, you kill both Arts, and you don't encounter the Arts or walk away.

I second this

Honestly, I think if they wanted to do something cool with the whole voiced protagonist thing, they should have hired Ron Perlman to do the male PC instead.

I don't care for any of the endings though. As others mentioned, one's copy-pasted from Fallout 3, and all of them being about the big explosions is off putting. I'd much rather have been allowed to kill off the Brotherhood in a way that allowed me to take their tech for the Institute or Minute Men, or lay claim to the Institute for the Brotherhod. Hell, it would have been neat to actually get to replace faction heads with Synths to destroy them from within.

But nope. Boring battles and big explosions.

I would have taken over the institute and forced the brotherhood to retreat ( without killing everyone ) and win time to reform the institute - Dense taking over the BoS however is hard to believe.First BoS fight Synths. and suddenly they watch the BoS being taken over by a Synth and do nothing about it? Not likely.Keep in mind, most members of the BoS share Maxstons view. Ousting Maxston would probably not change much

It raises the question of what it means to be part of the Brotherhood. Can a machine believe in the ideals of the Brotherhood? The Brotherhood wouldn't be taken over by a Synth, but by a Synth that believes in the Brotherhood. Just because the Brotherhood and Danse found out that he was a Synth doesn't change the fact that he helped other Brotherhood members. Look at Scribe Haylen's reaction towards finding out that Danse was a Synth. As long as Danse acts like part of the Brotherhood, then it does matter if he was created in a womb or lab.

If you didn't put that BOS sniffer pack on the Institutes computer BOS, or us for that matter, would never find out Danse was a synth.

That's probably why it was scrapped in the first place.

I see the RR as an bunch of scammers, they sweet talk you until they rob you blind. They're the one that lead to the worst possible ending. All 3 other endings lead to a very positive results, even the Institute, surprisingly enough.

As for Danse, they could have changed certain elements in his storyline like replacing Maxson or framing Maxson as the synth instead. Honestly, I want just anything to have Danse with me and not have a vertibird kamikaze on me.