This video is just rant/opinion video so, don't rush to judgement it is just a opinion even the author of the video say so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEuvwv5uSkA

Ah, it is Shoddycast! Seen it, brilliant!

It'll be tough to keep this thread going without breaking the "no political arguments" rule, but here goes (it might also be best to move this to spoilers?). It would be really cool to see an evaluation of 4's factions by an actual political scientist - no offense to shoddycast, but they didn't really talk about their credentials for this kind of discussion.

To start, I think the "social freedom" metric isn't the best metric for the factions. I think better would be "selfishness/selflessness"; the Institute only cares about what happens on the surface as it directly pertains to them; they'll spy on the surface to keep tabs on potential threats (or potential new scientists, like Dr. Li or TS Wallace), they'll perform experiments, and they'll dump their failed experiments on the surface, but really have no regard for what goes on (or any moral qualms about what they do to the surface). Granted, the Brotherhood is more interested in controlling the wasteland, in the sense that they'll appropriate any technology for their cause, destroy any tech they can't control, and don't have any problems just up and taking any resources they need, regardless of who else needs it. But in the end, they still put their needs above everyone else.

The Minutemen and the Railroad, on the other hand, are all about selflessness. The Minutemen is all about protecting each other from anything that threatens them, and uniting to overcome the greatest threats. The Railroad are all about protecting synths from anything that threatens them, making sure the synths have as fair a shot in the world as any human. The talk about toaster rights is misleading - I think the controversy there is about robots that have their own goals and decisions, like Codsworth or Ironsides; is Codsworth any less deserving of respect and equal treatment than a human? (that's a rhetorical question, if you don't think he is then you understand why the Railroad is divided over the topic).

I also don't think the story in this game has any intentional parallels with current events. Maybe if the questline was about taking the technology from the elite few controlling it, and sharing that tech across the wasteland... I think the storyline's politics and ideologies are based on Cold War sci-fi, and Revolutionary War politics. The story is about artificial intelligence, technology gone out of control, personal liberty, equal treatment, and, well, war. (there's also the personal themes about loss and rebuilding)

It's fine to discuss in game politics on the forum. It is against our rules to discuss real life politics even when making comparison to the game. This thread breaks that rule and is thus closed.