I joined the Brotherhood first after meeting Danse. Fallout 3 was the only exposure I had to the Brotherhood prior to this game, and so I assumed that the Brotherhood was an institution dedicated to preserving technology and helping people survive the post-apocalypse. And that is still true, but I didn't realize how xenophobic the Brotherhood was, and after being asked to kill a certain scientist who had helped me previously, I felt very uneasy about remaining with them. This feeling was further exacerbated when I began to meet a lot of synths who were just... people. And in Valentine's case, very good people. People I would consider like myself. When synths became less sinister to me, it made the Brotherhoods position untenable. I ended up helping the Railroad, remaining undercover working for the Institute until the critical moment arrived where we could evacuate the rest of the synths. During the course of these events the Brotherhood attacked and we retaliated by destroying them.

I didn't really want to destroy the Brotherhood though. I just didn't agree with their position and their fanatacism put them on a crash course with my friends and goals. In my post game, I am actually kind of carrying the fire of the Brotherhood. I use their gear and like to think I am my own personal splinter group of the Brotherhood, in the same vein as Lyon's group. To that end, I wonder if we might see some dlc that will allow us to rebuild the factions we might have destroyed. In the case of the Brotherhood, we get the opportunity to make our own splinter group and set a new standard of goals for the organization. In the case of the Institute, maybe we start to recruit intelligent scientists around the Commonwealth and work toward making synths fully human (or as close as possible) and repurpose tech across the commonwealth to benefit the citizens. Maybe even retool older generation synths to be a militia for the Commonwealth and fight back against the super mutants and ghouls and raiders.

I realize the Minutemen fill this sort of general good group for the Commonwealth, but I really respected the dedication, determination, and purity of purpose that the Brotherhood had. I felt more aligned with their drive to destroy the evil that plagued the people of the Commonwealth, but that ask-no-questions methodology and hardline on non-feral ghouls and good synths drove me away. Right now I am pretending that I have taken up their mantle a little bit and am a lone "white knight" in the wasteland. It would be great to have that realized in the game as an actual option though. It would even pose a great chance to have you make a new choice after you've sided with your group at the end. I told Desdemona that i was done with missions after the last quest, and honestly I kind of was. I had done what I set out to do and we had to kill alot of people to do it. Maybe having the option to rebuild an organization from the ruins of what was could be a chance to let us take what we liked about an organization and make it better fit the ideals it SHOULD have had from the beginning.

It would be a fun and easy dlc I think!

I totally agree and also think it would be a fun and awesomely cool expansion questline!

Approved! Thumbs up.

Artanis would be proud. I have never played Starcraft 2.

I wish there was a way to de-jerkify the Brotherhood. I like them but god. They can be real jerkwads.

There are 4 possible factions for the player to join. Bethesda isn't going to spend time developing DLC for only one of them. It would be nice, but I don't think it's going to happen.

They always were to greater or lesser degree. In F1 and 2 they were kinda cool then came the Van Buren/New Vegas character derailment and they became my number two genocide target after Caesars Legion.

Simple solution: Make post endgame expansion content for ALL the factions. Much profit to be made.

They would only do that if all factions were included in a single DLC. They're not going to release Brotherhood of Steel DLC first and then Institute DLC a year later because people who picked the Institute might have given up on Fallout 4 by then and opted to play something else.

A smaller renegade chapter you can persuade to either side with one of the other factions or the BoS would be good.

Meh they should just allow you to assasinate that [censored] Maxton and take over, unfortunatly lore wise that wud only work after you destroy Institute and Railroad since after that you are second ranking member of the BoS right behind elder Maxton(holding rank Sentinel), but meh they cud at least give you some options for persuading faction leaders to change their ways and nagotiate instead of all of them being genocidal maniacs(well except Minutmen since you lead those so its up to you if you wana play as genocidal maniac or not).

I mean sure Rp wise post main quest you potentialy influence at least BOS(especialy if something happens to Maxton) and Institue(since you are made the director of it) but that wud all be post main quest, what i wud like o see added later on is possebility to influence the factions before the story is over.

Ehhhh, if you do that, there's kind of no point to the moral ambiguity is there?

Yes and no, depends how you look at it, and working towards changing views of the factions doesnt erase their past so they wud still have plenty of bad baggae atached to them, it just gives you freedom of choice to play how you want, and i am not saying they should make it easy to do or even possibile without some moraly grey/black choices like removing certain people by force, playing them against eachother etc... Basicly what am asking for is possebility to have some influence on them since you do most of the heavy lifting anyway:)

Oooh, that would be amusing. Approved!

Anyone getting sick of all the moral ambiguity we get these days?

Grey vs grey morality reminds me why grey can mean bland, dull, boring.

Joking aside the game devs or comic, movie or TV creators that will make something with black and white morality, shining good heroes and completely evil villains will make a bundle.

Happy ending, heroes who actually succeds and saves the day for a change!

To quote a very wise man:

"By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor." — G'Kar

As I recall people HATED THAT in Fallout 3.

Despite the millions and millions of sales, you still hear the sneering contempt on these forums.

Well in general people dont like being forced into certain ending, but more choices is never bad and they can range from good to bad and anything in betwen.

i don't dislike Golden Endings but I do think it works in Fallout and here, specifically.

Especially as a contrast to the Lone Wanderer.

Well now dont get me wrong i dont actualy dislike current endings, i am just saying i wud like to see more options. I mean this is a sandbox RPG game afterall so for most part we get to create our own characters story instead of just playing it out.

All i am asking for is more options, and i rly dont see anything bad with more options.

I admit, I would have liked to have done more to shake things up myself.

* A fight in the Railroad between Desdemona and Doctor Carrington

* Elder Maxson being persuaded to go one way or another depending on speech checks.

* An option to Liberate the Synths after taking the Directorate.

* An attempted coup by the Minutemen.

Of course, I think it would have been awesome if they had more time to side with the Gunners over Preston Garvey and make "evil" settlements.

I am a bit in all honesty, especially when it feels forced or contrived. In the case of the Brotherhood and the Institute it certainly feels so. Can you honestly believe that there would not be any idealist people in these factions? People that would challenge the status quo? I think the structure of the brotherhood works to curtail that, but the Institute is run by committee more or less, so why wouldn't there be ANY internal friction between the leading members that you could potentially work with to steer the principles of the group?

Also, morally grey is a description I reserve for very specific situations. In my mind the Brotherhood isn't morally grey. They have morally sufficient reasons to fight against super mutants, feral ghouls, and raiders, but not morally sufficient reasons to kill non-hostile synths and ghouls. That is still black and white, the fact they fuse them together doesn't mean they mix to grey. In a perfect game, you would be able to challenge those policies and preconceptions and have a justifiable reason to walk away from the group or at least give them food for thought. That may be idealistic, but with the way the Fallout narrative is structured, I feel like I'm just a dirty double dealer who is playing everyone, when in fact, I have very good reasons to be suspicious and change my allegiance to each of these organizations. They did a good job with the writing to help us convey our feelings at critical moments, but I wished I could confront them and explain myself clearly, because my personal policy is to not be two faced.

This is especially pertinent because I don't see why the Brotherhood had to necessarily be opposed to the Railroad. We didn't HAVE to kill each other.

Nice quote btw

@captinfez Since quoting seems broken on my phone. There is a guy in the Institute that thinks they rely far too heavily on the Synths. That's pretty much it I think. A minor encounter with a guy whose nam escapes me.

There's numerous dissenters in the Institute and people who argue about Synth rights. You come across several conversations where people discuss it.

Also, Doctor Li.

In the Brotherhood, Hanlon wants to leave but she says she's afraid they'll kill her.

I liked the BOS for the same reasons. Even respected Maxson although not always seeing eye to eye with him. I wouldn't mind seeing a dlc where you somehow wrestle power from Maxson and become the Elder.

I remember him, but I can't think of his name. I didn't spend a lot of time in the Institute, which I regret. I wish I would have poked around more, but I honestly had no interest and only really stayed there to accomplish the interactions I had to.

Iirc, Dr. Li only really had any reservations about the Institute because of what happened to Dr. Virgil and also that she didn't find working there fulfilling (or it wasn't everything that she thought it would be; she appreciated the challenge of working in more disparate circumstances like she had with the Brotherhood). I don't remember her having specific problems with the Institute's modus operandi. I could be wrong though, like I said above I didn't poke around the Institute much.

I never ran into Hanlon... was she on the Praedwyn? I know Danse was fanatical in his devotion and everyone else seemed likewise. It strikes me as being either a characteristic of those who join the Brotherhood or something that is bred into people who join by proximity or fear... which appears to be Hanlon's case.

Either way, I'm still surprised that we couldn't have an influence on the path of these groups, through speechcraft, actions, and maybe pure force. Especially if there were dissenting characters present within the organizations to begin with. It seems like a missed opportunity to not give you the chance to insert yourself as a force of change. That might make the tensions between the groups even messier to keep track of, but it would have been a truly next gen experience to be able to have all these minutiae to manipulate to achieve a wide variety of end game scenarios, instead of, pick one of these three and that's it.

If you take the Speech Challenge, Doctor Li says she hates the Institute has all this technology and doesn't use it to help the Commonwealth or other people like Rivet City did.

I'm probably getting the name wrong but they joined because they thought it would rewarding and exciting but the militarism scares her as well as the fanatic zeal. Also, you can't leave once you join lest you take away Brotherhood secrets.

He's speaking of Scribe Haylen, whom you meet in the Cambridge police station

Ah ok, I failed her speech challenges. That kind of stinks that succeeding at the speech challenges is the only way to get that inside information. Kind of makes the Brotherhood population seem one dimensional.

Ah ok, I don't think I did that. Interesting. I feel bad for Dr. Li. I think she went down with the rest of the Brotherhood and I was the one to get her to join it. Hopefully, in a future dlc or update, we can see her again and work with her. She didn't deserve to go up in smoke with the rest of them.

It gets worse for Scribe Haylen.

If you ask about the other soldier with her (not Danse) before the Brotherhood arrives, Haylen admits she joined because she liked him and thought he liked her.

He then informed her the Brotherhood was his only purpose.