Super Mutants and D.C

Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:32 am

As I was playing Fallout 3 today I went to the Citadel. Inside I talked to Squire Maxon (I think) and he mentioned, when I asked him about Super Mutants, that they may be looking for something in Washington, D.C. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas about this? If it's true, does anyone know what it is (whether speculation or canon)?
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Jason Wolf
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 3:37 am

FALLOUT 3 QUEST SPOILERS BELOW








There has been no truly official word either in game or otherwise, on what they are looking for. Some people speculate it's more FEV, but then that raises the question of why are the particularly in Downtown D.C. when it could be anywhere, and why they would look for more, since they seem to have enough in Vault 87. Other's say they may be looking for more people to mutate into super mutants. This one especially makes no sense. If they have been in downtown D.C. for years, and they are seeing essentially no people to mutate exceot Brotherhood, who usually kill them or are killed by them, instead of captured. Even if they did capture them, I don't think the mutants are smart enought to remove the power armor other than pulling them through it which would likely kill them.

Now, there is a third group who say that the mutants are searching for something we are not aware of at all. A special weapon, virus, etc...etc... This one seems most likely since we don't know what this unknown factor is so we have no arguement for it, whereas the other two idea's have some pretty concrete arguements that they are not true.

Maybe Bethesda will do a 6th DLC about it, since in the interview they said they believe Mothership Zeta to be the last one, but they thought the same thing with Broken Steel. Maybe it will be better explained in Fallout: New Vegas (Unlikely, since their on the other side of the....."country"...) Or, more likely it would be explained in Fallout 4, if it takes place on the east coast. However, they way I see it is if they don't anounce new DLC for it, then I don't see it being revealed any time soon, if at all.
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Amanda Leis
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 12:47 pm

This is what the official guide (co-written by some of the game's devs) says:

[Lyons] discovered this abandoned Pentagon military complex. The presence of Super Mutants sent a chill up the collective spine of the Brotherhood; these
weren't the children of the dreaded Master, nor were they the remnants of the band that fled east and were ultimately destroyed (or assimilated into the Brotherhood of Steel) in the Chicago area. No, this was a new breed of Super Mutant, one with a local origin . But where did they come from? What did they want? How were they reproducing? Elder Lyons was ordered to discover the source of this new Super Mutant infestation and wipe it from the face of the Earth.


The Super Mutants that infest the urban ruin of Washington D.C. originated in Vault 87. Those unlucky enough to have reserved space in Vault 87 soon found themselves forcefully taken to a secure part of the vault, where they were locked in airtight chambers and exposed to a concentrated form of the F .E.V. The Overseer and his security force had no real idea what to expect; they were Simply follOWing the "plan. " When the exposed vault dwellers started transforming into Super Mutants, nearly the entire vault population had been exposed . Those who hadn't yet metamorphosed knew what was coming, and, well. .. it didn't end well for humanity.

The dwellers of Vault 87 were turned into Super Mutants in 2078, and have been a presence in the Capital Wasteland ever since. Most of those original Super Mutants have long since been killed. But whether it's because of the nature of the F.E.V. they were exposed to, or a simple underlying human instinct, the Super Mutants of the Capital Wasteland are obsessed with the preservation of their own species. Super Mutants are asixual and incapable of procreation, so their only way of reproducing is to kidnap other humans, drag them back to the Vault 87 chambers, and infect them with F.E.Y. And so they have done, for nearly 200 years.

Super Mutant society is loosely hierarchical, with the weaker (most recently transformed) Super Mutants generally giving way to the stronger. The Super Mutant hierarchy, as defined by the Capital Wasteland contingent of the Brotherhood of Steel , is as follows: Grunt, Brute, Master, and Behemoth . Generally speaking, the Super Mutants of the Capital Wasteland get bigger, stronger, and dumber as they age. The Behemoths are so strong and savage that they're the only thing feared by the other Super Mutants.


Sneak or use a Stealth boy to approach the bottom of the steps and eavesdrop on two of them. They plan to search for more of the "green stuff" and use it to make more Super Mutants. Apparently, there is F.E.V. in this facility, and the Super Mutants are using it to reproduce.

The additional background lore in the guide comes from the designers themselves. IMHO it's pretty conclusive that there isn't anything more to Vault 87 super mutants than what's already in FO3. They were originally looking for new people to mutate, now they're also looking for more FEV.

Maybe it will be better explained in Fallout: New Vegas (Unlikely, since their on the other side of the....."country"...)


If anything, New Vegas will feature the more civilized Mariposa super mutants from FO1, FO2 and FOT, not the Vault 87 mutants from FO3.
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Wayne W
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 1:01 pm

As said, I'm pretty sure it was just vaguely/poorly written, and was about them looking for new people to infect and possibly more FEV to use, as theirs might be running low after 200 years.

If you think about it, when people first started to make settlements and such them probably went to the city first, for food and shelter that was already made and survived... it makes sense the mutants would start there to look for people to infect. The "Big Town" storyline might be a subtle hint that they are just now, or just recently, expanding their search out further into the wastes, with the Germantown Police HQ as a new base of operations.

On FO4, if it takes place in The Commonwealth or somewhere else on the East Coast, one wonders how they will again explain new Super Mutant specimens in new areas... either another Vault with FEV, or a migration of the mutants from D.C., which to me would be annoying since the player character does what I would think would be a good job of stemming the tide in that area during FO3. Perhaps they will say the super mutants from D.C. packed up their FEV and migrated after the water was turned and the D.C. area began to flourish.

I am especially interested in what Obsidian will do in New Vegas, considering established cannon needs to mix with a new audience... random new players will wonder why the mutants are so different if they base them off FO1 mutants.
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Ron
 
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