If the Minutemen are pledged to protect the people of the Commonwealth and the BoS want to exterminate some of those people, it's bound to lead to conflict.

It is weird that it's an optional quest, though.

Great summary, thanks! I ultimately chose to side with the Minutemen, since that was the faction I felt the most connected to and I'm also a Constitutionalist. To me, the Minutemen seemed to be the most inclusive and genuine of the factions. You point out some excellent drawbacks, though.

I obviously now know the endings; I didn't realize that there was a "default" option in all four. I'm not going to second guess my decision, though.

While the Institute clearly had the best technology, I didn't feel that their motives were ever truly fleshed out. I didn't feel connected to advlt Shaun at all either. The whole "Father" and "we know what's best for humanity" seemed too paternalistic. I know that finding Shaun was a big part of the default character arc, but ultimately my own experiences really drove my choices.

Remember, the U.S. had inferior technology when it overthrew the British during the Revolutionary War.

Not really, given Preston prefers to follow orders than make decisions.

The BOS as a group which is good for the Commmonwealth is an easy argument to make.

Unless you're a ghoul or Super Mutant or Synth.

I can easily see them killing lots of regular humans who won't bow down to them, the folks in Goodneighbor for starters.

Probably.

Of course, the BoS may actually not be genocidal beyond Synths and Super Mutants.

They may just be racist against ghouls.

That's a big if, though.

As evidenced by the 'feeding the troops' quests, where killing the settlers to take their crops is as viable an option as convincing them to 'donate' their food. And even when passing the charisma checks the farmers' dialog clearly indicates they're handing over their crops due to having no choice - it's that or a laser rifle to the face if they refuse.

Which is why none of the BoS quest involve pacifying areas of hostile, raiders, feral or supermutants activities that have nothing to do with gathering tech

It seems to me that the BoS and the Institute offer security at the expense of freedom. What's the saying? -- Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither? Seriously though, wasn't the extermination of all non humans why we destroyed the Enclave in Fallout 3? And wasn't that science at the expense of morality the reason the Enclave (and Vault Tec) were always the bad guys. Yet the BoS in the Commonwealth embodies the former and the Institute the latter. I liked the summary too, very well stated.

To some extent I guess you have to decide whether you're trying to rebuild the old society (a sentiment the Sole Survivor surely shares with the Institute) or whether you're trying to build a new one. The non feral ghouls and super mutants (and synths) have no part of the first but do have a part in the second. The Sole survive must also share sympathy for the BoS since he was military (and can his ability to use power armor show that he did so in service?). Surely both these factions seem like some remnant of the government he formerly served. The problem is that it's hard to see society actually rebuilding with these factions (granted I haven't seen the applicable endings). The Institute would create a rule by a small group of scientists with their killer robots to keep order. Surely the peasants of the Commonwealth would not be their priority. The BoS would be a warrior culture ruling over peasants who can't be trusted (or allowed to have) any "dangerous" technology.

It seems to me that the Minutemen have the best chance to be in the right place when the Capital Wasteland's more reasonable BoS and the NCR come calling (and they will eventually). I agree that all four factions have shades of grey but despite the likely higher degree of order and security (something many dictators excelled at), are they really likely to result in greater happiness?

I wonder what would happen if the Sole Survivor just killed all the killer robots in the institute, leaving the institute population to fare for themselves? Of course they'd probably fight to the death too, but if they didn't, they might get a lot more reasonable toward a more diplomatic means of dealing with the outside world.

You do realize the BoS we have in FO4 is the Capital Wasteland's BoS, right? The entire BoS is united now, in most (if not all) of their ideology at least.

I can't share your praise for the "morally ambigous" factions, OP.

To be honest, the more I think of those factions the worse I think about FO4, which is a shame, since the gameplay has been a blast so far.

What I share however, is your point of lacking diplomacy. A point I loved about New Vegas.

The factions, for me, are the most disappointing so far in Fallout. The whole world screams player-freedom, yet you can't change a thing about the factions. They are strict, hunkering, extremists which won't change a thing about themselves. You can't get the BoS to accept sentient ghouls as people. You can't make the institute take a look into the question of synths being more than just machines, composed of flesh.

The Institute:

How you can compare them with a utopian society like Star Trek is beyond me. They maybe got the technology and architectural design, but that's the point were it ends. When you talk with the scientists, you may get idealist impressions, but look a bit deeper or listen to X6("The commonwealth is a corpse and the people there are like maggots feasting on it." "I can't wait for all surface-dwellers to die."), you find that they all contradict themselves. I really wish the institute would be like that clean white facade they live in, but given their crimes towards the people of the commonwealth, I find it hard to sympathize with them.

The loading-screen tells us that the Institute first tried to work with the people in the commonwealth, but then mutual mistrust ended that relation.

We can't bring something like that back up? As the director I mean. No, rather we stick to "building a better feature for humanity", "mankind redifined" by kidnapping people as testsubjects, replacing them with synth-doppelgangers, sending out am army of robots to anything that could oppose us...

We can't even investigate that stuff! Who does this whole replacement-garbage? How delusional can someone be to send out a PR-speech via radio while kidnapping people from their families and replacing them with robo-clones?!

To be honest, I think the quota of people aligning with the institute would drastically plummer if Bethesda hadn't put the PC's son Shaun in there.

The BoS:

For a moment I thought I played Wolfenstein when I saw those charming uniforms of the Prydwins crew and heard Maxsons speech. As much as I like the BoS in FO3 and could even somehow find some merit in the different BoS-iterations of previous games, those fascist zealots are repulsive. And to be honest, if you remove the Power Armors and Liberty Prime and most of the other scavenged or simply stolen tech, there remains nothing but another Raider faction who would kill you for your shiny Laser Rifle.

Heck, even the scribe aboard the Prydwin, the guy who want's you to collect books and such, seems like one of those, evil, scurry scientists from a WW2-movie to me.

The Minutemen:

You brought up that they take food, water and caps for protecting people. And simply by adding the players ability to build settlements you name them rulers instead of allied forces? The Minutemen are a civil militia. If you stand around all day with a gun and protect people, you have little time to grow or hunt your own food and water. You need money to buy equipment. You can't protect people if you're starving to death, that has nothing to do with rulership.

Aside from the inner-politic struggles of the Minutemen I still think if you'd take the tech from the Brotherhood and asigned them to the Minutemen, you'd get a more beneficial power than the current BoS is.

The Railroad:

As charming as their backstories might be, in the end they are the same fanatics as the BoS or the Institute. Glory herself states a very important point "No matter what the people here might say, don't think that synths are human. We're being assembled, bone by bone, muscle by muscle. I've seen it."

I think we mostly agree on them in that regard, but honestly, I find them as repulsive as the institute themselves. Just because you assemble a robot from flesh and bone instead of servos and steel, it suddenly becomes human? But normal robots aren't, even if you can literally load the mind of a Ms. Nanny into a synth and get a full blown Gen3 with emotions? Hypocrisis if I ever saw it.

But my biggest beef with all of the factions is their unwavering extremism. No diplomacy, no ability to change even in the slightest. The main story only presents the factions to the player, you get to know them superficially and then kill off any opposition they might send you to. You can decide sometimes to let a faction live, but that's it.

I don't want a butterfly's and sunshine ending, but I find it lackluster that I can only decide what group of extremists I can support on their way to domination.

I think it's interesting to look at it through this:

Elder Lyons had a big fantasy of the Brotherhood of Steel as shining knights. He was Merlin and Arthur was well, Arthur while his daughter was meant to be the Lancelot to the group. However, Arthur Maxson isn't reading The Once and Future King. Arthur Maxson is reading A Song of Ice and Fire.

The whole "requisitioning" supplies is straight up out of the original Medieval handbook. Less golden age of chivalry and more, "nasty, brutish, and short."

This is where I give the Brotherhood of Steel a cookie. They're not the Mojave Wasteland Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, which is as close as most modern-day Fallout players are going to get to understanding what the Orthodox BoS is all about. The Brotherhood of Steel is not supposed to be anything other than a bunch of weirdo tribals who live in their isolated bunkers and hang out. The Western Brotherhood of Steel had the "mission" of confiscating advanced technology but didn't, for the most part, until NCR--where they royally [censored] up and got their asses handed to them. One of the hilarious bits of Fallout 2 is how the game makes fun of the BOS for this.

The BOS is mysteriously watching you.

Watching you.

Planning something against the Enclave.

Then Horrigan kills them all and they have no further part in the plot.

The Western BoS were, in a very real way, closer to being the Institute than the Enclave. Fallout: Tactics is semi-canon according to Fallout 3 but, weirdly, Elder Lyon's story has more or less the same role for the Eastern Brotherhood of Steel. A bunch of religious dissidents to the Codex cross the country and then decided to actively help settlers by bringing order to the Wasteland in exchange for resources as well as recruiting from their ranks. The difference is the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel was not aggressively racist against nonhumans (with the exception of a certain general) while Elder Maxson most assuredly is (and so was Elder Lyons).

The Eastern Brotherhood of Steel is actively bringing order to the Wasteland by destroying Raiders, Super Mutants, Feral Ghouls, and, sadly, Synths. We don't see them shooting intelligent ghouls and all the "cleansing" missions you receive are against Feral Ghouls or other dangerous groups of people. They're intending to stay in the Mojave but their handling of matters is not so different from the Sole Survivor himself/herself as they're shooting the things which endanger everyone.

Weirdly, Travis more or less summarizes the issue for the Commonwealth. "So, the Brotherhood is here to take over? Uh, I guess that's good. Better than Super Mutants I mean? Yeah." *pause* "We're all gonna die!"

In other words, the BOS is not making promises they can't keep when they say they're bringing order to the Wasteland--unlike the Institute who has done jack [censored] for 200 years. They're walking the walk. Albeit, the walk is making the Commonwealth the feudal domiciles of the Brotherhood.

When it comes to the settlements, the difference between the Minutemen and the BoS is that the settlements join the Minutemen out of gratitude after the Minutemen help them.

The BoS is out of fear of what will happen if they refuse, or by buying/persuasion.

If a settlement refuses to join the Minutemen I don't see them attacking, but the BoS? I don't think they'd lose any sleep over it.

The Institute ending is an interesting one because I think it remains ambiguous as to what you're exactly fighting for as the new Director of the Institute. Shaun's tenure of the Institute is a conservative interpretation of the Institute's doctrine. Status quo is God. All he wants is to continue the status quo of the Institute and keep things exactly as they are. If you've seen the Matt Damon movie, Elysium, it's an immigration and First World privilege movie where Jodie Foster's character is attempting to preserve the amazingly luxurious lifestyle of the ruling minority while everyone else suffers outside.

Are you fighting for a continuation of Shaun's dream? Are you fighting for the Institute to continue on? Are you fighting so you can enjoy your life in the robot-slave paradise? Or are you fighting to reform the Institute? To believe that it can be "fixed"? To share technology and infrastructure with the multitudes? To free the Synths gradually than all at once? The ambiguity is exemplified by Nick Valentine who thinks you'll do everything the same.

The lack of ending slides really cripple this game, I think.

I haven't completed the game yet and find myself at "the crossroad", still deciding. Charlemange19 really put it all in an objective view. Big ups, buddy (especially how you kept your cool with the G?tz-guy). My decision is based on both in-game experience and what has been said in this thread. I will ultimately choose the minutemen. Here's my reasoning behind why I did/didn't choose a faction:

BoS: Warmongering supremacists with a near religious indoctrination. They do get things done.. But it is too blunt and aggressive. They say they are protecting the people of the commonwealth, but they will commit genocied if you're not of the "right material"/have different views/have power rivaling their own. They will also rob you of food and resources if you're not acting like a mercenary for their ranks. They seem to care about themselfs and no other.

Railroad: While admirable in trying to save those robbed of freedom, I find them to be naive and too idealistic. From what I have seen the synths are just that, synths. Robots. When entering the institute you are greeted with a test-phase on how to simulate human feelings. I believe this has become so close to perfection that people cannot tell it apart from a real concious. After all, the creators of synths and the only ones with a deep insight into the subject, regard synths as only robots. They mean well, but seem to let feelings cloud judgement. Also; mass-slaughter of the institutes citizens... For a righteous movement, they are not really righteous.

The Institute: I leaned towards joining them after I had confronted them in their HQ. They have been busy advancing science for what the claim to be "for the better of mankind". They also tried to establish a government, which was ripped apart. I can however not come to terms with how they do things. They kidnap/murder and lie constantly to further their goal. From what I have seen they have done more harm than good. I have actually not seen any good, only synth research. Someone mentioned that they had put synths in ruling positions to sway people into the right direction (maybe "their" direction) and that they made crops purer/better in the wasteland. I do believe in neccessary evil, but they stretch it far, while at the same time not giving enough of the good. If I see more of the good being done further into the game, I might choose them. They, in my eyes, have the best chance of making the wastelands prosper.

The Minutemen: Will be my choice, unless I find some new information. They are actively helping the people of the wasteland, be it human, ghoul or supermutant. They do not seem to have any other agenda than rebuilding and defending its citizens from danger. If you do not like the rule you have in your current settlement, you move to another. The only ideas are; one for all, all for one. To me it looks like the closest you can come to freedom while also maintaining safety in the wastelands.

The Institute, for me, actually has some of Star Trek's Prime Directive contradictions going on for it. The Institute is full of people who consider the Wastelanders above them to be primitive and unable to look after themselves--and they have the technology to back it up. They also have a paternalist and dismissive attitude to the Wastelanders as well with the idea of changing society from behind the scenes monstrous when you think of the Wastelanders as thinking advlts with their own opinions.

And yes, Shaun is the Director to get you to consider the Institute as a viable faction.

The Nazi parallels are definitely there, though it's more like Warhammer 40K in that the not-so-small difference between the Nazis and the BoS is 90% of the people the BoS kill are actually dangerous monsters. It's just the remaining 10% is a bunch of decent, good people like the ghouls who you can make into one of your farms. They don't need food, they just grow it to help people.

Re: Minutemen Leadership

It's a bit more complicated than that. The issue being Starlight Drive-In, Sanctuary Hills, Hangman's Alley, and other sites being settlements established by the Minutemen versus the various settlements which choose to ally with the Minutemen. There's no civilian authority the Minutemen answer to and they recruit settlers with their tower radios with the mini-game making it clear you're the one making orders for what goes where.
This isn't a bad thing, mind you. It's just the people of the Wasteland don't have much experience with democracy anymore and the Minutemen will do a better job than the vast majority of people anyway.

In short, the Minutemen will rule most of the Commonwealth Wasteland if you do their quests because no one else is and no one cares if you do since you provide extra water, caps, and food.

Also, potentially jukeboxes and portraits (despite not affecting happiness! WHAT A CHEAT!)

Re: Minutemen lack of Firepower

There's also the simple fact the Minutemen can't fight Raiders, Super Mutants, and other monsters as well as the BoS. The original Minutemen were wiped out by the Gunners faction, I remind you, which is solidly welterweight as an enemy let alone heavyweight. The Mirelurk Queen is a monster straight from Call of Cthulhu but it's not alone in the Commonwealth. There's Behemoths (one of which the BoS destroys with a helicopter mounted machine gun manned by the Survivor), Deathclaws, more Mirelurk Queens, and worse. The artillery MIGHT be able to compensate for that but requires its operatives to get really-really close to succeed.

It's a big if.

The BoS/Minutemen ending gives the Minutemen all the firepower they need to win.

Ditto the Institute ending with the Sole Survivor in charge of the Minutemen.

They also have major more resources technologically to give to the Wastelanders. Thankfully, at least the Commonwealth people know how to make a FRIGGING WATER PURIFIER unlike the idiots in the Capital Wasteland.

VAPORIZE THE WATER. ITS NOT DIFFICULT.

*ahem*

The issue of what qualifies as human is a subject which comes up a lot in regular science-fiction and Fallout in-particular. The Sentient Deathclaws are certainly not human beings but seemed to be a relatively decent bunch of people. Ghouls ARE human by my standard but they're so mutated by radiation that they don't have many life-processes we think of. Super Mutants are humans too, by that standard, but suffering massive roid-rage and brain damage--which doesn't exactly lend itself to peaceful co-existence.

The Master mentioned the amount of radiation you suffer affects the process so that's why he wanted to get Vault-inhabitants. Fawkes is presumably a descendant of one of the original Vault-inhabitants infected by FEV and probably why he's so much smarter than anyone other than Lou Tennant and Marcus.

In any case, Synths are assembled rather than born and have cybernetic/organic brains. Nick is a robot who has a human being's personality and emotions downloaded into him.

The question could go round and round but the Railroad's stand that Synths are PEOPLE if not humans makes sense to me enough I'm behind them. They aren't a faction about rebuilding the Commonwealth, though, anymore than the Underground Railroad is a faction about rebuilding the Confederacy after the Civil War.

I can't remember that they pledged anything, only thing I know about them is that once months before the player meets Preston, most of the Minutemen have abandoned the people of Quincy and their fellow Minutemen.

And Synths aren't people.

Preston never even tried to negotiate with the Minutemen, even though it would probably be possible.

While I'm not really inclined to get bogged in the debate with you again, uou keep using Preston as a reference when he puts the General's tricorn on the first capable stranger he finds.

1) The Minutemen aren't anti-Synth like the BoS, 2) Ghouls would also be killed, which are also considered settlers, 3) Preston's cell of the Minutemen is pledged to help the people, they stayed and defended Quincy when the others ran off. Those other cells have ceased to exist as they're never see again. The Minutemen are their old selves, "Protect the people at a minute's notice" and all that.

Awww, thanks.

I think the Brotherhood of Steel is best exemplified by Paladin Danse and his arguments which the Sole Survivor can point out are rather stupid. Paladin Danse REALLY BELIEVES taking technology from Wastelanders is in their best interests. They don't stop to think Wastelanders might object to this for a variety of reasons.

They believe they're heroes and making the world a better place and offended if you suggest maybe, just maybe, they're kind of self-serving and paternalistic (or just plain wrong). That's the scary thing about the BOS, for better or worse, they're entirely sincere in their objectives and aren't motivated by selfishness. It's just their idea of helping Wastelanders is ruling them as a technocratic aristocracy.

Curie's quest is pretty much as close to an objective scientific experiment of consciousness as you're going to get in my opinion. Curie is a sophisticated computer program designed for a specific purpose which is sentient but non-human in its thinking (a distinction which I think is important) and limited by its programming. Hence why Curie being locked up for 200 years in isolation doesn't drive her utterly insane. When she uploads herself into a Synth body, she immediately gains emotions like boredom, the capacity to love, fear, and other emotions which make her significantly more "human." So much so the distinction between her and a human being is irrelevant.

The big thing about the Railroad is they've decided the Institute is evil, full stop, and deserving of no mercy when they're actually mostly just ignorant and self-serving with a few genuinely evil leaders (Shaun included since the FEV experiments were under his watch). I forgive them for feeling the same about the BOS since the BOS attacked them first and is planning wholesale genocide.

Complicating the Institute issue is that its members are clearly being kept in a state of isolation and information control. Patriot/The Kid clearly has no idea WHAT the Commonwealth is like and everyone is told it's some sort of radioactive hellhole where everyone is dead or insane. Likewise, Doctor Li is told Virgil is dead in an accident and not that he ran away because he was conducting human experimentation on hundreds of Wastelanders in something straight out of Nazi Germany/The Enclave's handbook.

The Institute is also told the Synths aren't people and they're mind-wiped regularly unless they appear happy and productive.

One good thing is you can have the Minutemen helping people no matter which group you side with.

Even the Institute and Minutemen can ally with the Director being the General of the Minutemen and perhaps using the latter to distribute the Institute's resources.

Most of the people in the common wealth are against Synths.

again, there is hypocrisy here. The Institute are evil for grabbing a few people in the hope of reversing the mutant virus and making the wasteland safer? How many hundreds of people does the Sole Survivor murder to make the wasteland safer? If the Institute want to grab a few raiders and experiment on them, *everyone* is better off

Virgil ran away because he contracted the virus, and couldn't physically work anymore.

Desdemona, amusingly, is flat-out WRONG about a lot of her assumptions. For example, the reason the Railroad brainwashes Synths into believing they're human beings with memories is because they think human beings will never accept Synths amongst their ranks and it's for their own protection. Not only does this give many Synths an incredible identity crisis (since they don't KNOW they're Synths), it also means the many Synths the Railroad helps can't campaign for their own rights and equality.

Desdemona, for example, says the Minutemen will mutiny if the General tries to save the Synths of the Institute.

And if you go with the Minutemen?

They...don't.

Likewise, Nick Valentine and the Railroad aren't especially chummy. Nick Valentine, for example, HATES it when you argue the Railroad should liberate all Synths by force. He fought for his acceptance as a Synth by BEING A SYNTH versus pretending to be human.

He hates the Institute but his opinion of the Railroad is kind of dismissive. I wish we could have talked to him about it more.

Uhm, okay, now I'm severely questioning you because Virgil gave HIMSELF the virus to help him RUN AWAY. Did you miss that part?

I actually agree with you otherwise. By your argument, killing all of the Institute to make the Wasteland safer is justified!

no, the wasteland wouldn't be safer though. The Institute are actively trying to make it better, sending synths out in the dead of night to replace crops on farms that are failing, ensuring there is food etc.

The Institute are pre-war, same as the PC. They still live in the world where robots police the streets, work in hospitals, look after your baby. Synths are just the next generation of Mr Handys. The V3 synths were developed because abovegrounders could spot v1 synths. A V3 could go about it's good deeds without fear of being harassed.

The whole "hatred runs deep" thing comes from the Commonwealth Government. The tribes gathered to try and form a Government, but it ended in a bloodbath. Of Course, everyone blamed the "Evil Institute" and their synths, and they are now the bogeyman. What they forget, either out of convenience or ignorance, is that it was the Institute that called for the tribes to gather in the first place! The Government was their idea. But the unwashed rabble just couldn't agree or compromise with each other and so they ended up killing each other. It wasn't the Institute, although the whole thing made the Institute think twice and stop being such a visible presence.

I'm sure if you side with the Institute, you get a different story to if you side with the Railroad of BOS. Cos people talk about the Institute on these forums and it bears no resemblance to the Institute I learned about in the game lol

Institute forever *stands and salutes*