(It should be apparent from the thread title and the forum section, but just to be sure: SPOILERS FOLLOW)


I just finished the MQ for the first time, and I thought I'd post my impressions.


So where to start? At the beginning, I suppose. And the beginning of this game is (IMO) far and away its weakest point.


I deeply dislike the overly detailed background for the player character, and I find the PC's initial personal tragedy to be overly motivating: I want my character to have a platform from which to explore the game world, not an obsessive need to follow the main plot, come what may. I found myself fighting against the characterisation given to "me", and in fighting it, I found myself increasingly alienated from the character. This wasn't helped by the player VA, nor by the dialogue wheel which often gives us ambiguous keywords, so that what our toon says isn't what we wanted to say - in some cases quite the opposite.


The Minutemen. Personally, I didn't find the radiant quests as annoying as most people seem to have done. They provided an excellent vehicle to go an explore the commonwealth and grind a few levels, albeit at the expense of a fair amount of what appears to be called ludonarrative dissonance - the idea that the game and the story are working against one another. I couldn't escape the feeling of "why am I even talking about this if all I want is to find the stupid brat?"


The MM quests do get repetitive, of course, and allowing three concurrent radiants is probably too much - one would have done nicely and I wouldn't have felt so smothered in quest objectives. Still, overall it worked quite well.


Having said that, I was very glad to leave them behind and chase the MQ a bit. Piper is a joy to have around (as are all the companions I've adventured with - Piper, Cait, Nick, Codsworth, Dogmeat and even Preston - all made interesting companions) and things picked up considerably from this point.


In particular, hunting down Kellogg and the memory journey afterwards were among the stand out moments of the game. The synths (which I'd not really encountered before this mission) were interesting. Tough enough that I couldn't take them lightly, but not so tough that I had to pump endless rounds into them before they died. If I have a complaint about finding Kellogg, it's the way you have to walk into the obvious trap. This was one of (many, many) things I hated about Dragon Age: Origins - being forced to do stupid things to make it easier for the designer to set up the fight the way they want. That said, at least an avenue of retreat was left open. When two rounds to the head didn't kill him I could still run like hell and pick off synths from cover.


Another stand out moment: emerging from that building and seeing the Prydwen overhead with the BOS announcing their arrival. I knew the BOS were coming, and I knew they had an airship and that was still impressive as hell. Well done.


Back to Kellogg, exploring Kellogg's memories is another high point. In fact, Kellogg comes perilously close to stealing the entire show. Certainly he's far more interesting than the somewhat bloodless Father. I didn't join the BoS this time so I can't comment on Maxson, but Kellogg is tough without being two-dimensional. Aside from some of the companions (like Nick and Cait) he's probably the best developed NPC in game.


The Glowing Sea: This too worked well for me.I was playing a somewhat frail sneak/sniper type, so my only option for exploring was to do it in power armour. So plodding through the radiation, walking to conserve power, and looking at the blasted landscape through the PA HUD ... it was like being undersea and trudging along in a pressure suit. I was always aware that rapid death awaited if I took the suit off.


The endless desolation also worked. After the very dense Commonwealth, the sparseness of the Sea made a strong contrast, and is about what I'd expect from somewhere that had been very heavily nuked. OK, I know the land would probably recover faster than that over 200 years, but this is the future as it was going to be in 1955 or so. I'm willing make allowances.


One quibble on the subject of the Glowing Sea - ease off on the teleporting monsters a little. Mole rats using burrowing as a combat teleport is silly, but I could cope with it. But if I see a scorpion on the far horizon and bounce a sniper rifle shell off its carapace, I do not expect to have it appear behind me in less time than it takes me to reload. Especially if the justification is "it tunnels". Either give the damn things a maximum range or else give the Coursers shovels and spare the Institute the power drain caused by current teleportation mechanism.


The Railroad and the Institute are fun. A lot of the quests are radiant, but there seems to be more variety. I know a lot of them are the same as the MM ones (rescue a kidnapped synth (say what?) or clear the type 1s out of a building) ... but they didn't grate the way the MM quests had come to do. Not sure why, it may simply be the variety. Both factions had decent NPCs. I disliked Desdemona, but I disliked her in the way I was supposed to dislike her and not in fingernails-on-a-blackboard way of Mama Murphy (why did we need her? I mean at all?) or the eye rolling way of Father. About Father...


OK, so I don't like the premise and lil' Shawnee was always going to have his work cut out trying to impress me as a player. All the same: here's a kid who so loved his non-violent, law school trained mother that he saved he from the cryotubes ... and then set up a fight between her and the Institute's most feared cold blooded assassin. Because he wanted to see who would win. And since the odds seemed too much in his mom's favour, the assassin is also cybernetically enhanced and has a dozen or synths to back him up. Then, once she wins and demonstrates that (against all logic) she is a dangerous unknown quantity, he then starts grooming her for leadership of the Institute. It. Makes. No. Sense. At. All.


Shawn rose to be head of the institute, a faction that values rationality most highly. So we can assume that Shawn is both intelligent and rational. Yet these actions are completely lunatic. Maybe facing his imminent demise has knocked a screw loose and he's slowly having a nervous breakdown, it's about the only thing that fits the facts that makes any sense at all. (That, or the player is an experimental 4th Gen synth with memories harvested from the PC's corpse after they died when the crysosystems failed. That would explain pretty much everything).


Mass Fusion: I put this one off as long as I could. I had a somewhat shaky start - a legendary knight spawned on the root just around the corner from the arrival point and kicked my posterior before I realised what was happening. After reloading however, I enjoyed this quest a lot. Sneaking around the long way so I could shoot Knighty's power core out the back of his armour; crouching in the lift picking off the BoS ambushers with Kellogg's pistol as fast as they could show their faces; getting the berylium agitator with a faulty radiation suit and then finding three working ones afterwards. All good stuff.


Brotherhood vs Railroad. Also good fun; defending the base was good solid stuff. Nothing to write home about perhaps, but then I'd been itching to start a fight with one of the BoS types and it was nice to indulge myself. Cambridge Police station was good too. I'd have liked to spend more time scouting and sniping, but when I got inside a certain range, everyone else charged. Oh well, I'd got most of the enemy by that point.


Blowing up the Prydwen: this was every bit as much fun as the moment watching the Pyrden arrive. I talked my way past the challenges and installed the charges without incident, which was nice. I was expected some scripted mishap to force a fight whether I wanted one or not. It was good to be able to choose the non-violent solution for once. If you can call blowing a hydrogen airship out of the skies non-violent, that is.


Assault on the institute: I wasn't quite sure why I was heading through the old robotics section except that that's where the quest marker was. This is a problem I've had quite a lot with the game; the objectives flash up and are then blotted out by the cute quest graphic which then stays on long enough that I'm not watching when it goes away and the instructions are displayed again. Not a big deal since you can generally read it from the log, but I've had things change, map markers added and extra equipment appear in my inventory - all without knowing why it happened.


That aside: good fight. The institute makes a good combat arena and I enjoyed the fight. Father's invincible certainly of his own righteousness was a little disappointing. I'd have like to be able to raise the subject of murdering people so they could be replaced by synths or synth attacks on settlements for no apparent reason ... but it wouldn't have added anything I don't suppose. Shawn is a high functional nutjob; it doesn't really do to anolyse it beyond that point.


The touch of giving the player the same device that Burke gives the Lone Wanderer in F3 is a nice touch. In fact, I have something I want to get off my chest.


All you folks who complained (and are still complaining) about destroying megaton being too lightly dealt with in F3 - this is all your fault. This is what it takes to blow up a major nexus of civilisation in a post apocalyptic world and having it mean something - the whole game is about that, and nothing else. Nothing else would do it justice. So having established that, perhaps we can all move on. And Beth? If for F5 we could move on from the family theme as well, that would be appreciated. I don't want to spend the next one finding out that I'm the third clone cousin, twice removed of the Lone Wanderer, or that I'm secretly my own grandfather due to a time travel accident happening later in the plot. Please, let's find a new theme.


As you might gather from the above, I have slightly mixed feelings about the actual ending. It would have been nice to have had an option not to nuke Boston by that point. I suppose I could have walked away. Didn't try it for fear of what I might mess up if I left a major quest-line hanging like that.


To an extent this is to the credit of the writers. I came to like characters in all the factions, and I didn't want to kill any of them. Another criticism of F3 was the lack of the trademark Fallout "no right answers" moral ambiguity. And yet here it is, writ large. There really wasn't a good way to resolve this conflict, and while I've only done one ending, I doubt the others are much better. Some will favour the BoS or the Institute for political or philosophical grounds, but I doubt anyone's hands will be any cleaner after those endings.


I will say that I think the ambiguity works better on a smaller scale. F1 & 2 had no-win situations, but the Master and the Enclave were clear bad guys and you could feel good about beating them. I'm not sure I feel good about the solution here at all. I mean I was never going to choose the militaristic BoS (Kudos for having them back on form after Lyon's Kinder Gentler Brotherhood, BTW) and the institute's mix of hard pragmatism and intellectual elitism sounds lack a recipe for misery, even with the player nominally in charge. The ending was well written, but still unsatisfying, and I say that not as a complaint so much as as feedback. I can appreciate the intention here, but I'm not sure it worked as well as it might.


That said, it was nice not to have an cookie cutter bad guy. I guess there's no pleasing some people, even when the person is me.


Overall? Overall it was a damn good ride, albeit one that nearly derailed in the first five minutes. I'm looking forward to the CK and some DLC. A few more side quests would be nice.

That is well written! Was quite interesting to read.

Subject has been debated many times already not quite as well written tho but in the big lines everybody agree on the fact that the story make no sense at all and many questions remain.

MAybe it was intentional, maybe they lacked time, that i do not know, but whoever you side with you're left with some kind of " well is that it?" feeling.

- Brotherhood searching for technology decide to nuke the institute wich contains advanced technologies that could improve everyones lives (they could only have blown synth production facility), makes no sense what so ever.

- Railroad blowing up the facilities making what they are sworn to protect make no sense yet again. And again this faction is the most egoist of them all, protecting only synths living hidden underground not caring about humanity at all. The whole railroad makes no sense at all, only Deacon is a decent written individual and apart if you side with railroad he will die wich is a shame.

- Institute full of scientist that replace, experiment on surface human in a twisted goal we never know in the game because the poor dialogue system doesnt allow you to ask interesting questions....

The general behavior of Shaun experimenting on his own father is a sign that he is a seriously deranged individual.

Your general idea that it is for you the player to realize that in war you sacrifice decent people or have to make choices... Well alright but at that point it make no sense. Most conflict were resolved either by surrendering or by peace decrets so the moral here makes no sense. It's kinda simplified and make you feel very annoyed and disapointed because of the poor choice you have, you as the player are prompt by the game to make choices, choices that make no sense at all.

This game doesnt treat about human war but war led by total morons with the IQ of a pair of socks where the only thing you can do is answer sarcastic or agressive but in all that it doeesnt matter since you have to achieve lunatic quests to progress with no option to simply say "no".

People act like this is out of character for The Brotherhood, but it really isn't. They blew up the Crawler and Raven Rock in Fallout 3 as well despite all the technology both those locations contained.

The Brotherhood doesn't collect technology to help people, and never has. Its primary objective is to contain or eliminate technology they deem threatening: which means keeping it from the general populace as well. In this case, they felt The Institute's technology was too dangerous to be kept around at all, so they nuke it.

Its pretty much Brotherhood standard operating procedure 101.

The Railroad doesn't care about the propagation of Synths as a species (for lack of a better word). Since their entire goal is to basically make Synths think they're human and blend them into the general human population. They want Synths to become human, not remain as their own separate species.

I've pointed this out my self previously, its the Brotherhood standard operation procedure to destroy their enemies bases, even if the tech could be useful to them.

Actually its the standard operating procedure in most of the Fallout games.....

Fallout: option to nuke the Master's location.

Fallout 2: Destruction of the oil rig.

Fallout Tactics: option to nuke Vault 0.

Fallout 3: Raven Rock and the Crawler.

Fallout 4: Nuking the Institute.

and of course the Brotherhood is usually involved in these nuclear options.

Fallout New Vegas actually was the first not to really give us the option, we can of course personally travel to one Legion base and wipe out the occupants and the game ends with an assault on the other.

Which kind of makes no sense. Sacrifice the lives of your agents to get these synths free and then obliterate any chance of there ever being more. Just strange considering the trouble they go through and the moral high ground about synths being alive and having rights, but apparently that right will only last however long a synth lifespan is.

Thank you for this review!

I agree with you up until leaving Fort Hagen. The BoS arriving was well done, and impressive. Afterwards the visit to the Memory Den was impressive also, and I wanted to continue the rest of the main quest. I had delayed it for quite some time, since I enjoy the game greatly - without the main quest. I was level 36 when I went to Fort Hagen, and I took Nick with me. He should have (I heard this) unique dialog with Kellog. But nothing happened, since Nick remained at the door, far away. It probably did not trigger his dialog, if there is any. Failed and aborted dialogs are one of the failings of this game - not to speak about the 'new dialog'...

After the Memory Den I left Goodneighbour, and there it was: In Boston were several Vertibirds in the air, firing at unimportant enemies and disturbing things, I had not yet seen. And they fall out of the sky like ripe plums. Awful. One Vertibird crash may be cool, 20 per hour are not cool. There is even a video somewhere, where a crashing Vertibird kills an NPC during a dialog! Really awful. Every commander wasting soldiers and material without any gains this way would soon meet with an 'accident' in real war, besides the fact that I must ask, where the 1000 BoS soldiers and hundreds of Vertibirds are coming from...

After this I restored an older save (I always have saves before I start something), and forgot the main quest. It is quite fine now for me. There are radiant quests from the BoS, I will look for the Railroad (had no contact yet) and do their radiant quests, and will do Minuteman quests. There is a lot to do, and all of it is nice. But this contrived main quest - when I ever restart it, I will do it as fast as possible, with the Minuteman ending, because this seem at least a bit logical to me. I have a lot of problems with the main quest, and the different endings, but have to admit, that I did not play them - only read about it.

My brother played the Institute ending completely, and after this he lost all fun in this game. He does now play other things and says after being forced to kill two factions (just to save one) he has lost all fun with game. Ok - I did tell him, that he missed a lot of other options, but this is an example what this kind of story can do.

Sadly there are massive flaws in the story, and while the BoS surely is true to their original concept the contrived 'moral ambiguity' is not ideal and does not work for me.

Agreed. It would pretty much be unusual for The Brotherhood to not to have nuked The Institute.

The Railroad are pretty nutty all around, but from their point of view: they believe Synths *are* human basically. So their goal is to save all the ones they can, and integrate them into human society. Basically turn them into humans and make everyone else think that's what they are: regular humans. Your fellow man etc.

Their goal isn't to protect Synths as a separate 'race' or 'species' or whatever, or even to openly advocate separately for Synth-rights, because that would run contrary to their ideas of Synths and humans being no different. Destroying the Synths reproduction machine falls right in with that line of thinking.

Call them crazy or misguided, but it does make sense from the perspective of their own internal logic.

BoS's primary mission is to stop advanced technology from destroying the world again, not collecting it. Collecting it is just a side-objective to help achieve this part because the BoS believes that they could use tech to achieve this mission.

As such, the Institute is all they hate: users of very advanced technology that can be used to bring another global catastrophe onto the world.

We already do have the answer to this question.

And the answer is... there is absolutely no grand master plan, that is just an urban legend in the wastelands. They create Synths because they are practical servants and they replace people for espionage, experiments and "grocery shopping".

As far as experiments go, it is also answered: they believe that technology they invent could prove useful. Originally, they wanted to use it to fix the Wastelands, but after the failure of the Commonwealth Provisional Government, they abandoned that plan. Right now, they seemingly intend to use the inventions once they expanded further underground (which became possible thanks to their fancy new Nuclear Reactor).

The only thing we don't know the point of are the FEV experiments, but that may get answered once the Cyborg DLC (hinted in the terminals) comes out.

That's mainly because the Mojave BoS just sits in their bunker in NV XP But Mr. House is pretty sure they want to blow him up and Yes-Man goes crazy if you tell him you will be sparing the BoS because, again, he is pretty sure he is gonna get blown up by them.

So yep, this is their modus operandi: blow up what you don't like ;P

Oh no, you have to kill people in the war! How horrible!

FO4 can now freely become an example of why the shallow and stupid black&white stories and conflicts are made in the gaming indistry: if you have players like all factions and the characters in them, they will whine about having to kill the enemies of their chosen faction, no matter how much sense it makes. They'll whine and whine about not having a peaceful ending, even if that peaceful ending makes 0 sense due to what kind of organizations the factions in the question are.

Because, quite frankly, in almost every game where you choose your faction, you try to destroy ALL the opposition when possible. The only thing that makes FO4 different is that while in other games you choose between good and bad guys, in FO4 you have all warring factions be good and bad, but never truly diabolical... and always made of human beings. Usually the only time you can make peace is for minor factions in optional side quests, but rarely ever in the main storyline and with main factions.

Making you feel horrible for your choices is the exact thing Beth wanted here, for it shows the REAL wars and real sources of conflict.

To the OP:

One of the things I think is worth noting in regards to Shaun/Father is what most likely is "wrong" with him, and I'm not referring to the cancer that inevitably will conclude his existence without outside interference.

Shaun is very, very likely a high functioning psychopath. He has the ability to be perfectly normal, to seem empathetic and even to rise to prominent positions within his own organization. He even knows how to persuade others to view his point of view as the 'correct' one.

"Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature." - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath

This, I feel, describes what we experience of Shaun to a tee. You're not his parent, you're an experiment, and later a tool. He makes sure you a 'worthy' without taking time to rebuild his family. He shows no remorse at any of the crimes committed in the Institute's and later his name. From the deaths in Vault 111 to everything in between that and his death.

With that in mind, it explains perfectly why he does things like keep the FEV experiments running even when the head researcher (Virgil) is begging him to shut them down. It makes perfect sense why he just doesn't cut Kellogg loose due to his 'viciousness'. It makes sense why, instead of opening his parent's cryopod and being there (or a representative) to explain things in detail, he watches and observes and treats it like an experiment. It's why he waits only until he's dying to even bother, when he's known right where his remaining parent is his whole life. He didn't try to make that connection because he didn't need it -- being a psychopath.

Whether he's a psychopath due to his genetics or his upbringing, we'll never really know. It is probably a combination, with the Institute proving a poor surrogate parent to a child who would need good parenting the most.

Excellent write up OP.

Unfortunately, I played an Institute play through before attempting the Railroad, and that ruined the Railroad for me. As Director of the Institute I can do so much more good for all the Commonwealth, that it renders the Railroad little more than superfluous nutjobs.

I have in the past criticized Bethesda's insistence on Nuking the Institute, but I may have been mistaken.

But I am only mistaken if it is the only option available. If the Institute is beaten conventionally in the last battle, then other options should be available for the player to manage their faction's victory. But if the battle is only won by nuking the Institute then that's just the way it has to be, like it or not.

Why though?

The player doesn't lead The Brotherhood, Elder Maxson is the faction leader, nor does he lead The Railroad: Des does. In both cases, the player follows the orders of their 'superior'.

The Minutemen are a possible exception. But really, the player is only nominally in charge of that group. With "General of the Minutemen" being a mostly meaningless title.

I felt fine about the railroad up until the point they ask me to go into the institute for the assault with them. They pretty much go in and kill everything that moves, including unarmed scientists. If it wasn't for me asking Father for the evac code, they would have burned every man woman and child alive in there. It made me feel like a terrorist actually. An option like FNV where you can go in and make the Brotherhood base uninhabitable without killing everyone would have been my choice. But nope, it's murder everyone to finish the quest. BOS is no better. Preston is the only redeemable character as far as the attacks can play out.

Almost forgot about the Prydwen too. All I could think of as it fell was a little voice in the back of my mind screaming " don't worry about meeeee maaaaam!!!!"

Even prior to the MQ completion, there are increasing Minutemen patrols throughout the Commonwealth. They are around towns you control and build up. The more towns you take control of and build up, the more patrols that exist. I've seen MM holding posts from Nahant (right in front of the Oceanologic Society) to holding a series of bungalows as a station near Lake Cochituate if you hold Somerville and keep it defended and all the way up to Skylanes 1981 near Tenpines. This is all before the MQ ends. Then there are the 3-4 MM patrols that roam around.

The Minutemen are exactly what you make of them. If you hide from Preston and refuse to help, they are a bit of a joke and mildly useless aside from the occasional artillery barrage. OTOH, if all 29 settlements have near 20 settlers and you have provisioners for all of them and they get defended when the attacks come up, the patrols can be spotted regularly... as long as you're not just fast traveling everywhere.

(On top of that, some of the artillery barrages are darn murderous when you've got three-four settlements triangulated somewhere. I've seen 10 shells land in sequence before.)

Sure you can build them up, but my point still stands. You aren't *really* in charge of The Minutemen. Nobody is. Its a loose collection of volunteer citizen soldiers, which has no defined military organization. You can expand their network or let them remain tiny and inconsequential, but you can't change the primary way they're organized: which is to say, they are only loosely organized and remain as such.

The MM don't have to listen to you, and the individual soldiers/groups can pretty much do as they please. http://i.imgur.com/3NBuRSc.jpg.

Lt Andronicus

Well, true, certainly in the Railroad case you may have no choice since they do have that whole terrorist thing going on. Des, makes it pretty clear that she'll happily destroy the lives of humans to save her precious synths.

But with the BOS we have the precedent of the Player being able to defy Elder Maxson in the case of Danse and still getting promoted afterwards. Perhaps it would be better to argue that their should be no options in 'Blind Betrayal', which would keep consistency with 'Nuclear (Not much of an) Option'.

With the Minutemen, you point to yet another missed opportunity for Bethesda to have given greater depth to this faction. Because yes, out all the factions this should definitely have been one where a more humane victory should be available, if possible.

But again, if the only way to defeat the Institute is total destruction then that is what it must be.

I would like to point out, assuming that's a line from Pinned, the Institute quest, the General essentially orders the Minuteman in question to go against his very duty and stand down and not attempt to protect TS Wallace from the Institute recruitment attempt. I'm not surprised he is completely insubordinate. He was completely relieved to see the general and ready to hand reins off to them until the General starts going 'let's not be so hasty'.

My point is really this -- the player is as much in charge of the Minutemen as he is the Institute as the Director -- he gets saluted and given some new radiant quests. Ostensibly the General has the power to tear down their homes and rip up their crops, but we all acknowledge most of that as being game engine crunchiness. Essentially he still makes more 'how this organization is built' decisions than he ever would as Director or Sentinel.

Regardless, the guy makes it pretty clear that the MM are not the player's personal army. And don't have to obey your orders if they don't want to. Sure they'll happily follow along if they personally agree with the orders: but a military that does not make. The General is only nominally 'in-charge' of the MM lore-wise, its a first among equals role with no actual power.

Its been awhile since I've played that quest. But I certainly don't remember flying in the face of the MM. The SS was simply saying "There's more to this than you guys know, let me try and negotiate" (which is absolutely true, since T.S. Wallace is eventually glad to join up with the Institute once he learns they're here to offer him a job) but the MM won't have it: they just want to start shooting and to hell with their General's orders.

That's a very disorganized military structure, when the grunts can disobey direct orders from their 'superiors' based on their own personal desires.

And it makes sense for the MM, since they're a volunteer militia. Not soldiers.

Gameplay wise, you're probably right for the most part. But I was talking purely from an in-lore perspective.

It doesn't surprise me that you can't order The MM to not nuke The Institute because I doubt they'd obey your order anyway. They'll do whatever they want when it comes right down to it. Orders or no orders.

On the other hand: in-lore The Director is shown to basically be a dictatorial role. Likewise, Brotherhood Sentinel in-lore is an actual honest-to-goodness military rank. Because The Brotherhood is a military.

So I can have rebellious Minutemen brought up on charges?

If you like this kind of 'decisions' in a video game, fine with me.

But there are players, who do not like it. If they are a majority or not I cannot tell. But there are more than a few.

The problem is this: Are people proud because of being able to make 'hard decisions' in a video game? I mean really?

If one in his real life has to make hard decisions (not life/death, but hard decisions if someone can keep his/her job, or something similar) she/he will probably be grateful not to be forced to do this in relaxing video games. Because in real life there often is no way around the decision, and every decision hurts somebody. In a video game people look for sort of a dream world, where they can do more things they want, and maybe also would love to find, that hard decisions with a bit of work and thinking can be avoided or at least done in a less hurting way. This as a possible answer to your 'shallow and stupid black&white stories' criticism.

I understand that you do not want dumb games with the absolute good vs. the absolute evil.

I too do not like these things.The factions in FO4 are ok for me.

We have the reckless group, who in their arrogance think, they know best, what is good for humanity. And people 'who mean only well for you' were always in history responsible for great evils. Despite all they claim they are self serving only, and are exactly the kind of people who are always proud of their 'hard decisions for the good of all'. But these decisions only hurt others, never them.

We have the naive and also somewhat reckless 'social warriors', but in many ways they are quite harmless.

We have the BoS as typical military unit, but without civil direction, who exists in a narrowly defined ideal, never questions itself and never will change because they cannot change. Except when one person (Elder Lyons) tries to change them - which did not work. They should be controlled, as any military unit, but who should do it, and who will not abuse this power? (And it would change the Fallout-World deeply).

And we have the Militia, who are neither good nor bad, but just protecting themselves and their own.

My problem is, that the story writers did not even try to allow solutions, which would probably also call for killing, but are more subtle and harder to find.

No - we have the 'Hollywood-Solution': Kaboom in the end, solves all.

Would it not have been enough - only as an example - to kill several leaders in the Institute and so change the direction? The same goes for the BoS, they could have been forced into a draw back which conserved their face.

The Railroad could be made meaningless, when there are no new Synths, and the Synths they already have 'saved' cannot procreate and will die a natural dead later, especially in this violent world. And this are just my fast thoughts, I am sure the story writers could have found much better subtle (but not complete non violent) solutions.

Leave the brutal solutions in the game, why not? People who like them, can use them. But earlier CRPGs were much more subtle and intelligent - and that CRPGs become more and more Hollywood-like action and nothing more (and less role play) is a fact I do not like.

Just my thoughts to this - I do enjoy FO4, even when I criticize the main quest and the general story setup. In Beths games the small things (locations, letters, notes and small side quests) often were better than the main quest. And such small things I find more than enough in FO4.

And if you like the main quest as it is - fine for you - enjoy it!

As always, it depends on what dialog options the Survivor chooses.

They can be 'whoa, guys, let's talk this out' and even then the MM are very wary if you make your Charisma checks. You can attempt to order them (and that screenshot appears to be a definite failed charisma check). You can attempt to bribe them. You can also choose to go in shooting and kill the Institute recruiting squad. Or you can just gun down the Minutemen. All are ways to complete the quest. Though killing Enrico gets you Banished.

When I did the quest as my Institute playthrough, I remember the Minutemen being 'thank goodness you're here, you're a welcome surprise' and they try to explain the situation and ask you to lead the charge.

Militias (the very term inplies it) have always been far looser than any real military organization. I'd expect much tighter discipline from the BoS day to day. Even then, the Sentinel has precisely zero orders he's allowed to give anyone.

My point being -- General isn't a meaningless title if you don't want it to be. Just as Director isn't for someone who destroys the Institute's enemies and Sentinel isn't for someone who follows Maxson to the end. They're all about the same in what you can and can't do, and in some ways, the General can do a bit more due to how the Settlement system works.

But, yes, if you end the game with basically only four-five Settlements and a beat up old Castle... yeah, "general" isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.

I had to go back and check (I have a save at around that point) but it actually isn't a Charisma check, its an attempt by the player to give a Direct order to the MM to stand down:

http://imgur.com/a/mFcn7

You can be forceful with them initially, or you can be polite and tell them "good" work, but also ask them to peacefully stand down. The MM will refuse this, and you can try to issue a direct order, which they also refuse to do. Its only after passing a charisma check saying "You don't have all the information here, I do. They aren't going to hurt him." That the MM finally agrees to stand down.

Again, this just shows that the General of the MM is purely a figurehead role. Lore-wise, you have no actual authority within the organization. Its a civil-service servile role, in an organization which isn't a military and is really only barely an organization. Orders mean nothing to them, and ultimately they can do what they want. You aren't the 'leader' of the MM, you're a guy whom they sorta-kinda all agree is 'in-charge' of this loose collection of citizen soldiers, but in-practice the title is meaningless.

In my opinion the Director of the Institute is hands down the most directly powerful position that the Player can achieve.

Sentinel of the BOS is number two. I don't know what you get for winning with the Railroad, but that probably ties for unimportance with Preston's Water Carrier (General of the Minutemen).

At least the brotherhood is seen in the commonwealth so you got the impression to be part of something but the minutemen? Come on between settlers unable to build their own waterpumps, sending you eradicate a bunch of ghouls at the end of the map and pseudo patrols appearing for a particular quest or place they are inexistant.

Btw general of minutemen mean you lead them it is said by preston many times + you take the castle, + you are the only one actually doing something.

They are a militia yes but militia take orders despite being actually not part of the army, look at the american civil war many of them fought side by side with regulars and were led by army officers unless im wrong ( i apologize if i do).

Luckily, that conversation isn't the only one where the Survivor gives an order in their role as General. It's the General's command that sends the Minutemen into the Institute. Garvey even says they'll be waiting on the General's orders to send the Minutemen into the facility.

Plenty of Minutemen storm an unknown facility and many of them give their lives. So, yeah, the General can and does give orders. And they get followed.

It's a matter of not giving orders that fly in the face of the Minuteman's calling -- defending the people of the Commonwealth -- which is exactly what happens in Pinned.

At this point, though, we're derailing the thread. If you want to talk about it further, feel free to start another thread.

Right, but only if the MM personally agree with those orders. Attacking The Brotherhood and Institute are both examples of orders they want to follow. This isn't a good basis for a sound military structure. Or any kind of military structure really. Its clear that when push comes to shove, and they don't want to do something: they won't.

Personally, I don't think asking them to hold up while you try to talk a situation out is something that flys in the face of the MM. If the MM think that resolving situations violently is how they should always respond....then that's a problem in and of itself IMO.

But you're right, this is off topic. So agree to disagree.