I'll bet you 10,000 internet points that Preston Garvey is essential and you can't "wipe them out". If you kill the nameless npcs he'll fight you until he's "knocked out" then get back up like nothing happened asking you to complete his quest.

If they are responsible for defacing the USS Constitution, they're done for.

I imagine the laser musket is a "poor man's laser rifle", and somewhat of a stop-gap weapon, cobbled together to give the Minutemen a chance against better armed and armored enemies.

There was plenty....only three gangs took the offer and Benny had to challenge the leader of his Tribe to get the power to seal the deal. He tells you everything if you talk with him in Caesar's tent.

A Gauss Rifle is a high technology artifact that only a couple factions are capable of manufacturing, if any are. If the Minutemen could afford/manufacture them.....they probably wouldn't need the Survivor. The Laser Musket...from what little info we have....is being crafted in the current day using materials found in Pre-War ruins. It's probably the best the locals can do. I suspect it's a field expedient version of the Recharger Rifle that relies on a manually operated Dynamo to charge the firing batteries. While a member of the BoS or Enclave, as well as more well heeled Wasteland factions like the Regulators, would turn their noses up at it.....it would be a godsend to a Wastelander who needs a weapon for self-defense or hunting but for whom buying a box of shells is a major investment. Assuming the Minutemen are a Wasteland militia, similar to it's namesake, they are responsible for arming themselves...and that may be all they can afford.

All three were adequately explained by in-game dialog......Caesar tells you that he chose the Roman Empire as window dressing for his Totalitarian Dictatorship because it was completely unlike the cultures of the tribals he was conquering and he needed a unified culture to impose on his slaves to make his scheme work. The Omertas serve House and are cosplaying Mafiosi at his bidding because he chose to make a reference to the years of Mob control of Vegas. The Kings were squatting in a school for Elvis impersonators and started reading the materials lying around and the King felt the rebel persona of Elvis's early career was a perfect expression of the kind of gang he wanted to run.

The Minuteman symbology doesn't bother me...living in Massachusetts they would be surrounded by references to them, why not use them for inspiration?

Quit your Heresy! Why would a Wastelander need a junk gun like the laser musket when they have a Gauss Rifle and 5000 MFCs in their inventory like your player does?

I imagine that the Timepeople raided a museum, and decided to change their names to the Minutemen, and stole a bunch of vintage laser muskets.

its one thing to speculate but its another thing to bash a company's writing on things that haven't been seen yet. There is a distinction.

Completely true, especially with Fallout 3. Bethesda needs to hire some better writers. Skyrim sold 23 million copies, they can afford to hire one or two people who will actually put thought into what they're writing. The quests in Fallout 3 that didn't require hand waving and turning your brain off were far outnumbered by the ones that did. And Little Lamplight? That should never, ever, ever have made it into the live game.

It's entirely fair to make a guess based off of their previous work.

The entire Fallout Bible existing in the first place hinges on the original devs writing things that don't add up, that they cannot agree on, or that were written into the games "just to be cool", with Chris Avellone speculating as to the reasoning.

So you'll have to excuse me while I have a laugh at "how past Fallouts have approached all topic matters with an educated point of view"



Longknife was bashing Bethesda's writing based on someone speculating whether laser rifles were used for hunting, pre-war. Context is pretty key.
By all means, if you want to bash writing that they have actually done, feel free to do so (though, also expect me to point out older games bad writing for comparison) But it seems pretty nonsensical, to me, to bash writing for someones speculation on something that we have not even seen yet.

I think you people in the laser musket discussion need to realize that fallout does, always has, and always will run on Hollywood logic. It can get away with not always making sense because the technology of the world is beyond our scope, and therefor we cannot make accurate parallels to our own technology. Also, it's science fiction.

I think you people in the laser musket discussion need to realize that fallout does, always has, and always will run on Hollywood logic. It can get away with not always making sense because the technology of the world is beyond our scope, and therefor we cannot make accurate parallels to our own technology. Also, it's science fiction.

why not?

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Yan - As I explained in the comment you quoted, a smoothbore weapon does not impart spin on the bullet. Rifling does this by make the projectile spin while still in the barrel. This allows the bullet to maintain accuracy and range better. Without rifling you are at the mercy of any imperfection in the barrel and just plain physics and ballistics 101.

Great post.

Not to mention that musket balls were typically smaller than the diameter of the barrel. This meant that ball could actually bounce down the length of the barrel and would not necessarily be firing straight when it exited.

I hope they're revealed to be nothing more than another gang of raiders and that nobody actually cares about them.

Get it. Thanks. ^^

Some people be like "WHY IS THIS A THING?" with the muskets

And I'm over here going "Because it's cool, now play your video game."

Good grief. You colonials don't half get excitable. Clearly you forgot how to conduct yourselves since we let you go.

Great post, and conversely the people that defend Fallout 4 with the assertion "it's not out so we can't say." are often the first to proclaim how awesome something is going to be in Fallout 4.

Lol
Yes, great post.
Just for the record, i was the one saying "it hasn't come out yet" in reference to how laughable it is bashing Beths writing as a result of someone speculating about what's in a game that hasn't been released.

Please, lets do continue stating how Bethesda svcks because we don't agree with someones speculation on an unreleased game, and then clap each other on the back about whst a "great" point it was.

I mean, the nerve of those lazy, sloppy writers, making us speculate details about a game that hasn't been released yet.

Yes and no. Yes, science fiction can get away with things that don't make sense in our universe (radiation turning ants giant for example), but it does have to make sense in the context of the universe its created. Its internal mythology, logic, and rules must be abided by.

There might be an in-unvierse justification for the laser musket to be the way it is and why it's the Minutemen's weapon of choice. If so, we can debate the merits of this justification, but it will at least have justification in the universe of Fallout.

If there isn't one, as I suspect there won't be, it's bad writing.

Kind of annoying that the laser musket with a crank is what a similar named weapon is called in Disney's "Treasure Planet"........I'm sure it is far from a colonial musket.