It seems that many here on the boards have a pretty low opinion of the Railroad and I am trying to figure out why.


I have not played them all the way through, so what am I missing? I have heard complaints that they lack a big picture mentality choosing only to focus on synth liberation. I have heard that they seem to care more for synths than for humans (or is it more of an fact that they are focused on only one mission - help the synths?). I know that many are uncomfortable with the mind wipe practice.


These are all good reasons to be wary of the RR, but is there more to why people dislike this faction so much?


Is there a darker side to Desmonda that I am unaware of?


Thanks for any added info or clarity.

Well they focus only on synths and robots. And, the latest gen synths are faster/stronger/smarter then the average human. Why is that important? The railroad gives those synths fake memories and sets them loose. At one point you find a raider leader thats a synth. So the railroad basically inflicted yet another horror on the commonwealth.

Then there is the hippy side of them, where they would steal robots from folks and reprogram them. Like stealing a Mr. Handy and renaming him Dr. Goodfeels. Silly on the surface, but if you were dependent on that robot for maintaining stuff or defense, you are utterly screwed.

It's probably just the fact that the Railroad consists of a subset of people who refuse to accept the fact that synths represent an existential threat to humanity.

I joined the railroad after getting bored with the minutemen. I enjoyed their storyline. You get to fight the BoS and Institute! You get ballistic weave. I really enjoy wearing a tux and having Piper wear summer shorts while having some decent damage reduction. Plus I love putting Deacon in a dress. He thinks he's such a badass, lol.

I don't understand why people are so against the synths. Sure the ones working for the Institute were programmed evil but the others just want normal lives.

They aid abominations at the cost of the greater good for the people of the commonwealth.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

You find out that they have a mole in the institute who is reprogramming siths so they want to escape.Basically the Railroad does not like the synths being slaves so they reprogram them so they also want to be free.Thats just stupid and creates a lot of unneccessary violence and disputes.

Aside from the crazies calling synths an existential threat (they're just humans with brain/machine interfaces installed... ie it says they're built from Shaun's DNA and indistinguishable from humans at several points in the plot), the RR comes off as a bit overly focused on synths, despite the more immediate problems around the Commonwealth.

I like them though, the characters are great and they won me over for the first playthrough. Many of the RR folks do care about regular humans as well, but they're focusing on synths because nobody else is.

They are short sighted? All they want is to free the synths but everything i see in the game points to them not freeing them as fast as the institute can create them. likewise they have no plan or means to actually hurt the institute or stop the institute from making news synths. so they are being an annoyance while just hoping to last long enough to see the institute have a sudden moral breakthrough and deicide to not make Gen 3s anymore. also they are constantly on the verge of being wiped out. honestly without the SS saving their butts they would never accomplish anything more than a footnote in history as a sort of misguided terrorist group. the BoS and Institute both feel like they have some means to accomplish their goals without you at least.

I don't like pretty much any organization that mindlessly pursues a goal that specific (and largely irrelevant to 99% of the population) and is so convinced that their pet issue is so much more important than all others they will use violence to achieve it.

On another note, freedom fighters and activists of all stripes generally get on my nerves with very few exceptions.

That's because that's literally the entirety of their mission. It'd be like asking any given settlement or even trade caravans to be active fighters for a unified Commonwealth government.

Railroad has two primary purposes: liberation of Synths, and destruction of the Institute. That second mission is why I joined up with them. Security and lasting peace in the Commonwealth isn't even a concern, because that's what the Minutemen are for. Settlements spanning from one corner of the map to the other with a network of supply lines to keep my citizens safe and secure, while the liberation raids and destroys our greatest threat.

Why do fans hate them?

The Railroad are a low-tech organization with no cool toys who potentially spanks the Brotherhood of Steel and Institute both.

But especially the Brotherhood.

They also have an ideology which makes the BOS look like...GASP...bad guys.

Spanking the Brotherhood had plenty of people hate NCR.

It's also what makes 90% of the Minuteman hate.

Mostly due to the short-sighted nature of their actions.

They don't take responsibility for a synth's actions after release, nor particularly care. Synth is free from the Institute, give some tips on surviving in the wasteland, maybe to a facelift and mem-wipe and then that it. If a Synth goes on to be the leader of a Raider gang, they don't care. They'll only care if the Synth gets taken back by the Institute.

And that is almost completely inaccurate. There's someone in the Institute who helps synths escape. There is no reprogramming involved, and the Railroad has never had any kind of contact with the person. At the worst, he finds Synths who already want to escape, and then create false work orders to get them in a position to where they can escape.

I like the Railroad quest line precisely because they are so committed to their goal. They are scrappy, survivors and have the opinion that if you create something that can think for itself, then it should be given free will. And like any free-thinking person, that free will might lead you to be a [censored] human being, hence the illustrative case of the synth Raider leader. I thought that was well done, because if you are an institute kind of person, you are all "see, giving synths free will is bad" but if you are a RR person its more "Giving sentient beings their freedom means they can make good or bad decisions, like anyone else."

My question is - a bit spoilery, I have stayed loyal to the RR, and my current task is still to "Work with Father", so keep playing along... as a result, I have done the Mass Fusion quest for the Institute, though not handed it in after finishing the objective last night. After I do the turn in, will the RR get ready to make a move at that point? I just want to make sure I stay on track with the RR this run-through, as that is my choice. Also, it is so so much fun to ice the BOS peeps, especially those in power armor. HA!

Edit: Also, the hippy robot you find was not at all related to the Railroad, if you read up on stuff around there, it was some sympathetic goofballs, but I am pretty sure the railroad would not want a bunch of high goofballs in their organization, blowing their cover easily. hahaha.

This is why I'm glad I can dual-align Railroad and the Minutemen.

Ideally, he can stand for the people, and the Synths, and stand against what he see's as oppressive forces.

They have ballistic weave, gauss rifles, and improved stealth boys. I'm rather surprised they have any difficulty with Coursers and Institute Synths at all (not that anyone has trouble destroying the standard synth soldier. A stiff breeze knocks them down).

Well don't forget the colonies were angry peasants with pitchforks and guerilla tactics who took on a more organized and armed military force in the British Army and Navy.

Gen 3 Synths are essentially humans and plenty of humans become raiders, when they release Synths they are releasing basically humans. If the humans become raiders, so be it. That's what any person mightn't done. Another thing is that Gabriel, the raider synth, was in the Minutemen before he slowly became a raider to take care of his men and himself. Apologies if this is phrased weirdly, I'm a tad loopy from cough syrup and if anybody needs any elaboration I'll try my best.

They're naive hippies fueled by good intentions, doesn't matter if the end result means real people get hurt.

And they'll practically demand you hand over your courser chip or they wont help you.. they don't even say "please".

Reason enough for them all to die horribly, I hate rude idiots.

I don't dislike railroad as a group. But as a major faction to side with, not that interesting. I posted in another threat that the other 3, (institute, minutemen, BoS), at least have some kind of plan for the Commonwealth as a whole. If any of those 3 factions 'win' then there will be some progress at least. If the RR wins then for everyone else in the commonwealth that isn't a synth or directly part of the RR, nothing happens really.

In their defense, if they free a Synth and then place restrictions, they're doing EXACTLY what the Institute is doing, only they're just re-enslaving them in another way. Their whole gig seems to be: "Free the Synths so they may live their lives in any way they please." Basically, give them more free will and autonomy. There are Synths (ie, Harkness, that girl we meet when we fight the Courser to name a few) who were freed and didn't then go murder innocent people.


To them, a Synth is no different than a Human.


A Human has free will and autonomy, is able to make his/her decision in any way he/she sees fit. If becoming a criminal is what he/she chooses, then so be it. Nothing's prohibiting a Human from deciding his/her own fate.


This is what the Railroad wants. Just replace the 'Humans' with 'Synths'. They're probably not even aware of that one Synth that decided to become a Raider. I'm sure they didn't free that Synth and then tell it to go hurt and torture and kill innocent people. I'm sure that's not what they're aiming for.


And before you bring up the Prydwen thing, I ask you: who decided to bring children aboard a giant warship as he invaded the Commonwealth?

What war? Brotherhood declared war on the Institute to spare humanity another apocalypse-level incident, but... nobody's fighting for control of the Commonwealth. Minutemen are protecting their settlements, Diamond City and Goodneighbour keep to their own, scattered communities and raider bandit groups remain independently affiliated, Institute only cares about Institute, and Railroad has their narrow mission.

The only group with a real plan for the Commonwealth are the Minutemen, and they're practically background.

"Invading the Commonwealth" implies that there's some sort of autonomous Commonwealth polity to invade. There's a couple of cities, a scattering of settlements, some independent bandit camps, but that's it. Unless Diamond City has vassal settlements in some sort of Greek/Mesoamerican model, the whole region is practically frontier.

First playthrough I sided with the BOS. Second time around I planned on siding with the railroad. I made it up to Blind Betrayal again but this time I wanted to save Danse. However after hearing Maxson's long dialogue, he once again convinced me that Gen 3 Synth's must be destroyed.

Cause they're basemant peasants and have no cool uniforms or anything. Ya can't have a movement/organization without cool wardrobe. Brotherhood has power armour ( largely thanks to space marines tho and it still svcks ), Synths have their pew pew lasers and cyberpunk sci-fi, Minutemen have..... well i guess historical appeal and muskets, Enclave had best power armours and was uber cool, also deathclaw soldiers. Compared to that Railroad has nothing to offer.

The issue can be distilled down to one regarding sentience and whether is it right to enslave sentient beings. The Brotherhood is too strident in it's viewpoint regarding humanities primacy and is mildly genocidal to any 'threat' to said primacy. A clear indication of the Brotherhood's idiocy is handling of non-feral ghouls, they do not differentiate between feral's and non feral's, thus wasting a potentially vast wealth of knowledge, experience and an adaptable people able to operate in hazardous environment's!

To blame synths for the actions of the Institute, is at best unreasonable. You are not generally responsible for the actions of your parents, are you?

The issue of Synth sentience is one the Institute choose's to ignore and dismiss, however there alternate pathways in the game. A reasonable 5th way exists where you can destroy the institute and preserve the Brotherhood (thus affording them to opportunity to evolve(however faint)), the Railroad and the Minutemen.

FYI, if it wasn't blindingly obvious, the "Railroad beating the BOS is why they're disliked" thing was a joke.