Fallout 4: The Bad - Factions

I've introduced the topic of factions and factional games in prior posts, so now it is time to look at factions in Fallout 4.  There are 4 of them, in this go-around: The Minutemen, The Railroad (RR), The Institute and The Brotherhood of Steel (BoS).  Each of them has lore and background story material that can be found relating to them and how they view each other.  Of them the Player Character (PC) can become the leader of two factions: The Minutemen and The Institute.  There is cut content in the game files relating to a quest line that would have either Paladin Danse or the PC end up as Elder of the Brotherhood, but since it was cut the point is moot.  Thus the PC can be a leader of a faction or a leading operative of a faction (BoS and RR), which is garnered by doing some jobs for each faction to gain their favor.  This is not abnormal for the two major series that Bethesda Game Studios has in their stables: The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises.

Taking a look at The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, gives a view into how faction leadership turns out to be more of a fancy title rather than an actual job.  Take the quest line that puts the PC in charge of the Mages College of Winterhold, so that at the end of it the PC becomes the Arch-Mage of the College.  Now in this leadership position do you get to, say, set tuition costs?  Or to determine something other than the test the PC had to go through to get into the College in the first place?  Can you set a policy up so that a prospective student must have the Jarl of their Hold's recommendation or at least approval?  How about a maintenance budget, does the Arch-Mage get to, say, repair the walkway to the College which features broken railings and sheer, lethal drops to the icy waters and boulder strewn area where the City of Winterhold used to be?  The answer to all of these, and much more is: NO.  And this same problem comes up Fallout 4 and, to a lesser extent taking the DIY/Yes Man option, in Fallout New Vegas (FNV), and isn't a large Fallout 3 where siding with the BoS is more or less how the script goes.

Perhaps the fine game designers at Bethesda Game Studios have never played a factional game or a transitional RPG/factional game and don't know how to design an actual job system and game mechanics that a PC gets to inherit when getting to be a faction leader.  Back in the old tabletop board gaming era (its a category and paper maps are also in it) there were many factional games that saw the player in the role of the faction leader and having to manage resources, recruitment, high visibility members/leaders within their ranks, and even such stuff as maintaining infrastructure (which begins to border into strategy type games, but there is a major overlap between them).  These games included: Kingmaker, Dune, Down with the King, Pax Brittanica, Outreach and many others.  In the computerized era there are games like Civilization, Sim City, Warcraft I & II, and just about the entire Total War franchise as examples of this category of game.  As a player you have the role of faction leader that is relatively abstract but does put under the player's control the actual mechanisms of making sure the faction has resources, addresses overhead costs and even sets policy on how other factions are treated.

Bethesda Game Studios fails to set up the mechanics for faction leadership in two major areas in FO4.  The first is being able to have multiple decision paths on, well, anything, involving a faction.  By using a voiced protagonist, the time and money that would be necessary to voice all the lines of a faction leader are just out of the question.  Those branching decision paths must also be reflected in the game world, and the only such game mechanic in FO4 is the Provisioner system to link up settlement resources.  That's it, and if you are in charge of The Institute, you don't even need that as The Institute doesn't want any outside 'help', and that is a decision you are stuck with as a faction leader.  The second part, and it is also constrained by the voice acting decision, is implementing policy changes of a faction towards other factions.  In this regard the lack of underlying mechanics for policy means that the underlying antipathy that factions show towards each other leads to the scenario where only two of the four factions survive at the end of the game, with the exception of The Minutemen that can be at relative peace with BoS and RR after removing The Institute so that three can survive.  The Minutemen, being grassroots, can't be removed as a faction, although you can ignore them, not help them and never build them up so they never become a factor in the game.  They still survive in spirit, however, as you can't get rid of the last member of them for game purposes.  In theory it is possible to have the Minutemen as the sole surviving faction by taking out the Institute, BoS and RR.

Yet this state of affairs is one that is part and parcel of the game and makes the current leadership (save Minutemen) seem incredibly brittle and lacking in actual ability to put long-term thinking into play.  There is no opportunity for cooperation between factions, no ability to get a temporary truce to work against a common foe, and no real way to broker a peace.  That is just insane as that is what faction leaders are supposed to do.  They must not only have the short-term goals of their organization at heart, but must view those in their organization as not being expendable like ammunition.  Playing the game may try to impress the heartless cruelty of these factions on the player, but even cruel or evil factions in factional games are willing to make short-term deals if they feel it helps their long-term goals.

At the other end of the policy spectrum is recruitment, training, provisioning, and assigning missions to individuals or groups.  That sort of thing is done through a command structure in most cases, though in small groups using cell based organization, the overhead of secrecy puts in a mandatory distribution of power if any cell in an organization is breached...and those are for games that take some time to figure out how to run something like an insurgency or secret-based group that cannot sacrifice security in the name of more members and usually have along 'getting to know you' period.  Beyond that are the basics: gathering resources (either materials, funds or negotiable goods), maintaining the organization in a physical way for buildings and such, keeping up morale, ensuring safety and security, and generally figuring out who will do well at assigned jobs or missions.

In a faction based game where the player is a leader, a sub-set of these mechanisms will be decided upon by the game designer and built into the game.  In an RPG based game, some of these mechanics are hinted at early on and, upon joining a faction, then getting some minor taste of what a leader goes through becomes an essential part of game play.  Starting at the lowest rungs of an organization and working your way up via missions, means that as the player rises through the ranks they will get more overhead duties to keep track of and people to actually command.  This sort of thing is damned rare in the gaming world, and designing a hybrid that stays true to role playing and offers expanded opportunities for it while being a true faction leader is difficult.  And as the faction leader you would also have to decide the risk factor of each mission and which were the ones only you could address.

At that point you would also have enough personal skills and abilities to address these problems, and be able to choose people you interacted with on the way up if you wanted a specialized group to go with you on the mission.  Perhaps the earliest people who helped you out and went with you when you were low level have stuck by you and are reliable in some command roles.  Or maybe some of the people that would be more generic need a personal field test, and that means going out on a mission with them, not to supervise but to watch how they command others.  All of this and more is a prime role-playing set of opportunities and a way to stifle busy work by delegating it while you are away.  That won't last long, and you will, as the leader, have a maximum time available for the mission or missions, after which you must return as part of the role taken up as leader of a faction.

Instead, of being truly innovative in game design, Bethesda Game Studios failed to take an expansive view of factional game play which is a prime place where the industry sadly needs good examples to show how it is done from an RPG to faction game route.  None of the elements of faction leadership even show up, not even a base budget and how to spend it via a meeting with department heads.  Nor does the player get to make personnel decisions, hire and fire people, and generally be the leader of an organization.  What you DO get are assignments handed to YOU by underlings.  Wait a moment, when these underlings are capable of dealing with them, then all they should be doing is notifying you of the problem and letting you know they are getting a few people together to deal with it and just need your approval.  Faction leaders don't get assignments from underlings, they HAND THEM OUT as a delegation of authority and responsibility to trusted sub-leaders in the faction.  Other problems will filter up to the leader via that route, particularly if the player can assign someone in the public interface type of role, to meet, greet and get to know public leaders, civic leaders and business leaders.  That will depend upon the type of organization, but any that require a modicum of good will amongst the larger population will have this as an actual job to be handed out...one that the player might have actually taken up on their way up the ladder. Those aren't just jobs on the way up: that is a way to familiarize the player with the organization, how it runs, how it works, and why it works that way.  Of course in FO4 only the Minutemen have that sort of public PR deal going on once The Castle is retaken which points out just what the other factions think about the individuals making up the Commonwealth.

Not to intrude much on the lore topic, but it must be brought up with regards to FO4 as the premise for it was set in Fallout 3 and The Pitt DLC for it.  What we knew from that game was that the Commonwealth had an organization known as The Institute that appeared to be in charge or in some superior position inside of it, and that they were high tech and creating humanoid androids.  These humanoid androids (later 'synths', in particular Gen 3 Synths) could demonstrate more than a modicum of free will and seek their liberty.  Even though they were created in a lab, their utilization of human organs, including a newly grown brain augmented with a synth component for organization of thoughts,  and demonstrating that they had a concept of what freedom meant puts them into the 'human' category.  They can't reproduce, don't need a balanced diet and generally handle radiation in a superior way to humans, but beyond that they look, act, talk, think and feel the same as humans do.  The picture this paints of the Commonwealth is that of a rather overbearing organization with an extensive secret police system that sends out skilled individuals or even a department head to track down these rogue creations.  The RR is an underground operation that seeks to free synths, and often mind wipes them and gives them false memories and backgrounds so that they won't accidentally betray themselves to Institute agents.  What we garner from The Pitt DLC is that the Institute also does trade with the outside world as they are cited as having purchase agreements for Pitt materials and goods.  What one of the leaders in the Pitt wants to do is created and do something that even the Institute can't do so as to show their superiority in biotechnology over the Institute: a cure for the Troglodyte Degeneration Contamination.

The actual Institute we get in FO4 does not trade with the outside world and only sends the head of the Synth Retention Bureau, Dr. Zimmer, out on high profile synth retrieval.  Justin Ayo is put in charge as the acting Director of the SRB as the sort of 'spare tire' for when Dr. Zimmer is out.  As an interesting side light, the Institute properly uses the concept of 'acting director' in the case of Justin Ayo but not in the case of Father who ALSO refers to himself as the acting Director of the Institute.  Organizations do not screw up with this sort of thing and 'acting' in the stead of someone who is gone has a limited number of meanings.  First is that the actual person in charge is away and this individual is acting on their behalf.  The second is that the individual is a stop-gap, usually a deputy or assistant, that has been elevated temporarily to the role of Director but that the actual person who will be taking that place has yet to be determined.  While that second in command spot can lead to permanent leadership of an organization, the reason that a senior individual is in that position is that they are put into a dead-end but useful job because they lack certain necessary skills to actually be a long-term director.  But I digress from the main topic of the picture that is painted of The Commonwealth.

What we had gotten from FO3 is that The Commonwealth, in whole or major part, was under the sway or influence of the Institute.  It could be a shadowy organization, yes, but when actual communication and trade of any sort takes place between an organization and the outside world, then some of the shadow begins to get burned away.  They did, for a short time, work with the Commonwealth Provisional Government, but the Institute found the actual idea of governing to be one they couldn't cope with as it involved setting a level playing field on the needs of people on the surface with those of the Institute.  There was some push-back against the move to end the CPG by the Institute as can be found on a couple of holotapes inside it, but the final verdict was written in the deaths of the community and settlement leaders by Institute Synths.  Even with that taking place before FO3, the way individuals speak of the Institute and their connections in FO3 is in the present tense and, while undercover to an extent, known about and having actual contacts with the outside world.  Even with teleportation technology, the types of materials being moved would require getting them within range of that system, which means crossing overland between the Commonwealth to the Capitol Wasteland and The Pitt.

A total sub-surface, secluded and sequestered organization with a top-down dictatorship and disdain for the surface world is what we got and that does not meet up with the expectations set in FO3.  As a faction the Institute has demonstrated that it lacks raw materials, it lacks reliable power and even has to get some power sources from the surface for their own use.  They are so primitive in moving rock that they have resorted to explosives and synths clearing away debris via manual labor with a couple of small front loaders.  Where the rock goes is anyone's guess.  If they were advanced they would have had the workstation system as seen in the Vault Tec DLC, which allows for the removal of preselected and charted areas at a single go and all of that is translated into useful materials stored in the workbench system.  Mind you that was a pre-war system, and should be something the students and faculty at the Commonwealth Institute of Technology knew about.  Of course that was available, you would have a large sub-surface city or Vault extending for miles with an actual, sustainable population.  While not exactly what you would expect from FO3, it would be something much closer to it than what is actually seen.

The surface world of the Commonwealth was portrayed as a place that was under watch of the Institute which used a secret police of androids or synths, as they became known, to keep the surface dwellers under the thumb of the Institute.  That doesn't need to be a police state, mind you, but what we see in FO4 doesn't really get it right, either.  The Mayor of Diamond City being surreptitiously replaced by a Gen 3 Synth doesn't do much for the policy of the Institute, which, by the way, is never clearly stated anywhere.  Basically if the surface world has been written off as just full of people with bad genes, then, as a faction, why even give a damn about it?  Why waste resources that could be better utilized on the infrastructure of the Institute itself?  As a faction the Institute is sadly unable to decide if the surface world is to be ignored, is an omnipresent threat or just a place to pillage and loot at will.  Mostly it is the latter, of course, yet there is some communication and trade with The Pitt, and that is worse off than the Commonwealth is in regards to being contaminated.  What is it with that, anyway?  Just in the realm of overall goals, policy and objectives the Institute isn't all that coherent in FO4.  From FO3 it may be seen as small, but very effective, capable and goal driven organization, with enough security to open itself enough to the outside world to seek resources from it in a non-destructive fashion.  It basically ruled over the Commonwealth directly and indirectly, willing to use open agents and trade with the outside.  That isn't the Institute we got.

As the RR is out to free the synths, you got the idea from FO3 that they are a small organization, which is what we got in FO4.  Kudos on that, at least.  And as it operates like an actual organization set on moving individuals via a network of trusted friends and associates, it also has to deal with being compromised.  The problem of the RR as seen is when the PC is asked if they would risk their life for their fellow man even if that man is a synth?

The counter question you do not get to ask is: would you risk your life for your fellow man even if he was a human?

If the RR is against the slavery of synths, then what about the slavery of humans as seen in Nuka World?  Or Super Mutants rounding up individuals as a food source?  That doesn't cause a single twitch of their moral fiber.  Are a large number of people anti-synth?  Yes.  Yet, if Gen 3 synths are seen as human, the enslavement or consumption of humans should be of equal status since being human is the touchstone.  If you can't be bothered about human slavery or becoming a simple food stuff, then it is hard to see why these individuals would be upset by synth slavery.  Is there a real difference between enslavement of created beings via a machine versus those people captured by force in the wasteland (or submitting to it to care for other slaves)?  Are a number of Raiders sadistic towards synths?  Yes.  They are outweighed by the number that are sadistic towards humans.  Plus if you get rid of the Institute the long-term problem of synth hatred will go down over time as there is no longer a source for those synths.  At that point you are no longer freeing synths, but extracting revenge.  If the RR survives and the Institute goes down, then the RR become vindictive and seeks to be a controlling force in the Commonwealth.

Speaking of its destruction, Imagine leading the Institute and finding out that it has been infiltrated, and now being destroyed right under your nose.  A faction leader would have known that catastrophic failure is possible, and designed an escape system that doesn't rely on huge power consumption and have a back-up area for emergencies in case everything went wrong.  That is something ALL organizations must have on their agenda, particularly those that can and do suffer problems that can cascade to total failure.  Failure is an option, success is not guaranteed.  The RR suffered such catastrophe and recovered.  The Minutemen were able to recover (if you bothered to do so) from total failure and collapse.  Two factions aren't prepared for that: BoS and the Institute.  The former has seen total failure (or at least heard about it) when chapters go silent.  The latter is depending on a quick technological fix to save the Institute from power shortages, and yet those aren't the only problems the place faces in the way of logistics or even viable human gene pool.  If they did, then they would NOT have ordered the deaths of those frozen in Vault 111, but would have sought to bring them into the Institute with uncontaminated genetic material.  While not a long-term solution, it would have offered the Institute a longer lease on life...and the problems of an expanding population...which means growth, the need for more resources, more power...

If the Minutemen and RR can get a hand-waving pass, the BoS can't.  As depicted theirs in an expeditionary force centered around the Prydwen airship.  That airship has a limited capacity for holding troops, vertibirds and, as is found out later, powering itself for the long haul due to the need for specialized coolant.  What we are handed is a force that has limited resources, limited manpower, and while willing to pick up a few new recruits along the way, are basically a self-contained force there to do one, and only one, job: remove the Institute.

Bethesda Game Studios decided to give them infinite supplies of everything, including manpower and vertibirds.  This makes no in-game sense nor any sense for a military force that requires a logistics supply chain.  To be clear, to have a force like the player is shown in-game would require a constant resupply of soldiers, power armor, weapons, generators and vertibirds.  Presumably, since overland caravans can't handle that, the BoS would need to set up supply depots in the wasteland between the Capitol region and the Commonwealth.  Vertibird replacements would be required to be flown in, and the safest route for the last leg of the journey is either at very high altitudes or over the sea.  A supply chain avoiding the hazards of the Glowing Sea, the irradiated landscape where a major bomb cluster fell in and around nuclear power plants and near a military storage depot that held nuclear devices, would be the wiser route as isolated islands could be found for staging men and equipment while then setting up a set of radio comms back to the Capitol district.  Barring that, since the Prydwen comes in from the western portion of the map, near the Nuka World station, they may have decided to set up a supply system going from The Pitt and then north-east through Appalachia and the Adirondacks, and then looping around The Glowing Sea.  In-game this would mean that vertibirds would be seen ferrying supplies in on a daily or multiple times a day basis to keep the expedition resupplied.

Sadly that is lacking.  In the Nuka World DLC there was a grand opportunity to show a major BoS supply depot that was under constant harassment from the Raiders and other sorts there.  That would have given the BoS access to the X-01 Power Armor suits, advanced technology and possibly even trying to get a group together to figure out just what was going on there.  This is a missed opportunity to attempt to paper over a badly implemented set of decisions on game design.  Without that sort of resupply the BoS would have no business expending resources, aircraft and members on the sorts of things that are seen in-game.

Elder Arthur Maxson (it is a title, only, since he is in his early 20s) is supposedly a military genius, though bloodthirsty, it is to be admitted, he is supposed to know the nuts and bolts of keeping a military running.  He inherited a mess after the last member of the Lyons family (the Elder and his daughter who was a Sentinel and took command after he died) died in combat.  Arthur Maxson would need to successfully reunite the Brotherhood Outcasts with the main contingent, ensure that the recruitment of qualified wastelanders continued, and take over the distribution network of Project Purity that the Brotherhood under Elder Lyons had worked to set up.  After that he would need to firm up some sort of production agreement with The Pitt, build an airship from scratch, find a reactor good enough to power the thing, and then, and only then, create a cache of supplies, consumables, spare parts and such to mount the expedition to the Commonwealth.  He is supposed to KNOW logistics as that is a prime requirement of any high-level military leader and a firm requirement of the BoS.  The way he is portrayed with the expenditure of men and equipment makes him look incompetent in the extreme, and no matter how good his field leadership may be, he would not be qualified to be an Elder of the Brotherhood.

Well that is how it would be in an RPG, at least.  An action-based game requires plenty of action, and even action that makes no sense in any way, shape or form is better than lack of it.  So after the BoS arrive you can see enough vertibird crashes that would represent the entire contingent of vertibirds the BoS showed up with in their opening scene after the close of Act I.  This game mechanic, and it is a game mechanic, is made to give the player a sense of urgency or just lots of firefight opportunities.  Militarily these missions, expending such equipment in no way related to the main and primary mission, nor useful in garnering local supplies or securing local production, makes no sense.

Bethesda Game Studios could have made this an important part of the storyline and game mechanic by having the BoS start to show up in force at places like the Corvega Assembly Plant or Saugus Iron Works, and then bring in NPC staff from The Pitt or elsewhere to start getting these sites up and functioning to create new supplies for the BoS operations, locally.  The BoS would have a different agenda in doing so, and be utilizing the Prydwen not just as a source of getting an initial strike group in place, but then have pre-planned, tactical missions that would then allow for local resources and manufacturing to bolster the long-term aims of the BoS.  Why extort crops from local farmers when there is Graygarden available?  It is fully roboticized and would be a prime place for the BoS to set up a supply base, extending and reinforcing the robots used there by deploying a few of its own.  And with that technology under their belts, putting up a greenhouse at the Boston Airport would be child's play.  Suddenly the entire 'feeding the troops' bit gets removed from the radiant quest 'opportunities' and turned into a solid understanding of what it takes to keep the entire BoS campaign going.  Throw in taking over a local mine and the entire raw materials to refined resources to final product production system is complete and the BoS is then relieved of a lot of supply worries and might even open up a recruiting center in the aircraft graveyard section of the airport.  With precisely 4 missions, all of this would then help to give a background to the BoS, demonstrate competent leadership, and add in story elements of the BoS actually NOT extorting crops from locals and maybe even opening a market for exchange to help the BoS in the stuff they can't easily get or make.

At that point the BoS wouldn't be there just to take out the Institute, but to become a functioning part of the Commonwealth with an entirely new Chapter or perhaps even self-sustaining Division as a result.  Why the PC, if they joined the BoS, could even take part in those exact operations which would range from pure combat missions to diplomacy with robots that have rather advanced AI and personalities.  Perhaps even setting up the robot Supervisor Green with its own trading stand or equivalent to act as a secondary shop for the BoS.  By utilizing the overpass at Graygardens, the BoS could create a new vertibird landing area, rather well protected space for creating living room and quarters for troops, and then an entire ground area inside exterior fortifications for training, R&R, feeding, etc.  A multi-story greenhouse with robots running it, a true outpost with externally protected trading area and a well fortified landing zone above it all with look-down, shoot-down capability.  That would be a major part of an RPG storyline for the BoS, and by the time any showdown with them came, the Prydwen would no longer be the sole point of failure for the mission...which it is as presented.

That is it for the major factions, though probably not the last on the topic.