Fallout 4: A game in need of an overhaul

Fallout 4 is a good action/shooter based game with some RPG elements...or as an action game it is a pretty decent RPG and as an RPG it is a pretty good action game.  With action, gun play, and combat mechanics taking center stage the feel of the Commonwealth is that of a shooting gallery, not a place where people actually live.  That is to a great loss for the game franchise as it is built around communities and dealing with the problems of the wasteland and was willing to put action game elements in to make the RPG setting work.  Playing a role took center stage, and even if a player developed a combat oriented character, it was a character that required depth and understanding that prioritizing those stats, skills and perks meant sacrificing others that were non-combat oriented.  That was a balance issue for each player and each character that was developed, which allowed for more stories and more content to become available when a new character was created that wasn't solely combat oriented.  The need for some basic combat skills was necessary to a certain degree, but if even those were avoided the concept of 'successfully running away' from an encounter (especially a random encounter) allowed for a non-violent character to be created.  Under Bethesda in Fallout 3 and 4, this is not an option.  Nor is actually killing off quest givers or entire factions until the game 'allows' it to happen to the set storyline.

To overhaul Fallout 4 requires some basic game mechanics to be changed, stats and perks reverted to the prior system, and an understanding that players like to find new ways to play the game that range from pure pacifist to pure psychopath, leaving the wasteland dead behind them.  Fallout: New Vegas typified this and it is entirely possible to go through the base game and have zero people and animals killed.  Just getting out of the starting Vaults in Fallout 3 and 4 is nearly impossible to do without killing, and then the wasteland makes killing a priority.  This priority on combat needs to be de-emphasized and instant hostility segregated and understood as being limited to a very few groups.  To do this requires dialogue options, unmarked quests, and ways to avoid antagonizing factions and yet still complete quests.  In fact what is needed are more factions in Fallout 4 and a greater dynamic of understanding between factions even if they are hostile to each other: there must be a reason and rationale to the hostility.  All of this requires RPG mechanics, deeper stories and a greater background to what exists.  The groups seen in the game give a sense that this could be done, but a number of basic concepts either need to be ditched, overhauled or re-worked.  Even if the basic story line is kept, and it isn't all that good,  the ways to go through it, achieve it and live with the end results needs to be diversified to make the game work as an RPG.  An outline of what would be required from a personal perspective follows.

More Factions and More Consequences
Death is easy, life is difficult, and people in the wasteland tend to gravitate towards certain common understandings born of this harsh reality.  Super Mutants call each other 'Brothers' and yet do not act like a coherent brotherhood.  In fact they criticize all humans and see themselves as superior, and yet blame The Institute solely for their condition which is not unreasonable but untenable as an overall outlook.  In a reworking of this, they would also recognize that after a few years no more Super Mutants were being dumped into the wasteland by The Institute, and that if they kept up with their ways they would die out, completely.  This should be an important back story in the wasteland as the Super Mutants try to find a means to hold together while internal squabbles drive them apart.  This group needs to be a faction with story lines going though it that let the player character (PC) find a way to unite Super Mutants under a leader, kill them all off, or just leave them to their fate.  Choices will have consequences along each path, and an outline of an alternative set of story paths will help to bring this to light.  Also they wouldn't let their brothers become suiciders as that just decreases the chance for Super Mutant survival in a very real and immediate sense.  Having the Super Mutants start to act as real brothers means that a few that retain more of their senses will slowly rise to positions of influence and power.

The Gunners are a faction, but one that you can't do anything with.  In theory they accept contracts but are always immediately hostile to the PC.  Killing anything that moves is only smart against non-sentient animals, and killing neutrals needlessly antagonizes them, and may actually cause some contract problems.  The Gunners need to start acting like not antagonizing potential contractors is important to them, as they are trying to set themselves apart from the normal drug addled Raiders by actually understanding a contractual framework and command structure and adhering to it.  They don't need a higher cause beyond contracts, but they do need to change their attitude so that it reflects an understanding that they live and die by those contracts.  With them they survive, can trade and even recruit new and promising individuals.  Without them they starve and turn into Raiders which will be their ultimate end.  Contracted violence has a purpose, and if you have ever wished you could take out a contract with The Gunners, then you know the frustration of the action game mechanics being put in front of RPG game mechanics since you can't do that.

Mercenaries that can't be hired is actually a pretty inane concept, come to think of it.  If an easy way to integrate them into the story was needed, then the entire Salem Witchcraft Museum quest could be made to have consequences.  If you return the Deathclaw egg to its nest you not only get the brief encounter with a mother Deathclaw, but after that Deathclaws will no longer attack you nor your settlements, and only a Deathclaw you purposefully antagonize will fight you.  You get no experience for doing that, either, but if you actually help Deathclaws they may start to come to your aid later in the game.  If you complete The Gunner contract and deliver the Pristine Deathclaw Egg to the person who took out the contract for it, then you don't just get a few caps, but a visit from a Gunner representative letting you know that if you wish to take out set contracts you can go to Gunner HQ and talk with the Brigadier there about it.  The Gunners can be antagonized by killing them, and lose that benefit thus the PC will have to respect Gunner operations and not interfere with them, though they will get a few caps for helping out!  Gunners will not only NOT attack your settlements, they can be hired to DEFEND THEM on a per settlement basis for a few hundred caps a month, say.  A game element to take some caps from a settlement or from a network of settlements would allow this to go on in the background, making a self-sustaining settlement organization a real thing to consider.

If you build a solid reputation with The Gunner faction, their Brigadier may even let you know that the group in Quincy are renegades.  The player has options then when encountering those Gunnners, call them the ABC Group, the ones that drove the Minutemen out of Quincy and set up shop there.  It would be possible to negotiate a re-integration of them with the rest of The Gunners, which would take a lot of diplomacy.Or the player could join them and turn on the rest of The Gunners. Of course it would be possible to just wipe them out and reclaim Quincy as a settlement site, or offer to run it as a Gunner enclave (sort of like the re-integration idea) but offer to set up a support settlement there for The Gunners (possibly to bring down contracting costs for protection contracts or other bonuses).  By taking care of the ABC Group one way or another, the player will get consequences, ramifications and additional story lines.

Next up are the Raider groups.  Two centuries after the Great War they are still a thing that happens in the wasteland.  Hyped up on drugs, always seeking their next hit, and going after settlements for food because they can't be bothered to grow their own.  Robbery, extortion, kidnapping and outright threats is how they operate as small groups, and are generally hostile towards each other (with the rare exception of the groups at Saugus Ironworks and Dunwich Borers or what Bosco was trying to do amongst the Raider gangs in and around the downtown area).  Raiders do tend to be trigger-happy, and wantonly kill traders, settlers, and anyone or anything else that wanders their way.  They also rebound in a week so the shooting galleries are constantly restocked, and that makes zero sense.  Raiders would, of necessity, be multiple factions and each have their own problems due to circumstances: one might have a decent food supply, but chems are lacking, another be in the opposite situation, a third short on both, a fourth dying of illnesses, etc.  There is a well known way to keep Raider groups happy, though, and it is called: bribery.  Toss in turning into a drug dealer and aiming to be a drug kingpin of the wasteland, and the player now has a way to gain entrance to nearly every single Raider stronghold in the wasteland once they become known for it.  There is a drug lab operation going on that starts with a Diamond City quest, and it could be turned into a Change In Management quest by removing the current boss, going to the drug lab and letting the people know that their skills are still needed, but that the organization is going in different directions.  Namely, it is expanding.  Turning a few settlements into places that produce chems is not out of the question, particularly with the Contraptions DLC.  Of course there are consequences for doing this, like not being well liked in Diamond City but being adored in Goodneighbor, and possibly hated by some smaller operations.  The Gunners may or may not like this, but that will depend on how much the player has done for them, though it is unlikely Gunners will take contracts to guard Raiders.  Actions have consequences and this is not an easy road to go down, but offers its own rewards.

Taking the Nuka World DLC into account, coming in as the Drug Lord of the Wasteland might not be such a good thing...or it might be a VERY GOOD THING as you are obviously a Boss who knows how to get things done.  No need for 'tribute' chests and that sort of system when Raiders are just counted as extra mouths to feed by a supply system with their own Provisioners, and robots make relatively cheap and easy Provisioners so no risk to humans for that.  The Nuka World Raider Gangs would see the benefit of an Overboss who is also a Drug Lord of the Commonwealth...perhaps The ONLY Drug Lord of the Commonwealth.  Yes, going against the player with that status means that the Gang or Gangs risk having a chem trade embargo if they try to oppose you, and they are all addicts to some degree and antagonizing your supplier is not something done lightly.  Especially if this is the only supplier and controls all the drug trade for mass shipments.

When seen like this, the Raider gangs are still violent, drug addled thugs, but ones that come to respect those producing their food and chems.  The worst punishment that can be doled out is to cut a Raider site off from supplies...and then moving in to wipe them out and claim a new settlement site and permanently removing the threat of Raiders making it a home again.  All Raider sites become settlement options in this reworking.  This helps those playing it straight as, once wiped out, the Raiders do not return, and if turned into a settlement then a new, productive area replaces lawless wasteland ruins.  Keeping it Raider as a Drug Lord or Kingpin means moving in Raider groups that have proven loyal or offering it to The Gunners as a new place to set up shop if they want it under player supervision and support, of course.  This does have a net effect in the wasteland: contracts, organized trade, controlling violent groups or wiping them out when they go against your wishes...a basis for a new civilization is being built.

This brings up the Minutemen.  As a faction it is one that is absolutely protected by the game mechanics: you can't kill Preston Garvey.  How about making that optional?  Or, even better, integrate the Minuteman concept with prior concepts to have complaints about supporting Raider gangs or the PC being a Drug Lord play out to show that this is one way of neutralizing those threats.  Contacting and contracting The Gunners is a civilized way of doing things, and while their Brigadier is kept in good graces, the entire organization starts to become dependent upon settlements, trade and all the things the Minutemen support.  Now convincing Preston of that...well that would be a marvelous quest line or multiple quest lines, wouldn't it?  Put an end goal of actually creating a new government at the end of that rainbow, and focusing Preston on that, and letting him know that the various pacified Raider gangs and utilizing The Gunners is a means to an end.  If done right, the use of belligerent Raider gangs or ones that just won't stay pacified to slowly cut their numbers down would show Preston that the ultimate goal can be achieved, but it will take time.  Lots of time.

Integration
Now lets re-examine the main story with all these concepts in play.  Emerging from Vault 111 the player has decisions to make, and may actually want to avoid going to Concord for some time.  If the pressing matter of the main story is presented as compelling, which it isn't in its current stage, then getting to Diamond City to get a clue as to where baby Shaun is plays out pretty much as it does in the current game.  With that said, it would open the possibility of talking Skinny Malone into a deal with the PC to help get Vault 114 set up properly for their use.  The Triggermen become a minor faction and one that you can interact with, and they respect those who know how to use force to an end goal.  Nick Valentine may not like that solution, but it is non-violent and would give the player an excellent base of operations in the downtown region.  Skinny would know a good deal when he hears it, and having the chance to run things out of Vault 114 is his goal, as well.  Of course wiping The Triggermen out is also an option.  Or just leaving and not coming back. Decisions have ramifications.

If anyone remembers what happens in Nick's office, it is that he listed three potential groups as being possible candidates for the kidnapping.  First off was Super Mutants which is discounted quickly.  Instead of that he could also have heard how a group of Super Mutants had left their brothers under a new leader and were trying to find a different way of doing things.  They were up in the Vault 111 region but left it to and went to Trinity Tower.  Somehow Rex Goodman got there, and there was a split in this group of Super Mutants between Fist and Strong.  So talking with the Super Mutants might just get some insight into what was going on in the region of Vault 111.  Thus starts the process of putting the new concept of Super Mutants as a faction into play.  Fist wants to keep up with the 'hate all humans, but The Institute more' while Strong wants to find the secret of the 'Milk of Human Kindness'.  This is a tense stand-off where Fist has Rex and Strong captured, but Strong's brothers hold most of the lower floors.  Negotiating one's way to talk to these two would be tricky, and shooting on first sight not the wisest option, unless you are on a 'Kill Everything' sort of run, then you can just go wild.

What comes from Trinity Towers might be a new quest of Choosing Sides.  After talking with both Fist and Strong, what they relay to you is that their fellow brothers are about equally split on who to follow.  The job of the player, should you decide to do it, is to visit EVERY Super Mutant stronghold (the major ones, at least) to convince the local leaders of who to follow.  It would be possible to also just antagonize that group and kill them, too, which might be the best way to handle a couple of sites, like Fort Strong.  What could come out of this varies:  no Super Mutants left and a threat to the Commonwealth abated, all sites back either Fist or Strong, or that both get a set of sites and there is a separate leadership in operation from then on.  The major reward is, indeed, choosing one or the other, as Fist might agree to not attack your settlements, but the player must promise to go after The Institute in return.  Strong, on the other hand, is willing to journey for a time with the PC and see the benefits of more civilized cooperation.  What is learned is that Rex has stirred up some memories in Strong about his human past, and that vital component of kindness was lost.  Go with Strong and Super Mutant sites can accept traders and even supply Provisioners (which would need to be a new category for non-integrated sites).  With Fist, if you agree to go after The Institute you get a contingent of Super Mutants to help either the Railroad or Minutemen take the place down, and Fist might even start to understand the benefits of Super Mutants and humans working together.

The real prize is Rex Goodman, however, as he had to get to meet the Super Mutants in the first place.  He didn't do it alone, he had the help of The Gunners and even has a contact with them.  With that information the next part of Nick Valentine's roster comes into play: The Gunners.  As an organization they have a history, and they would have knowledge about Institute operatives.  They may even have an Institute contact, by the name of Kellogg.  Still for a price they'll make their archives on what they know about the Vault 111 region available, and perhaps even offer a contract to help gather more information for the Sole Survivor, but at full cost, which would be a few thousand caps.  From there and getting the good will of The Gunners means a non-violent confrontation with Kellogg as he knows just what The Gunners can do and doesn't want to make an enemy of them.  Here an entire non-violent way to get into The Institute opens up, as does having Kellogg as a Companion.  The old Memory Den option for violence is still available, of course, but getting the man to recount his own history is far more immersive than that.

Yet there should be a way to get into The Institute that doesn't involve any of this, so that those wanting to strike out on their own, form no alliances and be beholden to no one can still get in.  This requires using the Minutemen entrance, the outlet for the reactors that are used by The Institute that are part of the old infrastructure of Boston.  To do this would mean finding a place to put the information that is plausible and viable, and one that Nick would know about or that can be discovered elsewhere.  Actually there are a few good locations for this.  The first is the archive being preserved at the Boston Public Library.  It always seemed to me that such an archive would be something the Brotherhood would want as part of their general collection duties, yet even if you have discovered its location there isn't a thing you can do with it.  This feels like a part of a quest that never got made or not completed.  Yet if you had to get a place that had the infrastructure information of the old world Boston region, this is a good place to put it.  A second place would be the Boston Mayoral Shelter, and The Institute does have combat synths in there, but a good reason for them is never given.  Perhaps the information in the Library leads to the Shelter or vice-versa, or both might have it.  The pre-war PC would know about the BPL location and Nick would know about the construction work for the Shelter. Poseidon Energy Turbine 18-F would be a good location, as well, as Poseidon Energy tended to have its hands in just about all the major energy structures of the pre-war world.  Documents might be held there or in the Poseidon Energy main building to the south of Boston.  That is a short list of the many possible locations to put the information about the old pre-war cooling tunnels that lead to The Institute.

Either through contacts, relations, diligent searching or having an Intelligence of 1, a high Luck of 7 or better, using Dogmeat and the place that Kellogg had in Diamond City which would finally be mentioned by Nick or Ellie Perkins.  Some involve violence but don't necessarily require it, others require negotiation skills and working with factions, and others can be pretty much non-violent and thoroughly so with a good character build.  Any way you cut it, even using the in-game groups and turning them into factions with separate identities, Fallout 4's main quest could be made much more interesting and require some actual role-playing that has multiple ways to answer people that would be influenced by stats, perks, skills and affiliation with a particular group or groups.

Ramifications
Who you help or don't help, kill or don't kill, changes how various factions view you.  If you are helping out the Super Mutants, don't expect the Brotherhood of Steel to take you on as a member.  Arthur Maxson is following the Codex and Founding Principles, even in their breach by the Lyon family.  While he will bend on some topics, some others are non-negotiable.  It would be possible to go back and wipe out the Super Mutants, remember they have a set number at the start of the game and they aren't coming back.  When cleared out of sites they hold those sites will not see an influx of Super Mutants.  Doing that will mark you as a turncoat and betrayer, and might start to make other groups you are helping a bit more wary of you, but that is what happens when you break your word.

Helping Raiders out will put you in a difficult spot with the Railroad and Minutemen, and while the latter might be cajoled around, the former know that there are Raider gangs that enjoy capturing and tormenting Gen 3 Synths.  Looking at Raider groups as a whole, they don't respect the lives of much of anyone outside of their small groups and they tend to treat regular humans pretty horribly, as well.  A Drug Lord or Kingpin shouldn't expect much help from the Railroad, even with an intact Courser chip.  They won't shoot on sight with you, but they will tell you to leave and warn you never to come back...decisions made have consequences.

Being neutral to the power struggle of the Super Mutants, not voicing support for either leader means a split decision and no support from either group or leader.  But the Brotherhood would see the necessity of finding information and, as you aren't helping Super Mutants, you can become a member of the Brotherhood.  Not dealing with Raiders or going through a third party, say the Triggermen used as go-betweens with them getting a cut off the top, that is workable, though the Railroad might not like it that much but they will respect that you want nothing to do with Raiders.

The Gunners are a wonderfully neutralish faction and no one outside of Preston and few other old timers, hate them outright.  The Brotherhood frankly wouldn't care and neither would the Railroad, the latter of which might even appreciate contracted help here and there.  What MacCready has as a beef with the two Gunners, Winlock and Barnes, at the Mass Turnpike is something that could be worked out with the Brigadier.  Perhaps Winlock and Barnes are going off the rails or acting against the general protocols set up by the Gunners.  If they aren't, it should be possible to get MacCready out from under the threats by various means: doing a few jobs or escort duties, paying off any debts, or negotiating an end to any hold Winlock and Barnes may feel they have with MacCready.  If the beef is that MacCready is a gun for hire, then the Gunners will have larger problems on their hands by trying to eliminate all such individuals.  No matter how good MacCready is, he has cut ties and decided to freelance his skills, which means he doesn't have the support that the Gunners can provide for operations and is going small time and working for next to nothing to keep himself fed.  The Gunners are an organization, one that is known and either feared or respected, and their only problem with freelance operatives is when they get in the way of Gunner contracts.  Any of the alternatives to dealing with his situation can and should be available in a proper RPG setting with RPG mechanics, where players can improvise solutions based on what they have done, what their skills are and what other personal capabilities they have that might just fit the bill.

In this remixing of the Commonwealth where there is no infinite supply of people, Super Mutants or much of anything else, the player is put into a position of extreme resource management over time.  Setting sites not to respawn means no areas to grind out experience and loot: once a place has a threat removed and is looted clean it stays that way.  The only reliable sources of scrap are traders and caravans and no one has magical tickets to deliver shipments to a workbench.  Really, just how does that work, anyway?  I have yet to see a trade caravan with a wagon show up with 100 units of steel, wood, aluminum or anything else, yet the materials just magically appear in the workbench.  It is easy enough to grant that the red workbench has all sorts of local powers for building and utilizing materials via some form of materialization process with set parameters.  Getting a shipment of materials in without it physically arriving?  That doesn't fly.  Now if a delivery service is implemented, well...that would be 'immersive'.

With a limited number of people, creatures and materials, Fallout 4 would become a system of cost/benefit analysis decisions for those players wanting to build settlements or even just make/improve their own equipment.  Visits to merchants becomes a necessity for those individuals, and no matter how much material a site may seem to have, it is all set at the start and runs out when it is looted thoroughly.  The fragile system of neighboring groups not wanting to suffer losses turns the Commonwealth into a tinderbox, where one strung out Raider who has the shakes from chem withdrawal might shoot a Super Mutant accidentally and start a fight between them.  A fight that has its own long-term ramifications, too, as fatalities to either side means a permanent loss (in the case of super mutants) or the need to try and recruit replacements.  A dynamic system where NPCs start to build better defenses and yet face the brutal necessity of needing to find food will also mean that cannibalism even within a group is something that is widespread though still not accepted.

One of the great things that Automotron brings to the table is expanding the Graygarden concept of roboticized farming and agriculture.  Nuclear powered robots turn into a resource for the player, and a method of actually permanently capturing a robot in the field to return it to a settlement for rework into an agricultural robot would be needed.  Graygarden itself can be expanded and become a crop growing powerhouse for a trade network and supplying settlements, but that costs much in the way of materials to build.  The decisions made on how to do this puts the player into a very powerful position of being able to offer much of what Diamond City offers, but on a smaller scale.

In this revamped, reworked version of Fallout 4, the long-term winners are those who are able to band together and defend themselves and be relatively self-sufficient.  The 'Scavengers' of the wasteland may turn out to be individuals foraging for a small community seeking just a few things to help their long-term survival.  Raiders are still present and those not strung out on chems may actually have a decent chance of survival, thus the Nuka-World Raiders are in a better overall survival situation than, say, any group trying to occupy the Corvega facility or even Saugus Ironworks.  What the game should demonstrate is that the PC will have a large impact on the survival situation of everyone in the Commonwealth, and that the sides they take, the actions they take and outcomes of those actions will reshape the Commonwealth for good or ill for that long-term.  Going Raider is a short-term option, of course, but one in which finding new recruits becomes harder as Raiders are just parasites on farming communities: hurt the farmers too much and the Raider group begins to starve.

Trying to save the super mutants via negotiations and perhaps even working out deals that would see them removed from places with scarce food and working in areas with better hunting would offer the PC a chance to gain an ally from a current enemy.  At the same time eradicating the super mutants is a real possibility that the Brotherhood of Steel would sanction with great favor to the PC.  The RR has no love of Raiders and, probably, super mutants, and see both as threats but not ones that can be easily removed.  By putting a positive stress on the benefits of cooperation, mutual support and trade, the entire game would then revolve around the slow building of a New Commonwealth.  It is just this sort of new society that The Institute has fought against for decades, starting with the Commonwealth Provisional Government initiative.  Each part of the wasteland has its own reasons for why it has not recovered all that well, and in the Commonwealth the largest problem to that recovery has been The Institute. 

Stepping away from how it is currently portrayed and putting into place a political system within the organization (not parties, per say, but internal factions) would give the PC the ability to demonstrate that the refuse of The Institute, which is to say Super Mutants, can recover enough of their humanity to be a benefit to the Commonwealth or at least no longer a threat to it.  This action would be enough to gain notice inside The Institute and start to put into question if they are, indeed, the 'best hope for humanity', a humanity that they wish to 'redefiine'.  Would demonstrating that the thread of humanity can be picked up by those who were transformed by FEV not also fit that bill?  It would make the PC an enemy of the BoS, of course, or at least be put on the outs with them but that is a consequence of the action.  As we don't know the ramifications of the BoS uniting in the Capital wasteland, we do not know if they went on an extermination hunt against every ghoul, super mutant and mutated creature there.  If tolerance was demonstrated, as the Lyons tried to put into place with Project Purity and delivering water to ghouls as parts of communities, then Arthur Maxson would have to make the choice of continuing that policy or acting as seen in Fallout 4.  The BoS has a Codex and Founding Axioms to live by and Arthur Maxson is faced with the breach of certain key elements actually working to help the Brotherhood's organization.  If he is a strict adherent to those principles, then the sentient ghouls will have been eliminated in the Capital wasteland.  The indications of taking in outside recruits and training them is that this is not the case, and that there may be old internal problems in bringing the Outcasts back into the Brotherhood that require him to give a lot of verbiage to those principles, even as he is in breach of them.

The Institute, however, never clearly gives the end goal of 'mankind, redefined' which makes it a quixotic catchphrase that is ever changing and can never be reached.  By giving a goal, demonstrating that humanity, no matter how you try to 'redefine' it, is about cooperation, self-help, and toleration a key set of goals and targets can be put in place and even implemented by the PC.  Getting The Institute higher-ups to agree to this, well, that is what an RPG is for: understanding the organization, sounding people out, working with those who are like minded and seeking to shift the status quo into a different direction.  The Institute may believe that Gen 3 and follow-on Synths are superior in every way to humans, save being subservient to them and treating them as property, and that is a major problem in this scenario as many of those refugee escapee Synths are still in the Commonwealth and show up as a settler here or there.  In theory these individuals would be considered property of The Institute, and the point can be made that if they act like normal humans, work with normal humans, cooperate and help normal humans then the entire question of them being created is moot: they pass the Turing Test save for the inability to reproduce and in the post-apocalypse that problem can be seen by the low number of children seen in the wasteland. 

The lack of ability to reproduce is not a negating factor as normal humans seem to have that exact, same problem.  The rationale for children is to establish a new working base that can be raised to continue on survival and perhaps even do more than just survive.  Synths, by having death as limited to accident or being killed by design, are effectively immortal and could serve as a bridge between generations until their limited storage capacity for memories begins to run out.  Gen 3 Synths haven't been around long enough to face that problem, and yet they will have it.  Being immortal has its downsides.  A proposed role for The Institute is serving as a repository for memories and expanding that with the help of Gen 3 Synths who do the dirty work of survival and serve as a bridge between the high tech Institute and the rest of the wasteland.

Another bit missed in FO4 is a control Vault: these are Vaults that have a Garden of Eden Creation Kit.  The GECK is a technology that allowed for Project Purity to come into being as it was expanded upon by a cadre of scientists looking to cleanse the wasteland of radiation.  Imagine finding that there is a GECK in the Commonwealth!  That piece of technology, alone, would surpass all that The Institute has done in chasing after Synth technology and would demonstrate a level of understanding and capability that they just do not posses.  An alternate path for the entire game could be set up when the PC finds out that one of these devices is somewhere in the Commonwealth, which would seriously side-track everyone as a new element came into play in the game: an element that is lore friendly and one that is known to work at Shady Sands and with Project Purity.  Vault-Tec had a few number of control Vaults, and finding that one of those didn't make it in the Commonwealth and never deployed this technology puts into play a whole new variable of unprecedented proportions.  The BoS would want to study it while The Institute might want to suppress its use to keep its comfy role.  The RR might have no actual use for it until it learns of the Synth refuge in Far Harbor, which then presents a perfect opportunity to rid a portion of The Island of the Fog permanently.  And the Minutemen would see this as a prime opportunity to found a large community of not just settlers but to begin rebuilding the post-war landscape so that a new society would arise.

Having a GECK near the major metropolitan areas would make a lot of sense for Vault-Tec with both Shady Sands and the one in the horribly irradiated Vault in the Capital wasteland showing that this was the case.  Other metropolitan areas might also have such devices: New York, Miami, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, and even Denver in its over-run state might still have a failed Vault housing such technology.  By restarting society near the ruins of the prior society the remains of the old can be crafted into the new: old cities torn down over a few generations and used to rebuild a new society.  It isn't just plausible that there is a GECK in the Commonwealth, but something that should be a near certainty.  References to an 'isolated' or 'dead' Vault might seem to indicate Vault 111 at first, but once it is given a different place, then the idea of there being an unexplored Vault in the Commonwealth would become a real proposition.  Restarting with the help of the much hated Vault-Tec could become an actual reality.

Of course that is one of many possible courses that a PC could take with this knowledge. The possibilities are many fold with many nuances that one would expect of an RPG, so that there is no true set ending but once an end state has been set then the game can draw to a close.  The wasteland could be left in even worse condition than  it is when the PC arrives.  Or it might be turned around, completely.  Factions rise and fall as one talented, determined individual steps out into the post-apocalypse to see what it is all about.  An individual who at least came from a semi-functional society that worked.  Fallout 4 is a game of missed opportunity and in true need of an overhaul so that it can become an RPG-Factional game with a lot of combat elements, of course.  By not resetting the shooting galleries, by not constantly respawning enemies, and by having everyone realize that if they don't ensure a continuity of operations there will be no tomorrow....that would change the entire game from a run and gun shoot 'em up back into an RPG where every decision matters and every life saved is an opportunity.  A game with no simple ending.

Fallout 4: The Good - Art, Land, Architecture, Setting

Fallout 4 is a visual masterpiece in comparison to the rest of the franchise.  Hands-down it is the most interesting region that has ever been presented in terms of its localized architecture, art work, history and shows a good understanding not just of Boston and surrounding suburbs, but also of the Northeastern US in general.  The Commonwealth is expansive, filled with history and has many environmental stories that will cause the player to stop and just look at it to see if a way that the last moments of the region played out can be fit together.  Life continued on right to the moment the bombs dropped and not everyone took it seriously that the bombs were actually dropping.  The bank robbers that only have skeletons left and the duffel bags filled with cash, the man putting trash out in a dumpster, the couple that knew what was coming and spent their last moments together are all to be found in the setting of FO4 along with much, much more.

Under Bethesda the Fallout franchise has more starkly put a dark mirror up to the era of the 1930's to early 1960's, and utilizes the science fiction of that era to shift away from the movement to transistors and, instead, to the power of the atom as the source of beneficial progress.  Nuclear fission products did not supplant prior internal combustion power sources, be they power plants or vehicles.  Instead a hybrid economy arose, with the change from coal, natural gas, gasoline and diesel never being a complete process, although many industries did a complete change-over due to the advantages of compact nuclear power sources.  How such sources work doesn't need an in-depth explanation as, indeed, our world didn't go down that path nor make the discoveries that happened in that world.  The designs seen in-game show the remains of vehicles, industrial sites, homes and many other buildings that reflect multiple different forms of energy use to reflect this.  The Red Rocket Truck Stop would service gasoline, diesel, fission and fusion vehicles since they didn't service just trucks but personal vehicles like cars and motorcycles.  That rich history was shown to a lesser degree in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, but it is to be seen throughout FO4.

Geography is not only stunning but used to demarcate regions of relative safety with the Northwestern part of the map, the player starting area, being one of the safer regions.  The Western Central part, just below it, is less safe and the more the player travels to the Southwest and then South the less safe and easy the world is to survive.  That southern most area is highly irradiated and still has the radiation of the bomb that went off there and the nuclear material from the power plant complex that were thrown into the environment.  That region called The Glowing Sea is in the Southern part of the map and it is much closer to what is seen in FO3 than anything else in the Commonwealth.  The Central portion of the map has relatively safe places that define it: Diamond City, Goodneighbor, Bunker Hill.  Within that region and just a bit around it to the south are some very hard to navigate regions full of the ruins of Boston itself.  The architecture of the Fallout franchise shines through with the skyscrapers all the way to row houses reflecting the cultural heritage left by generations of people living there.  To the Eastern Central out to Fort Strong things are a bit less stressful, but have definite hotspots of trouble to encounter.  Above that is the Northeastern region that is less full of hostiles but still treacherous.  The North Central is the transition zone of escalating hostility between the Northwest to the Northeast, and has its own perils to the furthest northern part of the map.

This form of zoning is only approximate, at best, to the player, but allows for a quick glance to help jog the memories of just where it is and what sort of threats can be found.  If you are north of the Charles River, then you'll see the ruins of Boston to the South and you are in a somewhat safer region if you can see the ruins of C.I.T., though Cambridge is a major concern just to the North.  Safety is relative and within each zone that is also true, as there are places of solitude and safety within even The Glowing Sea.

If there is any knock to this instance of the franchise, it must also be extended to the prior two under Bethesda: boarded up homes really just don't fit the world.  First who had the time and resources to board them up?  The nuclear attacks came out of the blue, unexpected and without warning, so no one had time to board them up before the bombs dropped.  After the bombs dropped there wouldn't be enough time, resources or food to board them up.  In-game lore shows that Raider gangs started forming within days of the bombs falling, and in our own world we have seen what happened within that same three days of Super Storm Sandy: individuals forming gangs, looting, threatening other people, and generally showing civilized activity to be a veneer that can easily be broken.  The Fallout universe had things less well constrained if the presence of addictive chems throughout the Commonwealth is any indication along the presence of a drug dealer in the cul-de-sac neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills showing just how deep the rot had spread.  Even military order didn't last more than a week or two, in the few places they were deployed.  After that, no one would bother to board up homes.  Yet they are a pervasive part of the landscape.  This is an instance where the design team kept with the Lore, but the Lore itself makes no sense.  Even worse are homes that aren't boarded up that have nothing of real interest in them, save a demonstration that there was a pre-war use of the home and possible post-war use, as well.

Boarded up homes are a minor quibble and an eyesore, only.  Where Bethesda shines is the Vaults of the Commonwealth and the corruption behind each of them.   Vault 114 was just a job to appease local mobs and unions, though it was set to be a social experiment of packing the rich and wealthy together in communal living arrangements.  That didn't happen, and post-war mobsters found the place to be a relative safe haven compared to the surface of the downtown.  Vault 111 was a cryogenic experiment that went on far longer than it was intended to go on, due to the internal breakdown of command and the lack of food.  Vault 75 was meant to breed child super soldiers, and used ruthless culling and genetic manipulation to try and achieve this end, until the super soldier children overpowered their superiors and left the Vault.  Vault 81 was meant to breed an omnicure to all diseases that could be harbored in molerats...mutant molerats provided by Vault-Tec.  Only an Overseer with a sense of scientific ethics and good morals stopped that, but condemned the researchers to die in isolation so that the rest of the Vault could survive.  Vault 95 was set up to provide a drug-free environment for junkies to rehabilitate them, and yet had an insider that would open up the door to a storage area full of enough drugs to last years.  The results were grim as the addictions so long kept at bay returned in force.  Just from the base game, these Vaults show a good understanding of how Vault-Tec did things, and while there are some instances of questionable Lore, the over-arching ideas remain.  The only thing missing from the mix, and there should have been at least one in the region, is a Vault with a Garden of Eden Creation Kit.  Still if you had that and a control Vault, then The Institute would never have happened the way it did as the technology of a GECK is far beyond anything even The Institute, as seen, could ever do, so you can understand why there isn't one near this major metropolitan area in terms of game setting.

When the Fallout franchise moved to Bethesda and became a first-person experience, the world changed and that meant a fully fleshed out and modeled world that held the remains of the pre-war world.  The Nuclear Age continued onwards in the Fallout universe and yielded a rich post-nuclear war setting that Bethesda Game Studios has enriched to make the world feel as if it was lived-in before the Great War.  The style has shifted in a subtle fashion between the Capitol Wasteland and the Commonwealth which is reflected in the urban and suburban environment.  The lack of a strong moral foundation promulgated by government and corporations, plus the promulgation of addictive substances means that after the Great War the lack of certain individual restraints was given free reign so that Raiders still continue to be a threat long after the centralized government fell.

What must be remembered is that with the retreat of the Roman Empire civilization became far more localized, and while the actual living standard of the entire population fell the necessity for strong local rulers shifted the focus of survival.  Geography played a part in some of this, so that peoples unified by local language and culture began to cohere as actual alliances and political entities.  Yet in some regions the localized rulers were always at odds with each other, and would remain so for centuries, which is why 'The German Question' of the early 19th century was pertinent as the region had a few larger political entities (Prussia and Bavaria) and dozens of Counties all of which meant that the regions was referred to as The Germanies. These regions did start to shift into common trade alliances and would finally be united after the Franco-Prussian war by treaty.  If Fallout is giving its setting a treatment similar to that of the collapse of centralized rule, then it is Fallout: New Vegas that shows the start of strong personalities attempting to pull off the creation of somewhat primitive new Nations from the wasteland in the form of Caesar's Legion.  Lack of societal cohesion in Fallout 4 can be attributed not just to the background factors but the active intervention of The Institute that killed off the Commonwealth Provisional Government.  For an organization that disdains the surface world and its population and claims that no one can touch it, that is an odd sort of behavior.

Yet it is that singular organization, The Institute, that gives one of the most visually interesting experiences in the Fallout franchise.  Once inside the architecture, lighting and so much else has a feel to it that can only be expressed in terms of cinema and movies.  On first sight my reaction was that of seeing a cross between The Shape of Things to Come (1936), Forbidden Planet (1956), and perhaps just a bit of Logan's Run (1976).  I've called it a showcase elsewhere and it is truly just that: a showcase of architecture and technology with a definite fetish for a sanitary environment that is unlike anything else ever seen in the franchise.  There is also an Orwellian vibe to the entire organization that is reflected in the use of synths doing menial tasks and Coursers patrolling the upper reaches of the interior.  After leaving the post-war world and functioning pre-war area, the presentation of The Institute is meant to inspire awe and overwhelm the PC and the player.  That singular time is one that is bound to stick in the minds of players as it is one of the most memorable visual pieces not of just Fallout 4 but the entire franchise.  It is a modern alt-history masterpiece with its own furniture design that is utilitarian, spartan, clean, neat and simple, yet fully in the utopian mode derived from the 1950's view of the future.  The Institute follows the view that only the best and brightest get to survive in safety, comfort and purposeful asceticism, while everyone else gets to be looked down upon by them for having to make a hard scrabble living in the wastelands.

With three out of four endings to the game having The Institute fall, there is an indication that this viewpoint and the meddling involved will see the destruction of this form of eclectic asceticism and that those who survive it will be unable to rebuild anything like it in the near future.  In many ways that is a sad sort of ending that loses such artistry.  It is a style locked in a bubble, however, isolated and secluded with a bent towards pleasing efficiency, and that is not the future of humanity.  In hanging on to ideals and going into seclusion The Institute creates a beautiful marvel, a showcase environment, and one that cannot withstand the hatred it has spread by its activities.

That other organization before the war, Vault-Tec, gets its own DLC and that one gives the design aesthetic of modular building used to create old world beauty.  Being able to build a Vault allows the player to think out just how an underground space that is to have a living society in it should be set up, and after many bad examples given by Vault-Tec it is possible to think out just what an expansive Vault requires.  The build area for what was to be Vault 88 is huge, far larger than any Vault ever seen in the franchise, and allows for this modular concept to gain its full scope of expression.  It is sad that the underground area is set up so as to break up the ability to build a unified Vault, and it is only with mods that allow the removal of pieces that were fully removable elsewhere can the actual underground can be made available in full.  If The Institute is the post-war utopian ideal, then the Vault is the pre-war survival and get by ideal made into a reality.  The Vaults have pre-war design power systems which do fail, in often spectacular ways either by lifespan or intent by Vault-Tec itself.  For all of that the ability to design something larger than The Institute and put into a play a fully functioning population framework that is self-sustaining and yet able to trade with the outside world gives a different experience and outlook to the player.  The design of Vaults is also future oriented, sanitary but less well lit than The Institute and has a definite industrial feel to it.  Modular industrial utilitarian which uses a grid layout for design rather than the circular layout of The Institute, which is done for end user building and simplicity but has an impact on design constraints.  With that said it is very possible to build a Vault larger than The Institute and with more reliable power supplies, plus a better layout for inhabitants and placing down job objects for them to work at.  The idea of Better Living Underground from Vault-Tec is realized in the DLC and gives a final piece for creating settlements that are fully enclosed environments easy to separate from the outside world and still be open to trade and interaction.

The Nuka World DLC brings forth the entire park as entertainment experience gone horribly wrong after the bombs dropped.  While the place is a total mess, with rides no longer working, the actual theme park has a good design concept behind it.  This does emulate parks in the common world between Fallout and our universe, namely that of the Disney brand complete with castle and everything.  Built long after those early parks, the stasis of culture is retained in full so that the 1950's size, style and culture show through the post-war mess.  It was my hope that the DLC would offer a way to rebuild all the rides and attractions, and slowly staff them with robots and personnel from the wasteland, but that was not to be.  Even after ridding it of the Raider gangs, a final unlock to clean up the park and remake it into something that would attract customers is not to be had.  There is no grand, unified workbench system like in the Vault-Tec DLC and the entire region features one, single place to build a settlement.  Bethesda may have had far grander ideas for this park, but it falls short of completing them.  With that said the design and layout of the park itself is excellent and continues on in the tradition of having separated areas for themed attractions: Kiddie Kingdom, Dry Rock Gulch, Safari Adventure, The Galactic Zone, and World of Refreshment.  Throughout the park the automated announcement system is stuck on its continual repeating cycle of announcements in each area, and the Nuka Cola machines with working screens still offer a cycle of Nuka Cola shorts featuring Bottle and Cappy.  Throw in the theme song for the park that the player may find themselves humming as they play, and has its own eerie ability to stick in the head long after leaving the game, and a complete cola-centered theme park experience is granted that is unlike anything else in the Fallout franchise.

The grand design layout and the way each area gets its own and separate treatment allows for the environment to tell much of the story and that story is backed by terminal entries found in the park.  The ghoulification of the workers in Kiddie Kingdom is recounted not just through terminals but actually recounted by a rare sentient Glowing One who organized the people as they became ghouls.  They watched friends and lovers go feral and felt the slow decline of their mental capacities, yet these people tended to those people and hoped that a cure might be found.  It is one of the saddest stories in Fallout 4, and yet, if you search thoroughly before the final encounter, it can offer a final if forlorn hope to the last sentient survivor who will then shut down the radiation sprayers in their zone for good.

Dry Rock Gulch is run by robots and was a refuge for some traders who tried to take refuge there when the Raider gangs moved in, and they were overcome by bloodworms.  The Robots continue on as if the war never happened and go about their daily routine oblivious to the lack of park personnel.  It is surreal in many ways to walk down the western oriented streets and see just how the old west of movies were captured in this one setting.

Safari Adventure has mutated creatures created post-war and the story of how a ghoulified survivor utilized truly high tech equipment to create living creatures to survive and then, finally, isolated and used FEV to create creatures that might defend the area is fascinating.  Too bad neither Institute nor Brotherhood are interested in Nuka World, but that would require thoroughly integrating the region into the Commonwealth instead of just making it a one-way street for Raiders to prey upon the Commonwealth.

The World of Refreshment with its River of Quantum Nuka-Cola (would that it were so!) has become the home to mutated Mirelurks called Nukalurks, as was the case in FO3.  That wonderful blue glow of the Nukalurks sets them apart from the rest of their kin in a visually interesting way.  The story garnered from the last day of the old world is one that allows for an understanding of what dedication to a job meant for so many on that Saturday morning, and the distant lights from the exploding bombs seen over the mountain tops told of its end.  Some people let the radiation kill them, others committed suicide and one or two tried to get back home.  This is the legacy of the old world and how it still had people with a work ethic.

Within the Galactic Zone are robots that have been put onto hairtrigger combat alert because their main control system had its Starcores removed from it.  Gathering those up from inside and outside the Galactic Zone can be a study in peril, yet, for all the hostility of the robots they can be deactivated.  Sadly Bethesda decided that the ranged Robotics Expert had to be a close range skill, thus removing the 'ranged' portion of it...thankfully mods put that back in and it is possible to control robots by aiming at them with manual sights and triggering the skill, just like you used to be able to do!  Instead of fighting the robots a goal of deactivating them one by one can allow for this entire area to slowly be made safe, though at the cost of XP since you don't get anything for just shutting robots down.  But it is the robots that make the Galactic Zone so enticing, beyond the smaller stories found within it.  Once enough Starcores are reinstalled to allow for the major segments of the robots to be put into a non-combat mode, and then the final one discovered, the entire Galactic Zone can be brought back online with all of the surviving robots to go about their mundane tasks and ignore the fact that there are no customers to serve.  As a player I had so hoped that the entire zone would become a build site that would allow for the creation of new robots to replace any I had to destroy, but that is not the case.

Outside the park, proper, there is a mystery mansion, a town dedicated to the personnel that staffed Nuka World, and the return of the Hubologists who are led by a visionary to Nuka World to receive the experience of a lifetime.  This environment is in keeping with the location of many theme parks being far away from cities and having a rural area around them, and mirrors our world in many ways due to this.  What may have been a lush grassland or somewhat swampy grassland has now become a dry place, with only the remnants of the swamp remaining where water still flows.  It is enclosed by mountains on all sides, so no walking back to the Commonwealth is possible, although many others have done so it is not something the PC can do.  It would have been nice to allow a different way to go through the park without the main story for it being active, but that is not the case.  Still nothing can detract from the fallen splendor of a theme park, and it is a shame that Bethesda, so set upon the VR experience, didn't make a way to repair all the rides in the park and even finish those that weren't completed.  If they did they would have a VR experience like none other available to the hardy wasteland explorer.

Far Harbor's DLC gives the setting of an island shrouded in a low level radioactive fog, and The Islanders pressed back from homesteads to the port town of Far Harbor.  Getting there requires a quest, and then taking an automated boat to The Island.  Like the Dragonborn DLC in Skyrim or Point Lookout in Fallout 3, this means getting a tour of the outer part of the harbor by the boat before docking and then becomes the game mechanic to go back and forth between the two areas.  The landscape is that of Maine, with swampy lowlands and rugged mountains, and some plateaus and coastal flatlands scattered throughout The Island.  Mutated creatures of The Island are unique to their environment and have those that drop from the tall trees or spring from the marsh and swamps, while others can be found on the coasts, including normal types of Mirelurks and a unique type known only to The Island, plus other creatures like the Fog Crawler.  A group of Super Mutants somehow got to The Island have taken over a few sites there.  Those that stay too long in the Fog become crazed Trappers, which are the Raiders of The Island.

For the design, Far Harbor gets very high marks in giving a quaint feeling to the main port, and the general feel of how The Island survived on the tourist trade prewar.  It was also home to a submarine base, recently taken over by The Children of Atom, and to a Vim! bottling plant, which was in fierce competition with Nuka Cola for survival.  Toss in  a lumber mill, older ports, and a ruined port taken over by Trappers, plus the main park in Acadia, and the pre-war conditions take shape, even in their ruins.  This is a setting with a feeling of dread and suspense behind it, and the rare clear day does nothing to dispel this feeling.  There are a few areas that can become settlements, and building on them means taking their unique geography into mind when doing so.  This single DLC offers a much stronger main story than the base game, and gives the player much agency in deciding the outcome of events for those on The Island.  The factions (Synth Refuge in Acadia, The Children of Atom at the sub base, and The Islanders at Far Harbor) have no requirements on them surviving and the game offers solutions ranging from a temporary truce and cease-fire to all-out annihilation of everyone.  What happens is up to the player, and though there is some nudging to follow the 'good' route, even that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: there are solutions to Far Harbor's problems but none of them are particularly 'good' and some are spectacularly 'bad'.

There is no way to do the creepy nature of Far Harbor justice without playing it.  For setting and story, plus boiling down the essentials of the base game story to something with a wider spectrum of solutions, Far Harbor actually outshines the base game in many particulars.  The major downfall within the settings is the platform and building minigame necessary to get to DiMA's memories, and anyone replaying the game will want to find the console commands for a PC to get past it the second time as it offers nothing new the second time through.  It gave me some headaches and that meant only being able to play for a few minutes and then doing something else while the game was paused.  I would have preferred a hacking game or perhaps going into locked library space off of the main base instead of that minigame.  Consider it the puzzle platform section of Fallout 4, and if you don't get a headache and like figuring out 3D puzzles, well, more power to you!  For everyone else, you may want to skip it on subsequent playthroughs.

Needless to say there is a Vault on Far Harbor, Vault 118.  It is perhaps the most humorous quest going through FO4, that being of an over-the-top murder mystery amongst people who had their brains put into Robobrain bodies.  Yes you can solve it with enough questions and observations, and find the real culprit!  Who you decide to finger and how you nail them (or even IF you want to do that) is up to you.  And lets just say there is one small section that, with a high Charisma, becomes available for those of you missing the robotic interlude concept.  Still this Vault is unlike anything else in Fallout, and was something diverted by the rich and powerful to get their own seclusion from the post-war world, and even undermined Vault-Tec's original concept but the new one got their approval.  I wish that was buildable after the Vault-Tec DLC but, sadly, it isn't.  I would have really liked to complete the design and offer The Islanders an opportunity of low class Better Living Underground which, actually, is far superior to their current arrangement.

Design and style considered, there isn't much to Automotron, although there could be so much more done with it.  Basically The Mechanist's Lair, from upper reaches to final living quarters should be one, integrated build zone and the player allowed to clean up the garbage and mess of the place.  The Mechanist would have done so learning robotics skills and assigning clean-up duties to robots as they were built, come to think of it...luckily there is a mod for that.  Without mods the Mechanist's Lair is an underwhelming place to build and actually very frustrating as its level design features no snappable components to work with.  The place needs a major overhaul and reworking, but doesn't need the Vault-Tec treatment, however, just the sort of work that is offered for build components that would allow the industrial theme to be re-utilized.  Beyond that the setting, with a few nice touches, is basically pre-war industrial going to slow ruins.

Overall Fallout 4 and its DLCs get high marks on artistry, creativity, and getting the settings done right.  The few quibbles are just that: quibbles.  Fallout 4 is visually in keeping with the franchise and yet suitably different to accentuate the regions it contains.  That is what anyone playing in the Fallout franchise under Bethesda wants to see, and it is done very well for this game.  Kudos to the design teams doing all this hard work!

Fallout 4: Lore, creativity and constraints

Fallout 4 is a game set in the Fallout Universe which is an alternate history universe that diverges from our universe as the Nuclear Age transformed the way civilizations approached the problems of manufacturing.  This universe didn't see the same sort of Space Age that ours did, and it did not feature the move from vacuum tube technology to transistorized technology.  A good reference for this sort of universe can be found in the science fiction of the 1930's to the early 1960's, especially those that utilized nuclear power for their basis of the next generation of tools, vehicles and equipment.  If you read the works of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Anderson, Pohl and Piper, to just pick a few, from that time period, then you will get a very good idea of how this sort of alternate history is founded.  This is a world where television just never caught on and where radio remained king of the airwaves.  Hollywood didn't budge much from its formulation of that era, either, and the influences were those going from radio to cinema.  It is an alt-history that is very similar to our universe and yet distinctly different in many, many ways, and each game in the series uses that as its basis and then offers a view of what it left behind when it all went to hell in nuclear flames as the Great War with China finally went nuclear on October 23, 2077.

In creating a universe for players, a game designer (without regard to genre) must take into consideration how that universe actually functions.  Even when running a paper and pencil campaign, players will learn about the world they are in by interacting with other people, the environment and coming across hidden or lost information.  A game world has a history as its foundations, and that history can and does gain reinterpretations over time as more is developed for that world in the way of interesting missions, scenarios or new places to go.  All of that historical information, be it before the player arrived or after they have started to explore, forms the basis for this thing known as Lore.

The function of Lore is to give a foundation for game play, and when a series of game sessions (or games) within a given universe are created, Lore must be a foundation for that new material.  This does not mean that Lore is infallible.  In fact it may be contradictory based on who is giving it out, what they are aligned with and how they view those who did the activities being recounted.  Lore also encompasses technology, weapons, armor and all the artifacts that are mentioned by stories.  Lore is also a point of agreement for those who form a civilized unit known as a Nation State, though all Nations start at the family level and that is where Lore is first learned.  The Fallout Universe has Lore behind all of this and more, and it creates a diverse background that has been or will be explained to a player either via in-game materials or playing in prior instances of this universe.

When new instances of material for game play arrives in a universe, it is likely to feature many things that are not in agreement with prior Lore, and Fallout 4 is no different in this than any other game in a series of games that has a Lore based function behind it.  These discontinuities form into broad categories and they deserve an examination.

RETCON
A Retcon is Retroactive Continuity change in a series set in the same universe be it fictional or gaming.  This is a break or discontinuity with prior established Lore that offers a change to prior continuity of Lore in the new instance.

There is an Alteration  Retcon that is a change that attempts to explain itself based on prior material or offers a ready opportunity to understand it where prior games may have established one thing but had no way to gain information from the new game area so that a new continuity is established.  A simple one for this is the presence of cats in FO4.  All prior games established that cats had perished during the Great War, period.  The Commonwealth, by not having much contact with the outside world, didn't have a say in this belief as they were not tied in with anything much beyond their geographic region and the few contacts that were established most likely didn't worry about the absence of cats as something to talk about.  Cats are present in FO4 and the belief they had perished was true up to this point and a reason that this notion wasn't shot down was that it was true for all the prior areas in the franchise.  Geographic isolation and limited contact meant that the survival of cats in the Commonwealth wasn't really known to anyone outside of it.  The continuity of the Lore in prior games has changed retroactively with FO4 as there is a reason for this knowledge not to be known outside of this play area.  The Lore has been Altered in this case and a reason that isn't stated but relatively obvious covers it.

When there is an addition to Lore that has been established, that is to say something new that is consistent with prior Lore but not seen in prior game instances happens, this is an Addition Retcon.  In FO4 the category of Pipe Weapons are introduced as the cheap and makeshift firearms made from available components that are not seen in prior games, and are thus an addition to firearms classification.  These expedient weapons actually should have been seen in prior games, but never were, and there is no way to explain why they weren't.  Many reasons could be thought up to cover this, but nothing readily apparent comes to mind, so it just must be taken at face value that these weapons exist in the Commonwealth and are thus part of the Lore.

Another class of retcon is when something is removed from the Lore via the present game.  This can happen when events are described as happening in a different sequence or placed before established sequences without any rationale behind it.  Or if events happened in a prior story or understanding of Lore and are then said to have not happened then that is a Subtraction Retcon.  In FO4 there is a Brotherhood entry in their database that establishes that the potato has gone extinct after the Great War, and yet the potato can be found as an ingredient in Fallout New Vegas.  The potato actually did survive, exists and the Brotherhood had to go through that region to reach the east coast, and thus had every opportunity to know that the plant existed, thrived and was available as something that could be found or purchased.  Part of the reason this is done is so that the above ground Tato plant, that yields fruit as a foodstuff can be seen as some sort of mutated hybrid, possibly with a pre-war tomato plant, yet the Tato is not the potato which is a root crop, not a fruit crop.

Another form of retcon is that of a Compression Retcon where prior activities are compressed into a very short sequence which may exclude some information or even add in new material that did not happen in the established sequencing of events.  This can happen when getting an overview history from an individual or organization, and may be done to justify the way they act in the present by removing or adding in minor material to the past.  In FO4 the Player Character undergoes this with at least one individual, and it is the PC that is not allowed to actually give a full accounting of themselves even in brief so as to try and establish doubt in the mind of the player.  These sorts of retcons are rare, but they do happen.

Now with all of that said, the actual creativity necessary to create a new instance in a series requires understanding the background and history of that setting in the established context for that series.  If you read any series of stories or watch television or film series, the retcon will happen, even by those people who strive to give as much continuity as possible.  Games are not immune to this and often breaks with Lore happen when better technology to run a game appear that allows for new or novel game play to happen.  Games in a series can be judged by how well they handle these changes and their ability to explain either via setting or actual in-game material, the changes that are seen.  Some changes may be trivial and others may invalidate entire prior games in the series based on what the change is and how well it is handled.  Thus Lore can be seen as a constraining factor, particularly when better technology can make an older way of doing things obsolete.

Creativity is unbounded, however, and while a new way can be implemented it can also be explained as to how things have changed since the prior instance of the game which supported an older interpretation.  This is an opportunity for creativity and creators should not see this as a problem but a challenge to create the reasoning and rationale behind the change, which can be done via a Compression Retcon that retells of events since that prior instance and the current state.  This will indicate that there is a back story to the change that may or may not receive a full treatment, but at least it is there as a placeholder.

And that brings on FO4, as it is rife with retcons large and small across the entire game, and fans will notice these as they happen and be left scratching their heads as to how and why these changes were made.  As cited above there are cats, pipe weapons and potatos as examples, but these are not alone in the game, and there are much larger ones that are just dropped in with no backstory, no environmental explanation and no real rationale behind them, and these can be seen as a problem of creative focus and storytelling on the part of Bethesda Game Studios.

A first example, and most glaring, is power armor and the newly introduced power armor frame to which the power armor pieces are attached.  This frame is powered by the newly found Fusion Core that is not seen in any prior instance of the series.  Furthermore the Fusion Core is now used to power Gatling Lasers, which had been established as being powered by expendable Microfusion Cells (MF Cells) in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Electron Charge Packs (EC Packs).in Fallout 3 and FONV,   These energy cells (generically) are utilized like expendable ammunition in any other weapon and are depleted and the spent cell ejected from the weapon.  Thus within the series there has been a Lore retcon to the Gatling Laser from its prior instance with Interplay and its new life in Bethesda and Obsidian adhered to that with FONV.  While the Fusion Core is run down and finally ejected, the entire way the Gatling Laser works has been changed.  Is there a good reason or rationale given for this?  No.  Is the absence of whole categories of energy cells in FO4 given?  No.  Energy Cells, the specific type, and not the general category, are not present in FO4 at all.  The Gauss Rifle used to be a single shot weapon utilizing MF Cells that were in a cluster and replaced between shots, not a weapon with a magazine of specialized 2mm ammo as seen in FO4.

These may seem like relatively simple forms of retcons, and they are.  The purpose is to streamline game play by removing some prior bits of technology, re-purposing others and then adding in a final type that is utilized in specific instances.  There is only an environmental consideration in the setting of FO4's history that could explain this, and that is the advent of Mass Fusion and the lovely fusion generators that appear to still be producing power over two centuries after the Great War.  The setting also gives ruins of Municipal Plutonium Wells where, presumably, older nuclear material was dumped once fusion generators replaced the older nuclear generators.  Yet this environmental explanation, if true, would undermine the very problems of the Institute in the ways of power generation.  These generators represent a distributed fusion system that appears to pre-date the Beryllium Agitator used to get the large reactor going in the Institute.  We know what nuclear reactors look like from previous games, and these lovely yellow devices with a fusion core in them are not attached to nuclear generators, but stand alone systems.  This is, in theory, a known and trusted technology that has proven the test of time and the Institute would have used that same technology to create new power sources as they expanded so that each sub-section of the Institute would have its own reliable power supply.

When changing the Lore of a region and putting it into the past it is necessary to then take into account how it will be seen and understood as time goes on.  To remove certain types of energy cells and streamline game play, and by adding in the fusion core and putting in a number of places to get fusion cores that are active generators, the concept is then not propagated throughout the region.  Even if these new power systems had a decade to be put in place, or even two, they would not totally supplant the older systems which were also reliable for the long term.  One item, the Nuclear Battery, seen in FO3 and FONV is totally absent from the Commonwealth, yet these were not only able to power up drained energy cells (generically), but also served as a form of jury rigged lighting when attached to long life light bulbs or lamps.  Those were seen in many places in the wasteland, and the large number of such batteries points to a widespread utility function of them for smaller devices.  These were subtracted from the Lore in the Commonwealth, and no number of Municipal Plutonium Wells to dump these batteries would explain their absence as they clearly had a function that reached to much smaller and independent technology as they were portable.  Thus no matter how long the Wells were taking in old batteries, the necessary functions of equipment and pure utility in long-lasting power for low power draining equipment would remain.  They served a different purpose from Fusion Cores and removing them doesn't make any sense and, due to the high price of Fusion Cores, makes the Nuclear Battery a cheaper and better known alternative than trying to adapt older systems to them.  And as a battery it has easy to access terminals that allow for it to be utilized in a number of roles that the Fusion Core just can't fill.  The change to the Fusion Core with no real good back-up for why it wasn't used by those able to build technical equipment post-war, and the absence of the older Nuclear Battery means that these are breaks with the Lore of the Fallout series within Bethesda's own tenure as owner of the series.

Equipment Lore has ramifications for plot, storyline, and suspension of disbelief, thus even a cursory glance at what is seen above ground and functioning reveals major flaws in the plot design of FO4, holes which are not explained in any way.  A much simpler break with Lore is that of Power Armor, a new favorite as it moves away from being an enhanced wearable armor and turns it into something closer to a personal vehicle.  This might be something closer to the combat suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or what some of the personnel wear in David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, or even be considered as a form of transition to a Mech Suit or Mecha form of warfare.  To get that spiffy animation and entry/exit from the suit, plus feeling like you are wearing something with a lot of heft behind it, Bethesda decided to scrap preexisting Lore built up throughout the Fallout franchise, even during its own tenure which kept with the prior Lore until FO4.  That Lore requires specialized training and fitting for Power Armor to put it on.  It is possible to repair such suits without such training, but to actively wear it and use it does require training.  That was always training of the 'fade to black, it happens off screen' sort, and was meant to keep what was special about Power Armor a secret from the player.  Getting accepted by a faction (normally the Brotherhood or, in FONV, the Enclave Remnants) was a reward for helping them and represented the point in which the PC was now able to handle some of the best equipment in the entire game.

In FO4 any illiterate farm hand, junky, Raider, or other untrained individual can just put in a readily available Fusion Core into a Power Armor Frame and walk off with it and the armor on it.  Raiders do that one better by crafting their own armor (which isn't so great but what do you expect of Raiders?) to put on the Frames thus creating new suits of low quality Power Armor.  And there are more than enough Frames, some with armor already on them, sitting unattended around the wasteland so that anyone who has any wit at all can quickly pick up Frame and start walking around like a pro!  Is there a reason for this change?  I mean beyond the spiffy animation and feeling like a tank while using the stuff?  No.  That's it, you are able to feel awesome!  So is anyone else, including that illiterate settler that just jumped into your suit of Power Armor because you forgot to take the Fusion Core out of it.  Heaven help you if they have a Fusion Core in their inventory.  FO4 the game where everyone gets to feel awesome because...reasons?  What are the reasons for this change in technology?

A good start at cobbling together a reason is to see that the prior instances of the same armor had some sort of undersuit as part the entire deal.  It doesn't look like the hard frame system of FO4 and this then posits something like a soft frame with servos that need positioning for each user, and that required training.  By using a distributed, small set of energy cells (generically), the old Power Armor could have a long life in the field, take wear and tear and allow the user to mitigate the weight of the suit through the servos that off-set it by enhancing the wearer's strength stat.  In theory, if the new frame system was made for the old armor pieces, then all an individual has to do, when the frame arrives, is take off the individual pieces of armor and place them on the frame, shove a fusion core into the frame and make the transition from the prior instance to the new instance.  All military in use and precision, with requirements built into contracts that would take years if not decades to fulfill.  The Commonwealth would be the source of this new type of frame and would see the first military replacement of the prior soft frame system with this hard frame one.  This happened so close to the bombs dropping that it never got beyond the Commonwealth and even the Enclave didn't have access to it.  Perhaps it was a test deployment for the entire military, including National Guard units, just to make sure everyone knew how it worked.  Maybe it even had a training manual, though none are seen in FO4, but they are likely given how the military operates.  The Brotherhood may have run across records of this in the Citadel and the first team in, that Danse mentions, found the specs for making this stuff and they then got a production line in The Pitt going for it.

Yes a likely theory can be created to explain this, and it has its own constraints to keep it so that it is geographically isolated.  Now to actually run a vehicle, which is what Power Armor becomes, takes no training, because...reasons!  In the post-war vehicles are a bit on the scarce side, and no one has bothered to get bicycles up and running, which should be relatively easy compared to Power Armor.  Thus the absolute knowledge of how to run a vehicle by those born after the war is zero outside of a few factions like the BoS, Enclave or NCR.  Even with a self-adjusting frame, and all that good stuff, there is no need for any training at all to utilize Power Armor.  Imagine if this stuff was deployed in the field in China and the Chinese decided to get a few sets by staging a raid on a depot where they were being unpacked.  Grab a Fusion Core put it in a frame with armor pieces on it, and then use a Stealthboy sitting on a nearby shelf to get out or even use some form of native Chinese stealth technology that you brought with you.  Is this actually how the US military would want such suits to work?  I mean, really, just get in and go?  What will the Drill Sergeant have to yell at you for at that point?  And just how the hell do you deal with an enemy who has stolen the suit, speaks English well enough to fool you, and infiltrates a unit in a suit of Power Armor?  As production of this stuff was a contract negotiated with a war on, safeguards would be in place to prevent this, and each trooper would be expected to be able to maintain their suit, as well.  How to efficiently use it so that you don't run down the Fusion Core would also be taught so as to lessen the logistics requirements of these suits.  And from Proctor Ingram we also get the idea that all these frames just don't fit all that well: One Size Fits All, Fits None Well.  Want to adjust it?  Bring it to her and she'll do it and, probably, train you to do it for yourself so you don't have to pester her with it.  That would solve the Lore problem: training from the Brotherhood, the good old fashioned method.  All those other pretty suits you couldn't use until you got training.

Ah, training rears its ugly head yet again.  One of the major parts of that training would include actually getting past the safety interlocks of the frame to get into it in the first place.  This is the case of 'You Are Assigned This Frame, Soldier, And Expected To Maintain It And It Is Coded To You' sort of deal.  Just like in prior wars you got issued equipment to keep track of, the Power Armor Frame would be no different.  Why?  Logistics, so the military could know just what happened to each Frame, what its expected use of Fusion Cores was versus how it was actually used, and so that individuals wouldn't go joy riding or accidentally 'lose' one.  Hop in and go would only be for authorized personnel, which does not include that ignorant post-war settler or Raider.  Thus to operate Power Armor an individual would need training, authorization and then be held accountable for the equipment, all of which would have an impact on the post-war world of FO4.  What we get is the implausible hop in and go system that streamlines game play and gets you a chance to feel Awesome! when you haven't done a damned thing to deserve that feeling.  And then push that feeling down when you realize that any fool with a Fusion Core can do this.  But you still got that spiffy animation!

Can the Lore of Power Armor be salvaged?  Yes, and it would need a thorough going-over to do so.  Would have been nice to get a couple of screens of this on a Brotherhood terminal or have some one tell you a bit about how the stuff works.  A couple of screens of text doesn't require lots of game development cash, and it is way cheaper than voice acting it.  The male protagonist, by story, already had training in Power Armor and an authorization for it.  The female protagonist is a bit of a loss, unless you make her day career helping to make the things...remember becoming a lawyer was done by night school, so she did have an unknown day job.

These times I am using the environment to help explain things is creative, though as a derivative of presented material, and attempts to fit the new Lore into the old system of Lore.  These are instances that could be readily done by the game design team and introduced in a more explicit fashion to make for smoother retcons.  Lore is not a constraint on creativity, in fact when Lore is changed an opportunity to explain the discontinuity or change is then available to explain just how far and deep the Lore change actually is

Retcons can respect prior Lore, adapt to it and still offer the changes in an understood framework of knowledge and history.  Putting in artifacts, removing others and changing yet others each creates a lack of continuity and that lack is not an obstacle but a challenge to a game designer who seeks to expand the constraints and limits of prior material.  There is no need to drop them in without telling what is behind them if the environment can tell the complete story, which means more than just inference or guesswork.  Small pieces of primary material be they holotapes, books, magazines or other sources of information in a game setting can do that, as well.  A small or even tiny bit of explicit material can go a long way to understanding a setting and how it is both similar to and different from other, prior settings in the same game universe.

Now if an alternate to the main history universe is being told, which is an alt-alt-history, then so be it, and a new continuity can be established that has few if any links to the prior ones.  That usually gets some introductory material or a few bits and pieces that get to a major plot, depending on if the goal is just to explain or try to abort (or revert) an alternate history.  That last usually doesn't work out so well and leaves a question of just why the game was made in the first place.  The former, where there is a clean and explicit break allows for just some pieces of the old continuity to pass onwards and the rest gets chucked, thus allowing the prior continuity to be preserved without retcons.

Prior history, prior Lore and continuity are not just a constraint for creativity but an opportunity for truly creative individuals to explain just why these changes are present in the new instance of a story in any form of media, games included.  There will always be discrepancies in long running story series which can be traced back through the earliest written works of mankind.  Yet these works, be they religious, historical or fictional in content, do not fail as works when they give a reason and rationale for the discontinuity with prior works.  Thematically they can still adhere to the basis of those prior works, respect them and yet offer changes to them be they putting in that generations of mankind were longer the closer to the state of original grace they were in time to the shifting of weapons used in Victorian England when a well known team seems to continually shift their favorite side-arms.  Some require explicit and purposeful work in explaining changes, while others need merely show the shift in time to reflect the changes within a single time period. There are instances in Fallout 4 where the retcons seem to be just tacked on to try and assert that the potato didn't survive the Great War and to explain why the Tato plant bears fruit...a useless change, by and large, and unnecessarily tries to invalidate prior known facts, instead of saying that the Tato plant appears to be some sort of mutant hybrid formed by genes jumping between plant species in the Commonwealth.  It is unlikely to be a major plot point in any future game in the series, true, but why change something that only needs simple abridging or demonstration that in the localized region a new, mutant plant supplanted prior varieties?

For all that Fallout 4 offers an abundant world to explore, it seems to miss the mark when it comes to fitting in this region of the franchise into the entire past history of the series.  Perhaps the design team wanted to showcase all the great stuff they created early on to the players, and lost sight of the necessary respect that must be paid to prior design teams to keep a coherent world in play.  There will always be retcons in series, it can never be helped as even the best single author will screw up details between stories: it is a given.  Recognizing that these are changes, working them smoothly into the overall world, and then utilizing that newly created material to expand upon the world, that is an ultimate goal of a retcon: to change continuity and establish a new continuity and show why it makes sense.  More of that sort of thing would have meant changing timing of events, leaving the feeling of being truly powerful for later in the game and, perhaps, not changing minor things that worked just fine and were streamlined for design purposes alone.  That last is pure laziness on the part of the design team...perhaps they thought the pre-war world was very streamlined and efficient.  Yet the Fallout franchise demonstrates just the opposite, even within Fallout 4.

Fallout 4: The Ugly - The Institute

When first entering the Institute, you are given a promise by Father that 'all your questions will be answered'.  That is a lie.  You don't even get to ask them.  I had a lot of questions about the place and its people, and trying to find anyone with any expansive dialogue was a dead loss.  None of my questions about how the organization is run, how it manufactures materials nor even the basics of why there are so few people there could be answered because the questions could not be asked.  I wanted to reserve judgement on it until I could begin to understand some of the nuts and bolts of the organization, its structure, its accountability system, and how it determines just what projects are and are not important plus what the prioritization system were.

Without those answers even the most simple and most basic question of asking: what does it mean to be in an Acting position comes forward.  In our common understanding, when an individual is an Acting Director or Acting CEO or other, similar position, it means that they are temporarily in that position until a final individual is found to put into that position on a full time, full authority for that job basis.  With the Head of the Synth Retention Bureau, Zimmer who appeared in FO3, out going after 'high profile cases' the PC gets to meet Justin Ayo who is the Acting Head of SRB.  Thus the Institute adheres to this concept of an individual acting in a position who is actually the #2 person or the designated temporary stand-in for the actual person who has full authority.  Justin Ayo can, therefore, be over-ruled if he is seen as stepping beyond the limited authority granted to him as the Acting Head of the SRB, and his intrusive manner and paranoid attitude towards the scientists in the Institute has many complaints filtering upwards.

If this is the case then when meeting Shaun who is the acting Director of the Institute, then the natural question, indeed the very first one that came to my mind is: where is the actual Director?  I don't want to talk with a stand-in, but the actual person who has real authority inside the place.  The further designation of 'Father' is not an actual position nor title, though it is enough weight to sway the subordinate Heads of departments whenever Shaun makes a decision.  It is a truly minor point, of course, since he is considered the actual Director for all intents and purposes, but it is Shaun, himself, who gives himself the 'acting' designation and he should know what that means inside an organization.  If it meant he has the full power of the Directorship, then he could simply dispense with it and say he is the Director, no 'acting' is needed.  The suspicion is that what the PC sees and encounters is rigged and a set-up to protect the Institute, with at least two figures of power (Head of SRB and the Director) actually off-stage in case Father's harebrained scheme goes awry.

That is just a first glance problem with 'answer your questions', and yet the questions continue far farther and deeper than that.  In journeys through the Commonwealth, the PC can go through University Point and find what the Institute was looking for: the Laser Rifle with the 'Endless' Legendary effect.  Kellogg led that attack after first just giving a simple demand to hand it over, but since no one had actually figured out what it was that the pre-war researchers were actually looking for or where to find it, the Institute got no answer.  For that, they were slaughtered and synths sent in to comb the place for the project, which they didn't find.  On suspicion of having important pre-war research, an entire trading town was slaughtered: every man, woman, child and food animal was killed ruthlessly.  As this was under Father's Directorship, he had to give the OK for it.  I wanted to ask him why this mission was authorized and finally give some closure to the entire affair as I felt the technology was underwhelming.  This is an event that many NPCs will mention in passing, and has reverberations across the Commonwealth as University Point was an important trading center, so its loss put a financial hit on many across the region.  Yet no answers can be found within the Institute, and the current leadership hasn't gone through any turnover, so getting an answer from someone should be possible.

At this point the game mechanics of being an Action game with RPG elements goes against role-playing as the player is expected to just accept that they will never get to ask substantial questions and get actual answers.  To create a deep background to The Institute would require much more voiced dialogue from both the PC and NPC's inside the place, and give the player a certain amount of agency in making decisions about The Institute.  It is to be remembered that this is the very first time that the actual Institute has been open to play in the Fallout franchise, and understanding its background, position, operations, methodologies and how it works are vital in determining just what sort of future it should have.

The Institute wants to be low profile, and yet actively antagonizes, indeed wantonly murders, kidnaps and replaces individuals on a whim.  The Mayor of Diamond City is one thing, but what about poor old Art?  It is a random encounter but finding Art vs. Art, two identical men going after each other because of a botched synth replacement, is telling.  First off, Art (the original person) doesn't hold any position of power, influence, and is, for all intents and purposes, just another wastelander of no importance.  If he was important, then this wouldn't be a random encounter, now, would it?  Yet this no account wastelander is on the line to be snatched and replaced.  So why not do that with someone at University Point and get a first-hand look at things and not expend as much time and effort combing through the ruins in a vain attempt to find something that was only hinted at being there?  No need for Kellogg to show up, no threats, just a replacement of one of the individuals without a family to then keep an eye on things and ask some low key questions.  Through the use of the Molecular Relay, it should be possible to do this and gain INTEL without a huge expenditure of resources.

This only makes sense if The Institute wants to keep an element of fear and terror inside the Commonwealth, and breed paranoia.  An organization that actually wants to keep a low profile does not operate like this in the open leaving traces and evidence behind that is easy for all to see.  For all of the bluster and verbiage about being so advanced and the wasteland having nothing to offer The Institute, and wanting to have no hand in the affairs of the surface world, the organization sure has a funny way of going about it by doing just the opposite.

As presented The Institute has little idea of how to actually manage projects which, given the nature of research and technology, should be something they would be good at.  An example of this is the need to get a new reactor going to power The Institute, as given use the old systems already present or made just after the Great War and siphoning off of topside systems is causing major problems.  It would have been nice if every time the PC uses the teleportation system that, when they arrive, there is a major brownout and perhaps some people being a bit PO'd at this constant abuse of a privilege. Verbal indications just don't cut it when you have such a new and fancy setting, and would put a real sense of understanding into play.  Still the plan to actually build and start the new reactor hinges on a vital piece of technology that no one has seen and only has a few vague descriptions to go by, but is powering a huge system in the Mass Fusion building (currently occupied by Gunners).  The BIG MISSION for The Institute and Brotherhood (who need the same piece to get Liberty Prime up and running if you go their way) is that McGuffin in Mass Fusion.

This begs the question:  how can you even start a project like this if you don't know the exacting specifications of the piece that is vital to it?  The answer is: you can't.  In fact this isn't the last piece you want to procure, but the VERY FIRST PIECE as it is vital to the design of the rest of the system.  Even if lesser pieces of the same dimension had been used previously, this one has new interior power design parameters which indicate it can do much, much more than prior versions and would then allow for a much more capable system to be designed.  If you knew those specifications, that is, and had the piece in hand to see if it actually worked as the single piece is just a WORKING PROTOTYPE.  Yeah, all the bugs weren't ironed out from it, but being functional meant it would be sent to the US military pre-war, which would mean DC.  For a brand new, long term power system, wouldn't it be nice to know if the critical component that will let it power up and function actually had long-term components in it and had actually operated within design parameters?  Wouldn't it be nice to KNOW those design parameters?  And if you knew all that, then why not just make one?

This is a Project Management failure of such large proportions that I found it impossible to give any credence to the idea that The Institute was competent at manufacturing and designing technology in its current state as shown.  For a project you need to gather specifications and materials before you actually start on it, and critical fail components need to be secured first on the list, not last.  The Institute has had years, if not a decade or more, to actually accomplish this and yet, wait around until they build everything then HOPE to get the necessary part to make the new reactor work.  As I've said in other settings: Hope is many things, but it is not a strategy.

So far an overall view of The Institute comes off as bi-polar, dysfunctional, and incompetent.

To me, as an individual player, the attraction of helping this group got marginalized very quickly, and yet all of this gets summed up in what is driving the organization forward.  The simple motto of "Mankind, Redefined" is one that has been heard a few times, and usually has the slaughter of millions of innocent people at its feet.  Be it Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, when this concept gets a head of steam going the results of Collectivization, A Great Leap Forward, or Purifying the Race are the types of results at the end of it.  "Mankind, Redefined" is just a motto that drives the Gen 3 Synth program, but no one wants to actually put hard and fast milestones to what it means.  To actually reach an objective, which is what the Gen 3 program is all about, there must be certain and attainable goals and end state that can actually be stated and defined.  If you can't define the end state, then how can 'Redefine' ever be achieved or even started?  That motto sounds great as a sales pitch by a Department Head at a meeting, but if it isn't backed up by a concrete proposal leading to a verifiable and achievable ending, then it won't go anywhere.

Thus the Gen 3 Synth program has a Project Management failure at the start, just like the new reactor program.  At least in the case of the reactor, the piece is known to exist.  For Gen 3 Synths, without such a definition the entire concept will turn into a programmatic Death March of constantly shifting goal posts, wasted months or years of effort, then working towards the new goal and facing the exact, same redefinition.  There are indications this may have started as a Spiral Design project, and yet even those have verifiable end goals in mind with milestones that can be checked off along the way.

And the Gen 3 Synth program is eating up resources, using up lots of vital power and is impacting projects across The Institute, which lends political power to both Advanced Systems and SRB.  There is one researcher who WILL ask, rhetorically, just what that motto actually means, and he is Lawrence Higgs.  There is a lone dissenter to the entire Gen 3 Synth program because it doesn't have a meaningful end state that can be defined.  He is meant to come across as old fashioned, but Lawrence Higgs is the only one to posses the actual clarity of thought to put the entire program into question and he is loyal to The Institute.  The institutional clout of Advanced Systems and SRB is also felt in the leeway granted to Justin Ayo and to Madison Li.

Madison Li has problems with Father wanting a duplicate of his younger self made as a Gen 3 Synth experiment.  While on-board with the entire Program, this personal project of Father's starts with misgivings by Madison, as heard on a holotape, and a later holotape shows some appreciation of the project and some apprehension as well.  To her the Child Synth concept is troubling to her since she knows that synths do not grow old and, thus, a Child Synth will not grow up as the goal is to redefine mankind, and growing older and maturing seems to be out of the question.  Gen 3 Synths receive programming that only allows for limited learning and ability to question what they are doing, yet large leeway in that ability to question and store the answers.  In trying to constrain curiosity and self-awareness, enough of each is provided to Gen 3 Synths to allow them to break out of their programming constraints.  A child, any child, must have much greater curiosity as they do not have much in the way of experience nor a mature way to process information, and thus a Child Synth must have those traits and yet have them heavily constrained so that they never stop being a child.  This is a recipe for disaster, which is something that Madison Li has to deal with, and the lack of rationale given to creation of this Child Synth add to her suspicions about the motivations of The Institute and Father as the Child Synth project can only be a dead-end.  A dead-end likely to end in some form of psychosis of the Child Synth if allowed to continue for the long term.

The very mental stability of Father, the child of the Sole Survivor now over 60 years old, must be called into question at this point.  While pointed at as a 'Great Scientist' the PC never gets to see just what it is that is so great about Father.  He acts in a humble manner (and the great work on animation has his stance and gestures show that he is clearly not telling the truth when you first meet him), and only cites his genetic background being the one used to create the Gen 3 Synths as the major reason for his elevation to his current position.  While a leader of The Institute, he shows no real Program Management skills and allows programs with ill-defined or non-defined goals to continue, gives the OK to a project that can't even figure out how to get the most valuable component as a first task, and then over-rides the specialist knowledge of a Department Head to authorize a project that is not just counter-productive but can only lead towards failure in the Child Synth experiment.  To those inside The Institute, driven on by a motto, he is a 'success' but try to find out what he was successful at doing, and you get nothing.  No awards, no accolades, no demonstration of technology, and no evidence of actual leadership skills, either.  He over-rides Department Heads without giving reason, shuts down the FEV lab and hides what is going on, and generally gives wide latitude to a paranoid head of the SRB to act as a form of Secret Police.  On top of that he also manages to leave out that he has terminal cancer as part of his condition until the very end, and that is the reason he has acted so rashly.  Cancer is, however, curable in the Fallout timeline, and one would think that the medical capacity of The Institute would have dealt with that as part of the Gen 3 Synth program, at the very least, to stop the unconstrained growth of cell cultures taken from Shaun.

After that there is the problem with the population size of The Institute.  There are two children and one young adult within its confines and the total number of individuals is under a hundred (and that would include people out on missions and such, like Zimmer).  This is not a viable gene pool.  Even taking in a talented individual or two from the wasteland doesn't get a viable gene pool, and it is questionable if those brought in would even be allowed to have children, given the entire viewpoint on how those inside The Institute value their less polluted gene pool in comparison to the surface world.  What we see of The Institute is the last generation of humans there.  As Gen 3 Synths aren't seen as people, but as property with some cognitive ability and that Gen 3 Synths are not able to reproduce, what we are given is the End of The Institute within a few decades.

This is a problem of the entire surface world as depicted, of course, but is acute inside The Institute as means to garner individuals and more diversified genes were deliberately destroyed by The Institute itself.  This happened when the people and their genetic material in Vault 111 were killed by Kellogg and Institute staff.  As seen in Sanctuary as the bombs dropped was a diverse gene pool and age range that would be reflected inside the protected Vault, and only a very few individuals were exposed to the bomb blast that had the Vault go to lockdown.  It is to be noted that Shaun was amongst those individuals, and his genes were declared to be pure enough to pass whatever tests The Institute had.  What about all the people who made it down BEFORE the bombs fell?  And if the brief exposure at such long distance wasn't enough to damage an infant's genes, then what about the adults, including the parents of Shaun? The Sole Survivor is called 'The Backup' which means that, yes, the genes from those riding down on that fateful day would ALSO be candidate genetic stock for The Institute.  And even those in cryo failure before Kellogg arrived are in a state of suspended animation, kept at low temperature and should have much viable genetic material in them...and there is always the possibility that advanced medical techniques could revive them.

Surely those inside The Institute, particularly the BioSciences division must have run the numbers right after the survivors of CIT got things settled down beyond base survival needs and recognized the major problem of their population size and lack of genetic diversity.  To a degree this is a problem in Vault 81, as well, although they have a system of 'population control' which must also have genetic viability management as part of its design.  Even with that Vault 81 is in the same position as The Institute, although it may be better managed to allow for multiple families to have children so that there will be a future generation of Vault residents able to maintain and manage the place.  Not so with The Institute.  The grand and quite spiffy place they have made for themselves is less well managed than a Vault-Tec Vault that has adapted to stringent population controls and genetic diversity management and are slowly opening up to the idea of more trade with the outside world, possibly due to the condition of the Vault and overall lack of genetic diversity in the population base.

These are the problems with The Institute we are shown in Fallout 4.  Yet with one of the division heads and an indication that the actual Director may not be Father, there is a sneaking suspicion that this is not the totality of The Institute.  To last as long as it has requires a much larger population and more in the way of foodstuff production than can be achieved in the BioSciences labs.  As for the new Gen 3 Synth we see stroll out of the creation room, well, where does that door go to?  I mean if you do a quick check using the console, you'll see that you don't get a new synth out of the room but the same one over and over and over again.  Maybe it is a test model that is immediately broken down?  If you take the given production rate at face value, then The Institute, as shown, would be over-run with them in a few days.  It can be assumed that Gen 1 and 2 Synths are just put into a shutdown state someplace and activated as needed...though there would have to be one heck of a storage facility to account for their numbers.

A final piece in this is that The Institute is the progenitor of Super Mutants in the Commonwealth, and there are no indications of outside Super Mutants showing up there.  A top number of Super Mutants dumped in the wasteland can be figured out based on the size of the FEV lab in The Institute, a rough measure of how many abductees are processed per month, and that multiplied by ten years to get a total maximum number of Super Mutants put out by the FEV program.  In taking off attrition of Super Mutants due to Raiders, Gunners and the hazards of the wasteland, plus simple in-fighting, that total comes down with an upper limit (if being generous and underplaying the hazards) of 3,000 Super Mutants total and a lower limit possibly as low as 1,500 being the absolute total number at game start.  The Sole Survivor kills of quite a few of those, and many more are killed off due to those hazards of the wasteland deals.  Put in the places that they have taken over having Raiders and Gunners as neighbors, and that lower estimate starts to look pretty generous.  Yet there appears to be an endless supply of Super Mutants.  Of course this is a broken game mechanic that makes no sense, but if you want to make sense of it, then the only real solution is that the holder of the FEV has another facility set up somewhere.

The question that comes from this is:  Is The Institute we are shown in Fallout 4 the real thing?

Everyone acts suspicious and is tight lipped about The Institute, even if you get friendly with them.  All the interior plot lines support the glitzy showcase as being The Institute.  Yet it doesn't have the infrastructure, facilities space, production space or population size to support itself to validate this concept.  It is a showcase, a place where all the new technologies come together to show the promise The Institute has to offer, but even this showcase has problems keeping itself powered up.

If we accept the game mechanics as true, then The Institute we see is not the real deal.  In fact it would need to have a much larger facility, perhaps using multiple pre-war generators, and be pretty far from the CIT ruins.  This would make sense as the survivors of the old CIT would realize the need to gather other survivors with technical knowledge to survive longer and the immediate shelters and systems they made would only serve as a base of operations until such time as a better and safer place was found.  Perhaps an old military base or underground storage depot in the western or north western part of the map.

In my first play through I used this logic to search for The Institute as I thought there might be some clue or a DIY way to get into the place.  Roaming across the northwestern part of the terrain, I found a number of large pipelines heading underground and searched, in futility, for where they were going.  This part of the map is one of the least threatening places in all of FO4 and it appeared to have the right amount of water infrastructure heading into it to support a large organization.  An added bonus was being near Vault 111, giving them easy access to at least the remaining above-ground supplies left after Vault construction.  All it would take was an old, underground military supply depot or bunker (like we see in FONV) and The Institute would have a relatively safe, quiet, cozy home and use the CIT base for putting together the future of mankind, supported at a distance just to insulate the real Institute from harm.  Given 3 out of 4 endings to FO4 this would be a smart thing to do.

What is fascinating is the mechanics and results of quests handed out by Institute members concerning synths out in the wild.  In Synth Retention and Building a Better Crop, the Institute sends the PC on missions to Libertalia and Warwick Homestead: the first on a 'bring 'em back alive' deal for a rogue synth and the other to help iron out problems the Bio group is having in testing out a new strain of plants.  On a later restart of the game, I decided to put an idea into action to test the veracity of the two individuals (Gabriel and Mr. Warwick) being synths, as well as generally trying to fail the missions as they are amongst the very few the PC is actually allowed to fail in completing them.

First was removing the old ex-Minutemen turned Raider contingent in Libertalia before getting Synth Retention.  Why?  I wanted to see what happened the next day when I got the mission.  I fully expected the Raiders to remain dead, but that didn't happen.  Yes the game mechanics require a fully stocked and prepped set of Raiders encamped there, and that is what happened: it is pure game mechanics involving the quest and nothing else.  Yet that makes no damned sense, now, does it? Literally, overnight, all the bodies were removed and the entire place reset during the few hours I spent back at the Institute.  If anyone had to explain this as a real world phenomena, then it would involve high technology, teleportation and a group of very quick working actors put in place to make the site quest-ready.  Going down this line of reasoning then eliminates the Raider gang under Gabriel as being one that opportunistically moved in right after the prior gang was eliminated: they would require a lot of help to do that and Raiders are not known for their work ethic.  Nor are they known for hacking capability to change or delete computer entries on terminals referring to the prior gang.  This is the realm of Institute work since they fit the bill for doing all of this if they had a Raider group under the control of an operative who organized them, and the Raiders have loyalty to this individual.

That is a big 'if'' and would require putting a Gen 3 Synth in charge of Raiders.  The way the quest is supposed to go is that Gabriel is given his factory recall code (after cleaning out the rest of the Raiders below the highest point in the array of ships), and then kill off the few remaining high ranking members.  After that X6-88 transports Gabriel out of there and the PC is left to figure out just what happened.  Yet there is a very slight window of opportunity at the very start of the meeting to pull up VATS and target Gabriel.  By then I had a fully tricked out Gauss Rifle and maxed out Perk trees for Rifleman, Ninja, Mr. Sandman and a couple of criticals stored in Critical Banker.  Goodnight, Gabriel and hello to mission non-success.  The rest of the Raiders were easy to take out and I got to Gabriel's body to take a look-see.  Gen 3 Synths, on death, have a Synth Component available in their lootable inventory.  Danse has one, Magnolia has one and the Mayor of Diamond City has one.  All Gen 3 Synths found dead to other causes have one.  Gabriel, however, doesn't, yet the PC is told that this is a Gen 3 Synth.  The evidence shows that this was not a Gen 3 Synth due to the lack of a Synth Component.

Yes this was probably a simple oversight on Bethesda's part, just like the resetting game mechanic making no sense has their handprints all over it.  Still this is going with the in-game world concept of how this could be, and it fits in very well with the prior idea that the Institute is running the entire reset show and, to help out, they have a paid human operative who is given a very simple script to follow when confronted by the Sole Survivor and X6-88.  This Raider group had to be near-by to move in so quickly, and it still doesn't make much sense to look for them if they are well hidden.  Yet this is in keeping with in-world capability and far better than busted game mechanics.  With this line of reasoning the conclusion is that Kellogg was not the ONLY capable high level operative under Institute pay and 'Gabriel' could be given extreme assurances that he will be moved to some other site after the confrontation.  Going with this idea means that Father is using Institute assets to make you feel a part of doing something vital for the Institute. That fits the scenario and the player is set up to 'succeed' not by Bethesda's inability to make a compelling rationale for the Institute, but through the Institute being a seedy place willing to get its way through various means.  Given how the place views people topside as a whole, the expenditure of a Raider gang won't even bother them beyond the loss of some minor assets associated with a higher level field asset or agent.  Synth Retention is not about getting a 'rogue synth' back, but about manipulating the PC into not asking questions and being obedient to the chain of command inside the Institute.

Then there is Roger Warwick, who was kidnapped, tortured and replaced by a programmed Gen 3 Synth to oversee testing a new crop for the Institute.  The quest will have the player going to a few places, but ultimately is supposed to yield a 'happy' Institute outcome of removing any questions about Mr. Warwick having been replaced by a Gen 3 Synth. That is if you play it straight.  Now, if you try to antagonize everyone and get a quite upset farmhand to go back and attack Roger Warwick, well...I have a Gauss Rifle and know how to use it.  Being willing to tank the small arms of the rest of the family is a pretty easy thing to do, and gives just enough time to check the inventory of this synth.  There is something lacking there, however: a Synth Component.  And after running away from the place the family will then turn friendly and allow you to use the workshop...presumably because you showed that Roger Warwick wasn't what he said he was: the husband and father of the family.

So, beyond being yet another oversight by Bethesda...say, if the oversights are fitting a pattern, are they oversights?  If Synth Retention builds doubts then Building a Better Crop just adds to them.  In the computer terminals the PC can find information that Roger Warwick was snatched and, presumably, died or was killed, to put a Gen 3 Synth in his place.  But was he killed?  Everyone associated with the quest in the Institute swears he is, just like Father did with Synth Retention.  Evidence or lack thereof, says otherwise and that Roger Warwick is not a synth.  So just who is this Roger Warwick under the employ of the Institute?  Well I can rule out Gabriel...but after that?  Was Roger Warwick actually replaced or did he become a willing agent of the Institute?  His family could find other Institute evidence or just take the word of the deceased irate farmhand as the truth and come to their senses after the incident.  The simplest way to explain Roger Warwick, and it fits with the general distrust of giving a Gen 3 Synth something other than menial work to do, is to say that Roger Warwick was bribed or otherwise enticed to become an Institute Operative with some minor benefits.  The first crop strain for testing is the Mutfruit that is grown by the Warwicks, and it proves to thrive in the soil of the old sewage treatment plant.  Getting lucky twice would be a bit of a stretch and the Institute would then want to clean up if the second crop also comes out as a success...which if you follow the quest line and do a check-up afterwards, is just the case.

The PC is expected to take the Institute's word on the way things are run and is given scenarios that fit this process.  So where was this guile at University Point?  Or, indeed, any other site that the PC can find Institute Gen 1 and 2 Synths roaming around?  If plugging in the demise of Kellogg is also part of the plan, the creation of an experimental Synth Shaun is part of the plan, and then giving out two missions that shows the Institute to be doing just what it says it is doing while, in fact, running the entire set of encounters via proxy, then all of this must fit into a cogent reason for Father and the future of the Institute.  If Kellogg has proven problematical and divisive within the Institute, mostly for the cyborg parts that extend his life, then who is going to be the capable operative that will express few qualms about working for the Institute?  This person needs to be capable, ruthless and yet able to sell a line of BS to distract others, and generally be able to calm things down when the Institute has operations go wrong.  A bag man.  A new Kellogg.  And to make this person feel even better they will be able to become the new acting Director when Father dies of treatable cancer.

Do we actually get a real funeral for Father if you go down the Institute path?  Because if there is no body going into the ground or being incinerated then the question is: just what happens to an acting Director when they find a good replacement for themselves?  Maybe that is the point to stage a death and become the actual Director, and get shuffled off-stage after a nice, staged death.  It will take a bit for the new person to figure out they are a figurehead and that this Institute they get to work with isn't the real thing but simply a training facility for aspiring managers and a holding pen for those of suspect loyalty.  Actually what is seen is a showplace, meant to overawe and impress outsiders with a staged entrance, and it is a stunning change from the wasteland.  If all that we see is the full entirety of the Institute...well...that is just plain bad game design.  As a functioning operation it makes no sense on the logistics, overhead and maintenance side of things, and better working and far older technology in the Vault-Tec DLC shows just how small in scope the Institute really is by allowing the PC to build something far larger that makes more sense and can actually sustain itself.

What is wrong with the Institute is not the question to ask.  What does the Institute do well?  Now that is the question.  Answer that with lies, deceit, subterfuge, inter-office squabbles, and an ability to stage scenarios to change an individual's mind....then you are on a closer track to the real answer.  For all the beauty of the place, and no detracting from that as it is beautiful, the Institute is not going to change course for anyone, including the PC.  And if that individual can be corrupted, misdirected or made to feel important enough to win them over to the Institute...well...what is the loss of a couple of operatives in the larger scheme of things?  And as for Shaun...is he really your child?  Kellogg and the information you can find shows this to be the case.  Yet, given what can be seen about Gabriel, Roger Warwick, and the methodology of the Institute, the question does have to be asked as material from the Institute and even what you are told is the truth can be demonstrated to be false.  And you are not allowed to ask meaningful questions about past operations of the Institute, either, even after being told that all your questions will be answered.  By not answering them, by misdirecting on missions and generally operating as an authoritarian or totalitarian organization, the questions are answered.  Side with the Institute and you can gleefully slaughter your way through two other factions, and become a willing subordinate in the structure of the Institute.  A subordinate who is given a fancy title and yet not granted a budget nor the means to change policy of the Institute...policies that would need to be changed just to have the Institute survives it will be out of people in a generation or less.  Just as the West Coast Brotherhood will need to change its policies if it is to survive, so to the Institute will have to do so if you go with the Institute ending.  The Brotherhood can see reason, and shown a working example with the East Coast Division.  The Institute?  It is on a high tech death march to redefining mankind and defining itself out of the picture.  If what we see is all there is.

That is a mighty big 'if'.