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.