The problems with Fallout 4 as part of the Fallout franchise are great and deep. Internally the problems that are presented to the Player Character (PC) and thus to the player is in a setting that makes little to no actual sense. Internal logic within the setting of the game is so highly skewed away from the basis for the franchise that it cannot be ignored. By turning the franchise away from Role Playing Game (RPG) roots and going for a shallow action arcade shooter the basis for the game suffers to the point of breaking with the franchise. The established concept of 'War never changes' makes it part and parcel of the human condition, and the long term ramifications are ones that require thought on the part of the player and a decent summation of outcomes based on the PC's actions. Playing after such a game end can be highly fun and enjoyable and vary greatly from the ending summation, but that means it is just a variant out of that ending. Fallout 4 has an ending movie that does not address such consequences. Is the Institute destroyed or not and what happens with other factions will influence both of those endings. The same is true of each of the other factions, as well, and their presences or destruction in the Commonwealth will have deep and abiding changes what follows, but none of that is featured in the ending movie. Yet there is no way to eliminate all the factions and turn the Commonwealth into a true wasteland where it is kill or be killed and war is continuous.
Internally the logic for an arcade shooter of any sort is that it requires targets, and to that end targets must be in endless supply. Yet this is a wasteland and the birth rate as seen throughout the series is relatively low save in the more civilized New California Republic. Factions may hold sway or direct power in various places, but their internal numbers are relatively low compared to those they wish to control and do not feature the elements for creation of families, supplying people with safe haven nor in attempting to convert others to their faction.
Religious orders as in the case of the Hubologists or Children of Atom have extremely limited appeal due to their limited scope of beliefs, and while welcoming outsiders the internal codes of belief are so strict as to limit views on what happens outside their organizations. A more traditional religion like Mormonism was seen as a threat to Caesar and wiped out as these were a people with more liberal views and yet adhered to the basics of humanity having free will and the freedom to decide their lives for themselves. The mayhem and chaos of the Commonwealth means that there is no basis for an arcade shooter style game, and yet that was what the community got.
Now lets move on to factions or things that should have been factions in no particular order.
Super Mutants and FEV
Victims of FEV be they at the hands of The Master, the experiments leading to Super Mutants creating more of their kind at Vault 87, or The Institute all have one thing in common: limited numbers. The Master created the largest and most diverse Super Mutant army as he was both a victim of FEV and cybernetically enhanced through a direct connection to a computer system. While immobile he forced hundreds of people and creatures to be melded together by FEV and was a true threat to the world. His demise and defeat of the Super Mutant army means that those numbers have dwindled as there is no way to create more Super Mutants: with the ending of the Mariposa Base came the end of the threat of Super Mutants in the west. In the east, if the post-Fallout 3 canon of the success of Project Purity is correct, then all of those sites in the watershed for the Capitol region will be cleared of radiation. As the Super Mutants had already run out of the eastern strain of FEV, the basis for creating more Super Mutants was at an end and their numbers would be on the constant decline in the Capitol region.
That leaves The Institute, and it had a time limited program of creating Super Mutants to examine the properties of the bodies and intellect to try and augment the Gen 3 Synth program. Yet that research was a failure and the discards that were still alive were dumped above ground. Like in the West and Capitol region this puts an upper end cap on the number of Super Mutants in the Commonwealth. This breaks the paradigm of an arcade shooter getting new targets to knock down on a regular basis and the actual appearance of Super Mutants should dwindle the more they are knocked down.
There are many, many opportunities for role-playing in such a condition as a few of these Super Mutants demonstrate some concept of cause and effect. Added to that the wish to protect each other as they are considered 'brothers' and the decline in absolute numbers means that those better able to figure out what is going on will have a higher chance of survival. This would break the concept of a Super Mutant Suicider as none of their 'brothers' would ever wish to see a life thrown away in explosive rage. Even the dumbest of their kind place that kinship over rage, and that is one deep and abiding aspect of the Commonwealth Super Mutants that demonstrates some understanding of 'family'.
A final piece of the FEV is stored in the Nuka-World DLC at the Cloning Facility as seen in the Safari Adventure quest. Here the presence of Super Mutants was noted by a surviving researcher who obtained tissue samples and isolated a form of the FEV and utilized it in gene splicing to create Gatorclaws. It can be taken that the original research is still present and that the basis for FEV and its use are housed within that facility. While no Super Mutants were created there, it serves as a repository of knowledge that is actually very advanced as the ghoulified researcher studied the material for years with advanced genetic tools and equipment. Here the lack of ability to integrate DLC content into the base game comes to the forefront as this is research that a couple of factions would want to obtain: The Institute and Brotherhood of Steel (Bos). To accomplish the isolation of FEV, understand its workings and then use it for gene splicing in an exacting way is much further than The Institute had ever gotten with FEV and would be seen as highly dangerous technology and knowledge by the BoS. Yet neither of these factions can even be informed of this which is part of why the conceptual basis for these factions is broken. Nor can the PC enlist Virgil to go to Nuka-World to utilize the technology there to better understand the FEV and perhaps find a way to reverse it, though that might be a horrific process for those creatures that were melded together from multiple sources.
The basis for a real story is present: Super Mutants realize that their numbers are dwindling and that no new Super Mutants are appearing and to survive they must learn how to work together. They are past the point of trying to storm Diamond City, and as settlements start to self-organize and protect themselves, they slowly go off the 'easy target' list and go into the 'high casualty' list. Super Mutants would stop enraged 'brothers' from suiciding, as that makes things worse, not better. An entire quest involving Strong and Fist as opposing leaders within the Super Mutant faction should arise naturally from this: Strong wanting to understand some aspects of human nature and Fist wanting to basically shun humanity for the wrongs it has done to create Super Mutants. A long quest involving negotiating with the larger Super Mutant encampments on behalf of one or even both of the leaders, trying to present their cases and even offering support and aid if they agree to stop raiding settlements could and should have been possible. This would make the Super Mutants into a viable faction that, albeit violent, understands that such violence has its limits especially if a site or two is cleared of their 'brothers' by other events and there are none to storm back in and take it. Instead of a short sidequest and firefight, that entire quest could have been a multipart major quest with long-term ramifications. And so long as the player doesn't side with The Institute, there are benefits to having a group of well armed and armored Super Mutants willing to storm important sites even if they don't agree with you all the time.
The Minutemen
Factions must have some basis for their coherence and have a set of objectives, goals, following and leadership that serve as its conceptual basis. A free-form general protection faction, like the Minuteman, only needs the concept of communities helping each other to survive as its basis and some minimal command structure to help manage it. It is a weak factional concept and yet can be very powerful given time to civilize and tame parts of the wasteland so that humanity is not in an active part of the food chain (while Raiders, et. al. would continue to be part of it). What makes the concept of the Minutemen powerful is that it has an easy to understand basis and only requires some dedication and risk-taking on the part of just a few people at each settlement. With work it becomes strong and without it everyone is left to fend for themselves. Yet the concept of banding together will arise separately no matter what happens to the Minutemen: it is an age old concept of creating a Nation and will appear when no better basis for cooperative protection is around.
What isn't clearly understood is that the Minuteman concept is one that is of a militia, that being a lower level and self-organizing form of cooperative self-protection in towns, villages, counties and even small cities. These organizations are loosely joined together with representatives from individual communities or even just households forming the strength of the organization. Leadership isn't imposed but elected at that level, and the rank of Colonel is the highest one that has been historically available to such militia at a State-wide level in the US. Such a militia can be strong, in theory, when local leaders and the highest level of leadership have general agreement on the basis for operation within the State and put themselves as available for emergencies or invasions to the top Executive elected position in a State, typically a governor.
As seen in FO4, there is no top level political leadership for the Commonwealth. And as the northeastern States were amalgamated into the Commonwealth in 1969 in the Fallout universe, that means a top position that would have oversight on activities over the region. Without that the lower level militias don't have a system of accountability save to each other, and that can fall apart rather quickly if there is no large-scale and pressing threat to the communities involved. That is why the Minutemen fell in the Fallout universe in FO4: no higher level accountability structure from the political side. In part that was due to the event of the massacre of the Commonwealth Provisional Government by The Institute. Typically no amount of political infighting leads to an immediate massacre, and this meeting ended atypically with The Institute getting fingered as the culprit. The reason why they are fingered is that such a massacre, when they are done on the political side, are done as part of a power grab and orchestrated beforehand, leaving a clear 'winner'. That didn't happen and yet it was in the common interest of all communities to come to a working political arrangement. Who won? The Institute by keeping that from happening so they could continue to experiment on individuals taken from the wasteland.
Thus the job of the PC should not end at the ending of FO4 if the Minutemen are a surviving faction with multiple settlements agreeing to join it. In fact that should be the start of the meat of the game, itself: helping to form a stable government for cooperative self-protection. Standing up a provisional constitution, finding a way to get a legislative, judicial and executive branch hammered out and then holding elections would have been the real point of the game after dealing with The Institute. When that happens then the role of 'General' actually can and should be reduced to that of the historical leader of militias in the US: Colonel. A General is needed for a hard military that is rigidly organized and has the job of being a soldier as its profession. A militia has that as a secondary concern and leading every day life as the primary one. Militias aren't amateurs, as such, but they are not soldiers, either. Seeing Minutemen going about their daily business of farming, crafting, running stores...that is the reward for being successful as a PC and a player: Stability or at least meta-stability has been achieved and that is all anyone could ask for.
The Railroad
There is a dependent part of the Railroad that requires The Institute: the creation of new Gen 3 Synths. If taking part in this factional ending then The Institute is destroyed and the source of new Gen 3 Synths go with it. The ideological basis of freeing Gen 3 Synths from slavery ends on the day The Institute can't create any more and the Synth Retention Bureau is gone. Without the ability to teleport the survivors of The Institute able to escape are left at the mercies of the wasteland, just like they did with Super Mutants but are not as well equipped to survive. Gen 1 and 2 Synths can continue based on their power supplies, but without a command structure and active orders from above, their threat is limited. Gen 3 Synths and Coursers are left and those wishing to seek their freedom need to find someplace that will take them in, and that is now a short-term mission of the RR. That should take a few months at its worst, and without the need to 'protect' Gen 3 Synths via a mind-wipe and new background, processing of them should go at a rapid rate. After that wave is dealt with there will be no RR: Desdemona has decided on the course that puts them out of a job. The RR has a definite end goal and this is true if the PC takes the Minuteman path and is able to have a general evacuation of The Institute proceed. As a faction the Railroad conceptually ends after that and their post main game content shows a bit of extracting revenge on a few Raider gangs, but otherwise doesn't offer much interesting content.
As a counter-espionage organization, the RR is nearly unable to survive against The Institute and failed at is prime mission of survival. All of the spy trappings, however, didn't lead to espionage based protocols, or at least ones that were followed continuously. That led to the Switchboard massacre and the current situation they are dealing with. Here, instead of going for centralized espionage, the RR would have been much better served with a cell based system used by insurgents and serious revolutionary movements not just in our history but in that of the Fallout universe, as well. Some of this is witnessed, but not in any truly organized fashion, instead using a few key people to serve as intermediaries between the RR and the Safehouses. Perhaps with so few people a good cell system couldn't be developed as the best of systems requires 3 people to a cell with very few contacts up or down the structure. To get to the state they are in requires that they haven't taken the Switchboard attack to heart in full and even expose high value personnel on a first meeting. There is no methodology to have an extended trust system, with reports moving upwards about new people and then having such new people put on missions or jobs to earn a spot in the organization.
Deacon, for all of his lies and manner, has some basic understanding of what needs to be done, but then goes against that interior logic to argue for the PC to be brought on-board the RR immediately. Desdemona is actually correct in not wanting to expose their current HQ to an outsider, and yet Deacon will argue for just that. As a player I would have been more than happy to cool my heels waiting for the data to be delivered from the Courser Chip (if you take that as your first exposure to the RR). Secrecy is paramount to such organizations and no matter what your gut instinct tells you, if it is wrong just once it could be curtains for the entire organization. Not only does this make sense, but is a missed opportunity for some serious role-playing which would have made the RR much more substantial as it would show that they mean business. And if I wanted to become a player in the organization then that must start at the periphery, perhaps as a courier or errand boy for a safehouse. Going that route means that when the Courser is taken down there is a pre-existing contact that can move your request for decryption up to HQ and then get a reply via other channels. If done properly the entire RR part of FO4 would have been a major change from other organizations currently seen in the franchise and actually be quite refreshing to experience. A whole stealth or espionage part of the game would be available on far more than simple hunt/kill/find data business and turn into a role-playing experience.
Lore wise the RR is a part of the lore after FO3. It doesn't exactly live up to the expectations from that game, but neither does The Institute or the Commonwealth as a whole. Before the attack the RR was in much better shape, and that attack at the Switchboard took place between FO3 and FO4, approximately 6 years before FO4, so the organization has had time to recover. From what has been seen not all their operatives or safehouses were penetrated in 2281 and The Institute has been relatively slow going against the organization. Bad leadership can be blamed on the downfall, though such bad leadership to let the organization be so deeply penetrated typically means the non-survival of the organization. With enough good people, contacts and safehouses, the RR recovered and a good 5 years later it has...well...not many more people than it started with after the Switchboard attack. Still Desdemona is right to enforce protocols and secrecy. No matter how talented an outsider is, breaking those protocols is the sort of thing that led to the downfall of the RR at the Switchboard. Yet the RR as conceptualized in FO3 has a greatly extended set of contacts outside the Commonwealth for smuggling runaway Synths out of the reach of The Institute. That network was not lost as the absence of the Head of SRB demonstrates.
It is that network that should be the source of new agents and infrastructure building inwards and utilizing a safer cell based system for communications and even becoming somewhat decentralized. While much of the interior expertise at the heart of the RR was lost at the Switchboard, those on the ground at the periphery in the smuggling groups and safehouses, the true purpose of the RR is to move Synths out from the Commonwealth, were left pretty much unmolested. Operating out of the reach of The Institute, that system should have been drawn upon to create a better system of smaller safehouses that were widely distributed and harder to identify. Talented individuals in that periphery should have been brought in to help restructure the organization under those who escaped the Switchboard. There are other facilities that are isolated and beyond easy reach of The Institute that could serve much of the same purpose of the Switchboard but be more defensible and better camouflaged. When attacked at the center of the organization it is incumbent for the periphery to change places, spaces and even rotate people laterally so as to confuse those seeking to find them. Perhaps that did happen to some degree, but the major indicators is that safehouses were struck after the Switchboard and only a couple survived that under older protocols. By becoming dependent on the center, the periphery was left vulnerable and unready to respond.
An actual endgame of having the last Synths being moved out of the system and closing down the safehouses is the actual goal for the RR. It doesn't gain in strength even when it 'wins'. There is no rationale for manning checkpoints as the RR is about movement of people undercover to save them from persecution and death. Doing so openly will cause resentment amongst the population as a whole, plus makes agents a target for anyone wanting to take potshots at them. Just as the underground railroad dissolved with the ending of slavery so too does the RR of FO4 end with the fall of The Institute: in less than a year it should be gone as an organization and remembered for its ideals and good works done in the face of a superior opponent that it was able to survive if not defeat itself. Without new Gen 3 Synths being made, the RR is on a clock ticking down until the last Synth that wants to be rescued is rescued, and you don't need to man checkpoints for that but use the informer network that the RR already has on the ground. Plus a few more people may be willing to point surviving Synths to the right destination in recognition of the noble goal that the organization has now achieved. And as the PC organized settlements, it should be easy to get the word out that these refugees need to be safely handled and moved to the RR. Who needs checkpoints when there are far more friendly settlements that are easier to find by just following provisioners?
Brotherhood of Steel
The Brotherhood of Steel has morphed from its West Coast roots and has changed its basis in the East twice: once under the Lyons family and again under Arthur Maxson. Their problems have been covered previously and require just a quick recap. First is that the structure of the Brotherhood has seen the elimination of the Knights as a separate logistics operation with those roles having been transferred to the Scribes and the Knights now put under the Paladins. The Lancers have been started up to cover aerial operations and form their own internal order. Secondly Elder Maxson has taken on an expedition that is light on command infrastructure and that break with the Chains that Bind: the conceptual system of chain of command so that the leader does not directly command low-level subordinates but delegates that authority to a command structure. Both of these conditions were seen in The Outcasts leaving the BoS in Fallout 3, and while changes to recruitment may be something that The Outcasts adjust to, the basic liquidation of an order and removal of intermediate command structures are both reasons for why The Outcasts left under Lyons. They may only be a minority in what is seen when the Prydwen arrives, but a variant of their insignia is seen on every suit of Power Armor inside the BoS.
While Elder Maxson has shown himself capable in combat and had to negotiate with The Outcasts, there is a fundamental bridge that if it was rebuilt to get The Outcasts back into the BoS Eastern Division would have then drove them right out again with this expedition. Indeed we can find no member on the Prydwen who was from The Outcasts. While they may be getting on in years, The Outcasts are also hardened combat veterans and would serve as the core of the fighting prowess of the Eastern Division having been made self-reliant for years and understanding the rough necessity of survival. Elder Maxson breaking the Chains that Bind, taking Liberty Prime along for the ride, when seen through the vision of The Outcasts is yet another leader going rogue and breaking with the past, tradition and basic command structure of the military. Perhaps Elder Maxson left the highest echelons behind to govern the Eastern Division in the Capitol wasteland for a reason: he left behind the start of a civil break-up with The Outcasts and in his journey to the Commonwealth would be breaking up the organization he forged together.
Logistically the expedition as seen makes no damned sense and adheres entirely to the action arcade shooter concept. Yet each Vertibird lost in combat is not one that can be magically replenished as there are no operational factories in the Commonwealth producing those parts or vehicles as a whole. In fact the Prydwen and the contingent within it must be relatively small, compact and ready to adapt to local problems while dealing with a trickle of supplies coming all the way from over the Glowing Sea through a series of supply depots. Recruits, Power Armor, ammunition, food, Vertibirds, spare parts...the list for keeping such an organization going is long and an expeditionary force being supplied by air must be small. The numbers seen in the game in and around the Boston Airport are about it, but that means no patrols, no extended areas of control and very little presence outside of the facilities they occupy. That would mean no crashing Vertibirds seen multiple times per day, no extended patrols even going up to the northwestern part of the map, no grand firefights against Super Mutants, period.
Why is that? Every member lost would be a loss to combat skills for the organization and require a trained replacement that can't be physically trained in the Commonwealth. Why not? Trainers require space and that would mean each of the Orders would require their own training environment and there just isn't the space for it nor the time until a reliable system of heavy transport on a regular basis can be instituted or created in the Commonwealth. Logistically speaking, the BoS in the Commonwealth operates on a long thread and to get what we see in game would require daily overflights of Vertibirds not by one or two at a time, but entire squadrons. Damn that would be impressive! It wouldn't make any sense as it would require the Eastern Division to be in complete control over all of the Capitol wasteland, The Pitt and anything else they can get their armored mitts on. It would also require a basic setting up of not just caravans for water but outright control and patrolling of the wasteland so that all communities within that zone are under BoS control and available for conscription. And that is just to get that huge logistics supply chain in place! And that would be something that would drive those hardened combat veterans known as The Outcasts right back out again.
What conclusion can be drawn from this? That the BoS we are shown has not embraced its roots and while many detested the things that the Lyons family did, many of those things cannot be undone. Recruits from the outside who pass Brotherhood fitness and ability tests can become members of the BoS. The power structure we are given lacks all the standard pieces that makes a good military system work with subordinates delegated powers and responsibility and the leader overseeing the overall health of the entire organization. Shorn of the internal checks on abuse of power, Elder Maxson now in his early 20's, has become a virtual warlord. The trappings of the BoS are still there with the titles and ranks, and a vestige of the power structure is in place but can be over-ruled at any point by Elder Maxson who expects absolute obedience to his commands. That is not the way of the BoS and without the Chains that Bind, Elder Maxson has corrupted the Eastern Division, perhaps using the easy excuse of 'necessity'. Whatever the case, as presented, the BoS as given in FO4 are not plausible given the past of the BoS.
The Gunners
The Gunners are high-end mercenaries for hire...for everyone except the PC. As shown they are immediately hostile to the PC and will just try to gun you down whenever they notice you. What a sweet bunch, huh? I mean it isn't like you actually want to contract their services...wouldn't it be cheaper to just pay The Gunners a set amount every week or month to protect a settlement or three? Maybe even offer them housing, good beds, food and the like for those on such duty? It isn't as if the PC has a magical ability to create new stuff at a settlement, right?
Wait, you do?
Why isn't this something you can do with Gunners? Well it would involve some sort of game mechanic for contracting, making sure that amounts were set aside to be paid out on a regular basis, say to a purser or quartermaster of The Gunners, and actually involve negotiating with The Gunners and interacting with its command structure. As it is, who actually knows how to contact them? Well a robot in Diamond City that wanted Deathclaw eggs was able to do that. The Cabot family seems to have a contract with them. After that? Hmmmm....say who is paying these guys, anyways? There aren't enough jobs around to support them and they have taken a couple of sites with high casualty rates, so where are their training facilities? Gunner's Plaza doesn't have a decent shooting range or place to work out, and it seems to be mostly R&R and admin.
As presented The Gunners don't act like mercenaries, just better armed Raiders who like robots a bit less than the Rust Devils, but respect them more. It is a faction that has technical background, at least enough to do reprogramming of robots and produce some higher end equipment. The problem with The Gunners, like the BoS, is logistics. Who pays them the high amounts necessary to keep all that running? Even more to the point, how can they afford all that equipment? This makes no sense at all. The Institute may use them, here and there, but for that they have Kellogg, Coursers and lots of throw away Synths, so the actual need for using The Gunners is so small for The Institute that it isn't worth thinking about. The Gunners cannot survive on scraps from The Institute. And if there is an outside funding source it must be relatively large and well financed. The only prior faction in the game for that is The Enclave, and they are in disarray on the east coast and not present in the Commonwealth. The Enclave also prefers to operate on its own and NOT hire mercenaries, by and large, and scraps from distant survivors won't keep The Gunners going.
Anyone who has run FO4 with the Contraptions DLC content knows that it is possible to make new weapons, armor, ammo and gear given the right equipment. That all requires resources, scavenging and purchase of said raw materials whenever its cheap to do so. A place like Gunner's Plaza is chock-a-block with so much resource intensive goods that it would require a lot of time, effort and money to make it and keep it running. Yet is it possible to even find a shop run by The Gunners who have a purchase list of things they will pay extra for? How about representatives looking to trade on behalf of them? Or putting up that they will accept certain goods as payment for contracts? The answer to all of this is: NO.
Sad, really, as they would have made a fascinating faction. Over the course of game play the opportunity to start interacting with The Gunners, perhaps on a sidequest, should have been introduced and that would then give a first Point of Contact with them. Perhaps a store for trade or even finding low-level contract work they would be willing to pay a freelancer to do. From there the 'getting to know you' game can proceed, with The Gunners being NEUTRAL at the start of the game and, if you start to work with them for protection of settlements, they might even become FRIENDLY though not 'allied' as such.
The Gunners are a military organization that needs something, and what it needs is the same thing the Minutemen need, in the end: a legitimizing organization. As it stands The Gunners are a contract or two away from becoming Raiders: no amount of training and loyalty oaths will feed an empty stomach nor keep soldiers in line when there is no work to do. Perhaps an unnamed third party with lots of cash to blow for very little is willing to keep The Gunners going, but with no hints of that anywhere in the game, that cannot be supported by something other than conjecture. Sans the cash they are at risk of not being mercenaries but simply Raiders with a fancy name and still not being able to keep themselves fed. The answer to this is a political system that has checks that can be put on The Gunners in exchange for becoming the actual military organization of the Commonwealth. Leadership protocols would still be in place, save the Brigadier of The Gunners answerable to the Executive position of the Commonwealth. This then offers a constant stream of funds for logistics and the removal of contracts as those now need to be processed by the government.
The Gunners wouldn't accept this immediately, which is why it should be part of a larger end-game scenario especially with a Minuteman or RR victory over The Institute. Without any indication of exterior support for The Gunners in FO4 and with all indications being that they are an isolated phenomena of the Commonwealth, the only conclusion that can be drawn is they they service contracts inside the Commonwealth. Their threats against MacCready demonstrate this, and The Gunners feel they are the sole taker of military style contracts in the Commonwealth and are willing to make sure any potential competition knows this. They don't appear to go down to the level of harassing bodyguards, which is the sort of work MacCready is ready to accept, so there know their limits. In addition while they may be for hire by some criminal organizations, they don't go after those. The Triggermen have little to fear about The Gunners coming to harass them as they operate in different venues, though both use violence it is to different ends.
The Institute
When playing Fallout 3 I got the idea that The Institute was a bit more present in the affairs of the Commonwealth and didn't exactly operate in a very low profile mode. At most they might be into a form of enforced experimentation via slavery on members of the population and at the lowest point they had visible individuals who operated directly like a power behind the throne sort of arrangement. They were, perhaps, operating openly in what was old Central Boston and outside of that area they saw settlements and communities as too dispersed to bother with.
It made sense to see it that way as it takes quite a bit for an organization to send a few people at the highest levels out over the long distance from the Commonwealth to the Capitol Wasteland. There is no hint that they simply traveled with a caravan or two, but that they came on their own through that harsh territory or that they might have come by sea travel. Trying to make sense of the few times the Commonwealth, Boston, The Institute and Androids were mentioned left a sort of jigsaw puzzle to FO3 players. Perhaps these Androids were being used as slave labor (with high starting cost, to be sure) to augment production of goods or perhaps even provide services that were not available from wastelanders. What we didn't get was the feeling that The Institute was isolated not just from other parts of the wasteland, but unwilling to deal with the surface world much if at all. That didn't fit with what we knew from The Pitt DLC of FO3, and some amount of active trade and even recognition of the quality of goods from The Pitt showed more than a passing interest in outside trade.
That sort of Institute, one operating behind the scenes but not underground, and even openly in some areas, plus understanding why trade was important to them for new equipment and ideas was missing in FO4. An expectation of being able to have a role-playing environment that involved technology, slavery of Androids (Synths), and learning about the ways that The Institute exploited others outside of their immediate grasp were built up to a small degree by what was shown in FO3. Taking up with another faction, the Railroad, would mean utilizing a different set of skills, contacts and interaction with individuals. Playing both sides of the field would put the player in deadly danger of being called out or spotted as a double-agent.
Getting the Commonwealth that was delivered, while visually interesting, didn't live up to the sort of high technology to wastelander dichotomy that had been hinted at in FO3. With the actual ability to play a role that one wanted to play in FO4 and handed something that was more warmed over wasteland with this tiny group with high technology living underground felt like a lost opportunity. In over 2 centuries The Institute can barely manage what it has, and that is a problem as what it does have demonstrates some major problems with the faction in concept and execution. The end result of such a tiny group of individuals, and the population size is smaller than that of Diamond City, points to major problems of genetic isolation, in-breeding and enforced population control as seen in Vault 81. Yet in both Diamond City and Vault 81 there are enough children to support another generation of both places, with at least a representative group of individuals in their late teens or early 20s to serve as the next generation moving into the population to replace older individuals when they die. The Institute is on its last generation of people, and has no echelon of individuals in their late teens to early 20s for immediate replacement of older members and only 2 children in the entire facility. The population of The Institute is in for a severe decline over the next two decades and without facilities to educate children even on such a low level as seen in either Diamond City or Vault 81, there will be no Institute in 30 years.
Perhaps this was the goal of the Gen 3 Synth project? Actually ANY goal of that project would be nice to hear as 'Mankind, Redefined' is a slogan that has no clear end-point objectives added to it. To put it bluntly that redefinition must, itself, be defined, stated and have goals that can be achieved or the overall project is set to be on a Death March to absolute failure. While having the ability to create individuals on the fly with pre-made routines and interaction capability is interesting, it must be pointed out that all Gen 3 Synths are sterile, consume food, and are based on the genome of one individual, Father. The rationale for snatching him from Vault 111 was that as an infant he had an 'uncorrupted' genome, not tainted by radiation of the wasteland. Yet this is true of each and every individual in Vault 111 and they were all intentionally taken off life support by The Institute, save for the sole survivor. That was an insane move by the Director of that era as each of those people could, in theory, serve as the basis for an uncontaminated genome AND offer genetic diversity to the Gen 3 Synth project. In point of fact, with The Institute as we are shown being a self-contained and isolated facility safe from exterior radiation, these individuals could be revived and brought into the population of The Institute to serve as a replacement group over a period of years with children being brought up to the ways of The Institute but leavened by pre-war knowledge of the survivors of Vault 111. Psychologically The Institute has undergone drift away from the actual foundations of science and program execution: isolation has brought The Institute a sharp focus on one topic, Human Synthetics, yet prevent them from saying just what it is those Human Synthetics are supposed to be as an end goal. As it is the Synth program has a relatively high maintenance overhead to it and in the Gen 3 line puts out individuals that must consume food to keep their biological bodies running.
They do need food as they consume it to survive when they show up in settlements run by the sole survivor. Undercover or runaway Synths have the exact same overhead as normal humans in food and water, with only the actual need to sleep being a tell-tale sign that they aren't human. Over time the humans in a settlement will eventually identify a Synth and eradicate them which is something that the Covenant group has been unable to formulate to counter Synth infiltration by The Institute. With this in mind, what is the actual purpose of a Gen 3 Synth? To serve as a workforce for the dwindling population of The Insitute? If that is the case and the members inside The Institute refuse to recognize that many if not all Gen 3 Synths have the capacity for original thought and self-awareness, then the end of the Gen 3 Synth program would be to have a population tidying up a dead Institute. Without a clear goal for the Gen 3 Synth program and seeing such Synths as property, then the very use of humans as a clear demonstration of the 'best' nature can create is being overlooked. A perfect machine modeled on a human being would have the ability to be self-aware, original thinking and be creative as these are tell-tale signs of success in adapting to the natural environment. Synths can be given immunity to the effects of radiation, yes, but that only makes sense if it is a genetic trait that can be passed on from generation to generation.
Here The Institute falls into the very same problem as The Master from Fallout who wanted to have Unity by converting everyone into Super Mutants via the FEV. Super Mutants are sterile, and would be the LAST generation of thinking living beings on the planet. Synths have this same problem, so that no matter how well made and designed they are, they are liable to the problems of nature and will die out. Well die out after The Institute closes up shop due to lack of population that is, and that is less than a generation away.
Gen 3 Synths also have another problem and that is shown when Father tells the division heads that he is dying of cancer. Fallout lore establishes that cancer was treatable in the pre-war world and was no longer a great killer but something easily cured. Thus either The Institute lacks this medical knowledge and can't cure cancer, or they have it and this is a type that is different from any other form of cancer ever seen on the planet. Father, therefore, has a genetic predisposition to this form of cancer. So does every single Gen 3 Synth based on his genome. If The Institute knew about this before making Gen 3 Synths, then it would have been caught and Father wouldn't be where he is in FO4. Since it wasn't caught and Father has kept it a secret from everyone for years, that means he has allowed the production of Gen 3 Synths based on his genome to continue with the knowledge they have a genetic flaw in their basis.
For a year that might be an act of self-denial. Longer than that, and it becomes a willful act of malice on the part of the acting Director of The Institute to withhold knowledge of a problem that is the very basis of the Gen 3 Synth program which is seen as a success. Failure is an option when running scientific experiments, and by not informing the scientists of this problem and stopping the production of Gen 3 Synths, Father is showing a base human flaw driven either by fear, cowardice or just figuring that this will be dealt with AFTER his passing. Without negative input into scientific knowledge, that is the knowledge of what doesn't work, there is no opportunity to figure out why it didn't work. Without knowledge of this form of cancer The Institute is now years behind in finding out its basis and perhaps creating a cure for it. Or at least delving into pre-war records on how cancer was cured so they can utilize that, though a bit late on the uptake on that score. If Father truly loves science and scientific advancement, he would have informed everyone about this years ago, instead of keeping it secret with his doctor who was not given the means to do expansive research as it was to be kept confidential.
The worst part is that the sole survivor as 'the backup' has a 50/50 chance of having those SAME genetic traits. And as that cancer took decades to show up, the sole survivor would not be showing it as they did go through medical exams in the pre-war world before going into Vault 111. That means the act of the previous Director and Kellogg may have killed off the individual who might be free of this genetic problem. What does need to be pointed out that dying and going into a deep freeze, presumably with the chemicals to preserve tissue already in the body, everyone in Vault 111 might still be revived. That is part and parcel of cryogenic suspension, after all, where people will that their body be put into a deep freeze state with proper chemicals to prevent ice crystal formation and preserved until they can be treated and revivified. Thus the entire population of Vault 111 might still be brought back to a living, waking state despite the intentional act of mass murder directed at them.
On the logistics side, The Institute seems to be pretty much a showcase of technology that, while impressive, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Starting with Synths, particularly the Gen 3 variety, we can see that one can be constructed from empty holding matrix to fully fleshed individual in about 10 minutes. These are then processed...somewhere. Perhaps it is a fully roboticized downloading of a basic personality matrix with directives and some physiological tests to see if all the random factors have made a Synth that can be upgraded to a Courser. Call that about a half-hour, with time on a firing range...somewhere...included. From start to finish all of this can be wrapped up in an hour or so, possibly, with a very few units going on to advanced programming and responses to become Coursers and the rest able to serve as individuals able to clean, do basic maintenance, and so on. That is roughly 24 a day, buts lets put that down to 20 a day for calculation purposes, as some number don't pass muster. In a week that is 140 Gen 3 Synths. In a year, that is 7,280 Gen 3 Synths. At that point there are more Gen 3 Synths than there are individuals in the Commonwealth. There is a problem with Gen 3 Synths: they have a biological system that requires certain nutrients to remain stable, and quite a few Gen 3 Synths become fond of Fancy Lad Snack Cakes. One box of Fancy Lad Snack Cakes per week might do for a Gen 3 Synth food addict, and since not every Gen 3 Synth likes the stuff, we can put a number down to, say, 5,000 boxes per year, roughly speaking.
At that point The Institute isn't about 'redefining' mankind, but maintaining a Gen 3 Synth population that is larger than everyone we see inside The Institute by a few orders of magnitude. Hey, where are all these Gen 3 Synths, anyways? Or do so few of them pass muster that the lovely construction system is constantly remaking Synths in the hope of a pass rate of something like 0.001% or less? Because if that is the case, then the Gen 3 Synth program is a failure as it is a waste of time, resources, energy and manpower that would be better spent doing something else. Like expanding The Institute's living space because it is woefully short on genetic variation and needs to expand to so as to not develop problems with in-breeding. If they had gene therapy or something like it, then Father wouldn't have a cancer that couldn't be treated, and would indicate that The Institute does know how to utilize genetic treatments suitable for countering cancer. Vault 81 has a problem of its tiny lab not being able to grow food quickly enough to keep its population stable, so there must be some protein synthesis going on somewhere to support its low population. The Institute has this problem in spades.
If you side with The Institute actually knowing what they are doing, then where is all the necessary space to hold all the excess Gen 1, 2 and 3 Synths? And if it is so competent that it doesn't need that space, then where are those Synths? You can't find rank upon rank of Gen 1 and 2 Synths in broom closets, after all. They do take up physical space and that space must be somewhere. Gen 3's need more space due to their biological components, and its probably not a good idea to put a Gen 3 into a shutdown state for hours, not to speak of days, weeks, months or years. Assuming that you can, then there is the same problem with Gen 1 and 2's: where are they. Over 7,000 per year if The Institute is competent is what backing them on that requires. Storage space, preferably climate controlled, which would help in preserving the state of most of those units because packing them in cosmoline would require a tedious cleaning job when you wanted to re-activate them. There are more high tech and lower overhead ways to do this, of course, but all of those still require space. If we got to see Mr. House's robot army, then where is the Synth army of The Institute? You know the army of floor sweepers, garbage cleaners and the ones who clean the toilets? If you packed a year's worth of Gen 3 Synths into one space it might fill up all of Dunwich Borer's quarry from lowest to highest point, with overflow out on to the landscape.
The only thing that would fit what is seen is that The Institute we get to see isn't the actual thing, itself. It is more of a demo model with some selected members working in it to try and figure out just how humans and Gen 3 Synths can work together, or at least have the Gen 3's subservient to humans at all times with none of those nasty concepts coming from free will. By deciding that the very factors of independent decision making that necessarily has a creative portion to it doesn't constitute free will, The Institute is making a case for predestinationism or even for humans not having free will. Yet inventiveness requires this, which is why Curie feels so limited as a robot: she lacks that spark of being human, of freeing herself of mechanical and programming restraints and getting another set of input into her base personality to be processed biologically. She understands the basis for such capability is rooted in nature, and a Synth brain in a more or less natural body is a suitable basis for this to happen. Curie was an oddity, to be sure, but for there to be emergent behavior that leads to self-recognition at a base level, she concludes what is necessary to break free of those constraints. You can't even tell The Institute about this since they don't allow Companions in with you. Besides they would just see her as their property, shut her down and strip her of her personality that would be judged aberrant, faulty and damaging to The Institute's reputation. Not as a success.
So where does that leave The Institute? It is unable to do basic program management or handle large scale programs properly. It wants to have a subservient mankind with all of the features but none of the drawbacks of human, and yet make such beings as subservient to flawed humans. When given a base genetic flaw on the grandest program The Institute has been working at for over a century, the information is hidden away and then kept under wraps, and never acted upon when it is revealed. The truly awe-inspiring ability to create Synths on a continual basis isn't supported logistically, save that there are so many failures that the success rate is low enough to deem any program with such a success rate to be an utter failure in any other context. The population inside The Institute is not sustainable for another full generation and may have undergone catastrophic genetic drift to the point where the need for sterilization or birth control is necessary and the children heavily screened before birth to prevent genetic defects from running rampant. None of this adds up to what we see in the game. It does serve as an arcade shooter foil, but it is made of foil that doesn't survive a light scratching at the surface and tears easily. Plus for all the worries about property and wanting to 'recover' it, much in the way of other property is lost on hare-brained expeditions with little to no obvious purpose. While they can replace a few individuals competently, they also do so for no reason that can ever be found out. The Institute in the way of Father promises much, but delivers nothing save to use the PC as a replacement for Kellogg that he hopes will be the right person to guide The Institute into the future. A person with a body count in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands by that point.
A bad, bad dream
Fallout 4 had actual and real promise to it as a game in the Fallout franchise as we would start with a pre-war individual and then need to make an abrupt change to the wasteland of the post-war world. You would have had a job, pre-war, and possibly go through a few days leading up to the fateful Saturday when the bombs dropped. You could have been anything: a returning veteran, a lawyer, someone who worked at a Red Rocket servicing trucks, an employee of Rob Co., General Atomics, Dunwich or Slocum Joe's. You might have been an undercover agent for the Enclave, working in trying to rub out criminals that the regular police were too corrupt to tackle, or handling threats that were outside normal experiences of any police, thus some of your work might have been fictionalized to cover it up. You could have been a Chinese infiltrator, a bookie, a junkie, or that cranky old guy trying to fix his lawnmower.
A good and solid 2 or 3 hours of game play in a 70 hour or more game is not unreasonable for staging a prelude to what is to come. Some careers might have some warning of what was coming and stashed a cache of equipment for you knowing that you were placed in the Vault 111 neighborhood for a reason. Or you just might have been an everyday person with no preparations at all. Maybe you had a Mr. Handy robot, but most people couldn't afford one, so you would ask the neighbor to lend their Mr. Handy to you once in awhile. You would get to drive a car or take a bus, chat with co-workers, joke with customers or just huddle in a cubicle trying to parse out programming code for a new robot line. Then the bombs dropped. You had seen the world as it worked and didn't work pre-war. You might have been married, single, cohabiting, with any variation of that you could think about. And once you were thawed out you wouldn't have a 'save your son' story thrown at you and your very first concern might be in finding out if any of the other people inside their cryopods could be saved. Just because their life support readings are off-line doesn't mean that they weren't properly put into suspension...this IS Vault-Tec we are talking about, after all.
Based on just what you saw coming out of cryogenic suspension, you might figure out that someone let you out or that it was just a random thing, or that something had gone wrong and the system chose to defrost you to solve the problem. As a player you would be given facts, evidence, choices and not be steered towards finding your son and giving up everyone else for dead. These were your neighbors. Some of them might be friends or even lovers, all coming from a cul de sac sort of drama arrangement that would have fit perfectly with the Fallout franchise. Would your pre-war skills stand to the test of the post-war world? You might not know how to use a gun, or you may have been all too proficient at it. You might not be a mechanical genius or you might see the complex diagrams used to create new items and declare them to not be efficient enough and improve them. You would be translating pre-war skills into a post-war world, and while secretarial or clerical skills might not seem like good survival skills, they sure do come in handy in making lists of things you need and even figuring out where some good resources might be based on pre-war experience and that means more resources found more often.
How you started would then determine just what sort of attitude you took towards everything in the wasteland. A pre-war drug pusher might not see strung out Raiders as hostile, but as a customer base. That kind of turns the entire pre-scripted nature of Concord on its head, twists it around and turns it into something totally other. Are you up to the task of dealing with a large Raider gang, not with violence but with price negotiation and factoring in the lives of innocents into the bargain? Or if you were that pre-war Enclave agent, mowing these drug addled violent junkies might just be a clean-up operation and a Deathclaw something you were trained to handle. Coming out of the past is not a de novo start: this is not a blank slate but one that has been written on and must be taken into consideration to make the rest of the game make sense. Aiming to become a drug kingpin in the post-apocalypse is just as valid a response as wanting to establish a new government to bring order to all the chaos, with everything in-between also on the table. This would require a deep world, one with established post-war themes that the Fallout franchise is famous for including and each faction would demonstrate that they not only adapted to this world but did their best to survive and expand in it. That would bring conflict and war, war never changes.
People can and indeed must change when confronting life, in general, and a shattered world of a post-war era that has gone to hell. To be able to describe that trajectory is the primary job of a role-playing game and when coupled with player agency leads to diverse endings. Tacking on a 'find your child' quest and thinking this can be a 'good' narrative that will press players onwards is not just lazy writing but an active insult to the Fallout player base. A player has no investment in the pre-war world, the marriage that is presented or the infant that is the product of a romantic time after going to the park. Player agency in the pre-war era and then ending it would expand role-playing choices and even allow for differing ways to approach the post-war era with different drivers and motives. Removing choice and player agency in what is purported to be a role-playing game does not reflect a rich world, but a poor one that is poorly designed from the start.
While many new people were brought into the Fallout franchise by FO4, they got a rude awakening when playing either Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas as both of those featured role-playing where the decisions you made changed what you could say, who you could approach and what you could and could not accomplish. In particular with FONV players could do damned near anything from being a saint that wouldn't harm any living thing all the way to a psychopathic murderer that left a pile of corpses behind them and made the Mojave into an empty wasteland (at least in the base game). With prior parts of the franchise still on sale (and inexpensive) quite a few gamers got to experience what was and still is the Fallout phenomenon and then get a basis to compare the latest part of the franchise with its prior installments. This is part of the reason that the post-launch FO4 critical reviews and scoring have not gone up after the first 3 months: players learned about what this franchise was and find more to be disappointed with in the current installment compared to the prior ones. A player willing to invest a bit more time to play prior parts of the franchise then begins a serious process of analysis and comparison of those entries with FO4 and the result is the slow decline of FO4 away from the top of the franchise and down towards the bottom of it.
The only bright spot of FO4 is that the updated Creation Engine has allowed for modders to have the ability to start taking apart game mechanics, like the horrifically abused Perk system and start the process of restoring a skill and perk system, so that players get meaningful choices on how they want to approach the game. Sadly this cannot fix the broken speech system nor the awful plot that theoretically should be driving the PC forward but is totally unimmersive to the player. In a game that entices immersion via exploration and crafting, it also breaks that immersion by continually bringing the main story plot line up again and again. If you want to be a PC that has actually rapidly adjusted their outlook, then having the 'you're over 200 years old!?!' bit thrown at you gets a bit tedious, to the point where you would like to throttle that person and say: yes, get over it since I DID A FEW WEEKS AGO. Sadly the ability to actually do that or even have sensible replies to NPCs is lacking. No one is so insular or so driven as to not listen to other approaches to a common problem or even problems for life in general (once you get to know them) save a religious fanatic and those are pretty easy to spot. Yet the player can spend a long time thinking about what they actually WANT to say to an NPC, especially a faction leader, and get stuck with the same 4 choices which boil down to 3 positive and 1 negative. For a franchise used to making the moral and ethical areas grey, the speech choices go totally to black and white. And if you really don't want to slaughter your way across the wasteland? Sorry, that is something you need to seek in a prior installment of the franchise. Action combat game mechanics rule the roost in FO4.
One of the major problems that Bethesda Game Studios has had in its franchises is actually coming up with a game that demonstrates that it understands how a faction operates on the ground. This isn't that necessary with free-form factions, like the Minutemen, but is a damned necessity with any faction that is driven by something other than basic self-defense. The Brotherhood of Steel should act like it is just the spear point sent into the wasteland to assess and try and deal with The Institute, and have a regular organization that is sane, sensible, defensible and can be sustained by incoming supplies. That leaves a wide range of role-playing opportunities both for and against the BoS in and of itself. Those supply lines are vital to the success of the mission, and yet they are shoved aside as even a concept so the player can get an endless supply of exploding vertibirds and a coterie of dead BoS members larger than ANY chapter witnessed in the franchise...or more than all of them combined if you have a long enough time at the game.
A clandestine RR that has suffered a severe setback doesn't break its internal security rules because it has seen what can happen when it does that and it isn't pretty. Gaining the trust of that organization is a long, slow getting to know you dance that requires patience on the part of the player to actually understand the organization. The 'getting to know you' period is mandatory under all circumstances, and placing trust in the actions of the RR if you haven't won them over so as to get vital information from them creates an air of realism that no amount of poor random vocalizations by NPCs can ever do. Deacon, for all of being a companion and such, needs to know his place in the organization and actually go through that 'getting to know you' period BEYOND just one operation. Yet the flimsy plot demands otherwise, thus operational security goes out the window.
The Institute needs to be scaled to what it is purported to be and the grand showcase that we get needs to have all the underlying parts of what allows it to be as it is clearly shown, and that might not be a pretty sight. As shown it is far too small to do very much, and without any real physical space to actually have the equipment necessary to process or store anything from food to Synths it comes off as just a showpiece not an actual working organization. What is given is a shallow and a rather vapid 'we are the future' faction that doesn't have either a well defined past or present and doesn't act like the things it says that matter actually matter. As an organization they are unable to run even simple projects in a rational way or even bother to define what their end goals are for the organization. When made the head of the organization it is not possible to actually change policies, reassign personnel...well if you had more than the handful available you might get a talent pool and that isn't allowed...or even start to execute based on those changes. If you can't point out the major flaw in their Gen 3 Synth program in that having the genetic basis for all Gen 3 Synths have an underlying genetic factor leading to an unknown and uncurable form of cancer, well, for all the supposed intelligence there these people just aren't that smart.
As in other games BGS has put out, becoming a faction leader or at least the 'most important operative' in the faction is pretty much a quick and easy thing to do. The rewards are slim and titles never hold any authority behind them because the PC is never given the tools to actually utilize their position and deal with its responsibilities. The trade-off in rising in a faction is that you do get more leeway, more authority and are held responsible for what you do at ever increasing scrutiny to see if you are abiding by the tenets of the organization. At the very highest level a player would have to deal with schedules, personnel assignments, and an actual budget to figure out how to keep the organization running. Making that transition from troubleshooter to administrative overseer or CEO is a difficult transition to make, while still giving entertaining content and a real rationale for the player to take a more active role in events...if they want to do that. Part of the fun of being at that high level is that you no longer get the cats and dogs missions, the 'could you do this vitally important thing that needs to be done RSN but you can do at your leisure?' sorts of missions. The damned Radiant Quests that only serve as grind for the player to get levels but advance no story, no plot and are just Filler Quests for lack of better made content. All of those can, should and indeed must disappear at the Faction Leader level of things. A leader with an active bent to them will lead by example and be willing to show how missions can and should be done, and this should change opinions inside and outside the organization both pro and con. A less active leader for the organization delegates authority and responsibility for missions and then keeps track of them, asses outcomes, and lets the lower level individuals know what they did right, what they did wrong and all of that taken in context of just how hard the mission was in total. Very few games ever offer that depth of activity level, however, yet if becoming a faction leader in a role-playing environment then that level of detail becomes necessary. It takes skilled writing and coding to handle these affairs, and are actually more difficult than working on combat in the game engine as it requires an in-depth assessment of each faction and what they are about and how they go about activities.
A title without authority is hollow, and that hollow area is where the nuts and bolts of factions comes into play. You can't turn the Minutemen into a true military without a government, but you can't start the process of MAKING a government for the Commonwealth so you can never get a true military. The BoS has its core and foundation credo trampled upon, and yet you cannot bring up this lack of fidelity to them and impeach their current leader as a man setting himself up not as an Elder like Elder Lyons but something much closer to Father Elijah in FONV: a man with his own, personal agenda and the Brotherhood is just a tool to achieve it, in this case it is fame and glory for himself by doing this difficult task. And the RR doesn't offer the opportunity for the PC to become a talent scout or trainer for new operatives so that the organization can become a bit more secure and active at the same time. And for all the glitzy bits of The Institute, the PC never gets to enact policy changes, change personnel, and decide what the future of The Institute actually is. And with the Vault-Tec DLC the ability of the PC to actually make something that functions far better than The Institute is put in their hands: older technology that works, is adaptable and doesn't suffer the power problems The Institute has. Plus it has lots of living space available.
BGS can be credited with putting out a game with far fewer crashes than their previous outings, though it is based on an old game engine that is long in the tooth. If you didn't like the strange physics of prior games put out by the studio, then you won't like those same ones showing up in FO4. That could be readily forgiven along with the lack of a good melee system if the main story was compelling, interesting and immersive. BGS tends to rely on relatively dull main stories and then shines in the small stories, the interesting side quests and some demonstration that what the player does actually matters in smaller affairs. FO4 has some good and fun side quests and even interesting story based DLC content, yet all of that is in service to a game that has not taken past lessons to heart on how to broaden the role-playing aspects of their game without sacrificing player agency. Moving to shooter and action mechanics, and doing a much better job at them to be granted, has come at the sacrifice of an interesting plot, story and characters with some feeling that these decisions actually matter. The conflict that is pushed out to try and make this work is driven by the supposedly most intelligent group around, yet they have not learned lessons from history about what happens when overbearing authority is utilized against a population of people: it isn't liked all that much.
The reason The Institute destroyed the beginnings of the Provisional Commonwealth Government was that the assembly was raucous, there were many different opinions and The Institute didn't hold any more sway than any other settlement. It was, in other words, representative of the people involved who had a common goal of trying to secure a better future but having differing opinions on the best way forward. This was wiped out by The Institute since such a body would not adhere to what The Institute 'knew' was the best path forward, which was to kow-tow to them. Apparently the concept of earning trust was a bit too complex and involved for The Institute, and thus the wasteland's first hope for recovery on the east coast was destroyed by them. Yet here was something that might have actually been an interesting role-playing experience and might have served to show just how The Institute actually works on the inside. From a holotape found inside The Institute it is possible to discern a difference of opinion during the era of the CPG: at one point The Institute, itself, was somewhat more diverse in opinions on what the best path forward actually was. Given the nature of the way those in charge of The Institute view negative internal feedback in the time of Father, it is possible that such opinions were over-ridden and squelched from simple authority of 'you shall obey the leadership'. Yet The Institute, itself, is so small that it does not suffer from the one thing any organization just slightly larger than itself will get: office politics. Such rigid obedience and rapid squelching of dissent is only possible in such a small organization, and yet it isn't large enough to sustain itself over time. These things just do not work together or even make any basic sense. A conflict from a diversity of opinions, with smaller groups seeking their own slice of the pie is something perfectly suited to an RPG and The Institute would have been the prime place to show it.
Finally there are the side quests and DLC content that should have long-term ramifications if a certain set of paths are followed. With all the tongue-in-cheek humor of Automotron, especially when the comic book path is followed, the idea of having robot minions doing your bidding could play out in very interesting ways once the player gets their hands on that power. By having a factory available to be refurbished and brought into full production, the PC should have been granted that ability that The Mechanist had and to utilize it with better skill. For all of the fun of that DLC, there is no carry-through, no long-term ramifications and no major changes in NPC dialogue beyond companions of robots being a true threat to life and limb.
The Cabot House quest line offers the concept of a dark and foreboding power manifesting in the world and that if it isn't stopped than a true monster will be released that will transform the wasteland for the worst. Given the nature of the franchise it would be very possible that creatures from the sea that weren't Mirelurks, Fog Crawlers, etc. but something far less amenable to physical or energy weapons might start showing up. Perhaps Lorenzo Cabot was in contact with Yog-Sothoth or some other Cthulhoid entity seeking its own ends in the post-nuclear world, and releasing him and siding with him would have started a threat that would engulf everyone, even The Institute as it so unwisely thinks itself isolated when the realms of the earth and thought are very amenable to eldritch powers. Instead Lorenzo will sit on his butt and give you a new Mysterious Serum every week or so. So much for having him lead an army of creatures or R'lyeh rising up off the coast.
Given the Raider ending of the Nuka-World DLC, wouldn't it have been interesting to use the equipment in Nuka-World to find out where The Institute was and to find a way in? The worst ending to The Institute is NOT blowing it up, but putting it in the hands of Raiders...Raiders led by the PC. Putting the technology of The Institute into their hands and enslaving any survivors would mean a fate far worse for the Commonwealth than any of the base game endings. Sadly this is not available as a possibility. And all that fancy equipment, knowledge and so forth at Nuka World isn't of any interest to the BoS or The Institute. Here you can find a gene splicing machine that not only separated out FEV from a dead Super Mutant, but then had the FEV adapted to suit other organisms without such horrific effects. This equipment could lead to better Synth muscles, skin and tissue plus use a variety of sources for its creation. And this same equipment would want to be sequestered by the BoS who would see it as a deadly weapon. Weaponizing soft drinks would be of interest to ALL of the factions, period. Being able to change a bottle of Nuka-Cola into a nuclear assisted explosive would catch the eyes of every faction leader. Sadly, you can't get story lines like that in FO4.
Talking about Nuka-World I had thought there would have been an unlock for those with both Automotron and Far Harbor for Bradburton. Having one's head preserved is a pretty bad decision after all, but there is a solution available based on prior content. First off the actual equipment to create a Robobrain robot is available in the Commonwealth. Secondly one of the people who led the Robobrain project is still alive in Far Harbor after becoming a Robobrain, himself. Thus the PC has the means, available background and skill to offer John Caleb Bradburton a new way to get around: turn him into a Robobrain. All of the pieces are there and yet the one other way out, and a good way to establish order in Nuka-World and rid it of Raiders should be available: get Bradburton up and running as a Robobrain as HE knows all the ins and outs of the park, all of the defenses available for it and he is the only one who has a snowball's chance in hell of utilizing all of it to get the place up and running again. Given weaponized soft drinks, robots and the skill to utilize them, a team-up of the PC and Bradburton would pretty much spell the end for the Raiders and might even put a new force on the ground in the Commonwealth.
I thought the end of FO4 and all of its DLCs would be yet another ending to the game: the return of Bradburton with the help of the Sole Survivor to start up a new era of mankind with trade routes secured by Nuka-Cola powered and weaponized robots, favored groups getting their hands on weapons and armor that were augmented with Nuka-Cola, with the goal of restarting secure trade to create a functioning economy in the Commonwealth. Some factions would reject this or even oppose it, while others would embrace it as it would mark the end of the era of Raiders and the terror of Super Mutants. By combining all the DLC story pieces the beginning of the post-post-apocalypse would start in the Commonwealth. And imagine a fusion reactor that isn't started with a fusion core but with a bottle of Nuka-Cola. That would have been a fun and worthy role-playing opportunity that would reward good and expansive game play. Instead there is the bad dream that is Fallout 4 - the missed opportunities.
