Fallout 4: The Ugly - The Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is a mighty big 'if'.

Fallout 4: The Good - DLC content

Of course putting DLC content in the title means having to start winnowing out the real DLCs from those that are just workshop add-ons that feel like they should have been in the base game.  Still, if one is looking at a package deal on Fallout 4, then those pieces become useful depending on play style.  I'll put the workshop DLC (Wasteland Workshop, Contraptions, Vault Tec) together as asset style DLCs: only Vault-Tec has a story to go with it, and it is nominal though humorous as it gives a look into the company's way of viewing individuals as lab rats.

In the way of assets Contraptions Workshop is the one that puts actual production line equipment into place and is one of the few structural pieces that seems to draw upon the prewar knowledge available in the red workbench to construct useful equipment for material purposes.  Being able to make weapons, armor and food supplies on a production line basis moves FO4 from post-apocalypse to post-post-apocalypse.  With resource gathering and utilization to finished goods, the supply of newly made stuff essential for survival and more is in place.  If you want an idea of where Bethesda is going with the franchise, then Contraptions Workshop is it.  The Vault-Tec Workshop then adds in the critical pieces of large scale infrastructure in the way of water purification and power supplies, plus the actual ability to build Vault structural pieces to make safer internal housing.  Taken as a whole these minor DLCs hold keys to the future of the franchise if Bethesda ever wishes to use them.

What this does call into question, lore-wise and even just as an in-game mechanic, is who created those delightful red workbenches and the extended system in the Vault-Tec Workshop.  At this point it has post-war, crappy things to build, mechanical construction devices that are obviously uses pre-war technology (as seen in many of the non-functioning production facilities in FO4), and things that can only be described as adapted technology that is late post-war as seen in the Wastelands Workshop, particularly the traps utilized to catch various wasteland denizens, including humans.   That is a very versatile piece of equipment, and yet we never once see anyone programming the thing to adapt it to more uses.  Given that the Vault-Tec materials feature well fitted, protective pieces that put power, water and waste treatment through the joined sections, and the question of just why the other stuff is still so crappy is a question that is begging to be asked.  When all the pieces are in-place the idea of just making an awful looking post-war settlement goes out the window as the Vault Tec pieces can be used above ground.  That is the point where rebuilding isn't the question: you are now building something new and different.

The three remaining DLCs are Automotron, Far Harbor and Nuka World, and each deserves their place in the sun.  As a whole they are some of the best story driven DLCs that Bethesda has put out, although that will vary based on each individual's viewpoint of what the prior games held and how they fit into the overall story being told.

Automotron
Automotron is, perhaps, the closest to being light-hearted fun as it brings back a comic book figure from that timeline's past and gives it a second wasteland incarnation.  The first time we saw The Mechanist was in Fallout 3 and that was a, more or less, super hero who had started life off as a repairman and fan of robots and transformed himself into a comic book figure known as The Mechanist.  He isn't the same Mechanist in FO4, but he did inspire the new Mechanist who sends robots into the wasteland purportedly to help people, but ends up just trying to kill everyone.  In FO4 the lore of The Mechanist has been developed through the stories told on Silver Shroud Radio in and around Goodneighbor, and part of that can be captured by the player just by listening to the broadcasts.  In fact the player can actually become The Silver Shroud, submachinegun toting hero dealing out rough justice to evil doers, and there is a particular play through of Automotron using the costume once in the The Mechanist's Lair.

Automotron adds in a key piece of workshop equipment which is the Robotics Workbench, that allows for the creation and modification of stock robots typically seen in the Fallout franchise: Protectrons, Mr. Handy, Sentry bots.  Eyebots were excluded, though there is a mod that puts them into the mix.  Armed with that and a trusty, though somewhat dialog limited robotic companion, the PC can then track down what is going on, confront the new bandit gang, The Rust Devils, acquire a unique suit of T-60 power armor and the means to finally confront The Mechanist.  Once taken down the subterranean Lair becomes available as a settlement site, though it is most likely to be used as a provisioner point to send robot provisioners to bring settlements together in a unified supply situation.

Thematically the DLC is spot-on, well acted, and provides the ability for higher level characters to do it as The Silver Shroud and find the secret way in to confront The Mechanist instead of doing a brute force approach of surviving wave upon wave of robots until the facility finally runs out of power.  Determining which is more satisfying is left up to the player.  It is, thematically, one of the best role playing elements in the DLC and something that Bethesda would continue in the last DLC.

By using an existing place and turning it into the site for The Mechanist's Lair, this DLC does a good job for integration on that front.  What it doesn't do is gradually introduce Automotron enemies in a slow, build-up fashion.  To do this would mean that relatively under-powered groups of robots would show up early in the game as The Mechanist is getting established the rogue robots are not fighting just Rust Devils, but also going after just about anything that moves.  To a degree it is appropriate that the Rust Devils don't show up for awhile as their armor is better than standard Metal Armor which makes them a bit more on the resistant side to weapons fire.  Their robots at the low end, however, would be good for searching or scavenging and having a couple of the lowest level types of those or The Mechanist robot types would be very appropriate for introducing this 'threat to the Commonwealth'.  These robots wouldn't drop mods, just normal scrap until the proper story kicks off.  In addition Easy City Downs' robots are referred to as having mods, but they do not and it would have been interesting to see just what sort of home-brewed mods were in them as they would be thematically oriented to better speed for the bot types in question.  Nor do specialized robots from the pre-war drop appropriate modifications, like the Protectron firefighter or medical robots.  While the mods given in Automotron do replicate these, actually having to go out and find them so they would then become available would have been a nice touch to the DLC.

Automotron, by giving the ability to create robots and assign them to tasks, then starts to automate food production as robots can tend to plants (albeit they don't actually do anything more than just sit there and do nothing, but the crops still produce food) and free up the human workforce to do other things.  At the finish of Automotron robots can be used for Provisioning, tending crops, defense of settlements and custom created or adapted for Companion status.  As the lowest priced of the themed non-workshop DLCs, it offers a large number of options if you are into robots and finding a way to streamline settlements.

Far Harbor
 Moving on to Far Harbor, the Island that is reached via a quest line started at Nick Valentine's office, the player is given a setting that is foggy, lightly radioactive throughout with some hard pockets of fallout, a three-way set of groups that are antagonistic towards each other to a certain extent and new enemies in the way of deranged humans and brand new and quite hardy wildlife themed for the near shore and wetlands environment.  It is an interesting DLC as it offers a number of solutions to the problems facing the three groups and some actual choices that the player will have to consider because it puts a form of commentary on the main game that does require some reflection on it.  It is a type of DLC that has some elements of Point Lookout and Lonely Hearts from prior instances in the Bethesda era of Fallout.

The main quest is a young woman (she is an adult and no longer a child) Kasumi Nakano who got fascinated by a group on Far Harbor and traveled there to be with them, or at least meet them.  Going there to find her means meeting up with the locals on the docks who have been driven there by the Fog, the slightly radioactive fog that covers the island and can cause madness to those living in it.  They keep the Fog at bay with Condensers provided to them by the Synth refuge at the old Acadia National Park.  That is where the young woman went to and the journey then proceeds to there, and in so doing, encountering one of the Children of Atom on the Island.  They see the Island as part of Atom's domain, went to it, and were settled into an old Submarine Base by the Synth leading the refuge. DiMA.  After chatting with the slightly mentally askew Child of Atom the play then proceeds up to Acadia, itself and doing a meet and greet, plus finally finding the young woman who is alive and well.

DiMA, as the head of the refuge, is an early prototype synth between Generation 2 and Generation 3, and was made just before Nick Valentine.  DiMA was given a blank slate to build a mental structure while Nick was given the memories and mental structure of the pre-war police detective Nick Valentine.  Nick suffered damage and doesn't remember much of the Institute, only flashes of light, and nothing of DiMA.  DiMA considers Nick to be a 'brother' and uses that concept to try and convince Nick of his genuine affection and caring for Nick.  DiMA then turns and asks if the PC is a synth or not, and when you are given the opportunity to recall pre-war memories...well...the game designers decided that you shouldn't be allowed to do that.

Why?

Reasons!

 Asinine reasons, at that.  Any decent play through to that point in which the Institute is still around and the PC has been to Graygarden and the Brotherhood of Steel, means that opportunity to find and express pre-war memories have been available.  At Graygarden the memories of Professor Gray can be recalled, and those go back months before the war.  On the airship of the BoS and getting a physical, a sarcastic response can yield memories of a pre-war intimate session surrounded by far too much booze.  And if the player has done the Silver Shroud quest, then at the beginning they can recall sitting around with their family as a child listening to The Silver Shroud radio show.  Also at Goodneighbor the PC can recall their pre-war life with Daisy, the general goods vendor who is a ghoul.  Plus you can also find the Vault Tec Rep from the start of the game at the Hotel Rexford and talk with him about that last day.  Having done each of those and then NOT being allowed to bring them up with DiMA is a critical failure in game design and a slap in the face to anyone who has tried to use the role playing elements available to try and make a decent run of the game.  It is a singular failure in a game that has emphasized the pre-war nature of the PC, made it a vital and compelling part of the plot (one that is hard to miss and often thrust in your face).

This is yet another instance of Bethesda removing player choice and narrowing down input to get a desired result: it has nothing to do with actual role-playing and more to do with introducing the question into the minds of the players.  There are far better ways to do this, like pointing out that some of the synths that have gotten new memories get deep memories, going back some years.  Still the premise of the question would also call into question of why The Institute would ever put you into Vault 111 and would treat you as anything other than property.  This is especially grating if the player has done the basic reclamation quest on Gabriel for The Institute and drives home the point that all synths are seen as property even the 'Personal Synth' Eve in The Institute.  If the PC were a synth, then The Institute would have, long ago, sent out a team to bring you in as you are causing far too much damage and bringing attention to yourself.  This is a major flaw in this otherwise fine DLC, and will begin to point out that no matter what DiMA is trying to accomplish that the PC is just a piece on the chessboard to him: a person to manipulate.  There are better ways to do that and the quest to find Kasumi and then after you talk to her will reveal that upon any short amount of introspection by the player.

In the playthrough the PC will get to interact with the Far Harbor natives, who are restricted to their port town by the radioactive Fog which permeates the atmosphere and warps the minds of those stuck in it too long.  That is, unfortunately, not a game play mechanic but just stated as something that happens.  If you decide to hop and skip around in lead-lined and ballistic weave based armor, the radiation isn't much of a problem and you will never get mind altering effects from the Fog.  Upon first arrival the PC has to join in a fight against the local mutated wildlife that has decided that moment to try and get past the Fog Condensers that protect the town, so that this faction is actually the first you run across and the synth colony the second.  From the townspeople you learn of the animosity they hold towards synths and towards the Children of Atom who came to settle on The Island as they see it as part of Atom's holy land.  There are plenty of quests to do with the islanders, and some of them are very moving while others let you know that even when they are taking you in, if you make good then you will get rewarded.

The Children of Atom are a faction you will also get to join and learn about, and they came to The Island under the guidance of Confessor Martin, who ultimately died (or was murdered depending on your take of things) and that left Grand Zealot Tektus in charge, and he has little love for the synths which welcomed Martin and The Children to The Island nor The Islanders who he sees as intruders on Atom's holy land and standing against Atom's will.  It is up to the player to decide how to handle the situation and which faction (if any) is to survive their arrival.  This is a situation that can end with all factions surviving (though it is a metastable ending) to everyone dead: the outcome is left up to the player.

What the PC will uncover (doing most of the quests and getting through the mandatory 3D puzzle game to get DiMA's memories which has no damned place in the game) is that DiMA has been the manipulator of all of the factions and kept on orchestrating events and then finding that his work was turning out worse and worse at every turn.  To help calm down The Islanders he found one of their members that had been off of The Island for a decade and had her murdered and replaced by a synth.  He also hid the detonator to the nuclear weapons in the submarine bay that the Children of Atom are using as their temple, so that it can go boom.  Plus he has the kill switch code for the wind turbines that allow Far Harbor to exist and keep things running.  The Islanders are suspicious of the replacement, the Children of Atom don't trust his machinations and while the synths look up to him, a few express misgivings about what is going on (and the PC can learn that a few of them have been manipulated when things didn't go exactly as planned).  Giving land to the Children of Atom didn't create peace, and even Confessor Martin expressed that Division is Atom's greatest gift and if he got his hands on the key to blow up the nucleus in holy atomic fire, he would do so.  Fog Condensers that the technicians at Acadia made for The Islanders didn't win long-term trust but suspicion of ulterior motives.

While the theoretical 'good ending' is to do yet another synth replacement on Tektus, that brings into question just how the player views The Institute as that is EXACTLY what The Instituted DOES.  Yes, DiMA is rationalizing it just as Father and the others in The Institute do, as well.  When I call this ending 'metastable' it means that it is only stable for a short-term: suspicions will continue to fest both amongst The Islanders and the sudden turnabout by Tektus will raise suspicion of him amongst the Children.  Every time a problem crops up, DiMA will be forced to do something and when people can't be quelled and their suspicions remain, just what will happen?  Plus helping DiMA is giving tacit acceptance to these methods, which means that one of the major reasons to oppose The Institute is taken off the board.  Given the status of Paladin Danse, that can be a hard pill to swallow if you got that far in the play through.  If it is perfectly fine to replace individuals with compliant synths in Far Harbor, then why not elsewhere?  And the worst thing is that even given some of the attributes of Confessor Martin, there is no way to remove the primary message of Atom for Division.  If the replacement is truly devout, then DiMA is still left with someone who is faithful to that doctrine, and while ameliorated due to initial circumstances, must face up to the fact that Division is a Blessing unto Atom's Children and to be embraced.  This is no fix at all, merely delaying the inevitable.

Of course the player can just choose a single winner or no winner at all, which leads to multiple types of bad endings.  Yet an analysis of beliefs and rationale points out where the actual problems are in Far Harbor and their solution.

Who is it that welcomed the Children of Atom?  DiMA.
Who is it that murdered and replaced an Islander to manipulate The Islanders?  DiMA.
Who is it that ordered an unsuccessful mind-wipe of a damaged synth and left it in mental misery? DiMA.
Who is it that developed the Kill Code and hid The Detonator Key so that they could be held over the other factions? DiMA.
Basically who caused all of these problems?  DiMA.

The 'good' ending lets DiMA off pretty lightly and confirms him in the manipulator role, one that he hasn't done well at in the past and will continue to fail at in the future as he has already set the basis for it in place.  Hope you felt good about that, doing his dirty work for him!

Now if you aren't the sort that likes being manipulated is there a solution this problem?  Why yes, yes there is and it is damned simple.  Confront DiMA after giving him his memories back and hold him to the very code he says he will abide by.  If humanity is to be trusted for justice, then go to The Islanders and tell them that he has murdered one of their own and put a synth in but that synth is innocent of wrong doing.  Yes this will get DiMA killed in short order, but also give the sacrificial lamb necessary to finally shut up the hot heads in Far Harbor.

That leaves the Children of Atom.  What is the greatest, most sought after blessing that they embrace?  Division.  And who can hand it to them?  Why the PC!  To our eyes, here in the comfy main timeline without the problems of the Fallout universe, this is a form of mass suicide, like Jonestown.  Yet in the crazy alt-post-apocalypse where the teachings of Atom are embraced by his Children, who are you to say that they are WRONG?  When you reveal that you have the Detonator Key, the immediate response is for Tektus to call the Children together while you put the key in and turn it...giving you a very, very short time to get out of the submarine, get to the main floor and book out of the Nucleus as everyone from the outside is scrambling to get IN.  You have a sense of self-preservation, but these people fervently, wholeheartedly believe that Atom is about to bestow the greatest of all blessings directly upon them and other Children will mourn that they weren't there to take part in that holy communion of Division.

Is it evil to do this?  By our standards, you're damned right it is.  Yet this ending also avoids years of future bloodshed, constant fighting and such between The Islanders and the Children of Atom.  If you are going to get your hands dirty, then are you going to do it under the orders of another or do it yourself?  Or will you just walk away and wash your hands of future bloodshed...and if you have helped The Islanders at all, that means coming back to defend the settlements there that you helped to take under your wing.  You are going to get your hands dirty one way or another, unless you are willing to just let the whole thing sit as a lost cause, and persuade Kasumi to just get the hell out of Dodge as she will once you reveal what DiMA has done.  It is barely possible to just leave this mess unresolved and close the case, with DiMA dead to top it off.  Justice served and all that...just remember you have the means to forestall constant bloodshed in your hands, and that means your hands are still dirty with those deaths linked to your inaction. Do or do not, your hands get dirty.

Nuka World
 If the player waits to do Nuka World before resolving the main story of Fallout 4, then there is something that will start to give voice to some of the larger problems of the game as a whole.  In Fallout: New Vegas there were hints and lead-ins to the DLC content that one could find throughout the game.  Sierra Madre posters, a few bits of dialogue about that 'other courier', encountering cazadores and nightstalkers and wondering just where the hell they had come from, and some of the wishes expressed at Crimson Caravans to expand caravan routes north.  Paying attention in the base game meant you had context for the DLCs.  Not so in FO4, where the DLC content is just plunked down with no prior lead-in.  There is one story you might overhear about a ghoul whale, but that isn't something found in Far Harbor just 'out at sea', and the other DLCs didn't get so much as a hint anywhere about them.  No posters from Nuka World or stories of rampaging robots...nothing.  And yet all the DLCs had been planned long before the base game was released.  In Nuka World the player and PC must deal with surviving the Gauntlet of death traps, active foes, mines, etc. to just meet the Overboss who wants to kill you for the glory and entertainment of the other Raider gangs.  This is a Raider DLC and you are put in the heart of being able to overturn much of your hard work in the Commonwealth...if you want to.

Yet, for all of that, no one else in the Commonwealth gives a good hot damn about Nuka World.

The Minutemen do care, to an extent, but are still willing to follow you as their General.  Preston Garvey doesn't want to work with you if you take it too far, but if you get to that point and then decide on the Minuteman ending, well, yeah you're still the General to HIM, too.  Big deal, huh?

The Railroad says not a peep if you become an Overboss there...and they do not like Raider gangs very much because of the way that synths are treated if they are discovered to be synths.  They are fine with you being Overboss and even setting up Raider settlements inside the Commonwealth.  And yet the gangs you lead are no better and some actually worse, than the ones the RR despises.

The Brotherhood should be damned interested in having a region large enough to land the Pydwyn, and that has lots of suits of advanced power armor and weapons available, as well as other, quite dangerous technology.  They don't give a rats ass about it.

The Institute should be interested in some of the technology in Nuka World, especially the concept of being able to weaponize soft drinks.  There is a host of pre-war genetic information on animals and people in Nuka World that they should want with a great wantingness, and actually think about wanting to do a major campaign there to get it all.  Nope, no dice.  All about that undergroound facility with all of its problems and nothing about an outside solution...the myopia continues.

Nuka World is unconnected to the base game...and yet there are a few points you can roleplay as The Silver Shroud and actually get unique dialogue.  Plus you can get mods off the robots in Nuka World, so you can make even fancier robots with some unique weapons based off of Nuka Cola's line-up.  So Bethesda Game Studios could have offered a far deeper integration of this DLC...actually ALL of the DLCs, than what was finally delivered.  And it seemed that for all the criticism of not being able to be truly evil in the base game, the developers finally said 'well now you can!'  But only if you are willing to scrap what you've already invested in a play through to do so.  Isn't that special?

The premise of this DLC is that you are given the title of Overboss (yet another meaningless title in the long list of meaningless titles in Bethesda games) which means that, yes, you will do work to clear out Nuka World for the three gangs there!  Yet more ungrateful wretches to do quests for!  Yay!  Then, when you have 3 gangs and 5 park areas to hand out, the one with the short end of the stick will turn on you once you start setting up shop in the Commonwealth.  That's just so special, isn't it?  Not like you didn't get a clear signal of that from the start with the whole unequal distribution deal.  Still if you go through all of that, get the nominally wonderful perks that could have been useful at much lower levels (assuming you aren't doing a real challenge like going to Nuka World at Level 1), the question of what the real purpose of helping the gangs of Nuka World actually serves comes to mind.

As the companion available in Nuka World will point out, both the Brotherhood and Institute act like Raider gangs, just with lots of high tech and good sounding verbiage behind them.  That is, actually, a correct view of the situation as neither group holds themselves accountable to anyone but themselves and take what they want through threat of force or just killing to get what they want.  The RR is also unaccountable, but it is not, by and large, looking to take goods and land from people: they have a mission, are dedicated to it and don't get into that whole thefting to support yourself business.  And The Minutemen, in theory, are a citizen based militia of volunteers and mutual support, but without a government over it the problems of accountability also show up.  In theory The Minutemen might be the basis for bringing together enough settlements to then allow such a government to form. 

And the Raider gangs?  They are in it to rob, steal and kill their way to survival and dominance, which is a pretty simple viewpoint but at least one that can be understood as a base desire.  Raiders don't create anything, save chaos, and are self-absorbed as individuals, which is reflected by the gangs.  Why si the wasteland still a wasteland?  Look no further than the base instincts of humanity given leeway to express itself and aspire to nothing above fulfilling those base needs.  Genghis Khan brought a form of government and tolerance to those places that willingly submitted, and didn't fiddle much with them save to appoint an official at the top and skim off the top from that government.  He understood that there is a purpose to governance at a local level, and while establishing no lasting system the idea was not to force submission in totality but only in part.  Raider gangs feel no need to defend those settlements they get tribute from, and thus don't measure up to even Khan based standards.  These tribal concerns that exclude caring about where their daily sustenance comes from puts Raiders in a tough position when something else from the wasteland decides to get rid of their food source.  Raiders will farm, but don't like it as it is beneath them.  As Mr. Abernathy points out 'if you don't work, you don't eat' means that stealing or extracting food from others is short-sighted as it puts at peril the very thing that the thieves desire in the long term: survival.  If you are not thinking about survival in the wasteland (or in real life) then you are putting your life at risk which is a basic lesson that Raiders feel free to ignore.

Being Overboss of the Raider gangs has no end-game to it, and they don't even get a chance to figure out how to bring down the high tech gangs they see in the Commonwealth: the Brotherhood and Institute.  Both of these organizations could put an end to Raider problems, and the Brotherhood, by supporting Operation Purity in the Capitol Wastelands, have actually done this before.  The Institute can use high tech means, teleportation and lots of expendable Gen 1 and 2 synths to erode Raiders if they ever were seen as a threat, which is doubtful but history has many people like the Overboss that then figure out how to unify the forces beneath them.  Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas is just such an example, and that sort of organization will brook no contenders to being top dog and actually see anyone who contests their supremacy as a threat to be eliminated.  And The Minuteman ending shows that the Institute is vulnerable to the surface world.  A unified gang structure under a powerful leader would emerge if the Nuka World Raiders rise to being a power across the entire Commonwealth and they will seek to wipe out every other faction.  We aren't given that as an ending to Nuka World, but it would fit, thematically, with history and the Fallout universe.

Nuka World has much to offer in the way of interesting places, some more than interesting backstory, and fun weapons, armor and technology.  It is not well integrated into FO4 and for all the well made landscape and people have to offer, it is that lack of integration and expanded game play that leaves it feeling a bit hollow.  Going through all the rigmarole and the result is left unsatisfying.  That does not detract from the game play, which is one of the best in all of Fallout's DLCs, even with all the lack of role playing flaws that come with FO4.  Having outside interest from the Brotherhood, Institute, and perhaps a Minuteman initiative to drive out the Raiders would have made for a far more interesting DLC.  Offering an end-game to the Raiders would also have done that and allowed for a complete cycle of hopeless wasteland to hopeless wasteland.  Thus game play comes at the expense of putting a final twist to FO4 that would end in a truly 'bad' ending without hope and endless warfare.

Because war...war never changes...

Fallout 4: The Ugly - Voiced Protagonist

This topic is one of the defining parts of Fallout 4, and it is the movement from the silent protagonist, in which lines of dialog from the protagonist are chosen by the player for the Player Character (PC) to say, but that have no voice acting for it.  The silent protagonist comes in two varieties: the truly silent protagonist and the unvoiced silent protagonist.  That first type, the protagonist who never actually has a line of dialog is rare in gaming for at least the last 15 years, but it is a well known type of play style.  The Fallout franchise, up to Fallout 4 used the other sort of silent protagonist, which allowed for a variety of dialog options with NPCs so that the player could get to know a bit about them, what their circumstances were and if anything of interest could be revealed by them.  The NPCs are voice acted, the PC is not.  This is a vital part of role playing as no voice acted protagonist can cover the wide array of options and choices for character design and the type of person and personality the player was trying to achieve with their PC.

The Player Character is the avatar of the player in the game world, the one doing the actual activities guided by the player, and by giving a wide set of character design options the voice of the PC has to be one that is imagined by the player.  By choosing lines of dialog that are appropriate to that design and outlook for the PC, the player has a form of freedom in thinking just how the lines are spoken.  By giving a variety of choices of what to say there is also the intention that each PC will say them differently, which means that while certain dialog might yield better results, they may not actually fit with the type of person the PC is and thus yield different results in speech options.

A voice acted character is expected for times when known PCs are the point of a game.  A game out of The Witcher series gives the voice of Geralt of Rivia, while one out of Mass Effect gives a male or female Commander Shepard.  The basic role and situation is already created for the player, and while some cosmetic changes can happen before the game starts and within the game, the voice of the PC is set and all the lines of dialogue fully voiced.  That then requires a system for figuring out how to give the player agency in the world, and that can come out as a result of the different decisions the player makes throughout game play.  With that said you don't get to play anyone else in those franchises.  A game like Bioshock Infinite and its DLCs does offer a single voiced protagonist, but in the DLCs you play the companion who has an interesting set of stories of her own.  Thus you play through the main game as Booker DeWitt and then switch over to Elizabeth for some of the DLC content.  You don't get to play a resident of Columbia, say, just as you can't start out as a peasant in The Witcher series or a different species and job in the Mass Effect franchise.  That voice acted protagonist deal means that the freedom of the player is limited to the choices of the game design team, and if they did a great job then the leeway and types of decisions a player gets to make will then allow for a form of immersion in that PC.  Everyone has a different view of Shepard, Geralt, Booker and Elizabeth, and that is only constrained by how well the design team created a meaningful and in-depth experience for the player.

That single choice at the very start of the design process then starts to constrain and limit what can be done with the depth of the overall story, the world and interactions between the PC and NPCs.  Constraints are in no way a bad thing in game design terms, and can actually require a creative response and better look at the content that will be provided in the game itself.  Voice acting is only one, and a rather minor part, of immersion and allowing a game world to have a sense of internal reality for the player.  Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas both offered a good sense of how the in-game world and situation worked without a voice acted protagonist, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Game Studios also didn't need a voice acted protagonist and may have actually found that if they wanted to budget for all the different races that could be played that they wouldn't even be able to make the game if they did so.

For an Open World RPG in which there is not a set background for the PC, then comes a problem of having to create a setting in which voicing the PC becomes a problem due to character types and styles that players will create.  With too much background set, the player must either abide by the decisions the game designers made or decide to chuck them, imagine some different sort of background and then put up with voice acted lines that don't fit their character very well.  By making a story line imminent, that is to say pressing at all times, upon the PC if the route of following what the game designers want the player to do is chucked out the window, then the main story becomes a burden to the player as it will be brought up and nudged at them from various sources including NPCs, quests, and running across locations intended to show something to the player about that main story.  Putting up with that sort of pushing and nudging is an irritation and breaks immersion into the game world as no one will see your character as you have made them but only as the game designers intended for the main story of the game.

Voicing the protagonist and then doing a quick cut to get the main part of the game, means that there is no chance to get a solid grounding in the character type the game designers intend for the player to use.  The choice of male/soldier or female/lawyer isn't even given an hour of game play so that they can go looking for a job, figure out how to tend to their finances and put up with that pesky guy from Vault Tec trying to sign them up for the local Vault.  Why don't we get that?  Too much voice acting work.  If more attention is paid to the start, then the actual game will start to lose some of its structure due to budgetary constraints and timing.  Yet that sort of time would allow players to begin the process of building their character, to get some initial perks that reflect their pre-war lives.  If a voiced protagonist for an Open World game without a set type of protagonist must be done, and the game is broken into an intro/get to know you part and then a transition to the main game, then what is required is actually getting to know some of the life and background of that protagonist before the change-over.

A longer lead-in would allow the player to establish some of what that PC was before the bombs dropped.  Perhaps visiting the local garage to get a perk there, or going to the local range to pick up a perk or two there...fixing some stuff or reprogramming a basic routine into the robot could add in perk points.  Singular, yes, but a foundation and a beginning of a couple of extra points to go with a few they got from their lives before they were married.  Was the male interested in anything before getting drafted?  Did the female try to pursue some necessary training for the slowly decaying society around her while still getting a night school law degree?  Was the equivalent of an ROTC program available?  Were there vocational schools either could attend?  Perhaps part-timing as a model or waiting on tables was something they did to get by?  Anything?  These individuals did have a pre-war life, and were in their late 20's to early 30's, which is a point in which most normal individuals actually have some real life skills behind them and that should be reflected in their perk trees.

It wouldn't take much in the way of story of game assets to do this, save for getting some spruced up buildings in the pre-war era, maybe a short bus ride to go past a few places...but the interactions with anyone would require some plotting out and voicing.  Game mechanics for some perks getting assigned would be relatively easy.  Yet for an hour of time spent in the pre-war era the player could get to know their spouse, their neighborhood and truly realize what a horror was going to happen when the bombs dropped.  That would, of course, force the Far Harbor DLC to not take the coward's way out with the sudden lack of pre-war memories on the part of the protagonist...but that is a plot hole or deceit on the part of the game designers depending on how you look at it.  If the player is supposed to care about their spouse, their neighborhood and have deep and heartfelt reactions about losing them, then that isn't done in a short intro inside a single home and then running past people who are panicking when the alarm comes.  Caring takes time, and the game designers did not allot enough to actually get that across to the player via interactions of the Player Character.

More problematical is the way the game unfolds in the Vault and the ever so smart Institute sending a harsh wasteland operative with a penchant for violence in to lead a team of scientists and medical personnel to do a baby snatching.  The man would lead the security end of things, but not the actual kidnapping part as the medical team would be ready with sedatives to inject the parent holding the child so that the child wouldn't come to any harm.  Then close the chamber, turn on the cryo system and leave.  Murdering all but the Sole Survivor is insane for the Institute as each of the individuals in the Vault represent fresh, uncontaminated pre-war genetic material.  There were children scheduled for cryso sleep as well as young adults.  If the worry is getting flashed by the distant nuclear bomb disturbing genetic material, then the infant was exposed to that as well.  The only reason that would be set aside is if the distance meant that exposure was minor beyond the flash of the light, and that those who got in before the shockwave carrying debris hit was the only worry for fallout contamination.  It's a shame that Bethesda decided on voice acting as it would have been fun and interesting to play someone else from the neighborhood in the Vault.  The opportunities for play in that are large and could change the very nature of the post-war world and its recovery.

Fallout 4: The Good - Companions

What back to this topic?

Why yes, yes indeed.  The complaints about companions getting in your way, stepping in front of you just as you're lining up a long range shot or just, generally, not having a good combat AI must be factored in with the actual attempt to make sure the companions were not just generic followers.  In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the main complaint for companions was that they were generic.  Do a quest, do a mission or become a Thane and you got a free companion/follower.  That changed with the Dawnguard DLC and Serana, who came packed with her own mental model that ran in the background which kept track of what you had talked about, how you presented yourself and what your goals were, as well as how you felt about her as an individual.  That was an impressive feat to attempt at that point, and when it worked it was very impressive compared to the more generic followers in the game.  Skyrim was the project between Fallout: New Vegas (FNV) and Fallout 4 (FO4), done by Bethesda Game Studios.

Obsidian was hired to create FNV and they took a different approach to companions than Bethesda did, in that they wanted their affiliation towards the player character (PC) to happen in stages.  Thus every time you talked to someone who was old and important around Raul, he would want to have a bit of a chat with you.   When going with Veronica, there were places which would trigger her personal quest line and affiliation and get more information about her.  Mostly these were exposition dumps of the 'I need to get this out in the open' sort of deal, and were monologues.  This is a form of storytelling about the individual and the wider wasteland and how events happened outside of the immediate setting, thus were an RPG game element that required some game mechanics as well.  Cassidy didn't really like it if you have been stealing everything that hasn't been nailed down, and trying to talk with her if your Karma was negative turned out to be a no-go.  Cassidy had a built-in system of judging you by your general presentation based on what you had done: she could judge the PC by Karma.  Fallout 3 featured this to an extent with Talon Company and The Regulators, who would go after you if your Karma was too high or too low, respectively.  But those are groups making decisions based on contracts or what you have done, not individuals and not companions.  Still if you worked well with the slavers in FO3 you could get a slave follower, so points to Bethesda on that.  The changeover from Karma to personal review of an individual happened with Serana in Skyrim, and she was a very lore friendly and quite appealing companion, as well and that helped immensely.  There was still a theft and bounty system in Skyrim, so stealing what wasn't nailed down was still possible, of course, as was getting a bounty on your head if you did so.

Those game mechanics were removed from FO4 which had no Karma system, no Bounty system and, in general, if you stole something when no one was looking it wouldn't be pinned on you.  Bethesda did not go the complete route on that, however, and still marked items as STOLEN, which makes no sense at all for generic items or even some unique items.  That power armor set you stole from Raiders?  Yeah, some of your companions don't like it overmuch that you stole it and every time you get into it their favor can drop a bit.  How they know that is beyond anything the game mechanics actually want to cover as there is no Karma to give you an aura of sorts and if there is no witness, then identifying it as stolen when the owner didn't see it to pin it on you is absurd.  Steal something half-way across the Commonwealth and, somehow, it will still be known as STOLEN.

Without the proper game mechanics to explain this, the game element of something being stolen is detached from a framework to use it for particular situations.  You can't buy/sell some items to traders if it was stolen...how and why they know an item was stolen is not explained.  Karma gets your PC an aura or air about them, and some people can tell that right off the bat.  Stealing something in a system with a bounty attached can make some sense if you are the only one it can be pinned on or someone else who wasn't an owner saw you steal it.  Neither system is implemented and only the trade and use portions show up for companion and vendors, which, given the conditions of the wasteland, how are either to know that this wasn't yours to start with?  Remember most of the Raiders you see can't read or write, so they don't have a nametag on them...just the tag from the game engine marking it as STOLEN.

Outside of that, how you generally act towards others can gain you like/dislike with companions, and each have their own subset of activities to trigger that sort of event.  All Companions, indeed everything that can react to the PC or to each other in the game has AI behind it.  Simply put it is a script with variables that can change over time and circumstances.  Simple AI is put in place for everything else, with variations based on internal faction variables, so that Raiders just don't go shooting each other on sight.  Indeed removing that temporarily and putting a  high combat status on that individual will allow them to go berserk against the nearest person or creature, which has an entertainment value and has been part of how Bethesda codes NPCs that you can't recruit.  It is also possible to add the PC's faction to a list of allied factions for an NPC, so that they won't attack you, as well.  As a combat game mechanic it functions pretty well, but without proper RPG elements and scripts to back it up outside of combat, it isn't so useful.

In Skyrim the nature of Serana's script and background tracking were quite complex for the game and script engine, and there were a number of failure states that she could get stuck in, like saying she was going to leave to get cured and then just standing there.  To a degree this is true of all the recruitable NPCs in that game, and points to some basic limitations of script implementation in a complex game in the 32-bit era.  Going further afield in the shooter category of games, there are those with goals that the player must achieve for the plot to move forward and companion characters will have that as a reference so that they don't stray far from the path to that objective.  They can be given a large number of other routines, poses, dialogue and such to help them blend in with their surroundings and craft a personality for them.  Open World games where goals can be done in any order or totally ignored makes that sort of AI impossible save on a very limited basis, like someone looking to move through a dungeon or building with enemies in it and asking for the PC's help.

Interpersonal AI takes a lot of work and overhead, plus voice acting to make an NPC truly stand out and be believable.  With a voiced protagonist, usually at higher pay than NPC voiced lines,  that means that every line spoken by the protagonist is taking at least one or two lines out from NPCs.  That is why the NPC voice acting tends to have a limited response set in games with a voiced protagonist: money.  All that interaction costs money up front, and the type and style of game will dictate just how much time and money is to be spent on voicing of the various characters.  Getting a single good voice actor for an NPC like Laura Bailey as Serana costs a fair amount, and having two voiced protagonists for the entire game plus all DLCs means a lot of the money that could be spent for going in-depth on a few more NPCs or even adding in new NPCs is spent on the protagonist.  Of course it isn't that simple as the AI, story, backstory, and all the necessary elements to place an NPC in the game world need to be worked in as well, and that also takes a lot of money per character, though it is easier to add in different elements like was done in prior entries to the Fallout franchise.  In both Fallout 3 and New Vegas the choice of perks that were chosen for the PC would open up new dialogue options with some NPCs.  Stuff like Animal Friend, Child at Heart, Confirmed Bachelor/Cherchez la Femme, Black Widow....these weren't just about changing combat results and getting a slightly better chance at convincing someone at a speech check, but could open up brand new speech options that weren't available without them.  This is a way to add depth and traits to NPCs, and even put in alternative game choices to move forward in making decisions: these are key role playing elements that depend on RPG game mechanics.  It does require extra coding and forethought on the part of the game design team, of course, and that is something decided based on the type and style of game that is being designed.  A combat heavy game won't include them, while an RPG has such elements and mechanics as a viable game option so that the player is given Agency over how to make their decisions or to even find alternatives that free them of the prior constraints presented to them in different storylines.

FO4 is a combat heavy game, and the NPCs that are enemies tend to have pretty simple AI based on their abilities, attributes and equipment.  NPCs that recognize they are vulnerable and seek cover tend to do so for a limited period of time before they finally give the bum's rush forward, tossing their life away by doing so.  Combat AI for companions isn't much better and there are rare circumstances where the shooting gallery (be it mine, building, tunnel complex, what have you) allows for cover fire advancement.  That is to say if a Companion is in cover against an opponent, the PC can then open up from their position to cover the advancement of their Companion.  And then the reverse can happen to allow the PC to move forward while the Companion gives cover fire from their position.  Thus the two can leap-frog into better range going from cover to cover seeking to flank a set of opponents from one or both sides.  The chances of this actually happening is sheer and utter luck and not something that you prepare for since there is no game mechanic in the combat side of things for the Companion AI to comprehend advancing under cover fire.  Dumb luck will get you the few situations this happen, not devising a set of tactics that the NPC understands and will then seek to enact: there is no yelling 'cover me' and then getting a thumbs-up or equivalent so that you can then advance under cover fire.  That is one reason why I classify FO4 as an action game: it is action centered not shooter centered.

If these elements, the background accessible via specialized perks and getting a good fighting relationship, are mixed together, then this thing called 'immersion' starts to appear.  Letting a Companion know that you tend towards melee combat and will ask them to give you cover fire to advance, would be something you talk about before ever getting into a fight.  If only the Companions would recognize that there IS a fight going on before asking if you have time to talk to them about personal matters.  In my very first playthrough of FO4 I had been working with Cait and getting into some rather nasty fights, and getting to understand her background, all to the well and good.  Then, in the middle of a fight where a group of advancing synths were firing at us, she decided she wanted to have the old heart-to-heart.  Yeah, we stood up, got out of cover and had it...while the blue lasers were hitting all around us.  There is no magic shield of 'I want to talk to you' protection in FO4...hell there is no concept of 'personal space' when others are talking, either.  NPC AI is decidedly lacking in something known as Situational Awareness.  Still we had that chat, survived, won the day and proceeded on to the end of her major quest.  That is the first, only and last time I will ever accept such dialogue in the middle of a firefight, and even choosing the 'Not Right Now' sort of option still means I have to stand up and get out of cover in a fight and that is usually a lethal situation.

What is Situational Awareness?  Bethesda doesn't go that far in implementing it, beyond putting in some generic trigger points for NPC monolog and remarks.  That just isn't all that well done, truth be told.  SA goes far beyond that on both the combat and non-combat side of things.  The combat list should include things like: don't step in front of someone aiming down a scope, don't use area effect weapons when friendlies are in the range of the effect, keep your distance in combat, seek cover and cover fire opportunities against entrenched or protected areas, utilize non-combat skills when appropriate to take care of situations and problems during a fight (like going to the side of the PC who is gravely wounded and using a stimpak).  Stuff like that.  Get out of the way of the PC, don't block doors, and give people who are talking to each other a wide berth can start to cover non-combat SA, as well.  That and the game engine deciding to spawn people and creatures on the roofs of buildings or inside locked rooms that they don't have a means to escape from....that is game engine SA for placement of NPCs, and it doesn't really exist in FO4, either.  If you've ever been blocked from getting into a house because a caravan brahmin was spawned inside of it with no real way out, and thus no real way in, you get the idea.  Sometimes it is comical, but mostly it is just non-sense and frustrating beyond belief.

With all that said the additional and interactive 'getting to know you' for Companions is a good step forward and beats the exposition dumps of FNV.  It could use some refinement by adding in actual meal game mechanics so that the PC and NPCs can share a meal, go to a bar and have drinks together, and generally unwind in a friendly environment and talk things over.  Talking things over in the field isn't really the best of all possible solutions, especially if it involves a major activity that the PC will have to do with the NPC so as to advance the storyline of the NPC.  Better game mechanics or at least subsidiary elements to existing ones in the AI would be necessary for this.  It is a bit more to keep track of, yes, and requires some forethought by the game designers, but once set up as a mechanic, then it can just be used and places set up appropriate for such dialogue (or made by the PC) so that when the PC and NPC are in that place they can then have different dialogue options and opportunities.

The best of the modded in Companions from prior games in the TES and Fallout franchises can vary from very simplistic to revising a known NPC by adding in other options that have some voiced (or even unvoiced) options to finding a voice actor (friend, amateur or professional) to speak the lines for a unique Companion.  Quests for those companions can range from non-existent to incredibly in-depth and detailed, with multiple friendship and affection waypoints that are only garnered by working with the Companion, helping them and showing that you, as the PC, are willing to do a lot of little things to build up their trust.  That takes a lot of time, effort and sometimes actual money so that the Companion will get special clothes, special weapons, other items not found normally in the game and yet lore friendly...modders do this because they love the idea of having a Companion that isn't JUST a Companion but someone that is seeking a long-term relationship and that your PC may just be that individual.  A ghoul or super mutant companion may think nothing of the Cannibalism perk, while a human companion may detest you whenever you do it when they can see you doing it.  Which means you have to adjust how you play to their likes and dislikes as well as your own method of play, all while attempting to achieve some larger goals and quests.  A Companion should be more than just a squadmate or combat buddy, and romantically they should also have preferences, likes, dislikes and such so that doing some activities is just not possible no matter how much they like you.

Are those limitations to Companions?  Yup, they are.  And they make a game more immersive, and lets the player know that no matter how good they are that there will be things they just can't do in the play through they are on.  Player Agency will have limits, but will also have the hints at expanded opportunities if different choices are made.  FO4 is a step in the right direction for Companions by lengthening the 'getting to know you' phase, breaking it up a bit, and making the Companions seem to fit in well as a friend you can travel the wasteland with.  And if you just want to chuck all of them out, well, Dogmeat will always love you.  And get in the way of your next shot.Basically the realm of AI in the Fallout and TES franchises are lacking.  The game industry, as a whole, gives some unique NPC Companions (used generically here) that attempt to blend in with the game world, move stories forward and offer opportunities for player agency, which is the breadth and scope of decisions the player is faced with and can allow an ingenious player to find new ways to play the game and come to different or better ends than just using brute-force techniques.  The real place to watch for advances in AI are not in the big technology companies, but in the gaming realm as actual humans who are seeking to advance games can have a competitive advantage by offering better NPC AI, particularly in Companion AI, that seeks to adapt the Companion to the the player and vice-versa.  Want to get human relationships from computers?  Why look at big companies that don't make that a goal in the first place?  Why not start with those who have a real monetary reason to advance the state of the art, and can prosper by doing so?  Don't expect the big boys to solve this one.  The first game company that begins to crack this nut open in a limited environment will have a real money maker on their hands as the people and the game world begin to adapt to the changes the PC brings about...some for the good, some for the bad and some will just be changes.  How to make, track and implement those changes while giving it a realistic propagation rate...that is a minor challenge compared to actually cracking that larger nut open.  Games are the prefect playgrounds for AI development.  Now if we could only convince the game developers of this.

Fallout 4: The Bad - Factions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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