Fallout 4 is a visual masterpiece in comparison to the rest of the franchise. Hands-down it is the most interesting region that has ever been presented in terms of its localized architecture, art work, history and shows a good understanding not just of Boston and surrounding suburbs, but also of the Northeastern US in general. The Commonwealth is expansive, filled with history and has many environmental stories that will cause the player to stop and just look at it to see if a way that the last moments of the region played out can be fit together. Life continued on right to the moment the bombs dropped and not everyone took it seriously that the bombs were actually dropping. The bank robbers that only have skeletons left and the duffel bags filled with cash, the man putting trash out in a dumpster, the couple that knew what was coming and spent their last moments together are all to be found in the setting of FO4 along with much, much more.
Under Bethesda the Fallout franchise has more starkly put a dark mirror up to the era of the 1930's to early 1960's, and utilizes the science fiction of that era to shift away from the movement to transistors and, instead, to the power of the atom as the source of beneficial progress. Nuclear fission products did not supplant prior internal combustion power sources, be they power plants or vehicles. Instead a hybrid economy arose, with the change from coal, natural gas, gasoline and diesel never being a complete process, although many industries did a complete change-over due to the advantages of compact nuclear power sources. How such sources work doesn't need an in-depth explanation as, indeed, our world didn't go down that path nor make the discoveries that happened in that world. The designs seen in-game show the remains of vehicles, industrial sites, homes and many other buildings that reflect multiple different forms of energy use to reflect this. The Red Rocket Truck Stop would service gasoline, diesel, fission and fusion vehicles since they didn't service just trucks but personal vehicles like cars and motorcycles. That rich history was shown to a lesser degree in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, but it is to be seen throughout FO4.
Geography is not only stunning but used to demarcate regions of relative safety with the Northwestern part of the map, the player starting area, being one of the safer regions. The Western Central part, just below it, is less safe and the more the player travels to the Southwest and then South the less safe and easy the world is to survive. That southern most area is highly irradiated and still has the radiation of the bomb that went off there and the nuclear material from the power plant complex that were thrown into the environment. That region called The Glowing Sea is in the Southern part of the map and it is much closer to what is seen in FO3 than anything else in the Commonwealth. The Central portion of the map has relatively safe places that define it: Diamond City, Goodneighbor, Bunker Hill. Within that region and just a bit around it to the south are some very hard to navigate regions full of the ruins of Boston itself. The architecture of the Fallout franchise shines through with the skyscrapers all the way to row houses reflecting the cultural heritage left by generations of people living there. To the Eastern Central out to Fort Strong things are a bit less stressful, but have definite hotspots of trouble to encounter. Above that is the Northeastern region that is less full of hostiles but still treacherous. The North Central is the transition zone of escalating hostility between the Northwest to the Northeast, and has its own perils to the furthest northern part of the map.
This form of zoning is only approximate, at best, to the player, but allows for a quick glance to help jog the memories of just where it is and what sort of threats can be found. If you are north of the Charles River, then you'll see the ruins of Boston to the South and you are in a somewhat safer region if you can see the ruins of C.I.T., though Cambridge is a major concern just to the North. Safety is relative and within each zone that is also true, as there are places of solitude and safety within even The Glowing Sea.
If there is any knock to this instance of the franchise, it must also be extended to the prior two under Bethesda: boarded up homes really just don't fit the world. First who had the time and resources to board them up? The nuclear attacks came out of the blue, unexpected and without warning, so no one had time to board them up before the bombs dropped. After the bombs dropped there wouldn't be enough time, resources or food to board them up. In-game lore shows that Raider gangs started forming within days of the bombs falling, and in our own world we have seen what happened within that same three days of Super Storm Sandy: individuals forming gangs, looting, threatening other people, and generally showing civilized activity to be a veneer that can easily be broken. The Fallout universe had things less well constrained if the presence of addictive chems throughout the Commonwealth is any indication along the presence of a drug dealer in the cul-de-sac neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills showing just how deep the rot had spread. Even military order didn't last more than a week or two, in the few places they were deployed. After that, no one would bother to board up homes. Yet they are a pervasive part of the landscape. This is an instance where the design team kept with the Lore, but the Lore itself makes no sense. Even worse are homes that aren't boarded up that have nothing of real interest in them, save a demonstration that there was a pre-war use of the home and possible post-war use, as well.
Boarded up homes are a minor quibble and an eyesore, only. Where Bethesda shines is the Vaults of the Commonwealth and the corruption behind each of them. Vault 114 was just a job to appease local mobs and unions, though it was set to be a social experiment of packing the rich and wealthy together in communal living arrangements. That didn't happen, and post-war mobsters found the place to be a relative safe haven compared to the surface of the downtown. Vault 111 was a cryogenic experiment that went on far longer than it was intended to go on, due to the internal breakdown of command and the lack of food. Vault 75 was meant to breed child super soldiers, and used ruthless culling and genetic manipulation to try and achieve this end, until the super soldier children overpowered their superiors and left the Vault. Vault 81 was meant to breed an omnicure to all diseases that could be harbored in molerats...mutant molerats provided by Vault-Tec. Only an Overseer with a sense of scientific ethics and good morals stopped that, but condemned the researchers to die in isolation so that the rest of the Vault could survive. Vault 95 was set up to provide a drug-free environment for junkies to rehabilitate them, and yet had an insider that would open up the door to a storage area full of enough drugs to last years. The results were grim as the addictions so long kept at bay returned in force. Just from the base game, these Vaults show a good understanding of how Vault-Tec did things, and while there are some instances of questionable Lore, the over-arching ideas remain. The only thing missing from the mix, and there should have been at least one in the region, is a Vault with a Garden of Eden Creation Kit. Still if you had that and a control Vault, then The Institute would never have happened the way it did as the technology of a GECK is far beyond anything even The Institute, as seen, could ever do, so you can understand why there isn't one near this major metropolitan area in terms of game setting.
When the Fallout franchise moved to Bethesda and became a first-person experience, the world changed and that meant a fully fleshed out and modeled world that held the remains of the pre-war world. The Nuclear Age continued onwards in the Fallout universe and yielded a rich post-nuclear war setting that Bethesda Game Studios has enriched to make the world feel as if it was lived-in before the Great War. The style has shifted in a subtle fashion between the Capitol Wasteland and the Commonwealth which is reflected in the urban and suburban environment. The lack of a strong moral foundation promulgated by government and corporations, plus the promulgation of addictive substances means that after the Great War the lack of certain individual restraints was given free reign so that Raiders still continue to be a threat long after the centralized government fell.
What must be remembered is that with the retreat of the Roman Empire civilization became far more localized, and while the actual living standard of the entire population fell the necessity for strong local rulers shifted the focus of survival. Geography played a part in some of this, so that peoples unified by local language and culture began to cohere as actual alliances and political entities. Yet in some regions the localized rulers were always at odds with each other, and would remain so for centuries, which is why 'The German Question' of the early 19th century was pertinent as the region had a few larger political entities (Prussia and Bavaria) and dozens of Counties all of which meant that the regions was referred to as The Germanies. These regions did start to shift into common trade alliances and would finally be united after the Franco-Prussian war by treaty. If Fallout is giving its setting a treatment similar to that of the collapse of centralized rule, then it is Fallout: New Vegas that shows the start of strong personalities attempting to pull off the creation of somewhat primitive new Nations from the wasteland in the form of Caesar's Legion. Lack of societal cohesion in Fallout 4 can be attributed not just to the background factors but the active intervention of The Institute that killed off the Commonwealth Provisional Government. For an organization that disdains the surface world and its population and claims that no one can touch it, that is an odd sort of behavior.
Yet it is that singular organization, The Institute, that gives one of the most visually interesting experiences in the Fallout franchise. Once inside the architecture, lighting and so much else has a feel to it that can only be expressed in terms of cinema and movies. On first sight my reaction was that of seeing a cross between The Shape of Things to Come (1936), Forbidden Planet (1956), and perhaps just a bit of Logan's Run (1976). I've called it a showcase elsewhere and it is truly just that: a showcase of architecture and technology with a definite fetish for a sanitary environment that is unlike anything else ever seen in the franchise. There is also an Orwellian vibe to the entire organization that is reflected in the use of synths doing menial tasks and Coursers patrolling the upper reaches of the interior. After leaving the post-war world and functioning pre-war area, the presentation of The Institute is meant to inspire awe and overwhelm the PC and the player. That singular time is one that is bound to stick in the minds of players as it is one of the most memorable visual pieces not of just Fallout 4 but the entire franchise. It is a modern alt-history masterpiece with its own furniture design that is utilitarian, spartan, clean, neat and simple, yet fully in the utopian mode derived from the 1950's view of the future. The Institute follows the view that only the best and brightest get to survive in safety, comfort and purposeful asceticism, while everyone else gets to be looked down upon by them for having to make a hard scrabble living in the wastelands.
With three out of four endings to the game having The Institute fall, there is an indication that this viewpoint and the meddling involved will see the destruction of this form of eclectic asceticism and that those who survive it will be unable to rebuild anything like it in the near future. In many ways that is a sad sort of ending that loses such artistry. It is a style locked in a bubble, however, isolated and secluded with a bent towards pleasing efficiency, and that is not the future of humanity. In hanging on to ideals and going into seclusion The Institute creates a beautiful marvel, a showcase environment, and one that cannot withstand the hatred it has spread by its activities.
That other organization before the war, Vault-Tec, gets its own DLC and that one gives the design aesthetic of modular building used to create old world beauty. Being able to build a Vault allows the player to think out just how an underground space that is to have a living society in it should be set up, and after many bad examples given by Vault-Tec it is possible to think out just what an expansive Vault requires. The build area for what was to be Vault 88 is huge, far larger than any Vault ever seen in the franchise, and allows for this modular concept to gain its full scope of expression. It is sad that the underground area is set up so as to break up the ability to build a unified Vault, and it is only with mods that allow the removal of pieces that were fully removable elsewhere can the actual underground can be made available in full. If The Institute is the post-war utopian ideal, then the Vault is the pre-war survival and get by ideal made into a reality. The Vaults have pre-war design power systems which do fail, in often spectacular ways either by lifespan or intent by Vault-Tec itself. For all of that the ability to design something larger than The Institute and put into a play a fully functioning population framework that is self-sustaining and yet able to trade with the outside world gives a different experience and outlook to the player. The design of Vaults is also future oriented, sanitary but less well lit than The Institute and has a definite industrial feel to it. Modular industrial utilitarian which uses a grid layout for design rather than the circular layout of The Institute, which is done for end user building and simplicity but has an impact on design constraints. With that said it is very possible to build a Vault larger than The Institute and with more reliable power supplies, plus a better layout for inhabitants and placing down job objects for them to work at. The idea of Better Living Underground from Vault-Tec is realized in the DLC and gives a final piece for creating settlements that are fully enclosed environments easy to separate from the outside world and still be open to trade and interaction.
The Nuka World DLC brings forth the entire park as entertainment experience gone horribly wrong after the bombs dropped. While the place is a total mess, with rides no longer working, the actual theme park has a good design concept behind it. This does emulate parks in the common world between Fallout and our universe, namely that of the Disney brand complete with castle and everything. Built long after those early parks, the stasis of culture is retained in full so that the 1950's size, style and culture show through the post-war mess. It was my hope that the DLC would offer a way to rebuild all the rides and attractions, and slowly staff them with robots and personnel from the wasteland, but that was not to be. Even after ridding it of the Raider gangs, a final unlock to clean up the park and remake it into something that would attract customers is not to be had. There is no grand, unified workbench system like in the Vault-Tec DLC and the entire region features one, single place to build a settlement. Bethesda may have had far grander ideas for this park, but it falls short of completing them. With that said the design and layout of the park itself is excellent and continues on in the tradition of having separated areas for themed attractions: Kiddie Kingdom, Dry Rock Gulch, Safari Adventure, The Galactic Zone, and World of Refreshment. Throughout the park the automated announcement system is stuck on its continual repeating cycle of announcements in each area, and the Nuka Cola machines with working screens still offer a cycle of Nuka Cola shorts featuring Bottle and Cappy. Throw in the theme song for the park that the player may find themselves humming as they play, and has its own eerie ability to stick in the head long after leaving the game, and a complete cola-centered theme park experience is granted that is unlike anything else in the Fallout franchise.
The grand design layout and the way each area gets its own and separate treatment allows for the environment to tell much of the story and that story is backed by terminal entries found in the park. The ghoulification of the workers in Kiddie Kingdom is recounted not just through terminals but actually recounted by a rare sentient Glowing One who organized the people as they became ghouls. They watched friends and lovers go feral and felt the slow decline of their mental capacities, yet these people tended to those people and hoped that a cure might be found. It is one of the saddest stories in Fallout 4, and yet, if you search thoroughly before the final encounter, it can offer a final if forlorn hope to the last sentient survivor who will then shut down the radiation sprayers in their zone for good.
Dry Rock Gulch is run by robots and was a refuge for some traders who tried to take refuge there when the Raider gangs moved in, and they were overcome by bloodworms. The Robots continue on as if the war never happened and go about their daily routine oblivious to the lack of park personnel. It is surreal in many ways to walk down the western oriented streets and see just how the old west of movies were captured in this one setting.
Safari Adventure has mutated creatures created post-war and the story of how a ghoulified survivor utilized truly high tech equipment to create living creatures to survive and then, finally, isolated and used FEV to create creatures that might defend the area is fascinating. Too bad neither Institute nor Brotherhood are interested in Nuka World, but that would require thoroughly integrating the region into the Commonwealth instead of just making it a one-way street for Raiders to prey upon the Commonwealth.
The World of Refreshment with its River of Quantum Nuka-Cola (would that it were so!) has become the home to mutated Mirelurks called Nukalurks, as was the case in FO3. That wonderful blue glow of the Nukalurks sets them apart from the rest of their kin in a visually interesting way. The story garnered from the last day of the old world is one that allows for an understanding of what dedication to a job meant for so many on that Saturday morning, and the distant lights from the exploding bombs seen over the mountain tops told of its end. Some people let the radiation kill them, others committed suicide and one or two tried to get back home. This is the legacy of the old world and how it still had people with a work ethic.
Within the Galactic Zone are robots that have been put onto hairtrigger combat alert because their main control system had its Starcores removed from it. Gathering those up from inside and outside the Galactic Zone can be a study in peril, yet, for all the hostility of the robots they can be deactivated. Sadly Bethesda decided that the ranged Robotics Expert had to be a close range skill, thus removing the 'ranged' portion of it...thankfully mods put that back in and it is possible to control robots by aiming at them with manual sights and triggering the skill, just like you used to be able to do! Instead of fighting the robots a goal of deactivating them one by one can allow for this entire area to slowly be made safe, though at the cost of XP since you don't get anything for just shutting robots down. But it is the robots that make the Galactic Zone so enticing, beyond the smaller stories found within it. Once enough Starcores are reinstalled to allow for the major segments of the robots to be put into a non-combat mode, and then the final one discovered, the entire Galactic Zone can be brought back online with all of the surviving robots to go about their mundane tasks and ignore the fact that there are no customers to serve. As a player I had so hoped that the entire zone would become a build site that would allow for the creation of new robots to replace any I had to destroy, but that is not the case.
Outside the park, proper, there is a mystery mansion, a town dedicated to the personnel that staffed Nuka World, and the return of the Hubologists who are led by a visionary to Nuka World to receive the experience of a lifetime. This environment is in keeping with the location of many theme parks being far away from cities and having a rural area around them, and mirrors our world in many ways due to this. What may have been a lush grassland or somewhat swampy grassland has now become a dry place, with only the remnants of the swamp remaining where water still flows. It is enclosed by mountains on all sides, so no walking back to the Commonwealth is possible, although many others have done so it is not something the PC can do. It would have been nice to allow a different way to go through the park without the main story for it being active, but that is not the case. Still nothing can detract from the fallen splendor of a theme park, and it is a shame that Bethesda, so set upon the VR experience, didn't make a way to repair all the rides in the park and even finish those that weren't completed. If they did they would have a VR experience like none other available to the hardy wasteland explorer.
Far Harbor's DLC gives the setting of an island shrouded in a low level radioactive fog, and The Islanders pressed back from homesteads to the port town of Far Harbor. Getting there requires a quest, and then taking an automated boat to The Island. Like the Dragonborn DLC in Skyrim or Point Lookout in Fallout 3, this means getting a tour of the outer part of the harbor by the boat before docking and then becomes the game mechanic to go back and forth between the two areas. The landscape is that of Maine, with swampy lowlands and rugged mountains, and some plateaus and coastal flatlands scattered throughout The Island. Mutated creatures of The Island are unique to their environment and have those that drop from the tall trees or spring from the marsh and swamps, while others can be found on the coasts, including normal types of Mirelurks and a unique type known only to The Island, plus other creatures like the Fog Crawler. A group of Super Mutants somehow got to The Island have taken over a few sites there. Those that stay too long in the Fog become crazed Trappers, which are the Raiders of The Island.
For the design, Far Harbor gets very high marks in giving a quaint feeling to the main port, and the general feel of how The Island survived on the tourist trade prewar. It was also home to a submarine base, recently taken over by The Children of Atom, and to a Vim! bottling plant, which was in fierce competition with Nuka Cola for survival. Toss in a lumber mill, older ports, and a ruined port taken over by Trappers, plus the main park in Acadia, and the pre-war conditions take shape, even in their ruins. This is a setting with a feeling of dread and suspense behind it, and the rare clear day does nothing to dispel this feeling. There are a few areas that can become settlements, and building on them means taking their unique geography into mind when doing so. This single DLC offers a much stronger main story than the base game, and gives the player much agency in deciding the outcome of events for those on The Island. The factions (Synth Refuge in Acadia, The Children of Atom at the sub base, and The Islanders at Far Harbor) have no requirements on them surviving and the game offers solutions ranging from a temporary truce and cease-fire to all-out annihilation of everyone. What happens is up to the player, and though there is some nudging to follow the 'good' route, even that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: there are solutions to Far Harbor's problems but none of them are particularly 'good' and some are spectacularly 'bad'.
There is no way to do the creepy nature of Far Harbor justice without playing it. For setting and story, plus boiling down the essentials of the base game story to something with a wider spectrum of solutions, Far Harbor actually outshines the base game in many particulars. The major downfall within the settings is the platform and building minigame necessary to get to DiMA's memories, and anyone replaying the game will want to find the console commands for a PC to get past it the second time as it offers nothing new the second time through. It gave me some headaches and that meant only being able to play for a few minutes and then doing something else while the game was paused. I would have preferred a hacking game or perhaps going into locked library space off of the main base instead of that minigame. Consider it the puzzle platform section of Fallout 4, and if you don't get a headache and like figuring out 3D puzzles, well, more power to you! For everyone else, you may want to skip it on subsequent playthroughs.
Needless to say there is a Vault on Far Harbor, Vault 118. It is perhaps the most humorous quest going through FO4, that being of an over-the-top murder mystery amongst people who had their brains put into Robobrain bodies. Yes you can solve it with enough questions and observations, and find the real culprit! Who you decide to finger and how you nail them (or even IF you want to do that) is up to you. And lets just say there is one small section that, with a high Charisma, becomes available for those of you missing the robotic interlude concept. Still this Vault is unlike anything else in Fallout, and was something diverted by the rich and powerful to get their own seclusion from the post-war world, and even undermined Vault-Tec's original concept but the new one got their approval. I wish that was buildable after the Vault-Tec DLC but, sadly, it isn't. I would have really liked to complete the design and offer The Islanders an opportunity of low class Better Living Underground which, actually, is far superior to their current arrangement.
Design and style considered, there isn't much to Automotron, although there could be so much more done with it. Basically The Mechanist's Lair, from upper reaches to final living quarters should be one, integrated build zone and the player allowed to clean up the garbage and mess of the place. The Mechanist would have done so learning robotics skills and assigning clean-up duties to robots as they were built, come to think of it...luckily there is a mod for that. Without mods the Mechanist's Lair is an underwhelming place to build and actually very frustrating as its level design features no snappable components to work with. The place needs a major overhaul and reworking, but doesn't need the Vault-Tec treatment, however, just the sort of work that is offered for build components that would allow the industrial theme to be re-utilized. Beyond that the setting, with a few nice touches, is basically pre-war industrial going to slow ruins.
Overall Fallout 4 and its DLCs get high marks on artistry, creativity, and getting the settings done right. The few quibbles are just that: quibbles. Fallout 4 is visually in keeping with the franchise and yet suitably different to accentuate the regions it contains. That is what anyone playing in the Fallout franchise under Bethesda wants to see, and it is done very well for this game. Kudos to the design teams doing all this hard work!
Monday, November 6, 2017
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Fallout 4: Lore, creativity and constraints
Fallout 4 is a game set in the Fallout Universe which is an alternate history universe that diverges from our universe as the Nuclear Age transformed the way civilizations approached the problems of manufacturing. This universe didn't see the same sort of Space Age that ours did, and it did not feature the move from vacuum tube technology to transistorized technology. A good reference for this sort of universe can be found in the science fiction of the 1930's to the early 1960's, especially those that utilized nuclear power for their basis of the next generation of tools, vehicles and equipment. If you read the works of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Anderson, Pohl and Piper, to just pick a few, from that time period, then you will get a very good idea of how this sort of alternate history is founded. This is a world where television just never caught on and where radio remained king of the airwaves. Hollywood didn't budge much from its formulation of that era, either, and the influences were those going from radio to cinema. It is an alt-history that is very similar to our universe and yet distinctly different in many, many ways, and each game in the series uses that as its basis and then offers a view of what it left behind when it all went to hell in nuclear flames as the Great War with China finally went nuclear on October 23, 2077.
In creating a universe for players, a game designer (without regard to genre) must take into consideration how that universe actually functions. Even when running a paper and pencil campaign, players will learn about the world they are in by interacting with other people, the environment and coming across hidden or lost information. A game world has a history as its foundations, and that history can and does gain reinterpretations over time as more is developed for that world in the way of interesting missions, scenarios or new places to go. All of that historical information, be it before the player arrived or after they have started to explore, forms the basis for this thing known as Lore.
The function of Lore is to give a foundation for game play, and when a series of game sessions (or games) within a given universe are created, Lore must be a foundation for that new material. This does not mean that Lore is infallible. In fact it may be contradictory based on who is giving it out, what they are aligned with and how they view those who did the activities being recounted. Lore also encompasses technology, weapons, armor and all the artifacts that are mentioned by stories. Lore is also a point of agreement for those who form a civilized unit known as a Nation State, though all Nations start at the family level and that is where Lore is first learned. The Fallout Universe has Lore behind all of this and more, and it creates a diverse background that has been or will be explained to a player either via in-game materials or playing in prior instances of this universe.
When new instances of material for game play arrives in a universe, it is likely to feature many things that are not in agreement with prior Lore, and Fallout 4 is no different in this than any other game in a series of games that has a Lore based function behind it. These discontinuities form into broad categories and they deserve an examination.
RETCON
A Retcon is Retroactive Continuity change in a series set in the same universe be it fictional or gaming. This is a break or discontinuity with prior established Lore that offers a change to prior continuity of Lore in the new instance.
There is an Alteration Retcon that is a change that attempts to explain itself based on prior material or offers a ready opportunity to understand it where prior games may have established one thing but had no way to gain information from the new game area so that a new continuity is established. A simple one for this is the presence of cats in FO4. All prior games established that cats had perished during the Great War, period. The Commonwealth, by not having much contact with the outside world, didn't have a say in this belief as they were not tied in with anything much beyond their geographic region and the few contacts that were established most likely didn't worry about the absence of cats as something to talk about. Cats are present in FO4 and the belief they had perished was true up to this point and a reason that this notion wasn't shot down was that it was true for all the prior areas in the franchise. Geographic isolation and limited contact meant that the survival of cats in the Commonwealth wasn't really known to anyone outside of it. The continuity of the Lore in prior games has changed retroactively with FO4 as there is a reason for this knowledge not to be known outside of this play area. The Lore has been Altered in this case and a reason that isn't stated but relatively obvious covers it.
When there is an addition to Lore that has been established, that is to say something new that is consistent with prior Lore but not seen in prior game instances happens, this is an Addition Retcon. In FO4 the category of Pipe Weapons are introduced as the cheap and makeshift firearms made from available components that are not seen in prior games, and are thus an addition to firearms classification. These expedient weapons actually should have been seen in prior games, but never were, and there is no way to explain why they weren't. Many reasons could be thought up to cover this, but nothing readily apparent comes to mind, so it just must be taken at face value that these weapons exist in the Commonwealth and are thus part of the Lore.
Another class of retcon is when something is removed from the Lore via the present game. This can happen when events are described as happening in a different sequence or placed before established sequences without any rationale behind it. Or if events happened in a prior story or understanding of Lore and are then said to have not happened then that is a Subtraction Retcon. In FO4 there is a Brotherhood entry in their database that establishes that the potato has gone extinct after the Great War, and yet the potato can be found as an ingredient in Fallout New Vegas. The potato actually did survive, exists and the Brotherhood had to go through that region to reach the east coast, and thus had every opportunity to know that the plant existed, thrived and was available as something that could be found or purchased. Part of the reason this is done is so that the above ground Tato plant, that yields fruit as a foodstuff can be seen as some sort of mutated hybrid, possibly with a pre-war tomato plant, yet the Tato is not the potato which is a root crop, not a fruit crop.
Another form of retcon is that of a Compression Retcon where prior activities are compressed into a very short sequence which may exclude some information or even add in new material that did not happen in the established sequencing of events. This can happen when getting an overview history from an individual or organization, and may be done to justify the way they act in the present by removing or adding in minor material to the past. In FO4 the Player Character undergoes this with at least one individual, and it is the PC that is not allowed to actually give a full accounting of themselves even in brief so as to try and establish doubt in the mind of the player. These sorts of retcons are rare, but they do happen.
Now with all of that said, the actual creativity necessary to create a new instance in a series requires understanding the background and history of that setting in the established context for that series. If you read any series of stories or watch television or film series, the retcon will happen, even by those people who strive to give as much continuity as possible. Games are not immune to this and often breaks with Lore happen when better technology to run a game appear that allows for new or novel game play to happen. Games in a series can be judged by how well they handle these changes and their ability to explain either via setting or actual in-game material, the changes that are seen. Some changes may be trivial and others may invalidate entire prior games in the series based on what the change is and how well it is handled. Thus Lore can be seen as a constraining factor, particularly when better technology can make an older way of doing things obsolete.
Creativity is unbounded, however, and while a new way can be implemented it can also be explained as to how things have changed since the prior instance of the game which supported an older interpretation. This is an opportunity for creativity and creators should not see this as a problem but a challenge to create the reasoning and rationale behind the change, which can be done via a Compression Retcon that retells of events since that prior instance and the current state. This will indicate that there is a back story to the change that may or may not receive a full treatment, but at least it is there as a placeholder.
And that brings on FO4, as it is rife with retcons large and small across the entire game, and fans will notice these as they happen and be left scratching their heads as to how and why these changes were made. As cited above there are cats, pipe weapons and potatos as examples, but these are not alone in the game, and there are much larger ones that are just dropped in with no backstory, no environmental explanation and no real rationale behind them, and these can be seen as a problem of creative focus and storytelling on the part of Bethesda Game Studios.
A first example, and most glaring, is power armor and the newly introduced power armor frame to which the power armor pieces are attached. This frame is powered by the newly found Fusion Core that is not seen in any prior instance of the series. Furthermore the Fusion Core is now used to power Gatling Lasers, which had been established as being powered by expendable Microfusion Cells (MF Cells) in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Electron Charge Packs (EC Packs).in Fallout 3 and FONV, These energy cells (generically) are utilized like expendable ammunition in any other weapon and are depleted and the spent cell ejected from the weapon. Thus within the series there has been a Lore retcon to the Gatling Laser from its prior instance with Interplay and its new life in Bethesda and Obsidian adhered to that with FONV. While the Fusion Core is run down and finally ejected, the entire way the Gatling Laser works has been changed. Is there a good reason or rationale given for this? No. Is the absence of whole categories of energy cells in FO4 given? No. Energy Cells, the specific type, and not the general category, are not present in FO4 at all. The Gauss Rifle used to be a single shot weapon utilizing MF Cells that were in a cluster and replaced between shots, not a weapon with a magazine of specialized 2mm ammo as seen in FO4.
These may seem like relatively simple forms of retcons, and they are. The purpose is to streamline game play by removing some prior bits of technology, re-purposing others and then adding in a final type that is utilized in specific instances. There is only an environmental consideration in the setting of FO4's history that could explain this, and that is the advent of Mass Fusion and the lovely fusion generators that appear to still be producing power over two centuries after the Great War. The setting also gives ruins of Municipal Plutonium Wells where, presumably, older nuclear material was dumped once fusion generators replaced the older nuclear generators. Yet this environmental explanation, if true, would undermine the very problems of the Institute in the ways of power generation. These generators represent a distributed fusion system that appears to pre-date the Beryllium Agitator used to get the large reactor going in the Institute. We know what nuclear reactors look like from previous games, and these lovely yellow devices with a fusion core in them are not attached to nuclear generators, but stand alone systems. This is, in theory, a known and trusted technology that has proven the test of time and the Institute would have used that same technology to create new power sources as they expanded so that each sub-section of the Institute would have its own reliable power supply.
When changing the Lore of a region and putting it into the past it is necessary to then take into account how it will be seen and understood as time goes on. To remove certain types of energy cells and streamline game play, and by adding in the fusion core and putting in a number of places to get fusion cores that are active generators, the concept is then not propagated throughout the region. Even if these new power systems had a decade to be put in place, or even two, they would not totally supplant the older systems which were also reliable for the long term. One item, the Nuclear Battery, seen in FO3 and FONV is totally absent from the Commonwealth, yet these were not only able to power up drained energy cells (generically), but also served as a form of jury rigged lighting when attached to long life light bulbs or lamps. Those were seen in many places in the wasteland, and the large number of such batteries points to a widespread utility function of them for smaller devices. These were subtracted from the Lore in the Commonwealth, and no number of Municipal Plutonium Wells to dump these batteries would explain their absence as they clearly had a function that reached to much smaller and independent technology as they were portable. Thus no matter how long the Wells were taking in old batteries, the necessary functions of equipment and pure utility in long-lasting power for low power draining equipment would remain. They served a different purpose from Fusion Cores and removing them doesn't make any sense and, due to the high price of Fusion Cores, makes the Nuclear Battery a cheaper and better known alternative than trying to adapt older systems to them. And as a battery it has easy to access terminals that allow for it to be utilized in a number of roles that the Fusion Core just can't fill. The change to the Fusion Core with no real good back-up for why it wasn't used by those able to build technical equipment post-war, and the absence of the older Nuclear Battery means that these are breaks with the Lore of the Fallout series within Bethesda's own tenure as owner of the series.
Equipment Lore has ramifications for plot, storyline, and suspension of disbelief, thus even a cursory glance at what is seen above ground and functioning reveals major flaws in the plot design of FO4, holes which are not explained in any way. A much simpler break with Lore is that of Power Armor, a new favorite as it moves away from being an enhanced wearable armor and turns it into something closer to a personal vehicle. This might be something closer to the combat suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or what some of the personnel wear in David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, or even be considered as a form of transition to a Mech Suit or Mecha form of warfare. To get that spiffy animation and entry/exit from the suit, plus feeling like you are wearing something with a lot of heft behind it, Bethesda decided to scrap preexisting Lore built up throughout the Fallout franchise, even during its own tenure which kept with the prior Lore until FO4. That Lore requires specialized training and fitting for Power Armor to put it on. It is possible to repair such suits without such training, but to actively wear it and use it does require training. That was always training of the 'fade to black, it happens off screen' sort, and was meant to keep what was special about Power Armor a secret from the player. Getting accepted by a faction (normally the Brotherhood or, in FONV, the Enclave Remnants) was a reward for helping them and represented the point in which the PC was now able to handle some of the best equipment in the entire game.
In FO4 any illiterate farm hand, junky, Raider, or other untrained individual can just put in a readily available Fusion Core into a Power Armor Frame and walk off with it and the armor on it. Raiders do that one better by crafting their own armor (which isn't so great but what do you expect of Raiders?) to put on the Frames thus creating new suits of low quality Power Armor. And there are more than enough Frames, some with armor already on them, sitting unattended around the wasteland so that anyone who has any wit at all can quickly pick up Frame and start walking around like a pro! Is there a reason for this change? I mean beyond the spiffy animation and feeling like a tank while using the stuff? No. That's it, you are able to feel awesome! So is anyone else, including that illiterate settler that just jumped into your suit of Power Armor because you forgot to take the Fusion Core out of it. Heaven help you if they have a Fusion Core in their inventory. FO4 the game where everyone gets to feel awesome because...reasons? What are the reasons for this change in technology?
A good start at cobbling together a reason is to see that the prior instances of the same armor had some sort of undersuit as part the entire deal. It doesn't look like the hard frame system of FO4 and this then posits something like a soft frame with servos that need positioning for each user, and that required training. By using a distributed, small set of energy cells (generically), the old Power Armor could have a long life in the field, take wear and tear and allow the user to mitigate the weight of the suit through the servos that off-set it by enhancing the wearer's strength stat. In theory, if the new frame system was made for the old armor pieces, then all an individual has to do, when the frame arrives, is take off the individual pieces of armor and place them on the frame, shove a fusion core into the frame and make the transition from the prior instance to the new instance. All military in use and precision, with requirements built into contracts that would take years if not decades to fulfill. The Commonwealth would be the source of this new type of frame and would see the first military replacement of the prior soft frame system with this hard frame one. This happened so close to the bombs dropping that it never got beyond the Commonwealth and even the Enclave didn't have access to it. Perhaps it was a test deployment for the entire military, including National Guard units, just to make sure everyone knew how it worked. Maybe it even had a training manual, though none are seen in FO4, but they are likely given how the military operates. The Brotherhood may have run across records of this in the Citadel and the first team in, that Danse mentions, found the specs for making this stuff and they then got a production line in The Pitt going for it.
Yes a likely theory can be created to explain this, and it has its own constraints to keep it so that it is geographically isolated. Now to actually run a vehicle, which is what Power Armor becomes, takes no training, because...reasons! In the post-war vehicles are a bit on the scarce side, and no one has bothered to get bicycles up and running, which should be relatively easy compared to Power Armor. Thus the absolute knowledge of how to run a vehicle by those born after the war is zero outside of a few factions like the BoS, Enclave or NCR. Even with a self-adjusting frame, and all that good stuff, there is no need for any training at all to utilize Power Armor. Imagine if this stuff was deployed in the field in China and the Chinese decided to get a few sets by staging a raid on a depot where they were being unpacked. Grab a Fusion Core put it in a frame with armor pieces on it, and then use a Stealthboy sitting on a nearby shelf to get out or even use some form of native Chinese stealth technology that you brought with you. Is this actually how the US military would want such suits to work? I mean, really, just get in and go? What will the Drill Sergeant have to yell at you for at that point? And just how the hell do you deal with an enemy who has stolen the suit, speaks English well enough to fool you, and infiltrates a unit in a suit of Power Armor? As production of this stuff was a contract negotiated with a war on, safeguards would be in place to prevent this, and each trooper would be expected to be able to maintain their suit, as well. How to efficiently use it so that you don't run down the Fusion Core would also be taught so as to lessen the logistics requirements of these suits. And from Proctor Ingram we also get the idea that all these frames just don't fit all that well: One Size Fits All, Fits None Well. Want to adjust it? Bring it to her and she'll do it and, probably, train you to do it for yourself so you don't have to pester her with it. That would solve the Lore problem: training from the Brotherhood, the good old fashioned method. All those other pretty suits you couldn't use until you got training.
Ah, training rears its ugly head yet again. One of the major parts of that training would include actually getting past the safety interlocks of the frame to get into it in the first place. This is the case of 'You Are Assigned This Frame, Soldier, And Expected To Maintain It And It Is Coded To You' sort of deal. Just like in prior wars you got issued equipment to keep track of, the Power Armor Frame would be no different. Why? Logistics, so the military could know just what happened to each Frame, what its expected use of Fusion Cores was versus how it was actually used, and so that individuals wouldn't go joy riding or accidentally 'lose' one. Hop in and go would only be for authorized personnel, which does not include that ignorant post-war settler or Raider. Thus to operate Power Armor an individual would need training, authorization and then be held accountable for the equipment, all of which would have an impact on the post-war world of FO4. What we get is the implausible hop in and go system that streamlines game play and gets you a chance to feel Awesome! when you haven't done a damned thing to deserve that feeling. And then push that feeling down when you realize that any fool with a Fusion Core can do this. But you still got that spiffy animation!
Can the Lore of Power Armor be salvaged? Yes, and it would need a thorough going-over to do so. Would have been nice to get a couple of screens of this on a Brotherhood terminal or have some one tell you a bit about how the stuff works. A couple of screens of text doesn't require lots of game development cash, and it is way cheaper than voice acting it. The male protagonist, by story, already had training in Power Armor and an authorization for it. The female protagonist is a bit of a loss, unless you make her day career helping to make the things...remember becoming a lawyer was done by night school, so she did have an unknown day job.
These times I am using the environment to help explain things is creative, though as a derivative of presented material, and attempts to fit the new Lore into the old system of Lore. These are instances that could be readily done by the game design team and introduced in a more explicit fashion to make for smoother retcons. Lore is not a constraint on creativity, in fact when Lore is changed an opportunity to explain the discontinuity or change is then available to explain just how far and deep the Lore change actually is
Retcons can respect prior Lore, adapt to it and still offer the changes in an understood framework of knowledge and history. Putting in artifacts, removing others and changing yet others each creates a lack of continuity and that lack is not an obstacle but a challenge to a game designer who seeks to expand the constraints and limits of prior material. There is no need to drop them in without telling what is behind them if the environment can tell the complete story, which means more than just inference or guesswork. Small pieces of primary material be they holotapes, books, magazines or other sources of information in a game setting can do that, as well. A small or even tiny bit of explicit material can go a long way to understanding a setting and how it is both similar to and different from other, prior settings in the same game universe.
Now if an alternate to the main history universe is being told, which is an alt-alt-history, then so be it, and a new continuity can be established that has few if any links to the prior ones. That usually gets some introductory material or a few bits and pieces that get to a major plot, depending on if the goal is just to explain or try to abort (or revert) an alternate history. That last usually doesn't work out so well and leaves a question of just why the game was made in the first place. The former, where there is a clean and explicit break allows for just some pieces of the old continuity to pass onwards and the rest gets chucked, thus allowing the prior continuity to be preserved without retcons.
Prior history, prior Lore and continuity are not just a constraint for creativity but an opportunity for truly creative individuals to explain just why these changes are present in the new instance of a story in any form of media, games included. There will always be discrepancies in long running story series which can be traced back through the earliest written works of mankind. Yet these works, be they religious, historical or fictional in content, do not fail as works when they give a reason and rationale for the discontinuity with prior works. Thematically they can still adhere to the basis of those prior works, respect them and yet offer changes to them be they putting in that generations of mankind were longer the closer to the state of original grace they were in time to the shifting of weapons used in Victorian England when a well known team seems to continually shift their favorite side-arms. Some require explicit and purposeful work in explaining changes, while others need merely show the shift in time to reflect the changes within a single time period. There are instances in Fallout 4 where the retcons seem to be just tacked on to try and assert that the potato didn't survive the Great War and to explain why the Tato plant bears fruit...a useless change, by and large, and unnecessarily tries to invalidate prior known facts, instead of saying that the Tato plant appears to be some sort of mutant hybrid formed by genes jumping between plant species in the Commonwealth. It is unlikely to be a major plot point in any future game in the series, true, but why change something that only needs simple abridging or demonstration that in the localized region a new, mutant plant supplanted prior varieties?
For all that Fallout 4 offers an abundant world to explore, it seems to miss the mark when it comes to fitting in this region of the franchise into the entire past history of the series. Perhaps the design team wanted to showcase all the great stuff they created early on to the players, and lost sight of the necessary respect that must be paid to prior design teams to keep a coherent world in play. There will always be retcons in series, it can never be helped as even the best single author will screw up details between stories: it is a given. Recognizing that these are changes, working them smoothly into the overall world, and then utilizing that newly created material to expand upon the world, that is an ultimate goal of a retcon: to change continuity and establish a new continuity and show why it makes sense. More of that sort of thing would have meant changing timing of events, leaving the feeling of being truly powerful for later in the game and, perhaps, not changing minor things that worked just fine and were streamlined for design purposes alone. That last is pure laziness on the part of the design team...perhaps they thought the pre-war world was very streamlined and efficient. Yet the Fallout franchise demonstrates just the opposite, even within Fallout 4.
In creating a universe for players, a game designer (without regard to genre) must take into consideration how that universe actually functions. Even when running a paper and pencil campaign, players will learn about the world they are in by interacting with other people, the environment and coming across hidden or lost information. A game world has a history as its foundations, and that history can and does gain reinterpretations over time as more is developed for that world in the way of interesting missions, scenarios or new places to go. All of that historical information, be it before the player arrived or after they have started to explore, forms the basis for this thing known as Lore.
The function of Lore is to give a foundation for game play, and when a series of game sessions (or games) within a given universe are created, Lore must be a foundation for that new material. This does not mean that Lore is infallible. In fact it may be contradictory based on who is giving it out, what they are aligned with and how they view those who did the activities being recounted. Lore also encompasses technology, weapons, armor and all the artifacts that are mentioned by stories. Lore is also a point of agreement for those who form a civilized unit known as a Nation State, though all Nations start at the family level and that is where Lore is first learned. The Fallout Universe has Lore behind all of this and more, and it creates a diverse background that has been or will be explained to a player either via in-game materials or playing in prior instances of this universe.
When new instances of material for game play arrives in a universe, it is likely to feature many things that are not in agreement with prior Lore, and Fallout 4 is no different in this than any other game in a series of games that has a Lore based function behind it. These discontinuities form into broad categories and they deserve an examination.
RETCON
A Retcon is Retroactive Continuity change in a series set in the same universe be it fictional or gaming. This is a break or discontinuity with prior established Lore that offers a change to prior continuity of Lore in the new instance.
There is an Alteration Retcon that is a change that attempts to explain itself based on prior material or offers a ready opportunity to understand it where prior games may have established one thing but had no way to gain information from the new game area so that a new continuity is established. A simple one for this is the presence of cats in FO4. All prior games established that cats had perished during the Great War, period. The Commonwealth, by not having much contact with the outside world, didn't have a say in this belief as they were not tied in with anything much beyond their geographic region and the few contacts that were established most likely didn't worry about the absence of cats as something to talk about. Cats are present in FO4 and the belief they had perished was true up to this point and a reason that this notion wasn't shot down was that it was true for all the prior areas in the franchise. Geographic isolation and limited contact meant that the survival of cats in the Commonwealth wasn't really known to anyone outside of it. The continuity of the Lore in prior games has changed retroactively with FO4 as there is a reason for this knowledge not to be known outside of this play area. The Lore has been Altered in this case and a reason that isn't stated but relatively obvious covers it.
When there is an addition to Lore that has been established, that is to say something new that is consistent with prior Lore but not seen in prior game instances happens, this is an Addition Retcon. In FO4 the category of Pipe Weapons are introduced as the cheap and makeshift firearms made from available components that are not seen in prior games, and are thus an addition to firearms classification. These expedient weapons actually should have been seen in prior games, but never were, and there is no way to explain why they weren't. Many reasons could be thought up to cover this, but nothing readily apparent comes to mind, so it just must be taken at face value that these weapons exist in the Commonwealth and are thus part of the Lore.
Another class of retcon is when something is removed from the Lore via the present game. This can happen when events are described as happening in a different sequence or placed before established sequences without any rationale behind it. Or if events happened in a prior story or understanding of Lore and are then said to have not happened then that is a Subtraction Retcon. In FO4 there is a Brotherhood entry in their database that establishes that the potato has gone extinct after the Great War, and yet the potato can be found as an ingredient in Fallout New Vegas. The potato actually did survive, exists and the Brotherhood had to go through that region to reach the east coast, and thus had every opportunity to know that the plant existed, thrived and was available as something that could be found or purchased. Part of the reason this is done is so that the above ground Tato plant, that yields fruit as a foodstuff can be seen as some sort of mutated hybrid, possibly with a pre-war tomato plant, yet the Tato is not the potato which is a root crop, not a fruit crop.
Another form of retcon is that of a Compression Retcon where prior activities are compressed into a very short sequence which may exclude some information or even add in new material that did not happen in the established sequencing of events. This can happen when getting an overview history from an individual or organization, and may be done to justify the way they act in the present by removing or adding in minor material to the past. In FO4 the Player Character undergoes this with at least one individual, and it is the PC that is not allowed to actually give a full accounting of themselves even in brief so as to try and establish doubt in the mind of the player. These sorts of retcons are rare, but they do happen.
Now with all of that said, the actual creativity necessary to create a new instance in a series requires understanding the background and history of that setting in the established context for that series. If you read any series of stories or watch television or film series, the retcon will happen, even by those people who strive to give as much continuity as possible. Games are not immune to this and often breaks with Lore happen when better technology to run a game appear that allows for new or novel game play to happen. Games in a series can be judged by how well they handle these changes and their ability to explain either via setting or actual in-game material, the changes that are seen. Some changes may be trivial and others may invalidate entire prior games in the series based on what the change is and how well it is handled. Thus Lore can be seen as a constraining factor, particularly when better technology can make an older way of doing things obsolete.
Creativity is unbounded, however, and while a new way can be implemented it can also be explained as to how things have changed since the prior instance of the game which supported an older interpretation. This is an opportunity for creativity and creators should not see this as a problem but a challenge to create the reasoning and rationale behind the change, which can be done via a Compression Retcon that retells of events since that prior instance and the current state. This will indicate that there is a back story to the change that may or may not receive a full treatment, but at least it is there as a placeholder.
And that brings on FO4, as it is rife with retcons large and small across the entire game, and fans will notice these as they happen and be left scratching their heads as to how and why these changes were made. As cited above there are cats, pipe weapons and potatos as examples, but these are not alone in the game, and there are much larger ones that are just dropped in with no backstory, no environmental explanation and no real rationale behind them, and these can be seen as a problem of creative focus and storytelling on the part of Bethesda Game Studios.
A first example, and most glaring, is power armor and the newly introduced power armor frame to which the power armor pieces are attached. This frame is powered by the newly found Fusion Core that is not seen in any prior instance of the series. Furthermore the Fusion Core is now used to power Gatling Lasers, which had been established as being powered by expendable Microfusion Cells (MF Cells) in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Electron Charge Packs (EC Packs).in Fallout 3 and FONV, These energy cells (generically) are utilized like expendable ammunition in any other weapon and are depleted and the spent cell ejected from the weapon. Thus within the series there has been a Lore retcon to the Gatling Laser from its prior instance with Interplay and its new life in Bethesda and Obsidian adhered to that with FONV. While the Fusion Core is run down and finally ejected, the entire way the Gatling Laser works has been changed. Is there a good reason or rationale given for this? No. Is the absence of whole categories of energy cells in FO4 given? No. Energy Cells, the specific type, and not the general category, are not present in FO4 at all. The Gauss Rifle used to be a single shot weapon utilizing MF Cells that were in a cluster and replaced between shots, not a weapon with a magazine of specialized 2mm ammo as seen in FO4.
These may seem like relatively simple forms of retcons, and they are. The purpose is to streamline game play by removing some prior bits of technology, re-purposing others and then adding in a final type that is utilized in specific instances. There is only an environmental consideration in the setting of FO4's history that could explain this, and that is the advent of Mass Fusion and the lovely fusion generators that appear to still be producing power over two centuries after the Great War. The setting also gives ruins of Municipal Plutonium Wells where, presumably, older nuclear material was dumped once fusion generators replaced the older nuclear generators. Yet this environmental explanation, if true, would undermine the very problems of the Institute in the ways of power generation. These generators represent a distributed fusion system that appears to pre-date the Beryllium Agitator used to get the large reactor going in the Institute. We know what nuclear reactors look like from previous games, and these lovely yellow devices with a fusion core in them are not attached to nuclear generators, but stand alone systems. This is, in theory, a known and trusted technology that has proven the test of time and the Institute would have used that same technology to create new power sources as they expanded so that each sub-section of the Institute would have its own reliable power supply.
When changing the Lore of a region and putting it into the past it is necessary to then take into account how it will be seen and understood as time goes on. To remove certain types of energy cells and streamline game play, and by adding in the fusion core and putting in a number of places to get fusion cores that are active generators, the concept is then not propagated throughout the region. Even if these new power systems had a decade to be put in place, or even two, they would not totally supplant the older systems which were also reliable for the long term. One item, the Nuclear Battery, seen in FO3 and FONV is totally absent from the Commonwealth, yet these were not only able to power up drained energy cells (generically), but also served as a form of jury rigged lighting when attached to long life light bulbs or lamps. Those were seen in many places in the wasteland, and the large number of such batteries points to a widespread utility function of them for smaller devices. These were subtracted from the Lore in the Commonwealth, and no number of Municipal Plutonium Wells to dump these batteries would explain their absence as they clearly had a function that reached to much smaller and independent technology as they were portable. Thus no matter how long the Wells were taking in old batteries, the necessary functions of equipment and pure utility in long-lasting power for low power draining equipment would remain. They served a different purpose from Fusion Cores and removing them doesn't make any sense and, due to the high price of Fusion Cores, makes the Nuclear Battery a cheaper and better known alternative than trying to adapt older systems to them. And as a battery it has easy to access terminals that allow for it to be utilized in a number of roles that the Fusion Core just can't fill. The change to the Fusion Core with no real good back-up for why it wasn't used by those able to build technical equipment post-war, and the absence of the older Nuclear Battery means that these are breaks with the Lore of the Fallout series within Bethesda's own tenure as owner of the series.
Equipment Lore has ramifications for plot, storyline, and suspension of disbelief, thus even a cursory glance at what is seen above ground and functioning reveals major flaws in the plot design of FO4, holes which are not explained in any way. A much simpler break with Lore is that of Power Armor, a new favorite as it moves away from being an enhanced wearable armor and turns it into something closer to a personal vehicle. This might be something closer to the combat suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or what some of the personnel wear in David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, or even be considered as a form of transition to a Mech Suit or Mecha form of warfare. To get that spiffy animation and entry/exit from the suit, plus feeling like you are wearing something with a lot of heft behind it, Bethesda decided to scrap preexisting Lore built up throughout the Fallout franchise, even during its own tenure which kept with the prior Lore until FO4. That Lore requires specialized training and fitting for Power Armor to put it on. It is possible to repair such suits without such training, but to actively wear it and use it does require training. That was always training of the 'fade to black, it happens off screen' sort, and was meant to keep what was special about Power Armor a secret from the player. Getting accepted by a faction (normally the Brotherhood or, in FONV, the Enclave Remnants) was a reward for helping them and represented the point in which the PC was now able to handle some of the best equipment in the entire game.
In FO4 any illiterate farm hand, junky, Raider, or other untrained individual can just put in a readily available Fusion Core into a Power Armor Frame and walk off with it and the armor on it. Raiders do that one better by crafting their own armor (which isn't so great but what do you expect of Raiders?) to put on the Frames thus creating new suits of low quality Power Armor. And there are more than enough Frames, some with armor already on them, sitting unattended around the wasteland so that anyone who has any wit at all can quickly pick up Frame and start walking around like a pro! Is there a reason for this change? I mean beyond the spiffy animation and feeling like a tank while using the stuff? No. That's it, you are able to feel awesome! So is anyone else, including that illiterate settler that just jumped into your suit of Power Armor because you forgot to take the Fusion Core out of it. Heaven help you if they have a Fusion Core in their inventory. FO4 the game where everyone gets to feel awesome because...reasons? What are the reasons for this change in technology?
A good start at cobbling together a reason is to see that the prior instances of the same armor had some sort of undersuit as part the entire deal. It doesn't look like the hard frame system of FO4 and this then posits something like a soft frame with servos that need positioning for each user, and that required training. By using a distributed, small set of energy cells (generically), the old Power Armor could have a long life in the field, take wear and tear and allow the user to mitigate the weight of the suit through the servos that off-set it by enhancing the wearer's strength stat. In theory, if the new frame system was made for the old armor pieces, then all an individual has to do, when the frame arrives, is take off the individual pieces of armor and place them on the frame, shove a fusion core into the frame and make the transition from the prior instance to the new instance. All military in use and precision, with requirements built into contracts that would take years if not decades to fulfill. The Commonwealth would be the source of this new type of frame and would see the first military replacement of the prior soft frame system with this hard frame one. This happened so close to the bombs dropping that it never got beyond the Commonwealth and even the Enclave didn't have access to it. Perhaps it was a test deployment for the entire military, including National Guard units, just to make sure everyone knew how it worked. Maybe it even had a training manual, though none are seen in FO4, but they are likely given how the military operates. The Brotherhood may have run across records of this in the Citadel and the first team in, that Danse mentions, found the specs for making this stuff and they then got a production line in The Pitt going for it.
Yes a likely theory can be created to explain this, and it has its own constraints to keep it so that it is geographically isolated. Now to actually run a vehicle, which is what Power Armor becomes, takes no training, because...reasons! In the post-war vehicles are a bit on the scarce side, and no one has bothered to get bicycles up and running, which should be relatively easy compared to Power Armor. Thus the absolute knowledge of how to run a vehicle by those born after the war is zero outside of a few factions like the BoS, Enclave or NCR. Even with a self-adjusting frame, and all that good stuff, there is no need for any training at all to utilize Power Armor. Imagine if this stuff was deployed in the field in China and the Chinese decided to get a few sets by staging a raid on a depot where they were being unpacked. Grab a Fusion Core put it in a frame with armor pieces on it, and then use a Stealthboy sitting on a nearby shelf to get out or even use some form of native Chinese stealth technology that you brought with you. Is this actually how the US military would want such suits to work? I mean, really, just get in and go? What will the Drill Sergeant have to yell at you for at that point? And just how the hell do you deal with an enemy who has stolen the suit, speaks English well enough to fool you, and infiltrates a unit in a suit of Power Armor? As production of this stuff was a contract negotiated with a war on, safeguards would be in place to prevent this, and each trooper would be expected to be able to maintain their suit, as well. How to efficiently use it so that you don't run down the Fusion Core would also be taught so as to lessen the logistics requirements of these suits. And from Proctor Ingram we also get the idea that all these frames just don't fit all that well: One Size Fits All, Fits None Well. Want to adjust it? Bring it to her and she'll do it and, probably, train you to do it for yourself so you don't have to pester her with it. That would solve the Lore problem: training from the Brotherhood, the good old fashioned method. All those other pretty suits you couldn't use until you got training.
Ah, training rears its ugly head yet again. One of the major parts of that training would include actually getting past the safety interlocks of the frame to get into it in the first place. This is the case of 'You Are Assigned This Frame, Soldier, And Expected To Maintain It And It Is Coded To You' sort of deal. Just like in prior wars you got issued equipment to keep track of, the Power Armor Frame would be no different. Why? Logistics, so the military could know just what happened to each Frame, what its expected use of Fusion Cores was versus how it was actually used, and so that individuals wouldn't go joy riding or accidentally 'lose' one. Hop in and go would only be for authorized personnel, which does not include that ignorant post-war settler or Raider. Thus to operate Power Armor an individual would need training, authorization and then be held accountable for the equipment, all of which would have an impact on the post-war world of FO4. What we get is the implausible hop in and go system that streamlines game play and gets you a chance to feel Awesome! when you haven't done a damned thing to deserve that feeling. And then push that feeling down when you realize that any fool with a Fusion Core can do this. But you still got that spiffy animation!
Can the Lore of Power Armor be salvaged? Yes, and it would need a thorough going-over to do so. Would have been nice to get a couple of screens of this on a Brotherhood terminal or have some one tell you a bit about how the stuff works. A couple of screens of text doesn't require lots of game development cash, and it is way cheaper than voice acting it. The male protagonist, by story, already had training in Power Armor and an authorization for it. The female protagonist is a bit of a loss, unless you make her day career helping to make the things...remember becoming a lawyer was done by night school, so she did have an unknown day job.
These times I am using the environment to help explain things is creative, though as a derivative of presented material, and attempts to fit the new Lore into the old system of Lore. These are instances that could be readily done by the game design team and introduced in a more explicit fashion to make for smoother retcons. Lore is not a constraint on creativity, in fact when Lore is changed an opportunity to explain the discontinuity or change is then available to explain just how far and deep the Lore change actually is
Retcons can respect prior Lore, adapt to it and still offer the changes in an understood framework of knowledge and history. Putting in artifacts, removing others and changing yet others each creates a lack of continuity and that lack is not an obstacle but a challenge to a game designer who seeks to expand the constraints and limits of prior material. There is no need to drop them in without telling what is behind them if the environment can tell the complete story, which means more than just inference or guesswork. Small pieces of primary material be they holotapes, books, magazines or other sources of information in a game setting can do that, as well. A small or even tiny bit of explicit material can go a long way to understanding a setting and how it is both similar to and different from other, prior settings in the same game universe.
Now if an alternate to the main history universe is being told, which is an alt-alt-history, then so be it, and a new continuity can be established that has few if any links to the prior ones. That usually gets some introductory material or a few bits and pieces that get to a major plot, depending on if the goal is just to explain or try to abort (or revert) an alternate history. That last usually doesn't work out so well and leaves a question of just why the game was made in the first place. The former, where there is a clean and explicit break allows for just some pieces of the old continuity to pass onwards and the rest gets chucked, thus allowing the prior continuity to be preserved without retcons.
Prior history, prior Lore and continuity are not just a constraint for creativity but an opportunity for truly creative individuals to explain just why these changes are present in the new instance of a story in any form of media, games included. There will always be discrepancies in long running story series which can be traced back through the earliest written works of mankind. Yet these works, be they religious, historical or fictional in content, do not fail as works when they give a reason and rationale for the discontinuity with prior works. Thematically they can still adhere to the basis of those prior works, respect them and yet offer changes to them be they putting in that generations of mankind were longer the closer to the state of original grace they were in time to the shifting of weapons used in Victorian England when a well known team seems to continually shift their favorite side-arms. Some require explicit and purposeful work in explaining changes, while others need merely show the shift in time to reflect the changes within a single time period. There are instances in Fallout 4 where the retcons seem to be just tacked on to try and assert that the potato didn't survive the Great War and to explain why the Tato plant bears fruit...a useless change, by and large, and unnecessarily tries to invalidate prior known facts, instead of saying that the Tato plant appears to be some sort of mutant hybrid formed by genes jumping between plant species in the Commonwealth. It is unlikely to be a major plot point in any future game in the series, true, but why change something that only needs simple abridging or demonstration that in the localized region a new, mutant plant supplanted prior varieties?
For all that Fallout 4 offers an abundant world to explore, it seems to miss the mark when it comes to fitting in this region of the franchise into the entire past history of the series. Perhaps the design team wanted to showcase all the great stuff they created early on to the players, and lost sight of the necessary respect that must be paid to prior design teams to keep a coherent world in play. There will always be retcons in series, it can never be helped as even the best single author will screw up details between stories: it is a given. Recognizing that these are changes, working them smoothly into the overall world, and then utilizing that newly created material to expand upon the world, that is an ultimate goal of a retcon: to change continuity and establish a new continuity and show why it makes sense. More of that sort of thing would have meant changing timing of events, leaving the feeling of being truly powerful for later in the game and, perhaps, not changing minor things that worked just fine and were streamlined for design purposes alone. That last is pure laziness on the part of the design team...perhaps they thought the pre-war world was very streamlined and efficient. Yet the Fallout franchise demonstrates just the opposite, even within Fallout 4.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
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'.
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'.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
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...
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...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)