The iconic faction, the Brotherhood of Steel gets a lot of love from developers, and Fallout 4 was no exception. However, I would argue that the inclusion of the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4 was an overall detriment to the game, and the other factions would’ve been better without them. Let’s see if you agree!
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For everyone who want the shortcuts:
00:00 Intro
01:55 Primary Assumption
05:18 Faction Weakness
05:42 Contra Cutting BoS
08:00 Pro Cutting BoS
09:19 BoS Not Required
11:36 What Would Be Missing?
12:50 Paladin Danse
13:41 Liberty Prime
14:59 The Prydwen
16:32 Power Armor
17:01 Vertibirds
17:51 Smaller Details
18:17 BoS Relationship With The Institute
20:36 Better Minuteman Without The BoS?
23:33 Not Totally Cutting The BoS
24:43 Quest "The Last Patrol"
25:49 Recover Missions
26:40 Quest "Blind Betrayal"
27:47 Redial Quests
28:07 Own Thoughts
28:52 Making The BoS an DLC?
29:35 Fixing The Big 3
30:05 Fixing The Institute
34:46 Fixing The Railroad
[NOTE: suggestion on how to fix the Minuteman is at 20:36; not a separated topic here]
41:20 Fixing Smaller Groups – The Gunners
41:50 Fixing Smaller Groups – The Triggerman
41:59 Is It Worth It?
42:45 A Good Example – The Children of Atom
43:12 Outro
Yeah I see your argument, but that scene when the Prydwin arrived (at night for me with the spotlights on) was the coolest moment in the whole game.
Didn't know I wasn't already subscribed lol
The Raiders and Gunners should have been proper factions in the base game. The PC really doesn't have a viable, irredeemable evil faction. Such factions would inject balance into the world set.
A better question is why was the brotherhood in either Fallout 3 or 4? If you look at their state in F2 and New Vegas they simply don't have that kind of force projection. It doesn't make sense for them to have a small army on the east coast. This is a gaping plot hole as the Brotherhood was always short staffed because they were cultish and sent recruits to die in places like The Glow to prove themselves. Of course there is a faction we've all be waiting for that COULD have carried the same faction weight as the Brotherhood. VAULT-TEC!
We've seen their handiwork. We know they had plans to survive the war. They should be almost as well equipped as The Enclave. And someone was doing server maintenance on the mainframe in DC. Very sus.
Plus there are a lot of other factions that were never properly fleshed out that could have been major players too. The Gunners is one that could have taken the Brotherhood's place quite handily. There is still a lot of speculation on where they came from and what their real agenda is. They don't seem to have been from DC or from The Commonwealth. Talon Company could have been more fleshed out too. A robot empire isn't out of the question either given how master brains had a lot of admin rights. So an army of terminator robots lead by an insane brain in a jar is not out of place in the setting.
Очень интересно правда)) Классный ролик!))
i never comment on things but i love this video so much i felt like i needed to. you are a creative genius and i agree with all points made, esp about danse and his quests.
i’d love to hear your thoughts on danse’s half baked backstory/the brotherhood’s cut content and what he could have become instead of a glitchy mess in all endings lol
keep up the great videos!
The Railroad could have been interesting if they got their start and namesake from opposition against slavers, and the synth thing was just a progression past that point, they freed so many slaves that they saw in the eyes of a gen-3 synth the same look as the slaves, and from that point chose to help synths. Just please, for goodness sake, remove the Railroad's inner divide of those who think gen 1 synths and sentry guns are people.
On the topic of another faction, Gunners only being mercenaries makes no sense to me. They're so advanced technologically that only the Brotherhood and the Institute are better than them, they are so organized and have the supplies to be a real faction, one that could be like the regular commonwealth but with a far more militaristic and structured culture. The wasteland itself could have a divide between order and freedom, in a post-apocalypse it makes sense a faction that values order over freedom would appear. They can even show their own values being better in a few regards, with highly guarded caravans, defense covered walled settlements, and far lower raider presence in their lands, maybe in Gunner territory there's a good chance you'll find a Gunner group fighting raiders or super mutants. They could also get along with the Brotherhood as their technology is strictly pre-war and they would respect the Brotherhood's structured nature. Gunners could also have more ready access to purified water and food.
The commonwealth and Railroad is low tech, the gunners are mid-line tech, and the institute is high tech. The minutemen have to figure out where they fit among these, and as their leader you have to help the Minutemen find the answer. Low tech people will obviously be the most free, with all the chems, prostitutes, and booze they enjoy in the game already, but not everyone will value that. Chems could be outlawed in Gunner territory, with only med-x and psycho being used and military only (strictly beneficial combat drugs), Institute could ban alcohol because it dulls the mind and instead only allow mentats.
honestly, i am sick of every fallout having the brotherhood and also super mutants
I see your point for potential but BOS are the poster bois of fallout
Fallout 4 should not be.
Yeah, the BoS felt kinda shoehorned into the game.
Hot takes. Please go become Bethesda’s editor or whatever.
You got me at having two whole choices for the minute men.
Side note: and tell me if this ain’t it, but it’s really interesting to me as a fan of both franchises how Baldur’s Gate has totally changed my expectations for the rpg genre… you’re right: having two distinct & different paths for the minutemen is such a beautifully simple solution, as it would have made FO4s writing to be on par with the least consequential parts of BG3. That kind of finish overall would have made FO4 a step above.
I always wipe out the Railroad when I meet them
Enclave is cooler than brother hood of steel
For the anti Preston Preston. We already have a high-ranking person who could easily fit that. Ronny Shaw, who shows up for the artillery quest, would fill that perfectly.
I'm totally behind that idea. Blind Betrayal could have been done in a way that depending on who you gave the information, different outcomes would happen.
If told to Haylen, she'd tell the player to keep it a secret. If told to Brandis or Rhys, they'd immediately act like Elder Maxson and a very similar dialogue/debate would go down. If told to Dense directely, he'd consider offing himself and the player would be able to convince him to either really off himself, just running away and hiding (maybe with a goodbye holotape to his friends) or even keeping the secret carry business as usual.
BOS not doing basic logistics in sending an immobile air ship to the region is a pretty big L. The main point of it would be that it can move… like away from threats?
Enclave fans when the Brotherhood of Steel, their rival, adopts their ideology: Confusion
Nonsense. Liberty Prime is the best part of the game, and the Brotherhood is the only option that doesn't involve betraying humanity which doesn't suck balls. The Minutemen are lame, and the Railroad are absurd and ultimately self-destructive as humans. If the BoS isn't necessary to the story, neither are the other factions, save the Institute.
I feel like we should've gotten Lyon's Brotherhood instead of 20-something Mini-Hitler's one. Maybe led by Sarah Lyons, instead of relegating her story to two lines in a terminal not many people would even get to read. The Lyon's way made the BoS the apex predator in the DC wasteland, greatly increasing in numbers, getting good PR by helping everyone in the wastes without completely forgoing the tech preservation mission.
Maxson's BoS manages to both striclty adhere and not adhere to the BoS teachings, they do hoard technology and don't give two fucks about the other denizens of the wasteland (no matter what Arthur may say, the BoS strongarms farmers into giving up their crops to them) but on the other hand they recruit outsiders in their ranks, which would be unacceptable by West Coast standards, and endeavor to blow up the Institute, a place filled to the brim with the most advanced technology in the world. The teleportation tech alone would be make it worth it to occupy the place instead of nuking it, let alone all the biotech that woud greatly improve food production for everyone in the wasteland.
To me, the Brotherhood's questline was, ironically, railroaded to fuck and back. There's no way of changing things, and Bugthesda did actually record lines for an alternative way of solving "Blind Betrayal" by challenging Maxson and becoming faction leader in his stead, which could have solved so many problems with the main questlines: by being leader of three out of 4 factions, we should've gotten the option of telling everyone to work together, liberating synths and guaranteeing a massive increase in quality of life for all settlers in the Commonwealth. Instead we get to choose between 3 or 4 different flavours of kaboom.
its really surprising that PAM is only used for radient quests given that EVERYONE in the railroad is constantly saying that desdamona is terrible at strategy.
also feels like there should have been some hardcore institute haters in the Minuteman ranks given the interaction where you basically choose to progress with the minutemen or railroad desdamona says that the minutemen don't care about synths (despite one of the 4 characters in the faction being a synth and another being the grandfather of all Gen 3s), which is reinforced by patriot's rebels attacking the minutemen if you get most the way through their questline but decide to go with a Minuteman ending.
maybe the prydwin could become an institute airship? after their reactor is set that becomes their main base as they focus on power projection after securing raw power for their headquarters with institute rifles sacrificing raw power for better accuracy + less recoil to compliment being fired from the lower deck of an airship
I'm not sure that reducing the BOS would give enough time to these problems though.
i feel like if the prydwen hadn’t shown up at all the recon team could’ve been a better representation of what the brotherhood has become than the inclusion of brotherhood members from the capital wasteland. on top of that they could’ve done some actual longterm character building for the handful of characters you’re allowed to see prior to fort hagan, theres some good characters on the prydwen but they seriously could’ve just had them be a part of the recon team as people who got separated or deserted, they could’ve used the faction without making them the main source of plot aside from the institute, and i feel like danse’s situation would’ve been more interesting if the recon team was separated from the leadership when he realized he was a synth, because the way his story ends is that he finds out he’s a synth and he goes into hiding and is immediately found, its a plot beat that should be the big source of conflict for the rest of his story but instead it takes place over the course of one quest, he’s a reoccuring character but after blind betrayal he becomes inconsequentially useless in the storyline because the writers didn’t want to take into account whether you killed him or not. his story is one of the most compelling from fo4 in my opinion because he is something that he is ideologically opposed to, but its a story that is so short that it’s missable if you don’t do the brotherhood storyline, at the end of the day, the brotherhood of steel feels both like it was bethesda’s main focus but because the world needed other things it still felt a little half-assed at time, it’s the fault a jack of all trades where you so many things but are not a professional in any of them, that’s what makes fo4 disappointing to me, it’s a fascinating game, but it lacks cohesion that it sorely needs, and at the end of the day probably just needed better direction
An original faction would be nice…assuming competent writers.
I have no doubt that the brotherhood should never have been in fallout 4. Fallout, at least in my mind (this attitude was reflected in earlier games, but obviously isn’t anymore) should be about how society rebuilds in the wake of nuclear destruction, along with the other still important themes about the evils of capitalism and the failures of the American dream.
Fallout should not, again, in my opinion, be about two or three factions that are stretched out over many games so that they can fight again and again like a Saturday morning cartoon. It completely takes me out of the games. The brotherhood was shakily justified in fallout 3 and makes zero sense in 4. I think this also extends to other elements, like super mutants. In new vegas they at least tried to do something interesting with mutants, showing how they adapted to the loss of the master and settled into life in the wasteland. In fallout 3 and 4, they are again shakily justified just so we have something to shoot that also has brand recognition.
It’s a shame, because I really enjoy some of the elements that Bethesda dreams up for the franchise. I loved all three factions in far harbour, and I’d love to see the children of atom expanded in whatever direction the devs choose. But no, they will keep recycling ideas until people just stop buying the games
I'm still upset there was no enclave dlc it seems like such a missed opportunity since the character we play could actually join them.
Fucking phenomenal video ❤