Should Fallout X, whatever the next game in the series is, kill off the Brotherhood for good?

The BoS wasn't ever on the brink of entering 'villain territory' . There was a pretty frequent jump/comparison by many people who played F4 that likened them to being nazi-esque but their agenda against -mutants- and -synths- is not comparable to nazi germany, unlike WW2 era Wermacht and SS the rank and file BoS and indeed the leaders of the BoS (Maxon, Kells, etc.) don't consider the supermutants, synths and ghouls -inferior- to humans they understand the scientific fact that they are on every basic level -not human- and that in the case of synths, supermutants and feral ghouls a very real and present danger to the people of the commonwealth. Even in the case of synths who escape the Institute, the glaring of example of Gabriel stands out (essentially a T-1000 running amuck leading a raider crew). One might be tempted to say 'oh, well a biological human could always and often does go down the same road as Gabriel so you can't say a synth is inherently more dangerous' but as far as I have seen (happy to be proved wrong) there is no evidence yet of synths aging or being vulnerable to disease and in the case of say coursers and even first-second gen synths their capabilities and endurance exceed a regular human. So having a synth turn raider is essentially like setting a terminator/courser loose on the general populace.

Few people seem to look at the world of F4 in context of the realities of everyday life in the commonwealth. Unless galvanized by the soul survivor the minutemen are doomed to become extinct. The railroad are not the faction to back because they have no long term governing plans for the commonwealth and literally one of the first (and in her mind most important) questions desdemona asks you is 'would you put your life on the line for a synth'. They are highly skilled guerrilla fighters with only one mission: to free and protect synths. There is nothing stopping the rank and file from turning to crime, extortion or creating their own despotic government after the BoS and Institute are both wiped out (both pre-req. to a railroad endgame) , this is something that has happened over and over again throughout history: the IPA (Irish provisional army) riots against the British but as the years go on they become the IRA and continue to bloodily fight over Northern Ireland and perpetuate violent relations between the U.K. and republican Ireland (not washing the UK of all involvement but stating the fact that the IRA continued violent attacks far past even their political arm calling for peace) and similarity and very relevantly the mujahadeen funded and backed by the CIA against the Russians that in the resulting power vaccum become the Taliban and other various terrorist sects. Guerrilla fighters never turn into stable governments.

So where does this relate to the BoS being villains in the setting of F4? It centres on the fact that outside of diamond city and vault 81.... there are no schools, raiders and mutants prey at will on the weak and the institute manipulates all of it for their own personal gain. The BoS comes with a mission: to stop the Institute and (based off maxons dialogue at the end of the game) stabalize the region.

This is not unlike the situation facing the west with NATO allied nations having involved themselves in the Middle East for years. There has been a lot of fuck ups, mistakes and bad conduct but they aren't there on a villainous mission...

So it is with the BoS in F4.

They in -no- way mirror the enclave, who had a hand in the sadistic experiments of vault tech and the fall of civilization itself. The enclave have always pursued fascist goals wheras the BoS has pursued goals that were at the core,noble in spirit but perhaps carried out with fascist methods.

The BoS are by no means saints and are not at all the best option for the commonwealth when compared to the minutemen. However they are far from villains and are in the end more of a respesentation of how war torn countries might view the west interfering in their own domestic politics and disputes, rather than the cartoonish jackbooted,master-race thugs of the enclave or Institute.

/r/Fallout Thread Parent