A Look Back At The Story of Fallout 4

Fallout 4 has a really strong gameplay and exploration system but its story while strong initially becomes a complete mess by the end of the game act 1 provides backstory and motivation for the player while the ending is just filled with contradictions underdeveloped factions and quests that are just laughably bad that's why today i'm going to explain why so without further ado let's get started so we Start fallout 4 just like any other game in the series with a slideshow of the world except in fallout's case it's footage of pre-war america one thing that's important to

keep in mind is that fallout 4 was a major evolution of the franchise there were new implementations that were added to make it easier for a new audience to grasp this game is a lot of players first introduction to the series so some background knowledge may be necessary so that the new players are Brought up to speed i honestly like this cutscene a lot fawn has never really disappointed to me when it comes to its opening cinematics and fallout 4 is no exception as it shows the beauty of fallout pre-war by displaying those technological advancements

and all the scientific breakthroughs that were achieved during this time but it also shows the problems of the world like how jobs are being lost rapidly and how natural resources are depleting it's After this where we finally get to see our main characters nate and nora most of fallout's protagonists are quite bare bones when it comes to their background as a lack of one helps create a character that the player wants to make fallout 3 just gave the player the background of a vault dweller whose father escaped the vault and new vegas gave the player

the character's profession of a courier all of these games used the small knowledge of the Character's background as a base for the overall story but fallout 3 and 4 had that background be about the protagonist family and the situations they find themselves in as for the voice acting lots of people had issues with this as they preferred substituting it with their own voice which continued to strengthen their relationship of the player and the character together but for me personally i don't really mind this continuing the trend of first Within this series it's the first time

we also get to see pre-war america the only other time was during operation anchorage of fallout 3 but that was in the middle of a war and it didn't really convey the lifestyle of the american citizen before the bombs fallout 4's intro was all about establishing to the player what life was like prior to the great war we could see the technological advancements in play as we can interact with the family's mr handy eunic Codsworth who's assisting with the family in any way that he can like brewing their coffee or taking care of the baby

we also get introduced to the more grim side of the game as we can hear a news broadcast about the ongoing conflict between america and china and we also get a visit from a vault-tec representative who wants to sign us up for the vault program since the creation of nuclear bombs both china and america have stockpiled hundreds of them ready To launch whenever they want so vault-tec created these vaults which were made to keep the american people safe just in case of a nuclear fallout one thing that this intro has that may not be apparent

is tension as a completely new player it seems just like a normal intro to the game but to anyone who's played fallout before you know that the great war will be starting soon you just don't know when maybe it'll happen in game maybe it'll happen in a Cutscene maybe this intro is just a dream regardless of what it could be the bombs haven't dropped yet and at some point they will and that creates immense anxiety it's not until a few minutes later after playing with sean that codsworth yells to the couple in a panic as

the news reporter addresses to the american people that the nuclear war has started and the great war is about to begin the most rational thing to do in this situation is to rush to the vault Before nuke hits this whole section is really interesting to look through as there's so many people doing different things there's a couple trying to put their bags away in the car and another couple is just embracing one another as they await the impending doom for the most part they also nailed the urgency of this as bikes and bags are just

dropped on the ground as there are people trying to get to the vault as fast as possible as we cross the small Creek we make it to the gate which has quite a long line all of these families are stuck and are not allowed to enter even the valtec representative from earlier is denied thankfully since we signed up just minutes prior we're able to bypass the line and make it to the vault we barely make it in the nick of time as the nuke detonates in the distance the couple along with all the other survivors

though do manage to enter vault 111. this section once again Creates different feelings depending on the player to a new player this might feel exciting or intriguing to explore the new vault and what it entails but to someone familiar with the game this sounds like a nightmare for those who are unaware vaults in the fallout universe were designed to shelter the american people but were also designed as testing labs that the higher-ups of vault-tec could test various different situations and see what the outcomes Were vault 111's experiment was to unknowingly test the effects of long-term

cryogenic suspended animation none of the vault dwellers knew of this experiment ahead of time and were just told to step into the cryogenic chamber given the other vaults we've explored in this series this one is actually quite tame we along with our spouse and son enter the cryopods waiting to be awoken after an unspecified amount of time the pods do actually open except it's not Vault-tec we see a scientist and a mercenary talking to our spouse before an altercation breaks out and our spouse is shot we get a brief look at the killer before being

sent back into cryo and then awake once again we as our protagonist just witnessed the death of our wife and the kidnapping of our son and eventually discover that the vault staff has been killed and the vault itself has been overrun by giant rad roaches this whole sequence while we're In the vault is really well done and is one of the reasons why i liked voice acting in this game our protagonist is not like others that we've played before we didn't grow up 200 years after the bombs fell we were there when it happened so

seeing a rad roach would obviously be scary to anyone who's never seen one before plus the voice acting when you open up the pod is just really great come on There has to be a release come on come on come on oh god it really displays the urgency of nate as he tries to save his wife even though he knows it's too late this area serves as a tutorial for the player as they're introduced to vats locked doors terminals and of course the pip-boy when they step onto the pad and get sent up back to

the surface fallout does its classic blinding lights reveal to show the aftermath of the bombs and how this Place was devastated by the great war fall 3 had some wonderful environmental design at the entrance as it showed skeletons of those who were denied entry and fallout 4 is the same as skeletons of the presumed families and military we met in the intro are just laying here it was an even better way to showcase how horrific this event really was as these were our neighbors and that's a frightening feeling after the exiting of the vault and

arriving in the Commonwealth 200 years later is where we get to begin the game and subsequently head into act 1. as a wrap up for the prologue fallout 4 starts off incredibly strong with a great cinematic opening and wonderful introduction that satisfied both new and old players by giving the new players feelings of excitement and curiosity but also giving the old players that same feeling with a few drops of fear not knowing when the great war will start but knowing that It's coming act 1 of fallout 4 opens up the world allowing the player to

go where they please but of course for our purposes we'll just follow the main quest right away we have a strong stardom regards to logical progression as our protagonist's main motivation is to find his son so obviously our task will be going from place to place asking if anyone has seen him or might know where he was taken the first act of the game is very reminiscent of fallout 3 as You go from one place to another trying to find your father except in fallout 4 it's your son the story also functions the same way

mechanically as instead of going from one place to the next in order you can skip the parts in between a player who goes from sanctuary then to all the places in order like conquered in diamond city will have the same outcome as someone who skips right to the end fallout 3 did the same thing by letting you skip right to rivet city and I've always liked this idea on a first playthrough you'll more than likely follow the path the game provides but there are a few people who may have skipped ahead and thus got a

different playthrough they may have not met preston garvey until hours later which will ultimately change the way the game plays this is also beneficial for multiple playthroughs as logically it makes sense that as long as you get to the important npc in this case being Nick valentine who cares how you got there all the npc's prior we're just pointing you in a different direction so whether or not you meet them is irrelevant once again of course though for our purposes we'll just go in order the first person we meet after exiting the vault is codsworth

who is more than delighted to see us codsworth has always been a favorite of mine especially when talking about what he's been up to for 200 years Codsworth you're acting a little bit weird what's wrong i i oh sad it's been just horrible two centuries with no one to talk to no one to serve i spent the first 10 years trying to keep the floors waxed but nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood nothing And don't get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed house and the car the car how do you

polish rust you can clearly hear the emotion in his voice and for a robot that's quite surprising he'll then direct the player to concord where we see a shootout between two groups after clearing out the raiders on the street we're then instructed to continue helping as there's more inside after all Of them are dead we can meet with the mysterious voice who is preston garvey leader of the minutemen preston explains that the minutemen have fallen on hard times that he's the only minuteman left and that the original group of settlers he was running with had

a population of 20 but it's now down to five given the people in the group preston seems to be the only capable soldier so it's quite obvious how they managed to lose so many members it's this problem that causes Him to ask for our help once again as more raiders will arrive and we need to drive them back he lets us know that there's a downed vertibird on the roof of this building but there's also a suit of power armor and a minigun inside of it using this should be more than enough firepower to wipe

out the raiders in concord in fact i'd argue it's too much firepower as a deathclaw arrives and dies just as fast as fun as it is to run around with a suit of power armor mowing Down dozens of raiders i feel like this section shouldn't belong here power armor and deathclaws have always been seen as endgame content in the thing all players strive for power armor will always be the best armor in the game and deathclaws are easily one if not the strongest enemy in the series but bethesda showed their hand too early getting power

armor or being able to defeat a deathclaw felt rewarding all the time and effort you put into Achieving this goal has been rewarded with something but never feels like this in fallout 4. to be fair the game does add variance of enemies so while a regular deathclaw might not be strong the mythic deathclaw sure is but that's not the point it's not about the variant it's about the enemies themselves seeing the super mutant behemoth at gnr and fallout 3 is an unforgettable experience this was a lot later in the game compared to fallout 4 and

yes while the Game also provided the player with power armor and a heavy weapon it's a fat man many nukes are incredibly rare compared to the five millimeter ammo of a minigun and fallout 3 required power armor training which isn't accessible until much later fallout 4 doesn't have any power armor training and gives the player a strong weapon with plenty of ammo it's hours the experience of wandering the map and accidentally running across the deathclaw and it Sours the feeling of finally achieving power armor for the first time it requires no effort on the player

as bethesda wanted to give them instant gratification and this is why i think bethesda created the quest this way you obviously want to hook the player into your game so why not give them the best set of armor in the game and a powerful gun to go with it but what also doesn't help this quest case is the difficulty in how laughably easy all these Difficult enemies are within the story and it's that part that is very important as i'm talking strictly within the confines of the story out in the commonwealth these enemies can be

encountered at any point so you may have full power armor or just a pipe pistol the enemies are only as strong as your gear as that is the independent variable in this equation but within the story it's a joke concrete is a town which means it'll have buildings buildings With doorways that are too small for the deathclaw to walk through so you can completely destroy the deathclaw without ever taking any damage the superman behemoths are the exact same the first one is defeated while using the minigun on a vertibird and the other two are killed

by liberty prime and the brotherhood of steel ending while i understand that bethesda wanted to hook the players in and showcase more action scenes to give the player a power Fantasy it just felt like this fight was added way too early into the main quest however despite my issues with this fallout 4 is the first game to finally showcase the weight of power armor it's not just some armor you can slip on whenever you want it's a suit of steel and requires multiple moving parts to work properly and while i do hate the tediousness of

having to get out to access a workbench or how long it takes to get in and out of the suit it's the Best version of power armor in the series this is why i wish bethesda would have saved this for later as both of these discoveries would have created an unforgettable experience and to be fair when i first played the game i loved it and i won't ever forget this scene but looking back on it more critically it's clear that this was done much better in other entries as i said earlier at concord we meet

with preston garvey leader of the minutemen you can continue To talk to preston garvey as he and the group will seek refuge's sanctuary but we'll get to that later in the video after conquered mama murphy tells us that the next place to find our son is diamond city alright look i understand the developers needed some way to tell the players where to go next but was it really that hard to just have preston tell the player that they know a detective who specializes in this sort of thing people like mama murphy aren't Unheard of in

the series as there's the psychers from fallout 1 and even the forecaster from falling to vegas but mama murphy always felt like a joke character to me like oh mama murphy's blabbering on again about the good old days she must be high off the jet i didn't think bethesda was actually going to make her an important role in this story it's definitely an odd nitpick to have but i've always found this weird once inside diamond city we can meet With nick valentine the head of the detective agency here in the stadium except nick's gone missing

his assistant ellie tells us that he went out on an investigation and never came back obviously we need nick or we're not going to find sean so regardless of what situation he put himself in we have to find him depending on where you go after this or how long you actually stay in diamond city an altercation may break out it'll be here or when you meet nick Where you start learning about synths as for the first encounter it seems to be two brothers having a dispute with one of them pointing a gun at the other

the brother with the gun claims that the other is a synth and wants to kill him as for the other encounter when we meet nick we realize that he's not even human allah ford does a good job of slowly giving away information in regards to what's going on within the game's world is the institute they're a group of Scientists that the people of the commonwealth see as the boogeyman the utilizes to do most of their dirty work as the group has three different generations of synths generation one and two synths are very robotic in fact

nick is a generation 2 synth and gen 3 synths are what is causing the paranoia like the one we see in diamond city generation 3 synths are almost indistinguishable from human beings this will play into a mission later with the Brotherhood of steel but for those who have never played this game before to give you an idea harkness from fallout 3 and even the mayor of diamond city are synths you might be asking how are they since they don't look like one that's the problem to even make a generation 3 synth the institute kidnaps people

and replaces them with a robotic body which is why they look like humans that's what's causing the paranoia people don't want to be kidnapped so they're really Terrified of the institute and synth so anyone affiliated with them will be shot it's a really risky situation to be in as this could mean your family is just a synthetic robot and that's what makes the institute such a fantastic faction at least for now they are this infamous folk tale with zero bases of operation anywhere near the commonwealth so people are confused whether or not they even exist

to begin with just like the minutemen the institute will come into Play later so we'll hold off on their story for now after making our way to park street station we run into a new gang called the trigger men they are this little gang with a small quirk that being that they look like 1950 mobsters followers had this problem for years where the developers make groups with a different name but change very little the fiends vipers talon company gunners and the trigger men are all just mercenaries or raiders with different Names there's barely any info

in regards to a proper backstory and there's never any quests related to them that give them any time to break free from the others like i said it's not a fallout 4 issue it's a whole series issue but i thought it would bring it up anyway skinny malone is the leader of the triggerman and he's holding nick hostage and it's our job to break him out assuming you survive nick will travel back to diamond city with you so he can Help find sean and from the details we relate to nick we discover that from this

information that a man named kellogg might be involved this is a small detail but i really enjoy the way nick goes about handling the information process he has ellie behind him writing down information and checking prior cases just in case anything relates to their prior work and the way he determines certain actions is really well done like when he questions why Someone would just kidnap an infant specifically and determines that it's not a random kidnapping but rather someone planned for this to happen meaning someone is pulling the strings on this operation he felt like a

real detective and even the mission after felt like a real hunt and i've always appreciated that back to the mission nick is well aware of who kellogg is and even remembers where his old residence was in diamond city the problem is that The door is locked the game provides numerous ways to open the door which i've always liked it's really nice to give the player the freedom to complete an objective even when it's as small as opening a door once we get inside we have to search for clues which leads to the discovery of a

hidden door nothing is here but we do manage to find gwyneth style beer in san francisco sunlight cigars we can then use dog meat to track his scent and hopefully that'll lead us To him the actual trip itself was nice and was a combination of investigation and combat so things didn't really feel too tedious on the way there we managed to make it to fort hagen and discover that kellogg is in the building we finally come face to face with the man himself and discover that he was working for the institute which means the institute

had a hand in sean's kidnapping except we still don't know why obviously we know how this is going To end so we fight kellogg and it's a really tough fight he has invisibility and his pistol is incredibly dangerous eluding his body we can either discover that he was a synth or at least partially synthetic as he has mechanical components in his inventory kellogg sadly is very good at covering his tracks and we once again turn up empty-handed but due to some brainstorming nick suggests that we can go to the memory then the memory den is

A place in good neighbor and they have this technology that allows you to relive your past memories it's weird and has definitely never explained how this works but we've seen pods used like this in very similar ways like operation anchorage and tranquility lane and fallout 3 so this isn't really too far-fetched for the universe after dr amari hooks us up we get glimpses into kellogg's life where it seems that his childhood was quite rough as he got Older he started taking on riskier jobs to support the family and would eventually come in contact with the

institute it's also hinted that kellogg was given tech upgrades to prolong his life as when he was a kid the radio announced that five states would join to become the ncr it's unclear when this happened but the first leader president eredesh became the president of the ncr in 2189 so kellogg would be extremely old by now which is clearly not the case In game it's a nice detail and a really cool discovery for those who are familiar with the old war after being hired by the institute kellogg was tasked with kidnapping sean but we still

don't know why after he kidnapped sean he would take him to his house in diamond city before being taken by an institute courser and given instructions to hunt down a scientist named virgil in the glowing sea before the memory disappears we do discover how the Institute is able to operate as the way to enter is via teleportation after exiting the memory then we can talk to nick about what we found out but we've discovered that kellogg is now speaking through nick this is a horrifying discovery as it seems that in some way kellogg is still

alive but it never gets brought up again not in the main quest not the side quest hell nick brushes it off when we bring it up to him this whole plot twist starts and ends in a Few seconds so i have to ask why even bother adding it in the first place the only thing i can think of is that some writer had a really good idea in mind but it was cut and then never taken out of the game it just shows a lack of quality assurance at bethesda our next objective is to find

this dr virgil who was originally employed by the institute so if anyone knows how to teleport in and out of the facility it's going to be him if you're starting to think that This game is really padding out its main quest you'd be correct we're now entering mission 7 and we just figured out who's behind the kidnapping it's not until mission 10 when we finally make it to the institute and discover why sean was kidnapped this is because bethesda put all their money on the reveal of the institute i'm going to summarize the events of

these upcoming missions rather than extend this video longer than it needs to be as i don't want to take up More time than necessary so basically after the memory then we make it to the glowing sea meet with virgil who says we need a coarser chip in order to teleport we find a courser near the cit ruins take the chip in his brain and craft a giant teleporter use the chip as the authorization key until we finally make it to the institute like i said there's a whole lot of padding in this part and it

was honestly boring me trying to write about it so i thought a Summarization would be easier but desder really wanted to surprise the player with the reveal so they made this long drawn out journey which more than likely had the opposite effects than what they were intending in this playthrough minus a few side quests here and there i went from main quest to main quest even adding on the fact that i knew where i was going and how to get there it still took me around nine hours to get into the institute keep in mind

many players Will not do what i did for this playthrough and instead dedicate tons of time to side quests and settlements so it could take double or triple that time just to enter the building so the question still remains was it worth it initially 100 the reveal that bethesda was holding on to for so long is that the leader of the institute is your son since he was taken out of cryo after being kidnapped he aged like a normal Human and is now a 60 year old man in charge of the institute the big bad

boogeyman of the commonwealth the group that presumably kidnaps people and replaces them with robots is led by your own son it's a fantastic twist and one i did not see coming this also presents a problem as it's quite obvious that the institute will have a hand in the ending of this game so are you willing to go against your family and its wishes for a different possibly better alternative It's a great reveal and one that had me questioning some of my future decisions throughout the game at least for the most part after arriving in the

institute we finally make it to the last act of the game where all the endings take place and it's here where fallout 4 completely falls flat fall 4 has four different endings that are related to the four main factions the minutemen railroad brotherhood of steel in the institute i'll say this now then explain When we get to the specific factions but the brotherhood story is quite impressive the institutes is underdeveloped and the railroad and minutemen do not belong in the main quest whatsoever firstly let's start off on a high note with the brotherhood of steel

thought four's brotherhood of steel is probably the most consistent faction in the entire game they have one goal and they stick with that goal until the very end their goal is also clearly Stated which is to eradicate the institute the brotherhood of steel preserves old technology and destroys other technology that is deemed too powerful to be left in anyone's hands the institute is that technology the ability to create synthetic organisms and being able to teleport at will while also making breakthroughs in other fields is grounds for blowing it up it was clear from the moment

elder maxson spoke what the brotherhood stands for And what they want to accomplish but i don't even need to explain this as maxine explains it perfectly by attempting to play god the institute has taken the sanctity of human life and corrupted it beyond measure all i've done for the brotherhood all the blood i've spilled in our name how can you say that about you're the physical embodiment of what we hate most technology that's gone too far look around you dance Look at the scorched earth and the bones that litter the wasteland millions perhaps even billions

died because science outpaced man's restraint they called it a new frontier and pushing the envelope completely disregarding the repercussions can't you see the same thing is happening again you're a single bomb in an arsenal of thousands preparing to lay waste to what's left of mankind you're comparing dance to a nuclear bomb This machine might not be a bomb but its goal is exactly the same place it where you want the damage done and when you least expect it it delivers a lethal blow without warning and without mercy a precision strike delivered right at the heart

of the enemy how can you trust the word of a machine that thinks it's alive a machine that's had its mind erased its thoughts programmed its very soul manufactured those ethics that it's striving to champion aren't even its own They were artificially inserted in an attempt to have it blend into society to put it simply the institute made the decision to create since because they could rather than ask if they should that speech of his was extremely powerful but where maxine fails is at the nuance as he sees all sins as bad regardless of background

or circumstance this makes him quite simple minded and unwilling to reanalyze his own beliefs but it's because he's written this way Just because his worldview is idiotic doesn't make him a poorly written character maxine is a static character within the story one that never changes their views beliefs or values regardless of what happens and it's what makes him such a great character in this game the brotherhood of steel's main quest will either start when you meet paladin dance or when you see the prydwen enter the commonwealth for the first time and i appreciate that this

ending and other Endings blend into the game with fault new vegas we had our one main goal which was to kill benny after we kill him we get introduced to yes man which is one of the endings and then afterwards we can walk over to the lucky 38 and start mr house's ending but not before being stopped by the legion in the ncr all four factions before many have no missions for us and then afterwards they all come out at the same time fallout 4 attempts to make things flow more Smoothly however the brotherhood of

steel has 14 missions to accomplish in its ending and six of them can be completed before arriving at the institute this goes for all the other factions too minus the institute obviously it was unique in welcome change as it made the game feel a bit more real making it seem like these missions were just the natural progression to what we were already doing as you could do the endings Alongside the main quest as opposed to just having them appear assuming we start from the beginning we meet palette and dance at a nearby police station who

we assist in fending off some feral ghouls the east coast brotherhood of steel is no stranger to recruiting outsiders so after we showcased our combat prowess paladin dance wants to take us on a few missions and see if we really have what it takes during one of these missions we get our hands on a Deep range transmitter which dance uses to fix the brotherhood of steel's communication relay it's unclear if this was the reason that prydwen was called into the commonwealth but if it was then it's the start of our actions having meaning the brotherhood

of steel's story has us go through all the ranks of the brotherhood from initiate to sentinel each of these ranks has some sort of reward and the missions we are given are reflective of our rank at night paladin And sentinel were given new paint jobs for a power armor but also got other upgrades like the medic pump and jetpack the missions also get progressively more difficult as we do simple retrieval missions in the start like the one with paladin dance to eventually leading the assault on the institute it feels like we're actually making progress within

the faction although i do understand the criticism of this as many claimed it's bizarre that you can go from the lowest To the highest rank in the brotherhood in just a couple days my only defense is that it's simply just a game i don't have a problem if things are sped up to keep the game interesting what i care about is making sure that i feel like i'm actually progressing after the prid win arrives is where things start to get exciting if anyone is going to have an aircraft it's the brotherhood of steel but an

airship is next level this is the home of many soldiers within the Brotherhood and is under the command of elder maxson the reveal of this caught me by surprise a brotherhood airship was nowhere near the top of my list of things i would encounter in this game the ship for the most part seems rather realistic i've never been on an airship but there are numerous decks dedicated to controlling the prudent and repairing its systems and there's even a main deck where all the doctors vendors and cooks all sit it seems like a place that you

Could actually live in the game also forces us to speak to some of the leaders of the ships who were more familiar with its inhabitants and its layout after this is where we start to hit the meat of the story the main goal of this brotherhood chapter is to wipe out the institute and the best way to do that is with liberty prime all of the missions after arriving at the institute are all about building liberty prime we attempt to recruit dr lee who was a Scientist who worked on him back in fallout 3 we

also attempt to hunt for specific parts like a high-powered magnet and a beryllium agitator which will come into play later but during this however two important quests appear one is related to the railroad as the brotherhood sees them as a threat to their operation and need to be wiped out and the other is the discovery that palette and dance is a synth we get the order from elder maxson and we are given No other option but to execute him for being a synth now obviously that's the only option he gives us but when we do

meet with dance we can talk to him about the situation and convince him not to give up his own life dance can agree with our decision and decides to just run away from the commonwealth but before we can see him leave elder maxson gets to him first we have to convince elder max and despair dance or else we'll have no choice but to execute him This quest was incredible and would not have been as impactful if it was anyone but dance he was the one who sponsored us and is the reason we're even in the

brotherhood to begin with so the fact that we have to kill not only a fellow soldier but a dear friend is rather heartbreaking it's also pushing against maxon's belief as he thought of since as the enemy but one of his own paladins who did nothing to betray the brotherhood as a synth and now has to Come to terms with the situation whether that means killing dance and continuing to believe all sins are bad or realizing that not all sins have malicious intent it is a tough decision for him but he does stay true to his

word and refuses to see dance as a person the finale of the brotherhood questline is exactly how you'd expect we escort the brotherhood and liberty prime to the cit ruins and blow a hole in the ground that leads to the institute we then make our way Through the institute place a fusion charge on the faction's reactor escape and then blow up the facility this fight is really difficult but given that the brotherhood of steel has soldiers geared in full power armor this was a cakewalk before blowing up the institute though we do get to meet

with sean before he dies and can have one last chat which i always thought was a nice touch we can even talk to the synth version of sean which we saw when we first arrived at The institute i'm not entirely sure what bethesda attempted to do here but my only guess was to give the protagonist a chance to actually raise their son as they had originally wanted it's a cool detail but for me personally it just wouldn't feel the same so i've always left him there at the institute it's after this where we get to

see the end credits and once again i'll address that later once we finish all the factions our next faction is the institute we Continue where we left off in the main quest and we discover that the head of the institute is our son sean he knows that we no doubt have questions and is willing to answer any that we have from our talk with sean we can discover that the reason the institute had kidnapped him back then was because he had pure dna the radiation of the wasteland corrupted a lot of people's dna and the

institute needed a dna sample in order to make gen 3 synths so to have the best Chance of success they would need someone's dna who was untouched by the world's radiation that's why kellogg was annoyed that he had to kill our spouse and why he calls us the backup as just in case sean didn't work out there's at least another vault dweller they can use to answer the next question which would be why an infant and not us well it's quite obvious that it's really easy to corrupt or convince a child rather than an adult

especially considering at Sean's age he probably hasn't had consciousness yet so his entire life through his eyes has been with the institute it's also here where sean says that the institute is humanity's best hope for the future and that the institute has the commonwealth's best interest at heart you've already established a backstory and even a motivation as to why the institute exists it's also a great way of making the faction a bit more gray as they seem Like the evilest faction in the commonwealth but maybe working with them we may realize that they're just simply

misunderstood however this doesn't happen just like on the prydwen we're tasked with meeting the division leaders in the institute and are told to explore the robotics facilities bioscience advanced systems and the synth retention bureau divisions by exploring these areas we can see that the institute is contradicting itself the facilities Division is about maintaining the institute systems on a day-to-day basis robotics is where the synths are created the sense retention bureau is dedicated to tracking down rogue synths bioscience is all about maintaining the food and water within the institute and the advanced systems division was created

to expand their own technology like teleportation and synth weaponry so how does this relate to the institute having the commonwealth's best interest at Heart it sounds like they're trying to be as self-sufficient as possible in fact that's exactly what they're doing as a few missions later we're told to find that beryllium agitator we talked about before as that can power the institute's nuclear reactor so now they never need any power from the surface with that reactor they can now be 100 self-sufficient and can now live underground forever once again i have to ask how does

this help the commonwealth It sounds like the institute doesn't care about anyone above ground yet claims to have their best interests at heart how is that possible to this day i still have no idea what the institute actually wants in this game there was a clue at one point but that plot was completely dropped almost immediately after the battle of bunker hill mission we meet with sean who steps outside for the first time and upon talking to him he says that the commonwealth is dead And there's no future here this sounds like a great start

to a new plot as sean dedicated years to helping the commonwealth only to realize it was doomed from the start thus it caused him to focus on just his fellow scientists and leave the commonwealth to die except this idea was never brought up by sean so we can't assume that's what he's thinking plus as we discussed earlier the divisions within the institute only performed tasks to benefit the institute So saving the commonwealth was never their plan to begin with regardless what's more important is the present with the commonwealth lost in the eyes of sean what

would the institute do now will they attempt to help other places in the united states will they take the route of the brotherhood and instead of helping the people directly maybe wipe out the super mutants while they're at it no they don't do anything the only divisions in the institute that don't Completely benefit the facility is the robotics lab and the synth retention bureau they do use synths for janitorial purposes within the facility but they also have coursers who hunt down rogue synths and also capture people to replace them with sins but why they're already

self-sufficient and have no plans of helping the commonwealth so why bother making more sense i understand that some of the synths are used as a way to keep an eye on people in the Commonwealth but if they plan to stay completely underground what's the point do you see how confusing this is the institute has no clear goal at all throughout the game and even if they did the divisions within the institute do not mesh with that gold at all it's the most confusing faction in this game because no one knows what they want help not

even sean knows what he wants and that makes this faction a complete mess assuming you've shut your brain off While you play the quests aren't too bad most of them are related to making the institute completely self-sufficient as they collect the beryllium agitator and hire a man named wallace who should be useful in evolving their current systems throughout these quests though we've been periodically going to meet with sean and the division leaders and it's announced here that sean is dying of cancer and that will be the new director of the institute it's quite a shock

to Hear this as despite the fact that he works with the institute he's still our son that's why we have those last words with sean at the end of each ending as he's slowly getting weaker and weaker and even if we didn't blow up the institute he probably would have died shortly after anyway as director we really don't get to do anything we get to make one choice on whether or not to upgrade the sense weapons or to mass produce more of them but that's about it The institute finale is where we as the director

order the synths and coursers to attack the railroad and the brotherhood of steel attacking the brotherhood is actually pretty cool as we infect the liberty prime with a virus that caused him to self-destruct and blow up the airport and the pridwin it was a cool mission and the all-out war that occurred during this quest was pretty cool too the only quest we haven't discussed though is the battle Of bunker hill as i wanted to save this for last as it relates to our next faction battle of bunker hill might be the worst quest in the

entire game for one specific reason bethesda did not playtest this at all one thing we haven't mentioned but has been happening throughout some of these missions is the point of no return before the start of a mission you might get a message saying that continuing this mission will make you an enemy to this faction should you Accept all npcs of that faction treat you as hostile and you cannot complete their quest and subsequent ending however before this the faction is in good standing with you the battle of bunker hill is what happens when you introduce

the point of no return to late in the game i said before that you can do many of the factions missions before even getting to the institute as fallout 4 blends them in seamlessly but that's where the problem lies battle of bunker Hill doesn't have a point of no return message because the mission includes the brotherhood the railroad and the institute as for the mission details and the basement of bunker hill is four synths given the values of each group the institute wants you to take them back the railroad wants to sneak them out of

the commonwealth and the brotherhood wants to kill them it turns into this large three scale war and on paper it's fantastic in practice it's [ __ ] awful since there isn't a point of no return the player can keep good standing with all factions so assuming you join the railroad the institute and the brotherhood prior to this mission it's a three-way war where no one shoots at you obviously any faction that is friendly to you won't attack but if all of them are friendly then no one attacks you and you essentially become a spectator it's

not like this is even a rare circumstance anyway all you have to Do is just join each group and assuming you want to explore the commonwealth and experience all the game has to offer then you're going to end up in the same predicament it's a sad excuse for a quest and while i could dock points on the institute for having this quest this isn't the only faction this happens to overall though the institute is a mess it's a faction with lots of potential but not a lot of development it's a faction that has no clear

goal or Motivation which is required if you're going to not only be the antagonist of a story but also one of the main factions within the story we the player don't know what the institute wants because the institute itself doesn't know what it wants and that's pretty embarrassing the railroad is our third faction and is dedicated to freeing the sins from the institute it's a really cool concept and one that intrigued me right away you have to go through this long scavenger Hunt following this red trail to an old church before putting in a code

that leads to their safe house in my opinion the railroad does not belong as a main quest faction and would be much more useful as if it was used as a secondary faction like the boomers and the great cons of new vegas within new vegas the boomers and great cons can be used to help complete your mission like having the boomers bomb hoover dam or convincing the great khans to fight for You they don't have a main set of missions but can help factions that do the railroad should have been this faction the only problem

that arises though is the conflicting motivations the other factions have the railroad would not want to help the brotherhood of steel or the institute as they go against what they believe in i'll admit there is definitely some holes in my idea but regardless at the end of the day the set of quests this group has is Terrible the first quest of the railroad is called tradecraft where you and deacon another member of the railroad are to infiltrate the switchboard to recover some technology the switchboard was an old base for the railroad that has been overrun

by since this mission is exactly like battle of bunker hill as if you're allied with the institute the synths will only focus on deacon allowing you to walk right past them the next mission is where things start to Get a little interesting desdemona the leader of the railroad informs us that there's a scientist within the institute that has been trying to help since escape he says that there are 13 cents ready to escape whenever we're ready but desdemona uses this opportunity to go behind the sciences back and instead of rescuing 13 cents wants to rescue

all of them in one sweep it's not a terrible plan it's definitely risky though desdemona says that the number one Problem the railroad face is manpower there just isn't enough people to launch a large-scale attack by themselves her plan is to have the sense fight for their freedom as the number of cents that will join the fight should even out the numbers once again it's incredibly risky but maybe worth a shot to prepare for this we need to talk with synth z114 who instructs us to kill the guards guarding this tunnel this is so that

they can be undisturbed while the rest Of the synths craft weapons for the upcoming rebellion however we can't just kill the guards then start shooting as crafting weapons takes time so z114 tells us to keep sean on our good side so he doesn't suspect anything is wrong this means we have to do the institute ending until a certain point and that certain point makes no sense to me firstly we are shawn's father so getting him on our side is not even a problem and we're also technically the director So he shouldn't even be a problem

anyway but what bothers me the most is to complete the railroad quest we need to help the institute perfection that prides itself on saving since it's crazy that we have to recapture five cents and power the institute's nuclear reactor before we can start our rebellion we are literally making the institute stronger which would then make our rebellion that much harder even though we have done all of that waiting to get to this part of The quest we still can't do the rebellion yet as we get a warning that the brotherhood of steel is about to

invade the safe house we push the small group of knights back but then the game completely loses me due to the overwhelming power of the brotherhood of steel some of the railroad members died including its best soldier glory so it's basically deacon tinkertom desdemona and us we are by far the most capable soldier in this faction and everyone Knows this as the others are thanking us for helping they said that without our help they'd be dead so it's clear that without us the railroad would be nothing and this isn't a good thing this means the

faction can't operate smoothly without intervention from the player making this a bad faction i don't know whether or not the writers gave up after this point but they continue to run with this as our objective is now to fight the brotherhood of steel since they shot First to do this we need to assault a nearby police station that has brotherhood members kill the soldiers then take the vertebrae to the pridwin the only people on this mission are deacon tinker tom and us so once again it's thanks to us that we got the vertibird and this

quest reaches the ultimate peak of absurdity as the great plan that tom and d can come up with is for the player to blow up the prid win alone we need to place three explosive Charges then run out of the blast zone before we blow it up i genuinely laughed at this plan there was no way the writers thought a solo assault on the prydwen was a good idea for a quest it's just bad and there's no way to justify it after blowing up the prydwen we finally get to start the rebellion which leads to

the same ending as the brotherhood of steel where we place the fusion charge on the reactor and blow up the institute with the added bonus that We did rescue some synths if it feels like we're ending this faction discussion quite early then you're correct as the railroad only has six main quests in its ending which is far less compared to the other factions the reason behind it is that half of the railroad's quest line is dedicated to completing the institute questline within those six quests though only one or two of them are actually good given

the number of quests the faction has and The fact that the faction literally wouldn't exist without the player's help it shows that this faction shouldn't be a part of the main quest at all even though the brotherhood of steel assault the institute just like the railroad did they at least are highly trained soldiers in power armor the brotherhood is the only faction i can see actually standing a chance against a full-on invasion against the institute i don't have a problem with games making the Player the sole reason the story moves along but when it's as

bad as the railroad it's a problem going back to the brotherhood of steel yes we made the high-powered magnets and found the stash of nukes and was responsible for leading the charge to the institute but we didn't build liberty prime and we didn't do all the shooting during the escort either we had assistance every single mission in the railroad would not be completed if not for the player you had To escort deacon to the switchboard you had to be the middlemen between the synths and the railroad you needed to kill the guards so they could

craft their weapons and you needed to destroy the pridwin on your own if the railroad lost every single member in the faction but the main character it would still be the same faction as it was before as it is now and that's when you know you've gone too far our last faction is the minimen i have the same feeling about The minutemen that i do with the railroad and the context that they should be a secondary faction this one's a bit more believable than the railroad as the minutemen have no natural enemies so siding with

either faction wouldn't be a problem at all all the men and men care about are the settlers and residents of the commonwealth they want to protect them from super mutants raiders and ghouls which has always made me scratch my head as to why they were Given an ending in the first place the minutemen start out right away with the worst example of rewarding gameplay as within minutes you're made the leader of the minutemen i don't think i need to explain how incredibly dumb this is all we do is save preston and build a couple settlements

stuff for sanctuary and we're already general even if we were to ignore that we don't even get the experience of being a general as preston still makes all our decisions and gives Us all the quests we need to continue so we're simply just a general by name the minute men's main quest is a story is not too bad as you go around helping other settlements with their issues and showing the people of the commonwealth that the minimen can be trusted taking into account actual gameplay it's pretty boring it's a faction that is filled with radiant

quests and some of the actual missions are locked until the player has gotten more settlements on Their sides with just endless radiant quests that are done and over within five minutes after taking over four settlements preston wants to make a move on the castle which used to be the faction's main base of operations the quest is quite fun and you do get to take down a mirelurk queen which is cool too after a few days a woman named ronnie will use the castle intercom to call us and request that we meet her at the castle

she is apparently an old war Veteran of the old minutemen and want to join up again after seeing what we've accomplished once again a really solid mission and we also get access to artillery units that we can use in combat everything is starting to go really great until just like the railroad it immediately nose dives our next quest is called form ranks which is activated by completing the quest inside job and banished from the institute the inside job quest is where we give Sturges a hollow tape of the institute's network and banished from the institute

is exactly what it sounds like after this we then have to recruit eight total settlements before getting an emergency distress call that the institute is invading the castle we can then use the settlement system to build defenses and hopefully hold them back the castle defense is actually really fun and can vary in difficulty depending on how much material you've been stockpiling for This but the issue is that this mission shouldn't have even happened in the first place to complete banish from the institute we either have to kill sean a named scientist or unrelated to killing

things we have to pass those points of no return we discussed before the point of no return for the railroad quest is on the last mission so you literally cannot do this as an option since you're on the last mission and there's no turning back the brotherhood is the same Way except it's the second last mission this is technically a viable option but who would get to the end of the brotherhood questline than stop especially after doing a dozen quests with them this leaves us with our only option which is to kill sean or the

staff meaning we have to willingly become enemies with the institute so that we can finish the minutemen questline the writers couldn't think of a natural way to make the minutemen the Enemy of the institute so they force the player to go out and kill someone at the institute all so that they can continue the quest this just shows that the minutemen shouldn't even belong here it's not a natural decision and is forcing the player to do something just to complete the main quest the cherry on top of all of this is that numerous times preston

will ask why the institute is attacking us like we didn't just kill a bunch of their staff to do this Mission it's probably the laziest faction in all of fallout 4. it's a faction filled with radiant quests that had to be forced into conflict by the game itself so that they had a reason to be included in the game bethesda tried to give the player more options by giving us four factions to choose from when in actuality it's really just two as the institute and the brotherhood of steel are the only factions worthy of being

considered a main faction if that Wasn't already bad enough fallout 4 doesn't even bother being creative when it comes to its ending three of the four factions all have the same objective which is to use the fusion charts to blow up the institute reactor this even continues in the end game slides but does this somehow manage to go backwards with fallout 4 as it has less variety than its predecessor depending on who goes into the purifier in fallout 3 there was a different narration it Wasn't as expansive as new vegas but it was a start

fallout 4 has a total of five slides and only one of them can be changed the first slide only changes based on your ending except it's only the institute since the minutemen railroad and the brotherhood of steel all have the same ending which means the slide at the end of the game is the exact same the narration in these slides is also just bare bones as is just the character talking about their family and How they wish things were different we don't get a single word about what the future of the commonwealth looks like thanks

to our choice we don't know if the brotherhood left after defeating the institute or if the minimum became a much larger faction after the settlers heard of the news of their triumph we get nothing it made this journey completely worthless all these quests made us feel like we were making an actual difference when it never mattered To begin with fallout 4 starts strong but plummets the moment we leave the institute and while the game is still fun to play when it comes to gameplay and exploration its story is awful it's full of underdeveloped factions contradictions

and quests that at some point make no sense at all to put it simply fallout 4 is a complete mess thank you all for making it this far in the video today i usually don't like making negative videos like this Especially when it comes to fallouts but i feel like it needed to be said if you want to watch other fallout content i have videos for fallout 3 new vegas and 76 that are much more positive than this one if not i have some other great videos like my analysis on cyberpunk one year after release

and why prey deserved more attention than it got as always like the video if you enjoyed and subscribe if you're new and of course thank you to my returning viewers for Coming back take care everyone goodbye [Music] [Music] you