This could've been a nice plot idea with the Outcasts waging a civil war with the DC Brotherhood, and it's a pity the difference between the two was so poorly portrayed. One could finally see a physical clash between zealots and new thinkers, unlike a dispute in Tactics. But I hope the topic of BOS (as well as Enclave) is over and will not be picked up again in the future, they've had their time.
DC BoS vs. 'General Bos' (informative)
- Thread starter FOvet
- Start date
Oppen
FIXT n°1 fan
Again, "moral superiority" is relative. At least, at the individual level.FOvet said:
Most elders actually should believe they're doing great deeds for humankind the way they're behaving. Their loyalty is actually their loyalty to humankind, mostly.
I do think like you in that point, in fact, I always try to make them get involved with society. But I don't think they will do that by themselves.FOvet said:You would make an excellent Paladin or even Elder. That last line just sooo reminded me of the NV chapters elder...wow. I'm not being a smartass either--I do LIKE the BoS, I justs feel they need to be more involved in society. But when you stated "The BoS cannot save the entire wasteland which is why they're supposed to horde technology and safeguard the future by keeping the past safe.", I could almost see a guy in T-51b power armor wielding a laser rifle speaking to an innitiate! I love it!
SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
Case in point: Father Elijah. He believed FANATICALLY that killing everyone in the BoS and resuming their mission with "ghosts" (holograms) and machines was the only way to "save them" from themselves and their misguided ways. He was SURE his plans were the only "right" thing to do.Oppen said:
FOvet
Wandering the Wastelands
That's true, Oppen...I highly doubt, unless some catastrophic event forces their hand, that the BoS will do the right thing and involve themselves more in society. Which is a shame, think of all the good the BoS could do, IF they did--Lyons BoS being an example of that.
Hell, the BoS could actually get society up and running again; there's sooo much potential there that isn't being met. This is one reason I was glad to see something new with the FO3 BoS. Maybe they could have gone about it in a different way, and by all rights, Lyons should have had far fewer followers stick with him, but one has to admit, the idea of an offshoot of the BoS, with all of their tech, helping the wastelands...it's a pretty novel idea.
Hell, the BoS could actually get society up and running again; there's sooo much potential there that isn't being met. This is one reason I was glad to see something new with the FO3 BoS. Maybe they could have gone about it in a different way, and by all rights, Lyons should have had far fewer followers stick with him, but one has to admit, the idea of an offshoot of the BoS, with all of their tech, helping the wastelands...it's a pretty novel idea.
SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
Speaking of "Lyons should have had far fewer followers", that just reminded me of more quibbles...
In FO2, it's AMAZING that you run into a "stray" BoS member when you find some ass-end-of-nowhere town (The Den), and you're not surprised when he turns you away. When you run into ANOTHER, you're even more shocks to see "so many" of them out and about. By the time you reach their major outpost this far out in San Fran, you too (the player, not just the Chosen One you're playing) are out for answers. It's just so strange and foreign seeing THREE members so far away.
New Vegas also treated them like this, when you had to KNOW the locations of the advanced scouts to be able to find them, and when you'd run into the dead bodies of ill-fated squads, they fell to something massive. A HUGE crater spewing lethal radiation, the exact cause of which is never explained. A MORTAR STRIKE that they didn't think to expect. A "cave in" (it might have been a wall, but that counts!) that crushed them. All extraordinary events, and then there was just the 3 squads. There were very very few BoS to "go around", and those who did weren't eradicated by junkies and scorpions; even their reckless initiates had no trouble running away from a NEST of Radscorpions...
But in FO3? Walk anywhere, and you'll find their bodies LITTERING ditches and "overrun" outposts. In several areas you'll find small guard stations that, for all intents and purposes, WOULD be able to hold its ground against any sizable, small-armed forces. These are Paladins in full Power Armor, after all. A bunch of bullets are nothing. But you find dead Paladins falling to bear traps in the Raider hideout of the Arlington Library. You find Power Armored corpse after corpse strewn across trenches, taken out by grenades and rifle-bearing mutants. On top of there just being TOO MANY in the streets of DC, they also all drop like flies. The Bethesda BoS just have no PRESENCE (in the thematic sense); they really do come off like empty fan service, drowned in a treatment and execution that doesn't apply to their specific universe/lore. For example, it's as if Christopher Nolan had revitalized the Batman movies by introducing a Dark Knight who slew mobsters in the streets with drive-by's. Done right (and with such an accomplished director, it WOULD have been awesome), you'd love the movie(s), but that would not have REMOTELY been Batman; a dark anti-hero whose few virtues are that he never kills, and never, ever uses a gun.
Such is the East Coast Brotherhood. If you had no context with what they really meant and represented for real Fallout, you would've looked upon them with awe and appreciation. But it's knowing that they're completely mishandled and thematically butchered that we come to hate them.
In FO2, it's AMAZING that you run into a "stray" BoS member when you find some ass-end-of-nowhere town (The Den), and you're not surprised when he turns you away. When you run into ANOTHER, you're even more shocks to see "so many" of them out and about. By the time you reach their major outpost this far out in San Fran, you too (the player, not just the Chosen One you're playing) are out for answers. It's just so strange and foreign seeing THREE members so far away.
New Vegas also treated them like this, when you had to KNOW the locations of the advanced scouts to be able to find them, and when you'd run into the dead bodies of ill-fated squads, they fell to something massive. A HUGE crater spewing lethal radiation, the exact cause of which is never explained. A MORTAR STRIKE that they didn't think to expect. A "cave in" (it might have been a wall, but that counts!) that crushed them. All extraordinary events, and then there was just the 3 squads. There were very very few BoS to "go around", and those who did weren't eradicated by junkies and scorpions; even their reckless initiates had no trouble running away from a NEST of Radscorpions...
But in FO3? Walk anywhere, and you'll find their bodies LITTERING ditches and "overrun" outposts. In several areas you'll find small guard stations that, for all intents and purposes, WOULD be able to hold its ground against any sizable, small-armed forces. These are Paladins in full Power Armor, after all. A bunch of bullets are nothing. But you find dead Paladins falling to bear traps in the Raider hideout of the Arlington Library. You find Power Armored corpse after corpse strewn across trenches, taken out by grenades and rifle-bearing mutants. On top of there just being TOO MANY in the streets of DC, they also all drop like flies. The Bethesda BoS just have no PRESENCE (in the thematic sense); they really do come off like empty fan service, drowned in a treatment and execution that doesn't apply to their specific universe/lore. For example, it's as if Christopher Nolan had revitalized the Batman movies by introducing a Dark Knight who slew mobsters in the streets with drive-by's. Done right (and with such an accomplished director, it WOULD have been awesome), you'd love the movie(s), but that would not have REMOTELY been Batman; a dark anti-hero whose few virtues are that he never kills, and never, ever uses a gun.
Such is the East Coast Brotherhood. If you had no context with what they really meant and represented for real Fallout, you would've looked upon them with awe and appreciation. But it's knowing that they're completely mishandled and thematically butchered that we come to hate them.
FOvet said:
Not that novel. Tactics was all about an offshoot of the BoS, only they were relatively more plausible.
It would be really, REALLY nice to have a Fallout without the Brotherhood of Steel, but Bethesda doesn't seem to get they're not inherent to the franchise. Transplanting them from their home in the west to the east coast never made any sense, but I guess now we're stuck with them. You could argue power armor is a must for any Fallout game, sure, but the BoS? There's no inherent tie to the setting for them, they shouldn't be everywhere, only vaults should need to be in every Fallout.
SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
I always enjoy the mental exercises of looking at the Bethesda BoS and the Micro Forté BoS, and pointing out their similarities, yet how one works and the other just doesn't. One uses AIRSHIPS to make a great journey.... because seriously, they have a long way to go, and a lot of people to go it... Yet they only make it halfway. The other......... walks. They arrive at their destination totally safe and sound, short only one member. One begins to realize its goal of changing the wastes by offerings their technology and security to those around them, utilizing a practical (almost mob-like) business model of give and take, and receiving recruits in exchange for their protection. The other "protects" the wasters around them, as long as they don't get too close to them. They have fresh new recruits all the time, but they have a closed-door policy, so they seem to conjur them from the ether. Etcetera, etcetera. One just never makes any sense...Brother None said:
Specifically Vaults that actually make sense for the Vault Behavioral Project: SOCIAL experiments, meant to test the wills and psyches of its subjects. Not ridiculous evil science spoofs, such as abducting dwellers to try and turn them into super soldiers, or making a Vault into a lab for some experiment on (unrelated, different) super soldiers, or drug-induced layabouts, both of which "go horribly wrong". Completely cliche, and just had no practical reason to exist within the Vault Experiment. The best FO3 Vault was 108, because it IS a really neat (and warped) idea to see what would happen to a population who had genetic predispositions to all die prematurely, with access to cloning technology. Kinda like Saber Marionette, only without the need to procreate for lack of women...Brother None said:
Don't forget they took a little girl along (Sarah Lyons), coz nothing like taking a pre-teen along on a military mission.
Vault 108 is ok I guess, except it was supposed to open up not too long after the bombs fell (40 years or so). Logically the cloning experiments all took place in the early 2100s, but somehow the clones are all running around in 2277. Just one of those "Bethesda absolutely does not pay attention to any kind of sensible timeline" things. Fallout 3 really should have been set before Fallout, it's the only way the Capital Wasteland would have made sense.
Vault 108 is ok I guess, except it was supposed to open up not too long after the bombs fell (40 years or so). Logically the cloning experiments all took place in the early 2100s, but somehow the clones are all running around in 2277. Just one of those "Bethesda absolutely does not pay attention to any kind of sensible timeline" things. Fallout 3 really should have been set before Fallout, it's the only way the Capital Wasteland would have made sense.
SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
Take that quote, and blow it up. Then blow it up bigger. Then take that to Kinkos and have them blow it up some more. Repeat ad nauseum until it blankets the sky. What I'm trying to say is, "^- This". XDBrother None said:
But yeah, the idea BEHIND 108 was cool, but (as with everything else in the game) the execution of it was messed up. 200 years later there's still Gary's making more Gary's? Just unbelievable. Even if 106 made sense, it suffered the same problem. After 200 years, despite being driven insane, SOMEHOW the dwellers lasted as a society long enough to still use their vault like a vault.... until roughly a few months before your player character coincidentally happened to venture out into the great unknown when they all fell apart and you stumble upon it. Stims were harder to come by in FO2 than FO1, because they were a pre-war product being used up and they were slowly vanishing; but not on the East Coast! If it was 40 years later, the piles of chems and salvage you could amass would at least seem POSSIBLE.
Helps build character! =D /sarcasmBrother None said:
But yeah, the Brotherhood taking mere CHILDREN (not just Sarah, since you don't really meet many older members in the game, and they even had the latest Maxon kid with them.......) along with them on their treacherous, arduous, dangerous military zealotry campaign is just more of the same; it's absolutely silly.
Languorous_Maiar
A Smooth-Skin
You know that Vault was first time mentioned in Fallout Bible? : )
Ofc. I agree that Beth in bad way put that Vault into game, drugs are active 24/7? Bullshit...
It's a diffrence of vault full of druggies and a vault with all time active drugs, which kill every inhibitant of the vault after some time... ehh...
Oppen
FIXT n°1 fan
Brother None said:
Not only that, but the fact the Gary's keep having Pipboys (the outcasts try to get one from a Gary in Broken Steel), but there seems to be none which is not used at the time the outcasts found that Gary, which I guess they took from the vault. I don't know, why would an insane Gary take the Pipboy from its "father", or where else would he get it. How is that it seems to be "just enough" for all the Garys and none for the outcasts?
FOvet
Wandering the Wastelands
I do agree with this--Fallout 3 does seem a bit...how to put this....
Irradiated? 'New' to the radioactive fallout? I mean, in FO2 people were FARMING, for Christ's sake. F A R M I N G, and in FO3, they are struggling just to find clean water to drink. Unlike the FO3 'fanboys' or 'fangirls' I -can- admit the series shortcomings, even if I think some criticism is undeserved.
Irradiated? 'New' to the radioactive fallout? I mean, in FO2 people were FARMING, for Christ's sake. F A R M I N G, and in FO3, they are struggling just to find clean water to drink. Unlike the FO3 'fanboys' or 'fangirls' I -can- admit the series shortcomings, even if I think some criticism is undeserved.
I was very sad how Beth handled the split in the brotherhood. I think its a neat idea that a BOS leader would grow tired of doing nothing and decide to do something about it. But Lyons should only have gotten a few soldiers on his side and stolen a few weapons and armor before he ran off and formed his own group. Trying to teach all his wasteland recruits how to fight and scavenge. Seeing how a bunch of rabble with cheap weapons and armor but with very good training could handle a small group of well equipped and seasoned of BOS. Competing for the same limited resources and bases. Ah a man can dream cant he?
Oppen
FIXT n°1 fan
Well, there's a rule, I don't know if it's only talked about in NV (in that case, we shouldn't expect Beth thought about it first) which states the command chain is linear (i.e., you can only give orders to your direct subordinates, and they give them to theirs, and so on), which makes it a little more plaussible. He only needs to convince their direct subordinates.Flick said:
Dukeanumberone
It Wandered In From the Wastes
FOvet: I agree on almost all of your points, I think a lot of people glanced over a lot of conversations in the game.
oppen:
lyons is the staunchest of BOS, obviously you didnt talk to Paladin Kodiak about how lyons performed the scourge
You don't think the things we experience as people affect us? Thats horrible logic, never heard of people mellowing
in their old age, I've know some mean SoB's that are very tame now in their twilight years.
TorontRayne
Many people did not defect, but aren't 100% content with the order/path of management, et: all off base scribes.
The purifier serves 2 fold purposes 1 controlling tech, source of clean water, I agree on the use/ misuse of tech (crawler vertibirds not used to potential)
but reasoning begind the change of values isn't really that far fetched just not your cup of tea.
SnapSlav
Most of the Bos sneer at you through the whole game. I get you don't like the cutesy phrases, but many military's have them.
Semper fi, oooraH? Ooh ooh and don't forget to "Be all you can be"
or my personal fave "come on you apes you wanna live forever?"
"For these conditioned soldiers to NOT ONLY knowingly decide to stay with their AWOL commander, but also shift to a "noble" persona is just unrealistic."
You mean conditioned to follow orders? You mean taught to know their place and respect rank? Like the 2nd in command who didn't place Lyons
under arrest for treason, just left? You mean inconsistencies like those?
" but that would not have REMOTELY been Batman; a dark anti-hero whose few virtues are that he never kills, and never, ever uses a gun."
-off topic I know but BOB KANE batman did have a gun, you know the guy who CREATED HIM !!!!!
"Fallout 3 really should have been set before Fallout, it's the only way the Capital Wasteland would have made sense."
I concede that for most situations Setting FO3 before the first one would have made the overall lack of clean water and the general state of things a lot more plausible.
but not the change in behavior of LYONS BoS.
oppen:
lyons is the staunchest of BOS, obviously you didnt talk to Paladin Kodiak about how lyons performed the scourge
You don't think the things we experience as people affect us? Thats horrible logic, never heard of people mellowing
in their old age, I've know some mean SoB's that are very tame now in their twilight years.
TorontRayne
Many people did not defect, but aren't 100% content with the order/path of management, et: all off base scribes.
The purifier serves 2 fold purposes 1 controlling tech, source of clean water, I agree on the use/ misuse of tech (crawler vertibirds not used to potential)
but reasoning begind the change of values isn't really that far fetched just not your cup of tea.
SnapSlav
Most of the Bos sneer at you through the whole game. I get you don't like the cutesy phrases, but many military's have them.
Semper fi, oooraH? Ooh ooh and don't forget to "Be all you can be"
or my personal fave "come on you apes you wanna live forever?"
"For these conditioned soldiers to NOT ONLY knowingly decide to stay with their AWOL commander, but also shift to a "noble" persona is just unrealistic."
You mean conditioned to follow orders? You mean taught to know their place and respect rank? Like the 2nd in command who didn't place Lyons
under arrest for treason, just left? You mean inconsistencies like those?
" but that would not have REMOTELY been Batman; a dark anti-hero whose few virtues are that he never kills, and never, ever uses a gun."
-off topic I know but BOB KANE batman did have a gun, you know the guy who CREATED HIM !!!!!
"Fallout 3 really should have been set before Fallout, it's the only way the Capital Wasteland would have made sense."
I concede that for most situations Setting FO3 before the first one would have made the overall lack of clean water and the general state of things a lot more plausible.
but not the change in behavior of LYONS BoS.
Slaughter Manslaught
Vault Senior Citizen
SnapSlav said:
I think that FOT's Midwestern BOS is a pretty plausible development on the original BOS.
For starters, the people inside were all rebels intentionally chosen so the BOS could stash them on the airships, sick 'em at the mutants and make them go away. It would be pretty easy to make a single, coherent group of BOS rebels stick together: They are on their own in a far-away land, they lost many of their numbers after the crash and they've just been handed a golden-oportunity to show Lost Hills that they were right.
The way they interacted with the outside world made sense: They needed recruits and resources, so they made a deal for recruits and resources in exchange for protection from raiders and some tech. They fought raiders and other baddies because they had to fulfill their part of the deal, and also because the other factions were a menace to their mission. Its very feudal in a certain way.
One could wonder if the whole plot of FOT was a experiment by the BOS elders to see if the rebels' new BOS idea would work. Considering they managed to win a war against raiders, tribals, super mutants, reavers and robots, I would say the experiment was a sucess, even if the Chicago boys do seem to have declined after the game, but that's just hearsay and probably Caesar's Legion giving them grief.
Meanwhile in DC...
The Lyons' BOS is full of fail. Why? Because, despite being a super-heavily equiped army of elite soldiers, they can't get rid of a bunch of annoying, retarded super mutant knockoffs. The original Brotherhood BEAT what remained of the Unity, managing to protect the Core Region with MINIMAL LOSS OF LIFE, and the Midwestern BOS beat what remained of the Unity again. Those two Unity remants were composed of Elite Super Mutants soldiers, trained and equiped well enough to fight the BOS in even footing. Their commanders were inteligent super mutant officers who were well-trained and well-equiped, some of them even surpassing normal humans in intelligence. They had hundreds or even thousands of members. They operated on the entire Core Region and based themselves on two ultra-secret locations. They even had a bunch of cultists who spied for them.
The EEV Super Mutants are a bunch of murderous, man-eating rampaging big green monsters. They have no organized chain of command. They have no strategy, no plan, at best "finding more of the green stuff to dip more people," why they want to make MORE of themselves is never explained. Their modus operandi is killing and capturing everybody they find so they can eat or dip them. They have no intelligent officers and they get dumber over time. They operate around the area of pre-war DC, they're too big and dumb to porpousefully sneak and evade any sort of stalking. Their base is a Vault near a community of children that send their members into the outside world from time to time. Despite fighting against a totally inferior enemy, the East BOS is being pushed back by hordes of mutants. Why Lyons didn't use intelligence resources to find the mutants and them invade their base and murder them all is NEVER EXPLAINED, as its also never explained why they don't do anything to scavenge the FOUR Vaults whose existance is well-know to them.
Meanwhile in the West, BOS forces bleeds 40:1 casualty rates from the NCR in battles... fought in bad defensible positions. What the hell!
tl;dr; Lyons is a incompetent fuckwit who can't eradicate a bunch of "Super" Mutants that would take five weeks for the real BOS to take care of.
Nominated for best Fallout related post 2012. :p
Dukeanumberone
It Wandered In From the Wastes
oppen
There are several allusions as to why, first the bloody locked medical room where they tried to remove it and probably killed him, lacking a full understanding of the biometrics of the model. Which is alluded to at your birthday party where the tech guy tells you he special fit it for you. As to why would an insane Gary take the Pipboy from its "father", because HE's CRAZY!! RABELROU. Dunno really got nothing for that one.
There are several allusions as to why, first the bloody locked medical room where they tried to remove it and probably killed him, lacking a full understanding of the biometrics of the model. Which is alluded to at your birthday party where the tech guy tells you he special fit it for you. As to why would an insane Gary take the Pipboy from its "father", because HE's CRAZY!! RABELROU. Dunno really got nothing for that one.
Agreed. Or why they blew up the most technological advanced base instead of simply taking it over? Or a million other why's, the problem with the BOS is the same problem with the whole game, ideas that are cool that are never elaborated or given plausible reasoning or fully developed.
No, I think he is a victim of the bad writing that plagues the entire game, in the conversations you have with him he is very bright, very introspective, very calculating, the problem is it doesn't translate into the game world outside of conversations with him.
BigBoss
Your Local Scrub
The problem is is that people say the Brotherhood doesn't care.
This is not true. We have seen them do beneficial things for humanity.
If they "didn't" care would they have sent to Paladins to the Cathedral/Mariposa when the Vault Dweller proved the possible threat of the Master and the Unity?
Would they have made any attempt to fight the Enclave at all in FO2? Since most BoS members are pure strain humans the FEV virus engineered by the Enclave wouldn't have effected them. They could probably had cared less.
The Brotherhood could have sat in their bunker and watched the world collapse around them during FO1 or 2.
Just because the Brotherhood doesn't help with every single problem, or every little town the wasteland that is suffering or isn't making it does not make them bad people.
Thus, it is true that Lyon and his chapter did stray from their original mission, to find technology.
HOWEVER, if the Brotherhood was that cold hearted, they could have dismissed Lyons Chapter as a Brotherhood of Steel chapter all together, and told the Outcasts to go for an all-out war against these traitors.
But they still supported them, and let them continue on as a BoS chapter, however told them they would no longer receive supplies because they had strayed from their mission.
The BoS isn't the masochistic bastard organizations that they were portrayed as in Tactics, or as the Outcasts.
Granted, they didn't take every matter in the Wasteland into their hands, and be the shining knights of the wasteland that they could've been. But they did help out where they could.
It isn't realistic to think that just because someone "can" or has the "power" to help someone, they will.
Even police forces across the world do not act like the saviors they are made out to be and "protect the community" at all costs. And numerous departments have numerous cops who are dirty, and only out for themselves.
This doesn't make those police departments evil, or even useless. The police do help out where they can, and its their job.
It is not the Brotherhoods job to help anyone in the wasteland. Their job is to collect, and sit on technology. They help people out willingly.
Yeah, there are a few bad eggs, but like I said, even police departments have corrupt cops. They could just walk around the wasteland and immediately shot anyone holding a laser or plasma rifle, or massacre whole towns because they MAY be sitting on a piece of rare technology without even asking any questions.
As a matter of fact, this would be the more realistic brotherhood.
The Brotherhood does far more than most people realize.
This is not true. We have seen them do beneficial things for humanity.
If they "didn't" care would they have sent to Paladins to the Cathedral/Mariposa when the Vault Dweller proved the possible threat of the Master and the Unity?
Would they have made any attempt to fight the Enclave at all in FO2? Since most BoS members are pure strain humans the FEV virus engineered by the Enclave wouldn't have effected them. They could probably had cared less.
The Brotherhood could have sat in their bunker and watched the world collapse around them during FO1 or 2.
Just because the Brotherhood doesn't help with every single problem, or every little town the wasteland that is suffering or isn't making it does not make them bad people.
Thus, it is true that Lyon and his chapter did stray from their original mission, to find technology.
HOWEVER, if the Brotherhood was that cold hearted, they could have dismissed Lyons Chapter as a Brotherhood of Steel chapter all together, and told the Outcasts to go for an all-out war against these traitors.
But they still supported them, and let them continue on as a BoS chapter, however told them they would no longer receive supplies because they had strayed from their mission.
The BoS isn't the masochistic bastard organizations that they were portrayed as in Tactics, or as the Outcasts.
Granted, they didn't take every matter in the Wasteland into their hands, and be the shining knights of the wasteland that they could've been. But they did help out where they could.
It isn't realistic to think that just because someone "can" or has the "power" to help someone, they will.
Even police forces across the world do not act like the saviors they are made out to be and "protect the community" at all costs. And numerous departments have numerous cops who are dirty, and only out for themselves.
This doesn't make those police departments evil, or even useless. The police do help out where they can, and its their job.
It is not the Brotherhoods job to help anyone in the wasteland. Their job is to collect, and sit on technology. They help people out willingly.
Yeah, there are a few bad eggs, but like I said, even police departments have corrupt cops. They could just walk around the wasteland and immediately shot anyone holding a laser or plasma rifle, or massacre whole towns because they MAY be sitting on a piece of rare technology without even asking any questions.
As a matter of fact, this would be the more realistic brotherhood.
The Brotherhood does far more than most people realize.