If you don't mind me revisiting the Brotherhood of Steel debate...
I think some of you are missing the point.
Back when I was in High School, I read Star Trek: The Nitpickers Guide (yes, I was a huge geek). It was a listing of all the continuity and technical errors that appeared, episode by episode, in ST:TNG. In between each season block, there'd be a 'fun' mini chapter. In one of them the author 'explained' how the errors he'd listed weren't, in fact, errors, but intentional parts of the show. He cited several examples, and came up with elaborate explanations justifying why you could see a boom-mike during the scene, or why the doors opened awkwardly, etc. It was a humourous example of not using Occam's Razor.
Now when it comes to justifying the BOS's presence on the East Coast, any number of elaborate explanations can be crafted. In a fictional universe, anything is possible. If we were stuck in that universe, the BOS presence would be a mystery begging a solution. But we're not in that universe - we can step outside the box; the BOS presence, then, is purely a mistake.
There is no need for them to be there. If you want to put in a bunch of guys with Power Armour, fine, they could even have a similar history to the Brotherhood, and that would be less of a problem. Same thing goes for the Super Mutants - I mean really, there were only a few hundred - a thousand at most - created by the Master. To try and posit that 70 years later, they're all still alive, and still waging war is ridiculous. If they were that bellicose, then they'd be dead.
Neither of these groups belong in Fallout 3.
No amount of in-game speculation and justification covers up the lack of creativity inherent in reusing characters and organizations that don't belong. In F2 the cameo appearances of F1 characters added depth to the wasteland - it was reasonable to expect to see a few of them. In F3 it's just lazy cheese.
And I'd like to finish with one last thought on 'The Wasteland Police' - what the hell were they thinking? The world is in a state of anarchy; there's no regional government collecting the taxes to maintain a police force, and the different cities (presumably) have differing ideologies on what 'living the good life' is. So where do these Police get their funding, and why are they doing it? There'd better be some damned good explanations behind this. I can think of a few, but they're subtle, and given the heavy-handed nature of everything Bethesda's displayed so far, I expect the BOS to be nothing more than a cartoonish version of Arthur's nights, with lazsr guns. Wandering around, righting rights, defending the peasants, with - of course - an infinitely respawning well of cheeser Paladins who don't mind dying.
Thanks for listening.
[/rant]
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