Ideas for new Fallout threats

My god... you're right... the guns want us to fight...

 

I think the series could try an emotionally motivated main antagonist, except unlike ulysess one not necessarily related to the player character. Most of the fallout villains (master, enclave, the various factions in NV and 4) have had so far are generally rationalists, who always have some sort of twisted logic or idealogy that supports that what they are doing is good. Said reasoning isn't always sound but the failures stem more from ignorance than emotion.

Why not take a step in the other direction? The genocidal mad scientist victor presper character outlined in the van buren design docs is a decent template, but his generic hyperationalist anime villain cleanse the world of the dregs of humanity schtick could be replaced with something more personal to his backstory.

I think an emotionally motivated villain could make for an interesting story and maybe open up options for very many of the player's actions in sidequests and roaming the wastes to have long term consequences that affect their relationship to and interactions with the antagonist, which tends to be relatively fixed in most of the titles.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the second half of the idea but the first half is a great concept. I think asking the question of "is moden civilization truly worth having" and "is the trend towards more complex societies that lead us to nuclear war in the first place truly progress?" is something that could really be interesting. There has been quite a bit of rebuilding in the series thus far, but honestly very little to ask if said rebuilding is really good.

 

I’m really drawn to this idea of a non-sentient villain that was mentioned early in this thread. It’s original in the sense that it hasn’t been done in a previous game, and it fits right in with the sci-fi b-movie tropes that the series is built on. If anyone has any more twists on this subject I’d love to hear it.

Here’s one example: a giant (like city block sized) mutated undersea creature that crawls out of the ocean one day to terrorize the locals and wreak destruction, much like Godzilla. It would be good for a fallout game set in a wet coastal area like the Everglades or the Ozarks or even the San Juan islands/Puget Sound area.

 

I'm thinking a Vault specialized in performing experiments of either an extremist ideology or combat nature, and when the dwellers come out of their bunker, they all set up a coup in a nearby settlement/town. They may not make for a major threat, but they could be a minor faction like the Powder Gangers. There at least would be a justifiable reason for why they'd be particularly friendly to the player as well. Lets face it, every player character under Bethesda must be a Vault Dweller, so being a dweller yourself that faction would be inviting towards you, as they may assume all other Vault Dwellers in the wasteland are like themselves.

 

Another BOS Faction, but this time they're all Ghoulified.

 

Funny, I am doing a similar premise (well, me and a guy) over at another forum, except its not the main villain (yet, its more like something in the "background"). My take on it is that the vegetal intelligence is a rising "god", a "god-in-waiting" akin to the Master - as in, its a god-in-waiting because its a creature not bound to normal mundane limits, and given time and materials, it might become something beyond human. Another comparison is to the Planetmind in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:

Spoiler: If you have played SMAC, open. Otherwise, fuck right off and go play it. Now.

The Planetmind/Voice in SMAC is a networked emergent intelligence created by a planet worth's of xenofungus interfacing together and eventually acquiring enough processing power to become sentient. It actually does that every few hundred million years or so, becoming more and more intelligent, but it always "crashes" before the end, which results in a mass extinction and a "reset" of its own intelligence back to sub-sentience. Last time it did was around the age of the Dinossaurs.

In SMAC, the arrival of humans, their pollution and destruction of the xenofauna/flora and use of psionics, speed it up. It was never malicious, it was just programmed to seek out independent locuses of psi energy (aka independent thought) and destroy them, as it thought they were just defective nodes to prune, it had no idea those were sentient human beings.

Perhaps the real villains are humans using its power somehow? Say, in SMAC, human factions could control Mindworms after enough in-depth study and by giving humans the "empath gene" which made the planetlife see them as friendlies.

We have been controlling plants for eons. Cultivating, cross breeding, planting, etc. Did you know grass can communicate with other grass? Its the "smell of grass" you can feel when you mow it down, its communicating that its being attacked by predators. What's an intelligent plant but another plant but smarter?

Another alternative is that the villains are a cult dedicated to the Plant God, but the Plant God "speaks" in such an obtuse, weird, strange, space alien logic way, that its followers have no idea what is it actually saying. "Greetings, saplands. Time winds down, but from perspectives, it regresses. Seeds to plants, plants to seed. Fire destroys, but fire creates. Creates destroy creates destroy creates. Flower blooms, flower rots. The dream of spring." And the Cultists end up with some assine telephone game interpretation, like "We must burn the infidels and sprinkle their ashes into the soil!"

 

The Evergreen (Name not final)

Harold's plant mutation was sped up by the wanderer, eventually this killed him, but his mutation did not die with him, instead it only accelerated even further and fused with Harold's DNA grew to be an incredible threat to the wasteland population.

Plant life now rapidly spreads throughout the wasteland through concrete or steel to cover everything in vegetation, destroying all forms of manmade structures just by spreading through them, the only thing that can stop it is mankind.
But The Evergreen isn't just a plant, it's like a living body, though not entirely aware of it's surroundings or actions it has developed "antibodies" to protect itself. These antibodies take many forms, from hulking monstrosities that crawl across the crown and have enough strength to tear a man in half like wet paper, to plant people that have developed their own language and culture, ever protective of the green that gave them life.

The Evergreen is seemingly unstoppable, but it is not without it's weak points, the further it's nervous system spreads the less it can feel on the edges, so it develops "brain" pods that act as a signal relay, taking out one of these will render the area slow and weak until it can reform. Reformation takes it's time, this is prime opportunity for wastelanders to push it back with fire and chemicals, this is why it has developed antibodies, to defend itself from the forces that seek to destroy it, to protect it's brain pods and continue it's growth throughout the wasteland all the way west.

But even if it were to be eradicated from the surface, there's no telling how far it may have moved underground, it may never be truly defeated.

 

I'm pretty sure people would shit themselves if this was actually in a Fallout game

 

It's weird seeing this thread made before even New Vegas and the Legion not being in the OP hah.

 

The legion isn’t really a “threat” in the sense that the Master or the Enclave were though. They’re kind of just another faction, no more of a threat than the NCR.

 

I'd disagree. Whilst they're definitely the most sympathetic antagonists up to that point, I think they're still antagonists.

 

I think that the fact that you can join them (and it doesn’t immediately result in a game over) separates them from the likes of the Master and Enclave (and theoretically Presper). For most playthroughs they are going to be the antagonists, but a Legion playthrough would see the NCR as the antagonist, and certain Independent playthroughs could see the NCR as the greater threat.

 

Perhaps a redundant point - but I don't think it would be that daft of an idea to flick through some 50's pulp sci-fi magazines for BBEG ideas. Mounds upon mounds of weird stories and wild ideas with a natural disposition for adaption to Fallout.

When I end up DMing a Fallout campaign again I plan to take a look for inspiration.