Plot Holes of Fallout 4 - Spoilers

[Mr Fish]

Not sure if it's been brought up yet, and if it has, sorry, but can we please discuss Super Mutants as a huge plot hole in this game?

First of all, the Institute is basically the Enclave 2.0, except even more stupid and hypocritical. When the Enclave ran FEV experiments, they at least had some good results, such as Frank Horrigan and Intelligent Deathclaws. And they pretty much stopped when they saw what FEV did to people considering they're all about the "purification of humanity". Apparently the Institute are far more stupid than that, since every single Super Mutant in Boston came from them.

The Enclave at least had the common sense to stop when they realized FEV was extremely dangerous, but I guess the Institute thought "Oh, it turns people into brainless giant green monsters that want to destroy humanity..? Better make more of them! Lots more of them!" Considering Super Mutants are sterile and always have been, even the originals made by the Master himself, that means the Institute created a literal army of these monsters only to release them on the Commonwealth for no reason at all.

Like, what the fuck? Why? Why not just destroy the Super Mutants you created? They mention multiple times that hardly any of them have ever gone up on the surface because of radiation and that they want to make the surface a better place, yet they sent a massive armada of giant green men to kill everyone? What was the point!

Oh and there are a total of 3 FEV tubes in The Instutue, so that means they'd have to produce a trio of muties over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, do their little tests in their test chambers and then release them.

I mean... Really? Maybe they wanted to portray the Institute as being completely incompetent. If so, then they succeeded because a sensible person would've pulled the plug after a handful of muties and offed them when they realized just how violent they are.

Oh and don't forget about the super mutant line about looking for more "green stuff" that they kept from Fallout 3 even though it doesn't make any sense with the Boston muties.

Oh and Curie knows about FEV, because why not?

On a side-note, remember the people that get captured by The Institute and get replaced as synths? Such as the mayor of Diamon City?
...
Where does the original go? The original mayor. I mean, they ain't storing him in The Institute, he's gone. Replaced. So where did the original one go? Is that ever explained? Cause I don't remember anything about that.

 

[Lanfear]

Shot in the back of the head and thrown into a ditch somewhere presumably.

Super mutants are so pointless in both this game and Fallout 3 that it hurts.

 

[Ragemage]

snip

For your benefit I went looking for an answer to both of these questions since I just started the Institute questline to see if that might be more meaty than the Railroad or BOS.

Apparently when it comes to the Super Mutants, Shaun is a retard. On a holotape in or around the FEV Lab, one of the scientists (Pretty sure it's Virgil?) says in his report that they've been making Super Mutants for 10 years without a single positive result. He says on the holotape and terminal entries that he even petitioned Father to stop using the FEV, but for literally no reason, Father denied his request and said to keep going. So basically the only explanation we're given is "Father wills it".

As for where the original humans go that're replaced by synths? Never explained. I tried hard to find out. I explored the entire Institute hoping to find some big room full of pods of kidnapped people like something out of The Matrix or Saints Row IV's parody of it, but I found nothing. Absolutely nothing besides sterile white walls and people acting like nothing was wrong. I exhausted every bit of dialogue with the named scientists, specifically the Synth Retention Bureau section, but I couldn't ask about it. No one would tell me why, even in the quest associated with it. In fact there's 2 such quests involving Synth replacement. One involves the Mayor of Diamond City but another one is where they basically kidnapped an alchoholic dad on this farm and replaced him with a synth duplicate that was hard-working to see how the family reacted. In both of these quests you go to get reports from the Synth-doubles but not once can you ask about the originals they replaced. It seems like it's literally only there to be a "Gotcha!" moment. Considering how much they build up Diamond City being anti-synth, I guess they thought it would be a huge plot twist if it turned out the mayor of this super anti-synth city was a synth himself.

 

[Ragemage]

Shot in the back of the head and thrown into a ditch somewhere presumably.

Super mutants are so pointless in both this game and Fallout 3 that it hurts.

At least in Fallout 3 there's a somewhat plausible reason for Super Mutants to be there, and they're pretty much a different species from the Western Super Mutants in how, when they age, they get huge and lose even more brain power. I thought it was a somewhat interesting contrast compared to the somewhat smarter mutants of the West. I mean, they get their FEV from a Vault that was contracted to run FEV experiments. Sure, I can buy that. Considering that's probably one of the less insane Vault experiments, why not?

In Fallout 4 it makes literally no sense for there to be as many mutants as there are. Maybe enough to hole up in ONE building, like the one where Strong's located, but for them to be everywhere? And since SMs are sterile still even though this is a different breed? That means these Institute retards made THOUSANDS of giant green mutants just because, and then instead of cleaning up their mess, they set them free to kill everyone. There wasn't even a reason like "Oh, we sent Super Mutants to the surface in order to clean out the irradiated population so that we, the pure humans, could take over", there's nothing. Not a single reason. Read my post above this one about what I found out about it in regards to why they did it.

In Fallout 4 it COULD have made sense for there to be Super Mutants, IF and only IF they were Vault 87 Super Mutants looking for more FEV to the north after they completely exhausted their supply in the Capital Wasteland. Plus by the end of FO3 Super Mutants are basically being hunted to extinction by the BOS and your player character (gotta get those SM blood vials for lots of easy caps!) so it would make sense for them to migrate north to avoid being wiped out and to try and make more of them. But no, instead, these are an entirely new batch of Mutants completely seperate from Vault 87 and it just makes my head hurt with how fucking stupid it all is.

 

[Mr Fish]

For your benefit I went looking for an answer to both of these questions since I just started the Institute questline to see if that might be more meaty than the Railroad or BOS.

Apparently when it comes to the Super Mutants, Shaun is a retard. On a holotape in or around the FEV Lab, one of the scientists (Pretty sure it's Virgil?) says in his report that they've been making Super Mutants for 10 years without a single positive result. He says on the holotape and terminal entries that he even petitioned Father to stop using the FEV, but for literally no reason, Father denied his request and said to keep going. So basically the only explanation we're given is "Father wills it".

As for where the original humans go that're replaced by synths? Never explained. I tried hard to find out. I explored the entire Institute hoping to find some big room full of pods of kidnapped people like something out of The Matrix or Saints Row IV's parody of it, but I found nothing. Absolutely nothing besides sterile white walls and people acting like nothing was wrong. I exhausted every bit of dialogue with the named scientists, specifically the Synth Retention Bureau section, but I couldn't ask about it. No one would tell me why, even in the quest associated with it. In fact there's 2 such quests involving Synth replacement. One involves the Mayor of Diamond City but another one is where they basically kidnapped an alchoholic dad on this farm and replaced him with a synth duplicate that was hard-working to see how the family reacted. In both of these quests you go to get reports from the Synth-doubles but not once can you ask about the originals they replaced. It seems like it's literally only there to be a "Gotcha!" moment. Considering how much they build up Diamond City being anti-synth, I guess they thought it would be a huge plot twist if it turned out the mayor of this super anti-synth city was a synth himself.

...
Weak.
How...
I'm yet again baffled at how shittily written Fallout 4 is.
Inexcusably bad.

 

[Crni Vuk]

At least in Fallout 3 there's a somewhat plausible reason for Super Mutants to be there

In which way? Looking at Fallout 4, Fallout 3 is barely better with the Super Orcs. From both a story perspective and the gameplay.

 

[Izak]

In Fallout 4 it COULD have made sense for there to be Super Mutants, IF and only IF they were Vault 87 Super Mutants looking for more FEV to the north after they completely exhausted their supply in the Capital Wasteland. Plus by the end of FO3 Super Mutants are basically being hunted to extinction by the BOS and your player character (gotta get those SM blood vials for lots of easy caps!) so it would make sense for them to migrate north to avoid being wiped out and to try and make more of them. But no, instead, these are an entirely new batch of Mutants completely separate from Vault 87 and it just works.

Fixed.

 

[Ragemage]

In which way? Looking at Fallout 4, Fallout 3 is barely better with the Super Orcs. From both a story perspective and the gameplay.

Simply put, Vault 87 Super Mutants were made in a Vault that had a lot of FEV and radiation in it. Because the only people who had guns in the Vault were the Vault Security (which would essentially just be a rinky dink pistol that wouldn't even dent a SM), it makes sense that the Super Mutants were able to take over very easily and then use the Vault to make more Mutants, thus creating the army we see in the Capital Wasteland. I mean the Vault Overseer had no idea what FEV did, he just did as he was ordered by Vault Tec. They tried to shut it down after only 2 or 3 people were dunked into FEV, but it only took that small handful of mutants to overthrow the place, whereupon they began dunking everyone else in the vault. The Vault dwellers at least tried to quickly fix their mistakes but it was too late.

In Fallout 4, it makes far, FAR less sense because, first of all, the Institute is all about the preservation of humanity. The Vault dwellers had no idea what FEV actually did when they began testing, but the Institute knew exactly what FEV did before they began testing. Yet, for some reason, they just kept dunking people, over and over and over again with literally the only explanation given is something Virgil says along the lines of: "I tried to tell Father these experiments were a failure, but he wouldn't listen to me. He just told me to keep turning people. This is insane." And even though they made WAY more Super Mutants at once than Vault 87 did, somehow the Institute wasn't overrun, and they were magically able to migrate THOUSANDS of super mutants to the surface with no setbacks on the Institute's side. I'd also like to point out that, by the time we get to the Institute they have a small army of Synths to guard the place. By the time they were shoving all these people into FEV vats, 10 years prior, they shouldn't have had really any sort of protection and should have been overrun just like Vault 87 was. Hell, the only Gen 3 Synth that had even been made by then was Harkness. Every other synth was a gen 1 or gen 2, something the Super Mutants are easily able to rip apart. But I guess the plot armor saved them.

 

[Crni Vuk]

That's not what I mean.
What I mean is, that the whole idea and origin for Super Mutants in DC was stupid, silly and totally meaningless as far as the plot goes. Like, you have to get trough the vault to get the GECK. But, the Vault could have been filled with Deathclaws, Ghouls or Rad Scorpions, and it would not make much of a difference. Because the Super Orcs ... I mean Super Mutants in F3 are nothing more but another bullet sponge for the player.
There was really only one reason to have them in the game. Because you need some generic enemy that screams Fallout in your face. But at the end of the day, the Super Mutants in F3 really had no other role than those generic trolls in Skyrim/Oblivion.

Sure, you can find many ways to explain why FEV ended up in DC. But it always remains a strech. Convoluted. And in the end, uncessary. I am sure Bethesda could have created their own faction, with mutants and experiments with radiation or what ever. But they took everything and just threw it several thousands of miles away. It simply shows that Knights in shining powerarmor fighting evil Super Mutants is what Bethesda sees in Fallout.

 

[Ragemage]

That's not what I mean.
What I mean is, that the whole idea and origin for Super Mutants in DC was stupid, silly and totally meaningless as far as the plot goes. Like, you have to get trough the vault to get the GECK. But, the Vault could have been filled with Deathclaws, Ghouls or Rad Scorpions, and it would not make much of a difference. Because the Super Orcs ... I mean Super Mutants in F3 are nothing more but another bullet sponge for the player.
There was really only one reason to have them in the game. Because you need some generic enemy that screams Fallout in your face. But at the end of the day, the Super Mutants in F3 really had no other role than those generic trolls in Skyrim/Oblivion.

Sure, you can find many ways to explain why FEV ended up in DC. But it always remains a strech. Convoluted. And in the end, uncessary. I am sure Bethesda could have created their own faction, with mutants and experiments with radiation or what ever. But they took everything and just threw it several thousands of miles away. It simply shows that Knights in shining powerarmor fighting evil Super Mutants is what Bethesda sees in Fallout.

Yeah, I suppose you have a point. At the same time though, couldn't the same thing be said about the Fallout 2 "Dumb Dumb" Super Mutants? After the Master was destroyed, Super Mutants started getting wiped out by pretty much every faction, and both places where the main source of FEV was, the Master's vault and the airforce base his second in command was stationed at, were both blown up in the original. Yet somehow Super Mutants were able to retake the blown-up airforce base and lo and behold there's apparently still FEV there somehow with which to make Mutants with? I dunno, Fallout 3's explanation does seem contrived but Fallout 2's explanation isn't much better at all unless I'm missing something here. I mean the smart Super Mutants intergrating with society and all that in FO2 is perfectly fine and reasonable, it's just the fact that the dumb dumbs were able to retake their old base which magically still has FEV in there despite being blown up in order to make more dumb dumbs.

 

[Dr Fallout]

1. The Dumb Dumbs are pretty fucking scary.
2. They have fucking rocket launchers, machine guns and various other heavy weaponry.
3. They're hard to kill. Very hard to kill.
4. FEV survived atomic blasts. Nuff said.

 

[mrchaos]

Yeah, I suppose you have a point. At the same time though, couldn't the same thing be said about the Fallout 2 "Dumb Dumb" Super Mutants? After the Master was destroyed, Super Mutants started getting wiped out by pretty much every faction, and both places where the main source of FEV was, the Master's vault and the airforce base his second in command was stationed at, were both blown up in the original. Yet somehow Super Mutants were able to retake the blown-up airforce base and lo and behold there's apparently still FEV there somehow with which to make Mutants with? I dunno, Fallout 3's explanation does seem contrived but Fallout 2's explanation isn't much better at all unless I'm missing something here. I mean the smart Super Mutants intergrating with society and all that in FO2 is perfectly fine and reasonable, it's just the fact that the dumb dumbs were able to retake their old base which magically still has FEV in there despite being blown up in order to make more dumb dumbs.

In fallout 2 the Enclave are the ones who were looking for FEV in the ruins, not the Master´s army. They had to dug really deep using an enslaved work force too reach the samples. The workers started mutating into super mutants and the enclave retreated (with samples) and sealed the workers inside.

 

[Earth]

snip

I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure that only a small sample of FEV would have been required from the military base for the Enclave to synthesise more of it.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

I'm not sure how many agree, but Bethesda coming up with a whole new mutant race to be the "wasteland orcs" would've been far better than what they did with Super Mutants, in my opinion.

 

[Ragemage]

In fallout 2 the Enclave are the ones who were looking for FEV in the ruins, not the Master´s army. They had to dug really deep using an enslaved work force too reach the samples. The workers started mutating into super mutants and the enclave retreated (with samples) and sealed the workers inside.

Ahhhh, okay, that explains what the super mutants were doing in there. I thought those guys were remnants of the Master's army looking for FEV. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Yeah, I suppose you have a point. At the same time though, couldn't the same thing be said about the Fallout 2 "Dumb Dumb" Super Mutants? After the Master was destroyed, Super Mutants started getting wiped out by pretty much every faction, and both places where the main source of FEV was, the Master's vault and the airforce base his second in command was stationed at, were both blown up in the original. Yet somehow Super Mutants were able to retake the blown-up airforce base and lo and behold there's apparently still FEV there somehow with which to make Mutants with? I dunno, Fallout 3's explanation does seem contrived but Fallout 2's explanation isn't much better at all unless I'm missing something here. I mean the smart Super Mutants intergrating with society and all that in FO2 is perfectly fine and reasonable, it's just the fact that the dumb dumbs were able to retake their old base which magically still has FEV in there despite being blown up in order to make more dumb dumbs.

Huh? I somehow can't rember that from F2. Who tried to make super mutants? And where?
Anyway, Super Mutants in F2 didn't really play much of a role in the game, and they started already to dissapear. Yet, you had a town with Super Mutants and Marcus, a couple of quests as well.
But if you ask me, Fallout New Vegas did an excelent job with the Super Mutants. With Marcus, Thabita and their presence as whole. And all of that without FEV.

*Edit
I see, some people already explained it. Yes, the Enclave was looking for FEV. There was no Super Mutant faction creating new ones.

 

[Ragemage]

Huh? I somehow can't rember that from F2. Who tried to make super mutants? And where?
Anyway, Super Mutants in F2 didn't really play much of a role in the game, and they started already to dissapear. Yet, you had a town with Super Mutants and Marcus, a couple of quests as well.
But if you ask me, Fallout New Vegas did an excelent job with the Super Mutants. With Marcus, Thabita and their presence as whole. And all of that without FEV.

*Edit
I see, some people already explained it. Yes, the Enclave was looking for FEV. There was no Super Mutant faction creating new ones.

The only thing is, they didn't need to explain those Super Mutants with FEV in New Vegas because they've been around since the time of the Master or the Enclave, aka a really long time. At least 70-100 years I think? That's also why there's so few of them in NV. I dunno, I'll agree with you that Bethesda should've made their own mutants rather than ripping off Super Mutants, but at least Fallout 3 is a hell of a lot more plausible than Fallout 4. Or maybe not, Idk, you be the judge. Fallout 3's Super Mutants at the very least didn't completely derail the entire fucking plot of the game. Goddamnit Fallout 4.

 

[Earth]

When did "vault experiments" become a thing? I can't remember any in Fallout and Fallout 2. Fallout Bible?

I don't mind the experiments in New Vegas because they were all well-done and made sense. You got a couple of social experiments, some experimentation with plant life, shit like that. But in Fallout 3 the FEV experimentation is stupid and makes no sense. It makes no sense why they would be testing it, when there's a much bigger and safer testing facility on the West Coast. Vaults just aren't a safe enough environment to be testing something like FEV. And the scientists in the vault never once thought that creating giant, dumb, violent monsters might be a bad idea? (not even to mention the ethics of it).

Then the Super Mutants make even less sense when they have no reproductive organs, have the intelligence of violent 6 year olds, and yet know to look for more FEV and know to dip people in FEV to create more mutants, without any kind of intelligent centralised leadership, the one intelligent guy they do have locked in a cage for no reason.

 

[Izak]

When did "vault experiments" become a thing? I can't remember any in Fallout and Fallout 2. Fallout Bible?

Van Buren was going to introduce the vault experiment idea into Fallout. It's one of the few plot points that Fallout 3 actually took from the design documents; originally they were going to be social experiments to see how the Enclaves hypothetical space migration would work, but I think Bethesda removed that aspect and just made it Social/Biological/Eugenic experimentation for the hell of it.
EDIT: Doctor Henry (the guy who gives you robo-dog in Fallout 2 and the guy from Jacobstown in NV) briefly mentions that he didn't work in the Vault behavioural program, I think he says it when you ask him about Vault 13.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I think that it was simply because cruel and subversive experiments works better and is more interesting then vaults to protect against the nukes.