The True Moral Quandary of Fallout 4 (no, not how to destroy the disc)

KingArthur

You Have Alerted the Horse
[REDACTED]
So, like it says on the tin.

In my mind, and, I suppose, in most minds, the Fallout 4 faction system is utterly stupid and pointless. Which got me thinking; what’s the real moral “dilemma” (used loosely) in that game? It can’t be the racism against ghouls in most settlements except Goodneighbor, because the latter is a shithole. It can’t be anything to do with factions, because they’re all the same except for the Institute.

It’s whether or not you kill Shaun when you first meet him.

Let me clarify, or rather contextualize.

You’re looking for your son, in this strange world. He’s less than a year old. You fight and kill a hired gun, who tells you he’s somewhere called “the Institute”. You go through the killer’s memories using an android PI and some memory device in an absolute slum of a town, and learn that you have to go through an irradiated ocean that’s ground zero of the blast, to find a supermutant who draws you a crayon diagram of a teleporter so you can work with one of 3 identical factions to build it and get inside.

Once there, a 60 year old man comes up to you and says he’s your son.

I shot him.

so the real question is: what do you do? Do you believe him, and work with the Institute? Or do you gun “Shaun” down, and hope you find solace in his death?

It’s not much, but it’s better than any other moral question attempted by that game.
 
The Institute is retarded, the Shaun reveal is retarded, so kill the latter and destroy the former.
 
My character was provably one of the strongest beings in existence. Right from being fresh from the vault he was John Wick crossed with the Master Chief.

So when faced with a faction that were playing games and holding his son hostage, he decided to take matters into his trusted and proven hands. Because why not.
 
Do you realize that the initial (unused) story for Fallout [1] was about the PC traveling through time to rescue his girlfriend, and destroying the hope of humanity?
 
It’s whether or not you kill Shaun when you first meet him.
By the time you meet Shaun you have seen and faced the atrocities the Institute has wrought on an already savage wasteland. When you learn who Shaun is, the objective decision your character should make is to blow Shaun away and escape the Institute to rebuild the Minutemen and war against the brotherhood, the railroad and the Institute provided you cannot bring them to heel. The fact that he was your son should have no effect on your decision but the fact that you failed to save your son before he was corrupted by the Institute will most likely weigh on your conscience for the foreseeable future.
 
Sure, but I suppose the question is whether a) you believe him or not and b) you shoot him or not.


I believed him.


I just didn’t give enough of a shit about MUH FAMLY to forgo putting a bullet in him.
 
Back
Top