Traeger91
Still Mildly Glowing
I doubt the Brotherhood was meant to last past the first game, even more so past the second. What is there, like three BoS members (not counting the Monty Python references) in the entirety of the second game?
Thoughts on the brotherhood?
- Thread starter Yossarrion
- Start date
Still Mildly Glowing
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
The Brotherhood are high-tech Tribals that occasionally engages in Raiding. The only difference is they have more power armor and weapons than most. I think they get overused and some of them are genuine scum (like Arthur Maxson) but they're just one group in the mass of wacky wasteland wayside tribes.
PaxVenire
Wasteland Peacemaker
I don't know where you get the tribal aspect from at all.
If the BOS was a Tribalish faction then they would more similair to the Reaver Movement or the Ciphers.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Reaver_Movement
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ciphers
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Reaver_Movement
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ciphers
Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
They’re tribals in the sense that they have their own cultural identity in ways that settlements like Junktown or the Hub, or even gangs like the Skulz or Blades, do not. But they have too much knowledge and understanding of the world, particularly the pre-war world, to have the kind of superstitions and mysticism that characterize most tribes in Fallout.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
I mean they're an isolationist bunch if interrelated people that carry out their own weird post-apocalypse traditions.
How do you define tribe?
Sulik and Benny are tribals. Just because you're one doesn't mean you're an idiot.
PaxVenire
Wasteland Peacemaker
I mean I guess you can call them a tribe by definition the same as you can call them an enclave. But in Fallout those two words clearly carry different meanings and compared to Fallout-specific tribals we see throughout the series the BOS clearly aren’t tribals. Hell, by Fallout 1 alone they were already abandoning their “tribal” ways and working alongside The Hub and sharing tech to stop the Mutant invasion.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Yeah, but they rolled back on that by Fallout 2. Even in the original timeline, the progressive Brotherhood got banished to the Midwest.
Traeger91
Still Mildly Glowing
"Original Timeline"
I'd love to ask Emil what the the official timeline even is, and to then have it change the next tine he explains it to someone else.
I'd love to ask Emil what the the official timeline even is, and to then have it change the next tine he explains it to someone else.
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Alphons
National Beholder
Vault 76 Dwellers created a "BatBreak" when they dropped the nukes on giant bats in West Virginia.
Due to that, separate realities intercept at various points of time and create holes in reality called "retcons".
Due to that, separate realities intercept at various points of time and create holes in reality called "retcons".
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Just saw this again, and it does remind me of something I was thinking of while watching the program: Very irrititating that all of the executives spoke in a soy modern business jargon way, and not really in the manner that mid-20th century businessmen spoke.
This is a little hypocritical of me, given that I like many others get annoyed with the firm fixation on the 50s aesthetic in Bethesda's Fallout and their vision of the pre-War... but if you're going to devote a quarter of your show to a pre-War World that basically is jut the future 1950s, you might as well commit and actually have people speak like it too.
They're a culturally and reproductively isolated group with their own entirely distinct customs and worldview. They interact with the outside world while maintaining their own distinctive culture. Within their communities they're pretty isolated from market forces, acting fairly cohesively. Even though their aesthetic is couched in the high tech, the way they look at tech and the world in general is in some sense pre-modern, unllike say the NCR. I think "techno-tribal" is an apt enough description. Though maybe "ethno-religious group" is a better one.
PaxVenire
Wasteland Peacemaker
I also dislike the triple downed 1950s future Bethesda has forced into the series starting with FO4. I know we had a discussion about pre-war Fallout in another thread where I said I wouldn't mind seeing more of the pre-war era for Fallout and your stance firmly being not to reveal it. Well I think this show altered my opinion and I retract my stance. We definitely didn't need to see it lol.
Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
Agree with the idea that the pre-war world should be left a mystery. I don’t want to derail the topic of this thread but I just want to put this out there and I don’t think it justifies its own thread: does there even really need to be a “divergence” in the Fallout universe? It’s something that’s widely accepted, but everything of importance happens in the mid 21st century anyway, and it’s just as believable that the world aesthetically slipped back into a retro Atomic Age culture as it is that the world just stayed culturally “50s” for over a century. Perhaps technologically speaking it’s useful to explain some of the design choices like why they still use vacuum tubes and black and white television screens, but realistically things like micro transistors have to exist to explain the robots, right? I don’t know.
Traeger91
Still Mildly Glowing
At this point, I'm lost as to who wrote what when. The Fallout Bible is one thing to go off of, at least if you're only talking about or care about what came before 3. But then there's a lot of videos and other discussions or articles that muddy the waters, presenting later material as if it had always been that way. All that to say, what started as simple retro futurism, became everything is 50's all the time. Honestly when I look at the first Fallout, I see elements of how people from the 30's or 40's might think their future would look like, it's not just limited to the 50's aesthetic. A good example would be the various tech, a lot of it looks like it's straight out of Metropolis (the 1927 movie). Tim Cain has also said they drew inspiration from a movie called "The City of Lost Children", and after seeing the movie and it's tech, I can definitely see it.
Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
Good point. Leonard Boyarsky was on Tim Cain’s channel somewhat recently and they talked about the development of Fallout. Apparently it was just going to be some Mad Max rip-off, but then Leonard Boyarsky was driving home one day and he had an epiphany-type moment that it would be cool if they made the pre-war world retro like the 50s. This is how Leonard pitched the idea to Tim and Brian Fargo, “make it like the 50s”. They didn’t fully understand what he meant, but they were intrigued, and apparently Brian was all for it immediately. But what’s interesting is that in the video he says that he later realized that what he meant was to make it like the 40s, he just didn’t know at the time that the retro ideas he had were more endemic to the 40s than the 50s. So there you have it, the concept of Fallout being like the 50s is just a misunderstanding, it was actually supposed to be like the 40s all along. I found this tidbit incredibly fascinating.
Here’s the thing. We try to come up with rules and stuff about what Fallout should be like, but in reality, the Fallout setting was never anything more than a bunch of stuff some nerds in the late 90s thought was cool. It really was lightning in a bottle. Fuck, this is what TorontoReign has been trying to tell me all these years, isn’t it?
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Traeger91
Still Mildly Glowing
That doesn't stop the original series from being great or it from deserving a proper sequel that has that same amount of attention and passion put into it. Truthfully, I'd forgive everything, but only if there was more cohesion with what came before alongside telling a good story.
Also, while I never interacted "directly" with him, I'd gotten a general vibe for the type of forum user that he was - A snide contrarian, that stuck around out of habit, even though he'd long since soured on the site and his peers.
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Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
Oh yeah, definitely, I’m not trying to excuse what Bethesda has done, nor am I belittling the first game. I think the setting worked perfectly, there’s a reason why it’s captured our imaginations. Hell, the setting was literally all I knew when I first discovered the franchise through wiki surfing back in 2006, and I was immediately fascinated. I didn’t even play the originals until the early 2010s. Yes, Fallout 3 was my first…
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I think what Fallout 1 did well with the Brotherhood of Steel was make them less of an ideology and more of a culture.
Like you get the sense that they have some ideals, but these are ambigous, and the game focuses a lot more on their mythologized history, internal politics, and cultural disputes.
You learn about the clashes between Vree and the traditionalists, you learn about how their system of Elders is often obstructionist and bureaucratic to a comical fault, but that this almost works in their favor, because it means they keep the Paladins from declaring war on the world around them. Most of the conversations you have with Elder Maxson are about how much he hates his position and the tedium of having to manage this society.
It was a very down to earth portrayal of a group of people, that didn't need them to have super high-minded ideals.
They send you on what's effectively a suicide mission before letting you so much as speak to their higher ups. They do clearly have means of keeping people out of their bunker.
Also, they have a very insular perspective: You find out that their Paladins were planning to torch The Hub because they got scammed on a trade deal (Although Elder Maxson stopped them). If Rhombus isn't there to inherit the Eldership, they wage a "Steel Plague" on California and start hoarding tech to themselves.
I think it's made extremely explicit that these are a dangerous bunch with xenophobic attitudes, and the capability to wipe out everyone else, albeit one that can be somewhat reined in if certain people(Maxson, Rhombus) are there to tell them not to do anything stupid.
I've never seen Fallout 3's Brotherhood described as "Hostile and dismissive" before. If anything the main complaint about Fallout 3 used to be that the BOS were made into these comically over the top heroes - Spending their time protecting people from Mutants and helping get the water plant working. Which isn't a bad direction mind you, just felt unmotivated. Moving from weirdos in a bunker to gallant knights just because "This guy is super cool and wanted to help people" always felt weird to me
Anyway, I have an alternate theory on how the flanderization happened
1. The Fallout Bible makes a point of how the Brotherhood of Steel dislikes mutants - But it's very explicit that this is largely for reasons to do with their position - They were right near Mariposa so saw weird Mutants even before The Master, they were involved in taking out the Master, and they largely see Ghouls as tech-scavengers
2. Bethesda reads this, decides "Brotherhood don't let mutants in" is a core part of their character, multiple Fallout 3 characters mention this - Less justification given
3. "Brotherhood hates Mutants" becomes their sole personality trait after Fallout 4 is released.
Ironically, despite it's bad writing in other fronts, I think Fallout Tactics had a better portrayal of both a more outward facing Brotherhood, and of the Brotherhood tackling the Mutant issue, and it felt more organic with how it did it:
- Brotherhood lands far from home,
-Fighting a perpetual war against Gammorin's Army
-As the war went on, they realized they needed outsiders for canon fodder, so protected people from Raiders and hostile wildlife in return for being able to take people as recruits.
-As the stakes change and Calculator enters the scene, they give up their petty beef with the Mutants, and instead team up to take out the bigger threat.
It feels like they're being reactive to the world and changing because things around them are changing, rather than being dogmatic in their portrayal.
Like you get the sense that they have some ideals, but these are ambigous, and the game focuses a lot more on their mythologized history, internal politics, and cultural disputes.
You learn about the clashes between Vree and the traditionalists, you learn about how their system of Elders is often obstructionist and bureaucratic to a comical fault, but that this almost works in their favor, because it means they keep the Paladins from declaring war on the world around them. Most of the conversations you have with Elder Maxson are about how much he hates his position and the tedium of having to manage this society.
It was a very down to earth portrayal of a group of people, that didn't need them to have super high-minded ideals.
They send you on what's effectively a suicide mission before letting you so much as speak to their higher ups. They do clearly have means of keeping people out of their bunker.
Also, they have a very insular perspective: You find out that their Paladins were planning to torch The Hub because they got scammed on a trade deal (Although Elder Maxson stopped them). If Rhombus isn't there to inherit the Eldership, they wage a "Steel Plague" on California and start hoarding tech to themselves.
I think it's made extremely explicit that these are a dangerous bunch with xenophobic attitudes, and the capability to wipe out everyone else, albeit one that can be somewhat reined in if certain people(Maxson, Rhombus) are there to tell them not to do anything stupid.
I've never seen Fallout 3's Brotherhood described as "Hostile and dismissive" before. If anything the main complaint about Fallout 3 used to be that the BOS were made into these comically over the top heroes - Spending their time protecting people from Mutants and helping get the water plant working. Which isn't a bad direction mind you, just felt unmotivated. Moving from weirdos in a bunker to gallant knights just because "This guy is super cool and wanted to help people" always felt weird to me
Anyway, I have an alternate theory on how the flanderization happened
1. The Fallout Bible makes a point of how the Brotherhood of Steel dislikes mutants - But it's very explicit that this is largely for reasons to do with their position - They were right near Mariposa so saw weird Mutants even before The Master, they were involved in taking out the Master, and they largely see Ghouls as tech-scavengers
2. Bethesda reads this, decides "Brotherhood don't let mutants in" is a core part of their character, multiple Fallout 3 characters mention this - Less justification given
3. "Brotherhood hates Mutants" becomes their sole personality trait after Fallout 4 is released.
Ironically, despite it's bad writing in other fronts, I think Fallout Tactics had a better portrayal of both a more outward facing Brotherhood, and of the Brotherhood tackling the Mutant issue, and it felt more organic with how it did it:
- Brotherhood lands far from home,
-Fighting a perpetual war against Gammorin's Army
-As the war went on, they realized they needed outsiders for canon fodder, so protected people from Raiders and hostile wildlife in return for being able to take people as recruits.
-As the stakes change and Calculator enters the scene, they give up their petty beef with the Mutants, and instead team up to take out the bigger threat.
It feels like they're being reactive to the world and changing because things around them are changing, rather than being dogmatic in their portrayal.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
No big disagreements or thoughts worth commenting, just want to remark that it's good to see you on the forum again, Jogre
