What mutant do you guys think could replaced the super mutants in DC?

ElloinmorninJ

ElloinmorninJ

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
The Super Mutants in Fallout 3 seem to be a major sticking point for a lot of people. Here’s some questions: Do you guys dislike them for the fact that they’re retconned into a place they shouldn’t be? Or is it because they have less personality? And what mutant do you think could’ve replaced them?
 
I dislike that there is FEV outside of Mariposa and West-Tek.
It's just a cheap lazily written excuse to shoehorn in iconic stuff from past entries to a location on the opposite side of the continent.
And I don't think there is a single way to implement a replacement that doesn't mess up the location just as much as super mutants did.
It's simply not functional for people to live in that area when you have a race of super people with zero regards for morals that like to bundle nets of human gore for funsies. Super Mutants or Super Schmutants, doesn't matter which it is, ruins the location. It's too much of an inhabitable hellzone to the point that it doesn't make sense for anyone to live there.

So if a new mutant had to be introduced in its place then everything would need to be rewritten regardless to make sense of it all.
I'd change the mutants to just ghouls. Prior to Lyons Brotherhood arriving the area was in control of mutant factions, all melting pots of various mutants. Most are ghouls but there are hillfolk and a few beastmen and super mutants as well, maybe even some trogs (van buren). Humans in this area would have been treated like 2nd class citizens and when Lyons Brotherhood arrived they would basically be irrationally anti-mutant and so they'd start attacking it and ended up ruining the entire DC area by fracturing alliances and trade routes and by the time you step out of the vault it'd be a broken landscape. Lyons Brotherhood would be the villains who after they realized what they had done are now desperately trying to restore order failing to realize that they are and always will be the problem to this area because of their actions because they have the mentality of being saviors. Oh and Lyons Brotherhood would have split off of MWBOS instead of coming from west coast and they'd be a splinter faction that left because of all the mutants in MWBOS.

A lot of the mutants that attack on sight hate humans because of Lyons Brotherhood to the point that you will have to suffer the consequences of these actions too, being a human. But no gore bags, no warzones, just enclaves and outposts of survivors, some militia, some civilians. Going in guns blazing would be like going into Arroyo and gunning everyone down.
 
The easiest would be urban version of Point Lookout Swampfolk. They would be victims of New Plague treated by West-Tek using their FEV research that wasn't confiscated by military.
Treatment would be partially successful, as the unexpected side effects and radiation would mutate them.
They would be much closer to humans/ ghouls than Supermutants, not feeling any bond with others of their kind and creating smaller communities.

Second option would be making Mirelurks more intelligent. They would be very territorial primitive tribals using basic tools, mostly hunting smaller land animals and fishing.
More advanced tribes would actually start to farm and breed small water creatures, maybe trading surplus with other tribes or even humans/ ghouls/ Urbanfolk in exchange for tools, weapons or fancy junk.
 
I actually think the New Plague itself could have been a really cool avenue for Fallout 3, and would have made a nice parallel to FEV on the West Coast.
 
Mantids make sense; opossums; squirrels...

Opposum.jpg
 
ElloinmorninJ said:
The Super Mutants in Fallout 3 seem to be a major sticking point for a lot of people. Here’s some questions: Do you guys dislike them for the fact that they’re retconned into a place they shouldn’t be? Or is it because they have less personality? And what mutant do you think could’ve replaced them?
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I feel like they have several issues and its the combination that makes them so horrible.

1. We have an entirely new wasteland and... the same type of monster. BORING!

2. FEV has so much potential, and instead we get... another type of Super Mutant. Boring!

3. They're all big dumb monsters. Like Orks but without, well, everything that makes Orks funny and cool. Just big dumb monsters running on retard logic.

4. The most significant issue, in my opinion: They don't matter. They are irrelevant and useless in the entire plot. They're there to be big dumb monsters for the player to shoot, and that's it. You can remove them from the entire plot, and nothing fundamental changes. Super Mutants were important in FO1 and FOT, had pretty good roles and characters in 2 and FNV as well. In 3? Aside from Fawkes, they don't matter. We don't even get to kill a big boss mutant or anything.

5. It makes canonically no sense how the Brotherhood of Steel is even having an issue with those mondrongos. They're a bunch of stupid monsters coming from a few kilometers west. Their logistics are literally "KILL LOOT REPEAT". They lack the advanced equipment, leadership and tactics of the Mariposa Super Mutants. Meanwhile in the West, a few hundred Brotherhood killed thousands of NCR in a bad defensive position, and would have probably won if Elder Elijah didn't fuck up, or let McNamara actually do his thing and fight a proper military campaign.

The only logical explanation is that Elder Lyons is a pretty cool guy, but like Father Elijah, he's a incompetent on military matters. Except he's an Elder of the Brotherhood, I don't think he would have been promoted from Paladin to Elder if he was that incompetent (Elijah was a Scribe). So what the Brotherhood is doing? Fighting urban warfare against giant superhuman slabs of pure muscle. Literally the dumbest thing strategy. Hurr durr.

6. "FEV Vault" is such a contrived way to put them there. Especially because we already had a canon excuse for FEV being around: The FEV Quarantine Towns, of which we know since the Fallout Bible. Fallout 76, of all games, does it right.


As for replacement... I dunno. I would like to see other types of Mutants entirely, FEV created or not. FEV doesn't need to equal Super Mutant, FEV is a delivery method for genetic alterations.
 
Slaughter Manslaught said:
I feel like they have several issues and its the combination that makes them so horrible.

5. It makes canonically no sense how the Brotherhood of Steel is even having an issue with those mondrongos. They're a bunch of stupid monsters coming from a few kilometers west.
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This has persistently bothered me as a justification for the Brotherhood going everywhere. Sure, the Unity was large but for a fragment of remnants heading out to the Midwest to be enough of a threat to justify a massive operation of BOS in airships? Please. Same shit with the Brotherhood in F3 in DC. The East Coast Super Mutants in particular are probably less dangerous than Yao Guai, since they're about as smart.



Slaughter Manslaught said:
6. "FEV Vault" is such a contrived way to put them there. Especially because we already had a canon excuse for FEV being around: The FEV Quarantine Towns, of which we know since the Fallout Bible. Fallout 76, of all games, does it right.
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I do not remember that from the Fallout Bible. I remember Insta-Pens and quarantine against the New Plague, but nothing involving public usage of FEV
 
I doesn't even need to be a mutant to replace the Super Mutants. It could be a cyborg faction for example.

A faction that originated from a vault where the experiment was to build mechanically enhanced super soldiers. But the procedure was never perfected and the cyber implants would create a type of madness and violent behaviour.
They could be as hostile and irrational as Super Mutants, they could be resistant to radiation like Super Mutants, maybe even as big as Super Mutants (to be able to support heavy and large mechanical parts, they would need to receive a treatment to grow their muscle mass and size or something).

Behemoths could be replaced with a cyborg piloting a giant robot or giant power armor or whatever. After all, Liberty Prime exists in that game.

They would be capturing humans so they could grow their numbers like Super Mutants did before their FEV run out.

Fawkes would still be an odd and rational one.

After all, Bethesda really liked the androids in FO4, they could have made cyborgs in FO3. Star Paladin Cross is a BoS cyborg, so it's not unheard in that game.
 
Atomic Postman said:
This has persistently bothered me as a justification for the Brotherhood going everywhere. Sure, the Unity was large but for a fragment of remnants heading out to the Midwest to be enough of a threat to justify a massive operation of BOS in airships? Please. Same shit with the Brotherhood in F3 in DC. The East Coast Super Mutants in particular are probably less dangerous than Yao Guai, since they're about as smart.
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I don't think it was a mere fragment of a remnant. Gammorin's army was pretty strong, they managed to fight a two-way war against the Brotherhood and the Calculator's Robots for a while. Straight-out demolished the Brotherhood in the first serious engagement we hear about, in St. Louis. Eight squads lead by General Barnaky himself, a load of squads died and Barnaky was captured. Granted, they had Latham leading the mutants in FOT, but still.

Also, I'm pretty sure the whole "Go chase mutants" thing is an excuse for the elders in Lost Hills to send the Dissident Brothers to fuck off and stop bugging them about the whole "bring outsiders into the Brotherhood" thing. The Airships were deliberately flawed, which implies that the Elders in Lost Hills wanted the dissidents to die, or not come back at all.

(the Brotherhood has an hilarious history of sending dissidents, mavericks and more open-minded folks away from Lost Hills)

With FO3, I think the real reason the Brotherhood went east was to check out on some unknown secret tech. Pretty sure that was meant to be Liberty Prime. Checking up on the mutants in DC was a bonus.

But yeah, its still dumb that the Brotherhood has any real issue fighting those 20 IQ ignoramuses.

Atomic Postman said:
I do not remember that from the Fallout Bible. I remember Insta-Pens and quarantine against the New Plague, but nothing involving public usage of FEV
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From the Fallout Bible 0:

2076 October 4 At West Tek, fifteen chimpanzees are infected with batch 11-111. The most successful test to date, growth and immunities in the chimpanzees surpass all other subjects to date. The military practically drools over the results. Plans are made in secret to begin testing in small quarantine towns in North America, and the Mariposa Military Base construction is sped up in anticipation of moving the West Tek project to a location under military supervision.
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I remember reading the original Fallout Bible back when, and I remember that part. This was not changed or anything.

Even the Vault 13 Timeline features something like this:

2071
  • The government relocates the FEV project into a newly formed secret installation in South-Western California. The goal of the project is to make the virus safe for human use.
2075: Playing God
  • The scientists working with the FEV began testing the virus in a human host. The experiments are conducted in small quarantined towns in Northern America. The populous begins introducing the FEV into their systems. The subjects become healthier almost overnight as all cancers and illnesses are broken down and devoured by FEV-1. After two months, all this changes. The subjects experience abnormal brain tissue growth that causes insanity in many patients. Unusual deformities slowly follow. Some subjects experience infertility or a severe form of leprosy; some even experience altering skeletal growth.
  • The Virus, which is carried by white blood-cells, is found to actually latch itself onto the host's DNA spiral causing unpredictable mutations.
  • The scientists begin working on a FEV-2.
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Huntersvile Super Mutants from Fallout 76? Perfectly canon.

Vault 89 was never necessary. They had the Quarantine Towns if they wanted to introduce FEV somewhere other than Mariposa.
 
Theres so much wrong with the super mutants in fo3.

1. The fact that they're there at all
2. The fact that they're reduced to just orks
3. The brotherhood says the come from the west (and they do) but most super mutant strongholds are in the east, in DC. How the fuck did that happen?
4. There are almost no actual super mutant characters in fallout 3. There are two non hostile ones and one of them has so little dialogue it's a wonder he wasnt just straight up cut from the game.

The only way to fix this would be to replace the super mutants with something else and redesign the whole map and dialogue so things fit together better. Basically the same solution to all of fallout 3s problems. It's so broken at its core youd have redo the whole thing froms scratch.
 
Instead of having supermutants and radiation in the river, they should have added some kind of substance in the water, leaking from a facility upstream.

The closer you get to the source, the more potent would be the substance. The substance would be addictive, increase the violent tendencies of the drinker and cause some minor mutation over the years. There would be a faction of the most mutated drinkers controling the facility that causes the problem, but the substance would still be an issue downstream, as the people who would start drinking it would feel compelled to settle very close to it, so they would keep drinking it every day. Some would be more violents and mutated, some other would be almost normal, but wouldn't want to move away. It would give more reasons for DC to be a constant battlefield, as new people would constantly settles and would want to stay there at any cost. It would also makes the project purity more meaningful, instead of providing to three identical water beggars. And it would explain why the Enclave wouldn't have settled closer to the river. There would also be some minor, but cleaner water sources in the areas, that would be controlled by other factions. But they couldn't rely entirely on their own sources, so they would mix it with water from the river or import it from somewhere else. It would give those factions more power. And there would be wanderers caught in the middle.
 
I generally don't like one dimensional warmongering monsters in video games, so Bethesda supermutants are something I can never truly respect.

My general stance is that if something is sentient, it should be respected as a person with motivations, wants and a right to life.

This isn't a judgement on anyone who enjoys this sort of thing, but I kinda dislike games that have a "What if intelligent species with language and culture, but we made them universally evil and never able to respond to basic reason". It feels like a soft form of othering, where killing and commiting general atrocities against other forms of life is made justified, because they embody every bad trope we use to other, if that makes any sense.

If I'm playing a narrative driven game, I have a tendency to overthink them, and so I can't really accept narratives that give me "This is your completely unambigous enemy that you have to kill".

The whole idea of "War never changes" is meant to reflect the inherent violence of the Fallout world, and portraying on the micro-scale of a post-apocalyptic wasteland how power structures utilise violence for their own ends

If you have "These knights in shining armour are defending us from orcs", it kinda makes me feel like you're not playing a game with any form of narrative gravity that respects what war genuinely means, what the genuine ramifications of a world based on violent orders is.
 
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