Bethesdaretconman
First time out of the vault
You know, I always defended No Mutants Allowed as a place that's strong willed and spirited, yes, but that there was always a good amount of discussion to be had, and accurate critique. Critique, not mouth-breathing bashing. But before I start pointing out why this thread is an example of the decline in NMA's quality, let me cross-post the long explanation as to why the OP's post is dumb.
Also, in case it's not clear, neither The Vault nor I are part of the fantasy la-la-land of denying Bethesda's sole ownership and authority over the franchise. If you, like TVD, reject reality, don't post, but contact a psychiatrist for delusion treatment.
I hate Fallout 3's story with a passion worthy of a better cause, but your criticism is unfounded and based on a lack of knowledge about lore on your part.
1 : The base money is caps. Contradiction with: Fallout 2
In the very first sentence you establish your ignorance. Caps weren't used "only during the first years after the war" and they weren't "farmer's money." It was a currency in every sense of the word, used for well over a century due to the Hub's backing (since the NCR was only founded in 2186 and would not instantly introduce a gold-backed currency, a better estimate would be a century and a half), which is understandable: Currency is whatever we use as currency.
Now, about bottle caps, the entire thing is covered here, on The Vault, but note that caps were deliberately introduced after the Brotherhood destroyed the NCR, to provide an alternative currency to the dollar, which became a fiat currency. Yes, it's backed by water, contributing to its stability. It also emphasizes how arbitrary currency is and leads me to another point:
Why does Diamond City need its own currency to be a city? And why wouldn't caps be the currency promoted by Diamond City for the exact same reason they were adopted by Hub in the first place? And if you want a lore justification, then look no further than Fallout: New Vegas' Dala, who mentions Mobius' speculation about post-holocaust economic systems when queried about bottle caps. Nothing indicates it wasn't a publicly available thesis.
Your point about banks and economic power is interesting, if there was any existing society that could be affected. There is none. The analogy with the Crusades falls flat on its face when you consider the fact that Crusaders operated with the backing of the entire network of European states and were primarily serving pilgrims moving to the Holy Land, not imposing their own currency on the locals (in fact, they dealt in local currencies primarily).
Even if we accept the proposition that there's a way for them to project economic power four hundred miles away from their center of power (which is unlikely), you do forget that in order to do so, they need to have something backing it. They can't just introduce their currency and expect people to accept it when they are a. a military expedition and b. merchants won't trade in their currency without them having a significant economic base in the Commonwealth - which they do not have, being a military expedition.
The Brotherhood trades in the local currency because they have no other choice than to do so.
Listen, I'm [...] not a writer.
If you were, you would have done your research on what currency is, the economic systems involved in the Crusades, and the whole slew of related subjects. And account for the reintroduction of the bottle cap out West.
2 : Jet is presented as a pre-war drug, shipped to vault 95 before it was sealed. Contradiction with: Fallout 2
This is a largely nitpicking point and contains one of the dumbest pieces of story ever created for Fallout 2. Myron's explanation for Jet is, quite frankly, bullshit. It has no scientific backing (a protein extract fed to unmutated cows two centuries ago suddenly starts producing the most addictive chem in the history of the world, really? I mean, read the whole thing and tell me with a straight face that isn't the most fucking ridiculous pseudoscience you've read in a long while) and is about as plausible as jenkem, which likely inspired it.
I can certainly understand why this bullshit was written, to give Reno a plausible reason for raiding brahmin drives to Redding (beyond delicious steaks), but it doesn't change the fact that this is a ridiculous part of Fallout lore that begged for retconning. FEV was introduced to retain a bit of plausibility when it came to giant mutant supersoldiers, without falling back on "Radioactivity Did It", which was a ridiculous trope.
Jet being a pre-War drug explains a lot more and allows for explaining why Myron was able to come up with it so fast and at such a young age: He was simply looking to ingratiate himself with the Mordinos and what quicker way than with figuring a way to replicate a pre-War drug (which means you don't have to figure out the formula, but merely a way to replicate it. The brahmin and taking blood samples to isolate whatever can be modified to make Jet with the right conditions (stretching plausibility, but still more plausible than "magic protein extract popping up in the shit of brahmin two centuries after the fact and nobody realizing that stuff for said amount of time despite brahmin shit being widely used as fertilizer everywhere").
Note: Fertilizer can be used to manufacture meth, explaining why you can make it in Fallout 4 and why Myron could make it.
Also, Mordinos, intelligent and drug-knowing? As Myron points out, they were farming Peyote and passing it off as a super-unique Reno experience, not to mention their entire operation is based on ruthlessness and violence, not intelligence and respect. That's the domain of Bishop and Salvatore.
3 : Again, Super Mutants are all idiots (except for Virgil). Contradiction with : Fallout 1, 2, tactics.
Because they're a different strain of super mutant, derived from a different strain of FEV than the Mariposa super mutants? You're grasping at straws here. Fallout 4 super mutants are completely unrelated to Fallout and Fallout 2 super mutants. Which renders this entire portion of your rant irrelevant.
And no, the Institute releasing brain-damaged super mutants to run interference on the surface is not dumb. For starters, super mutants have no idea where the Institute is and how to get to it. It's kind of the effect of teleporting stuff to the surface.
4 : why is Sanctuary empty ?
Because it's a ruin far away from any population centers and without any meaningful resources nearby?
5 : The institute's main defense is its position and its secrecy. It's an enclave far under the surface, with no enter, no exit. You can only enter via teleportation. Contradiction with : Fallout 4 itself.
Congratulations, you linked the Institute to the Commonwealth Institute of Technology. Do you want a prize for that?
(I'm doing my best not to be snarky, but if you cannot even get the name of the pre-War Institute right, it's hard not to be)
First of all, you are assuming that people remember that there was a CIT before the War, that it had an underground section, and that it was where the Institute was located. Then you make the mistake of assuming that digging downwards and penetrating reinforced concrete is a simple matter of picking up a shovel and digging. You go pick up a shovel and break through reinforced concrete, get back to me when you do.
Back? Good.
Now explain to me why would Diamond City or anyone in the wasteland try to band together against the Institute? A faction that demonstrated the ability to infiltrate any group it wishes and exterminate any attempt at forming a stable unified government on the surface? You're talking about fighting an invisible menace that can strike where it wants on its own terms and about whose location you have no idea beyond a general "It's under the old CIT, I hope!"
Oh yeah, and you're assuming the Institute wouldn't fight back with a horde of synthetic warriors equipped with weapons that outclass the weapons of the average wastelander by a wide margin, have no fear or morale to break, and will continue fighting as long as they keep running. The Minutemen, the Brotherhood, and the Railroad only succeed because they manage to find out precisely where they are and direct every resource they have towards destroying them.
6 : Why does Virgil hides in the glowing sea ?
Because the intense radiation makes the Glowing Sea impossible to scan remotely. It's the best place to hide when you're immune to radiation and have a very distinctive signature, as Kellogg and his synths would have to comb the Glowing Sea with a very fine-toothed comb in order to find Virgil and the mutants that inhabit it make for a very effective defence.
7 : The Institute is made of the greatest minds of the wasteland Contradiction with : the whole franchise What exactly has the Institute accomplished ?
Nitpicking with no imagination, how crude.
And that's just off the top of my head.
- Creating synths, giving themselves an expendable, versatile workforce and allowing every human to focus on creative pursuits and scientific endeavor. They are better than Assaultrons and Sentry Bots for the simple reason that they are versatile, easily capable of using human tools and in the case of third gens, self-healing with no requirement for spare parts. Also, Big MT's personalities are not sentient, but personality overlays used for a core OS. Kind of like Siri for Apple's iOS.
- You are cleary not able to understand the concept of pushing the boundaries of technology by experimentation. Gorillas and Robo!Shaun are examples of experimentation that investigates the limits of their technology. For a real-life example, look at how many experiments John Garand created before the M1 Garand was born.
- The GECK is not a food replicator. This whole line was dropped.
- You apparently missed the point where Father explains that they've made plenty of modifications to the original design, turning an experimental nuclear reactor into a tokamak fusion reactor, taking the MICRO-fusion technology created for the power armor system and scaling it up to MACRO-scale. Because, as Fallout 4 establishes, fusion powering the world in Fallout is not cold, but hot: "Evidence suggests this is, and always will be, a pipe dream". This actually fixes a lot of inconsistencies with the setting, as cold fusion would forever solve energy needs and render the entire resource crisis null. Oh, and before you point it out, Karl Oslow and his Mass Fusion was built on a giant lie, selling fission power repackaged as clean thermonuclear power.
- There's no indication that Big MT discovered teleportation before the Great War (if it did, it could've sold it to the government and defeat the Chinese within a year - teleporting troops into their heartland and dismantling their nukes remotely would do that).
- Curie was working on her own for two centuries with access to medical equipment designed for curing disease. And claims that she can cure every disease are bogus. She may know how to cure every disease logged into the Vault's computers, but not every disease in the world - not to mention there's a huge difference between knowing how to do something and actually curing it, as we can see in real life, where diseases aren't cured overnight.
- No, West Tek did not make a cure for FEV. As ZAX states, "No. FEV does not retain unaltered original copies of the subject's DNA. Only a virus which re-infected the subject with original DNA could reverse the effects. Additionally, there is no known way to remove the FEV itself." Virgil's achievement is figuring out a way to neutralize the original FEV, something West Tek did not manage to develop.
- The Institute is not the CIT and House's practical immortality is not "makeshift technology", nor is it an example of the Institute being outsmarted. House sacrificed his body to become immortal. The Institute can do it (Father does refer to taking drastic steps to ensuring his survival in the face of cancer), but doesn't want to (conflicts with their philosophy, which is why Father shuttered the cybernetics program; and really, Kellogg managed practical immortality without sacrificing body, managing to live to over a century of age with no signs of stopping, while House survives by being hooked up to a machine that turned his body into a husk).
8 : The institute's goals are... er... incoherent at most.
Yes, because the goals of the Institute are defined by its Director and few have a vision consistent with each other. It's basically the Legion, except without the veneer of ancient Rome and running for nearly two centuries. It's called "being human." You also curiously seem to be ignoring the possibility that the Broken Mask Incident was deliberate sabotage by isolationists within the Institute.
9 : The institute doesn't rule the Commonwealth and manages to lose against the Minutemen/Brotherhood/Railroad. Contradiction with : itself.
You do realize that the Institute doesn't mass-produce the synths continuously, because they'd run out of living space and supplies at that rate? Also, where do you pull these numbers from? Because from where I'm sitting, it's thin air (and I'm being polite).
10 : Shaun has cancer. Contradiction with : Fallout 1, New Vegas & Fallout 4.
Jesus Fucking Christ, you have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Cancer is not well understood. How we develop cancer is not well understood. Cancer is not curable in general because there is no one cancer every single one is different. Read some fucking Wikipedia or something.
FEV doesn't render a human immune to cancer without completely rewriting their body and permanent infection with FEV, as the virus then replicates and constantly updating the cells' genetic information with the modified DNA it holds, preventing degenerative changes that result in cancer. Father could cure himself by becoming a super mutant, but guess what?
He does not want to take such a drastic measure.
Also, you're an asshole. Cancer is not a "cell boo-boo". I've erased a wall of profanities here. I've lost my grandfather to leukemia. It's not a joking matter.
11 : The Californian Brotherhood of steel approved Maxson's rise to power. Contradiction with : fallout bible, Fallout 2, Van Buren, Fallout New Vegas.
Based on what source? There's nothing in Fallout: New Vegas, at all, implying that Lost Hills has fallen. In fact, the NCR/Brotherhood truce ending explicitly states the following: "The Brotherhood and the NCR in the Mojave Wasteland declared an official truce, despite continued hostilities between the two in the west."
So who, exactly, doesn't know Fallout 4 lore?
12 : Liberty Prime liberated Anchorage, if we believe Cambridge's robots. Contradiction with : Fallout 3.
It's called propaganda, love. Even you yourself agree.
13 : The BOS blows up the Institute. Contradiction with : all of Fallout's lore.
Good fucking lord, did you ignore the ENTIRE GAME? From the very first moment you meet Danse, you are introduced to the overarching idea of the Brotherhood: Technology needs to be controlled, lest it destroys man, as it did. To quote Maxson:
"Look at the scorched earth and the bones that litter the wasteland. Millions... perhaps even billions, died because science outpaced man's restraint. They called it a "new frontier" and "pushing the envelope," completely disregarding the repercussions"
And Danse: "Before the Great War, science and technology became more of a burden than a benefit. The atom bomb, bio-engineered plagues and FEV are clear examples of the horrors that technological advancement had wrought. We're here to make sure that never happens again."
More here. But basically, you don't seem to understand that the Brotherhood are not knights of yore and they are not tech hoarders like before. Maxson redefined the ideals of the Brotherhood, eliminating hoarding and effective worshipping of technology (what gave you the idea they did?). Collection and preservation of technology is a tool now, not a means to an end.
You don't understand the Brotherhood, at all. Here's a primer, and if you don't want to bother with reading all that, here's a pertinent quote from Talus, from Fallout 1: "Wear our Power Armor as a symbol of hope as you walk the wasteland, for someday when the world is ready we will surface and restore our battered Earth." And from Veronica: "Once upon a time [our purpose] was about technology. Controlling it so it couldn't destroy us again."
Destroying the Institute is a decisive act that seems confusing at first (after all, can't all that tech be used to their benefit?), except Maxson knows that this technology is powerful - and that kind of power corrupts beyond all measure. How long until he'd compromise the Brotherhood's ideals and start fielding synths, to preserve the Brotherhood's manpower? How long until they start copying members' minds into synths, like with Nick, to ensure they survive? And bit by bit, they become the very entity they despise. Maxson knows that, because the Brotherhood has gone down this path before, degenerating from an isolationist, but fundamentally well-intentioned group, to another raider tribe, except with fancier guns.
Whatever's lost is mere chump change compared to what was gained and preserved: The soul of the Brotherhood and humanity.
And traditionally, misconceptions you perpetuate:
- Lorri's modifications are upgrades that enhance human performance, but do not compromise the essence of a human (which is a neat subversion of the "cybernetics eat your soul" trope).
- Fallout Tactics has been disregarded by Bethesda and even if it wasn't, the Eastern Brotherhood is a rogue chapter with their own policies independent of the core Brotherhood.
- Accelerated Vector Fusion is the means to provide enough power for Liberty Prime to function at a basic level, not something to control Prime's AI (which is actually rudimentary and inferior to pretty much everything on the market).
- Ingram doesn't use bionic implants. It's a minor point, but she uses a customized power armor frame, not implants.
14 : There's the Enclave armor in the wild, untouched for centuries and rusty : Contradiction with : Fallout 2
X-01 is not Enclave armor. It's a pre-War prototype refined by remnants of the military post-War. The Enclave simply took it and refined it.
15 : The synths uprising There's a problem with the synths.
You do realize that every synth has an individual reset code and the Institute would have to broadcast every single one of these codes separately? And that's assuming that the Code Defender doesn't, oh, shut down the loud speaker system or isolate it from the grid? Or that synths don't shoot loudspeakers on sight? Or, say cover their ears?
16 : A ghoul stays locked in a fridge for two centuries, without food or water.
Yes, it's dumb. No, using a single, random, off-kilter quest that doesn't fit with the rest to bash Fallout 4 is not wise, or insightful. I don't see you bashing Fallout 2 for Coffin Willie, who's about as dumb an addition as Billy.
17 : Ghouls can run/charge. Contradiction with : Fallout 1 and 2.
That has been retconned, ever since Fallout 2. Remember Lenny? Ghouls with his sprite can run around just fine.
Why is that a problem?
18 : There are super mutants at Boston. Contradiction with : all fallouts.
As linked above, Commonwealth super mutants are derived from a separate strain engineered by the Institute.
And just so you know, there's no pure, raw FEV. The FEV in Mariposa is the FEV-II, created before the War, and it was not altered by the Master. What he figured out was how to ensure the survival of super mutant candidates, as the genetic damage from background radiation caused the FEV to malfunction and kill the subjects by triggering organ failure.
19 : Piper leaves her business Contradiction with : common freaking sense
As you mentioned, you're not a writer, so you don't seem to understand how curiosity works. Piper's a journalist and sticking with the Sole Survivor guarantees her a story about Nick. Add two to two.
Second, Piper lives in Diamond City and if she ignores McDonough's threats, then that should clue you in that he's making empty threats and the sisters are too popular for him to actually go through with dismantling Publick Occurrences.
20 : Robots have personnalities. Contradiction with : all fallout games.
Uh, no it's not a contradiction. Artificial personalities are a thing (weren't you arguing just a few paragraphs ago that Big MT pioneered super AI), and Codsworth is basically what happens to an incredibly powerful CPU and an artificial personality after two hundred years of a lack of maintenance. Note how despite all that time, he is still constrained by his programming. Plus, Codsworth isn't a cheap, domestic robot. Again, you're inventing stuff.
By the way, the brain isn't "a CPU so powerful that even our own engineers cannot even imagine a computer that would come close to it." Sorry.
21 : the Institute needed pure DNA Is Shaun's DNA pure ? Hell no.
It was as close to pre-War DNA as possible. You don't seem to understand physics at all, despite your posturing. Yes, Shaun was exposed for a brief moment to gamma radiation. Brief. Did you die of radiation sickness after your last X-Ray?
Also, read up on radiation shielding. Codsworth was shielded, the car was shielded, everything was shielded.
22 : Synth can't remember the Institute, because security protocols wipe these memory out.
It's explained in the game that most of escapees are synths from work crews, who do not enter the Institute proper and primarily work either on the surface or in tunnels beneat the Institute, expanding it.
And since synths are teleported out and in, tell me, how would they know where it's located, beyond "it's underground"?
You have a courser chip on your pip-boy. If you shoot up the entire Institute, all that happens is you get it deactivated. They could literally teleport you in to a jail cell, and then deactivate it, keeping you from ever interfering with there operations again, but NO they decide to be idiots, and just let you run loose in the Commonwealth and continue to fuck with them.
There's no indication they can teleport people without them actively requesting teleportation. It's not a cellphone that's permanently logged into a cell network, if you recall, but a chip allowing relaying into the Institute.
Diamond City has strict anti-Ghoul laws, yet you can walk a ghoul right in to the middle and they wont even try to kick him out.
The Forged, Triggermen and Gunners all attack on sight.
Gameplay concession. The first because cities turning hostile is unfun (not to mention Hancock isn't big on laws like that either, so he just swaggers into the city dragging is oversized balls behind).
Second is because there is a thing called resources and budget. Sure, it could be fun to have non-violent raiders, but the budget isn't made of rubber and the game's rich enough as it is.
What's this?, A villager has been kidnapped by Raiders?, Oh they're shooting on sight. How are you supposed to pay them ransom if they don't let you approach them?
Because you're not the guy contacted about the ransom and you're a potential threat because they don't know you?
In summary: Your post is nothing more than nitpicking born out of ignorance of actual Fallout lore, grasshopper.
Now, to write a follow up.
2 : Jet is presented as a pre-war drug, shipped to vault 95 before it was sealed. Contradiction with: Fallout 2
This is a largely nitpicking point and contains one of the dumbest pieces of story ever created for Fallout 2. Myron's explanation for Jet is, quite frankly, bullshit. It has no scientific backing (a protein extract fed to unmutated cows two centuries ago suddenly starts producing the most addictive chem in the history of the world, really? I mean, read the whole thing and tell me with a straight face that isn't the most fucking ridiculous pseudoscience you've read in a long while) and is about as plausible as jenkem, which likely inspired it.
I can certainly understand why this bullshit was written, to give Reno a plausible reason for raiding brahmin drives to Redding (beyond delicious steaks), but it doesn't change the fact that this is a ridiculous part of Fallout lore that begged for retconning. FEV was introduced to retain a bit of plausibility when it came to giant mutant supersoldiers, without falling back on "Radioactivity Did It", which was a ridiculous trope.
Jet being a pre-War drug explains a lot more and allows for explaining why Myron was able to come up with it so fast and at such a young age: He was simply looking to ingratiate himself with the Mordinos and what quicker way than with figuring a way to replicate a pre-War drug (which means you don't have to figure out the formula, but merely a way to replicate it. The brahmin and taking blood samples to isolate whatever can be modified to make Jet with the right conditions (stretching plausibility, but still more plausible than "magic protein extract popping up in the shit of brahmin two centuries after the fact and nobody realizing that stuff for said amount of time despite brahmin shit being widely used as fertilizer everywhere").
Note: Fertilizer can be used to manufacture meth, explaining why you can make it in Fallout 4 and why Myron could make it.
Also, Mordinos, intelligent and drug-knowing? As Myron points out, they were farming Peyote and passing it off as a super-unique Reno experience, not to mention their entire operation is based on ruthlessness and violence, not intelligence and respect. That's the domain of Bishop and Salvatore.
No scientific backing, huh? Neither is people turning to ghouls when exposed to too much radiation or them able to survive without food or water. It's fiction, not everything needs to be realistic, it does however need to be consistent. You edited that article beyond belief with tons of bias, I read the dialogue for how he made it and it's no more unbelievable than ghouls, super mutants, etc. "Radioactivity did it" is the trope that defines the entire fallout franchise, buddy. Myron has shown that he knows his shit, he discovered it quickly partially by coincidence when he saw the the slaves getting toxicated from the fumes of the dung, and civilisation has just started a new after the bombs dropped, so it's not too far of stretch to have people just discovering something that has been under all their noses after a 100 years, and not many book smart people probably work around Brahmin crap or even care about it. People have been too busy trying to survive. Oh, and OP never said anything about Mordino knowing all about drugs and just because he advertised it as the New Reno experience, doesn't mean he doesn't know anything about drugs, peyote fucks you up, it just lasts too long to get a profit, he probably knew that, he just wanted something quick to attract more customers, and I'm sure someone could tell him that Myron didn't invent jet, someone who knows it's prewar.
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