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Fallout 4 Spoiler Thread (Stay away if you hate spoilers)

Wow what a shitty story, and a worse ending.

They were on a good thing with the faction interplay, but the way they wrote most of the factions was just so, so shitty. They could have done a lot better with the Institute especially to make them the least bit redeemable.
 
You guys keep saying there are no side quests and while I had almost none after initially beating the main story after wandering around I ended up stumbling into a lot more. Not only that but I keeping finding interesting areas that don't have quests but still have some cool hidden things. I've got something like 50-60 hours into the game and I have yet to complete all the quests or go back to try out all the other endings though I'm close to finishing the brotherhood one now.
 
You guys keep saying there are no side quests and while I had almost none after initially beating the main story after wandering around I ended up stumbling into a lot more. Not only that but I keeping finding interesting areas that don't have quests but still have some cool hidden things. I've got something like 50-60 hours into the game and I have yet to complete all the quests or go back to try out all the other endings though I'm close to finishing the brotherhood one now.

Who said there were no side quests????
 
The most frustrating thing is how many times people here have talked down New Vegas for "railroading" by having a bunch of explicit factions, even though the game allows you to go with any of them or to give them all the finger.

Meanwhile both Bethesda Fallouts are essentially Brotherhood of Steel Adventures 1 and 2.

I just don't understand how having less reactivity and less feedback for your actions while being pushed down a single road towards the Holy Knights of the Brotherhood as Bethesda handles them is somehow more immersive than a design with agency and feedback. Maybe the preference comes from having characters and plots that are way easier to ignore, but Bethesda fans aren't willing to articulate their feelings that way?

I just don't get it.

Need help building those straw men? I can lend a hand if you need it. Also, you can choose to side with any of the three factions. It was actually a somewhat difficult decision, since you basically go scorched earth on the other factions which is to bad.

That was kind of my problem with the choices though, basically you were with a side or you were murdering all of them, when it seemed like there may have been some wiggle room for compromise. Especially between two of them with you being the leader of one before making the choice.
 
What about the side missions? There's not that many? I saw that the complimentary side quests weren't a lot. I sided with the Institute.

The ending felt meh. Not much went on. It went from being this huge plot to a plot about betrayal. Once you find out about you know who, that's about it. I did have fun doing what I did, but it didn't feel impactful. It felt like it was going to happen either way.

No real big twist except a decision. I must have locked myself out of the other endings since I sided with them.

There aren't that many side quests outside of the factions? I guess I lost a lot of them.

The game made me think of Logan's Run a bit. It has some great characters and factions.

I clocked 17 hours.

There's the Witchcraft Museum I haven't been to. I hope that's good!
 
I know idiots like to complain that FO3's ending "sucked" because you couldn't play around in the world after but this is an example of one of those times you shouldn't listen to the fanbase.

This wasn't the only reason the ending in FO3 sucked. It is actually a very minor issue in the carnival of stupid that was the ending to FO3.
 
There are two more supposedly. There is the Railroad ending and the Minutemen ending.

People are just less likely to do those. The minutemen quests practically guarantee that people won't bother.

There are 4 I guess if you count each of the three factions blowing up the reactor different. But they all end with the exact same quest. " The Nuclear Option"
 
Finished the Institute ending, definitely felt like I was doing the right thing by preserving their technology, coming to peaceful solutions with the rebellious scientists and the Minutemen, sending out a peaceful broadcast across the Commonwealth, and taking down the militant BoS...

...and then Piper and Nick are pissy that I went that route. "Oh, guess you're in favor of kidnappings, huh?"

No, you goofy fucks. That's why I did everything humanly possible to make the Institute a better place. Why I made sure violence was always the last resort. You'd think that the character you romanced and the escaped synth who owes you his life would be all "We weren't sure about the Institute at first, but now you're in charge. And you've never done anything evil before. Ever. So we trust you."

So close, Bethesda. You were like three charisma checks away from this being a totally satisfying and solid story, but now I come away feeling sour because of four lines of dialogue from characters who (in terms of affinity) immediately kept loving me anyway.
 
I had a great time with the Institute ending (even if I kinda had to be a cold dick in the process, lol) and loved the scope of it. It was like Fallout 3's ending with the raid with Prime except actually good. The scene with Father was touching. Those ending slides, however, were absolutely terrible. No kind of epilogue whatsoever, no hints as to what everyone was headed towards next. What gives? What happened to my companions? What happened to the area? I get that you keep playing afterwords but.. I don't know, that just kinda ticked me off. It was unneeded if that was all it was going to tell.

Had a great ride otherwise.
 
also waiting for story summary
Here is one if you side with the institute.

You start just before the bombs drop before the war but thanks to your military background you are chosen to be a part of the vault program. After arriving you are quickly frozen as it turns out thats the test for this vault. Some time later you are partially woken and witness your wife being murdered and you son kidnapped by some bald dude and a person in a hazmat suit. You are refrozen though. You wake up again being released from your pod and find the vault all dead.

From there you wander out and begin exploring the wasteland looking for you son and your spouses killer. You eventually will make it to Diamond City where you will be informed to talk to Nick Valentine about helping you since he is a detective. You should begin hearing about the institute who is famous for kidnapping people and replacing them with synths(lifelike robots).

After saving Nick(who turns out to be a rundown damaged synth) he helps figure ou that the bald guy is probably a bald mere named Kellogg. So you hunt him down and eventually kill him for what he did to you before he dies he confirms that it was the institute that took your son.

Than you use cybernetic parts of his brain to figure out how to get to the institute. At this point you also see your 10 year old son with Kellogg. You learn that the only way is teleportation. You also here about an escaped institute scientist Virgil. You hunt him down in the Glowing Sea, a super irradiated area. He explains to you that you need to kill a courser(a very powerful hunter synth) and build this device in order to get into the institute.

You kill the courser but need someone to read its data and the only group that could possibly do it is the Railroad a group of people helping synths to escape and become there own person. After finding them by following the Freedom trail, you now need to build the device. You can pick any of three factions to help you with this (Minutemen, Railroad or the Brotherhood of Steel).

Whatever you choose you end up teleporting into the institute where you find out that your son is there. But he is also now like sixty years old and the head of the whole thing. Turns out you slept another sixty years after the first wake up. None the less he is very impressed that you made it to him and wants you to join him. If you say yes you can join the institute like I did(Also you can be undercover for the Brotherhood or Minutemen by saying yes) or you can say no and he will ask you to leave regretfully.

So if you join the institute they send you out on some missions to recollect some synths that escaped them and were helped by the railroad. The first one has become a bandit and is killing a lot of people. The next group is just about to escape but you nab them.

You than meet your son on top of CIT where he explains that he was stolen because the institute needed super fresh never irradiated DNA and a prewar frozen baby was prime. Your spouses death was unintended(Kellogg was an asshole). You were kept frozen as backup but your son is actually the one who wakes you up as both an experiment(what would you do?) and because he wanted to meet you.

He invite you to attend a meeting with the board of directors where he informs you that the institute is running out of power and they have a plan to fix that through nuclear power. He also makes you his successor even though you aren't a super scientist since he thinks there are enough of those in the institute. He also reveals that he is going to die of cancer soon.

You head out to collect the final component needed to finish the reactor and fight the Brotherhood making them permanent enemies to do so. After turning on the reactor your son explains that you need to kill the Railroad off since they are a threat to the institute.

After all this your final mission is to take out the Brotherhood and their ship. The method they have you use is to get in turn off the anti-teleport shields and hack Liberty Prime to blow up the ship.

Having completed all of this you meet your son on his deathbed and have a final heart to heart before the game ends as he dies. You get a quick monologue and montage about and than are put right back in the game to continue doing whatever.

The End

TLDR
Your son is alive and is in charge of the scary institute but he is your son so you help him and he dies.
 
I just finished with the institute route, and like a lot of people here, found the conclusion to be lacking. The journey was pretty damn enjoyable though.

One question though, people in diamond city and the commonwealth in general say that the institute is kidnapping people and replacing them with synths... but it really didn't feel like they were doing that at all with how they wanted to get their synths back from the surface. Did i miss a terminal or note or story somewhere?

My theory is that it was really the railroad who were replacing people with synths. I mean, when they get a free synth they give them reconstructive face surgery and false memories that had to come from somewhere. Though i kinda slaughtered them without talking to them much, so i don't know if this has much credence.
 
Just finished the campaign, took me bout 17 hours with little divergence tbh, mostly focused on main quest.

Disappointing to hear that there seems to be so limited side quests then if most are allocated to the faction stuff =/

I did the railroad ending, so that immediately locks me out of anymore with 2 factions.

Some thoughts on the story as a whole:

This was all rather dull, no? I've not checked in here until now and have popped my head in the OT only a couple times but the world and characters just did not interest me this time around and I loved both NV and FO3.

The twist was silly: it made no sense. Why would the institute want only the baby, why no one else? Why just the baby>
If the source of DNA was they were looking for was so scarce why kill the mom so readily? "least we've got the backup"
Well you released him like 60 years later but clearly didn't care too much, leaving him wander the wasteland but you clearly have the capability to take and abduct people whenever.
Also, Kellogg not aging was also a shitty red herring, him being augmented or not.

The one thing I'll say for it is that it did leave me genuinely conflicted for quite some time as to who to side with, I thought that was quite well done.

Anyway I don't know if it was dependent, but the ending was frankly a damp squib. I got the railroad ending as I mentioned. It just stopped. Base explodes, end of. Don't really get a sense of change in the world at large now.
Also no confrontation with your son, I guess he just died in the explosion?

I agree with this. My beef is the motivations of the three factions. The Brotherhood of Steel brings the entire war fleet to the commonwealth based on spotty information about synthetic lifeforms? Everyday life is a day-to-day struggle to survive, yet a group of people of the Railroad have commited themselves to securing escaped synthetic lifeforms? The Institute, full of the best and brightest minds mankind has left, cannot comprehend that the hyper advanced synthetic lifeforms they are creating could become self aware and want to escape? I'm sure someone way smarter than me can connect these story line dots but on the surface it doesn't make much sense.
 
I can't believe they recycled Liberty Prime. It was novel in FO3, but here I just found it an exercise in tedium. "OH SHIT LIBERTY PRIME JUST ONE SHOTTED A SUPER MUTANT BEHEMOTH WASNT THAT COOL??!!!!" It comes off as Bethesda trying way too hard to impress.

Can't say I really liked any of the endings. Certainly nothing on the level of mindfucking the enemy commander via speech checks in New Vegas.
 
I agree with this. My beef is the motivations of the three factions. The Brotherhood of Steel brings the entire war fleet to the commonwealth based on spotty information about synthetic lifeforms? Everyday life is a day-to-day struggle to survive, yet a group of people of the Railroad have commited themselves to securing escaped synthetic lifeforms? The Institute, full of the best and brightest minds mankind has left, cannot comprehend that the hyper advanced synthetic lifeforms they are creating could become self aware and want to escape? I'm sure someone way smarter than me can connect these story line dots but on the surface it doesn't make much sense.

I don't agree with what you say about the Brotherhood having spotty info. They mention having sent at least to scouting forces before Danse and you clearly meet a lot of synths in the wastelands. Brotherhood's modus operandi is finding and recovering technology and the institute clearly has oodles of it. The reason for sending the Prydwin is they mention this is their first big move since the events of Fallout 3 and they want to show they mean business to everyone.
The Railroad is going with the idea that even if life is hard that is no excuse for slavery even at personal loss for members.
The Institute has no problem understanding whats going on with their synths wanting to escape they just don't see it as true sentience more as just glitches that have added up. One of the quests also points you to recapturing a synth he is free and he has become a very strong raider and is killing people. So they also see their escaped tech as dangerous.
 
Does the game get any better after the beginning? So far all I have done is build some stuff, clear bandit camps and the raid on ArcJet with the Brotherhood. There is very little context, nearly no choices (not even talking about c&c) and the dialogue is complete shit.
 
I just finished with the institute route, and like a lot of people here, found the conclusion to be lacking. The journey was pretty damn enjoyable though.

One question though, people in diamond city and the commonwealth in general say that the institute is kidnapping people and replacing them with synths... but it really didn't feel like they were doing that at all with how they wanted to get their synths back from the surface. Did i miss a terminal or note or story somewhere?

My theory is that it was really the railroad who were replacing people with synths. I mean, when they get a free synth they give them reconstructive face surgery and false memories that had to come from somewhere. Though i kinda slaughtered them without talking to them much, so i don't know if this has much credence.

The mayor of Diamond City is a synth plant, it's part of one of the Institute sidequests.
 
The lack of side quests is probably the games biggest failure. I didn't realize how little I had done until I beat the game. That's really.. strange.. for a roleplaying game. The only elements of choice were in the factions/main storyline.
 
The lack of side quests is probably the games biggest failure. I didn't realize how little I had done until I beat the game. That's really.. strange.. for a roleplaying game. The only elements of choice were in the factions/main storyline.

I really don't get this I have found and continue to find tons of side quests not related to the factions/main storyline all over. You don't get as many from hubs in this one you find them more from exploring. I'm sixty hours in and still finding new quests.
 
I don't think this game has less sidequests than Fallout 3, I'd say there are probably more. There's little C&C in the sidequests, but that's a separate issue.
 
So i didnt really know what was going on, the game didnt really communicate that it was over very well besides the cutscene. It ended so abruptly. I went with the institute ending, and never did all the railroad or bortherhood quests. So i kinda missed out on content there.

Now that the games over, what is there to do, didnt i read somewhere about like 400 horus of content. I thought once i got into the institute that id have almost another full half of a game. But no, you do a few missions, then youre the leader, one mission later, thats it. Its over.
 
I really don't get this I have found and continue to find tons of side quests not related to the factions/main storyline all over. You don't get as many from hubs in this one you find them more from exploring. I'm sixty hours in and still finding new quests.
The only quests I've been able to really find are "exterminate this" or "rid the raiders from here" type of quests. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. I did a few within Boston, like that one where you have to kill the family's insane father in the asylum, but there haven't been a lot like that. I was hoping for more quests like Agatha's Song, Blood Ties, Head of State, or Tenpenny Tower and haven't found that many quests with that kind of detail and choice.
 
Agree with pretty much everything you've said.

It may just be certain factions but I did the BoS route and now they seem to have more of a presence in the commonwealth (Stumbling onto military checkpoints, vertibirds patrolling, some BoS soldiers in Diamond City, etc). Still kinda underwhelming.

Did you have to attack the base in your playthrough? In the BoS one you do a full on invasion and encounter your son on the way to destroying the base reactor.

Only positive thing I can say about the story is that there are at least SOME factions that aren't two dimensional good/bad. BoS is genuinely kinda sinister.

I'm a little confused here with regards to factions, you can't do all the factions missions in one playthrough? I have a preference for Brotherhood of Steel, unless the NCR is on this game, so I'm hoping I can do there missions without effecting other factions missions.


Also. what is considered the "good" ending? Helping Brotherhood, Institute, Railroad or something else?
 
The only quests I've been able to really find are "exterminate this" or "rid the raiders from here" type of quests. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. I did a few within Boston, like that one where you have to kill the family's insane father in the asylum, but there haven't been a lot like that. I was hoping for more quests like Agatha's Song, Blood Ties, Head of State, or Tenpenny Tower and haven't found that many quests with that kind of detail and choice.

Make sure to check the miscellaneous section as it contains a lot of bread crumbs that lead you to larger quests. For one off the top of my head there are the detective cases in Diamond City you get from Valentines office, just grab the case files.
 
I just finished with the institute route, and like a lot of people here, found the conclusion to be lacking. The journey was pretty damn enjoyable though.

One question though, people in diamond city and the commonwealth in general say that the institute is kidnapping people and replacing them with synths... but it really didn't feel like they were doing that at all with how they wanted to get their synths back from the surface. Did i miss a terminal or note or story somewhere?

My theory is that it was really the railroad who were replacing people with synths. I mean, when they get a free synth they give them reconstructive face surgery and false memories that had to come from somewhere. Though i kinda slaughtered them without talking to them much, so i don't know if this has much credence.

No they actually are kidnapping people and replacing them with synths the game just does a poor job revealing this or explaining why they do it. If you sided with the Institute then go around and talk with the scientists and they should give you side quests, a couple of them involve speaking with undercover synth agents. One of them involves speaking with a synth who was used to replace the father of a family, his cover is at risk of being blown and you have to fix it. Why did they do this? Who knows, it's not like you're in charge of The Institute or whatever.
 
hopefully I wont read too many spoilers but I had to ask / discuss this. I just got to the institute and...what? this twist makes no sense
its a good twist, or would be, but what about Kellogg? Dude was what, in his 30s/40s when he took shaun, how can 60 years have passed, he would be dead or older than Father. The game wont even let me ask about Kellogg, the logical thing...its Fallout 3 and the super mutant not going in the radiation chamber all over again >_<

Unless I'm missing something and this is explained further into the Institute, its really souring me. And im not even in the "lol Bathesda's writing is garbage" camp
 
hopefully I wont read too many spoilers but I had to ask / discuss this. I just got to the institute and...what? this twist makes no sense
its a good twist, or would be, but what about Kellogg? Dude was what, in his 30s/40s when he took shaun, how can 60 years have passed, he would be dead or older than Father. The game wont even let me ask about Kellogg, the logical thing...its Fallout 3 and the super mutant not going in the radiation chamber all over again >_<

Unless I'm missing something and this is explained further into the Institute, its really souring me. And im not even in the "lol Bathesda's writing is garbage" camp

There are some notes in one of the terminals if I remember right, his life was extended through cybernetics.

Never mind that he should still look older of course >_>
It's a total cop out to try and hide the fact that 60 years have passed.
 
There are some notes in one of the terminals if I remember right, his life was extended through cybernetics.

Never mind that he should still look older of course >_>
It's a total cop out to try and hide the fact that 60 years have passed.

Shaun mentions it too. His life was extended, and yeah. it's a cop out.
 
oh wait, you CAN mention Kellogg in the conversation. Yeah Father says the institute prolonged his life... grrr I cant even argue with that, I mean it technically makes sense.

Im still angry :p
 
What a disapointment after New Vegas.

"Father: I am your son."

EleGiggle.png
 
So I finished the different endings today, and I have to say I'm disappointed. It just doesn't seem like much effort was put into any of them, the writing was awful.

I also don't like how every faction has to have SOME reason why they require to be the only ones alive. It just means you have to roam a fairly empty world after, there is no peaceful speech kind of resolution.

To be honest, it's kind of killed a lot of my enthusiasm to keep playing.
 
Man, what a disappointment.

I was REALLY digging the main story in my quest to find my son...until I found him.

I thought the twist was interesting and I didn't expect it, so I commend it for that. But after that, I feel like the main plot completely lost direction. I did not really know what I was doing with the Institute, and then I'm suddenly hacking Liberty Prime and it's game over. Weird.

The quest to find Shaun was great in my opinion, I just wish the result of finding him was different.
 
Just finished it, did the Railroad ending, then reloaded a past save and did the Institute ending. Boy that Institute ending REALLY sucks, huh? Nothing happens, just, you're the leader now, grats. I feel like one obvious ending is glaringly missing. I would've liked to take over the Institute and reform it, but that's not even an option, which really sucks and feels like a huge oversight. Imagine the Institute's potential under ethical leadership that doesn't treat synths like property? There's no reason why you couldn't take over the Institute without killing the Railroad, since Shaun's already terminally sick anyway. It feels like a huge cop-out to force a choice where there doesn't have to be one. And then to assume that my PC would run the Institute exactly the same as Shaun. Really sloppy, lazy writing. The role-playing aspect of this game is so severely lacking.

Blowing up the Brotherhood's airship was sick though. I didn't work for them at all in this playthrough besides the one introductory mission, never joined them. What happens if you join all factions? Where does the split happen?

I agree with this. My beef is the motivations of the three factions. The Brotherhood of Steel brings the entire war fleet to the commonwealth based on spotty information about synthetic lifeforms? Everyday life is a day-to-day struggle to survive, yet a group of people of the Railroad have commited themselves to securing escaped synthetic lifeforms? The Institute, full of the best and brightest minds mankind has left, cannot comprehend that the hyper advanced synthetic lifeforms they are creating could become self aware and want to escape? I'm sure someone way smarter than me can connect these story line dots but on the surface it doesn't make much sense.

Actually I think you got it. I was also REALLY shaking my head that Shaun was like "synthetics have no free will lol" I'm like DUDE THEY WANT TO ESCAPE. How do you explain that then? It's a huge plot hole. They're MAKING them down there and they don't know they have free will? Come on. The entire Institute is so underdeveloped, they don't even explain what their plans for humanity actually are other than "we're here and we build sick robots to do our work... I guess..."
 
What happens if you join all factions? Where does the split happen?

You can actually join a faction and then betray them. So if you don't want to do institute missions then you can join the brotherhood and then turn on them in the last mission. I don't know about the others though.
 
Blowing up the Brotherhood's airship was sick though. I didn't work for them at all in this playthrough besides the one introductory mission, never joined them. What happens if you join all factions? Where does the split happen?

It happens exactly the same way. The game doesn't really acknowledge that you worked with the Brotherhood.
 
It happens exactly the same way. The game doesn't really acknowledge that you worked with the Brotherhood.

But I blew up the ship with the Railroad. So if I were to join the Railroad AND the Brotherhood it would happen the same way or? Because in my playthrough the Brotherhood already went perma-hostile earlier, when I had to steal that component for the reactor.
 
People saying there aren't many side quests haven't been playing the same game as I have. I'm about 60 hours in and have just done the starting quests for BoS and the minute men. I've done a few story missions here and there but mostly just been picking up tons of side stuff to do. In the main story I've gone as far as tapping into Kellogs memories and now have to go to the glowing sea.

Just did an awesome side quest where you become a radio drama star called the Silver Shroud and it was so much different than anything that's come before so far. I don't get at all where people say this game doesn't have quests outside of the factions at all. If you beat the game in 17 hours you missed some really great stuff.

Have yet to even see the railroad or institute factions and my quest list is filled with stuff to do. It might not have as many great locations as 3 had but I'm still loving every minute of it. Accept for having to track down stupid materials every so often that I need for upgrades.
 
If Shaun was the least bit relatable and not 95% "the ends justify the means" snobbish scientist villain, I would have liked anything past finding the Institute.

The game really fell apart for me at Bunker Hill, where the BoS magically show up for no reason to have a war with 2 factions for 4 renegade synths that they have no business with outside of moral objections (I never contacted them before this point), the game doesn't properly respond to your betrayal of factions (nobody attacked me the entire time), and the quest objectives bugged out (the main objective still indicated I needed to save the synths after clearing the entire area for the Railroad and I couldn't speak to the escapee synths anymore).
 
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