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People complain that the BoS suddenly became fascist in Fallout 4, but in this game they're literally running a breeding program.
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May 27, 2023 17:34
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The Brotherhood was fascist since day 1, it's FO3's fault they've had any image otherwise
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May 27, 2023 17:38
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Yeah, Fallout 3's Brotherhood is weird. I'm not that big a fan of the FO4 Brotherhood going all Latin but I did like the ambiguous computer logs about how Elder Lyons and Sarah were "killed" and suddenly the East Coasters are hailing the prodigal son Arthur Maxson to lead them back to fascist glory.
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May 27, 2023 17:40
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Youremother posted:The Brotherhood was fascist since day 1, it's FO3's fault they've had any image otherwise They should have called the Outcasts just the BoS and the BoS "good" faction Lyon's Pride as a whole or something
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May 27, 2023 17:43
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Alhazred posted:People complain that the BoS suddenly became fascist in Fallout 4, but in this game they're literally running a breeding program. What the what? What the hell did I miss about the Brotherhood in New Vegas?
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May 27, 2023 17:51
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Arivia posted:What the what? What the hell did I miss about the Brotherhood in New Vegas? Veronica and Christine were lovers but it's a closed community that doesn't take on outsiders so they're encouraged to have heterosexual relationships to keep the Brotherhood from dying out. Veronica and Christine were separated from each other as part of this program.
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May 27, 2023 17:54
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Arc Hammer posted:Yeah, Fallout 3's Brotherhood is weird. The decision to get involved in local politics doesn't look that weird to me, especially if you remember (apparently non-canon) Fallout Tactics where BoS went full native. It's one of the ways Mojave chapter can go, and it's more sensible one. BoS as it was in Fallout 1 was basically doomed. They only let Vault Dweller in after telling them to go into a place of a certain death not expecting them to come back. Fallout 3 version is less interesting but it does make more sense.
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May 27, 2023 18:20
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It's less about how much sense it makes to get involved in the local politics of the wasteland and more to do with their attitude and presentation within the game. The Brotherhood in 3 is seen as this benevolent force of knights in armour coming to save the downtrodden. That in itself isn't so bad if the game makes it clear that the knights imagery is just a front to the rest of the wasteland and they're still xenophobic tech hoarders. But the game doesn't really do that.
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May 27, 2023 18:35
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They still look down on locals and you might find more about their roots if you dig for it. But it's not the game (or even series) where you're supposed to go look for subtle hints. Bethesda does this in Elder Scrolls where individual stories are cheap high fantasy cliché and you have to look deeper to learn how complex is the history and metaphysics of the world. Fallout as a series starts with a propaganda film where American soldiers in power armour execute a civilian and are proud about it, it considers writers who use subtext cowards. I still think them turning from xenophobic knights in shining armour to smug knights in shing armour is fine, just that it isn't interesting. If they wanted some clear moral orienteers they already had those regulator guys. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 19:13 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 19:10
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I have not played FO1 and 2 but I don't think the BoS was fascist before 4 if NV is anything to go by. They have a serious lack of ambition - isolationists to the core. That's why they need breeding programs, not to spread the master race, but to keep their perpetually falling numbers from falling behind replacement levels. Caesar himself mocks them fior having no real beliefs beyond "sit and wait." They've progressed not at all in 200 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MofSG-vLJ8
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May 27, 2023 23:10
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It depends on what you define as a fascist. That can get pretty squirrely. There are plenty of things that can justify their actions. In general most people are a lot more open to extreme solutions with the idea of a postapocalyptic world where safety and survival are very uncertain and in theory there's no broader societal norms around to constrain things. Just the main issue is that the central principle that the Brotherhood is built around is wrong. It's not feasible to cloister all advanced technology away from the world at large indefinitely, and there's no point. All that technology they stockpile and hide in their bunker is pointless if they don't want to use it to help anybody. Lyons was right to ditch the Brotherhood's standard practice in order to set up a radio station. If all they wanted to do was hide in their little hole as an isolated little settlement it'd be one thing. If their war with the NCR had been about trying to maintain independence and their ability to persist as their own thing. But they're aggressive and a threat to the world around them.
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May 27, 2023 23:39
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I did at least appreciate the writing slight of hand they pulled by having the Outcasts be a thing at all and using them as the springboard for the Brotherhood to go back to full fash mode in 4.
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May 28, 2023 00:13
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The Brotherhood doesn't have a concept of nationalism, which is pretty fundamental to fascism. They're much more similar to the crusading orders like the Teutonic Knights or Templars.
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May 28, 2023 01:51
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If we're going to go off of  the Brotherhood checks off the fourteen tenets pretty handily. The issue of the "Brotherhood of Steel nation" is pretty tough to tackle, but I think by FNV they've devolved into a pseudo-nationalistic cult with their emphasis on tradition, insularity, and an "ingroup-outgroup" mentality between them and the wasteland. I actually like the Lyons' Pride conceptually, and I think the Brotherhood can work as a "good guy" group, but Bethesda's godawful writing ruined any potential they had for interesting faction play. Having Lyons be an idealist willing to break away from the Brotherhood's extreme insularity in exchange for paternalistic tyranny is a good potential hook but they're just The Mandatory Good Guys written by people more invested in Fallout aesthetics than actual political commentary.
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May 28, 2023 02:01
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Youremother posted:If we're going to go off of It seems to me like whoever wrote the brotherhood in fo3 made them generic heroes because they were given a list of factions from fallout and they had cool armour
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May 28, 2023 02:07
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ilitarist posted:BoS as it was in Fallout 1 was basically doomed. They only let Vault Dweller in after telling them to go into a place of a certain death not expecting them to come back. Fallout 3 version is less interesting but it does make more sense. This isn't really how it is presented to the player. The Brotherhood base in Fallout 1, once you get into it, has an active training program, they're stuffed to the gills with weapons, and Vree is an active scientist, which is a luxury and then some in the wasteland!, and she's SPOILER ALERT a victory condition for the game. If anything, in Fallout 2 the Brotherhood is a deliberate red herring because, as the player, you remember them being cool in Fallout 1, and by cool I mean them having power armour and plasma rifles, and in Fallout 2 they're just... There in their little bunkers and bupkis to you. Fallout 4 put the silliness cherry on top of it all with the victory condition being a gigantic Uncle Sam robot blasting everything to bits.
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May 28, 2023 03:11
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Byzantine posted:The Brotherhood doesn't have a concept of nationalism, which is pretty fundamental to fascism. They're much more similar to the crusading orders like the Teutonic Knights or Templars. Crusading orders at least relied on recruitment and regular engagement with the outside world as opposed to trying to maintain a self-sustaining population. That part is the weirdest one. They believe in what they do, and had some level of interaction with the outside, but never to the point of intermingling. Instead they're apparently relying on organizing themselves like they're a vault. There are ethnic communities in the real world that maintain that kind of insular isolation despite being surrounded by other peoples, but seldom to that degree. Although maybe the fact that so many wastelanders are derived from vaulters means that society would be more accepting of authoritarian population planning? I guess as we see them in New Vegas they're in paranoid lockdown survival mode after losing the war against the NCR and we don't really know exactly what conditions were like right before the war. And I personally never muddled through Fallouts 1 and 2, so I know even less. At the time of New Vegas they're essentially under martial law to keep in hiding, but also going on raids either to sustain themselves or just to dole out violence in the name of their ideology.
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May 28, 2023 03:52
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The Brotherhood is subject to once of the worst pieces of miswriting in NV. They've got a whole secret spy circle, recon troops, and people like Veronica sitting at very well traveled and NCR aligned tradeposts. And they still haven't glommed onto the facts of what's going down in the Mojave, especially regarding the NCR/Legion war. You can spin it as their arrogance and isolation, but like The House, Three Families situation it's really just some loose writing that didn't have time to be tightened up. The 3 brotherhood is also not nearly as far a departure as most NMA posters would like you to believe. They send a squad to help you destory Mariposa, and the ending if Rhombus remains four sided states. quote:The Brotherhood of Steel helps the other human outposts drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life, on both sides of the conflict. The advanced technology of the Brotherhood is slowly reintroduced into New California, with little disruption or chaos. The Brotherhood wisely remains out of the power structure, and becomes a major research and development house They're mostly just bigger dickheads in 1 I don't wanna be doing barely thought out thought extrapolations, except I do and am going to. The Brotherhood's conspicuous downplaying in 2, plus their popularity, and semi canonical appearances in Tactics and Bos lead a lot of jerking knees into contrarian positions based on leaked Van Buren info about the NCR/Brotherhood war. The Bro Hood being a secret organization of badlads bent on hoarding tech becomes a signal that you're a "Real Fan" of the "Real" games vs. the filthy casuals who play Tactics or god forbid BOS. This belief solidified and redoubled when 3 was released and the BOS was used heavily. Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 04:27 on May 28, 2023 |
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May 28, 2023 04:12
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I think folks are being insufficiently generous to the more nuanced (more derivative) parts of the original games, which in turn sort of excuses some parts of the Brotherhood's inconsistent depiction. They're very directly based on A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the whole point of their depiction even from the first game is that they are subject to a basically constant deterioration of their underlying ethos. To quote myself from more than a year ago:Discendo Vox posted:A big part of the original point of the brotherhood is that there's massive deterioration in their actual goals and doctrines over time; Maxson I himself is very much in the "rebuild civilization and work with outsiders to restore things" line of thought, it's other people under his command, including his son, that don't get it. The shift from salvaging to hoarding, from protection to dominance, from engagement to isolation, occurs over time and gets worse and worse with successive generations. It's leaning hard on A Canticle for Leibowitz. A big part of the point of the BoS in Fallout 1 was that they've basically stopped teaching their own history in that generation (clearly inspiring some of Caesar's comments), and the current Maxson doesn't know why the population that constituted the brotherhood were originally moved to that location.
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May 28, 2023 04:22
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Discendo Vox posted:I think folks are being insufficiently generous to the more nuanced (more derivative) parts of the original games, which in turn sort of excuses some parts of the Brotherhood's inconsistent depiction. They're very directly based on A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the whole point of their depiction even from the first game is that they are subject to a basically constant deterioration of their underlying ethos. To quote myself from more than a year ago: I'd also add to this, the fact that BOS, Tactics, and Van Buren exist as a sort of Phantom Semi Canon really distorts peoples pictures of what the Brotherhood, and other organizations are and aren't. Unfortunately Bethesda doesn't have a Warp in the West style out, because "canonically" at this point the Bro Hood is a series of tiny isolated outposts reeling from the NCR/Brotherhood war, that also has swathes of the midwest under its protection via local recruits, but it lost Pittsburg, but controls the Capitol and maybe many of the areas around it via rejiggered Enclave tech, it also has a secret ghost chapter in WV that was totally? wiped out
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May 28, 2023 04:34
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In retrospect I kinda appreciate that just as my ultimate goal was to conquer and rebuild Boston so my lovely revolver could have a laser sight, so too did the BoS want to claim Boston so Liberty Prime could laser an rear end in a top hat to death again
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May 28, 2023 04:43
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SlothfulCobra posted:I guess as we see them in New Vegas they're in paranoid lockdown survival mode after losing the war against the NCR and we don't really know exactly what conditions were like right before the war. And I personally never muddled through Fallouts 1 and 2, so I know even less. At the time of New Vegas they're essentially under martial law to keep in hiding, but also going on raids either to sustain themselves or just to dole out violence in the name of their ideology. Honestly I think it's a bit of "NV is the one with good writing" -> "NV portrayed them like this" -> "This is how the Brotherhood was, is, and shall forever be", rather than the Mojave BoS being a single crippled splinter with no options.
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May 28, 2023 04:45
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Yeah it seems equally possible that the NCR started the war out of manifest destiny as the Brotherhood starting it out of some kind of radical enforcement of their ideology. They certainly seem fairly aggressive about expanding in every other direction. The Followers of the Apocalypse soured on the NCR as well. Who knows what groups in the Mojave won't gel with NCR rule. Maybe some of the desert rangers? It's just that the NCR is a big state with thousands of people drawing legitimacy from some kind of democratic process, while the Brotherhood is a small, decaying autocracy (theocracy?) where the current guy in charge is kinda just inadequate to adapt much to the Mojave after their last leader went insane hunting for superweapons. Doesn't help that New Vegas usually decided to use the NCR for most of its general-purpose dogoodery throughout the Wasteland like Fallout 3
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May 28, 2023 06:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah it seems equally possible that the NCR started the war out of manifest destiny as the Brotherhood starting it out of some kind of radical enforcement of their ideology. They certainly seem fairly aggressive about expanding in every other direction. The Followers of the Apocalypse soured on the NCR as well. Who knows what groups in the Mojave won't gel with NCR rule. Maybe some of the desert rangers? This is something I've never quite understood. Fallout America is like IRL Red Scare America on steroids. As bad as things were in our real world, they were so much worse in Fallout. They actually were fascists, run by an oligarchy that survived to become the Enclave. Then the world ended. This is the backstory of Fallout, correct? Fallout America was at no point this Obama America the NCR seems to be trying to emulate. That is the goal, in-universe and out. They make us think of the America we know as they are trying to resurrect the old ideals of the US. Ideals which never existed in their universe, All America was to the Fallout-verse is fascists.
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May 28, 2023 06:26
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Discendo Vox posted:I think folks are being insufficiently generous to the more nuanced (more derivative) parts of the original games, which in turn sort of excuses some parts of the Brotherhood's inconsistent depiction. They're very directly based on A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the whole point of their depiction even from the first game is that they are subject to a basically constant deterioration of their underlying ethos. To quote myself from more than a year ago: Who doesn't like someone who pads their h-index with self-quotations? Although I'm afraid this time around you might be barking up a faulty tree. Also, your self-citation is faulty, since the NCR did not exist in the first game at all, and we're led to believe by the second game that the NCR is the fault of our ancestor slash Vault Dweller. I'm also curious about how the Brotherhood, in the original game, "stopped teaching history". Isn't the entire point of visiting Glow seeing some history?
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May 28, 2023 06:30
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Ncr exists In F1's endslide if Tandi and her dad are alive.
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May 28, 2023 06:35
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Gaius Marius posted:Ncr exists In F1's endslide if Tandi and her dad are alive. Right, but that is explicitly the Vault Dweller's fault. And the ending slides are not what are present in the game world! Gosh!
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May 28, 2023 06:38
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BoS in FO1 and 2 aren't fascist because fascism required a combative revolutionary ethos, which is the opposite of how the BoS is portrayed.
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May 28, 2023 07:42
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NikkolasKing posted:Fallout America was at no point this Obama America the NCR seems to be trying to emulate. That is the goal, in-universe and out. They make us think of the America we know as they are trying to resurrect the old ideals of the US. Ideals which never existed in their universe, All America was to the Fallout-verse is fascists. The ideal existed anyway and pre-war America has portrayed itself as the land of the free safeguarding liberty from filthy commies. Just like you can call founding fathers wealthy white slave owner men, but praise their ideas. Or you can look at modern communists - even those who like USSR probably do not want to emulate any of its periods.
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May 28, 2023 08:42
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ilitarist posted:The ideal existed anyway and pre-war America has portrayed itself as the land of the free safeguarding liberty from filthy commies. Just like you can call founding fathers wealthy white slave owner men, but praise their ideas. Or you can look at modern communists - even those who like USSR probably do not want to emulate any of its periods. I mean, wouldn't mind emulating the part where they killed a poo poo ton of Nazis. I know other aspects of USSR in the 40s wasn't great, but killing a poo poo ton of Nazis is pretty good.
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May 28, 2023 08:49
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Air Skwirl posted:I mean, wouldn't mind emulating the part where they killed a poo poo ton of Nazis. I know other aspects of USSR in the 40s wasn't great, but killing a poo poo ton of Nazis is pretty good. Only after the Nazis gave them no choice. They were happy to be friends and partake in splitting up Poland. Also all the war crimes they perpetrated on German citizens. You shouldn't get credit when you ae happy to work with the enemy until they enemy gives you no choice and then you respond by doing heinous things yourselves. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 09:28 on May 28, 2023 |
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May 28, 2023 09:21
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I'm not trying to be a pro USSR dude, absolutely what they did to Poland (and most post war USSR states, including Germany itself) was horrible. But they also They were the country that contributed the most to winning the war in Europe and they lost 19 million people doing it. So I don't like denigrations to their contribution towards killing Nazis.
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May 28, 2023 09:28
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Upon further contemplation, i think original BoS are radical hoxhaists. Has anybody seen them outside of a bunker?
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May 28, 2023 09:30
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the problem, imo, isn’t that bethesda used the brotherhood of steel “wrong” it’s that they used them boringly. it’s extremely disingenuous to say that bethesda didn’t understand what the brotherhood was. considering that the outcasts exists they clearly knew that their version of the brotherhood was a departure from the original games. this in and of itself is fine. it’s just that they used this setup to do nothing interesting at all.
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May 28, 2023 09:39
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steinrokkan posted:Upon further contemplation, i think original BoS are radical hoxhaists. Has anybody seen them outside of a bunker? fallout 1 bos are neoconservatives fallout 2 bos are postfascists fallout van buren bos we’re gonna be maoists fallout 3 neoneoliberals
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May 28, 2023 09:41
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They changed them because 1) BoS are a landmark faction of the lore, so according to the Bethesda law the protagonist must be able to join them and be coddled by them, therefore - 2) their ideology must be absolutely anodyne because they must accommodate every possible protagonist regardless of their ethics and past actions. It's not a world building decision, it is in service of the theme park, where every paying customer is entitled to their ride on the Brotherhood of Steel bumper cars.
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May 28, 2023 09:46
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watho posted:the problem, imo, isn’t that bethesda used the brotherhood of steel “wrong” it’s that they used them boringly. it’s extremely disingenuous to say that bethesda didn’t understand what the brotherhood was. considering that the outcasts exists they clearly knew that their version of the brotherhood was a departure from the original games. this in and of itself is fine. it’s just that they used this setup to do nothing interesting at all. Because even in Fallout 1 the BOS is a corruption of it's original self I really don't see it as a bad idea to see the different offshoots also take some core views and shift it to the environment and their leaders own ideology. It's just some times it done in an interesting way and sometimes it's not. Like in three having one of the BOS leaders thinking they should do more and a schism happening on paper pretty interesting it's just the execution that's a bit iffy.
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May 28, 2023 09:51
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Air Skwirl posted:I'm not trying to be a pro USSR dude, absolutely what they did to Poland (and most post war USSR states, including Germany itself) was horrible. But they also They were the country that contributed the most to winning the war in Europe and they lost 19 million people doing it. So I don't like denigrations to their contribution towards killing Nazis. Viipuri represented a loss of about 10% of Finnish living space at the time. I don't mean to be a dick, but isn't the point, at least in Fallout 1 and a little in 2, that war really was meaningless? The Vault Dweller goes on an epic quest, and meets Lou Tenant and friends, and Master's plan is predicated on the land being absolutely poo poo-hosed because someone hit a key somewhere decades ago. No one won that war. Master tried to build something after it, but we know how that turned out.
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May 28, 2023 10:06
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I would not say WW2 was pointless.
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May 28, 2023 10:08
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Air Skwirl posted:I would not say WW2 was pointless. Yes, Adolf Hitler killed Adolf Hitler, who was an existential crisis to humanity. But that was a war that wasn't waged with atomic weapons, until it was, and now we have anime as a penance. Silliness aside, surely you see what I mean about the world Fallout 1 presented and how the war they had in their fictitious time-line was a doctor Strangelove scenario.
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May 28, 2023 10:11
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