In Fallout 1, the Brotherhood guards sends you to the most heavily radiated place in the map and are surprised you survived, confirming they sent your char character off to die because they probably thought it was funny.
It fo2 they ignore the enclave and the stuff going down.
In fo3 the main BOS broke off from Lyons because they got pissed he wanted to help. Also, it's mentioned by Willow that Lyons brotherhood likes to shoot at her for fun.
In NV, the brotherhood attack caravans, massacre a Follower outpost because they thought Veronica gave out secrets
In Fo4, Taegan goes behind Maxson's back to bully settlements. Also, if you give the Vault Tec salesman a home, Danse will flat out say you should have killed him instead, calling the Ghoul a thing while saying it.
So, the Brotherhood has been flat out bad people in most games, and even in the one they aren't their not the true brotherhood
There's usually this struggle from within over what direction to take. In Fallout 1, it takes a lot of convincing to get them to lend you a couple paladins to take the Master's base, and these guys don't even enter the building with you. As the series goes on, there's usually a question of leadership, do they remain isolated hoarders of technology, scavengers with laser guns, or do they use their technology to turn their enemies into dust and take a greater claim of the land as the NCR, Enclave, Legion, and Institute are doing. It's a player character who ends up helping an insurrection or shutting it down before it can take off.
I personally feel indebted to the BoS, because once you prove yourself, they do help out with power armor training and lockers of great weapons. But it's not out of the kindness of their hearts. It's like Disco Elysium, I'm running all these shady deals for Evart, because he's going to help me find my missing gun.
In all fairness, those paladins not entering Mariposa in fallout 1 is probably a bug, since that makes their help completely useless outside of a single potential fight at the entrance.
It is a bug, in earlier versions they did join you, and if you port Fallout 1 to Fallout 2's engine, which fixed a lot of stuff, they also join you in going in.
That’s good to know, thank you!
It takes a lot of convincing because they don't know what's going on lol. They sent scouts to Mariposa, they all died save for one who didn't even make it there. Once the player character actually gets them proof of what they're dealing with they're all for going after them my guy, also you're talking about a bug to make a point lmao. In older versions they did go in, same happens if you port the OG to Fallout 2 which fixes a lot of the engines problems. You also ignore things like:
They actively avoid genociding the super mutants while defending settlements from them.
They have a good trade relationship with the Hub and a good chunk of the the weapons they have come from the BoS, and even when they turn down a deal with the water merchants and said water merchants attack them, they avoid retaliating outside of capturing the attackers.
They have such a good relationship with the NCR that a state gets named Maxon.
They actively roll technology out into the wasteland and are a key reason why California is such a good place (until the show happens) to live compared to the other wastelands we see.
From the get go kind of the point of the BoS was that they weren't the good guys. They weren't bad guys either exactly but this is why they vacillate so much over the series. They're always at least somewhat isolationist and their technology hoarding thing is probably a net negative but they also don't go out of their way to be dicks. Meanwhile their goal of keeping technology out of irresponsible hands is perfectly understandable given how the world got blown up in the first place.
They can be straight up villains sometimes though and anybody that's actually played the games isn't going to be surprised when some of them are out there doing bad shit. What they do and how they do it have always been controversial even among their own ranks right from the first game. I find it baffling that there are people that think they're definitely pure good guys. They never have been and weren't ever meant to be.
Actually, the West Coast chapters didn’t break off from Lyons because of his activities (they were mostly unaware of them) they were just busy fighting the NCR, fracturing into smaller groups and nearly being wiped out.
The Outcasts aka the Traditionalists in the East are who broke from Lyons then reformed under Maxson.
Back West they simply cut off communications with the Lyons they were excommunicated exiles. When Arthur reformed the Lyons and Outcasts into the Commonwealth Brotherhood they remade contact with the Western Elders who recognized Arthur's authority.
As we see they seemingly made contact with the Knights of San Fernando, Yosemite, Coronado and Grand Canyon Chapters.
Lost Hills, Mojave (also excommunicated exiles), Chicago (confirmed Renegades disliked by Lyons) are unknown fates currently.
The insane thing given that he's about 20 in FO4 means that this is likely not that far history... so I can just imagine the fucking shock those elders had when this teen flew airship over his base with this fully equipped brotherhood with Lyons flag flying behind it only to find out that Lyons fought the enclave and uncovered several treasure troves of old world tech by helping people.
Caesar claimed to have wiped out Chicago.
No he claimed to have taken out Paladins and Scribes who didn't know who Roger Maxson is in Eastern Legion territory which would be Colorado or New Mexico at the time.
The issue here is that can be the Grand Canyon Brotherhood or Maxson's Bunker or Midwestern Remnants at this point.
No reinforcements came for vengeance either...There was no war between two empires. Chicago is also directly stated to be a small chapter in F3.
Tactics canonicity is simply murky...But everything indicates they canonized an ending where the Empire crumbled to ruins the various bunkers becoming their own chapters. The Legion wiped out the western most one.
While Chicago on the other side of the former empire is just chilling or at conflict with the Enclave confirmed to be in the region.
I just meant it was assumed to be the chicago chapter before now.
Yeah that's true the only option before now was Midwestern BoS Remnants. Now we have the Grand Canyon or Maxson's Bunker as further options because of the Show.
I think a lot of fans also need to realize that the BoS are chapters, not branches
They are entirely self-run with their own elders and other leaders instead of directly answering to a central command at Lost Hills, so there’s very little stopping all these leaders from doing things their way and not resembling chapters we’ve seen in the games. Isolate a group for 100+ years and you’re gonna see some deviation, right?
Seems too that it's an organization that rewards zealousy as much as performance, which means some will compensate with a lack of the latter with more of the former. You probably end up with more zealots the higher up you go in the non-combat positions, with career soldiers getting stonewalled at paladin.
"entirely self-run" says who ?
I mean look at Arthur Maxson, descendant of the founder of the BoS, descendant of the high elder of the West coast chapter, was raised by the capitol Wasteland's chapter and became commander in the Boston chapter. I understand that the different chapters have different visions, but it honestly looked a lot like a feudal system that evolves around the Maxson family, at least before this season came out.
The capitol wasteland and boston chapters you reference are the same. The Prydwyn arriving in fallout 4 is the wateland chapter moving into boston
you'd have to play the games to know that though
I think you’re right about Maxson’s role. He is meant to be an Arthurian figure. But even Arthur often has to do battle against rebellious vassals who do not share his sense of justice or unity of purpose. That’s how I see the Commonwealth and Western Chapters interacting. Arthur is the Huhh Elder, the western Elders have taken some of his influence to the extent they prefer it. Airships? Rad! Recruiting outsiders? Okay, we’ll take in orphans.
You are looking at two chapters out of; according to this season; dozens.
Bro he was born before the capital wasteland chapter existed they hadn’t left for the capital wasteland yet…Boston chapter? It’s the same chapter
Okay so the BoS was even more unified that what I was thinking
Well the capitol wasteland chapter cut ties when they went off mission but maxon returned to tradition and brought outcasts back into the fold. This seems to have brought them back into contact with the other chapters but neither would take orders from the other so I’d hardly call them unified
While the Maxson line is considered holy, there are elders who aren't Maxsons.
Arthur Maxson didn't "commandeer" the Boston Chapter.
You obviously didn't play fallout 4 or 3. Maxson's Brotherhood is the very same brotherhood that we meet in fallout 3 under Lyons' leadership.
Elder Owyn Lyons and his daughter, Sentinel Sarah Lyons die in between the end of Fallout 3 and the start of fallout 4. Arthur Maxson is appointed elder after the last elders were proven ineffective leaders and the west coast brotherhood (having regained contact with the easterners) endorsed his eldership, both out of a need to do so (he's a Maxson after all), and a lack of ability of refusal.
So they are not enterely self-run ?
Each chapter is autonomous to an extent, but traditionally they still answer to the Council of Elders in the West.
The first chapter to be formed outside of the west was the Appalachian Chapter, and they are dead as of 2106
The first expeditionary force, led by Paladin Rahmani, is likely to be the first rogue chapter as they do not have contact with the western brotherhood and based on player decision, either never re-establish contact, or try to.
After that, there was the Chicago Detachment, the second rogue chapter, status unknown as Lyons never managed to gain contact with them. They were originally a expeditionary force sent to hunt the remnants of the Master's army eastwards (it was also their first ideological purge, given the Midwest's members consist of Brotherhood soldiers who wanted to share technology and be less isolationist)
Lyons' chapter/East Coast Brotherhood, which was originally sent eastwards by the Western Elders, to establish contact with the aforementioned chicago chapter and get them to rejoin the fold, as well as scour the nation's capital for technology. The mission would change after the Scourge, a mass assault on the Pitt by Lyons and his men. This would lead to the first brotherhood "civil war", or the Schism, where Paladin Henry Casdin would take Codex loyalists and hard-liners and form the Brotherhood Outcasts, opposed to Lyons' idealism and charity.
Owyn would later die of old age, with his daughter, then-Sentinel Sarah Lyons, taking up the elder role, and serving for a few years before her own untimely death in the midst of battle, with ineffective elders succeeding her until Arthur Maxson became elder, endorsed by the Council back west, and being the youngest elder, at 16 years old.
Back west, the West Coast would do their second ideological purge, sending Scribe Elijah with a expeditionary force to claim Hoover Dam. This was their way of getting rid of him as Elijah was too radical, wanting to use technology to rule the wastelands. This force became the Mojave Chapter, and would base in Helios One, at Elijah's insistence, only to be nearly decimated by the NCR during Operation Sunburst. This would be one of the NCR's most major operations during the height of the NCR-BoS war.
Elijah would abandon this chapter, fleeing the mojave entirely, exploring the Big MT research complex and later the Sierra Madre, leaving Paladin McNamara to ascend to the role of Elder, and having the chapter make a full retreat to Hidden Valley, where they'd stay shuttered away.
Back East, Arthur Maxson would take the small Eastern Brotherhood and grow them to be a effective army with shrewd diplomacy, weaving the Outcasts back into the fold, and building up their arsenal with T-60 power armor and the Prydwyn (and as the show shows us, establishing a whole class of airships only used by the Brotherhood). This would lead to the East Coast Brotherhood establishing rule over the Capital Wasteland and then sending the Prydwyn out to the Commonwealth, in search of strange readings that the groups' recon squad were reporting.
And as the show tells us, Maxson's brotherhood faced the institute, likely came out the winners, and thus they are ready to establish control over the rest of the Brotherhood.
Most people arent suprised by that, they are suprised at how stupidly incompetent they seem to be
They were paramilitary nerds, now they are just paramilitary
seems like in San Fernando, the line between soldier and scholar is very thick. But its also pretty clear that San Fernando is not a typical chapter.
Having seen what paramilitary groups get up to around the world, it's really not surprising.
There's so many videos of them doing stupid shit and getting their buddies killed.
Not even paramilitary- normal military does stupid shit all the time
The fact that discipline had failed to be kept up in a post apocalypse to the standard of current day us military which requires a formal education up to at least highschool graduation is hard to grasp for people is ridiculous
If irl us military does stupid shit guarantee the bos in a post apocalypse 200 years later, with it being 20 years since Anyone had even a chance at some form of formal education is going to be even worse
Military has to give training grenades in exercises because the grunts would end up blowing themselves to bits fucking around with a live grenade.
Exactly. I think people in this subreddit sometimes forget just how fucking stupid the average person in real life can be, or how prone they are to panicking in dangerous situations. Where people get the idea that survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, 200 years after society has collapsed and most accumulated knowledge has been lost wouldn’t be utter numbskulls by today’s standards I do not know.
200 years and they still fuck around with a live grenade lmao
Ever see someone hammer a pin with 50 cal round? If not you should see that slide as part of a US Army safety brief.
That's the part I love the most about the BoS on the show. Of course an isolationist rigid cult would devolve into dumb morons after enough time. It would be very unrealistic for them to remain competent.
It's not that they're bad guys, it's that they act like drunken teens.
In the games, the ideology of the brotherhood is often flawed, but they're generally disciplined and ordered. They're like an order of monks or a religious knightly order like the knight's templar.
They've always been overall portrayed as relatively stoic, disciplined, but often zealously loyal to an ideology that they take too far. They're not the good guys, but they're not drunken raiders either.
Yeah and instead we have a bunch of clowns. Like those two knights with the grenade.
like it was said in this comment section, the average person is really stupid, now imagine how that would be in a post apocalyptic world
This is the weakest defense for dumb characters in a narrative.
They are among the most elite and disciplined units in the commonwealth, they can be dumb, but not play8ng with grenades.
The first scene of maximus in the show is him in a classroom. The show portrays them as dumb because that’s what the showrunners wants logically they shouldn’t be this dumb.
I wish I lived wherever you do, where classroom attendance means you cannot be dumb.
Here is a very long write-up explaining why that is not true. Half the things you said are either just flat out inaccurate or a dishonest framing of what actually happened.
Excellent write up. Also, seriously, the Brotherhood are not the ones who attack the caravans in New Vegas, it's the Van Graff's posing as the Brotherhood (they framed them). If you do Cass's quests you find out the truth, that the Brotherhood is innocent.
As for why the Outcasts broke off with Lyons in F3, it's because they had been getting outnumbered and killed by Supermutants for 20 years while following Lyons orders and they got sick of it, so they went back to their original mission of collecting technology.
Arthur Maxson fixed that problem by recruiting members from the Capital Wasteland. Macready even explains to you that the Brotherhood was able to clear out the Supermutant and Raider/Mercenary threats in the Capital Wasteland which allowed the people to move back into the area and live peacefully. It's why Macready left, there wasn't any Mercenary work left to do.
When the first season of the tv show came out, Chris Avellone explained he really didn't recognize the Brotherhood as it was portrayed. He said they purposely avoided writing them as the bad guys in the games because they knew it would be an organization that players would want to aspire to.
Chris Avellone TV Series Review Part 2
*Edit:
Adding to this, in F1 you can talk to Caravan Traders about the Brotherhood, and they will tell you that the Brotherhood are good people that get a bad rap.
Because this isn't tbe brotherhood that Avellone and co wrote.
This is explicitly a rogue chapter.
Yeah especially fallout 1 and 2 is blatantly wrong in what op is saying, clearly hasn’t played the actual games
lil bro no one is surprised that they are bad people, we are just surprised that they act like actual cavemen.
"The society that seperates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
-Thucydides
in a group that has "Knights" and "Clerics" (or "Scribes") i am in no way surprised.
Knights tend to be more blunt and gruff than scribes, sure, but in the game they didn’t all act like frat boy morons.
The show portrays them as cartoonishly stupid.
Edit: Guys, macho shit like falling contests (while wearing armor that's designed to take no damage from a fall) is a far cry away from playing hot potato with a plasma grenade in front of all your superiors at a ceremony.
The specific chapter of the brotherhood we see has knights like that, and that one has a much bigger gap between the Clerics and the Knights than the others. Xander isn’t like that at all, he’s dedicated to the Brotherhood’s ideals but he has none of the “frat boy” stuff, neither does the female elder (can’t remember her branch) who “doesn’t buy into the religious stuff”.
Yeah he also mentions they have a lot more clerics than usual. They’re like a cult.
I think the bos were literally based on a cult from the original Wasteland.
Do you expect people to understand things that are explicitly spelled out in the show?
Instead of relying entirely on memes?
Preposterous!
The show figuratively beats you over the head with a sledgehammer with some of these themes and people still keep missing it. I honestly don't know how much more obvious they can be
Anyone who has spent any time watching videos uploaded by Russian, Indian, or Pakistani grunts should not be surprised by the idiocy in Quintus' chapter. If you give a bunch of peasants a fuckload of firearms, but your definition of training is "beating them to behave when their superior is present", then yeah you're gonna get dumbasses playing with grenades.
And (spoilers for s2e4) literally beats Xander over thread head with a sledgehammer!
Yosemite branch IIRC, Coronado is the scheming macho grunt, and I forgot who the big macho brute is.
Coronado is the big guy, the littler guy is Grand Canyon Chapter.
Oh thanks, mixed those up
You mean the same games where there’s terminals in the Prydwen referencing Scribes getting STDs from ghouls, and knights trying to set records for longest fall in power armor?
I don't think anyone is using FO4 as an example of quality in any fashion.
No, but it does mean the BOS acting like drunk frat bros on spring break didn’t start with the show.
in fallout 4 the knights had a contest to see who could have the highest drop in power armor, and the latest attempt was disqualified cuz his armor got fucked when he landed so the record is someone who jumped off the prydwen. so yeah, i'm gonna say the brotherhood has all kinds of dumb jocks in their ranks.
They also deploy their power armor by leaping from vertibirds. I can totally see that leading to grunts conducting some highly scientific dumb shit like jumping off of tall stuff until it becomes an issue to see what the suits are capable of.
In FO4 in the middle of a war they have a contest to see who can jump off the tallest building in expensive power armor, and mention at least one set got wrecked that way. It's there, and the show plays it up a bit much, but it's not like that hasn't ever been there before
A bit much is an understatement statement. You mention one small thing in how many hours of BoS lore? Now how many goofy things in all of the BoS runtime on the show?
“Hot Dog!”
Yeah my issue with the show is that ALL factions are shown as cartoonishly stupid. I'm fine with the NCR and Legion losing power and influence but for the remnants of both to just be a handful of braindead nutjobs is a bit of a copout. It seems like rather than try to show even a bit of seriousness and risk failure, they opted for just jokes all the way down. Fallout has always been funny, but this feels more like a parody of Fallout than a real adaptation sometimes.
Friendly correction: this is not from Thucydides. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed
i mean, sure it can be explained. you can give me valid reasons as to WHY they act like that. it doesn't mean it's good for the show tho. rationalization doesn't mean good writing. and that's exactly my point. i simply dislike how they are handled, and it's the thing with every single person in this show, it's insane.
smart systems in media respect the audience as thinking participants, dumb ones treat him like a passive consumer. it's just how it is.
It's funny how the ancient Chinese consider the mix of the two to the ideal state.
It's called Wenwu (文武) or civil and military. Wen (文) for literature, culture, or scholarship. Wu (武) for martial arts, military, or bravery.
Even BoS knights don't live up to the Western knight ideal as well. Quintus' chapter seems modeled after church-founded military orders like the Templar. They don't act like a religious military order at all.
But that's what you get for LARPing culture or society that you ignore their entire context and nuances.
Just like the Legion.
It's just meant to be reflective of their failed leadership. Military groups always have a tendency to trend towards caveman behavior when they lack proper leadership, and these West Coast BoS chapters have some of the most woeful leadership imaginable. The Knights will stop acting like idiots if/when all of those leaders are dead and replaced by proper ones.
Even as someone who doesn't particularly like Maxson or the Commonwealth BoS, the reason they don't behave like this is because he's a good leader who repairs divisions, and ensures pointless infighting is kept to a minimum. Whereas someone like Quintus instead prefers and encourages it.
And then they tried to gaslight you into thinking BoS was this dumb in the games. They were pretty incompetent in most games but nowhere close to this level of braindead
like everything else in the show, by the way. it's all either dead or acts completely brain damaged, no in-between.
I’m not even surprised by that much.
It was inevitable, where general knowledge and some critical thinking was restrictively passed down to those who reached the top of the pyramid, while everyone else only learned those combat, survival and scavenging skills necessary to the group’s missions.
Impute +200 years of severe educational degradation, and this is what you get.
No. People are genuinely surprised they are not the good guys.
Yeah, maybe not so much here on Reddit, but the BoS were more or less the “good” guys in FO3 & were, at least, not the worst/evil faction in FO4. It’s not surprising some fans think of them as one of the good factions.
That's just the way Fallout 3 is, there's mentions of them shooting at ghouls for fun, but any negative traits of the BoS were toned way down for Fallout 3 so the player can feel like the hero of the wasteland. It's similar to what Bethesda did with Oblivion. You can do evil things in Fallout 3 and Oblivion, but the main quest makes you the hero whether you've done evil things or not. Bioware were the ones allowing you to be evil, Bethesda kept it to heroic player characters.
But wasn’t that the East Coast group, and a splinter faction at that? Lynn’s Pride? Or am I mis remembering? The West Coast games were set 150 and 200 years earlier. The East Coast have made a point of not wanting to emulate them. Even Ramani in 76 says that, and that’s only 25 years later.(Shin is different but he’s a fanatic)
Honestly, couldn’t tell you. It’s been a min since I’ve played 3 & I’m not a Fallout lore expert by any means. But that kinda reinforces my point that to the casual fans they just think “oh BOS, yeah I helped them fight the Enclave in that Fallout game I played, they’re cool!”
The sword is dumb. It's mostly the knights acting dumb, I'm sure the scribes have some responsibility with a leader like him.
I wouldn’t say they’ve always been BAD people. They’re just mostly indifferent aside from Lyons’ chapter.
I feel like a lot of the problems people have with the show is that they assume if they aren’t told something, the opposite must be true: “we aren’t told the NCR still exists, they MUST be entirely extinct!” Now we have “why are they stupid! Is the entire brotherhood this way?”
I’ve always seen plot confirmations to be fact, and the lack of them to be open to interpretation, not simply the inverse of the other answer. The brotherhood in the show may very well be different simply because of the Elder they follow, not a change in the faction in its entirety. The chapter in NV at the time the game takes place wasn’t exactly keen on surviving nor were they a large player at that point. A lot could change stemming from that.
I just wish people would simply have discussion rather than jumping straight to a conclusion because of something we aren’t explicitly told about. The lack of information is not always information.
Two flaws in that idea...
Titus and Xander from the Commonwealth BoS were also stupid frat bros.
Clerics exist in the Commonwealth BoS...They're just not the leadership. Despite in S1 it being stated "Highest Clerics from the Commonwealth" are who gave the intel and order to hunt the Former Enclave down.
Ultra-Religious Dogma and Improper Training/Discipline are seemingly a problem on both coastlines at this point in time.
Granted we haven't actually seen Elder Maxson address the issue or what that conflict in the Commonwealth that they're losing in is. For all we know...There's already a Civil War in the East Coast between Cleric-led vs Maxson-led.
At the very least they’re simply just outliers. Even in Fallout 4 directly there are those who aren’t 100% in line with East Coast Brotherhood doctrine. You have Haylen who still supports Danse even after finding out he’s a synth, and you have Initiate Clark who feeds ferals rather than killing them. That doesn’t mean the culture couldn’t shift in the decade since, but I don’t think a few characters represent the entirety. Maximus, while he may be dumb, isn’t as inept as some of the other soldiers in his own chapter.
I also wouldn’t say Titus was a ‘frat bro’ he was really just a coward.
Yeah like I said we haven't seen the leadership and there's an ambiguous conflict. So they very well could be exceptions/outliers.
Though I personally doubt it given Xander's role as Emissary and that the flaw of extremist Anti-Mutant is in fact cemented in stone since F3.
But yeah can't wait to see where they take it in this coast to coast BoS Civil War regardless.
Nobody is mad the BOS are shown as bad people. People are mad they are shown as knuckle dragging idiots. And before someone comes in with the "the BOS were always idiots" line, here is the difference. In a lot of the past games, the BOS were depicted as smart people who believed in a stupid ideology, not as brain damaged toddlers. There is a big difference between those two.
It was the BoS that did the investigations resulting in the peaceful destruction of the Master.
I got a cousin who wanted career military. He was airborne infantry for a while, then went on to EOD for the remainder of his time. Now he does some gunsmithing, teaches a class on the subject, took a hobby in woodworking. Does good work, but can't keep a clean work station, ignores basic shop safety and never wears PPE. Dude has been to the eye doctor five times in two years and every time his blurry vision and irritation was linked to sawdust lol. I've watched this dude get Hopps no-9 gun oil all over his clothes and hands, then make and eat a sandwich without cleaning himself, then spend most of the afternoon in and out of the bathroom multiple times.
The brotherhood isn't immune to widespread stupidity in their base ranks when their only two methods for maintaining or increasing their numbers is wasteland recruitment and inbreeding. It's so hard to believe that the NCR taught them that you can't just be the best around if you don't have the bodies to back that up. Not every member of your society has to be a physicist or chemical engineer, most of them just need to fill a pair of boots, hold a rifle and do what they're told. First thing new brotherhood members are is grunts, the smarter ones get picked to be scribes I'm sure, while the rest stay grunts a lot longer, and grunts are dumbasses with diverse skillsets no matter what army they're in.
Here is the problem. People like that exist in the military, but a majority aren't like that. The way the BoS is depicted, almost everyone, including two chapter masters, are depicted as complete morons. It makes everything feel very inauthentic. Would any of the villains/heroes in Fallout be as interesting or imposing if they were all portrayed as buffoons? I think not.
Actually I would say their ideology is good
If your mom asks you to take a basket of cookies to your grandma's house in the winter, and she tells you to bundle up because it's cold, but you decided to do it in your underwear and you die of hypothermia, did your mom send you on a suicide mission, or did you die because you were dumb?
In Fallout 1 they outright tell you it's radioactive and to take protection. If they expected you to die, why would they tell you that? Better yet, if you're a low INT character, they give you Rad-X for free.
Is Danse saying that because he's Vault Tec or a ghoul because one of those I kind of get...
Considering Danse is nice to Billy. I'm assuming because he is vault tec.
I don’t mind if they’re assholes, I just wish they were a little more serious. Like Danse and Rhys.
Actually in 2 they have outposts in a couple places like San Francisco where they’re actively monitoring and planning for the enclave threat. You can even go rewatch a video there where the brotherhood representative (who goes missing after you’ve met him) is shown to trying to fight Frank horrigan. With predictable results.
I just have issue with their portrayal as being highly incompetent and stupid.
Frat-bros power armor; not the deadly and capable force I think most games have shown them as - except vertibird pilots in 4
It’s not about their morals; it’s about how goofy they are. The grenade example is used because it’s a good microcosm for the season’s writing, putting jokes over actual storytelling. The politics boil down to everyone being an ape, conveniently wiping them from the show to prevent the writers from having to incorporate them. They could have ignored these factions, but they included them. Why? So they can jangle keys in front of the kids who count Easter eggs and worship iconography. They do this because it’s easier than writing storylines to replace factions and scratch the same itches.
I see people blaming it on one chapter having a different culture than the others, but that grenade stunt was pulled in front of multiple, yet not one of them cared.
It didn’t even make sense, I’m sure maxon created a commonwealth chapter but I doubt he would lead it, I’m sure he would instead head back to Washington. Our only hope is that the footsoldiers where stupid because they where run by clerics. But even the Grand Canyon and other chapter act like drunks.
Is this your first time seeing an NPC in videi game giving you a dangerous quest? They didn't force you to go there, and they even warned you that the place is irradiated and you need Rad-X. What more do you want? Just open their door without a quest?
They reactivated multiple outposts to observe the Enclave and asks help from protagonist so they can stop the Enclave's invasion.
Lyons lied about his situation for 2 decades and asked more reinforcement, and there was an ongoing war between NCR and BoS at that point.
Also, if you meet a ghoul kid Billy, Danse will say protecting the child is an admirable decision. Danse only dislikes scummy ghouls in Goodneighbor, not all ghouls.
This comment was fact checked by true Brotherhood of Steel scribes.
The VT rep isn’t scummy though?
Saying 'I AM VAULT-TEC!' isn't the best introduction when it comes to talking with a Brotherhood paladin.
Does that really matter? To the point of saying he deserves to die? Danse meets the rep WITH the sole survivor who knows who the VTR is and the fact that they aren’t lying. If Danse still comes to the conclusion that he’s scummy for that and deserves to die then idk what to say about that.
What really matters is that Danse has mixed comments on ghouls, given he is positive towards Billy, Kent and the settlers of the Slog.
Representing VT by itself seems like a good reason to be killed
Eh not everyone was evil at VT, at least not the bottom line. The rep didn’t even know about the cryopods in 111 as he claims. I doubt he even knew about the experiments they ran even post war. Also iirc he doesn’t “represent” vault tec, that’s just something he says to the player if they say they don’t remember him and it’s his name to us because he never gives his own. His past will never not be who he was, but that doesn’t mean it’s who he continues to be.
They have a consistent ideology in the games
Having an entire chapter not allow women is a gigantic departure from that imo because I (only been playing since 3) have never seen any gender based discrimination in their ranks and they have prominent female members.
While it’s it’s own chapter that doesn’t feel in keeping with the organization at all and feels like some early 2000’s Ultimates edgelord BS
Also fights to the death between members feels like raider behavior, not the behavior of an organization that has already lasted for 200 years. At best you could try to pass that off as them all being full of piss, vinegar & adrenaline having multiple chapters meet up like that is very potential civil war but again it’s just so over the top I have a hard time buying it.
Between this and Max’s confrontation with the Elder being just awful I’m just getting tired of the BoS part of the storyline. Seriously Max must be an idiot savant with emphasis on idiot. It’s just too frustrating to watch
Edit: 3 being an exception to the consistent ideology but even in that game it caused a schism
Im not arguing the point, but when is it said that the NV BoS attack caravans?
In ending slides they don't attack but will "confiscate" tech from caravans and traders which sounds very attack like.
Very much sounds like an attack, just worded nicely. Like how they don't murder mutants, they're just cleansing the wasteland.
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You mean when her caravan was attacked by Van Graff?
Lmao were they using Cass’ comment as proof that the Brotherhood was raiding caravans?
Hey now, you are asking OP to play the games, they only have bandwith to watch a tv show.
It's important to note that's a quote from an NCR caravanner who is very much loyal to the NCR and has no reason to speak kindly on the BOS, yet even she will give the BOS some 'credit' in assuming they wouldn't do something like that.
It was Van Graffs. She was talking out of her ass
Nope. Play the actual games.
they stole NCR gold man.
Which is different from attacking caravans.
The BoS have always had some negative elements within it. Take the presentation of the outcasts in 3, their general attitude in 2/NV or their reputation in 4. Hell, as far back as 1 they were so inwardly focused that the orders elders were squabbling over politics and ideology while the Master's army took over the wasteland, to the point they could be entirely wiped out should the Vault Dweller not intervene.
Scribe Haylen's holotape is pretty evident of this, underneath the surface the Brotherhood are very flawed. But in a game you are given a lot more time to explore locations, interract with NPCs and lore, get more time to be given surface level, and deeper presentations of groups. Theres time to present them as flawed without needing to show them as just idiots who love tech and big guns.
Its the same deal with all the NCR being focused solely on Shady Sands, or the Legion culture being focused entirely on Caesar worship to the point they're fighting over a mound of dirt with a corpse on top (admittedly, this one isnt that unbelievable, its more the scale that I think is a bit silly).
In a TV show you don't get to spend as much time exploring content. They're simplifying things and making them more pronounced to drive home the point. Some will understand this, some people seem to be missing that. Some people will live and die on it as though we're never going to see more of or to these groups ever again.
There are more nuanced ways to do that, which still can’t be missed by anyone possessing half a cerebellum. For example, Knight Titus in S1 with his tough talk that’s all a facade that breaks the moment he faces real danger. Compare that to two idiots going ‘hur hur hur!’ while playing with a live grenade and it’s like the writer stepped away for a cigarette while their kid took over.
You haven't played any of the games before Fallout 4, you are parroting the most reddit canned thread I have seen.
The brotherhood of Steel had shades of gray in varying degrees on the games they show up, but in the show they are like a frat house mixed with the Enclave for no good reason. Can fans of this crappy season go one second without trying to delude themselves into thinking they can make people remember an imaginary alternate version of the games?
No bro you see they are literally terrible most god awful faction bro I swear don’t you remember this something completely false and made up bro I swear
I have over a thousand hours in 3, New Vegas and Fallout 4 each
Let me guess 99% of them are in Fallout 4.
Nope, 3 and New Vegas
Doubtful. Also, I notice... no mention of Fallout 1 and 2. Curious.
Because I did one playthrough of both and haven't touch them since
Sure buddy.
Hey question, how many hundreds of hours did you put into new vegas to misunderstand that the BOS attacks caravans? Just curious.
For someone who knows and love NV so much I'm suprised you've never completed a Yes Man playthrough. There are three possible endings for the BOS in an independent vegas playthrough. You blow up their base which results in no more BOS to do raids, you appoint Hardin as elder which leads to BOS "seizing any items of technology they deem innapropriate" from passing caravans, or you get them to sign a truce with the NCR which leads them to "harrassing travellers over any bits of technology they have". I agree that the NCR ending where they reach a truce and guard caravan paths is probably the best and most interesting but you didnt forget about all the other ending options right?
Hey nice wiki read.
That's not them attacking caravans, which is what this kid was saying they do. They set up checkpoints and demand advaced technologies from NCR and other groups who pass by and this nly happens if you put Hardin in charge who is not a normal guy and he mostly does a hostile takeover, they don't do that while Macnamara is in charge, neither when Elijah was, nowhere in the game it says they attack Caravans. In fact the game says they don't do that... Maybe try playing the games instead of going to the wiki and trying to argue something this basic.
Taking tech from caravans IS attacking caravans
What do you suppose a Brotherhood Of Steel patrol does when they ask a caravan to hand over all valuable technology and the caravan says no? Does "attacking caravans" mean something different to you than "robbing at gunpoint under threat of death?" My last time doing a yes man run was in august and I chose for the truce, had to check the wiki to confirm there were in fact multiple endings that all involve the BOS raiding caravans for supplies 👍
The Brotherhood shoots Underworld ghouls for fun and are heavily demoralized in 3, and they have competitions jumping from skyscrapers in 4. The New Vegas Brotherhood is disciplined but stupid, the East Coast Brotherhood has never been as disciplined as the Mojave Chapter
Killing all ghouls on sight has never been Brotherhood policy. They do discriminate against ghouls but they don't massacre them. It's just ferals that applies to.
the problem isn't that they're bad people but that they all seemingly got brain damage
What caravan did the BOS attack in new vegas?
I agree, but in Fallout 2 they are certainly not "ignoring" the Enclave
Personal opinion, not exactly bad or evil.
they live with the wasteland mindset whilst acting like they aren't.
that's all they are.
People who say BoS was evil or bad in F1 and F2 continue to show that they didn't actually play those games.
That isn’t true about Fallout 1, tho
No, we are just surprised they seem so... Dumb?
Knights used to be armorers and soldiers.
Scribes masters of knowledge and technology.
Paladins warriors and leaders with few equals.
Elders were either from the Paladin or Scribe classes and this could reflect this in their leadership.
All members of the BoS were a combo of warrior and scholar because their main mission and purpose was to find technology, know enough to know what it is at a minimum, and bring it back for study, repair and sometimes use.
They were always assholes who had harsh views about the rest of the wasteland but they were at least more or less competent in their duties.
The BoS in the show is just a lot dumber than I thought they would be.
They are a military order, not a civilian government. Not a surprise that they would scapegoat certain groups and not respect human rights etc
The Brotherhood of Steel are lawful neutral
In the lore they have cleansed the wastelands of threats to humanity on several occasions.
Yeah and basically you can thank them for the NCR they protected Shady sands from being turned into rubble by the super mutant armies
They're the elves of Fallout. Incredibly powerful and arrogant, probably capable of ending the story in about an hour but for whatever reason they either cant or choose not to.
Being dickheads is expected, being paint-huffing morons is what pulls me out of the show.
Season 2 is basically showing everyome as incompetent except our main characters, and probably the death claw.
Wrong. People aren’t mad they’re evil. They’re don’t like they’re incompetent and blatantly evil. The brotherhood in the game can be argued as evil but they think of themselves are righteous and neutral in the show everyone is asshole to the point they know they’re are being evil they just don’t care.
To further illustrate OP's point, even the noncanon and rogue chapters are not very nice folks.
The Midwest Brotherhood only recruits mutants once their numbers dwindled enough to where they HAD no choice, and they effectively force villages to hand over folks in exchange for any protection. For those who crow about how Teagan asks the player to go to settlements and have them hand over food and water, the midwesterners were asking tribes, towns and villages to hand over portions of their own civilization for protection. A good portion of tactics' endings have the brotherhood in the midwest becoming authoritarian and dictatorial, one of which has them combining with the calculator army under the leadership of their former general who had fused with the Calculator, becoming anti-impure.
The Washington Brotherhood of Steel from fallout extreme would be tyrannical over the PNW, with the player leading a rebel faction that would defeat them.
PREACH.
In FO2 they are hiding from the Enclave and want you to investigate it for them.
The problem is not that's they're shown as bad people in the show, but more as incompetent at all level.
In F1 they warn you about the glow being irradiated , and in FO2 they send you to steal vertibird schematics from the enclave who they cant compete with
The title is exactly the problem with the show. Bad people. Baddies. Baddies and goodies. It's just so fucking shallow.
People are surprised that a Faction that perfectly emulates two factions from 40k are bad?
People saying "The show writers hate the BOS" or "The show has ruined the brotherhood" clearly havent played enough of the games/gone deep enough in the lore.
The brotherhood IS supposed to be good. But its constantly hampered by its 200 year old doctrine and the elders who are constantly arguing over which parts are more important. Roger Maxson started the BOS because he learned about the FEV experiments, and The bombs fell DAYS later, and Maxson(presumably) died shortly after. With no clear leader, the brotherhood started their infighting.
You aren’t paying attention to the complaints, we know they are morally grey, but they are not fucking stupid like the show portrays them
Im not surprised at all they are jerks, I'm surprised that they're fucking braindead. I don't want the brotherhood to instantly win everything or whatever but these guys are like the people from idiocracy with access to energy weapons and powered armor.
They were never the good guys per se, but the show is portraying them as no brain hicks with power armour, however in the games they are an elite disciplined military force.
Are they elite and disciplined though? Seems like they're helpless without the PC helping them, except in FO1 where they're only shitty people. Despite their technological advantage and unbroken continuity of identity since the bombs fell, they should be much more powerful than they are. They struggle in every campaign of importance and need a random wastelander to show them the way to victory every time. That being the case, the heavily armed and armored soldiers of the chapter we follow in the show being total dumbasses is perfectly believable to me.
We've only seen one guy from Maxon's brotherhood and he wasn't a dumbass. Dude was clearly manipulating Maximus after identifying his disillusion as a weak link in a soon to be renegade chapter. He only met his end because he assumed Maximus would hold the same hatred for mutants that is core to the Commonwealth Chapter. Honestly, the only criticism I have of the show's portrayal is the god centric rhetoric of Maximus' Elder.
In fo2 they dont ignore the enclave, but they have declined to the point they are composed of like 3 people so they cant do much.
They do help you get to the oil rig and give you free reign of their tech stockpile if you can steal the vertibird plans from the enclave.
Yup, they're dicks in the games and always have been, but they've also always been disciplined soldiers. So, ya, I expected some level of competence, but the show is portraying them as fucking brainless, reckless, mouth-breathers. I was hoping it was just Maximus' chapter, but nope it's all of them (except Dane, who I'm not convinced is really working with/for the BOS).
Xander was the only seemingly competent one, but oooope, nope he's gonna kill ghoul kids, which has never been depicted in any of the games as a thing the BOS does. Feral ghouls, yes, feral ghoul kids, maybe, but not non-feral ghouls. They shit on them, sure, but they don't outright kill them.
I feel like viewing the Brotherhood through a video game lens clouds how folks subjectively/objectively think of them.
Like they give you quests, they have sick gear, etc etc.
They are at best morally grey. They hoard tech on a paternalistic basis and who knows what would happen if that tech feel into the wrong hands?
If you were outside the BoS in a post apocalyptic wasteland the isolationist tech freaks are at best someone to be wary of and avoid. At worst if you discover some pre-war tech that might help you and others survive in the wasteland they will swoop in and take it. Probably killing you and lots of folks just trying to survive to do it.
At worst you are a ghoul, not feral, and they shoot you on sight. I mean you would think that having a faction that has such disregard for sentient life would be a big read flag for most folks.
It’s the brotherhoods isolationism that essentially makes them a couple of steps removed from the Enclave. They are slightly less genocidal and non-interventionist but they are still genocidal.
It’s also that isolationism that explains why they act like meathead jarheads. You are talking about an organisation mainly composed of inbred infantry grunts and a handful of scientists. Inbreeding is not associated with intelligence. But more than that how many good trainers or educators did they have in their midst? Maybe enough to teach the basics of power armour use, tactics etc. but overtime that’s going to atrophy. Particularly when you specifically divide your organisation keeping scribes/swords seperate.
They absolutely weren't until Bethesda just started retconning stuff. The only group they went out of their way to kill were the super mutants, which was pretty damn understandable given the events of Fallout 1. Even by Fallout 2 that had stopped doing that because they realized there was no point in fighting a dead war.
Please bro, ignore what the games show you bro. Please just imagine the head canon I made up to justify the tv show bro. Please bro.
Heh, I mean I have some sympathy. The games have varying perspectives on each faction that folks can choose to just take as gospel or ignore as they wish innit?
Like someone might just buy into any one factions propaganda and ignore what anyone else’s says about them. Thats part and parcel of it being a video game over other media.
Maybe you should try playing the games first, borther instead of coming here to lecture people on "the propaganda of the factions" while yo uask people to ignore what the games depict in favor of this weird thesis you have to justify the bad writting of the show. They are fun.
I mean feel free to have an actual discussion about it and rebut or refute my points. That might be more interesting than whatever this exchange currently is?
Also I’m an old yin. I played each mainline game on release (not tactics though - I’d gone to Uni by then).
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There are points in my argument. You could choose to address them. You could use evidence from the games to do that.
Given you think the post is nonsense it should be pretty easy for you to formulate a counter argument no?
I mean you’re also free to not bother but that would kinda of make this interaction kinda pointless.
If your position is just “your position sucks” then that’s fair. It doesn’t say much in support of your position that you don’t want to even attempt to back it up though.
If your position remains “your argument sucks” and you don’t want to go further then that it kinda amounts to the intellectual level of “you’re a big doo doo head and I don’t like you”. Which, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just ignore.
I am not doing enough drugs to be convinced to ignore what my lying eyes and ears were telling me, specially not for a tv show.
There are two episodes left, not much room for resolutions in that time. Your hostility is weird.
4 episode dude
Calling a splinter cell of like 8 people "The Main BOS" is a big stretch there mate.
Lore wise in FO1 and FO2 the BoS does fight the mutants and even chases down remnants of the master’s army all the way to Chicago etc, they also do combat the Enclave and with the NCR nearly wipe the Enclave completely out of the west coast. They do help the wasteland quite a bit sure you can argue some of the means aren’t the nicest but they more than justify them by the end results they beaten back 3 events that wouldve ruined the wasteland even more, masters army, enclave in both 2 and 3, then in fo4 they destroy the institute, fallout tactics they destroy the calculator and make life much better for the people of the states they took over etc stop being so damn dumb the BoS hate is crazy af to me
I think a lot of these comments are people being upset about BoS knights reflecting the reality of how USA elite forces behave during prolonged conflicts
I would still say FO4 BoS is still relatively good. When they are not 9/11ing themselves in downtown Boston they are purging the wasteland of raiders, ferals, and mutants for free.
Also Teagan isn’t representative of the entire BoS especially since you mentioned he is going behind Maxon.
They don't ignore it, they just get scared because they rely on superior tech to compensate for their numbers and the Enclave has better tech than them. That doesn't make them bad in that game, but it does make them cowards.
I think Lyons is the BoS to most fans. Fallout was really defunct until Fallout 3, and Bethesda made the BoS a very sympathetic, powerful faction to align with because of Lyons. Because that was the entry point for an entire generation of fans, they feel frustrated to see others are dipshits, even if that’s consistent with the diversity of chapters throughout the series and how the Western chapters behaved in the earliest games.
F03 was my first experience with the franchise, so I was very much in the camp of these guys being good. F04 they seemed fine, but started FNV right before the show came out and realized they are mostly a-holes.
I started on fallout 3 as a kid and was super surprised when I found out from nv and then reading the lore from the originals when I was younger amd then actually playing them then playing 4 that Lyons was actually the outcast in the grand scheme of things and the outcasts who seemed horribly evil were actually what the brotherhood was really like. Obviously im nv theyre apathetic at worst but if you manage to turn them around and give them more motivation to help the mojave it just leads them to start robbing people of tech in the ending credits. By the time 4 came out and I played it I was like yeah since theyre a continuation of fallout 3s brotherhood il hear them out, and pretty much all they stood for was hoarding tech, not helping wastelanders and murdering any life that they didnt see as worthy or pure. As much as I hate 4 I still finished it and despite how much I loved lyons chapter in 3 it didn't take much thought to blow the Prydwen out of the sky.
They aren't 'good' or 'bad' people they had a set set of values and are usually super black and white about them, which made them interesting. Sure destroying ghouls can be bad but it's not always. But it's usually shown they can learn nuance and change to not be so black and white. Hence literally every brotherhood ending in New Vegas or Danse and his endings in 4
The show has them be literal idiotic fratboys. And the show is allergic to neance
It's amazing how many people get fooled by in-universe propaganda across all media. It's no wonder so many people fall for real world propaganda too.
The BoS have always kinda been dicks, there have been some good guys, but its like any organization. Im waiting for s2 to be out so im just going off of s1, but im more peeved that the BoS are more cowards/incompetent than anything. From my experience, they are self righteous, and a bit of an ass, but they're competent and a major faction for a reason.
They’re just Boneless Enclave
They act like bumbling idiots, all of this season is comically bad.
Yeah, as much as they are a cool faction, I always found the genocide of ghouls, as well as rogue synths, highly distasteful.
When I was playing Fallout 4, I found myself wishing there was a way to convince the BOS to spare the lives of Non Feral Ghouls and Rogue Synths.
I mean, feral ghouls and the Institute need to be wiped out, though we can't grant mercy to those who just want to live a better life? I'm sure they could be of some use in helping humanity rebuild this broken world.
And yet I've had guys handwave it all with "but the bad guys were rogue agents, going around the heroic saintly elder's back" and "sometimes they trade technology."
Couldn't agree more. The BOS has never been 'tje good guys', they have always been jerk supremicists who hide behind their bullshit about helping stop humanity from destroying itself again with dangerous technology, in order to hoard power themselves.
Even in Fallout 3, which is arguably frames the BOS as the good guys the most in a games, as you mentioned the rank and file are still suprenicist assholes, they just happen to have a good leader.
Exactly, like the Brotherhood have always been technorelegious fascists. The only difference between them and the Enclave is that the Enclave doesn't fear technology and have a more unified goal of restoring the United States.
There are only a few truly good factions in Fallout: Followers of the Apocolypse, Railroad and the Minutemen. The rest are either completely evil (Legion, Institute, Enclave), evil with some good people (BoS, Great Khans), or try to be good but are imperialist capitalists (NCR).