Re-Writing Fallout 4

The story of Fallout 4 was lame, but put together could have turned out better.

My thesis on what should have been: The protagonist was actually a synth all along.
>The pre-war set-up comes across as just that: a set up. Everything is hunky dory - the protag and their spouse (opposite gendered) have a baby (boy) and live in suburbia. A vault tec employee pops up at your door conveniently, on the day the bombs drop, with pre-approved vault papers. Not long later, the bombs drop and the military has already mobilized around your town preventing any exploration. But wait! The Vault!
>The vault is seemingly on path. You just happen to get inside, as Boston becomes Bombston. You know the names of your fellow vault-mates but nothing much beyond that. You are processed and cryogenically frozen. There is a split moment where your tube, for one reason or another unfreezes. A mercenary (and faceless, masked thugs) take your baby, shoot your wife, and refreeze you.
>You somehow reawaken and find that the controls are busted and everyone is dead… except you. You make your way out and the only thing remaining from “your past” is an old, barely functional Codsworth. After some travelling, you come across the last of the Minutemen (who had, in their waning years, fought a guerilla war with the Institute). The Minutemen were ferried into Concord by raiders coincidentally as the sole survivor arrives. The minutemen are saved and shepherded into Sanctuary.
>You learn about the Minutemen and bits about their history (home base, what happened to them, who’s left) and you are directed to Diamond City. You meet up with an old Synth, freed from the control of the Institute. He helps break into Conrad Kellogg’s house and reveal a hologram of Kellogg and your child (Shaun). Strange that this is the only place you ever encounter that has holographic video footage.

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>You follow Dogmeat who leads you to Kellogg. He taunts you that you’ll never get to him and you’re already dead. You confront him about stealing your kid and he’s indifferent; he’s captured loads children and adults for the Institute and has no memory of you or Shaun. You are all just bodies for the Institute. Depending on how the conversation goes, Kellogg comes to believe that you were sent to kill him. You kill him, take the implant, the Brotherhood flies overhead.
>You search for the railroad, because they can use the implant to learn how to get into the institute. After following the Freedom Trail and discovering the railroad, you find out more about them. They have you escort a synth to Goodneighbor to be reprogrammed. You find the memory den and are introduced to the concept of Synth reprogramming. The Memory Den uses the chip to search through Kellogg’s memories and find out how to get into the Institute. Strangely you can’t find the memory from his house. (the implant may be too damaged?)
>You help virgil in the glowing sea, all the while you are confronted with details about the synth program and Institute experiments. If you are sneaky enough, you can find information about programming memories into Synths, creating fake holograms, and the frustrated attempts at weeding out the enemies of the Institute. The better your sneaking, the more you learn. Casual knowledge in terminals mention a project to create a synth without a failsafe so they can safely infiltrate and spy on enemy factions. After helping Virgil, you get the courser chip and make the molecular transport thingamajig.

>Your son visits you and introduces himself as your son. Strangely enough, however, he is referred to as “Father.” You are lead through the Institute, given a nice room, and given the mission statement of the Institute. They do everything they can to sell themselves to you and “Father” doesn’t act like a long lost Son at all, more like a salesman. He wants you to join him and eradicate all factions that oppose their desired control of the Commonwealth. He leaves the choice up to you and leaves (disappears from game).
>if you break into his office, you can find a mr. handy that identifies you by serial number, the same as the project number. It casually breaks the news you are a synth being monitored by the Institute. How you proceed in the game depends on you. If you destroy the Institute, on his deathbed he says you were to be his legacy; to lead the Institute to domination. You can reveal that you know the truth and he’ll remorsefully call you his biggest failure. A big risk that didn’t pay off.

crap.

Why can't I just be a survivalist who builds his own bunker?

Scrap the whole thing and ditch any Fallout sequels until Bethesda fucking dies.

I liked the idea of playing as someone who was alive before the bombs dropped, frozen, and resurfaces after everything, but they dropped the ball with the whole "find your son" shit and "no role playing" factor.

Makes no sense, why would Father try to make you his legacy?
He should have zero emotional attachment to the shell of his ""father""

How did he come to exist in the first place?
Last time I checked, synths don't reproduce

There are still a lot of things that make no sense. But at least say us when the synth-protagonist was deployed (so where the programmed memory ends and his real jounrey begins)

I prefer the twist being that the institute are replacing people with Synths and then storing the people in Cryostasis (the real reason they went into vault 111) while the surface is still highly radioactive. But I still can't explain away the god damn huge numbers of orcs and zombies.

But the question still is: Why?

>The protagonist was actually a synth all along.
stopped reading there, synths are a shit insert to the world

Far harbor DLC implies you're a synth but leaves it vague so you can decide for yourself

Yeah, that's still shitty story telling.

If you look at the fact that your son would have known right away and told you if you were a synth, then the far harbor dlc is completely pointless.

it's more like you're race(?)-fluid and can decide whether you want to be robot man or man man

very inclusive

Yeah there really is nothing about the game before the DLC to suggest that you are a synth. When your body gets torn to pieces you can see its a human inside, other synths dont react as if you are one of them, everyone or atleast someone at the institute would have told you, etc etc. Far harbor feels like it was fan fic that bethesda just plagiarized without thinking about plot implications.

Junk the entire storyline.
Make the FPS that Bethsoft obviously thought it needed to improve sales.
Storyline is the war between the US and China, because fuck it, war is the new thing and it's got a Fallout theme to it.
At the end of the game, the nukes fall, and there's a vague reference to waiting for F5.
Why the fuck not, right? Fallout is fucking dead. Everyone who made F1 and F2 are fucking gone, and they're never coming back. Fucks sake, F4 was an FPS with light RPG elements in it, why the fuck not go all the way with it? Fuck it.

Here's how you do the "Protag is actually a synth" twist, while also improving the game's choices.

>Intro is the same. You still go down into the vault and all that shit.
>When you first leave the vault, no minutemen. You instead find your way to Diamond City through other means.
>Game plays out similarly up until Kellogg. You can use Dogmeat to track him or, if your Perception/Intelligence is high enough, track him yourself
>When you finally get to Kellogg, instead of killing him, he instead teleports to the Institute and leaves behind some kind of clue (Maybe a taunting message made with Institute tech?)
>Around this time the Brotherhood rolls in, and you decide that you have to work with them in order to infiltrate the Institute
>Same shit with the Memory Den and Virgil, but now you have the Brotherhood's full backing in creating the teleportation device
>You finally make it into the Institute, where you meet with Father and Kellogg. It's revealed your whole pre-war life was a lie. You're actually a synth who has become eligible to be a courser, which is why you've been tracking Kellogg all this time. It was all a test to see how well you'd do, and you passed. You're then taken to a private room so you can regain your thoughts.

Now you have 2 options.

>Option 1
>You can retake your place in the Institute and become a courser, with Kellogg becoming a possible companion
>This opens up all the Institute quests, some of which reward you with your choice of Institute upgrades (Aqua Boy, for example, would be an Institute-exclusive perk, instead of being a normal perk like it is now)
>You also get all sorts of badass new weapons and armor to play around with

(cont)

Fuck Synths, also The Institute doesn't exist. Protagonist used to be the mayor of his town but also had military experience. Polish the fuck out of the settlement building system, improve trade, add more existing settlements and make Fallout into a first-person empire-builder like Mount & Blade.

Or you can choose the other option: Escape the Institute

>This will instantly make you an enemy of the Institute, and they will send out coursers to find you. Coursers will often infiltrate settlements and hide in plain sight, and they can even turn your own settlements against you. They will also often attack you on-sight, and are very powerful

This way, the Institute seems like more of a threat then they are in the current game, and your character can now understand why people are so scared of them.

>While hiding from the Institute, your only hope now is to find the Railroad and beg for their help
>Joining the Railroad does not give you the option of perks or new weapons/armor like siding with the Institute does, but it does have its own perks (Such as having access to Railroad fences, as well as having access to secret passageways that help you avoid the Institute's eyes)

Choosing either option will make you a permanent enemy of the Brotherhood of Steel, though. This is to contrast them from being the good guys that they were in 3.

>The end-game plays out similarly, although you now only have the options of siding with the Railroad or Institute
>Depending on your playstyle, story choices, companions, and size of your settlements, you can have multiple endings
>Endings can either be very good (The Institute is defeated and the Commonwealth is united under you) or very bad (The Institute crushes all its enemies and you are now the Institute's most feared agent). Of course, there are a lot of in-betweens
>And because you don't have to kill Kellogg, you can actually do a "no-kill" playthrough, if that's your thing.

What do you guys think?

I like it

DiMa is just fucking with you. He says you can't know for sure you're not a synth. He convinced the runaway girl she was but when I killed her she didn't drop any components

>why would Father try to make you his legacy?

You were his creation, his "son," that gave the Institute control over the Commonwealth.

>He should have zero emotional attachment to the shell of his ""father""

He doesn't have attachment. It's more you are his creation and his gamble

>How did he come to exist in the first place?

The same way anyone in the institute exists. His parents were residents.

It's shit and here's why

The whole idea that they would artificially create your life to this extent as to somehow test you into becoming one of their agents is inane bullshit
What is the motivation for the Institute to bother?
Why wouldn't they just create some super robots like they ALREADY have been instead of having you jump through hoops like a retard
Even more so playing as the female character who has literally zero background in fighting/warfare, why the everliving fuck would they """"recruit"""" you?

The story should have been about a man and his monkey driving an 18 wheeler across the country setting wrongs right and delivering cargo in a fast or zany manner.

Why not keep killing Kellogg? The PC being sort of his replacement and hunting Kellogg was both a test and a tying up of a loose end?

>The whole idea that they would artificially create your life to this extent as to somehow test you into becoming one of their agents is inane bullshit
It could also be explained as the Institute wanted to see what would happen. That's basically the only motivation Father has for freeing you in the original game, because he wanted to see what would happen.

>What is the motivation for the Institute to bother?
Coursers are supposed to be the best of the best at infiltration and retrieving rogue synths. Of course they're going to go through some kind of test.

>Why wouldn't they just create some super robots like they ALREADY have been instead of having you jump through hoops like a retard
Because what good are super robots if they can't infiltrate a community? That's why people are so scared of synths: You have no idea who's really human, and who's a spy for the Institute.

>Even more so playing as the female character who has literally zero background in fighting/warfare, why the everliving fuck would they """"recruit"""" you?
Remember that your pre-war "background" is all a lie in this version. For all we know you were programmed and trained for combat before all this happened, explaining how you're able to survive out there in the wasteland.

Because your "Spouse" was never actually your spouse. Hell, maybe you don't even have a spouse in this version.

Nothing to do with the spouse? Why can't the institute have used you to get rid of Kellogg (old, mostly implanted, potentially dangerous and expensive)?

Nigga this is just an idea I had, fill in the blanks yourself. All I know is that I was disappointed in 4 and wanted a story that revolved around you being a synth, instead of them just being alluded to all the time like they were in the game we got.

But why the effort and the risk of having you not join the Institute if you can just build a synth and program it to serve you/ be some ninja spy master
>because why the fk not lol amirite

The whole idea of synths having free will/ a conscience is garbage anyway since you can just be shut down immediately with your code

It all just makes zero sense from a plot perspective and the most I can think of is you chalk it up to >because

>But why the effort and the risk of having you not join the Institute if you can just build a synth and program it to serve you/ be some ninja spy master
Maybe the Institute got arrogant and thought they could program free will into synths and not have it backfire spectacularly?

>The whole idea of synths having free will/ a conscience is garbage anyway since you can just be shut down immediately with your code
And yet the Railroad is able to give synths false memories and facial reconstruction so they can live a new life. How well that works depends on your perspective.

>It all just makes zero sense from a plot perspective and the most I can think of is you chalk it up to >because
Well that's just like your opinion man.

Dumb. Questions this raises:
Why would Father want a synth with free will to live outside the Institute? Wouldn't it be better to have him trained and indoctrinated as a member of the Institute, so that you would be more likely to stick with them or at least perceive their views as just and righteous?
Why did they kill your wife?
Why concoct this elaborate scheme in the first place?
Why are you the only one? It seems foolish of Father to bet everything on just this one unproven prototype, and extremely uncharacteristic of a man that's lived his entire life as a scientist.

It's pretty terrible.

Why the fuck would the Institute get arrogant and put everything they built at risk ?

>it's my opinion
It's an objective truth that your fanfic-tier story has plotholes all over that lead to no satisfying conclusion because you can't think beyond Shaun being a fucking madman who gets bored one rad afternoon

>Why the fuck would the Institute get arrogant and put everything they built at risk ?
Why would Shaun release his father from cryostasis only to have him betray the Institute and destroy them (In 3 of the game's endings)?

Why would the Institute create synths that look exactly like real humans and have free will, only to have dozens of them escape right under their noses?

Why would Shaun appoint you to be his successor despite you not being a scientist and being an outsider, only for a bunch of the division's leaders to rebel against this decision and for them to potentially get executed for their insurrection?

The whole point of Shaun (And by extension, the Institute) is that they think they can play God, and it backfires in their face. It's why the Railroad exists, and it's why the Institute can't do anything by themselves without your help.

>It's an objective truth that your fanfic-tier story has plotholes all over that lead to no satisfying conclusion because you can't think beyond Shaun being a fucking madman who gets bored one rad afternoon
Sounds to me like you're just upset about something and decided to take it out on some random user on Sup Forums.

I don't fucking know what Bethesda was thinking with their toddler-core storytelling and I am sure I don't want to find out but here is some random dingus presenting his great idea to the public space of Sup Forums - Video games

If you can't at least make a sensible story outline and fill potential plotholes, then don't bother

What's the matter, user? What's troubling you? I'm here if you want to talk about it.

Please, make the raiders real characters.

They outnumber farmers and productive settlers, give you an option to join some or talk to some.

>because he wanted to see what would happen
See, this is why the writing for the Institute sucks. That's not science. It's not even remotely scientific. This is what dumbfuck interns think before they walk into a research lab. The vast majority of scientists don't just sit around doing wacky shit because they're curious. Research, and science in general, is the application of already understood processes and concepts to gather data that will help you understand processes and concepts that you don't already understand. The "understanding" part is that you are able to reliably exert control over a phenomenon. Example: I understand that cars go faster or slower sometimes when they have different shapes. I hypothesize that I can predict how much faster a car will go when I change its shape in a certain manner, with all other elements of the car's construction being the same.

What is Father trying to understand by doing these "tests" on a synth? The only suggestions so far have been something along the lines of having the player-synth become the future leader of the Institute as some immortal manifestation of Father's will, but here's the thing, Father is already aware that synths have distinct personalities outside their control, to the point that they have to shut down and reprogram or destroy some of them. Why the ever-loving FUCK would he suddenly have some super-special synth that he's willing to hand everything over to, and not have a backup plan or failsafe? Why would he do this in such an elaborate and conspiratorial manner? Inane curiousity? That's not characteristic of a scientist, but a gambler. It makes him look like an idiot that can't see how he might lose the shirt off his back rather than win the jackpot. That's not someone who would reasonably be in charge of this massive research lab.

If you want to create some kind of story for Father, start by creating a line of reasoning that makes sense for his character.

I'm just fucking with you, user, I don't actually give a shit about what you think. I just copied this story from a post I found in the Sup Forums archives and wanted to see how many replies I'd get. Here's the proof if you don't believe me: boards.fireden.net/v/thread/347757772/#q347765979

See ya, suckers! And thanks for the (You)'s.

I think the most sensible thing if you want to have raiders is just turn them into a formal military. They can look and act about the same, but put some town somewhere that they protect that has farms and stuff. Just say that the "raiders" are really invaders, and that their leader/king/chief/whatever has some reason for declaring war on the rest of the region, but doesn't bother directing any serious united efforts to expand because he's happy with the size of his little empire.

One bad thing about Fallout 4 was how every faction was supposedly chasing after the betterment of mankind. There weren't any lazy/crazy hedonist factions for people that just wanted to watch things burn. Something I really liked about the Khans from FNV; they didn't want some kind of glorious empire, just they're own little slice of heaven and to be left alone.

BTFO