Fallout 4: Difference between revisions

** Part of the Brotherhood's rationale behind stopping the Institute, according to Elder Maxson, is to make sure that it doesn't become ''even more'' of a threat.

** The Minutemen are a benevolent example, as they can go from being almost wiped out to the last man at the start of the game's plot to becoming ''the'' dominant force in the Commonwealth.

** Played straight with the espionage war waged between the Institute and Railroad over the freedom of Synths, as the Sole Survivor's intervention will '''permanently''' decide the conflict's result - one way or another.

* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]: The fact that the player can choose ''any'' of the game's main factions - [[Absolute Xenophobe|the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel]], [[The Conspiracy|the Institute]], [[Underground Railroad|the Railroad]], and [[We Help the Helpless|the Commonwealth Minutemen]] - without feeling like they're picking "the evil choice" highlights that ''everyone'' is pretty flawed (even more so than ''New Vegas'', which primarily relied on [[Black and Grey Morality]]), and it's up to you as the Sole Survivor to decide which faction is, in your eyes, [[A Lighter Shade of Gray|the lightest shade of grey]]. Instead, the conflict between the Brotherhood and Institute falls more along the lines of [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]], with the Brotherhood as Romantics and the Institute as Enlightened. The Minutemen and Railroad, while not actively fighting each other, also fall along the above lines.

** Even [[Always Chaotic Evil|''Raiders'']] are significantly humanized via conversations the player can overhear between them when they haven't been detected, and terminals in various Raider-controlled setting show countless shades of villainy among them.

** The ''Far Harbor'' DLC has the conflict between the Church of the Children of Atom, the inhabitants of the titular Far Harbor, and even {{spoiler|[[Town with a Dark Secret|DiMA's Acadia]]}}. Far Harbor's inhabitants are distrustful of outsiders (particularly the Children of Atom), but the main reason for their hatred and ignorance is that they've lost numerous loved ones as the radioactive Fog drove them to the docks. The Children of Atom, despite their [[Church Militant]] nature and wish to blanket the entire Island with the Fog at the expense of Far Harbor, are {{spoiler|'''not''' [[Not Me This Time|responsible for the Fog]]}} and only became more hostile due to being led by an extremist leader like Tektus. While DiMA and the Synths of Acadia live in peace and even provided Fog Condensers to Far Harbor to help them hold back the Fog, {{spoiler|DiMA himself killed Captain Avery and replaced her with a mind-wiped Synth in the manner of the very Institute he had fled from. Despite his reason for that being peace between Acadia and Far Harbor, he can get called out on being [[Not So Different|Not So Different]] from the Institute}}. The story ''does'' have a [[Golden Ending]], but it involves {{spoiler|either killing Tektus or [[Talking the Monster to Death|convincing him to leave]] so he can be replaced with a Synth to prevent a war between Far Harbor and the Children of Atom}}.

* [[Ham-to-Ham Combat]]: It's possible for the Sole Survivor to do this against the Mechanist in the ''Automatron'' DLC while dressed as the Silver Shroud. The ensuing dialogue is practically a contest on who can overact who.

* [[Happy Ending Override]]:

** Played with for ''[[Fallout 3]]''. The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel seized the day in the Capital Wasteland, with no small thanks to the Lone Wanderer. On the other hand, both Owyn and Sarah Lyons died not long after, many (but not ''all'') of their reforms undone as the current Elder, Arthur Maxson once more reunited with the Outcasts and the previously estranged West Coast Brotherhood in the Lost Hills. It's also implied that the Brotherhood rules over DC like feudal overlords.

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: The Sole Survivor is strongly hinted at undergoing this through a good deal of the game, being that they're suffering from PTSD by consequence of [[Trauma Conga Line|the game's prologue]]. [[Fridge Brilliance|Which can]] [[Alternate Character Interpretation|plausibly explain]] his/her at-times muted emotional reactions.

* [[Husky Russkie]]: Vadim and Yefim Bobrov in Diamond City are this, giving the impression of being a post-apocalyptic version of [[The Mafiya]] despite actually being rather amiable and friendly. They're likely descended from Soviet immigrants or delegates around Boston when the Great War happened.

* [[Iconic Item|Iconic Outfit]]: Two, actually - the [[Super Prototype|T-60]] [[Powered Armor|Power Armor]] and the [[Badass Longcoat|Silver Shroud costume]].

* [[Internal Homage]]: The Minutemen's resurgence under the Sole Survivor's leadership, in conjunction to them all but uniting the Commonwealth under one flag, bears more than a passing semblance to how the New California Republic ultimately came to be, paralleling how the Vault Dweller and Shady Sands under Aradesh helped lay down the foundations for a stable regional identity to arise.

** The default appearance of the Male Sole Survivor (Nate) looks more than a little like Albert Cole, one of the pre-made player characters for ''Fallout 1''.

** While [[Player Character|the Sole Survivor]] is called such in all of the game's promotional and meta material, they're actually described as "the Vault Dweller" by Diamond City Radio's Travis Miles in yet '''another''' reference to ''Fallout 1''.

** The Children of Atom's more villainous characteristics now paint them as an analogue to the Children of the Cathedral from ''Fallout 1''.

* [[Jerkass Victim]]: The Mayor of Boston is revealed to have commissioned an underground shelter for himself, his family and a handful of guards using taxpayers' money. When the Great War finally happened, the survivors topside weren't too happy knowing about that, resulting in said Mayor, family and supporters dying a brutal death. Which would be tragic, if they weren't so sleazy.

* [[Just Before the End]]: The prologue sequence is set in 2077, on the very day of the Great War.

* [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall]]: Downplayed, but Father's constant statements about how the Synths only ''resemble'' human sapience can be seen as a commentary on programming video game NPCs and making them resemble actual characters in a story people should invest in.

* [[Lighter and Softer]]: Than both ''Fallout 3'' and ''New Vegas''.

* [[Lovecraft Country]]: This vibe is given off more and more the farther north you go. The ''Far Harbor'' DLC takes this even further, being set in post-apocalyptic Maine.

* [[Medium Blending]]: The game's intro is done in live-action. While gameplay-wise, it not only builds on the RPG/FPS fusion introduced in previous entries, but also incorporates certain elements like settlement construction.

** The ''Automatron'' DLC meanwhile adds robot construction and customization into the mix. While the ''Vault-Tec Workshop'' DLC allows the Sole Survivor to become the ''de facto'' Overseer of his/her own Vault.

* [[Melee a Trois]]: Aside from the usual Super Mutant collective and Raider gangs, the Commonwealth is on the brink of an all-out war between three major powers - the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute, and the Railroad. The Commonwealth Minutemen can also potentially take the stage, either aiding in one faction ruling the Commonwealth or taking over the entire region for themselves (optionally wiping out the competition in the process).

** The Institute doesn't particularly care how many Synths are destroyed so long as they get the job done, given how any losses incurred could be replaced. The Institute also doesn't seem to care about how many people they abduct and replace with Synths, either.

* [[Monumental Damage]]: Several historical landmarks in and around Boston are still standing more or less intact, and in the case of ''USS Constitution'', stuck on top of a building with rockets strapped on. It's justified in that the warhead meant for Boston never hit its intended target, instead landing in what's come to be known as the Glowing Sea.

** Fenway Park has seen better days, though has long since found new life as the site of Diamond City.

* [[Multiple Endings]]: Based on the different factions the Sole Survivor sides with at the game's end.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Captain Zao's long since regretted his part in the Great War. It's also implied that his submarine, the ''Yangtze'', may have been responsible for launching the warhead that wound up landing in what became the Glowing Sea.

* [[Mythology Gag]]: Quite a few appear.

** The first trailer begins in a manner similar to the intro of [[Fallout 1|the first game]], by slowly panning out from a TV set to show the ruins of the Wasteland around it.

** In the ''Vault-Tec Workshop'' DLC, you can make your own Vault Gear-doors. However, they look like the smaller doors with the side-arm pulling them away, as they were in the art style for the original two ''Fallout'' games.

** The relationship between the Commonwealth Minutemen and the Settlers they protect is heavily based after that of the Desert Rangers from the original ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]''. The ''Fallout'' series is generally seen as the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''Wasteland''.

** Looking at ''The Art of Fallout 4'' will show that the design of the [[Demonic Spiders|Fog Crawler]] in ''Far Harbor'' is based on a [[Dummied Out]] design for the [[Giant Mook|Mirelurk Queen]].

** Both the Minutemen and Railroad are rather similar in their outlooks, to the point that it's possible for the two factions to join forces.

** To a degree, the Railroad and the Institute. As both, due to lacking resources in one way or another, have to resort to subterfuge, covert operations and generally keeping a low profile. Also, the fate of Synths under their "protection" is largely the same - having their personalities destroyed through memory wipes, but they happen for different reasons - the Institute do so because they view the Synths' self-awareness as software bugs, and the Railroad do so because giving Synths new personalities & appearances makes it harder for the Institute to track them down while taking away their traumatic memories.

* [[One Nation Under Copyright]]: It's implied that corporations under the Enclave's influence like Vault-Tec behaved like this in Pre-War America, to the point of feigning authority over the actual government in the event of nuclear war.

* [[Our Ghouls Are Creepier]]: Ghouls also appear in the Commonwealth.

* [[Our Zombies Are Different]]: [[Technically Living Zombie|Feral Ghouls]] return yet again in this installment.

* [[Patriotic Fervor]]:

* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: The Vault-Tec Sales Representative in the intro, the same one the Sole Survivor stumbles upon in Goodneighbor centuries later, had nothing to do with Vault-Tec's shady activities. Seems like the company didn't put much thought on employee benefits, especially with those out-of-the-loop regarding its true nature.

** Similarly, most of the Institute's countless scientists are quite friendly and pleasant to the Sole Survivor, despite the horrific actions that their experiments have accomplished on the surface. This is partly due to both [[Believing Their Own Lies|cultural indoctrination]] [[Bigger Bad|started by the Institute's founders]], and that most of the Institute's residents [[Locked Out of the Loop|genuinely haven't the faintest idea about ''any'' of their atrocities.]]

** A number of places in the Commonwealth are also shown to have survived by design. Whether it's the {{spoiler|time capsule}} in Jamaica Plain or the pyramid-shaped, radiation hardened Sentinel Site in the Glowing Sea.

* [[Really 700 Years Old]]:

** Several Ghouls are around who were alive when the Great War happened. Examples include Arlen Glass (a renowned toymaker responsible for Giddyup Buttercup), Kent Connolly (a diehard fan of the Silver Shroud living in Goodneighbor), Eddie Winter (an intentionally ghoulified mob boss {{spoiler|who was responsible for killing the original Nick Valentine's fiancee}}) and even the Vault-Tec Sales Representative seen in the intro, who's more than shocked to see you.

** Thanks to implants and enhancements courtesy of the Institute, {{spoiler|Conrad Kellogg}} is considerably older than he appears - old enough to remember the day the [[Fallout 2|New California]] [[Fallout New Vegas|Republic]] was formally established.

* [[Retcon]]: Quite a few, as noted below:

* [[Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns]]: Some of the guns are modeled this way, notably the Thompson and, particularly glaringly, the bolt-action hunting rifle. Possibly [[Justified Trope|Justified]], as [[Truth in Television|current militaries often ''do'' supply bolt action rifles with opposite to normal actions,]] with the intent of the wielder using their left hand to cycle the weapon & their right to operate the trigger, allowing for faster shooting. [[Rule of Cool|Or it might have been done to just give the reload animations a more unique look]].

* [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]: The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel and Institute fall along these lines, respectively.

* [[Self-Deprecation]]

* [[Shout Out]]: As with any good ''Fallout'' game, it's pretty [[Reference Overdosed]].

*** The Silver Shroud's storyline is also heavily based after ''[[The Boondock Saints]]'', a film about twin brothers who become vigilantes and kill prominent members of Boston’s criminal underworld

** The [[Wolverine|Adamantium Skeleton]] perk returns once again.

** Exploring the Wasteland, you'll frequently come across bundles of sticks and twigs up in the trees, which look [[The Blair Witch Project|disturbingly familiar]].

** One of the random encounters involves finding a dead [[The Postman (film)|postman]] surrounded by mongrels.

** In the C.I.T. Ruins, you can find an old mop and bucket along with the clothes of a janitor [[Good Will Hunting|next to a chalkboard with a complicated math equation]].

** One of Hancock's random conversations with unnamed Goodneighbor residents involves [[The Simpsons (animation)|a traveler attempting to sell the town a monorail]].

** Captain Ironsides' vendetta against the Boston-based Weatherby accounting firms that [[Makes Just as Much Sense in Context|the ''U.S.S. Constitution'' repeatedly crashes into]] is a reference to the [[Monty Python]] short film ''[[Monty Python's The Meaning of Life|The Crimson Permanent Assurance]]'', which also features a gang of unlikely pirates (elderly accountants in the film rather than robots) in a flying ship who attack American accounting firms.

*** In another example from ''Automatron'', the sequence of doors at the entrance to the Mechanist's stronghold is straight out of the opening sequence of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''.

** The Deliverer, a unique silenced pistol given to the Sole Survivor by the Railroad (the faction of the Commonwealth most heavily based on espionage agencies) is heavily based on the Walther PPK, the iconic pistol used by [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]].

*** [[Author Appeal|And it wouldn't be a Bethesda game without a ''ton'' of Lovecraft references!]] Let's go into some of them!

**** One side mission has you looking for a [[Mad Artist]] [[Serial Killer]] named Pickman, who makes macabre and disturbing paintings and has creepy tunnels under his studio.

**** In the [[The Dunwich Horror|Dunwich Borers Quarry]] (itself already a [[Shout-Out]] to H.P. Lovecraft), there's for some reason four Feral Ghouls all named after famous rock musicians.

**** A ''third'' reference to Lovecraft is the Kingsport Lighthouse. Kingsport was the earliest fictional town in what became known as [[Lovecraft Country]], and in ''The Festival'', a group of cloaked cultists perform pre-human rites there.

**** The Mirelurk Kings seem to resemble the [[The Shadow Over Innsmouth|Deep Ones]], what with their human-fish-frog look. Another (lesser) example would be the Lurkers.

** The caricature of Father that appears in the quest pictures looks exactly like [[Mega Man|Dr. Light]].

*** The special arm-light that checks the individual bodies is also reminiscent of ''[[Flight of the Navigator]]''.

** A corpse can be found beside a tractor, a broken fence and two Feral Ghouls, referencing a scene from Episode 1 of Telltale Games' ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_%28video_game%29 The Walking Dead]''.

** Normally, submachineguns aren't that hot as weapons due to low damage and high ammo consumption. Spray n' Pray (a unique SMG sold by Cricket) turns this upside-down. Thanks to its "Explosive" legendary effect, each bullet does an extra fifteen points of AoE explosive damage. The Commando perk buffs its base damage while Demolition Expert buffs the explosive damage; investing in those perks turns Spray n' Pray into an engine of devastation. To top it all off, the explosions have a chance to stagger the target. Did I mention that Spray n' Pray is a full-auto weapon?

** Ordinary projectile guns are just as effective as energy weapons if not moreso, due to the high availability of ammunition which is cheaper to buy and is far more common as scavenged loot. Even with all points in the Scavenger perk, the player will most often discover plain old bullets in crates, desks, lockers and such, rather than energy cells and plasma cartridges.

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]

* [[Story Breadcrumbs]]: There are a number of areas where you can only conclude what happened through environmental clues. A lot of that has to do with the Railroad and their symbols. A dead Protectron with a Railway Spike on its body near a Relay antenna is a clear sign someone from the Railroad killed it at that location. Several hidden pointers show the way an escaping Synth was guided through a feral-infested train yard. And the railsign for "Ally" is marked on a hidden observation post overlooking Vault 111 and Sanctuary Hills... someone's been watching you.

* [[Super Soldier]]: The Institute's [[The Dreaded|rightfully feared]] Coursers '''definitely''' count as this.

* [[Take That]]: One can sometimes find tiny hairbrushes on dead Deathclaws, which might be a jab at [[Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel|Fallout Tactics']] infamous "hairy Deathclaws" redesign.

* [[Take That, Audience!]]: [[Crystal Spires and Togas|The Institute]] can be seen as a subtle middle finger by Bethesda towards the residents of Western nations (who make up the majority of their audience), in how they implicitly accept the abuse of developing nations by their own countries in return for pampered lives and (relative) comfort.

* [[Town with a Dark Secret]]: Vault 81 is a rather benevolent example. On the one hand, it's a rather upbeat time capsule of Pre-War America that's a control vault in all but name, though it's (rationally) wary of outsiders. {{spoiler|But its original purpose, as a testing ground for diseases and bioweapons, was never implemented in the first place. The first Overseer sealing away the few scientists meant to conduct the experiments, while said scientists developed a conscience and willingly accepted their fate}}.

** [[Stepford Smiler|Covenant]], however, plays this straight.

* [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]]:

** The Children of the Atom in ''Far Harbor'', a formerly bizarre yet harmless [[Cult]] version of this, have become much more deadly and dangerous than they started as. {{spoiler|Especially since they began as pacifists in ''[[Fallout 3]]'', albeit with an obsession for worshiping nuclear weaponry like bombs}}.

** The Hubologists, [[The Bus Came Back|previously seen]] in ''[[Fallout 2]]'' make a return in the ''Nuka-World'' DLC, only this time even more deluded. Somehow.

* [[Weak but Skilled]]: The Institute makes up for their lack of resources with a massive spy network and being excellent at espionage warfare.

** Applies in a meta sense to what the player can do to change things, since they were unable to have a direct hand in actually rebuilding civilization, with they can now do, with the effects immediate and apparent due to the settlement mechanic.

* [[Yellow Peril]]: Averted with Captain Zao. As while he hails from Pre-War China, he's an otherwise honorable if ghoulified officer who sincerely regrets his role in the Great War and just wants to return home.