tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post4088025733292074882..comments2024-02-26T20:52:27.680-08:00Comments on Thinking Inside the Box: Fallout 4's Railroad Faction: Why I Side with ThemThe RPGeniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02752937839502693108noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-73285010059428651212018-10-08T20:07:18.214-07:002018-10-08T20:07:18.214-07:00The difference being that the people in the Railro...The difference being that the people in the Railroad are decent people doing moral good, while the people in the Brotherhood of Steel and the Institute are people that, good intentions and goals or no, are causing immediate harm to humanity and synths with everything they do. That's not to say that each and every one of them necessarily deserves death, but the game forces you to choose which faction as a whole lives, then the lives of the righteous outweigh the lives of those who do evil to their fellow man and machine. To preserve those who consciously chose to murder and enslave, to make those dark acts a <i>way of life</i>, through the deaths of those who chose to risk all to help the downtrodden and do right, is most certainly morally indefensible, regardless of the numbers involved.The RPGeniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02752937839502693108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-52921743934800034842018-10-08T14:37:34.669-07:002018-10-08T14:37:34.669-07:00We Will just agree to disagree then. (Though I wil...We Will just agree to disagree then. (Though I will contend that arguing the death of the Leadership of the Railroad as a particular point to be invalidated when more individual lives are probably lost in the destruction of the institute, even including the evacuation that is able to occur. Not to mention the death of all the Brotherhood in BOTH of our preferred endings.) Still, good talk.DrCryllushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13926373642822470151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-15216109521420251742018-10-07T22:17:13.671-07:002018-10-07T22:17:13.671-07:00Even assuming that Nora/Nate can convince the Inst...Even assuming that Nora/Nate can convince the Institute to turn itself around, it will require substantial time to be able to do so in terms of practicality alone. Time in which people keep dying who didn't need to, and a race keeps suffering that didn't need to. You're compounding one hard, concrete, and terrible sacrifice (the Railroad) with more and more future sacrifices, on and on until the faction is finally fixed...and you're making all these tangible sacrifices based on a hope that the Institute may, at some undefined time in the future, benefit mankind in ways not yet fully determined in overcoming conflicts unverified as oncoming.<br /><br />And honestly, even beyond the logistical problems guaranteeing that the Institute will continue doing evil for some time no matter how persuasive and good-intentioned Nora/Nate is, just the fact that it comes at the cost of the Railroad's lives defeats your goals from a philosophical long-run point of view. Because you're basically killing innocent and decent people now, in the present, for the sake of your hope that you can derive something useful and positive from the Institute later. In other words...make terrible but convenient sacrifices now, for the sake of a vague idea that the future could be better for it. You're basically trying to change the Institute by employing the very mindset that led them down their evil path to begin with. You may as well not bother trying to change the Institute for the better at all, if you have to do so by vindicating the mindset that all their evil was born from. When you destroy evil using evil methods, the good you've won is temporary at best, because all who see what you've done will know that those evil methods are effective, and seek to use them for their own endeavors.<br /><br />Jesus Christ I need to stop getting so into these discussions. At any rate, that's why I still disagree with you on this point. But we can agree to disagree on this if you wish; I don't mean to be contentious. At least, not excessively so.The RPGeniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02752937839502693108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-80309371634674000152018-10-07T22:17:01.833-07:002018-10-07T22:17:01.833-07:00I still contend that the structured immorality tha...I still contend that the structured immorality that permeates every level of the Institute's culture and method would be impossible for a single, initially disliked leader figure to turn around regardless of CH score, and I'd like to point out that there's not even the barest whisper of narrative support for such an idea during the entire Institute path--whatever ideas you have about Nora/Nate being able to turn the Institute around, they are entirely born on your side of the equation. Nothing about what happens and what's said on Nora/Nate's side through the late stages of the Institute path indicate that the Sole Survivor, no matter how otherwise good of a person, has any intention of deviating from the course that Father and his lackeys have charted. We're allowed to make certain logical assumptions about how the Sole Survivor as we played her/him acts in the future, yes, but it's hard for me to agree with a possible future path that the game's own narrative only comes a little short of outright denying.<br /><br />Nonetheless, let's say that you're right, and Nora/Nate IS capable of turning the Institute around. How fast does that happen? You can't just immediately tell them to stop murdering and replacing innocent human beings overnight, because that's their primary method of both security and outside-world experimentation, and the Institute is based around science. There has to be a backup method in place that minimally satisfies the Institute's needs for experimentation and peace of mind through disturbing levels of spying, before they're gonna say "Okay, we'll stop looking at human beings like expendable lab rats."<br /><br />You also can't just immediately tell them "No more pretending that these clearly self-aware, feeling beings you're creating aren't people--and on that note, no more slavery" and expect that to change overnight. Even if you can somehow sweet talk everyone into quickly changing their lifelong, incredibly wrong perspective on Synths, you still have to come up with an acceptable backup social structure to replace the current way the Institute's entire society functions, because it's built upon slave labor. You immediately emancipate the synths, and you are gonna have social chaos as the established function of every level of the Institute suddenly changes while everything in the place ceases working because no one's fixing anything, building anything, or cleaning anything.<br /><br />So how long does the Institute continue doing evil, do you think, before Nora/Nate can find alternative ways to keep experimentation going and keep security reassuringly competent without murdering human beings, and before she/he can find alternative ways to keep the Institute physically functioning and able to handle an incoming surge of new civilians whose rights and happiness are suddenly as important as all the other members'? Because during the time that new methods and structures are being set up, people are still dying, and synths are still being born to be slaves. By siding with the Institute, you've already actively killed dozens of morally decent people in the Railroad, and inactively killed the synths they watch over in the Commonwealth if those synths are ever found out and killed when a Railroad member might have evacuated them. And on top of that sacrifice, you're adding each and every moment of synth slavery until you can reconfigure the Institute not to need it, and you're adding each and every man and woman in the Commonwealth that the Institute eliminates to keep its experimentation going until you can reconfigure the group's plan of action otherwise.<br /><br />Continued in a moment...The RPGeniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02752937839502693108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-91895635693461686992018-10-07T02:36:40.907-07:002018-10-07T02:36:40.907-07:00Silly blogger, not logging me in when I post a com...Silly blogger, not logging me in when I post a comment so I miss the reply. ANYWAYS. Imma respond to your second point first. Point the Second (10CHA vs Founding Tradition), I really kinda disagree. 10 CHA is nice, but not overwhelming, I agree. Throw in full set of Sharp equipment, other miscellaneous boosts and consumable boosts though, and you can get a conditional boost of up to 32. (48 with DLC) 10 CHA alone? Yeah probably a long shot. Fully Specced? No one can refuse you. From a psychological point of view, I've actually made a point of exhausting all institute dialogue and listening to all voice lines, and as a student of manipulation I see ways to make rapid basic steps to prevent further atrocities, and longer term ideas to spread to move the institute towards good karma. As a optimist, I think I have a shot. <br /><br />Point the first though......Yeah. "War Never Changes." Technology never really solves anything in the Fallout does it? Within the Fallout meta, in the long term I'd probably be doomed to fail. Perhaps in the fashion of Elder Lyons, where after my death it would revert back to its inhumane ways... Still, I gotta hope. And hey, what is progress but a continual effort to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? IRL quality of life has increased with level of technology, and because of the larger messes humanity has to clean up (Tunnelers anyone? Not to mention things such as, say, Project Purity.) Fallout needs better tools to do the job than pipe weapons. Every Lone Wanderer and Sole Survivor must make their own decisions. Siding with the Railroad is undoubtedly my second choice of the available options. I just think that my Nate would have a shot at putting things together for good.DrCryllushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13926373642822470151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-16351041132423483642018-09-29T08:54:29.444-07:002018-09-29T08:54:29.444-07:00I've heard a lot of people talk about how they...I've heard a lot of people talk about how they side with the Institute because they think the Sole Survivor's leadership could turn it around. I honestly can't say I think that makes any sense. First of all, the idea that its technology is a key necessity of humanity's future endeavors has no particular reasoning behind it: we've seen multiple examples through the series that humanity can reclaim the world and create a functional society already without needing a higher level of technology than is already available to it. Certainly the Institute's toys and discoveries would be helpful and convenient, but they're just as certainly not needed--and possessing a higher level of technology than of the wisdom to use it is how the Fallout world get into this mess to start with, so if anything, it might be harmful in the long run to advance technology further and continue to leave humanity's wisdom undeveloped.<br /><br />More substantially relevant, however: a CHA score of 10 weighs not so favorably against a decades-long culture of institutionalized slavery and devaluing synths as no more than resources, which was built upon an also decades-long mentality of scientific progress outweighing morality and of devaluing non-Institute human beings as no more than resources. The possibility that the leadership of the Sole Survivor, which is already something the rest of the Institute's leading figures were very reluctant to accept, could overturn a society whose every method and value stems from a dogmatic worship of a nebulous "future of humanity" is unlikely at best. The members of the Institute have labored for <i>generations</i> under the belief that it's completely fine to sacrifice real humanity in any quantity for the sake of tiptoeing blindly towards an imaginary future humanity that they're just too busy to define, and Nora/Nate isn't a leader that they asked for or wanted. Father built a powerful tyranny over the Institute before he handed Nora/Nate the keys, but even his reign was starting to show cracks in its iron grip at the end, as major members began to question his pet projects. Judging the mentality, history, and fanaticism of the Institute, the methods of labor and research that have become institutionalized in it, and the words and actions of its members during the events of Fallout 4, a Sole Survivor who isn't a completely amoral monster is going to either ruffle too many feathers with the idea that thinking, feeling, self-aware beings should be treated with some modicum of respect and sympathy, and get kicked out...or she/he will have to move so slowly and subtly to enact changes that the slavery, kidnapping, and murder of innocents will go on for years before the Sole Survivor has maneuvered the Institute's mindset and methods to a point where she/he can stop it without an insurrection.<br /><br />I can appreciate the idea of changing things from the inside out, but that's the sort of situation that requires a person to have a solid enough footing as leader that it can happen, and that's not what the Sole Survivor has as the head of the Institute. She/He's rulership is defined entirely by the word of an old man who's dead now, and whose rule was already beginning to be questioned at the time he installed his successor. Combine this flimsy position with decades of a very powerful mentality that is directly opposed to basic morality on multiple fronts, and the only conclusion I can see for a Sole Survivor who's a decent human being is for her/him to be either ousted, or to have to fight a war of moral attrition so long and slow in its victory that no moral person could accept the casualties along the way.The RPGeniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02752937839502693108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268660459652553228.post-54966227125116495652018-09-28T21:38:26.330-07:002018-09-28T21:38:26.330-07:00As Someone who tends towards high CHA high INT cha...As Someone who tends towards high CHA high INT characters, I personally wound up siding with the institute for a simple reason: Other then being General of the minutemen,* the ending where you character has the most immediate and potential influence over a faction is the Institute. I shed real tears and Headcanon alternate solutions for the death of the Railroad down this path, but I firmly agree with the Institutes assessment of the potential of their technology, even as I disagree with their methods. The impossibly persuasive Sole Survivor, with their dual mantles of General and Head of the Institute, with the addition of their Pre-War life expereience, has the best chance to lead the Commonwealth to a Brighter Future Aboveground.<br />*Which you yourself pointed out is not something incompatible.DrCryllushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13926373642822470151noreply@blogger.com