The main storyline ofFallout 4revolves around the interplay between the 4 main factions of the game. How they all have oriented and organized around the conditions of the Commonwealth is a study in shades of grey and understanding their motives and tactics are key to making a decision that is in line with how you would prefer to play the game. Players are able to take on missions from every one of the factions during a playthrough, which gives everyone an opportunity to hear their ideologies before making a committed choice. Eventually, you will have to make a choice to swear allegiance but it’s a tough choice to make and one that I really struggled with when trying to decide what kind of story I wanted to see unfold.
What follows is my experiences and impressions of the factions and how I felt the overall faction struggle for power story was handled. For an in-depth breakdown of each faction, their quests and crucial elements, click on the headings to visit their robust wiki pages.
The Minutemen
I ran into this faction before any others as did most players at theMuseum of Freedomin Concord. I was impressed by their resolve and thought Bethesda did a great job with the character ofPreston Garvey. He was idealistic but tortured, loyal but opinionated. I opted for him as my primary companion through the game (except for when I needed the hacking expertise ofNick Valentine). The Minutemen as a whole held a mission of peacekeeping force, a citizen’s militia of sorts where the people of the Commonwealth would exercise a form of democracy. I found the Minutemen initially indifferent and to be frank, boring at the start. It isn’t until their story opens up and they start taking some harder stances against the Brotherhood of Steel and the Institute that you begin to see their conviction for their vision of the future. They are sympathetic to the Synth freeing aims of the Railroad minus the fanaticism which I appreciated and their mission of empowering the settlers of the Commonwealth to work, unite and rebuild the devastation felt very grassroots and very communal. But their squeaky clean aw shucks nature had me feeling just a little too much like a boy scout at times. I mean, we were killing people by the thousands here.
The Brotherhood of Steel
I could not get into this faction, and I really did try especially for all the weapon and armor advantages that casting your lot with them offers. Perhaps it’s my bend but the gun-ho zealotry of the Brotherhood put me off. It seemed very shoot first ask questions later. However I will say thatPaladin Danseoffers a refreshing departure from that guns blazing ideology and I recommend playing through the Brotherhood quest lines to get a deeper perspective. As a whole, the Brotherhood is a very reactionary faction, taking an extreme stance against a potential danger in the form of technology. Their zealotry seems to delude them here, making them a bit oblivious to their hypocritical reliance on technology. However, I am sympathetic to their aims because they are born of good intentions and their contradictory nature is how many of us would honestly react to a crisis that was bigger than us.
The Institute
This faction was the most interesting to me in terms of what they stood for, and although they were framed as the villains, I couldn’t find much in the way of stark evil to pin on them. Besides the megalomania, god complex, and kidnapping of Shaun and murder of Fiona of course. Which is pretty bad admittedly. The creation/slavery of synths is the game’s biggest moral grey and you could make a compelling argument for or against the motives of the Institute here. Machine or man? Autonomous or subservient? The issue with this faction for me is probably related to this greyness. I couldn’t really find a compelling reason to side with them and perhaps that sterility was the point. Their ambiguity made them the most boring faction of all, and I ultimately sided against them for their involvement in kidnap and human trafficking. It would have felt hamfisted to have sided with the faction that kidnapped my son and murdered my wife. If I’m being further honest, the interactions with this faction were the most awkward of the entire game, one in which it showed its major warts related to plot, pacing, and the recorded dialogue.
The Railroad
I rode with this fun lot for quite a bit, and actually chose them for the ending. They were kooky, paranoid, and ramshackle but they had an exuberance and sense of fun that the other factions just did not. From the fashionably patchwork attire and cigarette smoking leaderDesdemona, the delightfully eccentricTinker Tomand comical man of disguise and one linersDeacon, I had way too much fun performing their missions and fighting for a cause that felt real, if altogether a bit narrow or limited which is why i vacillated before choosing to see their story through. I mildly cared for the plight of the synths who wanted freedom, but had seen enough gunfights with the others that I more ore less viewed them as Mr. Handys on two legs. I was happy to find that the Railroads aims didn’t alienate the Minutemen and further found that combining the missions of both side by side really made me feel like I had arrived at comfortable playthrough orientation. Their, fanaticism was generally ok with me, outside of their willingness to kill whoever necessary to free synths. Fortunately having Preston and the Minutemen code at my side helped inject a bit of general compassion into the game, and when the time came I was sure to issue an evac alert to spare as many lives as I could.
I feel Bethesda hit the character homerun with this faction, consolidating the game’s most colorful characters into one crowded catacomb. Outside of Sturges with the Minutemen, none of the other factions featured much in the way of interesting supporting actors. But with the Railroad, I felt like I was hanging with old friends when piloting the Vertibird with Tinker Tom and Deacon, hamming it up the whole way up the flight to bring pain to the uptight Brotherhood. 10/10 would ride with these cats any time.
At endgame, stopping to look back at the journey Bethesda crafted for use through the interplay of the factions, I can say that the experience has been mixed but mostly positive . Strong characterization is always one of the more difficult things for a writer to do even when there is a strong conceptual frame and for all but one of the factions, Bethesda did a good to outstanding job. The biggest pitfall with the factions may have been their contradictory natures which is usually a good thing in storytelling until being forced to choose one at the expense of others comes into play. A fifth lone wanderer option could have been an interesting play for those players who unlike myself could not find a faction they really identified with or perhaps an opportunity to have obtained meaningful leadership in one of the factions that allowed you to reshape the aims of the group. That kind of dynamic storytelling is what can lift a game into another kind of experience, and one more immersive than any movie or book and I think it’s ultimately what Fallout, Elder Scrolls and the Mass Effect universes are aiming for. When that time truly comes, we’re all in for a treat.
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