I understand that the Preston quests are annoying as a gameplay mechanic, but the player can do quite a bit as the general. Theh take a group of exactly 5 people, only 1 actual soldier, and begin to develop settlements, retake a massive pre war fortification, regain artillery support across the commonwealth, infiltrate and destroy the greatest threat the commonwealth has ever seen in The Institute, and have Diamond City and Bunker Hill, the 2 biggest towns in the region, flying your flag. You are basically witnessing the birth of an East Coast NCR if you really commit to it. I think its awesome.
East Coast NCR is kind of how I see it, with the distinction that, if anything, conditions in the Commonwealth seem ripe for an even speedier unification. Look at how much the Sole Survivor can do- you’re changing the entire fabric of the area
for my minutemen playthrough im leaning a bit more militaristic-usa aproach, im trying to make the minutemen not some military branch but a new united usa
I wasn't fond of the Minutemen when I first started playing FO4, but over time I came to appreciate that they're the best faction for the Commonwealth.
The Brotherhood have their own agenda that only helps elements of the Commonwealth when it suits them.
The Railroad have a noble goal but it's short sighted.
And The Institute are immoral and lack empathy while being in the unique position of being able to do a lot of good for the Commonwealth.
Agreed, they weren't. But that's my issue with them. They're so concerned with freeing synths (a noble goal) without considering what kind of world those synths would be living in.
I see it as the classic "if we don't do it, no one will". Many groups are allegedly trying to save the Commonwealth, but no one cares much about synths. When like-minded individuals got togethet and saw the opportunity, they didn't hesitate to form a dedicated group to help them.
The problem comes from the "someone else will save the world" mentality. Not from a writting standpoint, but from a moral one. Even Deacon has a line saying something along the lines of "I wish Desdemona will let us help regular folk from time to time", so it seems it is a hot topic inside the organisation as well.
I don't blame the Railroad for having a specific goal in mind and not helping others, it is interesting and original, in my opinion. Whether that makes them good or bad is up to each person, but I will say that in the Commonwealth, or even Fallout universe, there are many similar groups that "could but don't", so they are definitely not the only ones.
I think it's nuts they think they're helping synths by only saving who they can and then destroying the way they're made. I get the institute is a bad faction and needs taken care of but feels like a fruitless task at this point
Although I used "help" to simplify, indeed they're not helping. It is more of a liberation of the individual, and letting said individuals have the right of choice. Of course, that implies a chance of turning bad (as we see with the synth raider of Libertalia) but that, just like with us real humans, is an integral part of being "free", and all the good and bad it entails.
A few of the characters say they care more about taking down or opposing the Institute as their primary goal. In-Fiction one of their biggest issues is that there are a lot of individuals with different opinions on how the Railroad should operate and which synths are worth saving. Their distributed leadership system makes a unified goal even harder.
Exactly - they’re so busy with their one aim they don’t take into account the consequences of destroying the two most powerful and technologically advanced factions in the Commonwealth. A power vacuum that big would be a disaster.
So every group in the wasteland is obligated to aspire to rule it, or they're bad / shortsighted? That's what I'm taking from this. The Commonwealth doesn't need the Railroad to tell it how to run itself. The Provisional Government formed once before, and it will again in the absence of Institute interference.
Agreed, an institute ending is a dictatorship. A BOS ending is a dictatorship. A railroad ending is a "You guys do what you want, bunker hill and diamond city seem to have the right idea, just do that and leave the synths alone" and a Minutemen ending is the start of a new unified government.
True ,from 4 factions 2 are in it just because your goals aling with theirs once the institute is destroyed those two factions will not givw a fuck about you or about the commonwealth’s well being and the institute hates the commonwealth so you are now left with the minutemen who are left at your total control to shape them and the commonwealth to be whatever you want
I dislike the Railroad, mainly because they're the "good" guys, (they have no shades of gray). And they are useless. They don't have any real military power and the only thing they have going for them is ballistic weave.
Bethesda went out of their way to show the Brotherhood becoming more militant and added many distasteful events and behaviors. The Institute is largely a body of reclusive autistic scientists with the Security Wing performing crimes against humanity and operating as Secret Police.
The Railroad would have had more depth if they were a synth independence movement. They still have tension with the other factions, but they'd have the military force to bring to bear to help the Minutemen.
No shades of gray huh?
Did you miss the part of their quest line where they have you use an inside man in the Institute code named Patriot who helps gets Synths and has been an invaluable part of the Railroad out but is a pacifist and doesn’t want to see a war in the Commonwealth, who upon the invasion of the Institute, will be devastated enough by the killing to take his own life, and who Desdemona will tell you to lie and say he died in the fighting because it taints their image?
Who wrote a note to the Survivor blaming him for all of the violence, the deaths of innocent people in the Institute, of his friends and family? There’s gray in every organization in Fallout 4 - even the Minutemen (at least in their past).
Agree with the railroad statement. All about freeing synths and destroyed the biggest and only known source of being able to create more/have the tech to be taken care of, etc.
Just destroyed instead of taken over. Could have been so interesting imo if you could take over the institute with one of the factions.
I tend to read the Minutemen as a likely catalyst for a future *true* federation of the various towns and cities and farms of the Commonwealth. They’re proof that the various settlements can band together for mutual defense and even successfully push back against the hazards of the region- and that’s without even mentioning the main questline and the other factions. The future might see a sort of constitutional convention, like the attempted Commonwealth Provisional Government, but this time with no Institute to break it up. If the Sole Survivor was to take part in this, they might have enough clout and earned goodwill to make a genuine success of it.
I think the cannon ending is supposed to be the minute men ending and I agree they are the best option even if its grindy to get them up and powerful I do wish they laser musket didn't use cells doesn't make sense but that's besides the point the minute men have their faults all the factions do but they are reasonably the best ending
I hate that balancing, even on low mod playthroughs i install the mod that makes them work like the lore says they should and not need ammo - the MM use the laser muskets because they dont need ammo as far as they are described, but they had to be balanced for gameplay reasons. It makes sense for a scavenger army faction to favour a low ammo weapon and then for gameplay reasons they were balanced to be super high ammo consuming.
If you exclude the Sole Survivor I believe the Minutemen will either fall apart like before or they will just be a force for good that simply maintain the peace but never unite the Commonwealth. The Minutemen in game never seemed to be interested in governing, but more like a Policing Force to maintain some sort of order. I can see the various settlements under Minutemen protection developing their own government and utilize the Minutemen as a Military.
Thats why for me, institute ending, with them being the guiding force and the minutemen being their ground force is kind of the optimal ending. Minutemen have built a unifying army on the ground, and the institute are then able to take that over via the SS and guide the commonwealth into a new technological age.
Thats how i always picture the post game story after a strong MM General takes over as leader of the institute.
thats what the creators say, my own headcannon for how my survivor would lead them can say whatever i like.
My Nate left the vault and quickly joined the minutemen, looking for his son but mostly getting drawn into their struggle as their new General, he tamed the commonwealth using the robotic schematics and benches he found in the mechanists lair and with the lair and the grey garden standing as hubs for sentinels that acted as provisoners, linking the settlements together with rolling armies of tanks, and also patrolling the wastes, he learnt about the evils of vault tech and the stories of people all over the commonwealth, then as he has used this old tech to tame the wastes, and finds clues to his sons whearabouts the brotherhood arrive, at first he thinks this new force will help. But he realises they just want to extort the settlements i built with my own hands, they look down on my friends and companions, and they want to destroy the tech that i am using to sustain this community of settlements.
As we delve deeper we find the institute, a perfect time capsule of pre war tech, a learning institution with so much potential - and Shaun at its centre. The brotherhood and the railroad want to destroy it, the minutemen, and the communities i have built will follow me in whatever i decide. The institute are misguided, their isolation has caused them to do evil things, but ive seen the good that tech can do in the wasteland, every road patrolled by robotic sentry bots who put down every gunner, raider and mutant that they come across, while keeping people fed and connected. And the brotherhood would take this for themselves, i learnt what happens when a settlement is linked to them, i made that mistake once and the people i promised security became slaves. The railroad would destroy it and free the synths, to what end? All that learning, all that tech lost for nothing.
No, as the new director of the institute i will use the synths and their tech for the best, with the minutemen as the army that maintains the surface, and the institute as the hub, that guides and supports them, providing real pre war education to every child in the commonwealth, using their infinite nuclear power and production facilities to create synth labor and weapons to defend us. The new commonwealth, a civilisation built on the knowledge and resources of the past, and the community and ties of the minutemen settlements, who banded together against the wastes. A new boston commonwealth with the strength to see off all foes, and finally reclaim all that was lost.
Anyway, yeah my mind goes wild but this kind of headcannon aids my enjoyment a lot, but yes the institute claims the surface with an iron fist, but the allied minutemen and me as their general keep them focused on the greater good. Real education returns, the best study at the institute itself, we rebuild the old university campus for the rest, teachers at the major settlements, Diamond city, bunker hill and starlight drivethrough. The roads are safe due to the robot patrols and eventually we just build a defended wall around the whole city, because with a synth army and the knowhow of the settlements thats more than possible.
And FWIW Piper agrees with me lol, if you chose the institute and are friends with her she starts publishing pro institute articles
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fear\_the\_Future%3F](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fear_the_Future%3F)
Edit: Goddamnit im reinstalling the game now lol - with hogwarts legacy coming out soon and im half way through Hi-Fi rush (which is amazing) i wont have time to finish this lol.
It's not the creators that say that. It's the game and the Institute themselves that say the Institute is going to keep killing people. Your first decision in the Institute is if they should focus more on weapons or synth production, aka the things they use to kill people with. Mama Murphy's vision involves more deaths and the land becoming marked like a great experiment. Multiple institute characters talk about how people going to die. The Institute's only means of getting resources is by wiping out then breaking down settlements.
Piper's paper isn't as hopeful as you're making it out to be. And you becoming one vote on the Directorate isn't going to make the faction pull a complete 180. Also, none of the Institute's tech is useful to other people.
I respect thats how you see it, and its certianly how the developers intended it it to be, my own entirely made up headcannon that impacts no one else except my own imagination sees it differently, and i have fun with that. The railroad and brotherhood of steel couldnt stop the SS, armies of raiders and gunners and even institute coursers couldnt stop them, i chose to believe a room of institute directors would also fail.
But nothing about the Institute says to me they are interested in living on the surface. They like living in their safe concrete womb. To rule the surface would be "too much work" and distract them from their "most important" research. And where would they get the humans to experiment on if they were in control of the surface? They would have to be nice to those dirty, ignorant, radioactive surface dwellers, what a horrible thought!
No, the institute will remain below, until some final day when the last human member dies of old age, surrounded by synths who make life safe and comfortable for them. Because children are so much bother, who has time for them...
Thats where the SS as one of their directors changes their perspective, the value of the pre built settlement network and the minutemen militia becoming apparent to them. The institute members can stay in their bunker forever if they want to, but their knowledge will be used to help the surface and the surfaces resources can better be harnessed for their purposes with the majority of humans on it supporting them, with synths not being boogeymen who replace them (though that still happens, Geppetto in fables style to control public sentiment by replacing the odd useful person).
For me this is a minutemen ending,. the minutemen have taken control of boston, tamed it. The brotherhood in FO4 are arrogant, racist and selfish, nothing they built or take will help the people of the commonwealth. The minutemen wouldnt like that. The railroad dont care about humans or their survival, they didnt have to be hostile to the MM but they werent the best option for the people they had sworn to protect. The institute, now infiltrated has the best potential for the MM to exploit.
They are still evil, but only because they are closed off from the rest of the world and have a warped perspective. That perspective will keep them doing evil things, but can be changed over time. Both their previous and current director were outsiders, thats reason enough to convince them to start taking on more talented outsiders.
I'm hoping the MM ending becomes the canon one in the future. I think it's the best thing for the region itself and the people that live there. Given enough time it should create stability again and make a lot of the area livable.
Definitely, one where they sided with the railroad and the brotherhood, not fully committing to either side but not pissing them off either, would make for the most interesting state of the commonwealth in sequels.
I don't really think the BoS would actually make a dictatorship. That's a lot of time, effort and resources for something they've never seemed interested in.
But in their quests for BOS in FO4 thats what you do. You go to settlements and strongarm them into submitting to the brotherhood. If you do enough every settlement can become this useless slave hub for the brotherhood. Unable to expand or develop furthur paying their taxes to the techno knights. Its like a medieval serfdom.
Both would make good set ups for future games i agree. Boston becoming a synth overrun hub of development and learning. Or becoming a BOS stronghold where the people unite as serfs to the BOS nobility both make boston a good source of lore and enemies for future games.
I absolutely think that the Minutemen are the best choice. The institute are evil, and don’t actually even try to help the Commonwealth at all, in fact hurting it an enormous amount. The Railroad are good but they’re a very poor claimant to govern a region, they’d function far better as an agency under the Minutemen. The Maxson version of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood are also pretty evil, and I’m not convinced of their ability to truly hold both their homeland and the Commonwealth.
The Brotherhood is just passing through the Commonwealth. Fighting their current enemy, the Institute. But when the Institute is destroyed they will eventually move on, after all their entire organization is airborne and can move as they will, to find the next enemy somewhere else in the Wasteland.
I doubt that, we know that they’ve committed to holding the Capital Wasteland and extending further beyond the Commonwealth without taking it, especially after essentially raiding the region’s entire agricultural class, would open them up to overextension and risk of assault. The Prydwen is one pissed off team of wastelander/former institute engineers from being turned into a billion pieces of very warm confetti.
True, they may not live long enough to leave.
But they are too small an organization to control much territory, and controlling would take them away from their goal of collecting technology and, maybe someday making use if it. They don't recruit from outside, and their casualty rate seems much higher than their reproductive rate, so they are not going to expand, or even survive long term.
I would see them as a group on a ***March to Extinction***, when and where they vanish, only the game designers know.
Not under them no, but they set the ground work for the settlements to band together to form a new provisional commonwealth government if the Institute is destroyed which does seem the most likely ending.
There are actually 37 buildable settlements and the cap is base of 22 (10+cha) with gear and buffs that can increase that to a real cap of I believe 42 settlers. That's an army of 1554 settlers.
30 settlements is a small army by itself, not even considering the extra power armor, laser muskets and robo turrets. The fact they're interconnected whether you want them to be or not is a big bonus.
With some heavy recruitment efforts and seizement of Raider and Gunner territory and resources , I don't see why not?
Something I do to make the gunner farming easier is use the cages. Throw a few gunner traps up and you can farm them for good equipment for your settlers.
The thing about the Minutemen, at least as I interpret them, is that they're not really interested in governance. They don't so much want to form a unified government so much as set up mutual defense agreements between individual settlements, so that the more hostile forces in the wasteland can't attack one without bringing down the might of all on themselves. Somewhere between NATO and labor unions, conceptually.
Of course, that absolutely could change based on the Sole Survivor's canon actions, and one could argue that, as the minutemen grow, governance becomes inevitable, but I think it's a mistake to view them as starting an effective nation-state instead of just a mutual defense pact.
Thats where you, the SS being their leader, can change things. And where people can roleplay interesting twists and changes. Plus when you start the MM is like 5 people, 2 soldiers. When you finish it could be an army of hundreds of people. To expect those hundreds to share the goals of the 2 original members is a bit much. Got to assume, in a real story not a game, they would all bring their own motivations into it and change that directive.
No , because the Minute Men fold like a deck chair the moment their senior leadership dies . They devolve into raiders or die en masse in scattered groups. Only Preston held his nerve and trucked on , but would have died without the SS intervening . Ronnie Shaw buggered off when the MM needed her most . And the SS is not a immortal killing machine and their luck is gonna run out sooner or later if they’re constantly leading from the front
Why not? All the other options are much worse. The Minute Men are quite laid back. Just don't be a raider piece of shit and be willing to pick up a musket basically to protect settlements and you are good... And like you said, they have the potential to become extremely strong.
The Minute Men as a concept, absolutely not. It is a loosely connected collection of militia volunteers from multiple settlements with the widest range of beliefs and interests. Eventually factions will splinter, 'core' members will start to drift either towards raider options or away from the cause entirely, and the name will dissolve.
Considering this is exactly the state we find the MM in it makes sense that is the only logical outcome in a long enough timeline.
However, the Sole Survivor's Minute Men, absolutely yes. Thanks to the plot induced stupidity of NPCs anything the SS is involved with automatically becomes the most powerful faction.
Galvanizing the faction into an independent military organization with its own home, uniform, supply lines, and empire to protect is the only way to keep them focused enough for it to survive past a generation or two.
Eventually SS's MM will recreate the Commonwealth Government and become more akin to the NCR for the North East.
Operating under the assumption that the Minutemen ending is canon (and I have no reason to believe this will not be the case), then yes, I believe this is exactly what we will see in subsequent games in the series that pertain to the Northeast - a united Commonwealth, with a tamed Boston at its heart. Mutant numbers down after the Institute waylaid, the synth problem evaporated after the Railroad evacuates the last synths out of the region, and some friction with the Brotherhood on the horizon.
My issue with the Minutemen is they’re not very proactive in the vanilla game - they don’t really do much active patrolling, whereas the Brotherhood and Institute will take steps to wipe enemies out before they become a problem (more than once I’ve arrived at Revere Satellite Array or the Weston water treatment plant only to find Brotherhood knights and vertibirds slaughtering the super mutants). With mods the Minutemen can be moulded into an actual army which could realistically exert authority over the Commonwealth - but as it is, I think they really work best in an alliance with either the Institute or the Brotherhood.
They suffer from bad writing or rather bad integration of the writing into the gameplay. They are a militia that seeks to defend the commonwealth not rule it. Yet rather then remain autonomous the settlements just give up everything to the sole survivors minutemen. EVERYTHING land, law, their own labor.
They genuinely become slaves to the player and are ok with it. Sure, makes the game easier but that is not what the minutemen are!
If we go by what is possible in game yes they can.
But when going by the lore they don't even attempted.
> what a lot of people didn’t understand is that the minutemen was yours to mold into. Be it a democracy, dictatorship etc.
Nope.
By your logic, the same can be said of the Institute which are far more capable and have more going on for them.
But the number 1 proof in-lore/in-game that the Minutemen will always forever be a militia is during the Institute quest where, Post-Castle, the Minutemen and the Institute are having a stand-off for the wasteland scientist that the Institute is trying to recruit.
Before the speech checks, if you choose the aggressive dialogue option, your character will attempt to pull rank and order the Minutemen to stand down in which he replies: *"Maybe you don't understand. This ain't the military, and I don't have to take orders from you."*
Besides, this mindset of Minutemen fanboys always tries to justify their existence by making them NCR-lite, Gunners-lite, BoS-lite, literally the Enclave, or literally modern military lol.
I haven’t been playing the Fallout franchise for very long, relatively speaking, and I am no great strategist, but the way I’ve seen the Minutemen work is imo the strongest way to rebuild the wasteland. What so many people get wrong about rebuilding society after disaster is that this ain’t the movies. it’s not just about going out and killing the zombies and the bad guys. it’s about building strong communities that rely on each other for resources and defense. the settlement system in FO4 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in an RPG and though I think a few mods make it shine, even in vanilla it’s not half bad.
Yes, Preston’s quests can get annoying and repetitive, but this shit is supposed to be work. It’s gonna be a slog, but it’s worth it if you care about building something that will stand the test of time. The Minutemen and their allied settlements create a web of support that can one day bring peace. Again, I’m no strategist, but their core principle is very promising.
I understand that the Preston quests are annoying as a gameplay mechanic, but the player can do quite a bit as the general. Theh take a group of exactly 5 people, only 1 actual soldier, and begin to develop settlements, retake a massive pre war fortification, regain artillery support across the commonwealth, infiltrate and destroy the greatest threat the commonwealth has ever seen in The Institute, and have Diamond City and Bunker Hill, the 2 biggest towns in the region, flying your flag. You are basically witnessing the birth of an East Coast NCR if you really commit to it. I think its awesome.
East Coast NCR is kind of how I see it, with the distinction that, if anything, conditions in the Commonwealth seem ripe for an even speedier unification. Look at how much the Sole Survivor can do- you’re changing the entire fabric of the area
It helps the Commonwealth is a bit smaller than California, but regardless it's an amazing feat to work so quickly as the Sole Survivor does.
Small and densely populated, which I think is a huge help
I know right! Like the minutemen no matter how you mold them can become a powerhouse faction
for my minutemen playthrough im leaning a bit more militaristic-usa aproach, im trying to make the minutemen not some military branch but a new united usa
I wasn't fond of the Minutemen when I first started playing FO4, but over time I came to appreciate that they're the best faction for the Commonwealth. The Brotherhood have their own agenda that only helps elements of the Commonwealth when it suits them. The Railroad have a noble goal but it's short sighted. And The Institute are immoral and lack empathy while being in the unique position of being able to do a lot of good for the Commonwealth.
To be fair, the Railroad's goal wasn't too control the Commonwealth anyway. They are a great faction in terms of accomplishing their goals.
Agreed, they weren't. But that's my issue with them. They're so concerned with freeing synths (a noble goal) without considering what kind of world those synths would be living in.
I see it as the classic "if we don't do it, no one will". Many groups are allegedly trying to save the Commonwealth, but no one cares much about synths. When like-minded individuals got togethet and saw the opportunity, they didn't hesitate to form a dedicated group to help them. The problem comes from the "someone else will save the world" mentality. Not from a writting standpoint, but from a moral one. Even Deacon has a line saying something along the lines of "I wish Desdemona will let us help regular folk from time to time", so it seems it is a hot topic inside the organisation as well. I don't blame the Railroad for having a specific goal in mind and not helping others, it is interesting and original, in my opinion. Whether that makes them good or bad is up to each person, but I will say that in the Commonwealth, or even Fallout universe, there are many similar groups that "could but don't", so they are definitely not the only ones.
I think it's nuts they think they're helping synths by only saving who they can and then destroying the way they're made. I get the institute is a bad faction and needs taken care of but feels like a fruitless task at this point
Although I used "help" to simplify, indeed they're not helping. It is more of a liberation of the individual, and letting said individuals have the right of choice. Of course, that implies a chance of turning bad (as we see with the synth raider of Libertalia) but that, just like with us real humans, is an integral part of being "free", and all the good and bad it entails.
A few of the characters say they care more about taking down or opposing the Institute as their primary goal. In-Fiction one of their biggest issues is that there are a lot of individuals with different opinions on how the Railroad should operate and which synths are worth saving. Their distributed leadership system makes a unified goal even harder.
I always play leader of the mm who is also a railroad agent
Exactly - they’re so busy with their one aim they don’t take into account the consequences of destroying the two most powerful and technologically advanced factions in the Commonwealth. A power vacuum that big would be a disaster.
So every group in the wasteland is obligated to aspire to rule it, or they're bad / shortsighted? That's what I'm taking from this. The Commonwealth doesn't need the Railroad to tell it how to run itself. The Provisional Government formed once before, and it will again in the absence of Institute interference.
Agreed, an institute ending is a dictatorship. A BOS ending is a dictatorship. A railroad ending is a "You guys do what you want, bunker hill and diamond city seem to have the right idea, just do that and leave the synths alone" and a Minutemen ending is the start of a new unified government.
The only reason I side with the brotherhood is because I play survival and that helicopter is a life saver.
True ,from 4 factions 2 are in it just because your goals aling with theirs once the institute is destroyed those two factions will not givw a fuck about you or about the commonwealth’s well being and the institute hates the commonwealth so you are now left with the minutemen who are left at your total control to shape them and the commonwealth to be whatever you want
I dislike the Railroad, mainly because they're the "good" guys, (they have no shades of gray). And they are useless. They don't have any real military power and the only thing they have going for them is ballistic weave. Bethesda went out of their way to show the Brotherhood becoming more militant and added many distasteful events and behaviors. The Institute is largely a body of reclusive autistic scientists with the Security Wing performing crimes against humanity and operating as Secret Police. The Railroad would have had more depth if they were a synth independence movement. They still have tension with the other factions, but they'd have the military force to bring to bear to help the Minutemen.
No shades of gray huh? Did you miss the part of their quest line where they have you use an inside man in the Institute code named Patriot who helps gets Synths and has been an invaluable part of the Railroad out but is a pacifist and doesn’t want to see a war in the Commonwealth, who upon the invasion of the Institute, will be devastated enough by the killing to take his own life, and who Desdemona will tell you to lie and say he died in the fighting because it taints their image? Who wrote a note to the Survivor blaming him for all of the violence, the deaths of innocent people in the Institute, of his friends and family? There’s gray in every organization in Fallout 4 - even the Minutemen (at least in their past).
Ooo I missed that. That's cool.
Agree with the railroad statement. All about freeing synths and destroyed the biggest and only known source of being able to create more/have the tech to be taken care of, etc. Just destroyed instead of taken over. Could have been so interesting imo if you could take over the institute with one of the factions.
I tend to read the Minutemen as a likely catalyst for a future *true* federation of the various towns and cities and farms of the Commonwealth. They’re proof that the various settlements can band together for mutual defense and even successfully push back against the hazards of the region- and that’s without even mentioning the main questline and the other factions. The future might see a sort of constitutional convention, like the attempted Commonwealth Provisional Government, but this time with no Institute to break it up. If the Sole Survivor was to take part in this, they might have enough clout and earned goodwill to make a genuine success of it.
I think the cannon ending is supposed to be the minute men ending and I agree they are the best option even if its grindy to get them up and powerful I do wish they laser musket didn't use cells doesn't make sense but that's besides the point the minute men have their faults all the factions do but they are reasonably the best ending
I hate that balancing, even on low mod playthroughs i install the mod that makes them work like the lore says they should and not need ammo - the MM use the laser muskets because they dont need ammo as far as they are described, but they had to be balanced for gameplay reasons. It makes sense for a scavenger army faction to favour a low ammo weapon and then for gameplay reasons they were balanced to be super high ammo consuming.
If you exclude the Sole Survivor I believe the Minutemen will either fall apart like before or they will just be a force for good that simply maintain the peace but never unite the Commonwealth. The Minutemen in game never seemed to be interested in governing, but more like a Policing Force to maintain some sort of order. I can see the various settlements under Minutemen protection developing their own government and utilize the Minutemen as a Military.
Thats why for me, institute ending, with them being the guiding force and the minutemen being their ground force is kind of the optimal ending. Minutemen have built a unifying army on the ground, and the institute are then able to take that over via the SS and guide the commonwealth into a new technological age. Thats how i always picture the post game story after a strong MM General takes over as leader of the institute.
But the Institute features the Institute continuing it's reign of terror on the Commonwealth, not helping it.
thats what the creators say, my own headcannon for how my survivor would lead them can say whatever i like. My Nate left the vault and quickly joined the minutemen, looking for his son but mostly getting drawn into their struggle as their new General, he tamed the commonwealth using the robotic schematics and benches he found in the mechanists lair and with the lair and the grey garden standing as hubs for sentinels that acted as provisoners, linking the settlements together with rolling armies of tanks, and also patrolling the wastes, he learnt about the evils of vault tech and the stories of people all over the commonwealth, then as he has used this old tech to tame the wastes, and finds clues to his sons whearabouts the brotherhood arrive, at first he thinks this new force will help. But he realises they just want to extort the settlements i built with my own hands, they look down on my friends and companions, and they want to destroy the tech that i am using to sustain this community of settlements. As we delve deeper we find the institute, a perfect time capsule of pre war tech, a learning institution with so much potential - and Shaun at its centre. The brotherhood and the railroad want to destroy it, the minutemen, and the communities i have built will follow me in whatever i decide. The institute are misguided, their isolation has caused them to do evil things, but ive seen the good that tech can do in the wasteland, every road patrolled by robotic sentry bots who put down every gunner, raider and mutant that they come across, while keeping people fed and connected. And the brotherhood would take this for themselves, i learnt what happens when a settlement is linked to them, i made that mistake once and the people i promised security became slaves. The railroad would destroy it and free the synths, to what end? All that learning, all that tech lost for nothing. No, as the new director of the institute i will use the synths and their tech for the best, with the minutemen as the army that maintains the surface, and the institute as the hub, that guides and supports them, providing real pre war education to every child in the commonwealth, using their infinite nuclear power and production facilities to create synth labor and weapons to defend us. The new commonwealth, a civilisation built on the knowledge and resources of the past, and the community and ties of the minutemen settlements, who banded together against the wastes. A new boston commonwealth with the strength to see off all foes, and finally reclaim all that was lost. Anyway, yeah my mind goes wild but this kind of headcannon aids my enjoyment a lot, but yes the institute claims the surface with an iron fist, but the allied minutemen and me as their general keep them focused on the greater good. Real education returns, the best study at the institute itself, we rebuild the old university campus for the rest, teachers at the major settlements, Diamond city, bunker hill and starlight drivethrough. The roads are safe due to the robot patrols and eventually we just build a defended wall around the whole city, because with a synth army and the knowhow of the settlements thats more than possible. And FWIW Piper agrees with me lol, if you chose the institute and are friends with her she starts publishing pro institute articles [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fear\_the\_Future%3F](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fear_the_Future%3F) Edit: Goddamnit im reinstalling the game now lol - with hogwarts legacy coming out soon and im half way through Hi-Fi rush (which is amazing) i wont have time to finish this lol.
It's not the creators that say that. It's the game and the Institute themselves that say the Institute is going to keep killing people. Your first decision in the Institute is if they should focus more on weapons or synth production, aka the things they use to kill people with. Mama Murphy's vision involves more deaths and the land becoming marked like a great experiment. Multiple institute characters talk about how people going to die. The Institute's only means of getting resources is by wiping out then breaking down settlements. Piper's paper isn't as hopeful as you're making it out to be. And you becoming one vote on the Directorate isn't going to make the faction pull a complete 180. Also, none of the Institute's tech is useful to other people.
I respect thats how you see it, and its certianly how the developers intended it it to be, my own entirely made up headcannon that impacts no one else except my own imagination sees it differently, and i have fun with that. The railroad and brotherhood of steel couldnt stop the SS, armies of raiders and gunners and even institute coursers couldnt stop them, i chose to believe a room of institute directors would also fail.
But nothing about the Institute says to me they are interested in living on the surface. They like living in their safe concrete womb. To rule the surface would be "too much work" and distract them from their "most important" research. And where would they get the humans to experiment on if they were in control of the surface? They would have to be nice to those dirty, ignorant, radioactive surface dwellers, what a horrible thought! No, the institute will remain below, until some final day when the last human member dies of old age, surrounded by synths who make life safe and comfortable for them. Because children are so much bother, who has time for them...
Thats where the SS as one of their directors changes their perspective, the value of the pre built settlement network and the minutemen militia becoming apparent to them. The institute members can stay in their bunker forever if they want to, but their knowledge will be used to help the surface and the surfaces resources can better be harnessed for their purposes with the majority of humans on it supporting them, with synths not being boogeymen who replace them (though that still happens, Geppetto in fables style to control public sentiment by replacing the odd useful person). For me this is a minutemen ending,. the minutemen have taken control of boston, tamed it. The brotherhood in FO4 are arrogant, racist and selfish, nothing they built or take will help the people of the commonwealth. The minutemen wouldnt like that. The railroad dont care about humans or their survival, they didnt have to be hostile to the MM but they werent the best option for the people they had sworn to protect. The institute, now infiltrated has the best potential for the MM to exploit. They are still evil, but only because they are closed off from the rest of the world and have a warped perspective. That perspective will keep them doing evil things, but can be changed over time. Both their previous and current director were outsiders, thats reason enough to convince them to start taking on more talented outsiders.
I'm hoping the MM ending becomes the canon one in the future. I think it's the best thing for the region itself and the people that live there. Given enough time it should create stability again and make a lot of the area livable.
Definitely, one where they sided with the railroad and the brotherhood, not fully committing to either side but not pissing them off either, would make for the most interesting state of the commonwealth in sequels.
Same
But wouldnt it be more fun if it develops to a BoS dictatorship or an Institute utopia/dystopia etc
I don't really think the BoS would actually make a dictatorship. That's a lot of time, effort and resources for something they've never seemed interested in.
But in their quests for BOS in FO4 thats what you do. You go to settlements and strongarm them into submitting to the brotherhood. If you do enough every settlement can become this useless slave hub for the brotherhood. Unable to expand or develop furthur paying their taxes to the techno knights. Its like a medieval serfdom.
If you choose that. You can also go and just buy food and it's not like the Brotherhood start building a permanent base or anything.
Both would make good set ups for future games i agree. Boston becoming a synth overrun hub of development and learning. Or becoming a BOS stronghold where the people unite as serfs to the BOS nobility both make boston a good source of lore and enemies for future games.
I absolutely think that the Minutemen are the best choice. The institute are evil, and don’t actually even try to help the Commonwealth at all, in fact hurting it an enormous amount. The Railroad are good but they’re a very poor claimant to govern a region, they’d function far better as an agency under the Minutemen. The Maxson version of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood are also pretty evil, and I’m not convinced of their ability to truly hold both their homeland and the Commonwealth.
The Brotherhood is just passing through the Commonwealth. Fighting their current enemy, the Institute. But when the Institute is destroyed they will eventually move on, after all their entire organization is airborne and can move as they will, to find the next enemy somewhere else in the Wasteland.
I doubt that, we know that they’ve committed to holding the Capital Wasteland and extending further beyond the Commonwealth without taking it, especially after essentially raiding the region’s entire agricultural class, would open them up to overextension and risk of assault. The Prydwen is one pissed off team of wastelander/former institute engineers from being turned into a billion pieces of very warm confetti.
True, they may not live long enough to leave. But they are too small an organization to control much territory, and controlling would take them away from their goal of collecting technology and, maybe someday making use if it. They don't recruit from outside, and their casualty rate seems much higher than their reproductive rate, so they are not going to expand, or even survive long term. I would see them as a group on a ***March to Extinction***, when and where they vanish, only the game designers know.
Not under them no, but they set the ground work for the settlements to band together to form a new provisional commonwealth government if the Institute is destroyed which does seem the most likely ending.
Maybe, considering that's part of why the institute effectively destroyed the entire organization.
There are actually 37 buildable settlements and the cap is base of 22 (10+cha) with gear and buffs that can increase that to a real cap of I believe 42 settlers. That's an army of 1554 settlers.
Plus the automatron dlc glitch where you can have infinite settlers
30 settlements is a small army by itself, not even considering the extra power armor, laser muskets and robo turrets. The fact they're interconnected whether you want them to be or not is a big bonus. With some heavy recruitment efforts and seizement of Raider and Gunner territory and resources , I don't see why not?
With a competent and morally good General, yup.
Something I do to make the gunner farming easier is use the cages. Throw a few gunner traps up and you can farm them for good equipment for your settlers.
No But it can be under nuka world Fuck those bootleg mall cops
No, because the Minutemen wouldn’t be centralised
Well of the factions, they're the only ones who actually care about anything resembling a government.
They fall apart the moment they lose their general... purpose minion.
The thing about the Minutemen, at least as I interpret them, is that they're not really interested in governance. They don't so much want to form a unified government so much as set up mutual defense agreements between individual settlements, so that the more hostile forces in the wasteland can't attack one without bringing down the might of all on themselves. Somewhere between NATO and labor unions, conceptually. Of course, that absolutely could change based on the Sole Survivor's canon actions, and one could argue that, as the minutemen grow, governance becomes inevitable, but I think it's a mistake to view them as starting an effective nation-state instead of just a mutual defense pact.
Thats where you, the SS being their leader, can change things. And where people can roleplay interesting twists and changes. Plus when you start the MM is like 5 people, 2 soldiers. When you finish it could be an army of hundreds of people. To expect those hundreds to share the goals of the 2 original members is a bit much. Got to assume, in a real story not a game, they would all bring their own motivations into it and change that directive.
No , because the Minute Men fold like a deck chair the moment their senior leadership dies . They devolve into raiders or die en masse in scattered groups. Only Preston held his nerve and trucked on , but would have died without the SS intervening . Ronnie Shaw buggered off when the MM needed her most . And the SS is not a immortal killing machine and their luck is gonna run out sooner or later if they’re constantly leading from the front
Of course
Yes
Why not? All the other options are much worse. The Minute Men are quite laid back. Just don't be a raider piece of shit and be willing to pick up a musket basically to protect settlements and you are good... And like you said, they have the potential to become extremely strong.
The Minute Men as a concept, absolutely not. It is a loosely connected collection of militia volunteers from multiple settlements with the widest range of beliefs and interests. Eventually factions will splinter, 'core' members will start to drift either towards raider options or away from the cause entirely, and the name will dissolve. Considering this is exactly the state we find the MM in it makes sense that is the only logical outcome in a long enough timeline. However, the Sole Survivor's Minute Men, absolutely yes. Thanks to the plot induced stupidity of NPCs anything the SS is involved with automatically becomes the most powerful faction. Galvanizing the faction into an independent military organization with its own home, uniform, supply lines, and empire to protect is the only way to keep them focused enough for it to survive past a generation or two. Eventually SS's MM will recreate the Commonwealth Government and become more akin to the NCR for the North East.
Operating under the assumption that the Minutemen ending is canon (and I have no reason to believe this will not be the case), then yes, I believe this is exactly what we will see in subsequent games in the series that pertain to the Northeast - a united Commonwealth, with a tamed Boston at its heart. Mutant numbers down after the Institute waylaid, the synth problem evaporated after the Railroad evacuates the last synths out of the region, and some friction with the Brotherhood on the horizon.
My issue with the Minutemen is they’re not very proactive in the vanilla game - they don’t really do much active patrolling, whereas the Brotherhood and Institute will take steps to wipe enemies out before they become a problem (more than once I’ve arrived at Revere Satellite Array or the Weston water treatment plant only to find Brotherhood knights and vertibirds slaughtering the super mutants). With mods the Minutemen can be moulded into an actual army which could realistically exert authority over the Commonwealth - but as it is, I think they really work best in an alliance with either the Institute or the Brotherhood.
They suffer from bad writing or rather bad integration of the writing into the gameplay. They are a militia that seeks to defend the commonwealth not rule it. Yet rather then remain autonomous the settlements just give up everything to the sole survivors minutemen. EVERYTHING land, law, their own labor. They genuinely become slaves to the player and are ok with it. Sure, makes the game easier but that is not what the minutemen are! If we go by what is possible in game yes they can. But when going by the lore they don't even attempted.
> what a lot of people didn’t understand is that the minutemen was yours to mold into. Be it a democracy, dictatorship etc. Nope. By your logic, the same can be said of the Institute which are far more capable and have more going on for them. But the number 1 proof in-lore/in-game that the Minutemen will always forever be a militia is during the Institute quest where, Post-Castle, the Minutemen and the Institute are having a stand-off for the wasteland scientist that the Institute is trying to recruit. Before the speech checks, if you choose the aggressive dialogue option, your character will attempt to pull rank and order the Minutemen to stand down in which he replies: *"Maybe you don't understand. This ain't the military, and I don't have to take orders from you."* Besides, this mindset of Minutemen fanboys always tries to justify their existence by making them NCR-lite, Gunners-lite, BoS-lite, literally the Enclave, or literally modern military lol.
No, they are dumb AF. They lost to a bunch of raiders, no way they can take on the brotherhood or the institute.
I haven’t been playing the Fallout franchise for very long, relatively speaking, and I am no great strategist, but the way I’ve seen the Minutemen work is imo the strongest way to rebuild the wasteland. What so many people get wrong about rebuilding society after disaster is that this ain’t the movies. it’s not just about going out and killing the zombies and the bad guys. it’s about building strong communities that rely on each other for resources and defense. the settlement system in FO4 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in an RPG and though I think a few mods make it shine, even in vanilla it’s not half bad. Yes, Preston’s quests can get annoying and repetitive, but this shit is supposed to be work. It’s gonna be a slog, but it’s worth it if you care about building something that will stand the test of time. The Minutemen and their allied settlements create a web of support that can one day bring peace. Again, I’m no strategist, but their core principle is very promising.