Fallout Talk - The "Super Mutant Problem"
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- Fallout's Super Mutants require a fair bit of attention.
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0:00 Intro
0:20 What is the Super Mutant Problem
0:53 Fall from grace
2:37 Defies established lore
4:09 No longer add anything
5:37 Caveats and consideration
7:10 Solutions 
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The problem is is Bethesda considers them a sacred cow for the franchise so every new game has to have them in it even if they don't make sense
So same as the BOS?
Pretty much, they are generally just forced in because its a recognizable element of fallout, if it makes sense or not
Can’t be a fallout game without deathclaws, super mutants, ghouls, brotherhood, enclave, and wanamingos… fun fact they almost put wanamingos in fallout 3
It's ironic actually, that Bethesda, trying to kinda freeze the game universe in it's setting with all those reappearing factions, end up making cheap knockoffs of the game they trying to imitate. And each time it's getting worse. Oh, wait it's actually sad
Wdym BoS, Vaults and Supeamutens are what an fallout is about. All praise Godd Toward and his brilliant writer-prophet Elim. God forbid they come up with anything original
The problem is that Fallout 3 is really a soft reboot of the series. They kinda make sense in the Bethesda-verse but not so much when they try to shoehorn in classic fallout lore.
I can say I am ok with Bethesda doing that if they hadn't New Vegas would not have had Jacobs town. No Marcus no Grandma Lilly! And while she may be my least used companion in the game she is by far my favorite just because who Doesn't love a 9 foot tall Monster wall of muscle who acts like a doddering old lady when you talk to her. She was Sadly under used as a companion. Should have given her more lines.(though I think the VA was actually a dude... meh still don't care Grandma lilly rocked)
Like their insistance of shoehorning the Brotherhood into Every single game.
Like fucking hell I have my own custom Brotherhood branch. I love the brotherhood But THEY DONT NEED TO BE EVERYWHERE.
@@BlueBD OOOKAY... Somebody needs to lay off the Party time Mentats. Take some fixer n chill.
@@DeathclawJedino no, he’s cookin
If new vegas had been made without fallout 3 existing, jacobstown still could have existed, new vegas super mutants are leftovers of fallout 1 super mutants
The 87 mutants were more fleshed out than typically given credit for: They aren't stupid, they're suffering from a traumatic amount of brain degradation and rampant aggression, culminating in the behemoths being incapable of speech. They're fully aware of being outnumbered and running out of brothers, so are (Supposedly) bent on capturing everyone they can to turn into fellow super mutants. They're aware they've burnt out of F.E.V., and are bent on finding more. They even have more refined, not quite uniforms, but clearly well-made armor. It's also brought up that trying to recall who they were causes them massive pain, further reinforcing why 99% are so willing to just be monsters; It simply hurts less.
Compare this to 4's Institute mutants: Big, lanky, dumb for it's own sake, and well they do seem to have some culture, it's only slightly more than the average pack of raiders. They wear scrap, are fans of pipe "weapons", and don't even bring up their former lifes. They're there just because they make for another enemy, and 4 only really wants to do combat or base building.
Even 76 did better, though not in the model department (I get 76 was an asset flip, but come on. Give them their own look). As you said, they generally seemed more aware about everything.
I wholeheartedly agree. But I would add that what really doesn't make sense about DC supermutants are their distribution and their numbers.
Vaults would at least have thousands of people living in them. Them being scattered around would them trying to capture more people with them being at the capital to stomp out the BoS on that front to try and secure the wastes.
I dont care how they handle them its lazy to reuse them
@@JanJansen985 Fair. Course, consider for a moment that when they tried to make something wholesale original, we got the Institute.
Super mutants shouldn't exist in 76. It takes place before the master made them... They literally have no way of existing.
Pitch:
Super Mutant settlement that's looking to grow it's ranks themselves with human volunteers.
They do recruitment drives and sell the idea as being bigger and stronger, more able to survive the wasteland creatures and raiders and not having to worry about Radiation.
People signing up would be mostly struggling scavengers, and nomads who don't see many better options, but with the occasional "dude it'd be so cool to be a giant juggernaut"
And they're asking for willing volunteers because to save their dying race and trying to use force has only failed them in the past.
To add onto this:
If Bethesda still want them to be enemies for you to shoot at then you can easily justify it but having raiders make up the majority of their volunteers at the start and leaving once they got what they wanted, once they realize the issue then they put in place some sort of system that requires new mutants to stick around for some time as they already have a thin base for volunteers as is without the raider mutants messing up their reputation.
Perhaps the Mutant follower of that game is one that recently served their time and left to wander on their own, with their personal quest being about if they believe it was a good choice or alternatively have them unambiguously believe its an amazing thing to experience but are struggling to decide between their individual freedoms or the debt they believe they owe the new mutant society, in either case they have a distinct distaste for the Raider mutants
I had an idea.
Let it be Super Mutant bend on conquering the world but inteligent enough to know that on their own Super Mutants wouldn't be able to do that.
So he gathers volounters (willing or not) to his army and society (Human Auxiliaries style of thing) and those he considers "worthy" are "elevated to godhood" but they have to serve their time as soldiers, workers or drivers before that. Drivers or pilots especialy because Super Mutants can't drive vechicles. I even have name for a Guy "Marshal". They could be wearing purple uniforms or armours and could be using energetic weapons.
Sounds like the unity of Austin in hoi4 owb
@@Metalmadness24
Either that or have Super Mutants within Raider ranks as an elite troop variation, since they're functionally the same thing anyways in a gameplay standpoint.
@boone4531 honestly, I would like to see one of the regions in OWB be adapted into a good Fallout game. That would be fun.
It makes it even funnier that in fo4 they have mutant suiciders lol
I live, I die, I don't get replaced!
FO4s iteration are just really bizarre in general.
There's a metric fucktillion of them running around the wasteland and the only real explanation we get for them is:
"Uh... Institute did a thing for a while then stopped."
@@SpadeDracodo we know how the Institute got ahold of FEV?
I think i could kinda get that they took some from the Master’s wreckage and then replicated it. Actually I’m not sure where Fallout 1 takes place but i think it was east coast right?
@@wooblydooblygod3857pretty sure you can find it in the terminal in the Mutie room in the institute during virgil’s questline. Also Fallout 1 took place around the Boneyard
@@wooblydooblygod3857 fallout 1 and 2 were west coast
Bethesda definitely needs to see them as a true faction. Let them build their own true settlements, Do more than just be "raider stand ins". Though That problem exists with a lot of the creatures(mainly humanoid ones). The EC mutants in FO76 would be perfect example of letting them truly be a faction given how they were created. Them having access and controlling WesTek. Have either a couple of smart or at least stable leaders and let them become a force to be reckon with again.
Might be cool if they give every minor and major group a faction status.
@@Flamme-Sanabilike vegas, it’d definitely be interesting if they did another game in the style and mechanics of vegas with fallout 4 building mechanics
@@jayboog740plus Bethesda could legitimately just hire Sim Settlement mod team to help with building mechanics, tbf on Bethesda a lot there added factions are interesting like I really love the Children of Atom
@@Grimsly3736 most definitely, just watched a video of fallout 3’s cut content and if new vegas and 3 share the same resources then the cut monsters shoulda been in vegas forsure
I hate to be that person saying "Fallout NV good", but honestly, what they did in Jacobstown was really good. If in the next installment of the Fallout series Bethesda took Jacobstown and expanded it, then it could work. Sorta like what they did with Goodneighbour in Fallout 4, but less lawlessness.
New Vegas is modern Fallout done right, and simultaneously the one formula Bethesda refuses to follow.
Id love to see Fawkes leading a super mutant city
@@monarchschwoop52 I'll take Fawkes over Strong any day.
There's a reason why a majority of people say "Fallout NV good" and a majority of people also say "Fallout 4 kind of bad outside of combat." Bethesda's reluctance to try anything big with the Fallout world (aside from trying to test new genres, which is something in the way of effort I guess) makes it so a lot of pieces of the world get left to stagnate, and their apparent forgoing of design documents around the FO3 era makes it so contradicting and reducing aspects of the setting becomes inevitable, further wearing down ignored parts of the world.
To wrap it back to the topic at hand, if they just thought, "Hmm, what if we turned Super Mutants into a proper group living in the Wasteland instead of leaving them as roaming post-apocalypse orks," then I don't doubt they'd be able to do great things with them. Even if they might have some of that... Fallout 4 flavor.
Like, if one world designer so much as put down a rinky dink Super Mutant camp and have the guard _actually talk to you instead of shooting you on sight,_ then that alone would probably spur massive changes in how the faction is treated. They can't mess it up at that point, unless they intentionally try to.
Fallout New Vegas IS good.
That doesn’t mean Fallout 3 and 4 are bad.
I think the emphasis on Super Mutants eating meat in 4 with all the meat props in their areas could’ve been an interesting plot point. Perhaps this strain of FEV could’ve caused them to grow painfully hungry very easily. This would motivate some to act as raiders to kill anything on sight and eat the remains like we already have, but also create mutant societies that cooperate with humans for mutual benefit. Perhaps they act as caravan guards to scare off raiders with their size and get paid in meat. Or maybe they start up farms and trade their crops for meat from human settlements. It would keep them all with a united goal but they’d go about it in different ways
A Super Mutant Janitor who goes around “cleaning” after battles and is paid in whatever he finds.
Bethesda mutants are like 40k Orks without the humor. I miss when mutants much more nuanced than spilling blood and collecting/eating meat.
Yeah, but Bethesda built the Fallout games past 3 (which remains their best game... yes, I know what I mean) with the Power of Belief alone.
After all...
"It just works"
~ Warboss Todd Howard
Hah. Fallout super mutants don't bother me whatsoever, however personally I CANNOT stand 40k orks. They're just so silly in every single way. I am glad they're there for the people that enjoy them.. but I have no interest in anything involving them whatsoever.
@@tanburanbu that's because GW made them comic relief, since the 'nids has a more prominent presence about the "mean horde of aliens".
Orks used to be scarier and more serious treaths, especially when the silly ones begun to become smarter with numbers
@@jetpilledmyron2056idk I love my Orks but narratively they add very little, even the “cool hyper intelligent psycher Orks” we’re just Necron victims 😅
@@Grimsly3736 reason why they should be presented as more.
Octarius made them better, stronger, smarter, even if they lost they won for themselves some new perks
I call this the "status quo hole" or "status quole".
Basically when the creators of a series are now trapped using the same thing repeatedly for sake of fan expectations/iconography purposes.
I've always believed that the only way for a series to not fall into this hole is to *stop* utilizing a certain concept *immediately after* it serves its purpose before the seeds are sewn too deep. Once you have something show up twice in a row, then it becomes a pattern, and then it becomes expected by the larger audience.
The Halloween movie franchise was a good example of this. It was meant to be an anthology series of unrelated spooky happening set around Halloween. They made their first movie feature Michael Myers, and then very half-assedly wrote up Halloween 2 which also featured Michael Myers as well (thus creating the pattern/expectation), and then a lot of fans who had been following along up until that point were confused/disappointed when Halloween 3 didn't have him. The hole was already dug, and it was too late to pull out without any damage by that point.
Super Mutants have been in the Fallout series for too long to stop now without it being jarring for the fans who got into the franchise later on (like Fallout 3 and onward). Yes, I too would love if the BoS, Enclave, Super Mutants, Deathclaws, and FEV stopped showing up in every single installment, but the reality is my personal feelings on this 30 year old franchise's lore integrity is actually not a driving factor in sales considerations on the broader scale.
And yes, while I understand it's incredibly easy to chalk it up to "bEtHeSDa jUSt dOeS'Nt uNDeRsTanD fAlLOuT, tHaT'S wHy xD", it's important to remember that whether hardcore/oldschool fans of the series like it or not, investors and executives play a very, VERY big role in making sure that their series reaches the broadest, widest, audience possible for maximum profits.
If that means shoving super mutants into every game because little-timmy-who-only-started-playing-the-series-with-fallout-3-but-has-been-consistetly-buying-every-installment-since-then is expecting to see super mutants, then you'd better believe they're going to keep doing it if they can keep getting little Timmy's money.
Having played all the Fallouts (except for Tactics which I have installed but still need to boot up and Brotherhood of Steel which shouldn't even count), I can say that they should have just stopped featuring Super Mutants entirely after the Vault Dweller defeated The Master in Fallout 1. They served their purpose, their story was told. It was time to move on.
theres another way out of the hole and thats called innovation time to make SUPER super mutants with 4 arms all holding mini nukes german technology is the greatest in the world
Reminds me a lot of the modern day Star wars franchise. They just can't get away with putting the same things in.
Took to your point, you're absolutely correct. They're putting in what they think the following identity should be. It's not that Bethesda doesn't understand. Super mutants shouldn't be there. It's that they have to try and justify every time why they are there because fans expect them to be there because that's what makes fallout: fallout. Interplay kept this trend going with the brotherhood of steel and super mutants when they literally made two spin-off games with brotherhood of steel in the title and full of super mutants. People want to blame Bethesda for all this but the people who owned the franchise before them were already on the same track as they are
I don't think cutting out Super Mutants is the correct thing to do, the Nightkin in New Vegas demonstrated many better stories could have been told with the Super Mutant.
The problem is settling them into irrelevance for a "mad apocalypse raider" when a nomadic yet dwindling population of pre-war immortals has served depth to Ghouls.
Bethesda irrecoverably ruined Super Mutants causing fatigue from constant subpar characterisations.
Deathclaws could inhabit the current Super Mutant place, except Bethesda made them just animals instead of a wasteland mystery, and given the BoS something to actually do.
They have two weaponised creatures and a theocratic order dedicated to reaffirming a "moral" authority over force in the wasteland and still can't produce a good Fallout.
tl;dr, It's not the Super Mutants, Brotherhood of Steel, Ghouls, FEV or Enclave's fault that Bethesda makes shit Fallouts.
@user-pm5dl5bl5o the problem with nightkins are that they're a bit of a retcon.
New vegas acts like nightkin were always in the background, even back in the master army days.
While it's not the biggest deal in the world to me personally, let's not act like if bethesda tried the same thing, they'd get castrated for it by fallout fans acting like they're breaking lore.
Prime example is the T-60 armor set. Bethesda retconned the armor into the series and pretty much said it was always there, we just happened to not see it in previous games. It's no different from the nightkin, yet ones ok and the other is not, all because of who made what
@@subjectdelta17 The Nightkin are not a retcon, they just aren't in Bethesda games which cuts against your point twice. Bethesda deserve a good bullying this time.
I have the same problems with nearly ALL of the "monsters" in the Bethesda Fallout titles, and deathclaws and rad scorpions don't have the FEV mcguffin to explain how they managed to make it all the way across North America. I solved the problem by approaching each Fallout game in isolation, assuming each one takes place in its own separate (no matter how similar) game universe, complete with its own internal logic for why rad scorpions are common in the Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth, despite the fact that both areas have winters cold enough to kill off any natural scorpion species.
Deathclaws were made pre-war. What's hard to believe that a man-made apex predator migrated across the united states over the course of 200 years?
Also, in the original titles they've said that after the bombs dropped, the climate on the west coast changed drastically. While Bethesda hasn't come out and spelled it out for you on the east coast, do you really think that atomic bombs being dropped wouldn't have altered the climate at all? Especially the ozone layer?
As a self professed fan of super mutants, I feel that their stories have for the most part been told. Fallout 1, tactics and brotherhood of steel told their stories. I would really want the next game to send them out with a bang. Make it clear that the super mutants are on their last legs and this is their last bit at relevancy, they are not going to gracefully bow out of the plot but go out with a blaze of glory. Maybe not the A plot of a game, but a B plot that is tied to the main quest. Give the Master's Army one last hurrah before they are rendered extinct.
I feel like a better twist would be them realising they need humans to survive, and that humans need them to clean up big areas of the irradiated world.
So we go into an uneasy alliance with them.
fallout 5 will magically have some FEV in some old abandoned enclave outpost or a faction similar to the institute who for some reason have mass produced FEV or "discovered" a source of FEV similar to discovering an oil field. its going to get more and more ridiculous the series goes on with bethesda's stagnation of creativity, but its probably going to get worse if my prediction about FEV occurs in the show instead of fallout 5. i think this is the reason why fallout 5 will be released in the mid 2030s, theyve run out of ideas.
The solution for more mutants in future games is to basically fulfill an epilogue for them. Some manage to form stable communities, others are integrated as a functioning wing of society. This would give them a future or some sort of unified goal for the future.
I think using OWB as an example could work for this. In the mod there is a group of Mutants called the (Troll) Warren *I could be wrong*. Having the last remnants of the masters army fighting for their life and trying gain territory could be a great story for a Fallout game, even if short.
I think one option is to have a smart scientist mutant trying to re-create FEV because he’s lonely and wants a “real” family for himself.
It’s simple enough to not be contrived, its relatable, it’s a callback to what the Master was doing, and it can be a direct connection to Frankenstein’s monster wanting a family for himself.
I very much doubt that the Enclave were destroyed as reported. If you are a shadowy remnant of the government, especially a big one like the United States of America, you'd have contingencies. Other Vaults and bunkers with FEV vats. Scientists who came across long abandoned Enclave facilities, etc etc.
Or a group of intelligent mutants that solved the fertility problem, but it turns out the fertility problem was by design, because the next generation coming from first gen super mutants are rabid animals that reproduce like rabbits. So you'd have Dollar Tree aggressive brainless super mutants as a first encounter, who are less strong but far more numerous, due to the virus causing rapid growth and reproductive capability at the cost of biological integrity. Then later in the game you encounter a far, far more powerful supermutant, that, when halfway wounded, wants to talk it out. This is where you are introduced to the OG super mutants that f-ed up and they want your help in trying to solve their mistake. Add to that the BoS, who will them want the faction of smart mutants to be eliminated, and you have yourself a healthy chunk of gameplay.
@@drakesilmore3760 In Fallout tactics the supermutants were indeed working to solve the reprodution issues.
@@drakesilmore3760we're again getting very close to the Krogan. Just let them reproduce somehow and leave it at that. In fact don't explain it have somene in game hang a lampshade on it "We don't know how the supermutants keep showing up they're sterile and live dangerous lives they should be extinct but they seem to never run out". Leave it unexplained for two or three games at least. have characters in game refer to it as the supermutant paradox.
@@drakesilmore3760 or even better make the kids just be normaler than the parents, would make a perfect parallel to the new world trying to be itself but being forced to bear the sins of its radioactive father
In FO4 it would of made sense if the institute was making them as soldiers instead of sending out Coursers. In FO3 it would of made sense if there was someone or something in Vault 87 trying to carry on the masters mission.
In New Vegas the Devs actually thought about it and gave them purpose, black mountain, Jacobstown, and the Nightkin.
No goals, no ambition, kinda like Bethesda's game design.
The problem with both Bethesda and Obsidian (Isle studio more precisely) is that when they introduced Super Mutants & ghouls. They stopped expanding upon more mutations like a race of humans who have extra limbs or flesh horror mutants roaming the wasteland and reproducing like vermin.
But also in a technical standpoint, trying to put all of that in a code is very difficult and hard. So they probably went with Super mutants & ghouls.
There used to be other kinds of mutants. The cave people that lived bellow that one farm in fo2 are an example.
@@bernardofares3003fnv had the Ghost people in Sierra Madre and the diggers in lonesome road and the plant people from that one vault.
You know what I’d like to see? A pre war character who’s similar to Harold, in that he resembles a ghoul but is actually a result of FEV. Maybe as like a secret failed experiment by the Master to sidestep the reproduction issues, he has a unique mutation where he ages very rapidly, but when he dies he sort of just molts and becomes a younger version of himself. Like a phoenix I guess, maybe they could give him some kind of fire resistance too. I don’t know, I’m just kinda thinking out loud here.
Although quite forced into Fallout 3, I think they still fit decently, plus the changes that were made to the new east coast kind helped. Where I think it went wrong was actually with Fallout 4 - The Institute should absolutely have not brought them back for another run, and nothing was really added to differentiate them outside of their new origin
In my opinion, both the west coast and east coast super mutants should have starting disappearing after Fallout 2 and 3, respectively. FNV did this well I think, showing just a small community over Black Mountain and Jacobstown after the Master's defeat scattered them and ceased their production. It's a shame, too, because I think their diminishing role and numbers were an intentional piece of interesting story progression from the original developers that was lost along the way. I would have liked to see more of the super mutants - especially the more feral ones - being taken out, leaving only a tiny amount of more intelligent ones hiding away over time and developing their own individual hopes and philosophies, similar to Strong, Fawkes, Marcus, Lily, Tabitha and Leo
I think it would have been great if Swan had been the only super mutant in Fallout 4(with Virgil of course). The Institute could have just made one and immediately said "Nope !".
@@vorastrixaridarastrixiejir403 That would have worked pretty well honestly
Yea - the institute just cranking out super mutants for no reason was so lame. It also was a squandered opportunity to make them different in an interesting way from the fo3 version.
I think it is ok that the institut made some supermutants but not in these numbers. Make them much stronger but much more rare.
You can remove Super Mutants from Fallout 4 but keep Strong by explaining he's from the Capital Wasteland and traveled to The Commonwealth in his search for the milk of human kindness
I honestly think they should have had the vault 87 mutants spread more across the east coast, that way you could have mutants in other east coast games without pulling another F.E.V source out of thin air, you can also explore them more instead of them just being beefier raiders.
I wish they would add more FEV mutants while making the super mutants more rare. The master took a lot of experimentation to get the super mutants right. In Fallout 3, we even see a bunch of dead bodies that grew too many organs because not everyone infected turned into a super mutant. They should focus on that. Imagine a large group of insane mutants that have organs and extra limbs bursting from their bodies. Then, even the most brain-damaged super mutants would be one of the few lucky ones.
Also, I really wish they would explain why FEV stops after it infects someone. It is supposed to be a virus; why wouldn't they be able to infect ordinary people? The point of every virus in nature is to spread. It must be super concentrated in their blood. They might not be smart enough to make that connection, but cannibals must have eaten a few at some point.
I agree. More Centaurs and floaters. Less super mutants. Apparently they had modelled the centaur for Fallout 4, but it looked like a trash fire so they went with the hounds instead. There is a video here on youtube of some of that cut content.
I like the idea of the FEV virus affecting cannibals, that could have been an interesting idea to expand upon. I think it is a virus with a super short half life. Once the cellular mitosis has been complete, it is inert.
@@jackochainsaw
I wasn't even going to go with those two specifically. I was thinking the FEV would act similarly to the dead bodies in the Super Mutant Vault in Fallout 3. So, organs and limbs would grow in strange places with less focus on a "perfected" design. Plus, this way, it could be a gradient. Mostly unaffected raiders and survivors could be normal or have extra fingers as a subtle clue. Then they steadily get more and more mutated until they are closer to centaurs that absorb everything around them.
@jackochainsaw ah I'd had wondered about the mutant hounds. Damn shame the centaur got scrapped- the fact that the FEV affected dogs was bothering me.
A thing to note. The fallout 1 writers honestly didn't understand how viruses, virions, and such worked. I've shown some of the notes and such to my friend who has a degree in virology, going for his masters, and he's said its complete nonsense. So it should go with a large dose of salt.
But going by some logic though. The FEV was originally made as the pan immunity virion, but it just sort of made people stronger and they said, "Lets do that instead." The goal was to change the DNA to a quadruple helix instead of a double helix, this wouldnt work but lets ignore that. The virus was just a delivery method, a way of getting the code in to rewrite the DNA, but instead of it doing it so it makes more viruses it was to just change the DNA itself. Which means it makes sense that to get a full mutant you have to literally bathe them in FEV in some way. Specifically because it doesn't reproduce. Logically too, that makes a lot of sense. If it spread that'd be pretty bad.
This was all sort of rambly, but I hope it helps.
@@Doomfullord that's really interesting, what did your friend say specifically?
My head cannon is that the Midwestern Brotherhood has cured their sterility leading to an over abundance of them in the commonwealth. The Institute only created a fraction of the super mutants you see today. The rest were born as such.
The problem with that is that they would have to re-grow their genitals. Super mutants (both men and women) lose their genitals during the process and become entirely asexual. Virgil in Fallout 4 managed to cure his super mutation with Institute technology. So it might be reversible or correctable. I don't think super mutants can be born in a regular fashion. They have to be mutated like a graft on a plant.
@@jackochainsaw Actually a terminal in vault 87 states that they only lose most of the visible characteristics, not all. I take that to mean they still have the necessary reproductive organs.
@@jackochainsaw no they are sterile not barbie dolls
@@jackochainsawThey have dongs and a cooch. Just no sperm or eggs/ovaries
In Fallout tactics the super mutants are indeed working on a cure for the sterility problem.
I love the fallout talk series because you’re able to break down the same thoughts I have and express them in ways I can’t. Never stop this series
the societies in fallout 3 and fallout 4 have one thing thats similar to bethesda, they have not improved, but for some reason they went from stagnation to devolving.
I think it's a Bethesda issue. They just wanted to reuse enemies rather than come up with new, region relevant enemies. Like Radscorpions make sense in the SW United States but I wouldn't have thought Boston was particularly suited for scorpions pre-war. Don't just reuse character models to save time/money when the series is so heavily influenced by in-universe lore.
The really silly part is they came close with Fallout 3. Things like Mirelurks and Yaoguai could've easily been replacements for Radscorpions and Deathclaws respectively, because they fill the same niche.
I think they should really beef them up. Make them bullet sponges with good armor and weapons but keep the numbers very low, like fighting mini bosses. Only a few locations dotted around the map or small roving bands are ever seen. The backstory should be like in new vegas, about how a dying race struggles to survive in the wasteland with more and more of their kind getting killed each day until eventually they must retreat into seclusion, told through dialogue, hollow tapes, notes, environment, etc. There should be a set number of them in the entire game, no respawns. So when you clear a super mutant location, it'll stay cleared forever or maybe a new enemy type takes up residence. This'll give players the sense that they really are helping along the exterminating of an entire race, especially late game when you've likely killed off all muties in your game.
Dumbthesda had already made everything a bullet sponge. And that's half the problem. The need to make fights tougher but not that way, as it doesn't make it tough it just makes it expensive.
Bethesda arguably haven’t added anything of substance to the Fallout franchise in general. Slowly shaving away what made it unique in the first place.
Even as someone who is a big critic of Bethesda they have added things of substance to the franchise (for better or for worse) no matter if its not much. They added; the radio, they reinvented vats and thats about what i can think of maybe I missed something but no matter how small its worth mentioning.
The idea Vault experiments kinda debunks that notion tbh.
@@alsaiduq4363 Bethesda didn’t invent the vault experiments if that’s what you’re saying. Though I may be misunderstanding you.
They add "muh Lovecraftian" cheap lore.
In other words they turned boring crap into less boring crap that has a longer replay value.
I feel like Bethesda missed a trick with the East Coast Super Mutants.
Make it so that there aren't nearly as many of them, but the few that you do encounter are all as tough as a Behemoth, maybe not as big, but have each act like a superboss. And they're not just strong, but smart and dangerously clever with tactics, becoming what they were originally meant to be, a super soldier in every way. This would keep with their dying race aspect as well as make them a prominent threat again, along with showing you how after all this time had passed since the Great War, these few that have remained are not only the strongest, but the smartest and possibly most powerful Super Mutants in the _entire_ Wasteland. And you could have it that this is a small but organised group that, instead of coming from another source of FEV, (which even for Fallout 3 is a bit too far for me), they instead found info on a potential cure in DC and are there to search for it. Creating this horrifying potential scenario where these fully realised Super Mutants could possibly reproduce, necessitating their extinction lest they truly become the next stage that wipes out humanity.
It's funny that for as bad a game and story as it was Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel got the Super Mutants _more_ right than Bethesda ever did. (I *_will_* die on this hill!)
That is interesting! Even without FEV it wouldn't take much for an intelligent Super Mutant to become God King for a group of ignorant tribals. Maybe even set up the Daughters of Hecate baby stealing plot from Van Buren to strengthen his small nation over it's neighbors. You become their prisoner and have to resist the psychological manipulations and drug trips with some homages to Apocalypse Now before shattering the cult ... or taking it over
Nah just remove the silly "they are a dying race" trope and enjoy
@@Ghastly_Grinner A bit late to remove the "they are a dying race" trope at this point, particularly since while it's still stated if not at least inferred by their status as sterile beings, Bethesda keep finding new sources of FEV to create new strains of Super Mutant.
They can't commit to one or the other.
@@darkarpatron Just make the Super Mutants produce FEV naturally in their waste they make latrines where the goo is stored then they just dunk the people they capture in the goo if you turn into a Super mutant them welcome to the tribe if you dont well they eat you problem solved.
I think it’s telling that Obsidian really only placed super mutants at a handful of locations in NV, meanwhile they’re everywhere in the Commonwealth and Capital Wasteland. They’re a part of the story in NV, but they come off like a box full of your younger brother’s action figures in the Bethesda installments.
"what do they add ?"
same with nameless raiders and ghouls
if you ask Bethesda its shooty shooty time
They are Cool .
They look interesting .
They add enemy variety.
They add a toy to the sandbox of the game.
@@Ghastly_Grinner
How does it add enemy veraiety if they are same copy paste mutants that fill half the wasteland. This seppoust to be an RPG with factions. Not a helo style game where the entire game you fight the covenant or flood and even there these enemies more flushed out with different alien races in the covenant. Imagine if super mutants had some sort hierarchy that add depth to them like big mutants as overlords and behemoth and small mutants or some like in warhammer where green skins have where even the orcs have their common, savage and black variations. With each one has da Boyz, bigUns and finally warlords. Instead they are no different from drauger that fill all skyrim ruins.
@@nicbahtin4774 How doesn't it add to enemy variety. They are a different enemy type with different look feel different style of bases etc
@FEVRobert
The point is that the world is different factions not nameless raiders mutants and ghouls. You can side or cross different factions and there's alot of quests intertwined. In contrast bethesda style is just to go and clear location, maybe someone will tell you to do it. At most you will find a few texts on computers there. And that's pretty much it. People forgot that fallout is about people living in a post apocalypse bethesda completely missed the mark in Fallout 76 that didn't even had NPCs on launch.
While I think “they don’t add anything” is technically correct, I prefer a more constructive way of phrasing it as “they don’t add *enough*” I still think SMs still have some potential, it would just take a lot of effort to make it work right.
All SMs really add right now are bigger enemies that are decent for quick xp, with a contrived explanation on how they’re in the setting of the current game. They’re essentially Fallout’s version of Orcs.
The only way I could think to fit SMs in a new location would be some type of mad scientist stealing a container of FEV and threatening to shatter it as a type of WMD, with that happening halfway through the plot and causing a change in the game world with super mutants running rampant. And even then, it’s kind of feels like just an excuse to shoehorn SMs in the game.
Nah, I'm 100% with you. When Bethesda took the game to the East Coast, they did so knowing that most of humanity had been knocked back to a tribal period, and that there would about 2000 miles from the old games to the new. They had every opportunity to do something *new* to expand and add to the Fallout universe instead of simply recycling. They chose to recycle Radscorpions. To recycle the Enclave. To recycle BoS and Super Mutants. All of it. It didn't have to be nothing from the old games showing up, in fact that would be asinine too, but they could have actually considered the context that these various races, factions and plot elements existed within, and said 'okay, we'll save the Super Mutants for something out West later, we can do something *new* here. Introduce some other sort of mutated off-shoot of humanity if you really want, but make it something other than Ghouls and Super Mutants. There's plenty of old 50's and 60's Sci-fi they could mine for inspiration. I would have preferred to see them lift CHUDs wholecloth than just recycle supermutants again. Particularly since the DC Metro could have provided that very opportunity. People who survived the bombs by hiding in the metro (yes I know, Metro is a game) and degenerated into something less than human. Instead the Metro is. . . Raiders and ghouls. . . Woo.
In defense of FO3 and FO4, the capital wasteland mutants were on a big drive to make as many of themselves as possible, so much that they ran out of FEV. So they made themselves a massive army before their numbers started to dwindle.
Also in Fallout 3 the super mutant story has 2 things you missed. In FO3 the mutants will charge you saying "we are the future " i just heard it today doing German town. Also in the DC ruins or if you listen in on the super mutants you can hear supermutants talking about finding more FEV, unfortunately most players don't hear this dialog because they shoot mutants from range. But the FO3 mutants are searching for FEV like the Fallout 1 quest to find water for your vault. When the lone wanderers enters vault 87 they are giving the mutants the "bad end" that the player could get in Fallout 1.
As for Fallout 4 the institute makes the mutants, for reasons. Thats how they reproduce. The institute is clearly established as NOT wanting the commonwealth wastelanders to have a society and government so they do FEV experiments intentionally to cause more chaos.
In your video you touched on "difference between gameplay and story (story scale)... but you have to remember that Bethesda games are scaled down from real life/actual lore. Daggerfall was the only Bethesda game at true scale. Look at the concept art for New Vegas and vegas alone is easily a city of 1 to 1.5 million people. When there are only a few thousand NPCs in the whole game. Megaton concept art has 5-6 rings of streets going up the side of the crater instead of the 1.5 rings in game. Megaton should be a town of 5,000 people in the lore, but their is barley 50 NPCs in game. Someone here on YT made the Skyrim cities in unreal engine at true scale and it would take an hour and a half to walk across.
The super mutants in FO3 could easily have enough numbers for half a million mutants but we just dont get that in game, as well as a dozen hamlets between Megaton and greyditch. If the game were to true scale.
This is where the limitations of the creation engine shine. If you have played 76 recently you can see they are pushing it to its limits. If they were to move to unreal we could have those giant maps.
I will say, the Institute didn't necessarily create Super Mutants to create chaos. They did FEV experiments in the name of science, and let the resulting Super Mutants run rampant topside because they didn't care as the surface "was dying/dead already" and they could perhaps learn something useful from it. And they didn't stop the long-since useless experiments until Virgil broke out because Father... is an idiot. Or he specifically kept it going to cause chaos, one of the two.
The super mutants frustrate me because they represent the highs and lows of the Fallout franchise. West Coast mutants are well-written and compelling, while the east coast mutants lack nuance, and are just "big dumb thing to shoot at." If super mutants have to keep showing up, then I would prefer the 2/NV approach. Show us all the different sides to these people, and have them serve as a minor, yet relevant faction.
In my opinion, cut them out, unless there's REALLY good reason to include them or some actual devemploment for them.
Again, people hate it to hear but New Vegas knew how to do it. Mutant were isolated to three places in the whole game. Jacobstwon where you had Marcus with a community, the few mutant dealing with addiction of Stealth Boys in the research facility and a rogue fiction on black mountain. They all made sense and you had ways of interract with them beyond shooting.
and to add to this. new vegas has absolute zero FEV labs. it takes from the events of 1 and 2 that west coast mutants are now finite and they split into several factions. like several nightkin factions. black mountain/jacobstown/repconn. each with their own stories on what lead them to their locations. in this case all three are less integrated because they chose not to join the NCR. hence their far out settling in the mojave.
back east we hear it even now still lets super mutants become citizens and remember in 2 they had a ranger super mutant. so by new vegas all the west coast mutants has settled into their roles though finite and possibly eventually die out. they for the most part stopped being problematic those that stayed. and the mojave and other remnant factions usually try to stay away but still willing to take out intruders.
so far all bethesda games all for one reason or the other have FEV labs present and somehow the explanation for why theres large super mutant presence because someone made them due to that. and plus their variant in lore is just a dumb brute with some rare smart ones. Instead of motivated and reasonably smart individuals that have goals and motivations
I believe there is also a bodyguard supermutant in westside
@@killerguythefox Yeah, finite super mutants is a big thing in the west coast, and I'm glad FNV respected it. Mariposa super mutants stopped being created post-Fallout 2, and they've either had to integrate into society or form their own communities. There's a few scattered around the Mojave as random raiders, but they're rare, as they should be (the Brotherhood's been hunting down hostile remnants of the Master's army since Fallout 1 ended, so there shouldn't be too many left by now).
It's also something the TV show's done very right so far. It's set in part of Fallout 1's map, and the only one to even show up so far was dead on a gurney. They're not all over the place like in Fallout 3.
I don't understand why Bethesda doesn't use the creative freedom to offer different unique terrifying creatures as antagonists in each game, rather than recycle the same old ones.
Like considering fallout 3 involves the water purifier perhaps there could be a sentient mirelurk-like race which wishes to take over the capital wasteland by contaminating all water sources?
Thats just 1 idea
Super mutants can still stay in the game they just need to seem more like a dying race, for example in my opinion just adding in a few survivor super mutants as members of wasteland societies is enough to keep them in. Plus it makes super mutants feel more memorable when your not seeing them all the time, you will remember these individuals whether they are violent to the protagonist or not.
It would be cool if some of them wanted to preserve themselves through peaceful means, and other factions of Super Mutant have the opposite viewpoint; thinking its goes against their "purpose" for existing, often attacking one-another's settlements wiping each other out in the draining dust and exhaust of the Fallout
A good alogory for us, ourselves; unable to fight our own nature...or maybe, only able to fight it.
Actually in Fallout 1 and 2 you meet more inteligent than dumb super mutants.
In Fallout 1 most mutants are still dumb, but smart enough to follow orders properly. Only the Lieutenant is truly intelligent. That is why they are searching for vault dwellers : because only non-irradiated humans produces intelligent mutants.
In 1 it's kind of funny bc there's only really two actual super mutant characters outside of generic enemies and one is by far the most intelligent of the entire series and the other one is one of the dumbest
Honestly, when i played Fallout: Tactics - i didn't miss the Enclave when they were absent
Same with Fallout 4 - i didn't miss the Enclave. So expectations isn't the thing with them. It's just that Bethesda can't write anything better than them if their life depended on it, and Starfield pretty much proves that.
by the time Fo4 rolled out, they can have done SO MUCH with the mutants. They could have been mutants that ran away from the mid US from that BoS, or from the West coast's last batches. OR could have trickled down from Vault 34 in Fallout 3. Having another origin point retconns that the FEV was a very secretive project.
The mutants introduced into the Commonwealth could have been their own camp. starting out like the Minutemen. at one point in time in story progression, the mutants, that youd stay away from, as they SHOULD BE VERY OP, as they were in Fallout 1/2, till maybe level 30 or 40 in the classics. ... so at some point in main story progression, lets say... the Pridwin pops in event, the BoS touch down. We get a radio message from one of those out of the way map areas, maybe even near the radioactive area, that Mutants have started expanding and have taken over nearby settlements or towns.
Then they could make the mutants negotiable to a point. as you could in Fo1, cuz theyre not just violent, but too stupid to win against your speech checks. Their leader was an intelligent super mutant, in his transition phase to a behemoth, loosing his mind. killing his own, and giving unrealistic or violent orders.
You know.... fucking give the content you add to the game some DEPTH. to this fucking puddle of an ocean.
I can imagine a kind of Super mutent genghas Khan hiding his intelligence basically they can be advanced but they need to not use the big words to keep the other lads from getting jealous and probably not explain all there plan to others just the basic plan and there part in it.
I like what they did in NV: They were still around, but not as regular enemies but as a small side-faction. They shouldn't be regular Raider-style mobs anymore with infinitely replenishing numbers, but they are part of Fallout and should still stick around in a smaller, humanizing role.
Personally I think the best thing to do with them from a "following through with the established lore" perspective is to have them in the next game but extremely rare. Maybe only two locations with them. One location (or a small handful of more isolated locations maybe) where the few per generation that are smart and not immediately hostile have congregated to try and forge a new Super Mutant identity and maybe work on finding a way to reverse their sterility, and a second small enclave of super mutants that are more intelligent but retain the aggression of normal super mutants. Their goal would be to create a homeland free from Humans and find a new strain of FEV to propagate their species maybe. Both are minor factions you can help or hurt, and both talk often about how there used to be way more supermutants but they were weak or they were stupid (depending on which faction you ask) and they got themselves all killed. Now they're a scattered remnant just trying to survive, and if you wipe them out they don't respawn. Maybe even have the less brutal ones be sorta like the Enclave Remnants in NV, just trying to integrate into society and move on from a darker past, although obviously they wouldn't be able to blend in.
Outcasts is situational. Tabitha (new vegas nightkin) was a commander in the Master's army, and many of the dumb mutants followed her in an almost cult like following.
If a commander mutant obtained a replenishable supply of FEV and a commander from the unity decided to continue the mission, it could be a fantastic minor saga or dlc even if not a main faction.
Y’know, a faction who is trying to Unite all Super mutants led by one of the more intelligent ones would actually be pretty cool. Especially if they play an important role in story.
Maybe have an opposing side that is just the broad idea of other mutants trying to stay independent and raider-like.
Have other factions work with and against them, and i think just that could be a main story point in itself, but better if there’s more to it.
Virgils storyline could be expanded to include breeding as he retained his intelligence
As much of a meme as it has become, it really _IS_ an issue of Emil Pag-however you spell it. There's little to no higher thinking going into the stories that Bethesda develops, when you scrape away the flashy set pieces and just look at the story for what it is, you're left with low quality "these things are good, these things are bad, here's an obvious twist that changes nothing and doesn't matter"
Supermutants could still play a role in future stories though if a new character like the master appears and attempts to unite disparate super mutant tribes. Also, even though it is not necessarily, canon you have to remember the super mutant scientists in Fallout Tactics who tried to cure mutant sterility, Bethesda could still use that story beat in some way and make a story around that if they ever decide to revisit the midwest.
Bethesda treats Fallout like a theme park first and story second. Mascots, merchandise and attractions you recognize and will spend money on.
I think a really cool idea for how a game could bring back super mutants in a more nuanced way than 3 and 4 is with cloning. Imagine some madman finds out how super mutants are made, discovers a pre-war experimental cloning facility, and then begins cloning humans and super mutants to create his own personal army to take over the wasteland. Someone who's just let all the power go completely to his head. Maybe over time, due to a flaw in the cloning process, the super mutants have grown weaker and weaker with each generation. Perhaps you could have a master rerun where you can get evidence that without a stable source of FEV (which he doesn't have) his continued cloning of super mutants is making them more unstable, weaker, and less useful. Maybe you could point out that past a certain generation, behemoths just aren't possible to make anymore. Maybe you could find a first-generation specimen to compare just to show him how badly his plan is falling apart. But then, being batshit insane, he just dismisses your findings unlike the master and figures that even if he can't keep cloning super mutants, he still has enough vats laying around that he can make a regular human clone army. But he doesn't realize that the flaw is also affecting his human clones, and so near the end of the story you're just fighting these horrifically mangled and clearly miserable cloned humans while the newest generation of super mutant clones are dying where they stand around you, and then you finally face off against the guy and he has like several dozen clones of himself that all get progressively more insane. And maybe you find out after the battle that the guy you were talking to isn't actually the original, but a clone, and that the original guy either died in a previous battle or is like a house scenario where he's a brain in a jar or a practical mummy in a casket.
And if you want to amp the horror up, maybe the cloning process actually makes the mutants more docile, but the guy is using something like the enclave mind control devices or brain chips to force them to fight. So while you're fighting them, they could be screaming shit like "HELP" and "KILL ME" or something equally horrifying while they continue to shoot at you even after losing limbs.
It's part of the larger gameplay dynamic of respawns. In fo4 the institute is no longer creating them, so they should never respawn. But also they should be incredibly rare.
It’s funny to think Bethesda feels they need mutants present and then the show goes and adds a Cyclops to the lore.
I do wish the Super Mutants in fallout 4 had more nuance to them. Partly because it might make me regret being a part of the Brotherhood when they talk about cleansing the Commonwealth of abominations. That sounds like something that makes you think "Are we the bad guys?", except 99% of what the Brotherhood want to kill happen to be hostile to Humans.
It's implied that the Super Mutants running around are people the Institute kidnapped and replaced with Synths. It would be nice if some of them actually remembered who they used to be, and there was some way to convince them to start working with their fellow Bostonians. Instead they're just big green raiders that have more health and sometimes heavy weapons.
The BoS is the blatant good guy faction they are for all intent and purpose the hero faction for fallout
@@Ghastly_Grinner I typically end the game with them. At least once I did it with the Minutemen, just so they actually have a conclusion to their story, instead of cutting off suddenly after Old Guns. Otherwise I destroy the Institute with the Brotherhood, and let knights in power armor defend military checkpoints.
They really don't do much in FO4 that I disagree with. The Synth issue is a gray area, but other than that they mostly do the same thing I'm doing. Hoard tech, kill hostiles. I feel a kinship.
@@chadnorris8257 The story of Fo4 really needed a better writer. A competent writer would have allowed for the game to have an ending that didn't destroy entire factions for really no reason. Hell you could have even had a large subfaction of the Institute live but just be teleported away to "sight B C E F & G" thus making Synths a part of the North American landscape from now on
@@Ghastly_Grinner Skyrim and Fallout 4 both have poor writing. Good gameplay, but hole ridden writing. Starfield is a complete mess. I have no faith in future Bethesda titles.
@@chadnorris8257 I wonder if its more of a the people suck kind of a thing. Why would Bethesda put effort into writing a good story when they know the story is like 5th on the list of what the people care about.
I actually like the Fallout Tactics take on the Super Mutants. The leftovers of an army that tried to take over the world, fighting (or helping to fight) a new army trying to take over the world
I think NV spin on the mutants was good .
Where there are supermutants that are crazy and some that hate humans and some that don’t like being mutants or still want to tolerate humans . It made it feel like mutants where diverse like they should be sense they where human .
If the next Fallout title didn't feature Super Mutants at all, I wouldn't miss them. Just like I don't miss mantii, floaters, centaurs, or wanamingos.
The Fallout 4 Super Mutants made more sense than the Fallout 3 ones. The Institute was actively experimenting with FEV and just released the resulting Specimen onto the Surface (no doubt because of some bleeding-hearts do gooders).
It also drove the point home at just how Evil the Institute is. Abducting thousands of People, experimenting on them, only to send them back up to wreak even more havoc. Just to keep the Surface destabilized, unable to form a meaningful resistance.
That strategy worked pretty well.
But how many did they abduct? Id could have been cool if they used gen3 synths to create Supermutants.
@@grimgrauman7650 I can only speculate, but considering they have been around for Decades and are shot on sight, id say at least a few thousands.
They tried to use FEV to help with the creation of Gen3 Synths, but it never worked and they just kept abducting surfacers to experiment on. Though the Behemoth Swan actually used to be an Institute member, so its likely they got rid of their more "undesirable" members by experimentation too.
This is the problem with other studios other than the originals working on a franchise. Instead of keep writing new things they just recycle them because they are branding. Bethesda is gonna find an excuse to put them in everything instead of making new creatures and factions
It's like pyramid head in silent hill.
thank you for doing this one. the muties are cool when done right.
A faction of human raiders and super mutants working together would be pretty cool. They select the strongest soldiers and inject them with FEV to make them even stronger. It could even be religious in some ways, the super mutants of that faction would view themselves as cursed heros.
Fix the super mutants. I thought it would also be cool if an intelligent super mutant would rise up and recruit all mutants including ghouls into one huge mutant faction. I also like the idea of them trying to fix super mutant sterility. Maybe they plan on kidnapping a scientist that specializes in mutations? Idk all that seems much more interesting to me
One thing they could do is make the decreasing numbers and the few remaining with high intelligence not only plot points, but gameplay elements at work. Maybe you run across a small scout group as random encounters while exploring, but mainly only have them stick to set locations for their subplot(s). Make their melee attacks be a guaranteed knockdown on the player, like the deathclaws in 4. Have them set ambushes, run faster than the player's sprint speed, and even dodge out of VATS sequences. Give the player a heart attack at the sight of them.
One F4 solution to the Super Mutant problem is to remove them as a spawn, get rid of suiciders (because where did they get so many nukes from, and why do they want to blow up?), get rid of the hounds (why would the institute test FEV on dogs?), and limit them to just being in a few quest locations. If the FEV lab is shut down at the start of the game, there should not be an unending horde of them all over the place, or squatting in buildings next to major settlements.
Secret option 4: Make it so the species has pretty much been wiped out, but still have a few individual super mutants in the game. Super mutants don't die from old age (unless I'm misremembering), so a few can wander over to wherever the next games take place.
If in Fallout 4 the devs made it so that Raiders took over Super Mutant camps when the Mutants were wiped out, and random encounters with them steadily decreased with every one that resulted in their defeat it would make more sense. Start with a pool to pull from and when there's no more, that's it. Being able to rid the Commonwealth of Super Mutants would also help make BoS radiant quests more meaningful.
Can’t wait for your take on the tv show when it comes out.
how about instead of making them like orcs or krogen, make them like ORKS, basically the same but with the addition of a actual (although basic seeming) society/structure and it could give smart and "friendly" mutants more legitimacy as equivalents to "weird boyz" and "free boota" mercenaries and instead of caps (or teeth since my idea is based on orks) perhaps have them deal in their own currency like how NCR and Legion did back in NV, maybe trading in a specific rare ammunition or maybe scrap, hell you could even have them put a Pittsburg/legion and use humans as slave labour. the mere addition of even the most basic level of society to them opens so many doors....then again this is bethesda
It seems like Bethesda is afraid to change too much or rock the boat, and it really holds them back from innovation with the series.
They're incompetent. It's that simple. It's not a lack of willingness to be original.
They tried to be original with the Railroad, The Minutemen and (to an extent) The Institute everyone hates those factions because the writing is even more shitty poo poo garbage than the way the rehash factions/elements were handled.
The problem is that Todd Howard is more interested in $$$ than in story and lore. They put just enough effort so that it appears to be a Fallout game on the surface level, but after just 30-60 mins the cracks begin the show and you realize how much depth it's actually lacking.
I love super mutants, but I share a lot of your frustrations with them. I hope if they appear in FO5 it is in a very limited function like wandering trader or a small group like the Enclave remnants.
I like the idea of hybridising the swamp folk from point look out with FEV
(this is relevant I promise) I've made a fallout setting for a Fallout Table top rpg game (set around lake Erie), and I have had to do a lot of thinking about the place of Super mutants going forward.
The way I gave them an interesting story was with this one idea "What if the Virus part of FEV, was actually virally contagious". With the meeting of east and west coast mutants, the slightly different versions of FEV somehow changed and caused a possibility of transmitting the virus like any other disease. My scientific bs reason for it was that Maybe the virus elements were taken from common existing viruses before the war like the cold or flu or such, and that over the centuries the common immunity that humans used to have right after the war has kind of disappeared with said diseases.
so scientific bs aside, I think making FEV transmittible creates an incredibly interesting dilemma for mutants and humans alike. Do you shoot Mutants on site, avoiding them at all costs, even if they are intelligent decent people, in fear of getting infected, or do you treat them like the people they are with the risk of joining their ranks. It also allows for a sort reproduction without taking away their sterility. It makes super Mutant societies inseparably connected to humanity, thus taking out the total replacement master ideology. I have a super mutant villain who desires to conquer humans in the region as to create a sustained and growing population of super mutants, but there are Mutants who stand against him and believe the two societies can live in harmony with consensual infections.
I think the biggest risk in the contagion approach would be straying too close to the lore of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. There's also the issue that ghouls could lose their uniqueness in Fallout lore if everyone had an entire second type of creature they had to worry about turning into.
Fallout 4s super mutant problems could be fixed if the Mutants where migrating into Boston, maybe bring back some of that lore from Tactics and [Redacted] where different Mutant warbands fled East after the Masters Death
I'm not going to lie. Thanks to the video it gave me the base idea for a mini faction of east coast mutants. One where, rightly so. Have their side quests.
Where, there are few left, they are not large numbers, hopefully they are in 1 or 2 different settlements. The ones that are left are the moderately intelligent ones. Where the faction leader, an already old mutant in mind, wants to unify all the mutant warbands and leave. Look for a place where they don't have to fight so much and can have some peace. And that there are options in their secondary missions. The way of the leader, the way of the second in command, one who wants to take over a vault so he can generate, or try to, make a new brood of mutants and get his old warrior glory back. Or the Fawkes way (so to speak), where, he wants to solve the problem by managing to modify the remaining super mutants so that they can be fertile.
One is meant to maintain a smaller number, always at the risk of being smaller until what little of their own culture they have, ends.
The other wants to recapture an old glory that for lack of numbers they cannot afford, using as an option to repeat what happened in the capital wasteland. Perhaps creating a new subclass of supermutants.
And the other, smarter, wants to be able to solve the problem peacefully, without the need to return to the barbaric ways of the past, but still wanting his people to expand. Perhaps by keeping the vault as their main settlement.
I think the big problem here is bethesda doesnt want to treat fallout like an rpg. It makes sense at this point to be able to play a ghoul or a super mutant, to integrate them into the games world and societies and whatnot. Theyre purposefully kept seperate from the ingame societies
Role playing isn't defined by the the amount of "playable races" there is in the game. In fallout's case, it makes sense for ghouls and SM to not be playable. Unlike in contemporary fantasy, Ghouls and SM have always been treated as secondary, decaying actors in the setting, in contrast to the surviving (mostly) non mutated humans. Being both fated to extinction, they are a reminder of nuclear devastation, and not a thing to be celebrated. For this reason, Supermutants and ghouls live in wildly different contexts than those of non mutated humans. SM, for example, are either violent maniacs(east coast), or are so rare that a normal person might think they don't even exist (west coast). It wouldn't make sense for them to have the same interactions with the wasteland and its inhabitants as a non mutated human. And I think those statements are true in the context of the classical games, as well as the context of the modern, Bethesda ones.
@@bernardofares3003 When I said Bethesda didn't want to treat fallout as an RPG in this context I meant they didn't want to integrate the roles of Super mutants into the world at large, they were fated to be trolls or goblins the player could kill without any real context, implementing them as a playable race or at least into in-game cities is just a way to address that. When you speak of ghouls as "decaying" actors, I feel that's just inaccurate especially compared to SM or even humans... Ghouls are immortal, produced by exposure to radiation common throughout the wasteland, generally sentient (their reason seems to last longer than the average person lives). With super mutants we see a capacity for cooperation, we see a fairly large population as far as representation in game, and sure they will eventually die out due to their inability to reproduce but they were shown to be capable of reason in the non-bethesda games, they had motivations and opinions, and they've proven useful in the few instances where they do interact with people. Is it such a stretch to say that actually these highly armed groups of super mutants that operate as bandit gangs might have a motive and interactions outside of murder? Surely if they are to be included in the times and areas the game takes place Bethesda could make more efforts to show another side to them.
Tons of Bethesda’s writings are questionable. I never liked them on their take on Fallout.
They only accentuated the "cool, look at this ma!" aspects of fallout, and not the meat and potatoes aspects of fallout. We kind of need the full meal. I'm hoping that because Microsoft owns Bethesda and Obsidian, they might say "Hey, we haven't had a fallout game in a while, if BGS are going to sit on their ass, let's give Obsidian a go and make some money." But I realise how optimistic and unrealistic that is.
Unfortunately yeah.@@jackochainsaw
Well one could make and give them purpose ... by making them OP rare loot ereas plus that they are immune to small caliber guns, forcing you to either come back with bigger guns or better equipment for instances you only want to role play a melee build.
I personally love the super mutants. I love hearing them interact with each other, and in FO4 when I found Super Mutant armor I got super excited cause I thought there would be a way to be a super mutant but then I was super disappointed when I found out you couldn’t and looked goofy as hell cause that armor set is really big on me.
You do make valid points.
The difference between east coast and west coast mutants do make for a good contrast. The Master wanted a new "Master Race" but West Tec wanted super-soldiers.
However it would be good to see these "Big and Dumb" super mutants get a plot upgrade. It was cool to see them as lumbering threats but eventually they should develop a culture all their own and with it goals.
Imagine if a small group of super-mutants decided to become merchants selling their strength as a commodity.
"You need pile of old cars stacked up as wall around your homes? Hmm... we can do that but we get two roast brahmin as payment... with good seasoning... and fifty caps. Good Bargan, yes?"
Or what if some of the smarter super mutants are trying to figure out what makes smart and dumb super mutants. So in an attempt to solve their fate as a dead-end species they begin kidnapping people and testing them before they expose them to FEV in an attempt to work it out through basic scientific theory and process of elimination.
We kinda need Super Mutants to exist in Fallout but you are correct they need purpose to become relevant once again.
A concept of mine: a super mutant scientist living on the west coast. He came from the Unity just like a lot of WC muties. But unlike scientists in other Super Mutant labs, he isn't interested in curing their sterility. He sees their sterility as the core factour in keeping peace with baseline humanity, and ever since the Master's death, he's found his rhetoric to make little sense, and has no interest in world domination nor replacement of baseline humanity. So instead, he's researching production of more FEV, as well as refining the Super Mutant creation process to reduce mortality rates, so that consenting humans can be turned into super mutants, thus preserving both strains of humanity. He's also hoping that after he accomplishes his goal, that he can become a doctor or paramedic.
They should make Super mutants a rare encounter but a very dangerous encounter. I'm talking death/ near death experience every single time even for high level players.
Personally I feel like they could easily make them better by simply making some mutants non hostile, make a super mutant settlement with quests to give, one off mutants in peaceful towns like meansonofabitch, pull a jacobs town and have peaceful ones explain that there's something wrong with the other ones out in the wastes that make them hostle to everyone else, put some in raider gangs (including ghouls too)
If they did all that it would give them a better foothold in the world making them seem more alive
*Me everytime I find a super mutant*
Me"Die abomination!"
Supermutant"Oh nos!"
Super mutants need to go back to being the main antagonistic faction in Fallout 5. Imagine if the small bands of mutants united into an army led by a cunning nightkin warlord. The player could even have the option of transforming into a mutant if they join the bad guys
They’re too iconic to remove by this point, they need more lore fleshed out
Could be fixed with more former forgotten enclave labs, or scientists tinkering with enclave labs/super mutant DNA. How's about this, a rival to the Enclave that is not the Brotherhood of Steel. See, so many options that BGS are too lazy to explore.
For giving EC Mutants a purpose, could give them another pair intelligent mutants, one more like Marcus, wanting to keep peace but, unlike Marcus, would be willing to fight if shoved
Then another would probably be closer to the master, wanting to reunite super mutants for the superiority they once had to return
Hell could even make a side quest involved with the warmonger mutants to find a container of power armor sets to take apart and armor some more elite troops (mutants that have some semblance of intelligence but is comparable moreso to a middle schooler than, say, something actually smart), with an ending that sees the finale battle with mutants having salvaged power armor parts (less so Frank Horrigan and more so like NCR salvaged PA)
A lot of the same things could be said about the BoS. Frankly, one of the best things about NV was that they were a pretty minor faction, and at least their presence made more sense there.
There are two things that I think could help make the super mutants a unique enemy again.
One is for the FEV to evolve creating some mutants who are smarter than others making them more common but still a minority.
Second is to have two types of weapons regular weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, even LMG. And heavy weapons like miniguns weapons that are powerful but to heavy for a regular human so only power armor or mutants can use them.
With ballistic weapons design for the first generation T-41 users and more advanced energy weapons for the T-60 and 51.
Also have it that their smaller in numbers but stronger. One thing that I think could be cool is that the FEV effects the mind in a way that all mutants want to do is fight and survive.
They want to establish their dominance and grow stronger as a race with less intelligent ones using words like big or strong as a term for advancement.
That’s what makes them stand out, raiders just want to kill and steal, mutants want to thrive and become the dominant force in their area on a instinctual level.
If Ghouls represent the decaying past then the Super Mutants represent a brutal future.
My honest solutions:
- Make the Remnants of the Unity that didn't stuck in the West form their own societies, or make them wanderers capable of NOT attack on sight. Make them appear almost mysthical and alien in culture, and make them reside in a place like Oasis, be it a military bunker or a relatively peaceful place. Add the fact they may welcome other forms of mutants, like ghouls and NEW forms of sentient ones, a sort of Mutology.
- make unique looking mutants based on folklore or different looks
Fallout 4 mutants might be just distractions for the institute to kindnap people and either turn them into super mutants that have the instinct to return home just to be turned away then go berserk with others or the people are experimented and other things
I think fallout new vages kinda did it perfectly if you want to have them in, there isn’t a whole lot of them and when you kill them they don’t respawn, there isn’t a whole lot of them you have Marcus and his group then Tabatha witch is his group but they don’t like him, then a small group that branched off from her, other then that there is only one other mutant in the game and that’s in dead money, and they all explained very well why they are there, I think Bethesda could of done something unique with them in fallout 3 and 4/76 but 4s kinda flopped on its face you made great points with how they act I do like fallout 3s because it would make sense that they would exist bc if I wanted to continue research on them after the war a vault is the best option to do so, but they are so out of place and I feel the same with the brotherhood tbh
Another story could be supurmutants that are looking to reenter their old lives before snached up by the institute
2:07 No, you're not being unfair. Bethesda, Bethesda, retcons everything.
I' a permadeath player and super mutants are strong in all games, they are not as well armed as in the original fallout but they are still more dangerous that any non power armor faction. Also, with some speculation you can claim that the institute uses super mutants as a buffer: after the cpg massacre the institute was enemy #1, then suddenly the super mutants besieged diamond city and the focus changed.
In fo3 the super mutants explain why the brotherhood opened up to locals and why the area is under developed.
In FO4 the Institute experimented with FEV, which can account for the super mutants in FO4. There is more of a lore wise problem with supermutants in FO3.
I didn't actually think Super Mutants were a problem...
Then I watched this video.
Thanks for that...
My stupid Bethesda answer is that the aliens keep making them for reasons. Idk
If you ran in to a group of mutants in the wasteland as a random encounter in Fallout 2, you were basically dead...
I share much the same opinion. And discovered I had similar thoughts about the Brotherhood of Steel once I discovered they were in Fallout 76, which lead to me feeling like this about F4's Brotherhood as well.
At least they gave some of the small raider packs some personality in F4 with the terminal entries outlining rivalries between them, but other than the generic ones that attack settlements that get spawned in, they mostly just act tough and wait around in their base to get shot.
And the thing is, Jason Mical's Fallout tabletop RPG implies that if the sterility issue can be solved with the Mariposa mutants, that half-human, half-mutants would be possible; though it's more likely Mical just took Marcus' "Getting the juices flowing again" joke seriously.
In the end, I hope Fallout 5 doesn't have Super Mutants. Or the Brotherhood of Steel, for that matter. But Bethesda's locked in a quandry where either people complain because the iconic thing isn't there, even though it would make no sense for it to be there, or you get guys like us who complain about the thing being there making no sense.
Like the BOS, the Super Mutants are tagged on so they can keep their IP.
I’m all for giving Super Mutants purpose. Not necessarily the big bad, but a long enough side story to get to know the kinds of Super Mutants this “strain” has produced and the culture they built around them. Free from a Mutant Master, and winging it as they go.
I too think they deserve to be more interesting than just bigger green raiders.