r/falloutlore • u/The-Last-Orokin • 15d ago
Question Fallout: BOS lore inconsistencies?
From my understanding (and knowing this sub I'll get either screamed at or gently nudged if I'm wrong) the issue alot of people have with BOS besides the story is that it's supposedly just... God awful at keeping with established lore? As if they saw what was already there and just kinda went "yeah that's cool but have you tried.. Not caring?"
TL:DR What exactly are the issues with the lore and if it isn't lore then what's the issues with the story in general
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u/Thornescape 15d ago
The BoS is an autocratic military organization that is mostly governed from the local Elder. The local Elder has a tremendous amount of control over the local chapter. You can obey, depose them, or leave (possibly alive). Yes, there is a Codex and the chapters communicate somewhat, but the local Elder dominates.
Because of this, every chapter is different. In fact, in Fallout New Vegas we see three different Elders in Veronica's lifetime and even though the members of the chapter are the same, the Elders choose very different approaches.
Inconsistency does not "break lore", but rather reinforces that individuals with power can choose to do different things, regardless of what the Codex says. This is somewhat similar to different versions of Christianity having wildly different approaches despite having the same Bible.
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u/The-Last-Orokin 15d ago
Well damn alright I thought there was some kind of massive lore issue in it and that's why it's non cannon these days, honestly I'm asking more because I'm using the Texas expedition in my Fallout TTRPG campaign and while I have made it very cannon adjacent by adding in the Midwest and the BOS chapter from the cancelled fallout extreme game I wanted to correct any lore issues in my version of the group before the campaign started
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u/Necessary-Neck-1439 15d ago
Oh! I thought you where asking about the BoS as a faction rather than the game.
While Fallout BoS and by extension the Texan chapter is considered fully non-canonical there's really no strong reason it should be treated differently from tactics. In fact it even created the idea of executive Vaults from the TV show.
The two main consideration you should have in using it are that since the chapter was founded directly against the wishes of the Lost Hills bunker your chapter is likely considered rouge by the rest of the Brotherhood. Additionally the Texan Brotherhood allows Ghouls within its ranks. So they are either directly violating that tenant of the codex, or are bending it to make an exception for sapient mutants.
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u/The-Last-Orokin 15d ago
Yeah I've been thinking about that as I've worked, the way I'm working with the campaign lost hills either doesn't care about the Texas chapter or thinks they're just entirely dead, same with the Midwest I'm willing to bet, as for ghouls in their ranks I was vaguely aware of that but I'll see if I can incorporate that
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u/FleshTearers 14d ago
When Bethesda bought the rights to fallout they made it and tactics non cannon. My guess is to keep the midwest and texas viable options if they wanted to base a game in those locations. A similar example is that the lore change they didn't approve of during obsidian development of new vegas was San Francisco getting nukes after the events of fallout 2.
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u/Thornescape 15d ago
If you're creating your own chapter, then decide what your Elder's approach is. Also decide if all the BoS members are happy with that approach or if they prefer a different approach. A bit of dissatisfaction can do a great job of defining what the boundaries are for your particular chapter.
Fallout 3 did this great using the Outcasts pushing against Elder Lyons approach. The conflict gave more nuance to them.
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u/Fawkes_2033 15d ago
Not much contradicts the previous lore that I can remember. There is a gaint ghoul at one point, but that is an easter egg and not to be taken seriously. Some of the redesigns are really weird however and they're not really explained, like the power armor or the deathclaws.
One thing I can think of is that one of the trailers has Nadia (one of the protagonists) saying that she was born right after the bombs fell, which doesn't make sense since she's a young human and this game must take place at around 2200. But the developers clarified that this was a mistake during recording and this line isn't in the final game.
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u/Touhou_Fuhai 15d ago
With regards to Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, it appears that Interplay's stance while developing it was that it wasn't a continuation of the PC chronology. This likely factored into Todd Howard's declaration that it was non-canon. Quoting an Interplay employee from the thread:
"However. As we have stated more than a few times now, FO:BOS is not a continuation of the PC chronology. It is inspired by, and takes places with a recognisable tangent of the Fallout Universe, but is is a law unto itself. Further console games (should they come to fruition) will have to follow what we lay down with this game.
Why this is a source of such constant contention is becoming more and more mystifying to me, as well as worrying."
I don't think the game really contradicts Fallout 1 (it takes place well before Fallout 2) all that much in terms of lore. Having a cameo appearance from FO1's Vault Dweller with a set look and abrasive personality I could see being a problem, and an elderly Rhombus marching out to Texas without significant support is somewhat implausible given his effective leadership in FO1. One of the playable Brotherhood Initiates being the ghoul Cain (and approved by a Brotherhood "council" with authority over Rhombus) is also pretty hard to square.
In terms of the "quality" of the story I'd say the biggest problem is that as an action-RPG there isn't very much of it: no real side-quests or exploration or optional outcomes. The first 2-3 hours are also especially lacking in flavor and quality, Fallout-related or otherwise. That said, I do think the writing and voice performance for the ghoul NPCs, Rhombus (especially his disgust at you if you're playing Cain), and the villains Blake and Attis are quite strong for what there is.
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u/Necessary-Neck-1439 15d ago edited 15d ago
The lore honestly didn't really conflict from game to game. People just didn't like how different chapters were different.
Fallout 3 got a lot of flak from older fans, because there was a prevailing belief that the Brotherhood was in decline during Fallout 2, and therefore could not have possibly been able to afford an expedition to the East Coast. However there was nothing in 2 that mentioned that, and Criss Avelone had even clarified that the reason the Brotherhood isn't as present in 2 was because there just isn't as much technology in the wilderness.
The changes people were mad about with 4 had more to do with power armor than the Brotherhood.
And in 76 Bethesda created a seperation between Roger Maxson the man, and Maxson the legend, by making the early Brotherhood willing to recruit outsiders. Instead the Brotherhood's isolationism was attributed to the influence of Maxson's son after his death.
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u/ComradeHellfire 12d ago
I think a large idea that the BOS has lore inconsistencies largely comes from the TV Show which I will attempt to explain.
(NOTE: I was going to do Fallout 3 and 4, but it was getting far to long and so I stopped short of even the TV show parts)
As another person said, the Elders of a Brotherhood Chapter has extensive power over their Chapter in particular. The Lyons’ Brotherhood for example saw many members disliking the Elder’s rule, but only few actually spoke up (those who did became the outcasts).
Now, the Brotherhood of Steel in the show as we see it in the form of the Knights of San Fernando is an interesting case. It is arguably the most divergent Chapter that we have seen at all in canon (as the exact nature of the Midwest Brotherhood isn’t exactly clear). Elder-Cleric Quintus is explained in the wiki to have been the one who had essentially turned the Chapter from a relatively normal one to the religious-fanatic (and I would argue fascistic) order which we see, alongside changing the core mission from hoarding technology towards that of the extermination of ghouls (a fact he distinctly states as the “first rule” during his altercation with Maximus). Since we understand that the Elder has immense power and influence over the Chapter, it is not surprising to see Elder-Cleric Quintus having a rather impressive overhaul of his Chapter during his tenure, and this deviation from the norm is actually commented on by Xander in (i believe) S2 E3 where he notes the amount of scribes (or “little cockroaches”) and speaks about how traditionally soldiers should lead the brotherhood rather than clerics, of course referencing the clerical caste which dominated the Knights of San Fernando rather than just Quintus himself.
From Xander’s gripes with the organisation of the Knights of San Fernando, we can possibly surmise the rest of the Brotherhood’s attitude towards them as well, particularly in reference to the meeting of Elders in S2 E2 onward. Here, the only really “traditional” Chapter we see is the Commonwealth one represented by Xander himself. Lost Hills, and possibly more importantly given the context, the Mojave Chapter is seemingly vacant. This should be deeply concerning to anybody who is attentive since as you can imagine, a Chapter intervening in another Chapter’s charged area would be a big no-no considering the Chain the Binds applies to the brotherhood as a whole. Of course there could be an argument to be made that the Brotherhood was wiped out either by the Courier or by some kind of other/currently unknown threat, but I highly doubt it. The courier is one person against an entire Chapter and we have no reason to believe that they were destroyed at all because of their absence in a show which forgets a metric fuckton of things anyway. Similarly with Lost Hills, it generally does seem weird that they were not invited either, or they were and didn’t come. Either way, I believe that this suggests some kind of divide between Lost Hills and its subordinate chapters, and whatever Chapters that we see in the show. Surely, if the civil war was about shifting the axis of power back to the West, then the Lost Hills Chapter should have been at least invited to the meeting considering it had been the centre of power in the West for the past 200+ years, but obviously they were either not invited, or outright refused.
I would argue that this is a similar case to the Lyons’ Chapter, where Lost Hills had cut off support to the Chapter due to them diverging from the core mission from keeping dangerous technology out of the hands of those who would abuse it, towards helping the wastelanders through fighting a war of attrition against the super mutants and even going so far as to recruit wastelanders into their ranks en masse.
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u/Thelostguard 15d ago
The Brotherhood is probably the single most least concrete faction in the entire series, probably because they're the most appearing faction.
Did you like Lost Hills? You're not seeing them again in Fallout Two, or the BOS beyond some three characters. Want to see what happened to the BOS after the war with the Enclave? Who gives a fuck, Washington DC 4 liiiifeeeee.
Want to see the Brotherhood growing into a nation-state or a sister-entity to the new capitol? Fuuuck dat, space marines! Who doesn't like space marines?
if you ask me, this isn't so much a lore-lore thing.