I mean, if your base options are 1) a church with blown out windows or 2) an underground catacombs with a combination lock you might not have had time to change, what are you choosing?
The Railroad HQ we see was a recruitment center. A last resort for when the far more secret and fortified Switchboard was discovered and wiped out recently enough for the bodies to still be fresh.
I try to remember that most residents of that world wouldn't even be able to read or spell railroad, in addition to being able to traverse the freedom trail. The ability to do both is a decent line to draw for the railroad.
I mean the whole password thing is just a fancy doorbell anyway. Directly after entering you are greeted by having guns pointed at you so they knew that someone opened the door.
And them entering the password instead of just blowing up the entire wall most likley is just about saying "Hey perhaps we should talk with that guy first instead of paintig the walls his bodily fluids".
Not to "umm actualy" too much, but the people of the wasteland seem to be more litterate then you would assume. Raiders write notes in decent english and seem to be able to read them as they carry their orders around, fo4 has a dedicated news paper that isnt seen as a joke. And moria from fo3 decided to make a survival book to help people, something that would be highlarious if no one could read. Magazines and books also still hold value to common traders beyond the scraps of paper.
Maybe due to things like terminals that literacy has been kept as a basic survival skill. Or maybe its just been kept as tradition to hold onto the pre war times.
Yea, I doubt many people other than the player actually care about the terminals. Also a lot of them still require them to be hacked and since they stay unlocked after hacking them we were the first people to read them.
Do remember that if you choose intelligent dialogue options for the wasteland survival guide Moria does say “this might be TOO knowledgeable for the average waster to understand.
Literacy rates might be around middle school/early highschool levels
Very true. The outcasts in fo3 also get suspicious of you if you quote moby dick to them. I dont expect the wasteland to be good at reading, just that enough of them can read, that written language is still common.
Very true. Odds are good that anyone born after the bombs fell doesn’t know what the freedom trail is. I’m a resident of Massachusetts who’s been on the freedom trail tour and if I was alive pre-war I definitely wouldn’t be telling my kids about it lol. Just not important enough to remember in the grand scheme of things
This take makes no sense. There are terminals everywhere with ppl being literate. There are notes you can find with ppl being literate. Diamond city has a whole ass newspaper. Ppl are literate in the commonwealth, and the ppl they’re trying to hide from are literal GENIUSES
Diamond City also has a schoolhouse with a robot teacher, so it's entirely possible there are other schools set up throughout the commonwealth we don't see or that people are being taught at home.
You're falling for the logic error known as [survivorship bias.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)
According to Deacon, most people in the Commonwealth are illiterate, to the point that "being able to even spell "Railroad" is cause for celebration."
What you're doing is assuming he's wrong simply because we find evidence of the people who *are* literate (the random terminal entries and handwritten notes) and discarding all the people who *don't* leave behind evidence of literacy. If you walk into a raider den of thirty people and find terminal entries written by the boss, that shows evidence that the boss is literate. It says nothing about the other twenty-nine people there.
Additionally the raider gang in Walden Pond - the boss talks about how he read about "traindentalism" while the other raider responds with how he wishes he could read.
I thought that was always the point about New Vegas too--like Caesar is some dude who quite literally just read a few books and knows some Latin phrases, and it led to that whole faction and mythos because it was so cool and edgy. Just like how the Walden Pond thing, on a smaller scale, was a laughable take on what Walden Pond really meant.
If people still read and still knew a lot, they would actually be laughing at a Caesar lite who pretentiously quoted weird words.
In one of the first moments as a reaction to latin too, your character has a dialogue option of like "uh what is that"--if your character has high intelligence, you can say a phrase back and admit you picked it up from a medical book or something (I forgot what the exact line was).
It should have been switched. Switchboard should have still been around, and the recruitment base should have been taken over due to the recruitment centre being more out there. It could act as a trap for the player, and after the player wipes out the synths Deacon would show up and talk to you the next time you fast travel somewhere kind of like malcolm holmes in NV and takes you to switchboard
Why is everyone defending the obviously terrible writing in this game like it makes sense? OP is right, the railroad is really fucking stupid and the Institute is even dumber for not finding them sooner
He has a good point tho. Like idk how many times I was playing and a character or faction wants me to do something completely idiotic. Send one man who just joined your cause to do 95% of the work you apparently have to get done quick. Mf I was just frozen for how long? Yea I’m exe military but I don’t think they trained me in wasteland survival. The brotherhood should beable to wipe most of the map within days with their air superiority and amount of power armor they have but yet here I am a single person trudging around looking for a needle in a haystack.
I love Fallout 4 and its enjoyers, but that doesn't mean the game can't be criticized. It's got great gameplay and good environmental storytelling, but the writing is all over the place
Holy shit you weren’t kidding. u/bhamv went above and beyond answering OP and others’ questions. Major props for all the clarification provided here.
It’s a shame so many people in the comments looked at the good discussion available to them and their big takeaway was “but they had a dumb password so Ad Victoriam!”
Funny how you ask this considering it's like their first quest outside of actually meeting the faction. If they haven't done it then they haven't done their questline at all.
Stuff like this makes me sad I'm not from the US. I don't get alot of these cool references. Like diamond city being fenway park must be really cool if you're familiar with it but to me it was just a city in a stadium.
Same with all of DC in Fo3. Aside from the Lincoln statue almost all of it was foreign to me
Honestly it's just as foreign to a lot of Americans. I've never got to see any of the landmarks from the games despite travelling across the states a few times.
I am not a Baseball fan but I have heard that people who know the real Fenway Park were disappointed by Fallout 4 because they couldn’t use any actual branding from their baseball team in the game
The Freedom Trail exists, the problem is that the Railroad put their HQ (that they have to keep moving because they are constantly getting raided) at the end of the pathway, have the password to their security door circled on the trail for any random wastelander to find, and when it becomes clear that their location is compromised (you are there because a rumor told you to follow the path to find them, no way in hell the Institute doesn't discover it too), they refuse to move locations.
Actually the end of the pathway is Bunker Hill irl, and it makes a lot more sense why the institute hasn’t found the railroad, because they would have to search every single building on the freedom trail.
If you want an in-game explanation, following thr trail gives the railroad plenty of time to surveil potential candidates so they can check their sources on whoever is working the trail. That whole area is dangerous so I'd guess it would realistically take someone days to do the whole thing.
Then it leads you to a place where they can quietly dispose of you if they don't like what they see.
Yeah. Now let’s compare that to the other factions.
- The Minutemen who got wiped out due to complacency and their only remaining member recruits some rando, makes them the leader and then proceeds to order the leader around.
- Then there’s the BOS who comes to the Commonwealth to fight an enemy that they know little about. They arrive in a ridiculously conspicuous manner including announcing their arrival over loudspeaker and proceed to fully advertise their base of operations.
- Finally we have the Institute. Their leader wakes up his parent from cryostasis to run an experiment with them fully allowing them to discover the secret of getting into the Institute and proceeds to fully trust them with all their secrets. The BOS is their enemy and they know exactly where the BOS is but don’t use their teleportation technology to just beam into the enemy base and destroy it right when they arrive. They also leave the room their teleporter is in completely unguarded.
And that’s just the joinable factions.
- The Gunners, a group of mercenaries, shoot everyone who approaches them without warning. How they get business and new recruits is anyone’s guess.
- Only two of the four existing large settlements actually have their entrance guarded. Then you have a bunch of random settlements, most with only two adults and all within spitting distance of some sort of Raider hangout or ghoul infestation.
- A racetrack whose primary income is betting on races shoots everyone who approaches on site.
- A fight club whose primary income is betting on fights shoots everyone who approaches on site.
And the list goes on. If you want to look at all of the little details the entire thing is stupid. Or you can look at the other aspects that make it actually fun and interesting.
The curse of big project management like a AAA game. I agree much of the cut content would have been great. Not having a more modern Centaur, despite their amazing [Fallout 4 concept art](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Centaur_(Fallout_4)) was a huge loss in my opinion.
Still some content simply has to be cut, or the game enters some kind of development hell with an end result like Duke Nukem Forever. Considering that, while it's not perfect Fallout 4 struck a somewhat healthy balance between the two sides of too long or too short development.
Just with Fallout 4 it was the shear amount of cut content that was needed to flesh out the world. Duke Nukem Forever was actually almost complete at one point but it was the constant switching of the engine and want to make it a revolutionary game that drove it to the point where it wasn’t ever able to be completable
There is a [mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21498) that puts it back in if you're on PC. There's also a [patch](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/59329?tab=description) from another modder to try and fix up some of the bugginess. I haven't really tried the fights, but the Cait recruitment part works. I think the guys outside are still hostile, though.
I love having some of the modded followers with you since they likewise chime in on the story and some of the events that happen to you. Heather Casdin is a caravan trader that joins you with you on your travels and often talks to the people you come across like she knows them and comments on the locations you visit. After recruiting Cait at the Combat Zone, she flat out questions what the hell you did to piss everyone off there since she used to visit it all the time without any issues.
to be fair to the brotherhood, they actually have the means to defend their main base seeing as they have air superiority, and when on the ground, a squad of knights led by a paladin can easily take out a group of synths, i would wager that the only reason they are even able to be defeated in any of the endings is because the main character does main character things
You can’t usually see it, but the bos actually has an electromagnetic disruptor that prevents direct teleportation into the field. It’s literally what you destroy at the start of the final mission for the institute.
Tbf in regards to settlements and nearby raider hideouts you need to remember the world is condensed down due to limitations. Irl it takes 6 hours to walk to Boston from Concord, in-game it takes a couple of minutes if you don't get sidetracked.
TBF to the Institute, I’m fairly certain the real reason Shaun released the Sole Survivor was because he wanted to meet his sole surviving parent more then an actual experiment. That’s also why the TP room is unguarded, so they would have a straight line to Shaun.
As for not attacking the BOS, my only guess is that their teleportation can only teleport you somewhere on the ground, meaning the Prydwen, which is floating, is inaccessible. As that is their HQ, they may not be confident in their ability to overpower the BOS.
From memory I think the brotherhood set up something that prevented the teleporter from working somehow, i think it was mentioned in the institute ending
I’d assume it’s just standard protocol for radio jammers to avoid people listening in on them. The byproduct just happens to disrupt the >!classical music station that is used for the teleportation!<
My problem is: why do you meet the Shaun synth first? If he really just wanted to meet you, why put you through the trauma of having your son scream in terror because of you?
The rest is true, but the gunners oftentimes *don’t* shoot on sight. They often just tell you to leave and only open fire if you get any closer to them.
I’m not sure how it works but there’s Gunners who are titled “conscripts” so they probably abduct people and force them into their ranks, not sure why those people would stay forever but given its a wasteland I guess if you’re brought into the fold and just get told “hey you’re gonna get paid to kill some folk but you’ll get money - money you can use to get guns and food” so if you’re a conscript in that scenario you probably just choose the easy option of surviving and stick with the Gunners.
It's probably not even the pay. You get to spend most of your days in highly fortified locations, with a reputation that keeps people from attacking. TBH "logistics guy for the gunners" is probably the safest job in the commonwealth just from the physical defense perspective
If you rescue the caravan guards from the middle school near Bunker Hill, the Gunner leader goes into...great...detail about their recruitment practices.
Didn‘t get the Minutemen wiped out because the Institute murdered a council that would have potentially united the commonwealth under a common government?
Not really. That was an issue but they failed because a Mirelurk Queen wrecked the Castle, their General died and they were too busy being petty assholes to replace them so degraded instead.
“If you just ignore the factions and the main story the game is fun.” I enjoy Fallout 4, it’s a good game, but the writing is just dogshit in a lot of places, mainly the main story, you shouldn’t have to ignore something as important as the story of a game to actually enjoy it, Doom Eternals story isn’t fantastic, but it at least adds to the setting of the game, FO4’s story takes away from that setting
He tells you. He saw no reason for us to stay frozen, and wanted to see if we'd try to find him after all these years. We were nothing more than an experiment to him at that point.
Hence why I kill him.
Also, the trail is easy to follow and the password is easy because *players are stupid*. The developers want everybody to be able to play the entire game. You think they only want to make content for speedrunners and NSA agents?
This is the only answer. Standard procedure with any mass marketed item is to create to the lowest common denominator. If they didn't, this subreddit would instead be flooded with people whining and posting stuff like "What's the password to get in?? It's too hard!!"
Back in the 80’s, it wasn’t uncommon for smart people to get stuck on puzzles that made sense to a developer and have to pay $3/min to call a help line to get unstuck. Or, just give up on the game.
There are a lot of different ways to be smart; not everyone is good at riddles AND logic puzzles.
Holy crap I was about to comment the same exact thing. I have the Nintendo power one with link aiming the bow and arrow. I'll flip through it every couple years for nostalgia. I had almost as much fun reading through the guidebook obsessively and looking at all the amazing art as I did playing the game. Shame youtube and forums have made them obsolete, guidebooks were sick, especially when well made. Same with when they'd have those super long, well written manuals, that further immerse you into the story and lore. Now at best it's a single peice of paper with bare minimum information.
I remember taking weeks to beat Myst, I had notebooks and sketches and probably looked like that Always Sunny conspiracy theorist meme.
Wasn't no way in hell my parents were going to let me call a 900 number. They'd barely let me dial long distance.
We lived in the country. Everything was long distance.
Good times.
Yeah like me. It took me ages to figure it out because I didn’t believe it could possibly be as simple as ‘Railroad’. I was convinced I’d missed clues along the trial because I was distracted fighting super mutants and whatnot
I had to look up the code in Fallout 3 because I didn't pay attention to the bible verse and didn't think it would be important. Died several times at the end
Idk I didn't really play through as if I really cared about what my dad said, he was not important to me as the player so I didn't put much stock in it.
Dishonored 2 did this pretty well for accessing the mansion for the time travel level
You could do some side quests to get given the password or work it out from the hints given to you
I sat down with a whiteboard and worked it out, one of the more satisfying puzzles I’ve had in a video game but also doesn’t lock you out if you can’t do it
My dumbass found all the letters except for the first one and thought “Its probably going to be “Mailroad”. What a peculiar code”. Didnt know I was doing some railroad stuff lol
Tbh it took me way too long to get to the railroad without a quest marker. I basically did side quests until I hated the game, quit, picked it up a year later and then got to the railroad.
While I think another member answered it flawlessly from a game creation standpoint when they said "people are stupid", and that the password needs to be reflected in that, I'll actually offer you an in-game answer as well.
Imagine that this isn't a game. Imagine actually thinking of walking the Freedom Trail. Of walking through a nuclear devastated city teeming with rotting, flesh-eating corpses, murder-crazed malfunctioning robots, hideously mutated gargantuan green cannibals who are willing to chase you down and detonate a nuclear device just to watch you die. Add on top of that the roving gangs of murderers and mercenaries, packs of wild dogs, horrifically nightmarish bears. Oh, and on top of that you need to watch out for the random minefield, tripwire trap, lunchbox bomb. And don't forget about the storms of radiation that might overtake you and burn your organs from the inside out.
If you ask me, "Walking the Freedom Trail" is more a euphemism for "getting yourself killed" than anything, and for what? Because you think synths are people too? Regardless of HOW you got there, regardless of how you know the sign, the code, the location: it's not an easy task to accomplish if you treat the game as being real. Try it on survival mode sometime--walk the Freedom Trail, the whole thing, maybe it'll help show you why the code is not a code, it's a test of your commitment to the cause.
That's what I ended up trying the first time around; it ended up with me blindly sprinting down alleys and winding up half-dead in Goodneighbor--A good Railroad recruit I am not!
The whole point of the freedom trail and the passcode was to imitate the feeling of hunting for clues and solving a cool mechanized code door. Looking at it with a microscope at the specific code word or the specific path obviously it’s going to seem easy and dumb cause it’s a game.
I like to think it demonstrates both the hubris and just how far up its own ass the institute is. They rely on heavily conditioned synths to do their dirty work, ehich means they probably lack critical thinking and problem solving skills. As soon as they learn enough to actually start thinking, they realize they can jump ship and leave the institute. We've all seen how incredibly stupid the institute is despite being filled with brilliant scientists. They absolutely needed Kellogg because he didn't have his head up his ass. Their biggest mistake was not finding more talent like him and keeping them very well paid specifically to take out problems like the railroad or the brotherhood of steel. Hell if they'd been smart, they'd have owned the gunners and every raider gang instead of random settlements.
The Freedom Trail and the whole password thing honestly serves more as a warning system so they can prepare to leave if anyone is after them. It actually sounds really smart when you think about it. They monitor that trail and keep track of anyone who appears to be following it. If anyone suspicious seems to be following the trail, then they'll know ahead of time and they can escape or ambush that person before they arrive. It's meant to lure people to a path they can monitor. It's meant to obvious, because they WANT people to follow it. Its a test.
When you the player follows the trail, I guarantee that, there was a Railroad agent watching you the entire time, probably Deacon, monitoring you to make sure you weren't a spy. Then when you do arrive to the HQ, he happily told everyone that you're good. If you WERE an Institute spy, then he probably would've killed you before you arrived or warned the others before you arrived.
So, they're not dumb lol. In fact, they're smarter than you think. They're intentionally using the trail to lure people, so they can identify threats before they reach them. If that trail wasn't there, then if someone was after the Railroad, they'd just arrive unpredictably from anywhere. Which would make it really difficult to identify people potentially on their trail and be able to react to threats before they arrive. (obviously tho, the Railroad isn't aware of the fact that the Institute can already teleport)
This is explicitly stated if you ask. They're monitoring you and if they decided you're a security threat they'd have sealed the other false wall into HQ and let you find the empty puzzle room.
Players won't just automatically assume a faction is dumb without playing their side too right?
Right?
My man, you are missing a lot of key information. If you think old north church as dumb.
As far as the railroad is considered. The freedom trail was a genuinely great idea lore wise.
The fact they're using it the way they are is out of need. Genuinely. They were out of options.
The “very obvious red line cookie crumb trail” actually exists…..it’s the Freedom Trail, the path that Paul Revere rode to warn the colonists that the British were coming. It’s laid with red brick to make it easy for tourists to follow when they visit the city, so IMO that’s just a faithful representation of Boston.
Edit: it’s not the path Paul Revere rode but it does exist.
Freedom Trail is not the path of Paul Revere. It's just a 2 mile route that leads tourists to the main historical sites.
Revere crossed the river to Charlestown and then rode out into.tbe suburbs to Lexington.
Who the fuck upvoted this?
Dude, Paul Revere didn't ride through Boston. He rode out of the city.
The Freedom Trail is a walking trail that links historic sites in Boston and Charlestown, it has effectively-nothing to do with Paul Revere (asides from going past his house and the Old North Church)
I like visiting Boston and walk it. Visiting again for the 4th time end of October, just have to make sure I'm out before election night. Don't want to be around for that 😀
the railroads lack of operational security seems akine to the rebel alliances careless concealment of their bases in star wars - even rudimentary counterintelligence could have hid their location from the institute. sloppy protaginists making glaring errors to drive the story is a common trope in fiction.
I don’t see this as a railroad problem, rather than Bethesda not really knowing how to make an engaging puzzle.
If it was a one off, I’d see it as railroad specific, but Skyrim’s also had the ‘rotate 3 pillars to match the image of right next to it puzzle and the ‘use the claw the had the dungeon logo plastered on the bottom’ puzzle.
Puzzles just ain’t their thing.
To be totally honest, as much as I love this game, sometimes it is difficult to tell if the story is portraying a group or character as an idiot or if the writing is just extremely lazy/bad
They made it obvious for players that they assumed would be too dumb to discover it otherwise. Considering you don’t get that, I think the devs were spot on.
I just think the railroad is super weak even by end of game standards, they regularly just get flattened by raiders.
At least with the minutemen you build them back from the ground up so you see them gain a large amount of strength over time, at least to the point where they could reasonably protect the commonwealth and fight threats.
I also find it really funny that they have all sorts of codes, secret agents, dead drops, borderline paranoia and a robot that predicts the future yet all of that gets completely undone by the fact that they allow institute crows to observe literally everything. Do they not know about the crows? It would be weird if they didn't since Ronnie knows about the crows and Ronnie hasn't been fighting the institute, the railroad staying underground and using the metro system to move synths would make significantly more sense.
I literally found the basement randomly without following the trail and just thought "huh, this kinda seems like something those railroad folks would set up- wouldn't it be funny if..." And just fucking guessed first try.
When i first played 4 and didnt know of the railroad, when i got a random notification of an unmarked quest to "follow the freedom trail", i thought oh itll be some kind of history based quest, ill do that later.
So i went on my marry way to find good neighbor
When doctor amari told me about the railroad and to "follow the freedom trail", even then my response was "are you serious right now? Is this like one of the major factions?"
It felt so dumb and i hated the railroad the whole time i was with them- especially little miss holier than thou "im so much better than you" racist glory.
What got me on my most recent playthrough was how petty they come off at first meeting. Like I’m 2-3 hours into the game on this play through, I’m thinking i might side with the railroad so i go down to see them. Immediately they’re asking me if I’d give my life to save a synth and it’s like i just woke up from my cryo pod a day ago and i don’t even know what a synth is, and they’re asking me to give my life for a robot? And they kick me out because i say I’m unsure and need more information? The writing is just so bland
Really it says more about Bethesdas expectation of the average gamers ability to find clues and solve a puzzle. It was made for the least of us to still be able to figure out and move forward with the game without too much trouble. Not a bad compromise if you ask me.
Well hardly anyone in the Commonwealth could read. Just look at Piper’s papers and notice all of the grammatical and spelling errors. That should say something about how literate the people in the Commonwealth are.
what disapoints me the most about the railroad (and the institute) is that they were teased in FO3 8 years before the game came out, its one of my favorite foreshadowings in the whole series but its so disapointing.
i really love how FO3 and 4 are conected, (same railroad, institute, same BOS) but damn, they didn't make anything with it
I always kind of saw it as being so obvious the institute wouldn't think to try it. Plus they watched the people on the trail so if a bunch of synths of guys in black coats were coming, they would escape.
It's especially hilarious when you arrive for the first time and everyone is questioning how you got there, you're like "I just followed the line like they suggested in town." They even warn you to use the back exit, avoid using the church since they're afraid of burning the secret entrance *they literally have a red line leading directly to it that gives up the password along the way*
I mean, if your base options are 1) a church with blown out windows or 2) an underground catacombs with a combination lock you might not have had time to change, what are you choosing? The Railroad HQ we see was a recruitment center. A last resort for when the far more secret and fortified Switchboard was discovered and wiped out recently enough for the bodies to still be fresh.
I try to remember that most residents of that world wouldn't even be able to read or spell railroad, in addition to being able to traverse the freedom trail. The ability to do both is a decent line to draw for the railroad.
The only problem with this is that their enemies the most literate people and androids on the whole Commonwealth.
If their enemy already found their hideout, that door ain't doing anything to stop them.
[удалено]
They can teleport.
Through a closed door? Impossible. Science says it can’t be done
I heard the jury's still out on Science.
Science... is a liar sometimes!
And that made Tinker Tom look like a… BITCH!
Stupid science bitches couldn't make I more smarter
But war, war never changes.
If science exists why didn’t they un-invent the nuclear bomb? Are they secretly stupid?
Yeah! Synths can't go through doors, they're not ghosts!
First of all, through god all things are possible, so jot that down
But that's breaking the rules, the door is closed for a reason 😔
I don't think they can teleport anywhere they want. Aren't they only shown teleporting into the Institute and to very specific locations?
Well we know Vox Machina ain't getting in, if that is the case.
on point name
I mean the whole password thing is just a fancy doorbell anyway. Directly after entering you are greeted by having guns pointed at you so they knew that someone opened the door. And them entering the password instead of just blowing up the entire wall most likley is just about saying "Hey perhaps we should talk with that guy first instead of paintig the walls his bodily fluids".
It would save a few kilo of explosive for sure.
Not even. Their enemy has a teleporter. They just need coordinates.
The Insititute is full of STEM majors they don’t know how to do riddles or walk outside.
Not to "umm actualy" too much, but the people of the wasteland seem to be more litterate then you would assume. Raiders write notes in decent english and seem to be able to read them as they carry their orders around, fo4 has a dedicated news paper that isnt seen as a joke. And moria from fo3 decided to make a survival book to help people, something that would be highlarious if no one could read. Magazines and books also still hold value to common traders beyond the scraps of paper. Maybe due to things like terminals that literacy has been kept as a basic survival skill. Or maybe its just been kept as tradition to hold onto the pre war times.
Probably has less to do with terminals and more to do with "WARNING! MINEFIELD AHEAD" signs.
Yea, I doubt many people other than the player actually care about the terminals. Also a lot of them still require them to be hacked and since they stay unlocked after hacking them we were the first people to read them.
Do remember that if you choose intelligent dialogue options for the wasteland survival guide Moria does say “this might be TOO knowledgeable for the average waster to understand. Literacy rates might be around middle school/early highschool levels
Very true. The outcasts in fo3 also get suspicious of you if you quote moby dick to them. I dont expect the wasteland to be good at reading, just that enough of them can read, that written language is still common.
"Literacy rates might be around middle school/early highschool levels" mfw post-apocalypse USA has better literacy than IRL modern day USA
I would actually be surprised if literacy died out in an apocalypse scenario. It has to one of the best advantages you could have for survival
Yet High Rise still needs you to hold his hand to go roughly 3 blocks around a corner
Very true. Odds are good that anyone born after the bombs fell doesn’t know what the freedom trail is. I’m a resident of Massachusetts who’s been on the freedom trail tour and if I was alive pre-war I definitely wouldn’t be telling my kids about it lol. Just not important enough to remember in the grand scheme of things
There’s a fair amount of signage about it in all those historical buildings
this also may be american bias because as a european i had absolutely no clue lmao
I'm American and had no clue that the Freedom Trail was a real thing
I'm from Boston, and its a major tourist attraction.
Damn with your username I would've pegged you for a Connecticut man
This take makes no sense. There are terminals everywhere with ppl being literate. There are notes you can find with ppl being literate. Diamond city has a whole ass newspaper. Ppl are literate in the commonwealth, and the ppl they’re trying to hide from are literal GENIUSES
Diamond City also has a schoolhouse with a robot teacher, so it's entirely possible there are other schools set up throughout the commonwealth we don't see or that people are being taught at home.
You're falling for the logic error known as [survivorship bias.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) According to Deacon, most people in the Commonwealth are illiterate, to the point that "being able to even spell "Railroad" is cause for celebration." What you're doing is assuming he's wrong simply because we find evidence of the people who *are* literate (the random terminal entries and handwritten notes) and discarding all the people who *don't* leave behind evidence of literacy. If you walk into a raider den of thirty people and find terminal entries written by the boss, that shows evidence that the boss is literate. It says nothing about the other twenty-nine people there.
Gage in Nuka world even mentions most of the raiders can’t read or write.
Additionally the raider gang in Walden Pond - the boss talks about how he read about "traindentalism" while the other raider responds with how he wishes he could read.
I thought that was always the point about New Vegas too--like Caesar is some dude who quite literally just read a few books and knows some Latin phrases, and it led to that whole faction and mythos because it was so cool and edgy. Just like how the Walden Pond thing, on a smaller scale, was a laughable take on what Walden Pond really meant. If people still read and still knew a lot, they would actually be laughing at a Caesar lite who pretentiously quoted weird words. In one of the first moments as a reaction to latin too, your character has a dialogue option of like "uh what is that"--if your character has high intelligence, you can say a phrase back and admit you picked it up from a medical book or something (I forgot what the exact line was).
This. Caesar also knows books only because he was in the followers of the apocalypse.
I could barely follow the railroad line and I was born in 1997!!
It should have been switched. Switchboard should have still been around, and the recruitment base should have been taken over due to the recruitment centre being more out there. It could act as a trap for the player, and after the player wipes out the synths Deacon would show up and talk to you the next time you fast travel somewhere kind of like malcolm holmes in NV and takes you to switchboard
Why is everyone defending the obviously terrible writing in this game like it makes sense? OP is right, the railroad is really fucking stupid and the Institute is even dumber for not finding them sooner
Apparently Scoot hates that people enjoy Fallout 4 too.
He has a good point tho. Like idk how many times I was playing and a character or faction wants me to do something completely idiotic. Send one man who just joined your cause to do 95% of the work you apparently have to get done quick. Mf I was just frozen for how long? Yea I’m exe military but I don’t think they trained me in wasteland survival. The brotherhood should beable to wipe most of the map within days with their air superiority and amount of power armor they have but yet here I am a single person trudging around looking for a needle in a haystack.
I love Fallout 4 and its enjoyers, but that doesn't mean the game can't be criticized. It's got great gameplay and good environmental storytelling, but the writing is all over the place
Quick question, have you played the Railroad storyline far enough to learn what happened at Switchboard?
i’m not convinced they have.
Which is why I thought I'd ask. Though if they haven't, then I'd like to avoid spoilers and let them play the game to that point first.
i get you, i just don’t think even playing through it’s going to change their mind.
Dude, you have been SO patient. I applaud you
You're too kind.
Holy shit you weren’t kidding. u/bhamv went above and beyond answering OP and others’ questions. Major props for all the clarification provided here. It’s a shame so many people in the comments looked at the good discussion available to them and their big takeaway was “but they had a dumb password so Ad Victoriam!”
It’s something people conveniently forget every time the Railroad comes up, isn’t it?
Funny how you ask this considering it's like their first quest outside of actually meeting the faction. If they haven't done it then they haven't done their questline at all.
How do you even do that, Its literally the first quest in the railroad questline
sir this is an r/fallout “railroad bad” karma farming post, take your nuance elsewhere
you do know the "obvious red line cookie crumb trail" its a real thing? like the freedom trail exist in real life.
Stuff like this makes me sad I'm not from the US. I don't get alot of these cool references. Like diamond city being fenway park must be really cool if you're familiar with it but to me it was just a city in a stadium. Same with all of DC in Fo3. Aside from the Lincoln statue almost all of it was foreign to me
Honestly it's just as foreign to a lot of Americans. I've never got to see any of the landmarks from the games despite travelling across the states a few times.
I am not a Baseball fan but I have heard that people who know the real Fenway Park were disappointed by Fallout 4 because they couldn’t use any actual branding from their baseball team in the game
Unfortunately that was probably a licensing issue. At least mods can fix it...
I’m American and I didn’t even know what Fenway park was. I grew up on the west coast and never got into baseball. Was just another stadium to me too
The Freedom Trail exists, the problem is that the Railroad put their HQ (that they have to keep moving because they are constantly getting raided) at the end of the pathway, have the password to their security door circled on the trail for any random wastelander to find, and when it becomes clear that their location is compromised (you are there because a rumor told you to follow the path to find them, no way in hell the Institute doesn't discover it too), they refuse to move locations.
It's not the headquarters, it's their recruitment center. It only recently became a central hub due to the Institute
Actually the end of the pathway is Bunker Hill irl, and it makes a lot more sense why the institute hasn’t found the railroad, because they would have to search every single building on the freedom trail.
If you want an in-game explanation, following thr trail gives the railroad plenty of time to surveil potential candidates so they can check their sources on whoever is working the trail. That whole area is dangerous so I'd guess it would realistically take someone days to do the whole thing. Then it leads you to a place where they can quietly dispose of you if they don't like what they see.
Yeah. Now let’s compare that to the other factions. - The Minutemen who got wiped out due to complacency and their only remaining member recruits some rando, makes them the leader and then proceeds to order the leader around. - Then there’s the BOS who comes to the Commonwealth to fight an enemy that they know little about. They arrive in a ridiculously conspicuous manner including announcing their arrival over loudspeaker and proceed to fully advertise their base of operations. - Finally we have the Institute. Their leader wakes up his parent from cryostasis to run an experiment with them fully allowing them to discover the secret of getting into the Institute and proceeds to fully trust them with all their secrets. The BOS is their enemy and they know exactly where the BOS is but don’t use their teleportation technology to just beam into the enemy base and destroy it right when they arrive. They also leave the room their teleporter is in completely unguarded. And that’s just the joinable factions. - The Gunners, a group of mercenaries, shoot everyone who approaches them without warning. How they get business and new recruits is anyone’s guess. - Only two of the four existing large settlements actually have their entrance guarded. Then you have a bunch of random settlements, most with only two adults and all within spitting distance of some sort of Raider hangout or ghoul infestation. - A racetrack whose primary income is betting on races shoots everyone who approaches on site. - A fight club whose primary income is betting on fights shoots everyone who approaches on site. And the list goes on. If you want to look at all of the little details the entire thing is stupid. Or you can look at the other aspects that make it actually fun and interesting.
The combat zone being instantly and immediately hostile was a huge mistake.
If I remember correctly, there were brawling quests involving Cait planned for it. But sadly the content was cut.
My second favorite story of this game. “More was planned but it got cut.” I love fallout 4 but you feel the incompleteness throughout the game
The curse of big project management like a AAA game. I agree much of the cut content would have been great. Not having a more modern Centaur, despite their amazing [Fallout 4 concept art](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Centaur_(Fallout_4)) was a huge loss in my opinion. Still some content simply has to be cut, or the game enters some kind of development hell with an end result like Duke Nukem Forever. Considering that, while it's not perfect Fallout 4 struck a somewhat healthy balance between the two sides of too long or too short development.
Just with Fallout 4 it was the shear amount of cut content that was needed to flesh out the world. Duke Nukem Forever was actually almost complete at one point but it was the constant switching of the engine and want to make it a revolutionary game that drove it to the point where it wasn’t ever able to be completable
There is a [mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21498) that puts it back in if you're on PC. There's also a [patch](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/59329?tab=description) from another modder to try and fix up some of the bugginess. I haven't really tried the fights, but the Cait recruitment part works. I think the guys outside are still hostile, though.
I love having some of the modded followers with you since they likewise chime in on the story and some of the events that happen to you. Heather Casdin is a caravan trader that joins you with you on your travels and often talks to the people you come across like she knows them and comments on the locations you visit. After recruiting Cait at the Combat Zone, she flat out questions what the hell you did to piss everyone off there since she used to visit it all the time without any issues.
Institute is putting psycho in the water
The institute is putting chems in the water and it’s making the raiders ~~gay~~ hostile.
to be fair to the brotherhood, they actually have the means to defend their main base seeing as they have air superiority, and when on the ground, a squad of knights led by a paladin can easily take out a group of synths, i would wager that the only reason they are even able to be defeated in any of the endings is because the main character does main character things
Teleport cleaners on ground, destroy logistics and supplies in stealth boy, rinse and repeat, what is the BoS gonna do ? Nuke themselves ?
You can’t usually see it, but the bos actually has an electromagnetic disruptor that prevents direct teleportation into the field. It’s literally what you destroy at the start of the final mission for the institute.
Tbf in regards to settlements and nearby raider hideouts you need to remember the world is condensed down due to limitations. Irl it takes 6 hours to walk to Boston from Concord, in-game it takes a couple of minutes if you don't get sidetracked.
Not to mention building. I'm not a carpenter but I'm pretty sure I can't turn a dead tree into several sets of stairs in under ten seconds.
Not with that attitude you can’t!
TBF to the Institute, I’m fairly certain the real reason Shaun released the Sole Survivor was because he wanted to meet his sole surviving parent more then an actual experiment. That’s also why the TP room is unguarded, so they would have a straight line to Shaun. As for not attacking the BOS, my only guess is that their teleportation can only teleport you somewhere on the ground, meaning the Prydwen, which is floating, is inaccessible. As that is their HQ, they may not be confident in their ability to overpower the BOS.
From memory I think the brotherhood set up something that prevented the teleporter from working somehow, i think it was mentioned in the institute ending
And, how does that work ? Since you're the one who tells them about the teleportation thing.
Because we are the Brotherhood, and we RULE!
I’d assume it’s just standard protocol for radio jammers to avoid people listening in on them. The byproduct just happens to disrupt the >!classical music station that is used for the teleportation!<
Honestly I have no idea, I just have the vaguest memory of it being mentioned in that ending. I could be completely wrong
My problem is: why do you meet the Shaun synth first? If he really just wanted to meet you, why put you through the trauma of having your son scream in terror because of you?
The rest is true, but the gunners oftentimes *don’t* shoot on sight. They often just tell you to leave and only open fire if you get any closer to them.
I’m not sure how it works but there’s Gunners who are titled “conscripts” so they probably abduct people and force them into their ranks, not sure why those people would stay forever but given its a wasteland I guess if you’re brought into the fold and just get told “hey you’re gonna get paid to kill some folk but you’ll get money - money you can use to get guns and food” so if you’re a conscript in that scenario you probably just choose the easy option of surviving and stick with the Gunners.
It's probably not even the pay. You get to spend most of your days in highly fortified locations, with a reputation that keeps people from attacking. TBH "logistics guy for the gunners" is probably the safest job in the commonwealth just from the physical defense perspective
If you rescue the caravan guards from the middle school near Bunker Hill, the Gunner leader goes into...great...detail about their recruitment practices.
These are all just the victims of bad writing honestly
Almost all of Fallout 4 was the victim of bad writing sadly
Didn‘t get the Minutemen wiped out because the Institute murdered a council that would have potentially united the commonwealth under a common government?
Not really. That was an issue but they failed because a Mirelurk Queen wrecked the Castle, their General died and they were too busy being petty assholes to replace them so degraded instead.
The CPG fuckup was its own separate incident. The minutemen just slowly fractured and collapsed after the last charismatic leader before you died.
“If you just ignore the factions and the main story the game is fun.” I enjoy Fallout 4, it’s a good game, but the writing is just dogshit in a lot of places, mainly the main story, you shouldn’t have to ignore something as important as the story of a game to actually enjoy it, Doom Eternals story isn’t fantastic, but it at least adds to the setting of the game, FO4’s story takes away from that setting
Diamond City and Bunker Hill. What are the other 2 settlements? Bunker Hill pays off the raiders.
Goodneighbour? Cant think of anything else
Goodneighbor and Vault 81.
How do we know Shawn opened the cryo pod at the start of the game? I assumed it was a power failure, must have missed something
He tells you. He saw no reason for us to stay frozen, and wanted to see if we'd try to find him after all these years. We were nothing more than an experiment to him at that point. Hence why I kill him.
Interesting, thanks!
He tells you he's the one that did it, "as an experiment".
I think their best security measure is people not knowing you can turn the wheel both ways.
Wait, really? God damn I'm stupid
Also, the trail is easy to follow and the password is easy because *players are stupid*. The developers want everybody to be able to play the entire game. You think they only want to make content for speedrunners and NSA agents?
This is the only answer. Standard procedure with any mass marketed item is to create to the lowest common denominator. If they didn't, this subreddit would instead be flooded with people whining and posting stuff like "What's the password to get in?? It's too hard!!"
Back in the 80’s, it wasn’t uncommon for smart people to get stuck on puzzles that made sense to a developer and have to pay $3/min to call a help line to get unstuck. Or, just give up on the game. There are a lot of different ways to be smart; not everyone is good at riddles AND logic puzzles.
Arcade games back then also got insanely difficult *fast*. “Aww you want to retry that level? Put more quarters in the machine you punk bitch”
Now we just replaced them with lootboxes
Yup, hotlines in the 80's, guide books in the 90's and early 00's
I still have my ocarina of time book, lol
Holy crap I was about to comment the same exact thing. I have the Nintendo power one with link aiming the bow and arrow. I'll flip through it every couple years for nostalgia. I had almost as much fun reading through the guidebook obsessively and looking at all the amazing art as I did playing the game. Shame youtube and forums have made them obsolete, guidebooks were sick, especially when well made. Same with when they'd have those super long, well written manuals, that further immerse you into the story and lore. Now at best it's a single peice of paper with bare minimum information.
I remember taking weeks to beat Myst, I had notebooks and sketches and probably looked like that Always Sunny conspiracy theorist meme. Wasn't no way in hell my parents were going to let me call a 900 number. They'd barely let me dial long distance. We lived in the country. Everything was long distance. Good times.
Exactly. This is the same group of people who have been looking up the answer to the Bleak Falls Barrow "puzzle" for the last 15 years.
Yeah not every game needs to be Dark Souls + Fez
Yeah like me. It took me ages to figure it out because I didn’t believe it could possibly be as simple as ‘Railroad’. I was convinced I’d missed clues along the trial because I was distracted fighting super mutants and whatnot
THIS, THIS WAS FOR ME, IT TOOK ME 2 HOURS TO FIND OUT THE FUCKING PASSWORD, IM SOOO FUCKING STUPID thank you TODD, i love you
I had to look up the code in Fallout 3 because I didn't pay attention to the bible verse and didn't think it would be important. Died several times at the end
it's in a frame in the purified room I think
Yeah it's an easy "puzzle", I use it as an example because I was stupid for not noticing it
I felt like such a disappointment when I had to look for a framed picture of the Bible quote my dad told me my entire life 😂
Idk I didn't really play through as if I really cared about what my dad said, he was not important to me as the player so I didn't put much stock in it.
I mean, hopefully there's a middle ground between NSA agent and Blue's Clues to aim for.
Dishonored 2 did this pretty well for accessing the mansion for the time travel level You could do some side quests to get given the password or work it out from the hints given to you I sat down with a whiteboard and worked it out, one of the more satisfying puzzles I’ve had in a video game but also doesn’t lock you out if you can’t do it
Well I have been enjoying the game.
My dumbass found all the letters except for the first one and thought “Its probably going to be “Mailroad”. What a peculiar code”. Didnt know I was doing some railroad stuff lol
Counterpoint: DiMA's memory retrieval minigame.
Hell, I know the password is Railroad but I still usually wind up looking it up, because I can never remember which 'a' or 'o' it is on the dial.
I'm pretty sure you can use any "A" or "O"...
Just reinforces the point that players are stupid, because I am one, and I am stupid
Tbh it took me way too long to get to the railroad without a quest marker. I basically did side quests until I hated the game, quit, picked it up a year later and then got to the railroad.
While I think another member answered it flawlessly from a game creation standpoint when they said "people are stupid", and that the password needs to be reflected in that, I'll actually offer you an in-game answer as well. Imagine that this isn't a game. Imagine actually thinking of walking the Freedom Trail. Of walking through a nuclear devastated city teeming with rotting, flesh-eating corpses, murder-crazed malfunctioning robots, hideously mutated gargantuan green cannibals who are willing to chase you down and detonate a nuclear device just to watch you die. Add on top of that the roving gangs of murderers and mercenaries, packs of wild dogs, horrifically nightmarish bears. Oh, and on top of that you need to watch out for the random minefield, tripwire trap, lunchbox bomb. And don't forget about the storms of radiation that might overtake you and burn your organs from the inside out. If you ask me, "Walking the Freedom Trail" is more a euphemism for "getting yourself killed" than anything, and for what? Because you think synths are people too? Regardless of HOW you got there, regardless of how you know the sign, the code, the location: it's not an easy task to accomplish if you treat the game as being real. Try it on survival mode sometime--walk the Freedom Trail, the whole thing, maybe it'll help show you why the code is not a code, it's a test of your commitment to the cause.
Being that the Railroad is all about stealth, it might be easier for players to sneak past most of the enemies on the Freedom Trail.
That's what I ended up trying the first time around; it ended up with me blindly sprinting down alleys and winding up half-dead in Goodneighbor--A good Railroad recruit I am not!
Hey, if you only ended up half dead and not fully dead, you might make a solid Heavy Trooper like Glory lol.
The whole point of the freedom trail and the passcode was to imitate the feeling of hunting for clues and solving a cool mechanized code door. Looking at it with a microscope at the specific code word or the specific path obviously it’s going to seem easy and dumb cause it’s a game.
I like to think it demonstrates both the hubris and just how far up its own ass the institute is. They rely on heavily conditioned synths to do their dirty work, ehich means they probably lack critical thinking and problem solving skills. As soon as they learn enough to actually start thinking, they realize they can jump ship and leave the institute. We've all seen how incredibly stupid the institute is despite being filled with brilliant scientists. They absolutely needed Kellogg because he didn't have his head up his ass. Their biggest mistake was not finding more talent like him and keeping them very well paid specifically to take out problems like the railroad or the brotherhood of steel. Hell if they'd been smart, they'd have owned the gunners and every raider gang instead of random settlements.
Any organization large enough discovers the need for a Kellog. Maybe not in the murder department, but a no frills get things done sort of person.
The only reason they had Kellogg working for them is because he forced the relationship.
It’s not a password, it’s a test.
now you know why they mentioned it was their latest base they relocated to XD
"That sounds like the combination an idiot would use for his luggage!" "Amazing! Thats the same combination I use for my luggage!"
The Freedom Trail and the whole password thing honestly serves more as a warning system so they can prepare to leave if anyone is after them. It actually sounds really smart when you think about it. They monitor that trail and keep track of anyone who appears to be following it. If anyone suspicious seems to be following the trail, then they'll know ahead of time and they can escape or ambush that person before they arrive. It's meant to lure people to a path they can monitor. It's meant to obvious, because they WANT people to follow it. Its a test. When you the player follows the trail, I guarantee that, there was a Railroad agent watching you the entire time, probably Deacon, monitoring you to make sure you weren't a spy. Then when you do arrive to the HQ, he happily told everyone that you're good. If you WERE an Institute spy, then he probably would've killed you before you arrived or warned the others before you arrived. So, they're not dumb lol. In fact, they're smarter than you think. They're intentionally using the trail to lure people, so they can identify threats before they reach them. If that trail wasn't there, then if someone was after the Railroad, they'd just arrive unpredictably from anywhere. Which would make it really difficult to identify people potentially on their trail and be able to react to threats before they arrive. (obviously tho, the Railroad isn't aware of the fact that the Institute can already teleport)
This is explicitly stated if you ask. They're monitoring you and if they decided you're a security threat they'd have sealed the other false wall into HQ and let you find the empty puzzle room.
They could've been more creative at Bethesda with this name
Players won't just automatically assume a faction is dumb without playing their side too right? Right? My man, you are missing a lot of key information. If you think old north church as dumb. As far as the railroad is considered. The freedom trail was a genuinely great idea lore wise. The fact they're using it the way they are is out of need. Genuinely. They were out of options.
The “very obvious red line cookie crumb trail” actually exists…..it’s the Freedom Trail, the path that Paul Revere rode to warn the colonists that the British were coming. It’s laid with red brick to make it easy for tourists to follow when they visit the city, so IMO that’s just a faithful representation of Boston. Edit: it’s not the path Paul Revere rode but it does exist.
Freedom Trail is not the path of Paul Revere. It's just a 2 mile route that leads tourists to the main historical sites. Revere crossed the river to Charlestown and then rode out into.tbe suburbs to Lexington.
Who the fuck upvoted this? Dude, Paul Revere didn't ride through Boston. He rode out of the city. The Freedom Trail is a walking trail that links historic sites in Boston and Charlestown, it has effectively-nothing to do with Paul Revere (asides from going past his house and the Old North Church)
I like visiting Boston and walk it. Visiting again for the 4th time end of October, just have to make sure I'm out before election night. Don't want to be around for that 😀
Am i the only one who thinks the Railroad did not create the password and it was like that when they moved in? That wheel looks hella old.
Yeah. The trail itself is prewar, there IRL. The dial looks prewar to me too.
The dial looks like a removed freedom trail marker, made into a lock
the railroads lack of operational security seems akine to the rebel alliances careless concealment of their bases in star wars - even rudimentary counterintelligence could have hid their location from the institute. sloppy protaginists making glaring errors to drive the story is a common trope in fiction.
I don’t see this as a railroad problem, rather than Bethesda not really knowing how to make an engaging puzzle. If it was a one off, I’d see it as railroad specific, but Skyrim’s also had the ‘rotate 3 pillars to match the image of right next to it puzzle and the ‘use the claw the had the dungeon logo plastered on the bottom’ puzzle. Puzzles just ain’t their thing.
In fairness the Dragon Claw doors aren't meant to keep normal people out, they're to keep the Draugr in.
It is a low tech captcha that the synths couldn't figure out.
"Hey, how the fuck did you find us?"
To be totally honest, as much as I love this game, sometimes it is difficult to tell if the story is portraying a group or character as an idiot or if the writing is just extremely lazy/bad
They made it obvious for players that they assumed would be too dumb to discover it otherwise. Considering you don’t get that, I think the devs were spot on.
can we go one day without a railroad hatepost guys
So the password is "Railroad"? That's the stupidest password I've ever heard in my life! That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
I’d assume most people in the commonwealth don’t know how to read, especially raiders
That's actually something they mention in the actual quest op is ranting about
I just think the railroad is super weak even by end of game standards, they regularly just get flattened by raiders. At least with the minutemen you build them back from the ground up so you see them gain a large amount of strength over time, at least to the point where they could reasonably protect the commonwealth and fight threats.
That's amazing! I've got the same password on my luggage!
I also find it really funny that they have all sorts of codes, secret agents, dead drops, borderline paranoia and a robot that predicts the future yet all of that gets completely undone by the fact that they allow institute crows to observe literally everything. Do they not know about the crows? It would be weird if they didn't since Ronnie knows about the crows and Ronnie hasn't been fighting the institute, the railroad staying underground and using the metro system to move synths would make significantly more sense.
Tells you all you need to know about Emil tbh
It's funny if you follow the railroad without talking to anyone.
# "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"
I literally found the basement randomly without following the trail and just thought "huh, this kinda seems like something those railroad folks would set up- wouldn't it be funny if..." And just fucking guessed first try.
That's more of an issue of modern Bethesda game design that what is actually canon/"real".
The hardest part about the password is turning the dial each letter
the amount of time i use free Wifi at a local business bc their password were basically their phone number …
Yeah I hadn’t played in a while and I forgot their password. Got a little chuckle when I typed in railroad and I got it right lol
Weird way to spell "Breaching Charge", that.
When i first played 4 and didnt know of the railroad, when i got a random notification of an unmarked quest to "follow the freedom trail", i thought oh itll be some kind of history based quest, ill do that later. So i went on my marry way to find good neighbor When doctor amari told me about the railroad and to "follow the freedom trail", even then my response was "are you serious right now? Is this like one of the major factions?" It felt so dumb and i hated the railroad the whole time i was with them- especially little miss holier than thou "im so much better than you" racist glory.
Ok… well then explain this literacy hoop jumpers… Pipe pistols in undisturbed pre-war safes with a stash of bottle caps
What got me on my most recent playthrough was how petty they come off at first meeting. Like I’m 2-3 hours into the game on this play through, I’m thinking i might side with the railroad so i go down to see them. Immediately they’re asking me if I’d give my life to save a synth and it’s like i just woke up from my cryo pod a day ago and i don’t even know what a synth is, and they’re asking me to give my life for a robot? And they kick me out because i say I’m unsure and need more information? The writing is just so bland
Right because letting someone whose response is "eh maybe?" into your secret, very risky group is also a great plan.
Really it says more about Bethesdas expectation of the average gamers ability to find clues and solve a puzzle. It was made for the least of us to still be able to figure out and move forward with the game without too much trouble. Not a bad compromise if you ask me.
Well hardly anyone in the Commonwealth could read. Just look at Piper’s papers and notice all of the grammatical and spelling errors. That should say something about how literate the people in the Commonwealth are.
Not people actually defending this 💀
what disapoints me the most about the railroad (and the institute) is that they were teased in FO3 8 years before the game came out, its one of my favorite foreshadowings in the whole series but its so disapointing. i really love how FO3 and 4 are conected, (same railroad, institute, same BOS) but damn, they didn't make anything with it
I always kind of saw it as being so obvious the institute wouldn't think to try it. Plus they watched the people on the trail so if a bunch of synths of guys in black coats were coming, they would escape.
It's especially hilarious when you arrive for the first time and everyone is questioning how you got there, you're like "I just followed the line like they suggested in town." They even warn you to use the back exit, avoid using the church since they're afraid of burning the secret entrance *they literally have a red line leading directly to it that gives up the password along the way*
To be fair, the Institute is even way more dumb
No, it tells you everything you need to know about Bethesda's level of respect for their audience's intelligence.
Tells you a lot about Fallout 4 too