I was just thinking about Fallout 4 and how 3/4 main factions are shit just on a conceptual level and the Railroad could've been done so much better. in the fallout 4 we got they're a bunch of losers who live in a basement and play pretend spy through makeshift symbols that are as secretive as "an arrow pointing left", which means there's something to the left. wow. not to mention their secret base password is their name, but that's been made fun of enough already.
desdemona is really boring but fine, tinker tom is a bad and annoying cartoon character, deacon's entertaining but somehow very boring at the same time, there's... idk doc carrington who doesn't like you, there's nothing to hold onto there, it's like everyone's a one dimensional piece of cardboard. they wanna free the synths and they have a bunch of synth members allegedly, though Glory is the main one and Deacon likes to pretend he is one to be ambiguous, but like... they're not a powerhouse, they're down because they lost their previous HQ, but they're shit spies too!! it feels like you're the only one who gets anything done for them and nobody else does anything? tinker tom wants to scan the weather all the time because he's a conspiracy theory nut and they have the magic robot who hands out fetch quests.
It's kind of expected when you're creating a player joinable faction in an RPG that they'd have a core set of beliefs, concrete politics and a well developed worldview, but the railroad (and the institute, and the minutemen) have fuck all for you to grasp or even think about? They wanna free the synths because they're slaves and that's the moral good thing to do, but nobody feels like they believe in anything or why they wanna do that? I get the strong feeling Desdemona had a tragic backstory that got cut for time going by her death line, Deacon has his defenses all the way up yet for some reason trusts you on a whim, Tinker Tom feels like how neurotypicals think of neurodivergent people and he's got nothing for any hint of a backstory, some others died on the HQ raid, I guess Glory is the only one I can see having an innate reason to join the cause but everyone's there because I guess they enjoy living in a shitty basement they never clean up and playing pretend spy with chalk symbols and dead drops.
nothing feels like it fundamentally works, it's so impressive bethesda did this with 3 out of four factions in the whole game and I don't even like how submissive you are to the brotherhood either, though they at least vaguely, barely make sense why they'd wanna kill synths, though Danse (who spoilers is himself a synth) saying that androids are as bad as the nuke is insane and insanely bad writing. it's like saying the black plague was just as bad slavery. they're two very different things, what the FUCK are you talking about Danse, also the only option you get to question the brotherhood at all is by saving Danse's ass, who turns on a whim to thinking "gosh I'm an abomination against humanity", to which you speech check him saying "but you've helped people" to which he says "you're right... I'm not an abomination after all", everyone's so fucking flat. cardboard, everywhere. I still maintaing that 3/4 endings requiring you to nuke boston for no god damn reason is so dumb, it's like... does nobody see that even if you take over the institute there's no reason to use the nuclear option since they've literally surrendered in every ending besides theirs? shaun's dying due to plot cancer, everyone's either dead or fleeing or surrendered, blowing up the institute and your fake robot son (not gonna get into that can or worms) is peak "nothing in this world matters or has consequences" writing. why not set off a nuke if the city's all fucked already, it's like bethesda's fallout world cannot ever get out of the dirt and radiation. even the faction that allegedly strives to do that nukes the institute for no reason either aaaaa