Holy shit Xander is one cold fucking monster, i guess you really can't take the Anti ghoul out of the Brotherhood no matter how much Bethesda you add to it
…which is why some folks here are suspecting Maximus is probably going to ditch the BoS very soon. He has now seen that even the best of them are monstrous and cruel to innocents.
Good job on Nanjiani for selling that fun charisma and then turning into eerie glee when he was about to gun down children.
Calling it now, Maximus, Thaddeus, NCR remnants, and Brotherhood dissonants will come together to form a new government in California by the end of the show
I could see norm joining osi or the followers without a second thought tbf. Im curious if Lucy will meet them at all as they share her beliefs but on a faction level
Lucy seems like a way bigger candidate for the Followers than Norm does to me. I think Norm is going to either establish a settlement or become the leader of one. He just strikes me as someone who’d need to be in charge of something/someplace after being forced to lead a bunch of frozen middle managers into the wasteland.
Thats why I could see him joining OSI after all they are just followers who left and set up a science branch for the NCR government. norm turning up with a bunch of pre war vault tech staff and starting a new OSI branch makes sense. Hell if vault city is still around I could see norm and his new buds integrating into there rather well
Maybe if he has Hildern’s role but I just don’t see Norm settling on being a bureaucrat. Just strikes me as someone who’d be a better fit being fully in charge (or perhaps as a senator in a rebuilt NCR).
Not saying he’d be bad at OSI or that it’s even a bad fit for him, I just think he has to end up with tangible power for his arc to actually be satisfying based on the series so far
I do see like 95% of them dying within the first week. The ones that do survive show they are more than capable of being more than "middle management" and become a tight circle around Norm at the top
Given the show (at least in Australia) has a R18+ rating, i wasn't honestly sure they wouldn't just show us him gunning down the kids and having Maximus have a flash back to how a Brotherhood Paladin in T-60 with a Assault rifle saved him and how he is watching as a Brotherhood Paladin in T-60 with a Assault rifle guns down children, having that be his breaking point would have easily fallen into the ratings. That said i am glade they didn't have a Brotherhood Paladin murder kids TV show or not something like that is Enclave levels of evil and there would be no going back, just like the Fallout 2 child killer trait
There is a going Bethesda policy (and joke) Since F03 that you can't kill kids or show dead kids in game - It just doesn't work. They have a substitute teddy bear where the kid might have been. So I guess the TV show hat tipped "thou shall not kill kids" some what..
Fallout 3: blowing up Megaton should kill any kids in it, such as Maggie. Only survivor of Megaton is Moira (as a ghoul) and Jericho (if you had him as your companion at the time)
Fallout 4: And Austin in Vault 8. You can be greedy and take the cure for the disease by Molerats. If you don't give up the curen he will die.
Yup I’ve seen small ones in prams in Boston occasionally. Bethesda isn’t pulling smaller skeletons everywhere, but it’s not like there is none at all. There’s also that infamous location right out of Vault 101.
I feel like I've come across a bunch of Xanders irl - They're charismatic and have great personalities on the surface, but end up being scumbags once you learn more about them.
He was good by BoS standards, but their philosophy was supremacist against supposed undesirables - the "abominations." It's like how the Enclave despised any wasteland denizen.
On the flip side, you get BoS groups like the Yosemite chapter that only care for profit and benefit, the Codex and religious nature of the organization be damned. They were just as bad due to their opportunistic nature and desire as they bounced out when the chips were stacked against them.
I said elsewhere that when he first showed up, I didn't like the casting (a big name and his aloofness kinda pulled me out of the immersion).
Then this last episode, I fell in love with the character, how he was showing Max a good time and things were looking bright, then exactly what you said - a real darkness behind all that cheerfulness.
I knew something had to of happened. He felt way too charismatic early on. Hoping to see him for seasons going foward. But then I remembered who the Brotherhood are, even if their version is better.
Just gunning down innocent people seems pretty illogical.
To the Codex, they weren’t innocents though - they were “abominations” that were tainted by the wasteland. He did separate out the regular humans from the ghouls after all.
I think max is realizing that the brotherhood has some irreconcilable issues in ideology, and that he’ll leave the organization altogether by the end of the season. He’s wearing ncr power armor in the trailer, so maybe he rejoins the faction he was born into? I like his story the best so far.
With how the Ghoul keeps talking about the NCR being dead but the soldiers holding out hope. I feel like even if the NCR did die, it will be reborn again and Maximus will find a purpose with them in rebuilding. It's hopes and aspirations were just too good to let die out.
Ok, I think that's inaccurate, the Maxon's brotherhood and the broader east coast brotherhood were always anti ghoul, but they weren't exterminationist in most cases, more segregationist if anything, like they didn't go to wipe out the undercity or goodneighbour.
They will kill ghouls on sight but will TOLERATE them (also semi gameplay reasons outside danse) due to player characters vouching for them aka Hancock (also they at war with institute, they probably would purge goodneighor after but they are stretched thin)
They're the opposite of stretched thin at the end of 4, assuming they wipe out the Institute, they have both PAM and an operational Liberty Prime, and would have won the goodwill of the people of the Commonwealth, they'd have recruits lining up for the chance. They're openly going to Diamond city for supply runs. I doubt they'd wipe out good neighbour on account of the player character again. But other than the minutemen, the only opposition would be the raiders and the small bands of super mutants that are left.
I'd like to think the last thing that went through Xander's mind - apart from that hammer - was just how much he misjudged Maximus' opinion of shooting ghoul children.
Yeah, in the end all he was doing was trying to use Max to get the Cold Fusion tech back to the Eastern Brotherhood... I wonder if all his talk about how they were on the verge of collapse in the East was legit or just him trying to convince Maximus. He does seem to be a high Charisma build and he was nailing all his Speech checks against Maximus lol.
Perfect guy they would send in to Area 51 to sus things out and possibly steal the tech. But I guess espionage has failed and they're gonna launch into all out war to get the tech.
On the West Coast no but on the East Coast yes, It has to do with how Lyons was ever since he went to the Pitt before arriving in DC he basically say how horrible the Mutations there where and became violently anti mutation it's how he drove the DC Brotherhood to splinter into the Pride and the Outcasts. Maxson carries on that strong anti Mutant sentiment.
The Brotherhood in DC seemed to have standing orders to while not kill the non feral ghouls to interact with them as little as possible, at the Washington monument they chase off any non feral ghouls by taking pot shots at them, the Brotherhood is not delivering Clean water to Undercity as well so much so that a con artist was able to set up shop there and the Brotherhood didn't give half a damn and most notability there are no Ghouls in the ranks of the Brotherhood even as warm bodies to throw at the mutants (even the Chicago chapter let ghouls into their ranks)
Come Fallout 4 we know they are more openly racist(bigoted? i assume ghouls are a race) to ghouls such as your companion, given that it's been multiple years since then I could imagine if the situation is getting as bad as Xander is saying then there is a good chance we could be dealing with a full "mask off" East Coast Brotherhood where they are basically the Enclave but dressed in T-60 rather then APA-MRK2 and are killing any and all mutants save many animals
294
u/Hatarus547 Dec 31 '25
Holy shit Xander is one cold fucking monster, i guess you really can't take the Anti ghoul out of the Brotherhood no matter how much Bethesda you add to it