A Word on The Brotherhood of Steel

A Word on The Brotherhood of Steel

	They aren’t the good guys. In Fallout 1, when you meet them and want to join they send you on a suicide mission they intend you to die on. You can find the corpses of the previous adventurers they sent on the same mission during your escapade. This is fine, you the player character wish to join these insular warrior-monks who hoard knowledge in order to affect change in the outer world, this is against their thesis of waiting for humanity to reassert itself above ground so that dangerous knowledge of weapons technology and other such scientific secrets in order so that an unready humanity doesn’t destroy itself again. They fail in this mission, not because their mission statement about protecting humanity from itself was wrong, but in the way they went about it. They are intensely human and relatable characters and I will explain why.

Greetings. It’s a fine day for learning.

	In fallout 1, the scribes of the brotherhood not just learn from history and research old world technology, but innovate and design new technologies. They are not disregarding history, but they have a head scribe who looks towards the future and seeks to have a bounty of knowledge to share with the new humanity who rises from the catastrophe that wracked the world and destroyed everybody on the surface. The other component of the brotherhood of steel is their militaristic arm, the paladins and knighthood of the brotherhood. These are battle hardened men and women who didn’t find themselves attracted to the world of research and the search for knowledge for its own sake, they defend the brotherhood and are generally the social wing of the brotherhood as well, if you were to talk to anybody affiliated with the brotherhood on the surface of the wasteland, chances are, you are probably speaking to a knight or paladin of the brotherhood. They are the watchers on the wall who keep an eye out for the rising of humanity so that they could lend a hand to the wasteland dwellers and uplift a society that is ready for the secrets that had previously destroyed mankind. The head paladin, head paladin rhombus is a gruff no nonsense man who knows he isn’t a scribe and knows what his strengths are, he won’t answer any questions that are too smart for him or above his station and directs you immediately to the person who can answer them. Leading the whole thing is the elder, and in fallout 1’s case, elder maxson. Elder maxson is a man who was born for his station, but sharp and friendly despite his militaristic bent. The brotherhood is truly a brotherhood, they care for each other and about their mission, they have intersecting personalities and interests like real human beings. The brotherhood of steel in fallout 1 never really goes out of its way to help you, but they did care about your efforts to improve the world. They only sought to stay a secret and watch for the revival that would truly never come in time for them. They failed in their mission because of their isolationism, leading to members of the brotherhood leaving their fraternal order to join other groups, such as the followers of the apocalypse, the enclave, and others. This failure is endemic to their character, and why I appreciate them as characters so much, as it is intensely human to be devoted to an ideal and fail in upholding it.

For Auld Lang Syne

	I said earlier that the brotherhood of steel aren’t the good guys of the wasteland, but they aren’t the bad guys either. They genuinely care about the direction humanity goes in and hope for a better tomorrow. The brotherhood was essentially founded because they discovered that the government was experimenting on prisoners of war and they found it unacceptable, how could these people be bad? I mean that maybe on some level, their actions aren’t always benevolent, but they are measured and careful responses to troubles in which they have to handle otherwise they will grow out of control. Specific examples include their eradication of the viper gang from the wasteland due to their religious zealotry and the danger they presented to the people of the wasteland. Their battle with the super mutants for control of the future, where the vault dweller was directed to kill the leader of the super mutants, otherwise known as the master, in their genocidal quest to alter the course of human evolution. Their siege on the nascent ncr as they attempted to gobble up every single piece of useful technology in their growth throughout the southwestern portion of the wasteland, such as the battle for helios 1.

Quick notes on the different iterations of the brotherhood throughout the games

fallout 1 – the most human and relatable version of the brotherhood, still wrong, but not evil or good
Fallout 2 – first signs of the failure of their ideology appear, but still good at heart and seeking the defeat of the enclave
Fallout 3 – fuck you nobody here had any character besides hurr durr we are isolationist and only hoard technology and never do any original research or learn or care about one another we are basically cookie cutter good guys who have a giant robot for no real reason besides todd coward thinking we needed a giant fucking setpiece for the end of the game
Fallout new vegas: very good and shows the outbranching of the result of their ideology taken to its logical conclusion and implementation in their war against the NCR and forced isolationism because of how dangerous the world has become for them
Fallout 4 – we are evil now boys, someone turn on flight of the Valkyries while I gun down some civillians because they might be synths, eat shit everybody wooooooooooo FUCKING HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO