[SPOILERS] Fallout 4′s Plot Dropped the Ball
Killing Sarah Lyons off-screen between FO3 and FO4 was a huge, huge mistake. I suspect that this was because fans balked at the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood being far less insular than the West Coasters. They wanted to run into the Brotherhood of old and Bethesda made the actual smart play and didn’t give them that.
Kudos to Obsidian for deconstructing the West Coast Brotherhood in Fallout: New Vegas and showing that following their path led to war with the NCR and their defeat due to having so few numbers, an unavoidable consequence of their xenophobic nature. They also would have a habit of pissing off locals by confiscating technology. Vault 22, Vault 34 and the NCR’s Office of Science and Industry, showed that the Brotherhood’s traditional model was doomed to failure. Ultimately the West Coast chapters were doomed to decline into irrelevance.
Alas, Bethesda gave into fan pressure and walked this all back, paving the way for young Arthur Maxson to soak up the bullshit from traditionalist Brotherhood factions. And so the Brotherhood reverted back to its old ways, with a slight twist in that they still manage to allow one or two outsiders into the group. What a shame.
Here is what Fallout 4 could have been like with Sarah Lyons alive: to be specific, this is how I would have plotted the story.
Things would have started to go sideways for Elder Arthur Maxson as of The Molecular Level. Upon getting the Courser chip’s encryption cracked by Tinker Tom, the character would run into Veronica Santangelo of Fallout: New Vegas right outside the church. She would ask the player (Sole Survivor) to hear her out. Sarah Lyons is not dead, she has been in hiding because Brotherhood traitors set up her death and proceeded to indoctrinate Arthur in the traditional Brotherhood ways. This conspiracy goes all the way up to Brotherhood Outcast Protector Henry Casdin, now a top ranking officer on the Prwyden since the groups reunited.
After agreeing to hear out Sarah’s case, Veronica escorts the player to Sarah’s hideout. Sarah Lyons, now with a prosthetic arm (see: Proctor Ingram), explains the incident where she was supposed to die, introduces the Sole Survivor to the Paladins who helped fake her death, and explains her life history. She then offers the Sole Survivor a plan: build the teleporter tech at her location with the help of her scribes, retrieve former and potentially future ally Madison Li, and copy as much Institute tech as the player can get their hands on. (Thereby railroading the Sole Survivor right back onto track with the main plot.) With this Institute tech in hand, the Sole Survivor can demand Arthur Maxson step down in favor of reinstating Sarah Lyons as the Elder.
In the Institute, the Sole Survivor talks to Father and all that, and earns his trust. Then they do more than just do a network scan, they have a headcam, they slap in tapes into every terminal they can find, and there’s a lot of mission markers for terminals in the Institute. Madison Li, while being convinced to rejoin the Brotherhood, vigorously confirms Sarah Lyons was the daughter of Elder Owyn Lyons, and would be the best choice as the new Elder. The Sole Survivor gets the option to come and go as they please, they see Sarah Lyons and she says get more tech. The player explains that they hunt synths, so Lyons sends the player on a mission to the Prwyden to collect information. When the Sole Survivor returns, she has called in Harkness who volunteered to get captured. The Sole Survivor will slap in a virus that will immediately effect his re-escape, and also suck down the rest of the Institute’s tech into a data disc. The player returns with Harkness, gains a million points of trust with the Institute, gets to look around the most sensitive areas, plants a virus, Harkness escapes and gets blamed for planting the virus (hah, like he cares!), and the player fakes anger in that he has to go retrieve Harkness again.
Now the Sole Survivor has a choice: follow Bethesda’s original plot (do everything Maxson’s way) or help Sarah Lyons.
Following Lyons: the Sole Survivor now has all of the Institute’s research and tech notes, so he returns to the Prwyden with Sarah in tow, and confronts Elder Maxson. Maxson, shocked to see Sarah alive, is told that (high ranked dude) Casdin has insiders in the Brotherhood who engineered his rise to power and Casdin’s return, etc., via Sarah’s death… which of course was faked. Maxson can either plod along in his war with the Institute with what he has, or step aside and see Sarah Lyons reinstated as Elder, and the Brotherhood gets loads and loads of unimaginable new tech.
Maxson steps aside, to the surprise of everyone, and the Sole Survivor promptly hands Sarah Lyons the World’s Most Ultimate Data Disc[tm]. Casdin and his inside agent both get caught and it turns out that Paladin Brandis was a chief opponent of the unofficial indoctrination of Maxson, and Casdin’s inside people sent him away to the Commonwealth to get him out of the way - with insufficient recon information, no less. Casdin and his allies decide to fight back. The Sole Survivor now has to pass a speech check to convince Maxson that Casdin’s insiders were guilty of multiple betrayals of the Brotherhood and that his rule as Elder is only a legacy of that. Failure means having to kill Maxson in order to put Lyons back in charge. If Brandis is on board he explains the intel he received on the Commonwealth and this is living proof of the betrayal: an automatic success for the player. The battle plays out on the Prwyden and on the ground, resulting in big losses for the Brotherhood.
As a result Sarah Lyons needs help. If the Sole Survivor is already aligned with the Minutemen, she will ask the player to recruit help from them. If the two sides are at war then the Sole Survivor will have to ask for help from Diamond City. Convincing them to join the fight against the Institute is a no-brainer considering the evidence the Sole Survivor presents them. Alternately the Sole Survivor can tell the Minutemen that the Brotherhood is under new management and they all have one enemy, the Institute, which they must unite against. Then there’s a meeting of the leaders, negotiations, and regardless of which path is chosen, Casdin and his buddies interject with one last attack. This ends when Veronica Santangelo shows up again and fires her new and improved Pulse Gun that she got from the optional (now canon) mission to Vault 34 - killing Casdin and his top inside agent. The others in his faction cower and new Elder Lyons decides there’s been enough killing. Everyone gets amnesty who gets it into their heads to stay loyal. There can be only one enemy around here, and it’s the Institute.
Having shown off the quick killing power of the Pulse Gun, Veronica offers the idea of mass producing it so they can use it on those God awful Coursers to break the spine of the Institute’s defenses. The end goal, now, will not be to blast the Institute out of existence (Nuclear Option), but rather, to take control of their manufacturing base and cow their scientists into abandoning their destructive goals. This would accelerate the Brotherhood’s plans, versus having to construct new labs from scratch without the expertise of the scientists. This option also allows the Sole Survivor to take over the Institute without killing Father.
Fast forward past Liberty Prime: in the takeover mission (the mission title is so obvious: All Your Base), the Sole Survivor must oversee the deaths of the directors (except Father) and all hostile synths, but the deaths of too many schmuck scientists means mission failure.
In the end Elder Lyons declares that Institute’s underground base will eventually be cleaned out and abandoned but its hardware and staff are already moving their work above ground under the watchful eyes of the Brotherhood and Diamond City/the Minutemen (or all three groups in the most ideal ending). Sarah Lyons makes a comment about a cooperative alliance that ensures the Brotherhood out East doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the Brotherhood out West. As part of that plan, the Brotherhood story ends with Elder Lyons and either Geneva of Diamond City or Preston Garvey of the Minutemen (or perhaps all three) overseeing the teleportation of a Commonwealth diplomat to the Hall of Congress in (formerly) Shady Sands to request an audience with the NCR leadership.
The Sole Survivor hears a lot of random speculation by Minutemen / Brotherhood / Diamond City people about how the NCR might have responded to knowing the East coast has teleportation tech, huge numbers, and an alliance to boot. The player will also have the ability to teleport reinforcements into battle and there will be radiant quests to set up purifier pylons across the city; any food or water in their range will be radiation-free a day after being set up. The quests will spread toward the Glowing Sea and the pylons will occasionally come under attack. So be sure to bring turrets!
