Fallout Talk - Did Bethesda Ruin Super Mutants 

It makes Zero sense in 4. There should not be hundreds of mutants in the commonwealth. There should be around 100 max due to failed experimentation. They don’t just pop out the ground lol.

playing new vegas with a green hud? that's blasphemy

The real sin is reusing them rather than coming up with something new and interesting to live on the other side of a continent.

After rewatching this one, I'll be honest, Supermutants in FO4 are just... there. Like, really, I sometimes forget they're not from Vault 87. They're just boring. At the very least, in 76, they were somewhat interesting, I mean, their backstory, it was pretty good, they were still unnecessary, but "okay". I love supermutatns in New Vegas, they were just... perfect. There was a reason for some of them to be hostile (Black Mountain, etc.), but Jacobstown is a perfect location to show you their "human" side. You can easily see the difference between a gen 1 and 2 mutant. Really, I applaud New Vegas writers for making it so interesting, when they could've just made it an uniteresting Broken Hills clone.

in my opinion, yes. They went from being an interesting species to being just another enemy. The one thing i like is the behemoths, they're really fun to fight imo

I remember being annoyed when I learned that New Vegas didn't have the brotherhood of steel and the enclave as the main major factions. Why was I annoyed? Because I was a stupid 14 year old whose only experience with fallout was fallout 3 and had no concept of the lore. I don't know what Bethesda's excuse is.

Fallout 76’s reason for having super mutants when the master wouldn’t have created them for another 100 years or so “Uhh… west tek poisoned the water, yeah that’ll do it”

the super mutants in 4 look like ogres not fked up mutated humans, they look normal as they are as in they dont look like they used to be something else before turning into a mutant

The institute has a lot of technology and gifted people, why are their super mutants more similar to Vault 87 than to the Unity? It would have been easier to explain that they simply emigrated from D.C to Boston, the problem is that Bethesda thinks that if there are no idiot super mutants and the BoS shooting with them it will be a boring game

Bethesda did 'slightly' redeem themselves with characters like Erickson, the breeder/trader super mutant you encounter in Far Harbor. He didn't agree with the mindless killing and fanatical mindset of his brothers, so he left, and built a home out a crashed airliner. He runs it like a trading outpost and will even sell one of his pups to you; a super mutant dog included. Bethesda could have made something of this character. Erickson could potentially agree to follow you to one of the base-building locations with the idea of transforming it into a super mutant haven, like Jacobstown. You would venture to areas on the island known for mutant activity, like the bathhouse, and try to convince the mutants to start life anew; having Erickson with you could make the process easier. Otherwise you could fight their leader, and by killing him, win the respect of the others, though this isn't guaranteed to happen every time. Your stats would have to be considered as well, such as charisma, strength, agility, and constitution. This could have started a new series of quests, where the people of Far Harbor dislike the idea of you creating a super mutant town, and want to destroy it. The Children of Atom might see the mutants as an abomination of Atom's glory, which, with a speech check, you might convince them that the mutants are icons of Atom's will and power. An alliance might be forged. You could lead a super mutant/Children of Atom full-on assault against Far Harbor and Arcadia, wherein the whole island becomes a radiated paradise. Or maybe you use Arcadia to play mind games on the muties, and forcefully replace the leader of the Children in order to create peace among the colonies. It would all depend on what you wanted. Moreover, you could use the Nuka World implementation of raider bases, and have your newfound super mutant friends invade the Commonwealth. Form alliances with the current residing mutant "tribes" and lead a full scale war. It wouldn't alter the ending of the Institute being wiped out, because the mutants would see the Institute as a means of making more of their kind. You would, thus, enslave the Institute and inevitably re-create The Master on the east coast. You would become the Mutant Messiah. Instead, however, you could work with Erickson to reign in the super mutant violence in the commonwealth, and use the mutants to fight back against their creators, the Institute. Mutant villages would be erected across the Commonwealth, and the Glowing Sea could become a new mutant metropolis, safe from deathclaws, radscorpions, and feral ghouls. The Children of Atom's base in the nuclear crater would become Ericksonville, and ultimately be established as the largest super mutant town anyone had ever seen. Twice the size of Diamond City. Furthermore, if leading the Minutemen, you could forge an alliance between them and the super mutant towns in order to keep the peace and establish the New Commonwealth. This could also lead to conflict with the Brotherhood of Steel, when they learn of the nuclear weapons stockpile in the Glowing Sea. Do you allow the BoS to raid the base and take the weapons, or demand they leave, thus creating conflict and a future war with them? The greatest thing about all of this is that none of it would happen if you never happened upon Erickson, or if you just shot him in the head and moved on. It would be very "Fallout-esc" to have a massive game changer all but negated because you, the player, decided to shoot first and ask questions never. Nevertheless, this is just an idea off the top of my head. Nothing more.

Mutants in 1 2 and NV: hmm that was a good fight now i will talk with my brothers about politics and science Mutants in 3 and 4: cock roach good

I think super mutants using weaker weapons after fallout 1 makes sense. Because in the first game they were an organized military force but after the death of the master they just use anything they can find

They ruin most of the lore because they lack the drive, passion, love, respect and creativity and replaced it with greed and laziness

In Bethesda's eyes, if the game takes place somewhere other than the West coast but doesn't have super mutants or Brotherhood shoved in for whatever reason, regardless of timeline as well, then it can't be a Fallout game. Let's also not forget how while 76 does have plenty of very muties that are based on actual West Virginian folklore, yet they still choose to have both Deathclaws, supermuties, and Brotherhood, 'cause as I said, if it didn't, then it somehow wouldn't be Fallout

Did Bethesda ruin super mutants? Better question would be - is there anything Bethesda didn't ruin? As you said, "this is a Fallout game, Fallout had supermutants, therefore, let's add supermutants". Same goes for every other Fallout themed item - 50's culture, jet, caps, you name it. Bethesda didn't make a Fallout game. They made a theme park ride with Fallout props.

I think the tunnelers from lonesome road were a really good unique area specific critter.

Bethesda super mutants are basically just orcs

"Did Bethesda ruin-.." "Yes."

76 recently somewhat utilized them in the Brotherhood questline. More as a side effect of the plot but it's something.

The super mutants in fallout 4 are literally just “orcs, but in the future”

I honestly feel like the problem is that they didn't go far enough with FEV. They mentioned that FEV had dozens of variants, yet we mostly just see it turning people into larger versions of themselves. They mentioned that a weaker version of FEV was airborne, and it supposedly infected everyone in the wasteland. This was to explain why non-vault dwellers became gen 2 mutants, but this could also mean that everyone is infected with a virus that could mutate. The FEV is inactive, but this could mean that I just lives in everyone now as a benign virus. What if in the next game something in the environment could mutate this virus and activate it. I don't mean full super mutants, but a few people closer to the Swampfolk would make sense. Plus, if the virus is mutating, you could end up with anything from a perfect super human to the multi-headed, half-animal centaurs from the first game. Actually, in the first two games, they mentioned that FEV can awaken psychic abilities, a faction/group of enemies that found a way to awaken these abilities would be interesting. Hell, I would even go as far as to say that the mutation serum from 76 could just be mutated FEV. If it can give people psychic powers and make half-dog abominations then why not give people hollow bones and kangaroo legs? There could be an entire game about a faction adding random mutagens to the water in different places to see how the FEV reacts. WAIT. I just realized they made the artificial humans, the synths, with actual human DNA, suggesting they are closer to clones than anything else. What would happen to a synth infected with FEV? They made sure we knew that they had to use the DNA of a non-mutated person with no radiation damage to make the synths. That is exactly the same thing the FEV needs to work on a person without causing brain damage. Plus, they used the DNA of someone who wasn't inoculated by the weaker version. A synth would make the perfect mutant candidate. It is a never-ending army of "primes" to be made into super mutants on par with gen 1. Even if they get infected with any other strand of FEV, they would probably be more susceptible than others, so Bethesda could really make anything happen here. Either way, my point is that FEV could do a lot more, but they keep using the same super mutants because they are identifiable.

I think Super Mutants were done well in 3 (since they fit the setting and had story around them) but not as much in 4 and 76. I do think it would be better to just explain that they migrate or are taken rather than always create another source of FEV every game.

Under Black Isle/Obsidian, Super Mutants were an actual faction Under Bethesda, they're just another Raider group for you to shoot at

When I first fought supermutants in 3, 4, and new vegas, I was honestly disappointed. In the original fallout, I would shit bricks if I even saw a supermutant, but in the others it's just "Wooo, free xp"

I really hope developers from Bethesda see videos of these kinds. They would help them out with the direction of the game if they were to just listen to the people. It’s sad seeing where fallout is going

The real sin is not letting you show them you are stronger, if they could see that , you could lead them

Even Tactics mutants are better explained than the Bethesda mutants.

I love Super Mutants. I want to see them in the next game. But I want to see them in a very small, story focused way. Same with the Brotherhood. But I’d much rather see a new faction take over. Fallout 76, despite its problems, has some of the coolest mutants we’ve seen from Bethesda in a while, and I think that if they just took a second to breathe and reflect, they could do some great work

If there's one thing you can always count on Bethesda it's the fact that super mutants, & the Brotherhood of Steel will always be in every single Fallout game. They can make a Fallout game based in China 3 years after the war, I guarantee you we would see Brotherhood of Steel & super mutants because Bethesda does not know how to make cool & interesting factions. When they do make something that is completely original they always end up sucking. The railroad, The Institute, & the Minutemen, are the best examples.

The Post-Fallout 3 Supermutants don't even make sense. They have no reason to be hostile to humans specifically. And they decide to decorate with spikes and Gore bags, eventhrough this is a style specific to the Vault 87 Supermutants.

You need to do a video on the white skinned super mutants discovered in the latest addition to fallout 76 campaigns: The steel reign expansion.

I think you overlooked something with the Fallout 4 Super mutants. They have a more communal, war based culture. This is primarily shown through Strong, but you can also see a bit of this through their combat dialouge and locations. Strong's dialouge shows that the Commonwealth Super mutants share stuff with each other, and don't have the same squabbles that humans have in some regards. According to him, if a Super mutants finds a better weapon, he uses that and gives their previous weapon to someone else. The Super Mutants also have lines (even Strong) that refer to other Super Mutants as their "brothers". This shows a sense of camaraderie/community, even with Strong, who was thrown in prison for trying to spare Rex (the radio guy). This is bolstered by the existence of Dead Eye, a blind Super Mutant that is still a significant part of the group, despite their major disability. (He still has really good hearing, and raises the alarm for intruders). They also have combat lines along the lines of "We are the future" and, "the age of the Mutant is here!", suggesting a belief that they are the future of the wasteland, the inheritors of the new world. All I'm saying is that don't discount the Fallout 4 Super Mutants, they have a bit of unexplored debt

I feel like there could be some more interesting things FEV could create than just "big green monster" (and centaurs if I remember correctly?) , especially when it's used and developed on by organisations completely separate from the master.

You know, the Brotherhood being genocidal against the supermutants in Fallout 4 is kind of motivated with how they kidnap and eat people in Fallout 3, and how they seek to wipe out humanity in Fallout 4. It is one of those cases were the writing is so bad that it starts to make sense.

In a major facebook fallout group, they were asking what people wanted in the next game. Most everyone said: more of the same, but with more modern graphics I said: Set it on Mars. No supermutants. A martian unique breed of ghouls that can survive without spacesuits, descendants of colonists, corrupted by the radiation, the deliberate use of FEV to survive, and an underground horror that wiped out all life there once before. Make base building about air and water and heat and diplomacy with other colonies, rather than how many turrets you can stack on a pole. Make enemies scale with time, as the foe awakens, and sends forces to conquer the irritating surface dwellers. Then end it with army tactics, the forces you equipped against the foes, the humans and benign ghouls against ancient horrors. Powered armour and spacesuits and blood blending with soil. Depending on how well the army goes, the player can then lead a small assault to take out the big bad. They can still win but it will be much harder if the army did poorly. If it lost, the player will have to fight on home ground, and may lose access to air and water and heat, and unless they have the right mutations or tech upgrades, they will die then and there, but if they completely specialised in sole survival, they can still win when everyone else has perished - and will be left alone on a dead world.

Thanks YOuTube for recommending this almost 2years after release. Great video. They were surely underused in 3 (plot wise, there were a lot in number) and in NewVegas it was something special

Super Mutants are just Orks now. I'm sure Fallout 5 will make them psykers.

Super mutants in FO1, 2, and NV: An intelligent race with their own motivations, society, and culture. Served as the main antagonist of the first game. Super mutants in FO3, 4, and 76: Orcs.

Idk but I like their personalities. Clearing supermutant camps in FO3 is literally the only reason I come back to it, because they are absolutely hilarious in their unwavering hostility and yelling.

In Fallout 76 Steel Reign DLC you do have super mutants as antagonists.

In my opinion, Bethesda have taken a "remember these guys?" approach to their wasteland populations

Super mutants are like a smaller example of the Tarrasque principle, as in a “crazy stupid powerful enemy” that realistically isnt fun to fight or even as hard as it seems- ergo they shine best as a STORY blockade, rather than an actual battle

i completed fallout 3 with a pair of brass knuckles and the only super mutant that was a problem was the ones with the sledgehammers

Bethesda should look to All Tomorrows if they're wanting a humanoid derivative species. Hopefully the concept artists for the next game sees this video.

I can see the Folks at Jacobstown joining the Great Khans Migration, picking up wanderers and giving them care.

Yeah i get it, they changed them and made them more common, and honestly i agree that they should be changed to a different enemy, but saying they ruined them? It's a really big exageration. I agree with you in many points, but the way you and many people act like bethesda freaking ruined and destroyed them feels more like hate than critsism.

I would love to play as a super mutant warlord trying to conquer the wasteland with their own army of super mutants, behemoths, centaurs, and mutant hounds.

To save you ten minutes: Yes, yes they did.

Its incredible that Bethesda went out of their way to distinguish Orcs in the elder scrolls universe to not just be mindless tolkien-esque beasts that do nothing but kill for fun. Then they take the giant mostly intelligent mutant race from fallout and just revert them to being mindless bloodthirsty tolkien-esque orcs. Its like they were scared of being accused if plagiarizing themselves.

The main problem is that Bethesda were too busy paying fan service to the elements of the previous games rather than thinking of them logically or creating new, more appropriate content related to the new story and setting.

It'd be very interesting if the 87 super mutants migrated into an area with pre-existing super mutant settlements. Maybe some west coast mutants and they moved because of anti mutant aggression. There's just more 87 mutants and they're way more aggressive. As in they keep shooting but get close enough and they hound you, shooting and pounding you. You could have some strife with these two different mutant groups. The 87 having found a similar way of making more but the other mutant group is sitting on what the 87 need. Maybe some conflict on how they see unity. Maybe some individuals join the other group and vice versa which would allow for some dialogue to flesh out the conflicts

Bethesda Ruined Fallout

I'd love to see an updated video about Blackburn's Super mutants from 76

I personally think they overstrechted it in F4 and maked it out of sense in Fallout 76.

Fallout 3, 4 and 76 are just "Vault Dweller and the brotherhood of steel vs a lot of wild raiders and mutants"

Bethesda can create some really creative and interesting enemies and factions, even if there is not much depth behind them otherwise. They seem so afraid of diverging from what they consider icons of Fallout to come up with new things within the main part of their games (look at how much more interesting _some_ of the enemies are in the dlcs over the base games) Even if they wished to have included some SMs, they could have been so much more interesting as just small clusters of npcs that are there with some real narrative purpose. The inclusion of them in 3 makes sense in one respect (Bethesda had to try and make a Fallout game in a completely different style while still being a Fallout game somehow so they kept the as many original icons as they could), but afterwards less so

Forget all that, I just want super mutants you can talk to again :(

Pretty much in every FO game you see your normal factions like humans, ghouls, and super mutants but I never understood why they don’t do more for the intelligent super mutants like Virgil, Marcus, Fawks etc their not your typical faction trying to strive for control over the wasteland rather their just trying to find their place in the world in the same way ghouls are but undoubtedly have it worse. Maybe in the next game having them form a group with smart mutants, humans, and ghouls where all contribute and are more helpful than the brotherhood and enclave to the point rumors get spread throughout the wastelands that such a place exists would be a really cool thing to experience

This is something I think Wasteland has handled well across the series (granted 1 and 2 were similar, though that gameplay gap is massive). What Bethesda’s Fallouts lack are truly meaningful Raider factions, as in meaningfully different, up until Nuka World dropped. Even then, that difference isn’t as big as the lore perspective between raider factions in the Wasteland series. Despite all being humans, they have some nice lore distinction in terms of motives and gameplay quirks. The Red Scorpion Militia using dogs and dynamite a ton is relatively expected for a raider faction, but the back story of being pissed off at the rangers because their leader and his dog was shot because as a kid he aimed a BB gun at the Wasteland 1 squad felt real. They also tried to bring peace - but they only knew how to be dictators due to lacking empathy. Then you have The Scar Collectors who are awesome in concept and are basically slaver technophiles that turn people into cybernetic bombs, rivaling the original super mutants on the whole assimilation/body horror spectrum, along with the firepower. I just hope we see something unique like those guys show up in future Fallout installments, because at the end of the day, super mutants in function really are just raiders with a spin (granted, a big spin that made them understandably dangerous the originals). Side note, the Reavers in Tactics were honestly a really cool faction conceptually and I’d like to see them worked in.

Yes. Yes they have. FEV was only on thr West Coast. Mariposa was a military bass, not a vault. So fev isn't in vaults. They should have did something similar to the Flayed ones. They aren't quite ghouls, but they're so close to them they might as well be

Super Mutants probably need to area specific encounters. Take all of them and plop them down on one location, something big like a ruined skyscraper or military fort. That'll make player's think twice when about 7 mininuke touchdowns and 30 missile launchers come at em out the gates swinging.

My biggest gripe is they had no leader in fallout 3. Huge missed opportunity to have a mutant warlord like gammorin from fallout tactics.

In r/Fallout, I posted a post called "Last weeks of Kansas city", where I made Super mutants a faction ruling over Kansas city (they call themselves"New America". Basically king Dexey, largest super mutant in the world since Horrigan. Super mutants are knights of Kansas city (elite warriors), no they aren't killing humans and ghouls, quite the opposite, they are coexisting.) Their enemies are: Brotherhood of steel, Caesar's legion, Dark angels(tribesmen with guns) and cyborgs of vault 54(basically those "machine makes us stronger" people.). If I know how to mod campaigns and model, this mod would use classic

most this things I noticed can be explain through time because in fallout 1 Super mutants wear well refined at peak of power but with master gone their quality would decay without meaning they became weaker over time without no proper upkeep

Fallout three super mutants are still some of the most terrifying

If they had planned ahead, it would have made more sense for the Commonwealth's super mutants to come from West Virginia, the West-Tek facility generates FEV there so they can make more of themselves, also 76 takes place in 2102 and Fallout 4 is in 2287.

I think whats worse about the Fo4 super mutants is that it would make sense from both a logical and thematic point of view for the institute super mutants act more like 1st gen (although the same role is already filled by synths)

Obsidian had the perfect balance for supermutants in NV. Some hostile, some friendly. They had actual quests with supermutants beyond just killing them. Bethesda could be doing that and more, adding more variants and lore. Like why hasn’t there been a Master like figure in the commonwealth or Appalachia to unify them?

A couple things. 1. I agree with the levelling issue, in a head to head fight, with no cover, you should not have been able to beat them with a 10 mm pistol and no armor. 2. As for beating them at a lower level, you have to keep in mind game type. 1 and 2 were isometric with dice rolls, and Super Mutant were heavily favored in the dice rolls due to their power. Fallout Bathesda style is 3d action, you can juke, take cover to heal, and pop in and out of cover. Yes you can, and should have the ability to put up a fight with them, but I will concede it should be a very long fight if you are a low level. 3. At least in Fallout 3 they do give some reason for them. Unlike Mariposa where the Master was breeding them to be survivalists, keeping their intelligence mostly intact. Vault 87 didn't share the Masters goal, or the Masters research in perfecting the FEV virus or the method of using it to the point of creating overly intelligent Mutants. They may not speak full sentences, and have broken English, but you can hear them have full conversations with eachother, and they obviously understand they cannot reproduce and need to capture humans to carry on their species, just not the more deep conversations on Philosophy or higher mathematics. 4. This need to capture to continue surviving and multiplying explains why you can find them so often and in so many places. They were never taught to capture in stealth, they just go out and get what they need.

They fell victim to the trope of "if you paint them green they become stupid".

Honestly, I preferred the super mutants from the older games. They just looked better.

I think the peoples complaints about how easy Super Mutants were in 3 was the reason behind the Overlord variant being added in Broken Steel, but because that was an end game DLC, players were pretty much god like by then and also because of the scaling you wouldn't encounter them till later level. But they were always difficult to come up against, even later level If I remember correctly.

For my Fallout tabletop set in Anchorage around the time of New Vegas or possibly 4, there is an alternate type of Super Mutant used creating an earlier batch of FEV similar to the Mariposa strain. Difference was they were doing early tests with it using POW's and deserters. They're smarter than Vault 87 and Institute Super Mutants, but not as strong as the Mariposa or Vault 87 variety. Also they're loyal to an antagonist faction which I won't spoil.

they've added some more lore to Super Mutants in 76 one of the things that stood out to me the most was that they could not seem to be able to turn the FEV strain into anything positive no matter how much they experimented with it, I believe one of the scientist even said something that it was almost alive and fighting their efforts or something of that sort

One thing I don't understand is why there are SO MANY Supermutants in Fallout 4. Like, of all the people we know are kidnapped by the institute and replaced by synths, or the towns wiped out by the institute, they couldn't nearly produce as many Supermutants as you see in the game.

Just found the channel and watching the vids now, good shit, so I subbed.🤜🤛

Just gotta say the only enemy I've ever been afraid of in a 3D fallout game is a Super Mutant Overlord.

You have a lot of good points. I'm focusing on lore reasons for them to exist too though. In order for them to be organized/tough they would have to be following an intelligent leader. A Gen 1 mutie will work since they're quite intelligent but in 3,4, and 76, there are no real gen 1 leaders for the aggressive muties. They all just fulfill their primary baser instincts; eat and make more muties if they have access to FEV vats. I'm trying to imagine FO4 without super mutants and it would be difficult to take them out. It would be boring to just replace them with more humans. Maybe a cult of aggressive but non-feral ghouls? A brand new enemy type would have to be created and explained if it wasn't an existing FO staple. This could be done but it would be time consuming. This is why I'm super curious about FO: London's enemy types. FEV -could- be over there if the British managed to smuggle some out using a spy but otherwise any mutation from FEV would have to be an Enclave outpost or atmospheric FEV that was thrown up into the air when a bomb hit one of the FEV facilities around the USA.

Supermutants being able to use guns in general seems outlandish. You ever see their fingers?

Fallout 4's Super Mutants should've been given the same amount of Damage Resistance as that of a BoS in Power Armor. They were often easy to kill and only the Legendary, Butcher and Master types were more of a challenge to put down. Another thing Bethesda should've done, was to give us an explaination how the Commonwealth Super Mutants could remain so numerous without any direct access to FEV. While it is never made clear how many were made by the Institute before they eventually stopped, the fact that so many would still exist without any way to reproduce remains a mystery.

Don't forget wasting away Sarah Lyons Scribe Rothchild and the Lone Wanderer not even being mentioned

They could had the supermutants been lead to Boston by a new leader,give him a name an be highly intelligent, show supermutants building outposts instead of just taking. They could had been fleeing from BoS and prepare a new strong holds,an capture humans to turn into supermutants as a reason why they are at water pumps. Problem i have in Fallout 4 is the theme "Take Back The Commonwealth" yet their is no leaders amoung the factions for raiders and no territory maps. To see who controls what areas,to make our group the minutemen more fleash out on quests,go explore dangerous areas with freash recruits to gain ammo supplies or even take over a manufacturer warehouse to help with supply lines. The game could had been the start of building the next society but it Bethesda who does things half fast.

I would like see the Super Mutant as heavy troopers with others Fallout factions.

What they should finish have it where the cure is available and a huge group of super mutants find out and start a war trying to destroy it bc they don't wanna be human again

Tribal Super Mutants is something we haven't really seen, settlments/nomadic muties that have acquired some form of "holy" FEV canisters that they worship and can do some limited dippin. Would be nice with a mutie faction that could be friendly/neutral/hostile muties are more interesting than just a raider with 20% more health, quite boring they are mostly used as fodder. .

The video needs update: Steel Reign (DLC for Fallout 76) revealed another group of mutants. Scientists released FEV to air and Water, (I think in one terminal it was mentioned that they also did experiments directly on raiders) Raiders were people who didn't make it to the vault, and it was not long after bombs fell, so they already were under radiation. They were also very first communities after bombs fell. So the explanation from Fallout 1 suits here - supermutants are just raiders someone did experiment with FEV on

Having an in game way of becoming a supermutant would allow more freedom for character personalities. Like how I view my Fallout 3 main as a hulking monstrous puppy that got that way because their best friend Moira Brown.

Playing 3 in the TTW mod seems to turn them into beef gates at least until you get your hands on some armour piercing rounds and a decent gun that uses them

Technically FNV also made super mutants early game enemies in the form of the nightkin at the repconn test site

Same can be said about the Brotherhood of Steel.

I think super mutants being intelligent is a cool twist on the heavy hitter race. I always thought the big dumb archetype was kind of overused

I still remeber my first encounter with a fallout 3 super mutant, it went like this "Oh fuck, I better sneak by him" "Ah fuck I'm dead." "Oh...what did he drop atleast? Pffft a hunting rifle?!"

I miss hearing the brotherhood calling them frankenstein

In the case why the institute has so many super mutant is most likely all the experiment trough the age fun fact is every synth has fev they originally tried to simply inject them with it and always fucked up or failed by Gen 4 they were grown with fev more specifically the courser have all the upside of fev increase strength ect (in lore not game) has for fallout 76 there is now 2 strain of fev one in hunter ville and one by doctor black burn where super mutant keep more human trait, also for some reason during the 10 year of f3 and f4 the mutant became a huge problem for DC again we don't know where they came from. Talking of Blackburn I really like the idea of post war scientist trying to perfect the virus and have physical change like his super mutant sadly was a much too short quest and beside the quest it self they didn't became common enemies which is dissapointing.

It would be cool if the super mutants created their own military and have invaded areas to take over. It would explain their ranking systems and weapons variety as well as why there are so many around. Then maybe add a quest or two for that plot

I think the main problem with fallout 3 supermutants is that they should be VERY visually different (and have a technically different name) as they are made from a completely different kind of mutation agent. They would have been fine as an NEAR equivalent stand in, and people wouldn’t be miffed about their substandard intelligence. Perhaps if they were seen as a kind of “supermutant 2.0” being reworked from the ground up with EEP instead of FEV due to its now minimal existence, nobody would have even batted an eye. Mutants in FO3 also suffer from a lack of purpose for existing, they kind of are just… there. No intelligent and charismatic leader like the master, no large powerful organization pulling the strings, they just kind of showed up (vault 87 doesn’t actually justify their existence through the use of experimentation, they should be nowhere near as widespread as they are). FO4 mutants on the otherhand suffers greatly from every issue imaginable: 1. Absolutely ZERO reason for actually existing, just some extremely vague stuff about the institute. 2. Absolutely far TOO PLENTIFUL and well equipped, at least in fallout 3 there was a reason for them being plentiful (they had a means of being produced). Meanwhile in 4 it’s just “ they are there because we want them there”. The kind of equipment and tactics they have is also just weird, suiciders? Why would in any circumstance would they have suiciders? 3. Having no actual “smart” counterpart (and no vergil does not count), and zero personality. Even the mutants in FO3 had a slight bit of personality with a brutalist edge to them and at least a bit of intelligence (sure they weren’t goddamn geniuses, but they felt real enough). Meanwhile every mutant in FO4 just has the personality “big idiot”, like they somehow got far dumber since their last installment?

In the recent Steel Reign content for '76, you have a researcher who says he's cracked FEV, and it will make a perfect human that can tame the Wasteland and rebuild the world. I was really hoping this was going to work: imagine someone "Tames" FEV, and it starts acting like all those geniuses thought it was going to. Suddenly you have super soldiers. I know that the arc of Fallout is man's hubris, so you're going to have some horrible side effect rear it's double head sometime, but wouldn't that be something NEW for the game?

When I was a fairly low level (under 10) in Fallout 4 and I first encountered a group of super mutants, they destroyed me fairly quickly but by the time I was somewhere between LV. 15-20 they were easy to deal with. By level 30, and with some half decent weapons and armour, even a behemoth was an easy kill for me. I think that behemoths in particular should be almost impossible to kill until you are at a high level with top tier weapons and armour.

Actually there is another even more important question, where the hell did the Institute get samples of the FEV to do its experiments ??? 126 years after the dweller of refuge 13 destroyed the cathedral and the Master with all the samples of the VEF he used, or even better, where the super mutants took samples of something so rare and far away to turn dogs being in the middle of Boston when they It is assumed that the super mutants and the VEF are aboriginal of California, it is understood that the Institute can relatively (although it would be stupid) go to California, dig the remains of the Cathedral or at worst, go to the remains of the Mariposa military base it would be practically impossible to find something, or EVEN stolen something from the Enclave WHEN ALL ITS FACILITIES HAVE BEEN CLEARED FROM A MAJOR EXPLOSION, since the first was completely disintegrated, and the second looted and sealed by the Enclave, and as far as is known at most The Institute has reached Washington DC, which is the furthest thing known (due to some missions in Fallout 3), it is impossible that they have achieved VEF, at most the event makes sense to me. Gration of the master's army when he died, Marcus who founded Jacobstown and there treats other Nightkin, generation 1 mutants, Lily Bowen, a Vault 13 dweller turned super mutant, those make sense since they all migrated from California to the Desert of Mojave and it is an acceptable distance and it makes sense, but from there to being in Washington DC and Boston is a smokehouse, I could believe you that they migrated this far from California and the Mojave to Washington DC because they are almost Apex predators, but from there to That some crazy scientists and more over other super mutants have access to the FEV and start creating with samples of a virus that is supposed to have been destroyed 126 years ago, it is a smoker, honestly in Fallout: New Vegas, it is justified, in Fallout: 3, is "acceptable", but already in Fallout 4, the super mutants are practically plr commitment to the saga since they come out in all the games together with The Brotherhood of Steel

It does make sense to me that there are multiple FEV strains being experimented on and developed in different facilities because of how volatile the virus is.