My thoughts about Gunners

[u/Proper-Appearance-83]

I feel like Gunners were suppose to be an evil militarized faction that you can be part of, I mean they had ranks, military discipline, main base and enough firepower that they almost conquered the Boston and they were the main reason why Minute men were wiped out.

It's like they had vision for the Gunners but they replaced them with Brotherhood and the Nuka-world raiders

[u/william09703]

wasted potential is what I would called alot of things in Fallout 4, apparently Gunner being one of them. the fact that there are multiple outposts, checkpoints throughout commonwealth, and even a HQ established by Gunners. It's all telling that Bethesda were once had a plan for them to be at least a sub faction, even as a nemesis to Minutemen, since there are contents between Quincy town and Preston's encountering.

E: further more, Maccredy also related to Gunner, and his final quest is to deal them.

[u/Altruistic-Ad-408 → u/william09703]

I don't think there was any plan for them. They are just Talon Company 2.0. It's just odd because they have an aesthetic and presence, even if it is generic.

In all fairness Fallout 1 did this as well, not all the raider gangs were fleshed out. Granted most were mostly offscreen.

[u/william09703 → u/Altruistic-Ad-408]

ofc, I'm not saying they had the plan 100%. it's just Bethesda is known to having creative ideas but most of time they never consider to put it to work. got too many examples in FO4, really.

[u/BustyUncle → u/william09703]

The Quincy shit always pisses me off. You should be able to move the Minutemen back there

[u/ReallyBadRedditName]

Every Bethesda game has the completely undeveloped comically evil mercenary group

[u/Altruistic-Ad-408 → u/ReallyBadRedditName]

Hey the Morag Tong aren't that bad. Just no memorable characters, but the lore is nice. Kinda the opposite for Oblivion DB, very memorable if shallow characters, but the cool lore got retconned.

Oh right, black heart company or whatever they were called, they did suck.

[u/RetroFallout2276]

Ill be honest, there's more than just wasted potential, as a major faction, dude they had so many chokepoints and strongholds in south boston and yet those look like damn raider hideouts, ESPECIALLY GUNNER PLAZA, if you say quincy then yeah I understand, it was RECENTLY taken and destroyed.

[u/Admiral_Eversor]

They're about as finished as anything else in fallout 4. They are a skin deep aesthetic and that's where it stops.

[u/Fearless_Roof_9177 → u/Admiral_Eversor]

Which is a tradition carried over from Fallout 3. The Gunners are almost literally just an Army-flavored ctrl+v of Talon Company.

[u/Admiral_Eversor → u/Fearless_Roof_9177]

Yep. I don't think Bethesda have ever made a meaningful contribution to the fallout canon.

Fallout 1, fallout new Vegas and fallout 2, in that order imo, with Bethesda writing some high budget fanfiction around the sides.

[u/Rexclone117 → u/Admiral_Eversor]

To be fair. They are even less finished than the rest of the factions. Which isn’t really saying much.

Fallout 4 feels like a massive experiment for the future games. But then Starfield comes along. And is somehow worse lol

[u/destuctir → u/Rexclone117]

To be fair that’s just liked Bethesda with fallout 3, a simple, often skin-deep game to get a new engine/technology developed, except 3 was followed by NV, whereas 4 just wasn’t, I expected a relatively quick follow up to 4 with a more developed world since 4 did the ground work of rebuilding the mechanics. Unless you count 76 but that’s basically a whole different genre in the fallout setting.

[u/texhnolyze-]

Install and play Sims Settlement 2, it expands the Gunners faction and greatly incorporated it into the main story. I even vastly prefer this path than vanilla story.

[u/AttakZak → u/texhnolyze-]

Honestly Sim Settlement’s Main Story is really well done, the mechanics are very buggy though and on Console it is HELL to get working properly. But the story of the Gunners, their involvement with other Mercenaries across the Wastes, and the endgame of it all is something I wish was canon. Hey, at least Kinggath got FEVer Dreams to be canon.

[u/Captain_Gars]

While the Gunners are a faction with a lot of unused potential there is no evidence in the game files that Bethesda had plans for them to be more than a more advanced and dangerous hostile faction. They are a more fleshed out version of Fallout 3'sTalon Company. 

The Minutemen were not wiped out by the Gunners. Only Ezra Hollis' company was destroyed at Quincy. What destroyed the Minutemen was the internal politics that slowly disintegrated the cohesion of the Minutemen after the death of General Becker. The Gunner attack on Quincy was just the final blow that made the weakened organisation collapse. 

[u/Alpharius_Omegon420]

They had such potential to be a cool faction and evil version of the minutemen but they just turned them into better armed raiders

[u/Rexclone117 → u/Alpharius_Omegon420]

Felt like a stand in for the Enclave. But didn’t make them bigger. Or bother to explain why they have so many energy weapons and plasma weapons

[u/ThunderShott]

Theyre supposed to me mercenaries for hire, so why can't I approach them to hire them?

[u/AtoMaki → u/ThunderShott]

I'm fairly sure you can't hire mercenaries in any Fallout game. New Vegas teases you with the option exactly once (Little Buster), and that's it.

[u/AtoMaki]

They are basically just the Regulators from 1, except with more lore (not a high bar to jump considering the Regulators have no lore) and fighting them is not locked behind an annoyingly drawn-out quest.

[u/J3RICHO_]

I feel like they should have just made them a detachment of Talon Company from Fallout 3 or something

[u/This_Acanthisitta_43]

I agree they were unfinished and had a lot of potential. I like to think they originally had a deeper storyline but ran out of time/willpower to complete the narrative. I wanted to know why they were setting up bases on all the overpasses. There should have been a reason why they wanted to control the skies. They were there before the brotherhood arrive so it is not to shoot down vertibirds. They could have introduced a different flying vehicle. For a powerful faction they really were purposeless. I like your thought that they could have been a joinable faction.

[u/SpookySquooshyFood]

The fan theory of them being descended from the corrupt Boston national guard showed that they could've had great depth. Unfortunately the base game does nothing with it.

Their professional paramilitary aesthetic is great and something I wish we saw more of.

[u/Mojo_Mitts]

The Gunners could’ve been the Legion type faction for the game and they could’ve offered another option for Nuka-World.

One day you get a Radio Message from the Gunners requesting nearby Assistance so you go to the Nuka-World Transit Station to meet the Commander to either Assist (Early Game) or Take Command (Late Game) of the Situation.

After going through the Gauntlet and such you can meet up with the Gunners already in the area to discuss how to take care of the Raiders which just got more interesting now that you’ve been made their new Overboss.

[u/luckyfox7273]

These guys kind of feel like the Zetas in RL.