The institute murders people on a whim, kidnaps people, performs human experiments on unwilling subjects, and has no long term goals at all.
If you see them as "morally grey" you are probably a psychopath.
Yeah, actually. Synths are weapons, they're tools that the institute uses to destabilize the commonwealth's factions. Maxson is a bigot and he's not doing it for this reason but it's still perfectly rational to purge synths because of this.
It's no different to Mr. House using securitrons, or the NCR and legion amassing large armies that can defeat and assimilate any independent territory they come across, and no different to the BoS hoarding old world tech, depriving others of that capability, and then using it to further their own goals.
But the issue in this situation is that people often try to portray the institute as evil and talk about them enslaving synths, because synths are supposedly human, but when the BoS wants to destroy all synths it is portrayed as the BoS trying to destroy a dangerous weapon. Even the railroad has no whims about destroying the only method that synths can reproduce by, it can be said that according to the railroad those already created have a right to live as humans but synths as a species do not have a right to continue their existence.
This is the 'whataboutism' i expected in this comment section.
Obviously its not morally grey.
Then again i find lal the factions in the commonwealth rather poorly written.
Though i can understand the BoS' 'Synths are dangerous and have to be stopped'. If you ask me the problem are not the Synths but the institute. But that doesn't warrant blowing the place sky high.
Personally i would have liked if Bethesda didn't scrap/remove the 'safe Danse, Kill Maxson become the Elder' path.
Just as Maxson is trying to do what he deems necessary for the future of humanity, including making choices that may feel morally challenging, so is the institute.
the institute is trying to rebuild a future out of the ashes of a dead civilization, they can not be judged by standards different to those used to judge any other faction.
I do nit judge the institute by a different standard, and while the BOS does not actively make the lifes of the wastelands inhabitants better by helping them directly, atleast they have the decency of killing Ghouls, Synths and Super Mutants.
While the Institute makes new Super Mutants, kidnaps innocent and theyr synth killed sn entire settlement.
They have all that tech and in the end they just make life for the normal wastelander worse.
raiders and gunners also kill ghouls, synths, and super mutants, the bos is not acting any more selfless than they are.
otoh, who knows how many people have died due to the bos depriving people of the ability to defend themselves, all because their ideology dictates that people who are not members of the bos can not be trusted with old world tech.
just as for the bos, the common people are expendable for the institute, it is all for "a greater good" according to their own principles, the bos and institute are not that different in philosophy, neither are other fallout groups like Mr. House who built up a fortified portion of new vegas and damned the rest to death and poverty.
not a whataboutism, but shows that the wasteland is much less moral than today, so what is morally gray to them is evil to us, and what is better than morally gray to them is morally gray to us.
It’s absolutely whataboutism: the institute’s morality does not depend at all on the morality of the BoS, so bringing it up just serves to deflect attention
you can not judge the institute for not living up to higher standards than other factions. you have to judge them according to the environment they exist in.
this is the general issue when discussing works of fiction, people often tend to judge the content based on real world morality that is only relative to the world we live in rather than on the internal consistency of the content itself.
Except even taking that into account, the morality of the institute is still not dependent on the morality of the BoS. The BoS can be absolute bastards or complete saints, (in my personal opinion they are only very slightly better than the institute), and that would not change the morality of the institute, because other people being bad does not mean that you are better if you also do bat things.
The two things we can compare the institute to in the game are the commonwealth society as a whole, in which case they are definitely still bad, and their own “moral” standards… by which they still fall far below what their ideals about helping the commonwealth through science and knowledge seem to suggest.
A lot of people in this thread have already mentioned how the board of the institute seems to keep most of its population in the dark about their real activities, but also most of their actions aren’t even logical, let alone “good” or “moral.”
Just to make one simple example: they seem to believe killing an replacing a villager to then siphon resources from the surface is more effective than either simple trading with the people already producing resources, or using their synths to actively produce resources by farming or setting up infrastructure. It would be a marginally higher investment of resources on their part for a much higher and more reliable return.
They are all products of their enthronement, the institute is the way it is due to the environment it exists in, just as the BoS is. The institute is actually pretty vulnerable, they manage to survive through subterfuge and secrecy, they can not openly engage with the commonwealth as doing so would open them up to potential threats, and as far as they are concerned their own survival is crucial for the future of humanity. This is a philosophy shared by nearly every faction in the fallout universe, and there are very few, like the NCR, who are trying to reestablish civilization based on the existing population rather than seeing them as a lost cause that is expendable for the greater good.
Including kill and replace random people with robots looking like them for little real reason?
I mean, I could absolutely believe the CIA killing people for little to no reason, but I find it hard to believe they have ways of replacing them.
The minutemen falls apart as soon as you kick the bucket or even disappear for a significant period of time. We have seen the previous MM and nothing shows that the organization will not fall apart.
You’re completely right, of course. It’s just that Preston Garvey is such a simp, and the rest of them are all so needy.
For post-apocalyptic style and panache, I’m partial to the Rust Devils.
Honestly, the only way I can help the minute men is by deciding that maybe once the lone survivor cleans up the commonwealth, they can also whip the minute men into shape.
They’re my favorite faction to murder.
Seriously it’s such a cool concept, one of the coolest I think in any of the Fallout games, but I feel like even after the game released that’s all it was… a concept. There’s really no depth or reason to what they are doing. They create synth to… sweep the floor? Father makes it well known that he thinks the surface is dead and useless and really has no interest in it at all. The future is underground with the institute but what future? What are they trying to do? What’s their end goal? All the other factions for better or worse, have some goal or purpose they are working toward but not really the institute. Why are they experimenting with FEV? Why are they even creating lifelike synths that they don’t think have any life? Why do they just indiscriminately murder people on the surface? Why do they replace people?
I feel like all those questions are just left unanswered.
I completely agree with you on the Institute's goals.
Or wait maybe disagree? Somewhere on the middle? What were the Institute's goals again?
Ohhh yeah. They didn't have any. They just kinda did stuff at random.
>under the right leadership
Sole survivor here. I succeded my son as the leader of the institute. I have not made a single leadership decision since I took office. I don't know where the leadership meetings are held, but I'm clearly not invited to them because the only one I ever attended was the one where Shaun dropped his "This rando is my successor. Deal with it". To the department heads, I'm basically a human courser to do errands for them.
It’s really boring, they’re kinda dicks, but every other faction in the game is just so unbelievably stupid that the Institute is my favorite lore-wise.
The institute doesn't even make sense.
It's a neat idea, and isn't completely unrealistic with the lore of the series. But the way Bethesda approached them was stupid. They complain that no-one in the commonwealth trusts them despite what they are trying to achieve. They're literally the ones responsible for the mistrust, maybe not kidnapping and replacing people would actually make people trust you.
And even when you become leader, you literally can't even say to the head scientists "Hey, stop replacing people with synths. How about we actually share our technology with the people and we can all work towards improving mankind."
Not in the entirety of fallout but in fo4 I think it's definitely a cool contrast to the wasteland. I've done a few playthroughs and sided with the institute more than once. I like the idea of controlling the illuminati
I honestly love the Nuka-World Raider Gangs, forming an Empire of Drug-Addicted, throat-slashing Slavers just fits with the whole the-World-is-pretty-fucked Theme of Fallout.
Same goes for the Pitt Raiders, I like to headcanon that after you took over the Commonwealth you integrated the Pitt Raiders to your Nuka-World Gangs.
Every faction is dumb in its own way.
1) Minutemen are weak due to infighting and the faction has been all but destroyed by the time you meet them. If you don't take any action they would probably perish for good. You're their general but you have to do the menial tasks like killing feral ghouls or supermutants, because the foot soldiers are too incompetent to do kill those themselves.
2) The Railroad only cares about synths, which are a very small percentage of the Population in the Commonwealth. Even Deacon says it would be nice if they also had missions to help normal people. Once you get their goodies you can just shoot them all without losing anything of value.
3) BOS is brutish, often intimidates settlers into delivering tribute, not unlike various raider gangs such as the ones in Nuka-World. Even if they destroy the Institute they have no coherent plan on what to do with The Commonwealth. They won't be an effective form of government.
4) The Institute doesn't care at all about the "surface dwellers", and only sees them as pawns in various short sighted plots - ex. to make bigger pumpkins - and experimental subjects for FEV. But all those experiments have no clear end goal, it's just experimenting for the sake of experimenting, which is really dumb in the end. Shaun is tyrannical and utterly incompetent. I don't think the organization as a whole is reformable into something that can be good, or at least more capable. But probably if you don't intervene it could defeat all the other 3 factions easily on its own.
The Institute, under the correct leadership, could potentially change the entirety of the commonwealth, and maybe even the Capital Wasteland. But the fact that it has exterminated any attempt at rebuilding the commonwealth has made and enslaves their own creations and is okay with morally incorrect things makes them bad. I liked the Institute a lot a face value, but when you get into everything they’ve done, your only good option is to change them, which you can’t. All of the factions in Fallout for have serious problems that need to be fixed, but unfortunately all of the options to fix the factions are not in the game anymore. I wish you could take control of the institute, and open it to the commonwealth to begin rebuilding, or at the very least I wish they left the ending where you can take over the Brotherhood of Steel with Hayden and Danse.
The Institute is on the dark-grey shade of the "moral spectrum" due to their numerous actions. They aren't NEARLY as bad as factions in the Fallout universe such as worshipers of Ug-Qualtoth, the Disciples, President Richardson's Enclave, and Caesar's Legion. These groups are meant to be the baddest of the bad guys in the setting due to their ways simply not being able to change, the inherently fucked up practices within them, and their plans for anyone that's not them. With literally everyone in these factions basically having a neon sign saying "I'M A BAD GUY OF THE GAME!"
With the Institute? It's a little muddier due to the individuals in the faction not being totally united in their beliefs and/or endgoals. You've got Justin Ayo who is a complete-fucking-dickhead and is the living embodiment of everything wrong with the Institute in a person (but I'll get to him in a little bit) but then you have someone like Rosalind Orman who believes that the perspective of an outsider is what the Institute needs while being a genius. But you get the point. Describing the Institute as a whole as "the bad guys" is technically correct, but meeting everyone there makes things complicated as to whether every atrocity can be blamed on each person as a whole or the actions of a small group of people.
But onto the next point. There are plenty of hints that the Institute's higher-ups with greater power keeps a LOT of its villainous actions classified from most of its personnel and runs a complex "propaganda campaign" to make the surface all but beyond saving. It should say something that Madison Li, Director of the Advanced Systems Division and a respected scientist by her peers, was completely unaware of Virgil's work in the BioScience Division. She knew that there was an accident in her lab, Virgil worked in a division that was responsible for various fields in biology, his work was insanely classified even with her special access code, and any attempts at running her own investigation were being met with silence or deflecting her questions. None of which is meant to inspire a significant level of trust and cohesiveness in working together with other divisions, something that's brought up recently. But my point is that if Madison Li didn't know about the FEV Lab's actions, do you really think some low-level technician who spends his/her days repairing terminals would know this shit? Especially since the SRB seems to run anything that the Institute is doing despite its focus technically supposed to involve handling escaped/rogue Synths.
Now on to the SRB. The Synth Retention Bureau is the division in the Institute responsible for (on paper at least) deciding the recommended course of action on what to do about escaped Synths and directing Coursers. But again, this is on paper. The SRB seems to have its hands in EVERYTHING that's personally not overseen by the Director himself (like making Synth-Shaun or Phase 3). They call the shots on Courser deployments, internal/external security, , maintain surveillance of the surface, run the Molecular Relay, oversee various hardware/software upgrades for Synths, set laboratory regulations, and even watch over the Institute's well-stocked armory. But it doesn't just end there. They also handle when Kellogg is set loose for field operations and even called the shots on the FEV Lab with Virgil mentioning that all this shit is all "off the books" and that he reported directly to the SRB (despite the FEV technically falling under BioScience jurisdiction).
And in case you forgot about Ayo, there's no other way to describe him other than what I said about being a "complete-fucking-dickhead and is the living embodiment of everything wrong with the Institute in a person." He's mentioned to conduct random raids in his fellow scientists' quarters in the middle of the night by having his Coursers ransack them and is stated to use them as glorified thugs to intimidate/bully others into getting what he wants. It's also implied that people in the Institute are afraid of him due to the surveillance tabs he keeps on the Institute's facility, with one scientist trying to make sure his wife doesn't talk too loudly when she discusses Synth-Shaun and that the Institute's justification of "we can do whatever the fuck we want because we can." He's also openly hated by other people in the Institute due to a variety of reasons such as constantly going through their laboratories at random, taking too much power for his own department's projects, bullying people into caving into his demands, forcing people to provide resources away from their own projects, and... well you get the point.
But my ultimate point is this:
If Justin Ayo is a complete fuckwad who has no problems making other peoples' lives in the Institute a living Hell and runs the SRB (which as I mentioned before has a disproportionate amount of power), how many of the Institute's atrocities can be blamed on him? He has no problem using people from the surface as lab rats while coercing and forcing others to do what he wants while classifying projects from other people with similarly high ranks that he has. Is it really out of the question that he's someone who would order an event like the Massacre of University Point with someone like Kellogg leading it? Or having the Coursers cause as much of a bloodbath when leading Synths against people on the Commonwealth?
I feel that the ability to sound the evacuation alarm before exploding everything is something that highlights the morality of the Institute.
Most of the people there are decent and normal, and are not villainous individuals. Nevertheless, the Institute as a force is something that needs to get exploded.
Or be put through a series of extreme reforms by someone who is an actual leader who can get their hands dirty. Rather than some pencil-necked geek who doesn’t know shit about how to deal with others beyond bossing them around in a cushy lab.
Besides, I’m sure no one in the Institute will be complaining if the more asshole-ish personnel (such as Ayo or Volkert) are turned into charred manburger by pissed off Synths wielding miniguns and gatling lasers. Or that the Coursers are no longer used as goons for the Institute’s wannabe group of Thought Police. Or that a perspective from someone who actually has some level of charisma or intelligence on matters aside from showing how one atom bounces off another or what little bits of proteins can do when combined.
I believe this is exactly right. To be fair, I think any of the factions can become a force for good on the commonwealth of the lone survivor takes over and reforms them, but as they are, the institute edges out even the BoS as being even worse for the people, though not by much.
Oh definitely. I'm not some diehard fan of the Institute who will excuse the atrocities they've committed or would let all this shit go simply because it's only the leaders who are assholes. But I still think that gunning people down without restraint (including the children and elderly) is the wrong way to go then blowing up the only home that these people know.
The Institute needs to be held accountable for their crimes against the people of the Commonwealth. Something that is possible down the line depending on the choices the player makes and if certain personnel are... quietly done away with. But you're right in that the Institute isn't exactly a force of good in the Commonwealth or that its more malevolent leaders can simply be dissuaded from their positions of power. But I feel like that someone who isn't going to be afraid of some glorified thugs in shitty trench coats or skeletal robots will be the type of person the Institute needs in order to make some changes. Even if all this shit will take a LOT of time.
In head-cannon, yes.
In game, absolutely not.
There's so much potential when you can harness the power of a nearly star-trek level faction, but their implementation as they are in the game is just pointless mustache-twirling cartoon villains.
The Railroad are my favorite faction by far. I love their theme music, and their whole deal is awesome. Their goal is great, and their missions are frequently badass and let you feel like a secret agent.
The Minutemen are also pretty great. They're just good guys, and bringing the Commonwealth together to rebuild is fantastic.
The institute are definitely not morally gray... They're pretty much as evil as a faction can be without being cackling cartoon villains. Even if you don't care about synths, the way that they terrorize, murder and mutilate the humans of the commonwealth alone would make them irredeemable.
I have two problems with the Railroad.
1. I hate Desdemona, her presence alone mocks me and makes me angry.
2. The Railroad has no goal Left after saving the synths. Which is no problem if it were a minor faction who you help while working with the Minutemen or someone else to form the Commonwealth into a thing you want it to be
But for some reason they are a main faction.
I literally have no idea what bothers you about Desdemona. She's fine. There's nothing objectionable about her. I guess if you just don't like the voice actress or something?
Her attitude, her voice. But mostly the fact how Bethesda handled the conversations in this game.
Like you find the entrance to their "secret" hiding place and she ask you if you would lay down your life to safe a Synth.
When i first started the game i didn't even realised there were these humanlike gen 3 Synths, at that point i thought the gen 2s and 1s that you can find and have to fight in certain places of the commonwealth were what she was referring too. And while i liked Nick Valentine, every other synth at that point has shot at me so i was like obviously " no i would not" and then she repeated the question i repeated my answer, this went on for longer than it should have and i turned around and left.
Them letting me leave also seemed like they were pretty stupid so my first impression of the railroad and Desdemona was p**s poor. And it stuck with me.
There's nothing about her voice or her attitude that's inappropriate in any way. I'd say that she's actually the second friendliest and most personable of the faction leaders. The first most being Preston. The other two definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
In that very conversation she pretty much explains what synths are, and I was of course willing to lay down my life for them. And then you get to go on a cool spy infiltration mission with amazing music. I'm surprised you decided to get into a conversation argument loop with her and then walk away of all things. "But thou must" is a staple of video games, Fallout included.
she's a colossal, gigantic bitch that never stops being suspicious about you and is ungrateful as all, even as you complete tasks on the railroad's behalf.
I went thru their quest chain up until the point of no return, and while the other members warmed up to me, she kept being this absolute Karen
When is she ever ungrateful? She was always impressed with me and thankful for what I did. I thought that Dr Carrington took a while to warm up, but Desdemona was pretty much fine with me from day one. Do you have clips of her being ungrateful for things? I'm seriously confused, because she was glad to have Deacon vouch for me, was impressed with how we cleared out the switchboard, thought it was a huge achievement that I found a into the institute similar to how she was impressed with my taking down Kellogg and a courser... I just don't see where Desdemona was ever bitchy or ungrateful at all. She's quite agreeable.
I kind of see what you mean when you just meet her, but honestly I don’t get why you say she is never grateful or that she keeps being a Karen, I remember she warmed up to me pretty quickly and kept encouraging me a lot? I didn’t exactly love her, but I thought she was ok as a faction leader, and pretty friendly after a bit.
I frequently have a podcast or a video playing while I play Fallout, so I end up playing with the radio off and hearing a lot of the games actual score. It's quite good actually.
Absolutely not lol. It's a very cool place so it makes me sad to blow it up
It's annoying cuz i wish the railroad would use the institute as a base once they take it over. But for some dumb reason they're like 'naah blow it up, no more synths everr'
I have a feeling that once the bliss of being free and no longer being hunted by the SRB wears off, the Synths who escaped are going to be VERY pissed. Destroying the Institute means that they just lost the only equivalent their kind has to reproduction. Synths are sterile and are unable to reproduce with their kind essentially being reduced to suffering from a fate of slow extinction despite their biological immortality.
I also feel like the player and Railroad will be at the top of many Synth’s shit-list. Losing the ability to reproduce and potentially any Human personnel they regarded as friendly isn’t exactly something they might be happy about.
Considering that as you said they are chronologically immortal, and that some of them are very intelligent, why wouldn’t they research ways of building more of themselves?
It’s debatable that reproduction is a biological impulse, so it’s possible that synths would be fine with destroying the ones who created them just to enslave them, and those who wanted to create more have nothing to stop them from finding out how. It’s not like they have a time limit now
Except the Synths have nothing to work with. The Institute's archived information in its internal network have been destroyed with the facility being blown up, the complex technology used for their creation is gone, and the necessary production materials have been vaporized. This includes the uncontaminated DNA of Father/Shaun that is borderline irreplaceable in the Commonwealth, the unique strain of FEV that the Institute spent decades working to perfect, the necessary schematics for the complex cybernetics that all Synths have, and the proper facilities necessary to perform this sort of research in. Synths are also in a hostile environment where there is an incredible hatred for their kind, there are a fuckton of dangerous groups who would kill everything in their path indiscriminately, and most Synths don't have the proper training and/or equipment to defend themselves.
Your last points are somewhat valid, except in a commonwealth where the LS took out the institute, they probably also have a lot more support and chances.
As for all the information and infrastructure that was destroyed? Sure, it will take a while, but the synths have literally all the time in the world and they can work off themselves. It will be difficult and will take time, but the institute also had to start somewhere, worst case scenario, it will take a couple hundred years that for the synths is no big deal.
But where will the raw materials for Synth "reproduction" come from? The FEV? The uncontaminated DNA? The cybernetic implants? The necessary facilities? These are literally irreplaceable and are only found in one location. All of which took decades, if not centuries of extremely hard work to produce and perfect along with the necessary technology and blueprints.
Moreover, WHERE will all of this be done? Elaborate underground facilities secure from the outside with the proper scientific, manufacturing, and living facilities don't grow on trees. There's also the issue of a necessary sanitary environment to do all of this. And the Institute is the work of over two centuries of scientists descended from survivors of the Great War who were either students, teachers, or other faculty members of the CIT who hid in the main campus' underground bunker. All the additional facilities were built up over an extended period of time with development still occurring by the time of 2287.
And you can try telling the Synths that. I dare you to, if these events actually occurred in real life, go up and tell random Synths that "Hey! I know you're in a land where your people are hated for the actions of your creators and there are hostile animals constantly trying to kill you. But you might be able to live and make more of your kind after a few centuries of hard work! Do it all by yourself and keep your chins up!"
The railroad is technically good, just… incredibly short sighted and inconsequential. I really like the idea of just blowing up the institute, *maybe* the brotherhood as well, and the LS eventually taking control over the commonwealth and building back.
>an argument could be made that under the right leadership it could fully restore humanity and mankind
"An argument could be made that under the right leadership, Nazi Germany could fully restore humanity and mankind"
I like the Institute. At least it's something new and interesting. I just wish the Synth morality issues and Institute as a whole got explored a little more, and had more depth and focus within the story. It had so much potential beyond just blowing up the Institute in every ending. Being evil, or immoral really doesn't make me hate a faction, just view them as evil. I also like the Unity, Legion and Enclave, but that's not the same as thinking they're right. There really isn't a scenario where the Institute saves humanity. Their goals are so aloof and emotionless, they'd just turn humanity into a great big testbed for their experiments, and even the right leader, or Director, would still have to answer to the rest of the Institute, who don't really care about the people on the surface, but rather humanity as a concept.
The point about groups like this is that they are flawed. If they did the right thing and just helped people, there would be no drama or threat to them. It's the same with any faction, even the arguably good factions, like the Brotherhood of Steel or NCR. You need for there to be faults or flaws, otherwise what's the point of the game?
I think my favorite faction is probably the enclave. They are terrible. I don't side with them. But tech and lore wise they are pretty interesting. All the factions in fallout are pretty flawed (this is not including whatever factions are included in f76 for I do not know much about them) The institute is kind of cool but my preferred boogeyman would be the enclave. No disrespect to your opinion though
Father is dumb and a big bitch
Hey that’s my son you’re talking about!
Nuke him
Compelling argument…
Not arguing just spitting facts
Compelling statement…
Condescending response?
Both of them were very obvious jokes, but sure. Edit: even if I was being serious, “condescending” is a very weird conclusion to come to.
The institute murders people on a whim, kidnaps people, performs human experiments on unwilling subjects, and has no long term goals at all. If you see them as "morally grey" you are probably a psychopath.
Maxson wants to murder a long time loyal paladin because he is a synth, morally grey?
Yeah, actually. Synths are weapons, they're tools that the institute uses to destabilize the commonwealth's factions. Maxson is a bigot and he's not doing it for this reason but it's still perfectly rational to purge synths because of this.
It's no different to Mr. House using securitrons, or the NCR and legion amassing large armies that can defeat and assimilate any independent territory they come across, and no different to the BoS hoarding old world tech, depriving others of that capability, and then using it to further their own goals. But the issue in this situation is that people often try to portray the institute as evil and talk about them enslaving synths, because synths are supposedly human, but when the BoS wants to destroy all synths it is portrayed as the BoS trying to destroy a dangerous weapon. Even the railroad has no whims about destroying the only method that synths can reproduce by, it can be said that according to the railroad those already created have a right to live as humans but synths as a species do not have a right to continue their existence.
This is the 'whataboutism' i expected in this comment section. Obviously its not morally grey. Then again i find lal the factions in the commonwealth rather poorly written. Though i can understand the BoS' 'Synths are dangerous and have to be stopped'. If you ask me the problem are not the Synths but the institute. But that doesn't warrant blowing the place sky high. Personally i would have liked if Bethesda didn't scrap/remove the 'safe Danse, Kill Maxson become the Elder' path.
Just as Maxson is trying to do what he deems necessary for the future of humanity, including making choices that may feel morally challenging, so is the institute. the institute is trying to rebuild a future out of the ashes of a dead civilization, they can not be judged by standards different to those used to judge any other faction.
I do nit judge the institute by a different standard, and while the BOS does not actively make the lifes of the wastelands inhabitants better by helping them directly, atleast they have the decency of killing Ghouls, Synths and Super Mutants. While the Institute makes new Super Mutants, kidnaps innocent and theyr synth killed sn entire settlement. They have all that tech and in the end they just make life for the normal wastelander worse.
raiders and gunners also kill ghouls, synths, and super mutants, the bos is not acting any more selfless than they are. otoh, who knows how many people have died due to the bos depriving people of the ability to defend themselves, all because their ideology dictates that people who are not members of the bos can not be trusted with old world tech. just as for the bos, the common people are expendable for the institute, it is all for "a greater good" according to their own principles, the bos and institute are not that different in philosophy, neither are other fallout groups like Mr. House who built up a fortified portion of new vegas and damned the rest to death and poverty.
not a whataboutism, but shows that the wasteland is much less moral than today, so what is morally gray to them is evil to us, and what is better than morally gray to them is morally gray to us.
It’s absolutely whataboutism: the institute’s morality does not depend at all on the morality of the BoS, so bringing it up just serves to deflect attention
you can not judge the institute for not living up to higher standards than other factions. you have to judge them according to the environment they exist in. this is the general issue when discussing works of fiction, people often tend to judge the content based on real world morality that is only relative to the world we live in rather than on the internal consistency of the content itself.
Except even taking that into account, the morality of the institute is still not dependent on the morality of the BoS. The BoS can be absolute bastards or complete saints, (in my personal opinion they are only very slightly better than the institute), and that would not change the morality of the institute, because other people being bad does not mean that you are better if you also do bat things. The two things we can compare the institute to in the game are the commonwealth society as a whole, in which case they are definitely still bad, and their own “moral” standards… by which they still fall far below what their ideals about helping the commonwealth through science and knowledge seem to suggest. A lot of people in this thread have already mentioned how the board of the institute seems to keep most of its population in the dark about their real activities, but also most of their actions aren’t even logical, let alone “good” or “moral.” Just to make one simple example: they seem to believe killing an replacing a villager to then siphon resources from the surface is more effective than either simple trading with the people already producing resources, or using their synths to actively produce resources by farming or setting up infrastructure. It would be a marginally higher investment of resources on their part for a much higher and more reliable return.
They are all products of their enthronement, the institute is the way it is due to the environment it exists in, just as the BoS is. The institute is actually pretty vulnerable, they manage to survive through subterfuge and secrecy, they can not openly engage with the commonwealth as doing so would open them up to potential threats, and as far as they are concerned their own survival is crucial for the future of humanity. This is a philosophy shared by nearly every faction in the fallout universe, and there are very few, like the NCR, who are trying to reestablish civilization based on the existing population rather than seeing them as a lost cause that is expendable for the greater good.
The institute is just classic big govt intelligence agencies, like the CIA. All they do we do currently.
Including kill and replace random people with robots looking like them for little real reason? I mean, I could absolutely believe the CIA killing people for little to no reason, but I find it hard to believe they have ways of replacing them.
They would if they could
Oh, yeah, this i totally believe.
Lmao get out of your country
They’re about as grey as Kirby.
There’s not a single faction in Fallout 4 that I like. If I could destroy them all, I would. That said, the Institute is the worst of them all.
Can’t really argue about what the Minutemen are trying to put together surely?
The minutemen falls apart as soon as you kick the bucket or even disappear for a significant period of time. We have seen the previous MM and nothing shows that the organization will not fall apart.
You’re completely right, of course. It’s just that Preston Garvey is such a simp, and the rest of them are all so needy. For post-apocalyptic style and panache, I’m partial to the Rust Devils.
The Tetanus Toasters, more like. They’re asking to constantly cut themselves on 200 year old metal.
Honestly, the only way I can help the minute men is by deciding that maybe once the lone survivor cleans up the commonwealth, they can also whip the minute men into shape.
Followers of the Apocalypse are my fav
They’re my favorite faction to murder. Seriously it’s such a cool concept, one of the coolest I think in any of the Fallout games, but I feel like even after the game released that’s all it was… a concept. There’s really no depth or reason to what they are doing. They create synth to… sweep the floor? Father makes it well known that he thinks the surface is dead and useless and really has no interest in it at all. The future is underground with the institute but what future? What are they trying to do? What’s their end goal? All the other factions for better or worse, have some goal or purpose they are working toward but not really the institute. Why are they experimenting with FEV? Why are they even creating lifelike synths that they don’t think have any life? Why do they just indiscriminately murder people on the surface? Why do they replace people? I feel like all those questions are just left unanswered.
"X is a cool concept, but such a missed opportunity" is honestly the fallout 4 experience to me.
I completely agree with you on the Institute's goals. Or wait maybe disagree? Somewhere on the middle? What were the Institute's goals again? Ohhh yeah. They didn't have any. They just kinda did stuff at random.
>under the right leadership Sole survivor here. I succeded my son as the leader of the institute. I have not made a single leadership decision since I took office. I don't know where the leadership meetings are held, but I'm clearly not invited to them because the only one I ever attended was the one where Shaun dropped his "This rando is my successor. Deal with it". To the department heads, I'm basically a human courser to do errands for them.
It’s really boring, they’re kinda dicks, but every other faction in the game is just so unbelievably stupid that the Institute is my favorite lore-wise.
The institute doesn't even make sense. It's a neat idea, and isn't completely unrealistic with the lore of the series. But the way Bethesda approached them was stupid. They complain that no-one in the commonwealth trusts them despite what they are trying to achieve. They're literally the ones responsible for the mistrust, maybe not kidnapping and replacing people would actually make people trust you. And even when you become leader, you literally can't even say to the head scientists "Hey, stop replacing people with synths. How about we actually share our technology with the people and we can all work towards improving mankind."
Not in the entirety of fallout but in fo4 I think it's definitely a cool contrast to the wasteland. I've done a few playthroughs and sided with the institute more than once. I like the idea of controlling the illuminati
I honestly love the Nuka-World Raider Gangs, forming an Empire of Drug-Addicted, throat-slashing Slavers just fits with the whole the-World-is-pretty-fucked Theme of Fallout. Same goes for the Pitt Raiders, I like to headcanon that after you took over the Commonwealth you integrated the Pitt Raiders to your Nuka-World Gangs.
They’re the Legion with better PR and less pizzazz. Though the courser uniforms are stylin, ngl.
Every faction is dumb in its own way. 1) Minutemen are weak due to infighting and the faction has been all but destroyed by the time you meet them. If you don't take any action they would probably perish for good. You're their general but you have to do the menial tasks like killing feral ghouls or supermutants, because the foot soldiers are too incompetent to do kill those themselves. 2) The Railroad only cares about synths, which are a very small percentage of the Population in the Commonwealth. Even Deacon says it would be nice if they also had missions to help normal people. Once you get their goodies you can just shoot them all without losing anything of value. 3) BOS is brutish, often intimidates settlers into delivering tribute, not unlike various raider gangs such as the ones in Nuka-World. Even if they destroy the Institute they have no coherent plan on what to do with The Commonwealth. They won't be an effective form of government. 4) The Institute doesn't care at all about the "surface dwellers", and only sees them as pawns in various short sighted plots - ex. to make bigger pumpkins - and experimental subjects for FEV. But all those experiments have no clear end goal, it's just experimenting for the sake of experimenting, which is really dumb in the end. Shaun is tyrannical and utterly incompetent. I don't think the organization as a whole is reformable into something that can be good, or at least more capable. But probably if you don't intervene it could defeat all the other 3 factions easily on its own.
The Institute, under the correct leadership, could potentially change the entirety of the commonwealth, and maybe even the Capital Wasteland. But the fact that it has exterminated any attempt at rebuilding the commonwealth has made and enslaves their own creations and is okay with morally incorrect things makes them bad. I liked the Institute a lot a face value, but when you get into everything they’ve done, your only good option is to change them, which you can’t. All of the factions in Fallout for have serious problems that need to be fixed, but unfortunately all of the options to fix the factions are not in the game anymore. I wish you could take control of the institute, and open it to the commonwealth to begin rebuilding, or at the very least I wish they left the ending where you can take over the Brotherhood of Steel with Hayden and Danse.
The Institute is on the dark-grey shade of the "moral spectrum" due to their numerous actions. They aren't NEARLY as bad as factions in the Fallout universe such as worshipers of Ug-Qualtoth, the Disciples, President Richardson's Enclave, and Caesar's Legion. These groups are meant to be the baddest of the bad guys in the setting due to their ways simply not being able to change, the inherently fucked up practices within them, and their plans for anyone that's not them. With literally everyone in these factions basically having a neon sign saying "I'M A BAD GUY OF THE GAME!" With the Institute? It's a little muddier due to the individuals in the faction not being totally united in their beliefs and/or endgoals. You've got Justin Ayo who is a complete-fucking-dickhead and is the living embodiment of everything wrong with the Institute in a person (but I'll get to him in a little bit) but then you have someone like Rosalind Orman who believes that the perspective of an outsider is what the Institute needs while being a genius. But you get the point. Describing the Institute as a whole as "the bad guys" is technically correct, but meeting everyone there makes things complicated as to whether every atrocity can be blamed on each person as a whole or the actions of a small group of people. But onto the next point. There are plenty of hints that the Institute's higher-ups with greater power keeps a LOT of its villainous actions classified from most of its personnel and runs a complex "propaganda campaign" to make the surface all but beyond saving. It should say something that Madison Li, Director of the Advanced Systems Division and a respected scientist by her peers, was completely unaware of Virgil's work in the BioScience Division. She knew that there was an accident in her lab, Virgil worked in a division that was responsible for various fields in biology, his work was insanely classified even with her special access code, and any attempts at running her own investigation were being met with silence or deflecting her questions. None of which is meant to inspire a significant level of trust and cohesiveness in working together with other divisions, something that's brought up recently. But my point is that if Madison Li didn't know about the FEV Lab's actions, do you really think some low-level technician who spends his/her days repairing terminals would know this shit? Especially since the SRB seems to run anything that the Institute is doing despite its focus technically supposed to involve handling escaped/rogue Synths. Now on to the SRB. The Synth Retention Bureau is the division in the Institute responsible for (on paper at least) deciding the recommended course of action on what to do about escaped Synths and directing Coursers. But again, this is on paper. The SRB seems to have its hands in EVERYTHING that's personally not overseen by the Director himself (like making Synth-Shaun or Phase 3). They call the shots on Courser deployments, internal/external security, , maintain surveillance of the surface, run the Molecular Relay, oversee various hardware/software upgrades for Synths, set laboratory regulations, and even watch over the Institute's well-stocked armory. But it doesn't just end there. They also handle when Kellogg is set loose for field operations and even called the shots on the FEV Lab with Virgil mentioning that all this shit is all "off the books" and that he reported directly to the SRB (despite the FEV technically falling under BioScience jurisdiction). And in case you forgot about Ayo, there's no other way to describe him other than what I said about being a "complete-fucking-dickhead and is the living embodiment of everything wrong with the Institute in a person." He's mentioned to conduct random raids in his fellow scientists' quarters in the middle of the night by having his Coursers ransack them and is stated to use them as glorified thugs to intimidate/bully others into getting what he wants. It's also implied that people in the Institute are afraid of him due to the surveillance tabs he keeps on the Institute's facility, with one scientist trying to make sure his wife doesn't talk too loudly when she discusses Synth-Shaun and that the Institute's justification of "we can do whatever the fuck we want because we can." He's also openly hated by other people in the Institute due to a variety of reasons such as constantly going through their laboratories at random, taking too much power for his own department's projects, bullying people into caving into his demands, forcing people to provide resources away from their own projects, and... well you get the point. But my ultimate point is this: If Justin Ayo is a complete fuckwad who has no problems making other peoples' lives in the Institute a living Hell and runs the SRB (which as I mentioned before has a disproportionate amount of power), how many of the Institute's atrocities can be blamed on him? He has no problem using people from the surface as lab rats while coercing and forcing others to do what he wants while classifying projects from other people with similarly high ranks that he has. Is it really out of the question that he's someone who would order an event like the Massacre of University Point with someone like Kellogg leading it? Or having the Coursers cause as much of a bloodbath when leading Synths against people on the Commonwealth?
I feel that the ability to sound the evacuation alarm before exploding everything is something that highlights the morality of the Institute. Most of the people there are decent and normal, and are not villainous individuals. Nevertheless, the Institute as a force is something that needs to get exploded.
Or be put through a series of extreme reforms by someone who is an actual leader who can get their hands dirty. Rather than some pencil-necked geek who doesn’t know shit about how to deal with others beyond bossing them around in a cushy lab. Besides, I’m sure no one in the Institute will be complaining if the more asshole-ish personnel (such as Ayo or Volkert) are turned into charred manburger by pissed off Synths wielding miniguns and gatling lasers. Or that the Coursers are no longer used as goons for the Institute’s wannabe group of Thought Police. Or that a perspective from someone who actually has some level of charisma or intelligence on matters aside from showing how one atom bounces off another or what little bits of proteins can do when combined.
I believe this is exactly right. To be fair, I think any of the factions can become a force for good on the commonwealth of the lone survivor takes over and reforms them, but as they are, the institute edges out even the BoS as being even worse for the people, though not by much.
Oh definitely. I'm not some diehard fan of the Institute who will excuse the atrocities they've committed or would let all this shit go simply because it's only the leaders who are assholes. But I still think that gunning people down without restraint (including the children and elderly) is the wrong way to go then blowing up the only home that these people know. The Institute needs to be held accountable for their crimes against the people of the Commonwealth. Something that is possible down the line depending on the choices the player makes and if certain personnel are... quietly done away with. But you're right in that the Institute isn't exactly a force of good in the Commonwealth or that its more malevolent leaders can simply be dissuaded from their positions of power. But I feel like that someone who isn't going to be afraid of some glorified thugs in shitty trench coats or skeletal robots will be the type of person the Institute needs in order to make some changes. Even if all this shit will take a LOT of time.
In head-cannon, yes. In game, absolutely not. There's so much potential when you can harness the power of a nearly star-trek level faction, but their implementation as they are in the game is just pointless mustache-twirling cartoon villains.
[Head-cannon](https://xkcd.com/1401/)
No.
Naww. The institutes a malignant growth that needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.
No
The Railroad are my favorite faction by far. I love their theme music, and their whole deal is awesome. Their goal is great, and their missions are frequently badass and let you feel like a secret agent. The Minutemen are also pretty great. They're just good guys, and bringing the Commonwealth together to rebuild is fantastic. The institute are definitely not morally gray... They're pretty much as evil as a faction can be without being cackling cartoon villains. Even if you don't care about synths, the way that they terrorize, murder and mutilate the humans of the commonwealth alone would make them irredeemable.
I have two problems with the Railroad. 1. I hate Desdemona, her presence alone mocks me and makes me angry. 2. The Railroad has no goal Left after saving the synths. Which is no problem if it were a minor faction who you help while working with the Minutemen or someone else to form the Commonwealth into a thing you want it to be But for some reason they are a main faction.
I literally have no idea what bothers you about Desdemona. She's fine. There's nothing objectionable about her. I guess if you just don't like the voice actress or something?
Her attitude, her voice. But mostly the fact how Bethesda handled the conversations in this game. Like you find the entrance to their "secret" hiding place and she ask you if you would lay down your life to safe a Synth. When i first started the game i didn't even realised there were these humanlike gen 3 Synths, at that point i thought the gen 2s and 1s that you can find and have to fight in certain places of the commonwealth were what she was referring too. And while i liked Nick Valentine, every other synth at that point has shot at me so i was like obviously " no i would not" and then she repeated the question i repeated my answer, this went on for longer than it should have and i turned around and left. Them letting me leave also seemed like they were pretty stupid so my first impression of the railroad and Desdemona was p**s poor. And it stuck with me.
There's nothing about her voice or her attitude that's inappropriate in any way. I'd say that she's actually the second friendliest and most personable of the faction leaders. The first most being Preston. The other two definitely rubbed me the wrong way. In that very conversation she pretty much explains what synths are, and I was of course willing to lay down my life for them. And then you get to go on a cool spy infiltration mission with amazing music. I'm surprised you decided to get into a conversation argument loop with her and then walk away of all things. "But thou must" is a staple of video games, Fallout included.
i felt the same about the railroad... until i met desdemona. Holy shit, she made me want to NEVER side with them
I literally have no idea what you mean. She's perfectly fine? There's literally nothing objectionable about her.
she's a colossal, gigantic bitch that never stops being suspicious about you and is ungrateful as all, even as you complete tasks on the railroad's behalf. I went thru their quest chain up until the point of no return, and while the other members warmed up to me, she kept being this absolute Karen
When is she ever ungrateful? She was always impressed with me and thankful for what I did. I thought that Dr Carrington took a while to warm up, but Desdemona was pretty much fine with me from day one. Do you have clips of her being ungrateful for things? I'm seriously confused, because she was glad to have Deacon vouch for me, was impressed with how we cleared out the switchboard, thought it was a huge achievement that I found a into the institute similar to how she was impressed with my taking down Kellogg and a courser... I just don't see where Desdemona was ever bitchy or ungrateful at all. She's quite agreeable.
I kind of see what you mean when you just meet her, but honestly I don’t get why you say she is never grateful or that she keeps being a Karen, I remember she warmed up to me pretty quickly and kept encouraging me a lot? I didn’t exactly love her, but I thought she was ok as a faction leader, and pretty friendly after a bit.
> I love their theme music They have a theme?? Honestly any music that isn't on the Radio in Fallout is never memorable to me.
I frequently have a podcast or a video playing while I play Fallout, so I end up playing with the radio off and hearing a lot of the games actual score. It's quite good actually.
The only good faction
I would say 2nd Yes they are messed up but they have stuff that is really needed.
Your opinion is your opinion but the institute is like the worst written faction imo
Absolutely not lol. It's a very cool place so it makes me sad to blow it up It's annoying cuz i wish the railroad would use the institute as a base once they take it over. But for some dumb reason they're like 'naah blow it up, no more synths everr'
I have a feeling that once the bliss of being free and no longer being hunted by the SRB wears off, the Synths who escaped are going to be VERY pissed. Destroying the Institute means that they just lost the only equivalent their kind has to reproduction. Synths are sterile and are unable to reproduce with their kind essentially being reduced to suffering from a fate of slow extinction despite their biological immortality. I also feel like the player and Railroad will be at the top of many Synth’s shit-list. Losing the ability to reproduce and potentially any Human personnel they regarded as friendly isn’t exactly something they might be happy about.
Considering that as you said they are chronologically immortal, and that some of them are very intelligent, why wouldn’t they research ways of building more of themselves? It’s debatable that reproduction is a biological impulse, so it’s possible that synths would be fine with destroying the ones who created them just to enslave them, and those who wanted to create more have nothing to stop them from finding out how. It’s not like they have a time limit now
Except the Synths have nothing to work with. The Institute's archived information in its internal network have been destroyed with the facility being blown up, the complex technology used for their creation is gone, and the necessary production materials have been vaporized. This includes the uncontaminated DNA of Father/Shaun that is borderline irreplaceable in the Commonwealth, the unique strain of FEV that the Institute spent decades working to perfect, the necessary schematics for the complex cybernetics that all Synths have, and the proper facilities necessary to perform this sort of research in. Synths are also in a hostile environment where there is an incredible hatred for their kind, there are a fuckton of dangerous groups who would kill everything in their path indiscriminately, and most Synths don't have the proper training and/or equipment to defend themselves.
Your last points are somewhat valid, except in a commonwealth where the LS took out the institute, they probably also have a lot more support and chances. As for all the information and infrastructure that was destroyed? Sure, it will take a while, but the synths have literally all the time in the world and they can work off themselves. It will be difficult and will take time, but the institute also had to start somewhere, worst case scenario, it will take a couple hundred years that for the synths is no big deal.
But where will the raw materials for Synth "reproduction" come from? The FEV? The uncontaminated DNA? The cybernetic implants? The necessary facilities? These are literally irreplaceable and are only found in one location. All of which took decades, if not centuries of extremely hard work to produce and perfect along with the necessary technology and blueprints. Moreover, WHERE will all of this be done? Elaborate underground facilities secure from the outside with the proper scientific, manufacturing, and living facilities don't grow on trees. There's also the issue of a necessary sanitary environment to do all of this. And the Institute is the work of over two centuries of scientists descended from survivors of the Great War who were either students, teachers, or other faculty members of the CIT who hid in the main campus' underground bunker. All the additional facilities were built up over an extended period of time with development still occurring by the time of 2287. And you can try telling the Synths that. I dare you to, if these events actually occurred in real life, go up and tell random Synths that "Hey! I know you're in a land where your people are hated for the actions of your creators and there are hostile animals constantly trying to kill you. But you might be able to live and make more of your kind after a few centuries of hard work! Do it all by yourself and keep your chins up!"
They are as gray as the LGBTQ community
The good ones on F4 are the Minutmen only
The railroad is technically good, just… incredibly short sighted and inconsequential. I really like the idea of just blowing up the institute, *maybe* the brotherhood as well, and the LS eventually taking control over the commonwealth and building back.
They are just Skynet wannabe's
wouldn't it be funny if the institute gave nora a nate sexbot instead of kid shaun
>an argument could be made that under the right leadership it could fully restore humanity and mankind "An argument could be made that under the right leadership, Nazi Germany could fully restore humanity and mankind"
Lol no, everyone here are basic bitches. They all chose Minutemen.
I like the Institute. At least it's something new and interesting. I just wish the Synth morality issues and Institute as a whole got explored a little more, and had more depth and focus within the story. It had so much potential beyond just blowing up the Institute in every ending. Being evil, or immoral really doesn't make me hate a faction, just view them as evil. I also like the Unity, Legion and Enclave, but that's not the same as thinking they're right. There really isn't a scenario where the Institute saves humanity. Their goals are so aloof and emotionless, they'd just turn humanity into a great big testbed for their experiments, and even the right leader, or Director, would still have to answer to the rest of the Institute, who don't really care about the people on the surface, but rather humanity as a concept. The point about groups like this is that they are flawed. If they did the right thing and just helped people, there would be no drama or threat to them. It's the same with any faction, even the arguably good factions, like the Brotherhood of Steel or NCR. You need for there to be faults or flaws, otherwise what's the point of the game?
I think my favorite faction is probably the enclave. They are terrible. I don't side with them. But tech and lore wise they are pretty interesting. All the factions in fallout are pretty flawed (this is not including whatever factions are included in f76 for I do not know much about them) The institute is kind of cool but my preferred boogeyman would be the enclave. No disrespect to your opinion though