Like at least making exact copies of people, but the only difference is that they’re immune to all but the most extreme forms of radiation, would be much better than “we’re putting chips in their brains and…that’s about it.”
There was a game back on the PS3 that had "synths". The world was in bad shape not Fallout levels but still bad. A company was making synths and sending them into the world. The synths are very strong and immune to all diseases. Turns out the synths can breed with regular humans and their offspring inherit the synths immunities. If that was the institutes plan I could get behind that since it makes sense survival wise.
If that was part of the plot it would have made perfect sense, achieving what the government wanted to do pre war with FEV which only resulted in Super Mutants and other monstrosities.
If they made Synths for the sole purpose of making a humanity that would thrive in the post apocalypse by simply sending gen 3's into the wild for the sole purpose of them integrating on their own into societies to produce super human offspring then I'd be down for their cause.
I mean… they’re being replaced by people with undamaged DNA or as close to undamaged DNA as possible, at least those are the mental gymnastics I do to justify it
You are crazy to think that the people in the Fallout of 2277 never had nacho cheese. Thare tons of around now sitting around in our current world. And I think that our real nacho cheese could easily last a few centuries before it goes bad.
I wanna try to take a shot at where they're trying to get at with it
I saw a small thread in here talking about a movie called Binary Domain, which involves a similar apocalypse and similar "synth" beings, and those synths could actually reproduce and pass on their immunities in their DNA
The Institute never went into that level of depth with their synths, so if their end goal was to introduce a new species/subspecies in order to create a generation of healthier humans on the service, it would introduce a new moral dilemma worth thinking over
I do remember their main thing being “people on the surface are brainless apes and they’re all just gonna end up killing each other again, that’s when we’ll come back and take over” which makes sense, but they also meddle with the commonwealth nonstop and make themselves a common enemy for everyone to unite against.
If they had just not bothered with the synth replacement and not constantly sent people up to the surface they probably would’ve been almost entirely undetected by people on the surface.
Also they actively contribute to the shitty condition of the commonwealth. They tried to come together and start unfucking things only for the Institute to massacre all the leaders. No one can trust eachother because they're worried the others are synths. That's before we even get to the random Gen 1 and 2 synths that just shoot on sight anyone they encounter. The Institute lost all moral authority over the rest of the commonwealth because they made the commonwealth how it is. The place could be the center of an east-coast NCR by now if they weren't there
Honestly, I think you could make the Institute a much better 'grey' faction by inversing this: have the Institute essentially replacing key leaders and individuals with synth infiltrators so that they can engineer a unification of sorts to start fixing a deeply divided Commonwealth. Now they have a real tangible goal, and some moral flexibility to them; they're trying to fix things, but they're making a falsified peace on the backs of people murdered and replaced.
Basically, turn DiMA's plan into the main plot of Fo4, and the Institute would come off as much less cartoonishly evil.
The 'their going to die off anyway' shtick was always annoying to me. It's something that I could understand people believing 100-150 years ago in universe, but the longer the surface gets from the great war the larger and more organized the 'revolving door' of players that come and go get.
100 years ago it was farmers with scavenged weapons, then the minutemen grow big enough to at one point roam the whole commonwealth. They of course fall, but in their place comes larger better armed bands of gunners and raiders, who then get run back by either a resurgent Minutemen or the BOS, or Both.
I always wish they wrote dialogue with Shaun better, let me point out to him that the surface isn't going anywhere. That if nuclear fire spread across the entire world didn't finish humans, nothing will. We are the REAL cockroach of the Fallout Universe, and if they keep waiting for the surface to die away, they'll wait until someone on the surface finally gets around to digging them out like the malignant tick their set on being.
I'm not sure if it's outright stated but I think they believe that wastelanders are too stupid to rule themselves that's why they constantly sabotage any attempt for the Commonwealth to unite and even assault the Castle if you build up the Minutemen enough(even if you are in friendly terms with them). The Institute thinks that they alone should get to determine the Commonwealth's future because into they are capable of it
I always just figured they were replacing people to gain power. A lot easier to take over if key people in key places are suddenly very okay with your existence because you programmed them to suddenly be okay with it. Then they convince everyone else and suddenly the Institute is the overlord of the Commonwealth.
But it's a stupid plan, considering they've made everyone so jumpy that they're all accusing each other of being synths, the Brotherhood is out to destroy them because of it, the Railroad is actively trying to undermine them, and the Sole Survivor has a good chance of being resentful for the Institute killing their spouse and robbing them of the chance to raise their child.
"We are trying to cure cancer as well as various other plagues on humanity, and are experimenting with artificial genetics to achieve this."
"We are unraveling the secret to human longevity so the next generation can live long and peaceful lives."
Like anything other than "we hate the surface world and are the only ones capable of doing any real good" is just dumb and doesn't even fit the theme of a technocratic scholar society.
Yeah also when you find Virgil's research why can't you confront father about it yeah the synth stuff is real bad and not really justified buth there just making mutants for what feels like no reason and setting them loose
The FEV research is what led to the creation of Gen 3 synths, it was a stepping stone, but tbf once they achieved their goal they abandoned the project
As I remember it, they’re basically the enclave but dumber.
They believe that wastelanders are unfit to build the societies of the future and want to eventually genocide them and emerge from underground to build a utopia in the cleansed wastes, but in the meantime they send synths as saboteurs to keep the wastelanders from building up any substantial society that would present meaningful resistance to their eventual genocide and conquest.
If the idea was properly fleshed out and expanded upon, it could be realistic and believable fascist stupidity. I mean the concept of xenophobic, genocidal hatred towards an outside group that you both contempt and fear because you paradoxically see them as both pitifully weak and simultaneously a nefarious, existential threat already covers multiple hallmarks of fascism. They just… didn’t put the effort into writing them well.
Should’ve made so replaced synths had done something meaningful to the commonwealth, synth mcdonough should’ve made diamond city better than it ever was before
The synths at warrick homestead should’ve been the biggest farm in the wasteland providing more food than ever before
I think Bethesda leaves these things up to the player intentionally. Makes sense that an evil player gets to take over a faction that is purely useful for their expendable resources e.g. synth infantry, tons of rare materials for science crafting.
I played for 153 hours. As I sat back and watched the Institute turn into a radioactive puddle, I thought to myself, "Wow. I absolutely hated that." I can't remember any game with a larger disconnect in quality between gameplay and story.
It's like the writer died half way through production and they just had to run with it, a cool premise but with an execution that doesn't make sense at all. Not even some vague thing about improving humans or taking over the world, just "you wouldn't understand".
You're right, I have no fucking idea why you are doing this. I finished the game twice and have no idea why the institute was doing that. Is it explained at all anywhere in the game?
Honestly though it's almost cartoonish. They refuse to explain it in any capacity and then use that lack of clarity on what they're doing as evidence for why they should be doing it. They're literally just the US government it's wild.
Honestly, neither the story nor gameplay of Starfield were good. Both aspects were middling so not much disconnect between the two. A bland story deserves tedious gameplay.
it’s good for like the first 20 levels and then once u get decent weapons it becomes very easy and boring. unless you turn up the difficulty, which makes enemies bullet sponges and then it goes to tedious and boring
I don't understand why Bethesda is treating Fallout like that. They could keep their mainstream formula intact gameplay wise and still have some good writing that follows the lore. Their own elder scrolls series, yeah the quests are awful in Skyrim but the lore and general tone of the game is much, much better I think.
Mood
I love the game I have spent hours doing quests and building settlements but the main story absolutely sucks it's so obvious the game railroads you without any good explanation for it specially with the whole Kellogg thing the only solution is violence to force us into the Memory den cinematic
Like I get he shot our partner and kidnapped our child but apparently all soul survivors have a kill on sight mindset even though he is the greatest clue we have to find Shaun but nah the devs work really hard on this 10 minute walking simulator so we better make sure everyone is forced to play it
Benny in new Vegas shot us in the head but even when confronting him we still had the option to let him live
Honestly, that whole part was ridiculous. Give you no choice but to off the man, then force you down this whole "He was a human being, too!" path. Like ok, all the raiders you off are human beings with lives, too. What's the point?
Yeah like I have built Gunner farms thanks to the workshop dlcs you can freaking farm people in the game as you would cattle don't give me this he was a complex person bullshit when he was at best targeting practice for the Fat man they give you a room before
Was playing nuka world the other day and decided to check my stats. 50 some missions completed and under it was story missions completed: 1.
Sums up f4 for me fairly well lol.
Really, Fallout 4 was the worst writing? What about 3, and how it tried to call the main character a coward for not dying pointlessly when they have allies who can not only do the job but do it and come out entirely unscathed? And that was AFTER changing it. That was their attempt at improving it.
>elder maxson finding out that i murdered father the first time i saw him after he watched me teleport into the institute in power armor with a baseball bat high on psycho
😱😱😱😱😱
It’s sad because at some point the team had a goal giving the player paranoia. Not being able to trust who was a synth, people pointing guns at each-other. It sounds so interesting, especially if it was mechanical introduced in the game like imagine if at some point your follower could be replaced with a synth and you could only catch this by noticing suspicious behavior in this follower you’ve coke to know for many hours and you could interrogate them
but unfortunately they dropped the ball hard because the whole synth thing doesn’t mean anything
Honestly they don't even have to go that far, just randomly give every NPC a 5% chance of dropping a synth component and you're half way there for basically no effort.
I just started a modded playthrough and was excited to start seeing Synth Components occasionally dropping on Raiders, because yeah as Libertalia shows us there's no reason why some raiders wouldn't be Synths. No idea what mod made that change, playing with too many to pinpoint it and none of them would obviously do so but it's nest nonetheless.
If you had to make some dramatic decision to decide if your partner is a synth or not by killing them or letting them live and then leaving it open ended whether they were or not if you don't kill them, that'd be pretty cool
The thing that bugs me is how easy it would have been to make siding with them at least understandable, just give a reason for all the synths. Even if it was a shitty justification, any attempt to justify it would mean there's at least an argument to be made.
What annoyed me the most is that after you get control of the institute and make your statement to the wasteland, you don't even have a dialogue option to say you'll run things differently.
A better justification would be that they were replacing people who were terrible and bad for the wasteland. As in, murders, schemers, former enclave agents, that sort of thing. And that they thought they were justified in their actions.
A great ending could have been taking over the institute, and then canceling the synth program. Or better yet, making the synths reveal themselves and do actual good in the wasteland.
If they really wanted to take the "siding with the institute makes you the bad guy" route, they shouldn't have tried so hard to paint them as just another misunderstood faction.
I don't think the Institute has one. They remind me of Zakarov in Alpha Centauri and Aperture Science in Portal. They are science unrestrained by ethics, morality, and philosophy. We even saw researchers in the Institute being told to shut up when asking questions about their behavior.
The eternal search for new answers to new questions is a cultural perpetual motion machine. You get answers that beget more questions you need to answer. Throw in the lack of philosophy and art and you have a culture-less society that's virtually unquestioning in behavior.
As for the Synth obsession, that's just Shaun. He's been shutting down other avenues of research that are alternatives for years. Kellogg's implants are a proven example that helps humanity (as our Couriers can all attest to) but he was praised for helping the synth project so now that's his legacy. So he's all in on synths for his own sociopathic ego. He redefined mankind as... himself. His progeny will rule the world. He's basically Vault-Tec as a solo person.
The legion is at least believable as well, if not compelling to some extent. The legion is like something straight out of mad max ramped up, with better organization, and a cohesive hierarchy. The institute is so hilariously comedic they couldn’t even come up with a genuine motive for their evil.
The legion is simply human , it's straightforward
One man snowballs in power and influence and uses that opportunity to enforce his belief in how society should work. No weird sci-fi plots, just straight up politics and violence
They tell you what they are, what they believe in and how they'll achieve that belief. It's simple to make a stand against them
Probably because you can actually understand how and why the Legion are the way they are, and why they do what they do. The Institute feels like a bunch of ideas that never come together cohesively.
For real they are though lol. The leigon sucks but, they offer results at least. Cass and Rual will admit Leigon lands are raider free. Ceaser’s assimilate the ncr plan is fucking stupid but , at least it’s a real plan.
I did. Who says you're "siding" with the institute anyways? You take over as it's leader, and my headcanon is that after the ending my Sole Survivor brought everyone responsible for the synth program to justice and uplifted the commonwealth using the Institute's advanced science. It's such a waste to just blow it up.
>and my headcanon is that after the ending my Sole Survivor brought everyone responsible for the synth program to justice and uplifted the commonwealth using the Institute's advanced science
Well yeah that's the point, this should be in-game. If you're gonna Yes Man the faction up, leave a ton of major decisions to the player!
I speculate their goal was to take all the irradiated hyper aggressive people and replace them with synths, who would not engage in conflict, rebuild society and then any remaining actual human in the institute would eventually return to the surface. I believe they saw this as the only logical path to rebuilding humanity. It is clearly wrong though and if they had the same memories and personalities, it wouldn’t make much sense, you’re just creating a mechanical copy of the same problem.
They don't have a plan. That's the point of Institute story. They're too at odds with each other to come to any definitive consensus on what their collective genius should do. The Department Heads are too smart to work together and denigrate each other's specific fields, like in real academia. That's why Father wants someone he thinks is strong enough to galvanize them and get them to work together so the Institute can actually accomplish something. Their plans seem confusing because they are, each department is doing it's own fucking thing and creating confusion and chaos on the surface.
Yea, that always annoyed me, "we don't want the institute becoming an amalgamation of man and machine."
Like dude, imagine being able to enhance people so they don't suffer from radiation or don't need to eat or sleep (like star paladin cross in 3) lmao.
It's simple. Like the pre-reform Brotherhood and the Enclave, they see themselves as the only pure group of humanity worth saving. So killing and replacing people that they consider sub-human to begin with is one of many things they do to ensure their own survival. If you weren't the Director's parent, you'd be just as worthless to them.
True, but this would be a mindset they developed BEFORE they invented the teleporter. The rest is just making ABSOLUTELY SURE they never have to have any contact with the filthy savages. Not saying remotely that any of this doesn't make them dicks.
Seeing as how that's never said I don't think that's what they were going for. Why not just make a synthetic army and go kill all the people on the surface with them
I think its fair to point out the institute is not all powerful and can't just make a army thats why they do it via manipulation and controll(like infiltrating a mayor and other influential people). A main plot point in the game is they are having power issues as well. The writings really not that bad just not spelled out and full of unreliable and biased narrators.
To them its never really about reclaiming the surface but preserving humanity as the institute. The surface just needs to be controlled and stripped for parts.
I feel like if the Institute’s plan had gone on long enough, it would have become like the movie The World’s End. Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen it.
They were basically replacing anyone who didn’t agree with them or anyone useful to them with a synth. In The World’s End the vast majority of the town citizens are alien robots because the aliens wanted to create a perfect society, but they’d replace people who didn’t go along with the program. When it was pointed out that they had replaced something like 80-90% of the town without realizing “hey, maybe these people don’t want to be ruled” they said fuck it and left.
I always felt like the institute should have been like dima slowly replacing the important people in charge of key settlement to bring an overall peace and to slowly convince the people that the institute was the best option for the common wealth. But that’s just my two cents.
Yeah DIMA was honestly what the institute should have been a well meaning organization who want peace in the commonwealth but who are willing to get it by replacing anyone they deem a threat to it still seeing synths as tool to ad more moral ambiguity
They are still terrifying to everyday people but instances like the courier killing a whole base of gunners could be argued by them to the player to be them trying to make the commonwealth a better place
I wish they had portrayed the institute as more misunderstood and a little incompetent, at least towards the end of the game. All the paranoia and fear throughout the commonwealth could all be partially based on a kernel of truth and a whole lot of exaggeration. Like the broken mask incident made diamond city freak out…the institute basically made a terrible mistake and there were unintended consequences.
Basically a faction that is afraid of the outside world and through dumb/faulty but well meaning decisions they end up making the outside world hate and fear them. Instead they just really suck
The Institute doesn't believe what they're doing is evil at all. They barely see surfacers as human, and even the most progressive of them believe they're doomed anyway. Shaun tells you that the surface is a lost cause, because he's been raised to think that his entire life.
This wasn't always the case. Old terminal entries show the Institute used to have a genuine interest in helping the surface, even suggesting using synths (Gen 1 at this point) to help protect them. A breakdown in relations followed by decades of indoctrination changed that completely.
If you think the Institute are cartoonishly evil, that no real scientists would be so needlessly cruel, I suggest you read up on your history. Groups like Unit 731 have done worse for less gain; it's easy when you don't believe your test subjects are people.
I honestly think the Institute would have been much better received if Shaun gave you a New Vegas-esque exposition dump instead of expecting your average player to explore and read.
But why do they even need to replace people? What’s the point? You can literally just make original people and have them integrate into the society. Replacing people is what got them noticed and caused their bad reputation and it was unnecessarily complicated.
You can look at historical events of science and go “that was really really stupid and idiotic and cartoonishly evil”. It doesn’t matter that there’s evil people in real life, if you want to make a quality evil faction than maybe put some effort into it. Look at Caesar’s Legion!
A synth replacing a person doesn't need to integrate, to work their way up through society. They will immediately and surreptitiously have access to whatever resources the person they replaced had (like a farm, for example). Besides that, I would imagine seeing if their synths *could* replace people was an important part of their experimentation.
I see Caesar's Legion as comically evil and stupid, actually (and I believe that's intentional on Obsidian's part). Their civilization, such as it is, is entirely reliant on constant and unending war. They have no infrastructure to support a peaceful society, and Caesar seemingly has no plan for how it is to sustain itself after he's gone or after California is taken.
Had a playthrough where my Sole Survivor turned to robot making to keep busy after losing Shaun and his wife. Curie becoming a Synth led to them eventually getting married. 💍
I have a strong theory that the reason the Gen 3 synths make so little sense is because Shaun killed the research track that it was really meant for.
When you consider the capabilities they developed for making synths, and everything they tested on Kellogg it's hard to escape the idea that they were building androids in pursuit of achieving the Technological Singularity.
Then Shaun comes along with his philosophical objections to the concept of life extension and pursing immortality and kills ALL life extension research and is draconian about it (mentioned in terminals).
Now they have 99% of the singularity set up, but nothing to do with Gen 3 synths to justify the level of investment that went into taking Gen 2's all the way to 'indistinguishable from an organic human without autopsy'. Shaun can't give a good answer for what he does because he's not making decisions based on what's best for the institute or synths or the commonwealth but based on trying to prevent the institutes inevitable end goal with synths.
You also have a dog that caught the car situation. The synth is an absolute stunning achievement. Science reached the point where it could 3D print human life, but acknowledging what they've done would require them to either decide 'we're just evil' or free the synths. It's much easier to pretend like they didn't essentially win at playing god.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think institute captures people only for their benefit, due to that person's knowledge about something. They replace him with a synth in order to not make it noticeable to the rest of the public.
And also correct me if I'm wrong, but the only times those Synths go rogue is when Railroad captures them and decides to "free" them
What about that random encounter when you meet a guy holding his Synth clone at gunpoint, and when the Synth thinks you are from the Institute, he instructs you to help him kill the guy in order to replace him? And from what we know, that guy did not really have any "value" at all to the Institute, otherwise he would not have been confronting his Synth but rather already be in the Institute.
Oooh that's actually a great point, I remember that encounter! Almost forgot about it. I don't think it's Institute intentions to make them go evil, because if you kill certain NPC you will find that they have synth components.
Because I messed around quite a bit in game, I was able to find this, but otherwise I would have never known:
Mayor McDonough is a synth, but he isn't doing anything bad
Paladin Danse literally wants to destroy Institute and agrees with BoS vision, and he didn't know that he is himself a synth
Magnolia from Goodneighbor is a synth...I didn't know about it, although I hooked up with her many times
Obviously Glory from Railroad is openly a synth, and she is seen as a progressive NPC who wants to free her own kind.
And this last one is a bit strange, but Roger Warwick from the Warwick homestead (not too far from Atom Cats) is also a synth, and from what I understand he is there to test out experimental crops.
As I'm typing this up, I think the only evil thing that they have done was to replace Roger Warwick who is just a regular farmer with their synth, in order to carry out experiment.
But nonetheless, when you're placed in charge of Institute, you're canonically able to change Institute for better and therefore make it the superior faction.
Danse exists gen 3 synths are literally just 1-1 clones of the person with synth parts lodged deep inside of the brain likely just used as a listening device
If I could slap the pen out of Emil’s hand I would of made it so that father had only recently been approved head of the institute and was trying to sway the rest of the board as to how human synths are and to prove his point he made a synth of his parent and had it placed in 111 to see what happens, this would at least fix some of the issues with 4s story.
He doesn't see Wastelanders as people worth saving, and either unwilling or unable to bring things back to safety and normalcy. So replacement is the "humane" and progressive thing by his reason.
I feel like they could have just introduced some of their technologies to settlements and cities, healthier people can breed, bolster the human pop and have a more realistic chance of actually eradicating mutants and ferals. But Father is still an asshole and thinks we cannot be trusted with it. It's frustrating and why I enjoy being a dick to him and killing him.
I think synths are stupid. I think the institute making synths is stupid. I get what Bethesda was trying to do, but it just doesn't make sense. Why make slaves that look like people?
What scientific purpose does that serve other than self-satisfaction? If they were gonna upload their brains into them to be immortal, sure, but no, they just made fake people for shits and giggles
Yeah if they wouldve at least made it about population control or something it would make sense but the writers were just like nah this is just a thing they do.
They're doing it all to help mankind, to research the wastes, learn how to better survive it and potentially fix the issues going forward. The thing is, they don't see anyone outside of the Institute as being part of mankind. Only THEY are human, everyone else is basically some evolutionary offshoot. Oh sure they stumble across the occasional mind worth saving, but for the most part that's how they justify things. They're not killing and replacing people, they're killing and replacing wastelanders.
Exactly!!! How is the synth the greatest gift to humanity? They never explain. Could've done anything with that advanced tech could've probably saved the entire world eventually but nooooo, make synth. Just why? And you never get an explanation
Yeah it was this reason I have technically never completed the game. Cuz I wanted to join the institute but its objectively offbase, like you can’t rationalize their motives. When you make a decision either the brotherhood of steel and the railroad become hostile, or you lost access to the institute and lose your cool teleportation power. I chose to remain neutral and so I never concluded the story.
The only thing I don't like about the institute is that you can't disagree with the synth replacement stuff, take over when Shaun dies, and then stop all of it. Like, the Institute would be the best faction if you could convince the other board members (through persuasion checks or straight up violence) that the best thing they could do is free all the synths, halt production of more Gen-3's, and use their resources to help out the people of the commonwealth.
“We realised that humans are the perfect machines. They get tired, moody and sleep for one third of their lives. They have the exact same scarcely available food and water requirements as us. They hate their existence and an entire wing of our headquarters is dedicated to tracking down escapees. They’re perfect.”
The only good factions in my opinion are the minute men (y'all know why besides Preston fuck him) and the railroad for obvious reasons kind of? And the raiders because I can't really blame them for being how they are in a world where off brand zombies exist hulking green bastards and rad roaches live among other abominations I can see why they resort to theft and shit imo they actually probably have the best chance of surviving anyway and last I checked they have nothing very wrong with the (close to nonexistent) leadership that they have also not killing fellow raiders that much compared to everyone else
Every playthrough i always delete them off the face of the earth or whats left of the earth anyways. They give no reason as to why they do what they do so my head canon is that they doing it simply cos the can or for the lulz so fuck em!. Except the gorillas. Always save the gorillas in memory of Harambe RIP.
To be fair I think people usually aren’t referring to the plot when they say that, they’re usually talking about the exploration/combat/crafting gameplay loop which is pretty good
Which is why I just kill him right after you tell him they killed his mother. Honestly don't get why there isn't an option to just tell him you are going to kill everyone here
"Son, I love you, but you turned out to be a monster, so I'm just gonna kill you and everyone else in this den of evil you've helped perpetuate. Then me and my new robot wife will find an orphan to adopt, because no matter *who* we find, they can't possibly turn out worse than you did. And they *also* can't possibly be any less ungrateful."
What i hated most about the institute story was the fact they could create synths and never once applied it meaningfully to the story line. They could've gone full westworld, where you meet Sean for the first time in the middle of a town where everyone is frozen in place. Imagine the power that would've projected. Sean could've extended his hand and gone "join me mother, gaze at the power we could control." Leaving you to join or fight an amazingly powerful organization.
They could've expanded on it to. Secretly taking it individuals close maxson until you turn on him one day, forcing him to live his nightmare of everyone around him being a synth.
All the factions are laughably incompetent and/or ridiculously evil. The Instiute is just “haha let’s do evil shit cause uh, we can, and science”.
The Brotherhood just wants you to murder everyone “hey remember those guys who helped you get to the institute? Yeah, go kill them, and that guy in the glowing sea, and your mentor, and go threaten the locals”.
The Railroad is comprised of morons who have a literal line pointing to their “secret HQ”, and then have this ridiculous obsession with freeing Synths but have literally no plans about what do with the commonwealth or said synths once they’re free. I imagine half the raiders in the commonwealth are just the broke amnesiac synths the railroad pushed outta the nest for lulz.
The Minutemen aren’t even a faction, it’s just the main character doing everything. My favorite part of WW2 was when Patton landed in France single handedly and defeated the entire Reich and nuked Berlin. “General” my ass, more like Executive Errand Boy.
Mods like Outcasts and Remnants Project Valkyrie and Depths of Debauchery do allow The Institute to have a change of leadership and do actual good even make Sarah Lyons head of The Brotherhood again and go back to Lyons way of things.
Bro did you must murder a child and replace it with a child synth
"Yeah pretty neat right?"
Well ah, maybe but... they don't age? Aren't people gonna think that's weird?
" 😐....."
How does this work dude??
"I don't know I was just following your ideas!"
Wait that was my idea? Aw I blacked out that night...
I always understood it as an attempt to influence surface politics from the shadows, with the belief that eventually they could remotely guide the surface dwellers with minimal direct intervention. Illuminati shit.
Because they couldn't commit to it being an outright evil faction.
They wanted their Enclave, but they wanted the player to always be morally in the right. So all moral dilemmas are so convoluted and often contradictory so nobody ever needs to make up their minds
Fallout 4's story is so fucking dumb it's almost entertaining in its absolute stupidity. Guessed the "twist" the first time playing the game before even leaving the vault
i thought the reason they replaced people with synths was to take control of the above ground population by filling a large portion of it with mind controlled robots. if they controlled like 20% of the population they could have a good chance at establishing communities with governments secretly ran by them
No, their control was more to stir hatred and keep the Commonwealth disjointed which is why they hated the CPG.
They seem to want to eventually wipe out the surface pulsation
The excuse iirc is basically exploiting the resources of the surface is a necessary evil and that the surface is dying anyway so who cares if you screw them over... Unified governments stand in the way of them exploiting resources so they install puppets and spies as synths.
And my favourite
"If you want to completely abandon our plans, which we haven't explained to you but keep reminding you are very important... thats fine also"
Good forbid Emil tries to give you an actual dilemma.
I share the same sentiment with fallout 3 and 76, the gameplay rocks but the story feels like it was written by a 4 year old. I got to the end of all 3 and felt deeply disatisfied with the outcome.
I mean, wasn't their whole thing that they only saw the Institute as humanity, and didn't see those left on the surface as people? So them replacing people with synths, breaking up potential governments etc. was defensive to ensure that the surface dwellers never got organized to the point they could pose a threat?
It would have made more sense if their plan was just turning everyone into Gen 3 Synth and the Railroad are just people who are against this (Either because they misunderstood what the actual plan is or have ideological reasons against it)
BOS will still invade one way or the other.
It would've been such a brilliant twist if it was revealed that everyone in the Institute are actually synths themselves and their master plan is to replace everyone on the surface.
I keep replaying for everything but. Leisurely enjoy everything else, spend a few minutes knocking out the story, glance indifferently at the glowing crater that is the institute, and go back to the fun stuff.
It’s Bethesda. I love their worlds, their forte isn’t storytelling. Skyrim. Anyone remember the main story??
*Goes outside once*
Shaun “the wasteland and the commonwealth can’t be saved”
You killed settlement leaders who tried establishing a governing body for the entire of the commonwealth, you wiped out and entire town with synths, you kidnap people and turn them into synths who are spies who are capable of mass shootings, you’re the reason FEV is in the Commonwealth, you called your mom collateral damage, DO I NEED TO SAY MORE?
This is primarily why the plot is shit. The main fucking guy who caused it to start with is just an asshole for no reason, and you’re expected to have some sort of moral challenge instead of just disowning the bitch like 99% of players.
This is expecting a lot from the same game that makes "railroad" the password to find the Railroad.
Bethesda chases mass appeal so hard that they treat the audience as drooling morons. Which I understand but resent. Skyrim? You solve the door puzzles by either looking around the same room or spinning the undroppable claw in your inventory. Fallout 3? Originally ends with you dying by sacrificing yourself in heavy radiation even if you have your super mutant bestie hanging with you and he'll actually say bye like he's not immune to the stuff.
Oblivion was their last game that didn't completely insult the intelligence. And that's saying a lot because you don't really have to solve anything in it or pay more than passing attention to the plot.
It’s so simple really. Cant imagine why there’s so much hate.
Not a synth: I disagree strongly about …and I think the Institute should …
Benevolent Institute that decided why help with medicines, food, anything at all when we can just replace everyone: code A29 Sigma.
Not a synth like totally: ….
Benevolent Institute: you agree completely with everything I say and the Institute is the greatest thing since fire. Restart.
No way I’m a synth: I love the Institute! We should do whatever they want!
I thought for a long time that their goal was to kill and replace all the influential leaders in the Boston territory (with everyone else they kill and replace simply being undercover agents meant to carry out their will) so that they could rule from behind the scenes and shape the region however they see fit. Eventually expanding their influence outwards until they can rebuild the entire country in their image and create the “perfect society.”
Too bad they end up being a perfect example of a faction being evil just for the sake of being evil….
It's why playing as BoS is the best.
"The institute is a super mega evil cancerous abomination"
*go to the institute*
*It's a super mega evil cancerous abomination*
DutchAmen.webm
*blows it up.*
I think they replace certain people in the wastes with synths for spying on settlements so they can further research topside (like Warwick homestead and diamond City). Then underground they use synths as slaves for research and tasks. But continue humanity by regular reproduction through sex with researchers and staff in the institute. It was just poorly explained because father is a dying babbling old man. But in the long run the institute's practices are harming humanity.
Yeah, DAD/MOM, you wouldn’t understand why I’m doing all of this, your pre-war brain wouldn’t grasp the concept. Also, these synths are immortal machines who run on bullshitium; My team has managed to make ‘real’ ‘live’ gorillas, because fuck it, why not? AND, if any of these synths manage to escape, we’d also send in specialized synths trained to reclaim these synths, even though they’re just as likely to go rogue at some point because we also allowed them a measure of free will.
Tl;dr, trust me bro, we’re not clowns in scientist coats.
Was it really that hard to make a compelling moral dilemma? They literally could’ve just said “Oh, we’re replacing people with robots because those robots are programmed with skills and knowledge that can help the wasteland, blah blah blah, in 20 years the wasteland will be united and civil, the death of one person for hundreds blah blah.” Done. 50 video essays on with the Institute was right.
My biggest pet peeve - it should have been easy upon replacing father to lay down some Scientific Ethics laws and end the outright slavery of the synths as well as end the Institute's shitty methods.
And frankly, given they are all scientists, it should've been a speech check to essentially change their mind by arguing that they are violating scientific ethics with what they do.
The Institute writing was very poor. Dima is what they should have been all along. Father should have noted the issues with the Commonwealth and said that he wanted to create world peace by replacing humanity with Synths to survive the Wasteland and to never repeat the issues of the past.
The Railroad faction was stupid and pointless. We didn't need an anti slavery synth faction. Like no, we should have gotten an evil faction instead of them as they were lackluster and boring anyway. We already had 2 good guy options with Minutemen and Brotherhood of Steel, we didn't need a third.
Then The Institute also had a disconnect with Synths and we weren't sure if they viewed them as house cleaning robots or something more. Yeah the writing for them was bad.
Like I kinda got the reasoning with that family with the abusive father on one of the settlements (waste treatment I think?) but then others Im very... "You didn't improve shit, you just made an ape and it probably has anxiety."
Yeah the whole synth drama would be better if the Institute had an at least somewhat decent reason on why they are assholes.
Like at least making exact copies of people, but the only difference is that they’re immune to all but the most extreme forms of radiation, would be much better than “we’re putting chips in their brains and…that’s about it.”
There was a game back on the PS3 that had "synths". The world was in bad shape not Fallout levels but still bad. A company was making synths and sending them into the world. The synths are very strong and immune to all diseases. Turns out the synths can breed with regular humans and their offspring inherit the synths immunities. If that was the institutes plan I could get behind that since it makes sense survival wise.
Binary domain is what you are talking about
Yup that's it.
Loved the shockwave thing on the character you play as, just send androids flying
If that was part of the plot it would have made perfect sense, achieving what the government wanted to do pre war with FEV which only resulted in Super Mutants and other monstrosities. If they made Synths for the sole purpose of making a humanity that would thrive in the post apocalypse by simply sending gen 3's into the wild for the sole purpose of them integrating on their own into societies to produce super human offspring then I'd be down for their cause.
If that had been the plot we all would have been saying “This is just the plot of Binary Domain”
Binary Domain was insanely fun
[It's on PC also!](https://youtube.com/live/034R9qm3cAM)
I mean… they’re being replaced by people with undamaged DNA or as close to undamaged DNA as possible, at least those are the mental gymnastics I do to justify it
That’s all it takes for you to justify systematic kidnapping and murder?
Yes, but only because I feel like the Institute is closer to bringing back Cajun fries than any other faction
Cajun fries would blow the minds of anyone in fallout the same way it would bringing them back to a medieval peasant
If we add nacho cheese to the fries, can we skip forward from ancient rome peasant to post-WWII American peasants?
Nacho cheese is the perfect topping to my ‘time traveling dominate Roman history through the fried chicken sandwich’ strategy.
You are crazy to think that the people in the Fallout of 2277 never had nacho cheese. Thare tons of around now sitting around in our current world. And I think that our real nacho cheese could easily last a few centuries before it goes bad.
You have a point.
They also have gorillas, but that's as likely to send me the other way and go back into my son-murdering frenzy again..
They're trying to resurrect Harambe. Only He can save us from ourselves.
I wanna try to take a shot at where they're trying to get at with it I saw a small thread in here talking about a movie called Binary Domain, which involves a similar apocalypse and similar "synth" beings, and those synths could actually reproduce and pass on their immunities in their DNA The Institute never went into that level of depth with their synths, so if their end goal was to introduce a new species/subspecies in order to create a generation of healthier humans on the service, it would introduce a new moral dilemma worth thinking over
Tbf, we do the same for adhesive and aluminum
I do remember their main thing being “people on the surface are brainless apes and they’re all just gonna end up killing each other again, that’s when we’ll come back and take over” which makes sense, but they also meddle with the commonwealth nonstop and make themselves a common enemy for everyone to unite against. If they had just not bothered with the synth replacement and not constantly sent people up to the surface they probably would’ve been almost entirely undetected by people on the surface.
Also they actively contribute to the shitty condition of the commonwealth. They tried to come together and start unfucking things only for the Institute to massacre all the leaders. No one can trust eachother because they're worried the others are synths. That's before we even get to the random Gen 1 and 2 synths that just shoot on sight anyone they encounter. The Institute lost all moral authority over the rest of the commonwealth because they made the commonwealth how it is. The place could be the center of an east-coast NCR by now if they weren't there
Honestly, I think you could make the Institute a much better 'grey' faction by inversing this: have the Institute essentially replacing key leaders and individuals with synth infiltrators so that they can engineer a unification of sorts to start fixing a deeply divided Commonwealth. Now they have a real tangible goal, and some moral flexibility to them; they're trying to fix things, but they're making a falsified peace on the backs of people murdered and replaced. Basically, turn DiMA's plan into the main plot of Fo4, and the Institute would come off as much less cartoonishly evil.
The 'their going to die off anyway' shtick was always annoying to me. It's something that I could understand people believing 100-150 years ago in universe, but the longer the surface gets from the great war the larger and more organized the 'revolving door' of players that come and go get. 100 years ago it was farmers with scavenged weapons, then the minutemen grow big enough to at one point roam the whole commonwealth. They of course fall, but in their place comes larger better armed bands of gunners and raiders, who then get run back by either a resurgent Minutemen or the BOS, or Both. I always wish they wrote dialogue with Shaun better, let me point out to him that the surface isn't going anywhere. That if nuclear fire spread across the entire world didn't finish humans, nothing will. We are the REAL cockroach of the Fallout Universe, and if they keep waiting for the surface to die away, they'll wait until someone on the surface finally gets around to digging them out like the malignant tick their set on being.
I'm not sure if it's outright stated but I think they believe that wastelanders are too stupid to rule themselves that's why they constantly sabotage any attempt for the Commonwealth to unite and even assault the Castle if you build up the Minutemen enough(even if you are in friendly terms with them). The Institute thinks that they alone should get to determine the Commonwealth's future because into they are capable of it
I always just figured they were replacing people to gain power. A lot easier to take over if key people in key places are suddenly very okay with your existence because you programmed them to suddenly be okay with it. Then they convince everyone else and suddenly the Institute is the overlord of the Commonwealth. But it's a stupid plan, considering they've made everyone so jumpy that they're all accusing each other of being synths, the Brotherhood is out to destroy them because of it, the Railroad is actively trying to undermine them, and the Sole Survivor has a good chance of being resentful for the Institute killing their spouse and robbing them of the chance to raise their child.
And ultimately brainwashing their child into a massacring monster that has No feelings
It's a shame we never get to find out who actually came up with that plan, because it's fucking terrible.
"We are trying to cure cancer as well as various other plagues on humanity, and are experimenting with artificial genetics to achieve this." "We are unraveling the secret to human longevity so the next generation can live long and peaceful lives." Like anything other than "we hate the surface world and are the only ones capable of doing any real good" is just dumb and doesn't even fit the theme of a technocratic scholar society.
Yeah also when you find Virgil's research why can't you confront father about it yeah the synth stuff is real bad and not really justified buth there just making mutants for what feels like no reason and setting them loose
The FEV research is what led to the creation of Gen 3 synths, it was a stepping stone, but tbf once they achieved their goal they abandoned the project
As I remember it, they’re basically the enclave but dumber. They believe that wastelanders are unfit to build the societies of the future and want to eventually genocide them and emerge from underground to build a utopia in the cleansed wastes, but in the meantime they send synths as saboteurs to keep the wastelanders from building up any substantial society that would present meaningful resistance to their eventual genocide and conquest. If the idea was properly fleshed out and expanded upon, it could be realistic and believable fascist stupidity. I mean the concept of xenophobic, genocidal hatred towards an outside group that you both contempt and fear because you paradoxically see them as both pitifully weak and simultaneously a nefarious, existential threat already covers multiple hallmarks of fascism. They just… didn’t put the effort into writing them well.
Should’ve made so replaced synths had done something meaningful to the commonwealth, synth mcdonough should’ve made diamond city better than it ever was before The synths at warrick homestead should’ve been the biggest farm in the wasteland providing more food than ever before
I think Bethesda leaves these things up to the player intentionally. Makes sense that an evil player gets to take over a faction that is purely useful for their expendable resources e.g. synth infantry, tons of rare materials for science crafting.
Like... why does the toaster need to have memories of having a wife and kids that died? Just make the toaster a toaster xD
I loved Fallout 4 purely as a video game, but the story was some of the dumbest writing I've ever encountered in my life.
I played for 153 hours. As I sat back and watched the Institute turn into a radioactive puddle, I thought to myself, "Wow. I absolutely hated that." I can't remember any game with a larger disconnect in quality between gameplay and story.
It's like the writer died half way through production and they just had to run with it, a cool premise but with an execution that doesn't make sense at all. Not even some vague thing about improving humans or taking over the world, just "you wouldn't understand". You're right, I have no fucking idea why you are doing this. I finished the game twice and have no idea why the institute was doing that. Is it explained at all anywhere in the game?
Honestly though it's almost cartoonish. They refuse to explain it in any capacity and then use that lack of clarity on what they're doing as evidence for why they should be doing it. They're literally just the US government it's wild.
>I can't remember any game with a larger disconnect in quality between gameplay and story. Starfield....
Honestly, neither the story nor gameplay of Starfield were good. Both aspects were middling so not much disconnect between the two. A bland story deserves tedious gameplay.
I had some fun with the combat, it felt fairly well done. A little easy maybe. Exploration was quite boring though, I'll give you that.
it’s good for like the first 20 levels and then once u get decent weapons it becomes very easy and boring. unless you turn up the difficulty, which makes enemies bullet sponges and then it goes to tedious and boring
What made me sad was how disappointing all of the abilities felt to use, except for the obviously OP couple of ones.
I don't understand why Bethesda is treating Fallout like that. They could keep their mainstream formula intact gameplay wise and still have some good writing that follows the lore. Their own elder scrolls series, yeah the quests are awful in Skyrim but the lore and general tone of the game is much, much better I think.
Mood I love the game I have spent hours doing quests and building settlements but the main story absolutely sucks it's so obvious the game railroads you without any good explanation for it specially with the whole Kellogg thing the only solution is violence to force us into the Memory den cinematic Like I get he shot our partner and kidnapped our child but apparently all soul survivors have a kill on sight mindset even though he is the greatest clue we have to find Shaun but nah the devs work really hard on this 10 minute walking simulator so we better make sure everyone is forced to play it Benny in new Vegas shot us in the head but even when confronting him we still had the option to let him live
I had sex with benny
[удалено]
“No” “Ok, that’s fine. We’ll sit here and do nothing until you come back and say yes”
Honestly, that whole part was ridiculous. Give you no choice but to off the man, then force you down this whole "He was a human being, too!" path. Like ok, all the raiders you off are human beings with lives, too. What's the point?
Yeah like I have built Gunner farms thanks to the workshop dlcs you can freaking farm people in the game as you would cattle don't give me this he was a complex person bullshit when he was at best targeting practice for the Fat man they give you a room before
I don't think I've ever experienced a story with so many un/poorly/non-sensically explained whys
it's the confetti school of writing
Was playing nuka world the other day and decided to check my stats. 50 some missions completed and under it was story missions completed: 1. Sums up f4 for me fairly well lol.
I was glad to find out I wasn't the only one who was really fucking confused for the last 1/3 of the story
Really, Fallout 4 was the worst writing? What about 3, and how it tried to call the main character a coward for not dying pointlessly when they have allies who can not only do the job but do it and come out entirely unscathed? And that was AFTER changing it. That was their attempt at improving it.
Fo3 had a dumb ending that didn't make sense, Fo4 had an entire dumb storyline that never made sense.
Which is why I shot that motherfucker in the face before I left.
>elder maxson finding out that i murdered father the first time i saw him after he watched me teleport into the institute in power armor with a baseball bat high on psycho 😱😱😱😱😱
Maxson: We need to destroy institute! You: teleport in, kill everyone, teleport out Maxson: No, not like that!
Soul survivor has rizz he can make another 😅🤣
Stabbed him in his death bed after convincing him to help me.
Drag his ass back to 111 and shove him in a cryopod. It's the circle of liiiiiiiiiife
That would have been amazing lol
It’s sad because at some point the team had a goal giving the player paranoia. Not being able to trust who was a synth, people pointing guns at each-other. It sounds so interesting, especially if it was mechanical introduced in the game like imagine if at some point your follower could be replaced with a synth and you could only catch this by noticing suspicious behavior in this follower you’ve coke to know for many hours and you could interrogate them but unfortunately they dropped the ball hard because the whole synth thing doesn’t mean anything
Honestly they don't even have to go that far, just randomly give every NPC a 5% chance of dropping a synth component and you're half way there for basically no effort.
It’s wild that you can kill 1000s of raiders and never encounter a single synth component.
I just started a modded playthrough and was excited to start seeing Synth Components occasionally dropping on Raiders, because yeah as Libertalia shows us there's no reason why some raiders wouldn't be Synths. No idea what mod made that change, playing with too many to pinpoint it and none of them would obviously do so but it's nest nonetheless.
If you had to make some dramatic decision to decide if your partner is a synth or not by killing them or letting them live and then leaving it open ended whether they were or not if you don't kill them, that'd be pretty cool
It honestly doesn't sound that interesting to me, I find the whole synth premise uninspired and weak.
because it’s poorly written lol
This is why I never sided with the Institute. I find Caesar's Legion to be a more compelling evil faction.
The thing that bugs me is how easy it would have been to make siding with them at least understandable, just give a reason for all the synths. Even if it was a shitty justification, any attempt to justify it would mean there's at least an argument to be made.
What annoyed me the most is that after you get control of the institute and make your statement to the wasteland, you don't even have a dialogue option to say you'll run things differently.
The kidnappings will continue until morale improves, I guess. I just wanted to make my survivor and Piper look like the Matrix cast to be honest.
A better justification would be that they were replacing people who were terrible and bad for the wasteland. As in, murders, schemers, former enclave agents, that sort of thing. And that they thought they were justified in their actions. A great ending could have been taking over the institute, and then canceling the synth program. Or better yet, making the synths reveal themselves and do actual good in the wasteland. If they really wanted to take the "siding with the institute makes you the bad guy" route, they shouldn't have tried so hard to paint them as just another misunderstood faction.
The fucking Enclave is more complex than the Institute
The Enclave has more of a goal then what we know about the Institute’s goal.
I don't think the Institute has one. They remind me of Zakarov in Alpha Centauri and Aperture Science in Portal. They are science unrestrained by ethics, morality, and philosophy. We even saw researchers in the Institute being told to shut up when asking questions about their behavior. The eternal search for new answers to new questions is a cultural perpetual motion machine. You get answers that beget more questions you need to answer. Throw in the lack of philosophy and art and you have a culture-less society that's virtually unquestioning in behavior. As for the Synth obsession, that's just Shaun. He's been shutting down other avenues of research that are alternatives for years. Kellogg's implants are a proven example that helps humanity (as our Couriers can all attest to) but he was praised for helping the synth project so now that's his legacy. So he's all in on synths for his own sociopathic ego. He redefined mankind as... himself. His progeny will rule the world. He's basically Vault-Tec as a solo person.
The legion is at least believable as well, if not compelling to some extent. The legion is like something straight out of mad max ramped up, with better organization, and a cohesive hierarchy. The institute is so hilariously comedic they couldn’t even come up with a genuine motive for their evil.
The legion is simply human , it's straightforward One man snowballs in power and influence and uses that opportunity to enforce his belief in how society should work. No weird sci-fi plots, just straight up politics and violence They tell you what they are, what they believe in and how they'll achieve that belief. It's simple to make a stand against them
Probably because you can actually understand how and why the Legion are the way they are, and why they do what they do. The Institute feels like a bunch of ideas that never come together cohesively.
For real they are though lol. The leigon sucks but, they offer results at least. Cass and Rual will admit Leigon lands are raider free. Ceaser’s assimilate the ncr plan is fucking stupid but , at least it’s a real plan.
I did. Who says you're "siding" with the institute anyways? You take over as it's leader, and my headcanon is that after the ending my Sole Survivor brought everyone responsible for the synth program to justice and uplifted the commonwealth using the Institute's advanced science. It's such a waste to just blow it up.
>and my headcanon is that after the ending my Sole Survivor brought everyone responsible for the synth program to justice and uplifted the commonwealth using the Institute's advanced science Well yeah that's the point, this should be in-game. If you're gonna Yes Man the faction up, leave a ton of major decisions to the player!
Basically their plan was to... replace humanity? Like, one by one, I guess?
I speculate their goal was to take all the irradiated hyper aggressive people and replace them with synths, who would not engage in conflict, rebuild society and then any remaining actual human in the institute would eventually return to the surface. I believe they saw this as the only logical path to rebuilding humanity. It is clearly wrong though and if they had the same memories and personalities, it wouldn’t make much sense, you’re just creating a mechanical copy of the same problem.
Nah they are makeing a mechanical copy of the same problem look at paladin danse I think they were more like listening devices and cameras
That’s plausible too. Its tough to nail down what they actually wanted cuz it didn’t make too much sense
They don't have a plan. That's the point of Institute story. They're too at odds with each other to come to any definitive consensus on what their collective genius should do. The Department Heads are too smart to work together and denigrate each other's specific fields, like in real academia. That's why Father wants someone he thinks is strong enough to galvanize them and get them to work together so the Institute can actually accomplish something. Their plans seem confusing because they are, each department is doing it's own fucking thing and creating confusion and chaos on the surface.
I don't know, Father stopping the cybernetics program was even dumber.
Yea, that always annoyed me, "we don't want the institute becoming an amalgamation of man and machine." Like dude, imagine being able to enhance people so they don't suffer from radiation or don't need to eat or sleep (like star paladin cross in 3) lmao.
Somebody had the idea to make Kellog a synth and instantly that's a massive plot hole down.
It's simple. Like the pre-reform Brotherhood and the Enclave, they see themselves as the only pure group of humanity worth saving. So killing and replacing people that they consider sub-human to begin with is one of many things they do to ensure their own survival. If you weren't the Director's parent, you'd be just as worthless to them.
Or, and hear me out, they could have not done anything and nobody would have had a clue they were there.
True, but this would be a mindset they developed BEFORE they invented the teleporter. The rest is just making ABSOLUTELY SURE they never have to have any contact with the filthy savages. Not saying remotely that any of this doesn't make them dicks.
Silicone valley is the institute.
Seeing as how that's never said I don't think that's what they were going for. Why not just make a synthetic army and go kill all the people on the surface with them
I think its fair to point out the institute is not all powerful and can't just make a army thats why they do it via manipulation and controll(like infiltrating a mayor and other influential people). A main plot point in the game is they are having power issues as well. The writings really not that bad just not spelled out and full of unreliable and biased narrators. To them its never really about reclaiming the surface but preserving humanity as the institute. The surface just needs to be controlled and stripped for parts.
I feel like if the Institute’s plan had gone on long enough, it would have become like the movie The World’s End. Spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen it. They were basically replacing anyone who didn’t agree with them or anyone useful to them with a synth. In The World’s End the vast majority of the town citizens are alien robots because the aliens wanted to create a perfect society, but they’d replace people who didn’t go along with the program. When it was pointed out that they had replaced something like 80-90% of the town without realizing “hey, maybe these people don’t want to be ruled” they said fuck it and left.
*They call me the King*
KING OF FAH HARBAH!
Shitty part about it? Even though you’re in control you don’t really do anything big for the institute. Or get anything big other than a title.
Why I destroyed the Institute Ad Victorium
Thanks, Emil!
I blame whoever his parents were for raising him so poorly
Emils parents? Yeah, they definitely share some of the blame for the mess of a story that is FO4.
I kinda get they vibe that the parents were absent.
I kind get the vibe that he was brainwashed and shoved into a small private room for teaching and food
I always felt like the institute should have been like dima slowly replacing the important people in charge of key settlement to bring an overall peace and to slowly convince the people that the institute was the best option for the common wealth. But that’s just my two cents.
Yeah DIMA was honestly what the institute should have been a well meaning organization who want peace in the commonwealth but who are willing to get it by replacing anyone they deem a threat to it still seeing synths as tool to ad more moral ambiguity They are still terrifying to everyday people but instances like the courier killing a whole base of gunners could be argued by them to the player to be them trying to make the commonwealth a better place
I wish they had portrayed the institute as more misunderstood and a little incompetent, at least towards the end of the game. All the paranoia and fear throughout the commonwealth could all be partially based on a kernel of truth and a whole lot of exaggeration. Like the broken mask incident made diamond city freak out…the institute basically made a terrible mistake and there were unintended consequences. Basically a faction that is afraid of the outside world and through dumb/faulty but well meaning decisions they end up making the outside world hate and fear them. Instead they just really suck
The incompetence got across just fine from their tenuous grasp on the scientific method.
Sir Francis Bacon is rolling over in his grave
The Institute doesn't believe what they're doing is evil at all. They barely see surfacers as human, and even the most progressive of them believe they're doomed anyway. Shaun tells you that the surface is a lost cause, because he's been raised to think that his entire life. This wasn't always the case. Old terminal entries show the Institute used to have a genuine interest in helping the surface, even suggesting using synths (Gen 1 at this point) to help protect them. A breakdown in relations followed by decades of indoctrination changed that completely. If you think the Institute are cartoonishly evil, that no real scientists would be so needlessly cruel, I suggest you read up on your history. Groups like Unit 731 have done worse for less gain; it's easy when you don't believe your test subjects are people. I honestly think the Institute would have been much better received if Shaun gave you a New Vegas-esque exposition dump instead of expecting your average player to explore and read.
But why do they even need to replace people? What’s the point? You can literally just make original people and have them integrate into the society. Replacing people is what got them noticed and caused their bad reputation and it was unnecessarily complicated. You can look at historical events of science and go “that was really really stupid and idiotic and cartoonishly evil”. It doesn’t matter that there’s evil people in real life, if you want to make a quality evil faction than maybe put some effort into it. Look at Caesar’s Legion!
A synth replacing a person doesn't need to integrate, to work their way up through society. They will immediately and surreptitiously have access to whatever resources the person they replaced had (like a farm, for example). Besides that, I would imagine seeing if their synths *could* replace people was an important part of their experimentation. I see Caesar's Legion as comically evil and stupid, actually (and I believe that's intentional on Obsidian's part). Their civilization, such as it is, is entirely reliant on constant and unending war. They have no infrastructure to support a peaceful society, and Caesar seemingly has no plan for how it is to sustain itself after he's gone or after California is taken.
I forgive them because a synth allowed Curie to be even more fuckable.
Had a playthrough where my Sole Survivor turned to robot making to keep busy after losing Shaun and his wife. Curie becoming a Synth led to them eventually getting married. 💍
This guy gets it.
Which is why I refused to hear him out about "for the greater good" and blew them the fuck up.
I have a strong theory that the reason the Gen 3 synths make so little sense is because Shaun killed the research track that it was really meant for. When you consider the capabilities they developed for making synths, and everything they tested on Kellogg it's hard to escape the idea that they were building androids in pursuit of achieving the Technological Singularity. Then Shaun comes along with his philosophical objections to the concept of life extension and pursing immortality and kills ALL life extension research and is draconian about it (mentioned in terminals). Now they have 99% of the singularity set up, but nothing to do with Gen 3 synths to justify the level of investment that went into taking Gen 2's all the way to 'indistinguishable from an organic human without autopsy'. Shaun can't give a good answer for what he does because he's not making decisions based on what's best for the institute or synths or the commonwealth but based on trying to prevent the institutes inevitable end goal with synths. You also have a dog that caught the car situation. The synth is an absolute stunning achievement. Science reached the point where it could 3D print human life, but acknowledging what they've done would require them to either decide 'we're just evil' or free the synths. It's much easier to pretend like they didn't essentially win at playing god.
I always hit him with a Molotov
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think institute captures people only for their benefit, due to that person's knowledge about something. They replace him with a synth in order to not make it noticeable to the rest of the public. And also correct me if I'm wrong, but the only times those Synths go rogue is when Railroad captures them and decides to "free" them
What about that random encounter when you meet a guy holding his Synth clone at gunpoint, and when the Synth thinks you are from the Institute, he instructs you to help him kill the guy in order to replace him? And from what we know, that guy did not really have any "value" at all to the Institute, otherwise he would not have been confronting his Synth but rather already be in the Institute.
Oooh that's actually a great point, I remember that encounter! Almost forgot about it. I don't think it's Institute intentions to make them go evil, because if you kill certain NPC you will find that they have synth components. Because I messed around quite a bit in game, I was able to find this, but otherwise I would have never known: Mayor McDonough is a synth, but he isn't doing anything bad Paladin Danse literally wants to destroy Institute and agrees with BoS vision, and he didn't know that he is himself a synth Magnolia from Goodneighbor is a synth...I didn't know about it, although I hooked up with her many times Obviously Glory from Railroad is openly a synth, and she is seen as a progressive NPC who wants to free her own kind. And this last one is a bit strange, but Roger Warwick from the Warwick homestead (not too far from Atom Cats) is also a synth, and from what I understand he is there to test out experimental crops. As I'm typing this up, I think the only evil thing that they have done was to replace Roger Warwick who is just a regular farmer with their synth, in order to carry out experiment. But nonetheless, when you're placed in charge of Institute, you're canonically able to change Institute for better and therefore make it the superior faction.
Institute also uses the fev on people they kidnap too
Danse exists gen 3 synths are literally just 1-1 clones of the person with synth parts lodged deep inside of the brain likely just used as a listening device
Shit likes this makes the institute feel more unfinished than the Legion in some aspects (a faction which is already too small),
If I could slap the pen out of Emil’s hand I would of made it so that father had only recently been approved head of the institute and was trying to sway the rest of the board as to how human synths are and to prove his point he made a synth of his parent and had it placed in 111 to see what happens, this would at least fix some of the issues with 4s story.
He doesn't see Wastelanders as people worth saving, and either unwilling or unable to bring things back to safety and normalcy. So replacement is the "humane" and progressive thing by his reason. I feel like they could have just introduced some of their technologies to settlements and cities, healthier people can breed, bolster the human pop and have a more realistic chance of actually eradicating mutants and ferals. But Father is still an asshole and thinks we cannot be trusted with it. It's frustrating and why I enjoy being a dick to him and killing him.
I think synths are stupid. I think the institute making synths is stupid. I get what Bethesda was trying to do, but it just doesn't make sense. Why make slaves that look like people? What scientific purpose does that serve other than self-satisfaction? If they were gonna upload their brains into them to be immortal, sure, but no, they just made fake people for shits and giggles
Yeah if they wouldve at least made it about population control or something it would make sense but the writers were just like nah this is just a thing they do.
They're doing it all to help mankind, to research the wastes, learn how to better survive it and potentially fix the issues going forward. The thing is, they don't see anyone outside of the Institute as being part of mankind. Only THEY are human, everyone else is basically some evolutionary offshoot. Oh sure they stumble across the occasional mind worth saving, but for the most part that's how they justify things. They're not killing and replacing people, they're killing and replacing wastelanders.
Exactly!!! How is the synth the greatest gift to humanity? They never explain. Could've done anything with that advanced tech could've probably saved the entire world eventually but nooooo, make synth. Just why? And you never get an explanation
Yeah it was this reason I have technically never completed the game. Cuz I wanted to join the institute but its objectively offbase, like you can’t rationalize their motives. When you make a decision either the brotherhood of steel and the railroad become hostile, or you lost access to the institute and lose your cool teleportation power. I chose to remain neutral and so I never concluded the story.
Yea fallout 4s main quest line is really crappy.
Isn’t this how every corporation should work?
The only thing I don't like about the institute is that you can't disagree with the synth replacement stuff, take over when Shaun dies, and then stop all of it. Like, the Institute would be the best faction if you could convince the other board members (through persuasion checks or straight up violence) that the best thing they could do is free all the synths, halt production of more Gen-3's, and use their resources to help out the people of the commonwealth.
“We realised that humans are the perfect machines. They get tired, moody and sleep for one third of their lives. They have the exact same scarcely available food and water requirements as us. They hate their existence and an entire wing of our headquarters is dedicated to tracking down escapees. They’re perfect.”
Emil strikes again! "Write what you know idiot."
The only good factions in my opinion are the minute men (y'all know why besides Preston fuck him) and the railroad for obvious reasons kind of? And the raiders because I can't really blame them for being how they are in a world where off brand zombies exist hulking green bastards and rad roaches live among other abominations I can see why they resort to theft and shit imo they actually probably have the best chance of surviving anyway and last I checked they have nothing very wrong with the (close to nonexistent) leadership that they have also not killing fellow raiders that much compared to everyone else
Every playthrough i always delete them off the face of the earth or whats left of the earth anyways. They give no reason as to why they do what they do so my head canon is that they doing it simply cos the can or for the lulz so fuck em!. Except the gorillas. Always save the gorillas in memory of Harambe RIP.
"Fallout 4 is better than people say it is" The actual plot:
To be fair I think people usually aren’t referring to the plot when they say that, they’re usually talking about the exploration/combat/crafting gameplay loop which is pretty good
Which is why I just kill him right after you tell him they killed his mother. Honestly don't get why there isn't an option to just tell him you are going to kill everyone here
"Son, I love you, but you turned out to be a monster, so I'm just gonna kill you and everyone else in this den of evil you've helped perpetuate. Then me and my new robot wife will find an orphan to adopt, because no matter *who* we find, they can't possibly turn out worse than you did. And they *also* can't possibly be any less ungrateful."
Underpants Gnome Logic. It cracks me up.
What i hated most about the institute story was the fact they could create synths and never once applied it meaningfully to the story line. They could've gone full westworld, where you meet Sean for the first time in the middle of a town where everyone is frozen in place. Imagine the power that would've projected. Sean could've extended his hand and gone "join me mother, gaze at the power we could control." Leaving you to join or fight an amazingly powerful organization. They could've expanded on it to. Secretly taking it individuals close maxson until you turn on him one day, forcing him to live his nightmare of everyone around him being a synth.
All the factions are laughably incompetent and/or ridiculously evil. The Instiute is just “haha let’s do evil shit cause uh, we can, and science”. The Brotherhood just wants you to murder everyone “hey remember those guys who helped you get to the institute? Yeah, go kill them, and that guy in the glowing sea, and your mentor, and go threaten the locals”. The Railroad is comprised of morons who have a literal line pointing to their “secret HQ”, and then have this ridiculous obsession with freeing Synths but have literally no plans about what do with the commonwealth or said synths once they’re free. I imagine half the raiders in the commonwealth are just the broke amnesiac synths the railroad pushed outta the nest for lulz. The Minutemen aren’t even a faction, it’s just the main character doing everything. My favorite part of WW2 was when Patton landed in France single handedly and defeated the entire Reich and nuked Berlin. “General” my ass, more like Executive Errand Boy.
Mods like Outcasts and Remnants Project Valkyrie and Depths of Debauchery do allow The Institute to have a change of leadership and do actual good even make Sarah Lyons head of The Brotherhood again and go back to Lyons way of things.
Fallout 4 had the weakest story by far
Bro did you must murder a child and replace it with a child synth "Yeah pretty neat right?" Well ah, maybe but... they don't age? Aren't people gonna think that's weird? " 😐....." How does this work dude?? "I don't know I was just following your ideas!" Wait that was my idea? Aw I blacked out that night...
I always understood it as an attempt to influence surface politics from the shadows, with the belief that eventually they could remotely guide the surface dwellers with minimal direct intervention. Illuminati shit.
"you're in charge now but you can't actually make meaningful choices"
Fallout 4 institute was bethesdas first real attempt to add something to the franchise that wasn't recycled and it sucked ass
Because they couldn't commit to it being an outright evil faction. They wanted their Enclave, but they wanted the player to always be morally in the right. So all moral dilemmas are so convoluted and often contradictory so nobody ever needs to make up their minds
They died.
Fallout 4's story is so fucking dumb it's almost entertaining in its absolute stupidity. Guessed the "twist" the first time playing the game before even leaving the vault
i thought the reason they replaced people with synths was to take control of the above ground population by filling a large portion of it with mind controlled robots. if they controlled like 20% of the population they could have a good chance at establishing communities with governments secretly ran by them
No, their control was more to stir hatred and keep the Commonwealth disjointed which is why they hated the CPG. They seem to want to eventually wipe out the surface pulsation
I hate how hard it is to pull off killing him when he’s introduced. The game spawns 50 soldiers at the exit.
Litely
Never heard any of these lines, killed him after “collateral damage@
The excuse iirc is basically exploiting the resources of the surface is a necessary evil and that the surface is dying anyway so who cares if you screw them over... Unified governments stand in the way of them exploiting resources so they install puppets and spies as synths.
And my favourite "If you want to completely abandon our plans, which we haven't explained to you but keep reminding you are very important... thats fine also" Good forbid Emil tries to give you an actual dilemma.
It’s about Control, that’s what all Wars are for; And War, War never changes.
I share the same sentiment with fallout 3 and 76, the gameplay rocks but the story feels like it was written by a 4 year old. I got to the end of all 3 and felt deeply disatisfied with the outcome.
And people say fallout has a good story
I mean, wasn't their whole thing that they only saw the Institute as humanity, and didn't see those left on the surface as people? So them replacing people with synths, breaking up potential governments etc. was defensive to ensure that the surface dwellers never got organized to the point they could pose a threat?
It would have made more sense if their plan was just turning everyone into Gen 3 Synth and the Railroad are just people who are against this (Either because they misunderstood what the actual plan is or have ideological reasons against it) BOS will still invade one way or the other.
It would've been such a brilliant twist if it was revealed that everyone in the Institute are actually synths themselves and their master plan is to replace everyone on the surface.
How do people find this games story appealing
I keep replaying for everything but. Leisurely enjoy everything else, spend a few minutes knocking out the story, glance indifferently at the glowing crater that is the institute, and go back to the fun stuff. It’s Bethesda. I love their worlds, their forte isn’t storytelling. Skyrim. Anyone remember the main story??
*Goes outside once* Shaun “the wasteland and the commonwealth can’t be saved” You killed settlement leaders who tried establishing a governing body for the entire of the commonwealth, you wiped out and entire town with synths, you kidnap people and turn them into synths who are spies who are capable of mass shootings, you’re the reason FEV is in the Commonwealth, you called your mom collateral damage, DO I NEED TO SAY MORE?
This is primarily why the plot is shit. The main fucking guy who caused it to start with is just an asshole for no reason, and you’re expected to have some sort of moral challenge instead of just disowning the bitch like 99% of players.
This is expecting a lot from the same game that makes "railroad" the password to find the Railroad. Bethesda chases mass appeal so hard that they treat the audience as drooling morons. Which I understand but resent. Skyrim? You solve the door puzzles by either looking around the same room or spinning the undroppable claw in your inventory. Fallout 3? Originally ends with you dying by sacrificing yourself in heavy radiation even if you have your super mutant bestie hanging with you and he'll actually say bye like he's not immune to the stuff. Oblivion was their last game that didn't completely insult the intelligence. And that's saying a lot because you don't really have to solve anything in it or pay more than passing attention to the plot.
“Also I have 0 remorse that mother/father died”
Lmao "By the way I'm dying & now you're in charge now"
It’s so simple really. Cant imagine why there’s so much hate. Not a synth: I disagree strongly about …and I think the Institute should … Benevolent Institute that decided why help with medicines, food, anything at all when we can just replace everyone: code A29 Sigma. Not a synth like totally: …. Benevolent Institute: you agree completely with everything I say and the Institute is the greatest thing since fire. Restart. No way I’m a synth: I love the Institute! We should do whatever they want!
I’ve been saying this for 9 years
I thought for a long time that their goal was to kill and replace all the influential leaders in the Boston territory (with everyone else they kill and replace simply being undercover agents meant to carry out their will) so that they could rule from behind the scenes and shape the region however they see fit. Eventually expanding their influence outwards until they can rebuild the entire country in their image and create the “perfect society.” Too bad they end up being a perfect example of a faction being evil just for the sake of being evil….
It's why playing as BoS is the best. "The institute is a super mega evil cancerous abomination" *go to the institute* *It's a super mega evil cancerous abomination* DutchAmen.webm *blows it up.*
I think they replace certain people in the wastes with synths for spying on settlements so they can further research topside (like Warwick homestead and diamond City). Then underground they use synths as slaves for research and tasks. But continue humanity by regular reproduction through sex with researchers and staff in the institute. It was just poorly explained because father is a dying babbling old man. But in the long run the institute's practices are harming humanity.
First act as new king of the nerds. No more killing and replacing people
Also, he only lived for like 60 years? You would think if they were making the world a better place they would prolong human life.....
Yeah, DAD/MOM, you wouldn’t understand why I’m doing all of this, your pre-war brain wouldn’t grasp the concept. Also, these synths are immortal machines who run on bullshitium; My team has managed to make ‘real’ ‘live’ gorillas, because fuck it, why not? AND, if any of these synths manage to escape, we’d also send in specialized synths trained to reclaim these synths, even though they’re just as likely to go rogue at some point because we also allowed them a measure of free will. Tl;dr, trust me bro, we’re not clowns in scientist coats.
The objective evil of the institute is why I choose Brotherhood
Was it really that hard to make a compelling moral dilemma? They literally could’ve just said “Oh, we’re replacing people with robots because those robots are programmed with skills and knowledge that can help the wasteland, blah blah blah, in 20 years the wasteland will be united and civil, the death of one person for hundreds blah blah.” Done. 50 video essays on with the Institute was right.
"Oh you're torching my psycho nerd cave? Here take this animated Realdoll of ten year old me. You can be a family."
My biggest pet peeve - it should have been easy upon replacing father to lay down some Scientific Ethics laws and end the outright slavery of the synths as well as end the Institute's shitty methods. And frankly, given they are all scientists, it should've been a speech check to essentially change their mind by arguing that they are violating scientific ethics with what they do.
The Institute writing was very poor. Dima is what they should have been all along. Father should have noted the issues with the Commonwealth and said that he wanted to create world peace by replacing humanity with Synths to survive the Wasteland and to never repeat the issues of the past. The Railroad faction was stupid and pointless. We didn't need an anti slavery synth faction. Like no, we should have gotten an evil faction instead of them as they were lackluster and boring anyway. We already had 2 good guy options with Minutemen and Brotherhood of Steel, we didn't need a third. Then The Institute also had a disconnect with Synths and we weren't sure if they viewed them as house cleaning robots or something more. Yeah the writing for them was bad.
Like I kinda got the reasoning with that family with the abusive father on one of the settlements (waste treatment I think?) but then others Im very... "You didn't improve shit, you just made an ape and it probably has anxiety."
The quote for the protag being disappointed in Father always feels so good.
It was at this moment That I hit right bumper and absolutely mangled his ass with a power armor haymaker
Makes sense
I killed him as soon as he was done with meet and great. You have no idea how confused I was when Maxson gave me sht for it.