Hi all,
I would love to see a mod that replaces the Institute's assets with pre-war assets. Simply changing the scientist outfits to pre-war casual wear would be a great start, but replacing furniture and wall textures with a pre-war laboratory aesthetic would be fantastic.
Why?
I think the biggest problem with the Institute is that they look like a futuristic fascist science cult. A more fitting choice would have been to copy the aesthetic of Robert Oppenheimer and Los Alamos - a community of mid-century sweater-vest academics creating super weapons in a secret hideout, somewhat out of necessity, but also out of curiosity and egotism.
I think that giving them pre-war clothes, and having their base be pre-war labatories that have been converted to living spaces, would be a great way to humanise the faction. It would be a pleasant surprise, a callback to the prologue and lends the faction moral ambiguity when you first encounter them. It makes zero sense to give a hidden community uniforms - who the f@#£ would willingly put on a uniform each morning to look like every other person in your community of fifty people? If they had any sort of branding, it would be the logo of the university, which would be stamped on their equipment.
The evil uniforms are ridiculous, as is the idea that the Institute has enough resources to convert tables, chairs and microscopes into the latest Apple and Ikea i-products. The current Institute aesthetic is sickeningly sterile, and would drive them all insane - there is nothing homely about their home. They should have enough resources to live comfortably, but still carefully rationed, heavily recycled - like everything that can be reused has been reused. They are essentially vault-dwellers - why have they seen greater cultural and technological changes than anybody else? They should be an isolated remnant of a glorious past, and a vision for a very attainable future for the Commonwealth.
So how synths, and why synths? Made fron scavenged resources, to collect scavenged resources. The same with teleporters and other hi-tech - not to terrorise outsiders, but as tools for resource gathering. The fact that they invest limited resources so heavily into synths shows they have a need for them, but also that they are proud of their creation, and have the potential to really help outsiders, if they bothered. They fact they tend to do evil things is less because they are uniformed villains and more because they are an isolated community putting their own needs before others.
It would also make the change of leadership after Shaun less awkward - instead of becoming Supreme Leader of the Evil Council, you'd be akin to a community liason officer for the university faculty - and a softer look would introduce a morally grey aspect to blowing them up. It certainly feels good to gun down fascists, but how heroic is it to gun down an unarmed nerd while he tinkers with circuits at a tiny desk at the foot of his bed? The Brotherhood would have no qualms, but the Railroad and Minutemen would have a much needed smudge on their squeaky clean records - zealotry and revenge, tyranny and terrorism, the absolute need for violent actions should always be questioned, and as a player it is too easy to just kill who the good guys tell you to kill.
